Emotional intelligence is a critical component of sales success. With awareness, knowledge, and building key skills, you can increase your emotional intelligence to close more sales.
Have you ever had a sales person talk their way out of a sale with you? You know your problem, are convinced of their solution and ready to go and they just keep on talking. They fill your head with so much information that somewhere along the way you lose interest. It now seems way too complicated and you need time to sort through the details.
How often do you do this with your potential clients?
Many sales people just like to hear themselves talk. They have a script to get through whether anyone is listening or not. Most often the script includes the products and how they resolve the client’s (assumed) points of pain.
The Impact of Corrective Complex
Corrective Complex is the knee-jerk reflex we all have during many of our conversations. Corrections cover the spectrum from the desire to fix a problem, heal someone’s hurts, convert them to our beliefs, teach proper information and direct the overall outcome. It is said that typically 90% of all energy in conversations is devoted to convincing others of an opinion.
Think of all the recent conversations you’ve had. Can you think of people who seem to talk at you versus with you? Chances are you’ve done the same. This is an example of Corrective Complex in action.
When in Corrective Complex, you develop a complex, others develop a complex, and the conversation ends up becoming more complex than it needs to be.
Think about it this way—when someone corrects or directs you, especially on issues you know need action or change, what do you think is our instinctive response? It’s human nature to naturally want to do nothing—or worse—do the exact opposite.
How do you respond when someone interacts with you in Corrective Complex—wanting to fix, heal, convert, teach or direct you?
Collaborative Change Offers a Solution
The opposite of the Corrective Complex is Collaborative Change. This occurs when both parties work together to resolve the issues at hand. It’s when everybody is intrinsically motivated to participate in change.
Collaborative Change requires trust that the client is an expert on themselves. You may have more knowledge, insights or experience; however, they are the ones who know what it takes to motivate them for change.
Collaboration makes getting things done so much easier because it calls in intrinsic motivation which is far more powerful than extrinsic correction and direction.
Three Key Skills That Increase Emotional Intelligence
To increase the capacity for Collaborative Change, one must increase emotional intelligence. The key is to develop three skills: a robust emotional vocabulary, self-awareness, and empathy.
Robust emotional vocabulary is otherwise known as emotional literacy. This provides access to a broader set of words to describe feelings. It is the first step and primary sign of healthy emotional intelligence. It also helps build resilience.
Self-awareness is the conscious knowledge of one’s own character, feelings, motives, and desires—knowing one’s internal states, preference, resources and intuitions. Self-awareness is the ability to monitor our inner world, our thoughts and emotions as they arise.
Empathy is the experience of understanding another person’s thoughts, feelings, and condition from their point of view, rather than from your own—the capacity to place oneself in another’s position.
EQTunement is the Key to Sales Success
EQTunement is the skill we need to avoid the Corrective Complex and move a conversation into Collaborative Change. To do this, we combine emotional intelligence and the act of attunement.
Here are the dictionary meanings of each:
Emotional Intelligence: the capacity to be aware of, express and control emotions – responding appropriately and helping others do the same.
Attunement: to bring into accord, harmony, or sympathetic relationship; simply sharing a common understanding and feeling.
Emotional intelligence is extremely important for success. It can be the single greatest determining factor when negotiating a sale. While this is true, combining it with attunement creates a powerful accelerator for Collaborative Change.
Putting EQTunement into Action
Putting these two skills together, we develop the ability of EQTunement. To achieve EQTunement, we want to communicate the following in every conversation:
- “I see you.”
- “I hear you.”
- “I understand you.”
- “I care for you.”
With these and other emotional intelligence skills you will supercharge your sales process and watch revenue accelerate.
Incorporating emotional intelligence key skills into your professional development and practicing the strategies that lead to Collaborative Change strengthen your ability to master sales conversations and close more sales.
