Working Resources is an Executive
Coaching San Francisco Bay Area Firm Helping
Companies Assess, Select, Coach and Retain Emotionally Intelligent
Leaders; Talent Management; Leadership Development; Competency Modeling;
Succession Management; and Leadership & Team Building Retreats
Sales
and Communications
Creating
a positive experience for customers is every employee’s job, including those
who work outside the sales department.
Unfortunately,
training often overlooks key interpersonal skills for influencing others.
Workers at all levels fail to understand that:
- Customer expectations for the sales experience have
increased.
- Customers enjoy a broader, more competitive
selection of products and services.
- There is often misalignment between sales and
service.
- Customers define value both rationally and
emotionally, yet less than 25 percent of salespeople are deemed proficient in
core selling competencies.
Functional
vs. Human Factors
“There are two sides to your job: functional and human,” write
Marshall Goldsmith, Don Brown and Bill Hawkins in What Got You Here Won’t Get You There in Sales! (McGraw-Hill,
2011).
The
functional arena of your job involves mastery of a product or service,
including features, benefits, advantages, and proof of what the company does. You
must know procedures, policies, process and pricing. You also need to master
the computers, software and data systems that run the business and measure
results.
Most of
this functional mastery happens without customer interaction. The
human arena determines whether you win, keep or lose a customer. Companies turn
over 10 percent of their customer base every year, on average. Replacing this
10 percent, as well as adding to it, is a constant challenge that requires
employee talent.
Every
interaction with customers represents an opportunity to provide necessary
information and ensure a valuable investment. View
yourself as an educator who supplies everything customers need to benefit from
your business. To accomplish this, you must learn to surpass their
expectations.
Connecting
Through Empathy
Empathy allows
us to understand others’ feelings, thoughts and experiences. Customers
must sense that you care about their needs.
Studies
show, however, that our sense of empathy is eroding. The
Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan has collected data for
more than 30 years, and researchers have found that young adults are 40 percent
less empathetic than their counterparts in 1979. The ability to empathize
dropped steeply in 2000, and narcissism rates have skyrocketed.
Many experts
speculate that these trends can be attributed to
increases in Internet usage, texting, and cell-phone and computer ubiquity. Regardless
of the cause, the solution lies in regaining empathy.
Destructive
Sales Habits
Goldsmith,
Brown and Hawkins identify 16 negative habits that severely damage a customer’s
sales experience:
1. Failure
to be present: repeated and annoying displays of behavior that
indicate we’d rather be somewhere else, “some when” else or with someone else
2. Vocal
filler: the overuse of unnecessary and meaningless verbal qualifiers
3. Selling
past the close: the irresistible urge to verbalize and execute
every possible step in the sales process
4. Selective
hearing: the absence of listening in the presence of a customer
5. Contact
without purpose: repeated, deliberate communication for no valid
business reason (other than wanting to sell something)
6. Curb
qualifying: the tendency to judge a prospect’s means and
motive superficially, from a distance
7. Using
tension as a tool: also known as “sale ends Saturday”
8. One-upping: the
constant need to top your conversational partner in an effort to show the world
just how smart you are
9. Over familiarity: the use
of inappropriately intimate gestures
10. Withholding
passion and energy: the tendency to forget that people make
decisions on the basis of emotion and later justify them with logic
11. Explaining
failure: behaving under the erroneous belief that simply assigning blame,
fault or guilt is enough to satisfy the customer
12. Never
having to say you’re sorry: an inability to apologize or accept
responsibility for personal or organizational errors/injuries
13. Throwing
others under the bus: sacrificing a colleague—often anonymous, often
vulnerable and usually innocent—to cover up a functional failure
14. Propagandizing:
overreliance on organizational rhetoric and themes
15. Wasting energy: taking part in
organizational blame-storming and pity parties
16. Obsessing over the numbers: achieving
revenue, profit or productivity targets at the expense of metrics of a higher
calling
It’s
never easy to create a new habit, but you can easily choose to stop a bad one. Here’s
the secret: Don’t try to change everything at once. Use the rule of three, whereby you identify only
three of your bad habits and commit to stop doing them.
Most bad
sales habits indicate an excess or deficit in either information or emotion. We usually
share too much information or not enough emotion (or vice versa). This
four-step action plan will help you neutralize bad habits:
1. Gather
data. Notice the kinds of casual remarks others make about you. These
comments contain key information that can help you improve your communications.
2. Find or
develop a “mute button.” Allow seven seconds of silence to pass
during your next conversation. You may find that this gap helps you listen more
carefully instead of mentally working on your response. Also use this time to
observe your conversation partner’s nonverbal communication.
3. Observe
your own self-deception. Each of us denies certain behaviors to
protect ourselves from discomfort. Identify what you can do—and stop doing—to
achieve even greater success.
4. Work
with a trusted peer, mentor or coach. Personal change rarely happens
when we work in isolation. If it does occur, it’s usually harder to sustain.
Studies show that sharing plans and following up with another person lead to
long-term behavioral changes.
Are
you working in a company where executive coaches provide leadership development
to grow emotionally intelligent leaders? Does your organization
provide executive coaching for leaders to improve sales and communications? Enlightened leaders tap into their
emotional intelligence and social intelligence skills to create a more
fulfilling future.
One of the most powerful questions you can
ask yourself is “Do I connect
through empathy with customers to understand others’ feelings, thoughts and
experiences?” Emotionally intelligent and socially intelligent organizations
provide executive coaching as part of their peak performance leadership
development and sales training programs.
Working
with a seasoned executive coach and leadership consultant trained in emotional
intelligence and incorporating assessments such as the Bar-On EQ-I, CPI 260 and Denison Culture Survey can help improve
your sales and communications.
You
can become a leader who models emotional intelligence and social intelligence,
and who inspires people to become fully engaged with the vision, mission and
strategy of your company or law firm.
About
Dr. Maynard Brusman
Dr.
Maynard Brusman is a consulting psychologist, executive coach and trusted
advisor to senior leadership teams. He is the president of
Working Resources, a leadership consulting and executive coaching firm. We
specialize in helping San Francisco Bay Area companies and law firms assess,
select, coach, and retain emotionally intelligent leaders. Maynard is a highly sought-after speaker and
workshop leader. He facilitates leadership retreats in Northern California and
Costa Rica. The Society for Advancement of Consulting (SAC) awarded Dr. Maynard
Brusman "Board Approved" designations in the specialties of Executive
Coaching and Leadership Development.
For more information, please go to http://www.workingresources.com,
write to [email protected], or
call 415-546-1252.
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