Converting your most potential leads becomes difficult at times. Even the top sales professionals struggle with this, despite having a superb product or premium quality service. In fact, a conversion-worthy deal can stop at any stage, leaving you wondering about what went wrong. While there’s no apparent reason for zero conversions, industry experts blame the lack of emotional intelligence for this.
Having a grasp of the customers’ mindsets and what piques their interest is the secret weapon of the sales professionals. Emotional intelligence ( EQ) is the clear winner in this context. It transforms your sales strategy from being purely transactional to relational, thus creating opportunities for long term profits.
Read on to dive more into Sales EQ on a deeper level and find out how it helps gain an edge over your competitors.
What is Sales EQ
EQ or emotional quotient refers to the emotional intelligence of a person. When it comes to sales, the emotional quotient of a salesperson helps him recognize, understand and manage emotions of the buyers. The ability to cope with the buyers’ emotions helps him modify his strategy to close the deals.
According to the popular author Blount, “the new psychology of selling” helps engage prospects, improve product differentiation and influence buying decisions.
Unlike basic sales methodologies like highlighting only the product’s features and benefits, sales professionals with a high EQ concentrate on the buyers’ emotional response towards a product. Accordingly, they can tailor the approach to accommodate the buyer’s emotional needs and decision-making process.
Levels of Sales Intelligence
As already mentioned, the emotional capability of decoding buyers’ mindset using the customer data is called emotional intelligence of a salesperson. There are four levels of sales EQ.
According to Blount, ultra-high sales performance reflects four different levels of intelligence.
- Innate or natural intelligence
- Acquired or learned intelligence
- Technological intelligence
- Emotional Intelligence
According to a recent study, a salesperson having any of these “intelligence levels” will outperform their rivals in terms of customer conversions. They can explore data from the depth and turn those into valuable business insights. Here’s a look at four different intelligence levels.
Natural Intelligence
While many salespeople are blessed with the innate capability of recognizing emotional patterns of the buyers, there are certain factors that still influence a person’s baseline intelligence. From genetics to nurturing, a person’s baseline intelligence is affected by these. People with high vaseline intelligence can effortlessly overcome the challenges that come in their way. They have a unique approach to analyze sales data, which they further use to decode the emotional pattern of a prospect.
Acquired intelligence
There’s something called acquired skill and a salesperson can master this over time by learning new sales frameworks, navigating different markets and cultivating unique selling environments. Such people come with an exceptional growth mindset, reflecting a strong desire to learn new things and challenge the status quo.
To master this they get advanced sales training and coaching that enhances their skills to a large extent. They constantly evolve and look for ways to improve their sales process based on experience and feedback. Over the time, they became quite capable of crafting persuasive sales pitches, tailor approaches according to customer segmentation and effortlessly close complex deals.
Technological intelligence
While the Sales EQ mostly aligns with the human element of sales, the role of technology cannot be undermined in this context. In fact, it is undoubtedly a key element of the modern sales process.
Relying on instincts no more work in sales. Instead it is more about data. Today’s savvy teams leverage a variety of tools to track progress and close deals – and technological intelligence is the key to wielding these tools effectively.
One such tool is CRM software. It helps you leverage capabilities like AI, automation and more so that you can make the most of your sales campaigns at the right time. With this, you can automate repetitive tasks, and glean insights from data analysis. That’s how technological intelligence comes into play.
Sales professionals with a skill of handling such tools can seamlessly manage customer interactions seamlessly and craft data-driven strategies that propel their success.
But it’s not just about ticking off a technical skills checklist. True technological intelligence shows itself in a willingness to embrace new sales technologies, tailor them to individual needs, and constantly optimize the sales process. It’s the ability to learn, adapt, and leverage the power of technology to become a smarter, more effective salesperson.
Emotional intelligence
Emotional intelligence brings the human element to sales. It is also the backbone of strong customer relationships. People with emotional intelligence are competent in decoding buyers’ interest on a psychological plane. They understand the buyers’ interest and what runs in their mind about a particular product.
Precisely, sales EQ is highly instrumental in transforming conflicts into opportunities and ensuring long-term customer satisfaction..
Decoding Your Buyers’ Emotion
Emotional intelligence of a salesperson helps him understand the customer journey and their decision making patterns. While logic often plays a final role in justifying a purchase, initial motivators are frequently driven by emotion. Harvard Professor Gerald Zaltman observes that every purchasing decision is governed by the subconscious (emotion primarily). Even in the rational space of the B2B segment, a staggering 95% of purchasing decisions are emotionally driven. In fact, the IPA data also paints a picture that clearly displays emotions have a larger role to play than logic in the B2B transactions compared to B2C..
Emotional manifestation of your B2B buyers come in many forms- anxiety of falling behind the competitors, the strong desire for improvement, aspirations for success, and alignment with personal values. As a seller, it’s important to decode which of these emotions are playing the power drive to shape the purchasing decision. Identifying this helps craft more compelling messaging and engage with potential customers on a psychological level that often leads to long-term association.
Keep in mind a person;s emotional attachment with a product is driven by the way it resonates with their sense of identity or fulfills their deep-seated desire. This runs true in both B2B and B2C segments. Logic comes into play much later, when it’s time to rationalize their emotional decision to the stakeholders. At this point, pricing consideration, features, functionalities of a particular product come to the scene. Apparently, a “high-end” product attracts customers on the basis of logical reasons, while it’s always an emotional power play.
For sales professionals, it’s crucial to differentiate when to focus on the emotional appeal and when to bring in logical reasoning. A good balance between the two makes a sale.
There’s a saying that a good salesperson is the one who connects with the buyers on an emotional plane. In fact, most of the upsell and cross-sells happen on the basis of your relationship with your customers and not essentially based on rationale or logic. However, the role of factual data or cost-benefit analyses cannot be understated even though sometimes they take a backseat. .
Final Thoughts
Your sales collateral must address emotional and logical aspects at an equal level. While storytelling and audio-visual elements evoke emotions, it won’t last long long if you don’t back those with data, testimonials and case studies for logical support.
Sales EQ plays a key role in customer relationships management as well as customer retention. A good sale does not end with conversion, rather it starts from the post-sale support. In order to establish a long-term connection, you must be responsive to after-sales questions or concerns.
Employing these strategies helps sales professionals effectively use their sales EQ to guide customers through the sales pipeline, from initial contact to closing the deal and beyond.
The roles of logic and emotion in buying decisions is equity tricky and the best sales professionals will attract the customers by providing a balance of both. That’s where the emotional intelligence in sales comes into play. It goes an extra mile to shape a comprehensive buying experience for the customers by satisfying their emotional desires and logical needs.
