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Influencing skills guide

Master how to do influencing right that will help you with your negotiations

What are influencing skills?

Influencing skills are the skills needed to bring people round to your way of thinking. This is done without using force or coercion, whilst always acknowledging their individual opinions.

The importance of influencing skills has increased over the years, with it now being one of the top five soft skills most in demand for procurement and supply chain professionals.

The top five soft skills are:

The top five soft skills are:

The demands on procurement and supply chain professionals are increasing. Organisations need professionals to lead change from within. If procurement increase their influence, this will help organisations drive growth in an era when it is with a range of global challenges. Procurement and supply professionals have a huge opportunity to influence stakeholders and suppliers across many industries and, more importantly, more digital capability to affect change in their organisations than ever before.

 

What are good influencing skills for negotiation?

Influencing skills are reliant on good soft skills, those skills are seen above. You need to have the ability to communicate effectively and engage stakeholders and refine the art of storytelling.

Storytelling depends on your objective. Are you wanting to spark action and communicate who you are? Or do you want to foster collaboration and share knowledge? Each objective will have a different story.

  • Start with context before content
  • When using data, put it into context
  • Recognise the decision style of each stakeholder which will help frame your approach.
 

What are the best persuasive techniques?

When thinking about being persuasive, you’ll have to apply your soft skills and emotional intelligence to make it work. 

Here are some tips and techniques below to master the art of persuasion.

Managing stakeholders

Stakeholders play a huge role within the procurement and supply profession. Learn how to identify and manage them successfully. Find out more about Managing Stakeholders

Stakeholder management key themes

Procurement Soft Skills Managing stakeholders
7 principles of influencing Effective Communication Training

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