Do you ever need to achieve something through others, when you have no authority over them?
Of course. Not only do you currently find yourself in such situations, but it doesn’t seem to get any easier even as your job level and title increase. In fact, the situations simply become more complex as job responsibilities expand. Conceivably the CEO is the only employee who has ultimate authority – and even he/she usually has a Board of Directors to answer to!

Think about account executives. They often envision a customized solution for their customer but then have difficulty "selling" the idea and getting the internal support they need to implement the solution. Their customer has high expectations, yet it is difficult to align the internal organization to meet these expectations. If you support sales, perhaps in a training and development organization, you have probably heard this concern. Certainly when you interface with strategic salespeople, you will be more credible if you understand that this is likely one of their greatest challenges. In fact, if you could help them reduce the time they spend trying to influence others internally, they could be spending that time with their external customers instead!

The importance of being skilled at "influence without authority" is confirmed from research completed by PDI. In PDI's analysis of tens of thousands of 360-degree feedback results, "Influence Others" was the only competency that was in both top ten lists for respondents predicting 1) senior management potential and 2) possible future career derailment. In other words, possessing this skill is critical for moving up in the organization, and lacking this skill could contribute to a career setback.
How can a person become more skilled in this critical competency? Is improving communication skills the answer? Or escalation? Or simply doing a lot of favors, in hopes that your good deeds will be returned when you are in need? Questions like these are what sparked the desire to develop a new thought process around influencing others.

Just as salespeople can be a source of best practices in managing relationships with customers, we looked to best-in-class sales organizations to teach us what they have learned about how to influence internally. Their successes created the foundation for the “IMPACT Without Authority” model (see Figure 1).

The following are a few tips that you can follow, as well as provide to salespeople who are challenged with selling internally.

• Be sure you understand the business goals of the people you are trying to influence. What you are trying to accomplish might actually hinder the achievement of others’ goals, and recognizing this underlying cause of concern is an important first step.
• Get others involved. When internal colleagues contribute to the development of a solution, they will more likely accept (and even embrace) it.
• Instead of trying “to influence” someone, view the situation you’re in as a problem to be solved. Then, look for a win/win solution to the problem.
• If you’re trying to implement a custom solution for a customer, make that customer "real" to the parts of the organization that need to change what they are doing. Often when non-sales personnel have a chance to meet and talk with an external customer, they become stronger advocates for the account and its unique needs.
• Be sure you are taking a balanced view of your idea. You need to determine whether the idea is beneficial for your own company as well as for the customer.
• Recognize that influence is a process. The more deliberate the planning, the more likely success will happen.

These tips and others will be explored in Session VII at the SMT annual conference in Boca Raton in November. See you there!