Emotional Intelligence for Sales Leadership

The Secret to Building High-Performance Sales Teams

Colleen Stanley

• Publisher: HarperCollins Leadership
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781400217731
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Vendite
• Index: Business

The best way to get ahead in sales is by developing the critical soft skills that will enable you not just survive but thrive.

Chronic complainers, no accountability finger-pointers, or learning-resistant laggards—these culture-killers costs sales organizations more in productivity than being weak in the so-called hard skills of selling. Sales leadership expert Colleen Stanley shows how emotional intelligence and the development of these critical soft skills improve sales leadership effectiveness and outperforms doubling down on more sales technology tools and fads.

In Emotional Intelligence for Sales Leadership, Colleen provides sales secrets that:

• Shows sales leaders why 'real world' empathy and emotion management are the key to building strong relationships with their sales team.
• Offers simple steps on how sales leaders create sales cultures that embrace feedback and change through the development of critical emotional intelligence skills.
• Provides guidance on how to identify key emotional intelligence skills needed in your hiring process to build resilient sales teams.
• Walks readers through the process of training sales teams on soft skills that ensure the consistent execution of the right selling behaviors.

The missing link is in hiring for and developing emotional intelligence skills in sellers and sales leaders. Emotional Intelligence for Sales Leadership will connect with anyone charged with growing sales in business-to-business or business-to-consumer sales.

PART I

IT’S TIME FOR A NEW SALES LEADERSHIP PERSPECTIVE

I learned to always take on things I’d never done before. Growth and comfort do not coexist.

—Ginni Rometty

It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.

—Fyodor Dostoyevsky

1

Welcome to an Emotionally Intelligent Sales Team and Meeting

PETE IS A NEW sales manager and excited about leading and developing his sales team. At the same time, he is a little nervous because he is new and has enough self-awareness to recognize that he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.

He reaches out to Victoria, a longtime colleague and informal mentor. She has been a successful sales manager for over ten years and still loves her role as a sales leader.

Victoria invites Pete to her biweekly group sales meeting to observe. Upon entering the room. Pete immediately notices that something is different, but he can’t quite put his finger on it. Then he gets it: the salespeople are talking to one another. They aren’t checking their smartphones or tablets for emails. Instead, they are fully present with their peers, engaging in relationship-building. Salespeople located outside of the corporate office are doing the same thing via videoconferencing, talking and joking with peers. This is weird . . . don’t these salespeople have prospects and clients pinging them? Shouldn’t they be multitasking? Isn’t there something that needs their immediate attention?

The meeting starts and Pete notices that the team is following a preset agenda. He makes a note that having an agenda is probably a good idea. It’s similar to running a productive sales call where you and the prospect know the defined purpose and objective of the call.

Victoria starts the meeting with the same question she asks at the beginning of each sales meeting: “What are we doing right?” Pete looks around the room and now he’s really confused. “Aren’t these sales meetings for problem solving? Why is Victoria wasting time on this feel-good question? Shouldn’t she get the team focused on addressing operational issues or client concerns?”

The sales team responds enthusiastically, reporting personal and company success stories. Pete feels the optimism and enthusiasm rising in the room. He sees the pride on their faces, because the sales team recognizes they are on a winning team, a great team.

Victoria moves to the next point on the agenda and teaches the sales team a new concept for conducting more thoughtful sales conversations. Only one concept is presented, and the sales team organizes into practice pods. Pete listens closely to the role-plays. To his surprise, he doesn’t hear the usual, “I don’t want to role-play . . . this isn’t real . . . I’m uncomfortable.” Pete wonders where Victoria found these salespeople.

After several practice sets and debriefs, Victoria moves to the next agenda item. She asks the sales team, “With what part of the sales process are you having difficulty? Where are your deals getting stuck?” Pete waits for the silence. I mean, really, who wants to admit they aren’t a sales rock star? To his amazement, several hands shoot up. But what’s even more amazing is what he is hearing. The salespeople are admitting where and how they screwed up!

• “I really got outsold on my last deal . . . and the worst part is, I am not even sure how I got outsold! I need some help on this one.”

• “I didn’t get a piece of business that I really should have won. And the reason is, I failed to prepare. I need to own this loss. Let me tell you what I am going to do differently the next time in order to win.”

• “I’m a little embarrassed to admit this but I’m feeling really intimidated by the size of this opportunity. I could use some help here to wrap my head around how to navigate through this selling scenario.”

Pete’s mind is racing. His experience in previous sales meetings has been a demonstration of the total opposite behaviors. Salespeople blame the company for their losses: not enough leads, need better marketing support, or the good old standby, our prices are too high. What is going on here? How did Victoria create this?

The final part of the meeting is a quick lap around the room and check-in with videoconference attendees. Each salesperson makes a commitment to one improvement in their sales process before the next meeting. Each salesperson finds an accountability partner on the team to conduct a daily check-in on progress toward their goals.

The meeting ends with everyone high-fiving each other and wishing each other good luck on their specific sales opportunities.

Pete thanks Victoria for the opportunity to observe the meeting. Driving back to his office, he wonders if actors were hired and the entire sales meeting was staged for his benefit.

