THOUSANDS OF BOOKS have been published teaching salespeople how to improve their selling skills. For me, there was only one reason to write yet another: to make a difference in the professional lives of others. I strongly believe that the concepts outlined in this book, if applied, are game changers.
I’ve seen too many salespeople work too hard for the lackluster results they achieve, never attaining the income and satisfaction they desire and deserve. Why? Because they misdiagnose their sales challenges and, as a result, prescribe the wrong solutions. They focus only on improving their “hard” sales skills when, in fact, something far different than just poor selling techniques are getting in their way.
This epiphany came after observing hundreds of role-playing scenarios during sales training in which salespeople flawlessly executed hard sales skills. They set up the meeting agenda properly, asked effective questions, and clearly established the next steps required to ultimately make a sale. But sometimes, when these same salespeople ended up in front of an “Attila the Hun” prospect, every bit of that knowledge and skills training went out the door. The salesperson moved into a “product dump,” offering solutions too quickly, even though he or she knew that such behavior leads to a price-driven sale rather than a value-added, consultative sales conversation. Or the opposite behavior occurred: the salesperson simply shut down, unable to think of anything to say, hoping and praying the meeting would end quickly.
What creates this chasm between knowing what to do and actually doing it? The answers are in this book.
There is a Buddhist proverb that states, “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.” And luckily for me, the team from Complete Intelligence, LLC, Marty Lassen and Scott Halford, showed up as my teachers and helped me discover the answer to this nagging question. Lassen and Halford are experts in emotional intelligence and work with executives and managers, showing them how to incorporate emotional intelligence skills into their personal and professional roles.
Emotional intelligence skills are rarely taught to salespeople. Most training is focused on hard sales skills such as finding new opportunities, negotiation, or closing tactics. There is little attention placed on soft skills such as empathy, rapport, and self-confidence. Even less on teaching salespeople how to manage their emotions and the emotions of others in order to achieve the sales results they desire.
Some salespeople are good at posing questions to prospects. But if they lack the emotional intelligence skill of empathy, they don’t communicate the all-important message, “I really feel your pain and I do care.” Despite the good questions they ask, prospects don’t connect with them. They feel as if they are being interrogated rather than meeting with a trusted advisor where a true partnership is being forged.
Other salespeople are good at building rapport but have difficulty building their sales pipelines. They don’t prospect consistently because they have not developed the emotional intelligence skill of delayed gratification. Rather than take the time to strategize and develop a pursuit plan, they give in to the pull of instant gratification and focus on what is easy instead of what is effective. Proactive business development is put off with the excuse, “I’ll do the sales activity when I have time.” Their wonderful rapport skills are wasted because they have few, if any, appointments on the calendar.
Still others excel at prospecting, but once they are sitting in a meeting, facing a sophisticated C-level buyer, they lack the emotional intelligence skill of self-confidence to close the business at full margin. Under pressure, they quickly cave into negotiation tactics. Emotions take control of the sales meeting rather than tapping into their selling skills, logic, and intellect.
All of these scenarios demonstrate how mastering a variety of emotional intelligence skills can make a huge impact on a person’s sales results. After many meetings with Lassen and Halford, coupled with my years of sales and sales management experience, I became convinced that lack of emotional intelligence skills training is a key reason that sales professionals often don’t close the gap between knowing and doing. Most sales professionals know what to do. So why aren’t they doing it?
Like many of you, I’ve enjoyed a great deal of success in sales. However, I have also fallen short when it comes to mastering my own emotional intelligence skills. Sometimes my high independence prevented me from asking other people for their help, input, or perspective. I missed out on the wisdom of others that could have provided shortcuts to my goal or prevented mistakes. At other times, my lack of impulse control caused me to make decisions too quickly and say “yes” to things I shouldn’t have. Digging out of those “impulse decision holes” has created stress and heartburn for me over the years. I didn’t understand the power of the emotional intelligence skill of self-awareness, so I never set aside downtime to accurately assess why the same sales or leadership problems kept appearing in my life.
Perhaps you have experienced the same issues. After reading this book and putting its principles into action, you will quickly discover that soft skills do produce hard sales results.
My Career in Sales
My first exposure to sales was through Jazzercise, a dance fitness company based out of Carlsbad, California. I owned three franchises and quickly learned how to sell and market in order to fill the gymnasium with paying students. I did everything imaginable to bring in business, from hiring my neighbor’s kids to stuff flyers in mailboxes to creating a speakers bureau. (Never mind that it was a bureau comprised of one speaker—me!) I delivered talks on fitness and nutrition to anyone who would listen, with the goal of converting audience members into paying clients.
My efforts paid off and my success in building the business landed me a place on the national training team for Jazzercise. I went around the country teaching new instructors how to start and grow their businesses. This was my first exposure to teaching and is where I learned that I had a love and talent for it.
From there, I had the good fortune to join Varsity Spirit Corporation, a small firm based in Memphis, Tennessee, that both manufactures cheerleading uniforms and conducts hundreds of cheerleading and dance camps and events across the country. The timing was right, as Varsity was just starting to build a direct sales force. This company gave many people incredible opportunities for growth, and fortunately for me, I was one of the recipients.
