Sales EQ
How Ultra High Performers Leverage Sales-Specific Emotional Intelligence to Close the Complex Deal
By Jeb Blount
Category: Psychology | Reading Duration: 18 min | Rating: 4.6/5 (414 ratings)
About the Book
Sales EQ (2017) explores how sales professionals can leverage the power of human emotion to boost their performance. It outlines the feelings that potential buyers experience and explains how sellers can learn to keep their own emotions in check during the sales process.
Who Should Read This?
- Sales professionals seeking fresh insights
- Entrepreneurs who want to get their business off the ground
- Business students looking for a new perspective
What’s in it for me? We buy with our hearts, not our heads.
A sales professional is only as good as their last transaction. That’s why it's so important to make every interaction with a buyer count, whether it’s on the phone, through email, or in person. It’s also why it's so frustrating when a prospect turns you down for no rational reason. That’s where this summary come in.
You’ll discover why rational reasoning works against you in the business of buying and selling. You’ll also learn how the key to unlocking success relies on tuning into emotions – both your prospect’s and your own. From fear to trust to empathy, this summary reveal how to navigate a sale according to your prospect’s emotional temperature – and what it means to be an ultra high sales performer while doing it.
In this summary, you’ll learn - how to get prospects to like you;
- why you’re pitching too soon; and
- why bad-mouthing your competitors is a bad idea.
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Chapter 1: The best salespeople think creatively to disrupt role expectations and score the deal.
Art was a young salesman in a tough spot. He was trying to sell his company’s truck leasing services to an artisanal baker. But the baker balked at the price, which he claimed to be much higher than that of his competitors. Art didn’t know how to move forward.
Frustrated, Art invited his sales mentor Joe to their next meeting. To Art’s surprise, they sealed the deal – all thanks to a brown paper bag. How did a humble paper bag save the day? Let’s start by looking at the baker’s – the buyer’s – behavior. By arguing that Art’s prices were too high, the baker was engaging in typical buyer behavior. But instead of responding along the same lines, Joe flipped the script toward success.
The key message here is: The best salespeople think creatively to disrupt role expectations and score the deal. After listening to the baker’s arguments about Art’s prices, Joe took out a brown paper bag containing two loaves of bread. One was a 60-cent loaf from the local supermarket, and the other was the baker’s own, much more expensive, artisanal loaf. By displaying the bread, Joe immediately disrupted the baker’s expectations of how a salesperson should behave. And with this disruption, Joe gained the baker’s full attention. Then Joe asked the baker what made his bread worth three times as much as the supermarket loaf.
The baker launched into a passionate ten-minute sermon about why the superior taste and ingredients of his loaf were worth the price. Why did Joe ask him this simple question? Well, when we talk about ourselves, we experience a rush of dopamine, which makes us feel good about ourselves. So, by getting the baker to talk about his bread, Joe activated a pleasant surge of dopamine in the baker’s brain. Subconsciously, the baker then wanted to reciprocate by making Joe feel good about himself, too. When the baker finished talking, Joe explained that they’d been trying to tell him the same thing about Art’s truck leasing company.
It was also more expensive than the competition because it was higher quality. In fact, they were the artisanal bread of truck companies! In making this comparison, Joe was using the baker’s language and logic. And by speaking the same language as his buyer, he made the baker feel understood – and gained his trust in the process.
Chapter 2: It's our emotions, not logic, that influence our buying choices.
It’s human nature to buy things. But exactly why do we buy what we buy? Imagine the following scenario. After purchasing some items at the grocery store, someone asks you why you bought those particular things.
If you’re like most people, you give what sounds like a rational reason – the shampoo makes your hair soft. But evidence suggests that, as a buyer, you’re much more irrational than you think. Researchers found that when a group of customers listened to German beer hall music in a liquor store, sales for German beer went up. When the same liquor store played French music, French wine sales bubbled to the top. The customers were asked why they bought their respective beverages. You’d think that the music’s influence would be an obvious factor, but instead, they gave rational responses like, “A friend recommended this.
” The key message here is: It's our emotions, not logic, that influence our buying choices. Our irrational buying pattern holds true for more important, complex purchases, too. Incredibly, a 2006 study showed that people were more likely to buy stocks in a company whose name they could easily pronounce than in one with a more difficult name. So, to become an ultra high seller, you’ll need to appreciate how emotions influence the buying process. The challenge is that the salesperson and the customer experience the sales process differently. The salesperson leads from a position of logic before gradually moving toward a more emotional standpoint.
In practice, this means she starts by pitching her product’s great key features. Then, after investing a lot of time in the sales process, her emotions begin to set in. Desperate not to lose the prospect, she becomes fearful of not making the sale. For the buyer, the experience is the complete opposite. He leads with emotions. In fact, his first thought when meeting a salesperson is, “Do I like this person?
” From that perspective, hearing a salesperson’s rational pitch makes him lose interest. As he gets closer to making a decision, the buyer starts to think more logically; he asks practical questions and starts negotiating. This would be the perfect moment for the salesperson to make her rational key-features pitch. But, as mentioned before, she’s getting emotional .
