Improve Sales with Emotional Intelligence Training for Sales Teams.
Do some of your salespeople struggle to hit their targets?
Do your salespeople come into conflict with other departments or even with each other?
Do your sales managers make excuses or blame their team members for missed targets?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, training your team for emotional intelligence can help.
As every salesperson knows, the sales process is inherently emotional. Salespeople are in the business of making people happy with a purchase.
When we are in the hands of an excellent salesperson, we trust them and look to them for expert advice. If at any point the buyer senses the salesperson lacks confidence, isn’t being fully transparent or forthcoming, or any hint of mistrust, the sales process can quickly sour.
I offer two services to help your employees increase emotional intelligence for better sales outcomes.
1. Emotional Intelligence Training for Sales Teams
Six emotional intelligence skills consistently show up in high performing salespeople. These are the key skills needed to build trust and confidence, set and manage their own emotions and goals, and to remain optimistic in the face of rejection or objections.
My two-part presentation for training sales managers focuses on these skills and how they are used throughout the sales process to manage both the customer’s and salesperson’s emotions. I include stories and studies of how these skills underlie the techniques that superior salespeople use to consistently meet and exceed their goals.
Customization
For every engagement, I work with you to identify the top priorities for your company. My presentations address only the skills your sales team needs, whether your sales cycle is short, medium or long, simple or highly technical and complex. These presentations can be targeted at a sales team directly, or addressed to train sales managers who can bring better practices and knowledge to whole teams.
Key Learning Take-Aways from Sales Training
In the first presentation, I introduce what emotional intelligence looks like in the sales process and how emotional intelligence skills form a foundation for successfully completing sales.
- The difference between emotions and emotional intelligence
- The three emotional intelligence skills that form the foundation for sales excellence:
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- Self-Regard: self-confidence and self-acceptance, essential for building trust and credibility.
- Self-Awareness: knowing what you are feeling and why, knowing what others are feeling and why, including the ability to empathize.
- Emotional Self-Expression: finding the right words for the right person at the right time, the salesperson’s proverbial gift of gab.
- Research, self-assessments, and discussion show why these three competencies are the gateway to higher performing sales teams.
- For organizations with short or less complex sales cycles, this introduction to emotional intelligence for sales may be all you need.
The second presentation focuses on the three higher level skills that enable success in more complex sales. Using scenarios based on situations that have occurred during your sales cycle or sales meetings, this workshop gives leaders practical training in solutions and responses based on emotional intelligence skills for sales.
- Role playing and scenarios demonstrate how three higher level emotional intelligence competencies enable success in more complex sales cycles:
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- Optimism: the ability to remain confident even when facing obstacles, objections, or rejection.
- Independence: the ability to set goals and hold oneself responsible, and an intrinsic desire to learn and improve.
- Interpersonal relationships: the ability to develop relationships that are mutually satisfying and to use empathy to build rapport over the long term.
- Ends with research on how these emotional intelligence skills come together to create a toolbox for sales success.
- Emotional intelligence cheat-sheet recaps important concepts.
Both presentations are 90-minutes and highly interactive. Attendees participate through individual self-reflections, small group break-out conversations, self-assessments, scenarios and role playing, and group discussion.
Schedule a chat now to find out if training your sales team for emotional intelligence is right for your team.
2. Candidate Screening for Building a Sales Team
If you want to build a high performing team sooner rather than later, using emotional intelligence assessments during the hiring process can help you identify people with the emotional intelligence skills they need to succeed.
Step 1: Assess Your Current Team
Every sales team has a unique set of skills that lead to success. By assessing your team, you identify the skills that separate high from low performance in your company. Once you discover the skills that matter most for the position you are seeking to fill, you can set goals for hiring others who fit that successful profile.
Once team assessments are complete, I, as the assessment professional, will meet with the hiring decision makers to interpret reports, identify top skills for your high performers, set hiring goals, and discover other trends that may be helpful for group development.
Step 2: Screen Applicants for the Skills that Matter Most
In most cases, only interviewees are eligible for assessment, not all applicants. The emotional intelligence assessment is considered along with other hiring factors (resume, experience, references, interview experiences, etc.).
Once candidates are selected, the employer must get informed consent. I will provide a sample Informed Consent Form for Candidates.
After all candidates are assessed, I will meet with the decision-making team to review reports and answer questions.
The cost of screening candidates for emotional intelligence is a small fraction of the cost of hiring a low performer.
Improve your chances of hiring a high performing salesperson the first time.
Or email me at Lisa@lisadfostercoach.com.
