Why you can’t guess your influencers

We often play a game with our clients. Write down the names of the top ten influencers on your market (or segment). If you guess correctly you don’t pay us.

It’s a safe bet – we’ve never encountered a close guess. But why?

I think there are two possible reasons. Firstly, most people have never thought about the question before. Although intuitively they know that their prospects are being influenced by a range of individuals, they’ve never considered who these people might be.

The second reason is that when considering influence, they use one, or maybe two, dimensions to measure influence. The most common ones used are frequency and market reach/awareness. Sometime they’ll use connectedness, especially if they’re considering the influence of bloggers.

The problem is that influence is multi-dimensional. Currently we use four dimensions of influence, and are piloting a further four (from which we expect two to be practical and consistently measurable).

It also explains why Bill Gates and Steve Jobs rarely turn up on our influencer rankings, along with the other obvious CEO of top companies. These individuals may influence industry trends and directions, but they rarely affect real decisions at the coal face.