. . and desperate. In the following chapters, you’ll learn how to get in sync with your buyers’ emotions so that you can meet them where they are, at every stage of the sales process.
Chapter 3: You’ll make more sales if you reduce your prospect’s cognitive dissonance.
As human beings, we all have an overwhelming desire to be consistent in our thoughts, beliefs, and actions. It’s simply the way our brains are built. So, we experience emotional distress when our actions are inconsistent or when we hear information that contradicts what we believe to be true. This distress is known as cognitive dissonance.
We’re always subconsciously seeking to reduce our cognitive dissonance. This urge is so strong that it can lead to denouncing new evidence or facts that are clearly true. And many salespeople unknowingly play into this. They end up raising their prospect’s dissonance, thinking that they’re calming it – a well-intentioned blunder that can cost them the sale. The key message here is: You’ll make more sales if you reduce your prospect’s cognitive dissonance. You don’t want to make others uncomfortable, right?
But, when dealing with cognitive dissonance, that’s not always easy to avoid. Imagine you’re an enthusiastic salesperson who’s scored an initial meeting with a prospect. You present undeniable evidence that his existing vendor is doing a terrible job. You proudly await his gratitude for the enlightenment, but it never comes. You probably didn’t realize it, but you just gave him cognitive dissonance. After all, he’s the one who chose to work with the existing vendor.
And, like the rest of us, he wants to believe that he makes good choices – despite your evidence that he actually makes bad ones. If he wants to reduce his dissonance and reinforce his positive self-image, he has no choice but to defend his decision. He’ll boast that his vendor is, in fact, exemplary – even if he can’t provide a single example of how. The result? He now sees you as an adversary. He doesn’t like you because you caused him emotional pain.
So why would he dump his current vendor for you? But don’t worry. Avoiding this situation is a lot simpler than you might think. In fact, you just need to ask one little question: What do you like about your current vendor? When asking what a person likes about something, you activate their negativity bias. This bias refers to how the human brain is primed to pay more attention to negative attributes than positive ones.
So, when you ask for positives about their vendor, you prepare them to start thinking about the negatives, too. This might still result in cognitive dissonance as they start complaining, but at least you didn’t create it! Ultra high performers have a formidable intellect!
Chapter 4: Great salespeople use their empathy to help buyers navigate their emotions and purchases.
They also have something that’s equally important: empathy. They put themselves in the other person’s shoes to get a sense of what their prospect feels. Let’s take a look at an example of sales-centric empathy. Karen is the highest performing salesperson at a jewelry store, where she sells high-value engagement rings.
That’s because Karen empathizes with the emotions of the starry-eyed young couples who come into her store. She understands that the bride-to-be often has a fairytale-inspired dream of brandishing an enormous diamond ring in front of her friends and family. And the groom-to-be? Well, Karen understands his desperation to give his fiancée what she wants without going broke. His decision hinges on potentially ending up deep in debt or disappointing his future wife. The key message here is: Great salespeople use their empathy to help buyers navigate their emotions and purchases.
So how exactly does Karen use empathy to be an ultra high performer? She seeks out clues with casual conversation. For example, she may ask the customers about their plans after getting married. This gives her an idea of their lifestyle, which quickly helps her understand price range expectations and the style of ring they’re after. She’s able to customize the experience, only recommending viable ring options. Of course, Karen could try to sell more expensive rings, but her empathy reins her in.
She knows that offering something too expensive may make the man anxious, pushing him away. She’ll never see that couple again. Being aware of your empathy level is a good step in the right direction. And there’s an easy way to find where you naturally land. Just answer this question: If you encountered someone behaving badly, would you A) Blame her behavior on her situation – she’s just having a bad day – or B) Blame it on her innate personality – she’s simply a bad person? If you’re a naturally empathetic person, then you most likely answered A.
That’s because empathetic folks tend to attribute other people’s behavior to situational circumstances. Conversely, less empathetic people attribute behavior to the offender’s personality. If you answered B, don’t worry! You share the same trait as many other salespeople. You just might need to work a little harder to put yourself in other people’s shoes.
Chapter 5: Ultra high performers stay in full control of their own emotions.
Shannon had put months of hard work into a high-value prospect. At the final meeting, she encountered a problem during her pitch: one of the executives kept interrupting to correct her. After the fourth negative comment, Shannon snapped. She fiercely shut him down.
Then she added insult to injury by explaining to other participants why she was right and he was wrong. At the end of her pitch, she realized that she may have won the argument – but she’d lost the deal. Shannon couldn’t manage her feelings. Instead of politely allowing her naysayer to exhaust himself, she lost control and turned her doubter into an outright enemy who’d most likely block any future sales attempts. The key message here is: Ultra high performers stay in full control of their own emotions. It's easy to assume that you’d handle Shannon’s situation better.
But the truth is, anyone’s behavior can quickly spiral out of control in a stressful environment. You see, stressful situations cause your fight-or-flight response to kick in. When this happens, your adrenaline surges as a response to your body preparing to fight – or run from – the threat. Unfortunately, when your fight-or-flight mode switches on, the rational part of your brain, the neocortex, switches off. Incredibly, without your neocortex, you're no more rational than a chimpanzee. You probably wouldn’t want a chimpanzee pitching to your prospect!
