Excerpts

Introduction 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. Excerpted from Emotional Intelligence for Sales Success: Connect with Customers and Get Results by Colleen Stanley All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.