I started in the field as a sales rep and moved up the corporate ladder to become Vice President of Sales, directing a national team of 130. During my ten years at Varsity, we grew from $8M to $90M, went public, and were named by Forbes magazine as one of the 200 fastest growing companies in the United States. Varsity is still growing and very successful, now the largest company in the industry.
After this great opportunity, I pursued teaching and training sales and sales management professionals full time, and have been doing that for the last fourteen years. We get hired to “grow” three things: sales, profits, and happiness. Although my firm works with a variety of clients and industries, our customers all have three values in common:
1. They value education and outside advice.
2. They value and invest in their greatest asset, their employees.
3. They treat their vendors like partners.
I am very fortunate to work with great customers.
What You Will Learn in This Book
The topic of emotional intelligence may seem a bit esoteric, but nothing could be farther from the truth. You will find that this book is filled with pragmatic information that you can use immediately. Don’t let the “soft” in “soft skills” fool you. The results you will glean from applying this knowledge are anything but soft.
This book will teach you about emotional intelligence in the sales arena step by step. Many of the skills, definitions, and context are derived from the assessment tool, the Emotional Quotient Inventory 2.0 or EQ-i 2.0®, distributed by Multi-Health Systems, one of the world’s leading assessment companies. This instrument measures a cross-section of interrelated emotional and social competencies, skills, and facilitators that determine how effectively we understand and express ourselves, understand others and relate with them, and cope with daily demands. We use this assessment with many of our clients to establish a baseline of competencies and identify areas of improvement. We know that what gets inspected and measured does improve.
In Chapter 1, we will look at emotional intelligence and its relationship to closing the knowing-and-doing gap. According to the American Society of Training and development, American companies spend about $20 billion (yes, billion) a year on sales training. With that many dollars being invested, you would expect every salesperson and organization to be hitting their revenue goals. Yet, sales continue to be a problem for many organizations because they are not addressing the core issue for lack of results, which can be attributed to poor emotion management.
Chapter 2 establishes the foundation of knowledge about the neuroscience of sales to help you understand the unique combination of biology, psychology, and selling skills that go into a successful sales transaction. Salespeople who learn to harness this combination are the ones who will succeed in an increasingly competitive business environment.
In subsequent chapters, each stage in the sales process is examined in order to point out specific soft skills that can improve your performance. For example, a soft skill such as assertiveness makes a big difference in how you set and manage expectations for a partnership, not a “vendor-ship.” This knowledge will help you stay out of those frustrating selling scenarios where prospects aren’t returning your phone calls or emails. These skills will help you qualify opportunities better—and reduce long sales cycles as well.
You will also learn how impulse control and reality testing help you listen more than you speak. Prospects have been complaining about salespeople talking too much for years and I will give you new tools and insights that will help you talk less and sell more.
And you will discover how the emotional intelligence skills of self-regard and self-awareness affect what level of decision makers you will contact and meet with in an organization. Do you really need one more lecture on “calling at the top”? I don’t think so. You know what to do and these soft skills will help you execute.
The book closes with a discussion around the qualities of emotionally intelligent sales leaders and cultures. They have a competitive advantage in the market because they attract and keep top performers. The formula is pretty simple: good people like hanging around other good people. Emotionally intelligent salespeople value relationships, play well with others, are lifelong learners, and show up with good attitudes every day.
Throughout this book, each chapter ends with several “action steps” that provide you with concrete ways to implement the skills you have learned in that chapter and that you will use in your day-to-day sales life.
How to Get the Most Out of This Book
At this point, you might be wondering if I value traditional sales training. The answer is a resounding yes! My company teaches hard sales skills every day. However, I’ve found that sales performance issues are usually the result of a deficit in both hard and soft skills. It’s not an either/or proposition. It’s similar to losing weight. If you want the fastest results, diet and exercise is the quickest route to success. I want to encourage salespeople and organizations to take a holistic approach when diagnosing sales problems and solutions.
As you read this book, take time to review your wins and losses from the current and previous years. Look at the data from a different perspective. What hard and soft skills allowed you to win or lose business during this time?
As you will learn, scheduling downtime helps you gain clarity on how best to change or improve. Hard-charging salespeople often make the mistake of plowing forward without taking enough time for introspection. As a result, they keep making the same sales mistakes in their approach and process. In the words of Steve Prentice, author of Cool Down: Getting Further by Going Slow (Wiley, 2007), “You need to slow down to speed up.” Take time to step back and evaluate your areas of weakness.
Part of slowing down means taking time to jot down notes as you read this book. Review the notes daily and weekly so that the new ideas and concepts become part of your daily habits and thoughts. Aristotle was right when he said, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
Finally, be willing to practice your new skills. When you study any of the “greats” in life, whether they are musicians, speakers, or athletes, you will find a similarity in how they achieved their greatness: hours and hours of practice. The good news is that practice is within your full control. You can practice in good or bad economic times. You don’t have to get approval or sign-off from your manager to do it. And it doesn’t cost you anything but time.
After reading this book, you will join other progressive sales professionals who have elevated their game by learning emotional intelligence skills. I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: soft skills do produce hard sales results. Are you ready for a game changer?