So, how can you learn to control your negative emotions? The answer lies in thorough preparation for every call, meeting, and pitch. Take the time to read up on the people you’re meeting with. Write a list of all the questions they might ask, and plan responses accordingly. It’s also good to be prepared for the very worst scenario in case the meeting heads in that direction. Other preparation strategies include role-playing the meeting with a coworker and running through your upcoming presentation with a boss.
By preparing, you enter your sales interactions with a calmer mind and greater confidence. In the course of your planning, anticipate any negative emotions that might show up so you won’t be blindsided by them. This way, instead of revealing those disruptive feelings like Shannon did, you’ll be able to transcend them and continue the pitch unfazed.
Chapter 6: We buy more from people we like.
Would you pay more for something because you liked the person selling it? The author’s friend found herself in this situation when buying an expensive, high quality mattress. She’d selected a mattress, but she didn’t like the salesman selling it. She couldn’t say why exactly; she just found something about him a bit “off.
” So instead of buying the mattress from him, she drove to another store where they sold the exact same mattress – for more money. The sales assistant in the second store was charming and extremely likeable. The result? Even though it was the exact same product, the author’s friend spent more of her time and money to buy the mattress from the salesperson she liked best. The key message here is: We buy more from people we like. So, how can you charm your customers?
Well, research shows that we like people who are polite, upbeat, well-groomed, well-dressed, and quite confident. So far so obvious. But there’s another factor that tends to get overlooked – we like people who listen. Unfortunately, many salespeople do the opposite, talking much more than they listen. If you’ve ever started a pitch the minute your conversation began, then you may be guilty of this yourself. The answer to why so many salespeople talk instead of listen lies, yet again, in our disruptive negative emotions.
Fear of the unknown causes many salespeople to talk too much. They don’t know what their prospect might say or ask, so talking reduces this uncertainty and makes them feel more secure. Still others blabber to satisfy their need for control. They wrongly believe that doing all the talking controls the conversation. Others hog the conversation because it helps them feel important; they constantly interrupt to prove how interesting and intelligent they are. And finally, others may talk too much because they feel impatient.
Their customer may be taking a long time to say what she means, so, fueled by frustration, the impatient salesperson jumps in to take over. If any of these emotional reactions sound familiar, it’s an indication that you may have some work to do. It’s only by managing your emotions that you can start listening more while boosting your likeability in the process.
Chapter 7: Trust is a tricky but vital part of the sales process.
Seventy percent of Americans believe that most people can’t be trusted. Now, as a sales professional, think about your odds of being trusted. Yikes! Unfortunately, the stereotype of the disreputable salesperson abounds in popular culture.
Gaining your prospective client’s trust is possible, but it’s a steep climb to success. In today’s hypercompetitive world, companies and individuals are under huge pressure to make the right choices about who they do business with. One wrong decision could leave them suffering financially. With this in mind, your prospects will pay very close attention to how trustworthy you seem. Once they’ve decided whether or not they like you, they’ll start to assess whether or not they can rely on you. The key message here is: Trust is a tricky but vital part of the sales process.
So, how can you gain a prospect’s trust? Well, building trust is a lot like building a wall. You do it brick by brick. It’s not about grand gestures; it's about genuinely showing people, with every action, that you’re someone they can put their faith in. One of the most important things is to behave consistently. That means returning calls when you said you would, emailing responses in a timely manner, and being routinely accurate with every fact and figure you provide.
When you're trying to establish trust, it's often the little things that count. Every time you’re late to a meeting, or get caught in a tiny white lie, you’re showing the other person that you can’t be trusted. Likewise, every coffee-stained business card you hand out, or sentence you interrupt, erodes their trust bit by bit. The thing about trust is that it’s not usually lost because someone makes a huge error of judgment. Instead, in most sales situations where trust collapses, it’s because too many bricks in the wall are missing. In other words, all your little mistakes add up.
And a lot of these mistakes stem from not having sufficient control over your behavior, actions, and emotions. That being said, don't fret the occasional mistake that’s bound to happen. Potential clients should give you the benefit of the doubt because they want to put their faith in you. In fact, it causes cognitive dissonance to think that the person you’re interacting with can’t be trusted. So, if you keep demonstrating that you can be relied on, then eventually your prospects will repay you – with trust and repeat business.
Final summary
The key message in this summary: Ultra high sales come from influencing your prospects’ emotions – and from learning how to manage your own. Customers buy from people they like and trust, not the people who bombard them with slick sales pitches. So, make a human connection with your prospective clients, and leave the hard sell to the amateurs. Actionable advice: Give the gift of a compliment.
Now that we know how closely sales and likability are connected, finding ways to dial up your personability can help you meet your sales goals. One powerful way is to give a compliment. Complimenting someone makes them feel important and valued. The most effective compliments are sincere and genuine, so take the time to get to know your prospect. Notice their unique achievements and qualities, and let the person know that you appreciate them.
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About the Author
Jeb Blount is a best-selling author, executive advisor, and thought leader on sales and leadership. Forbes magazine has previously named him as one of the world’s top social sales influencers.