At this point, Mr. or Ms. Reader, you might be thinking the same thing. No, the sales meeting wasn’t staged. What Pete observed is an emotionally intelligent sales team. These teams are comprised of sales leaders and salespeople with high self-awareness and personal accountability. No finger-pointing or blame because they live by the old, kind of corny mantra, “If it is to be, it’s up to me.”

Emotionally intelligent sales teams understand the power of delayed gratification, putting in the work, the practice, to get better at their craft. They don’t talk teamwork, they do teamwork, which starts with talking and building relationships with your teammates and helping them be successful.

This culture starts at the top. Emotionally intelligent sales teams are led by emotionally intelligent sales leaders. You don’t have to be perfect to get started. I should know, as I am a work in progress, still trying to master the many aspects of emotional intelligence. The good news is that emotional intelligence can be improved with desire, commitment, and focus.

As the late author Maya Angelou said, “When you know better, you do better.” If you’re ready to do better in your sales leadership role, this book will help you on your journey.

To evaluate the emotional intelligence of your sales organization, go to www.EmotionalIntelligenceForSalesLeadership.com and take our Emotional Intelligence Sales Team assessment.

2

It All Starts with You

CONGRATULATIONS IF YOU’VE PICKED up this book because you’ve received a promotion to sales management. I am sure that promotion is well deserved because you have been a top salesperson for years, producing consistent and profitable sales results.

It could also be that you are a sales leader who’s been leading sales teams for years and want to learn new ideas to motivate your team.

In either case, before you read any more pages, I’d like you to slow down and ask yourself if you really want to be a sales manager. Do you like sales management? I know this might sound like a crazy question but I’ve seen more than one salesperson accept a promotion to sales management that turned out to be a promotion to misery.

Years ago, I was hired by a company for a large engagement to provide our Ei Selling^® program. After the training, this company opted for the sales managers to teach and reinforce all of the key learnings. Unfortunately, most of the sales managers failed miserably.

The biggest reason for failing was that many of the sales managers didn’t like conducting consistent one-on-one coaching sessions with their teams. They were fully equipped with training tools to debrief sales calls, pre-brief sales calls, set up role-plays, and drill skills with their teams. But reinforcement takes time and these sales managers always gave in to the pull of instant gratification and kept prioritizing other things over coaching.

These sales managers weren’t bad people. Like many successful salespeople, they’d accepted the role of sales management when they really preferred the role of a seller. These sales managers simply liked selling and closing deals better than they liked developing salespeople.

Know Thyself

Apply the emotional intelligence skill of self-awareness. Self-awareness is knowing and understanding yourself. It’s the conscious knowledge of one’s own feelings, motives, and desires. It’s the mega soft skill, because that which you are not aware of you cannot change.

Carve out quiet time, ask and answer the following questions to make sure you want to take on—or continue—the role of sales leadership:

• Will/do you enjoy your new role as a sales leader as much as your role of an individual seller?

• Will/do you enjoy your current role as sales manager? What are possible blind spots that could be or are affecting your success as a sales leader?

• Are you willing to go through the steep learning curve required to learn the new set of skills (such as hiring, training, coaching, and holding salespeople accountable) to lead a team?

If the answer is no, that’s okay. I admire CFOs but I certainly don’t want to be one. Know thyself.

Hiring and Selection Skills

Sales managers are promoted because of their business development skills. Many love the thrill of finding new opportunities, holding provocative sales conversations, and closing business deals. You are still prospecting in your role as a sales manager, but the target changes. You are now focused on prospecting for the best sales talent. Instead of qualifying prospects, you now have to fine-tune your interviewing skills to qualify potential sales candidates. Should this prospective candidate even be in your people pipeline? As a sales manager, the most important deals you’ll close are the ones around hiring great salespeople.

Self-awareness questions: How energized are you about filling a salespeople pipeline? Are you as motivated by “hunting” for potential sales candidates as you are about identifying new prospects? What’s your level of commitment toward learning new skills such as recruiting, running behavior-based interviews, reference checks, and vetting resumes? Are you as excited about closing a new sales hire as a new prospect?

Training and Coaching Skills

Jack Welch, former CEO of GE, says it best: “When you take on a leadership role, it’s no longer about you, it’s about them.” You may have been a great seller but, unfortunately, your great selling skills are of no use or value if you can’t transfer these skills, habits, and attitude to your sales team.

If I didn’t enjoy teaching and coaching, I wouldn’t have signed up for sales management or entered the field of speaking, training, and coaching. Teaching looks like a lot of fun—and it is. It also can be tedious, as mastery requires a lot of repetition and practice to elevate a salesperson’s selling skills. The coaching sessions require a lot of patience.

Self-awareness questions: How jazzed are you about pre-briefing sales calls, debriefing sales calls, conducting role-plays, and more role-plays? Do you have the delayed gratification skills, the patience, to put in the work to develop salespeople? Would you rather be closing the deal yourself or teaching others how to do it? How motivated are you to put in the work to learn how to be a great teacher and coach?

Accountability

Great sales managers are comfortable setting high standards for the sales team and holding them accountable to metrics and outcomes. Sales leaders are always raising the bar of excellence because they know their best competitors are constantly raising the bar. But rais...