Emotional Intelligence in Sales People has been found to improve sales performance, customer satisfaction and retention and even significantly increase the likelihood of a sales person remaining in their job. Emotional Intelligence is something that can be improved upon.
When it comes to improving Emotional Intelligence, there are a number of ways you can do this; there are training programmes available and there is plenty of reading you can do on the subject. Personality tests, such as Myers Briggs, Social Styles and 16 Personalities are invaluable in improving EI. These tests uncover our own biases, preferences and tendencies when it comes to the way we like to process information and to communicate with others. They also highlight the differences between our own and others’ preferences. Once we are aware of these differences, we are able to adjust our own style to favour that of the other person.
These tests work by assigning individuals to a personality ‘type’ and each type is defined by a specific set of communication-style preferences and commonalities. For sales people, where relationships lie at the heart of how successful they are, recognising and understanding a customer or prospects ‘type’ enables them to more effectively build trust, demonstrate value, pitch a solution and handle objections.
Whilst no-one is suggesting that an individual will always behave in a way consistent with their ‘type’, or even that it is always possible to identify an individuals type accurately from observations alone, what we do know is that most people tend to deviate very little from their usual patterns of behaviours. This means that, with some knowledge of what to look for and by paying very careful attention to the way our customers respond and communicate, we can make predictions and best-guesses as to how best we should communicate with them going forward. For sales people who are able to make these observations and with the skills to flex and adapt their own style, this can significantly improve their success rate.
How Sales People Can Improve Emotional Intelligence
The only way you’re really able to improve Emotional Intelligence is to dedicate significant time and effort to developing it – whether that be through Emotional Intelligence training, self-guided research or through any of the aforementioned personality tests. However, there are some key things that sales people can look out for, which can offer valuable insight as to their customers’ communication preferences. Try thinking about a specific customer and answering the following questions – consider how you might adjust the way you communicate with them now that you have thought about these answers:
- Does your customer appear to be formal/conservative, or more relaxed, casual and easy-going in their approach and style?
- Do they appear to prefer structure and detail, or do they prefer more of a ‘big picture’ approach?
- Is your customer quiet and reserved, or more gregarious and outspoken?
- Do they seem to prefer to digest and think things through before making comment, or are they more impulsive and impetuous in their reactions?
- Do they seem to be led more by facts and figures, or by emotion and how something makes them feel?
Inevitably, in the majority of sales conversations, you will observe differences between your own preferences and tendencies and those of your customer and this is where sales people with high levels of emotional intelligence are really able to outperform their peers. By adapting their own style, in line with their customers, emotionally intelligent sales people instantly make themselves and their propositions, more appealing and because communication is more effective, the sales person is able to to guide their customer through the buying cycle more quickly and more adeptly.
Emotional Intelligence is an improvable skill that can make a significant difference to win rates, customer retention and can even shorten your sales cycle – if you’d like to talk to Salestrong about how we can help your sales people improve emotional intelligence, drop us a line at info@salestrong.co.uk or call us on 01778 382773.
