Emotional Intelligence in Sales

There are four types of intelligence in the world:

IQ or Intelligence Quotient

SQ or Social Quotient

AQ or Adversity Quotient

and of course EQ or Emotional Quotient.

Among the four, which is the most important when it comes to selling? The answer is, of course, all of it. We need to be intellectually intelligent in order to succeed in sales. After all, the products or services we are selling must make logical sense for the prospect to buy. We need the knowledge of how our product, market, and industry work.

We cannot sell a property investment if we do not have any idea how property investment works. We cannot convince an investor to buy if we don’t even know the numbers of what we are offering, from the ROIs of the world to the GDPs and GNPs of the countries.

All the more can’t we explain how our product can help the prospect without IQ which is the end all be all of why the prospect is there with you in the first place.

We also need to be socially or interpersonally intelligent to succeed in sales. Sales starts and ends with a client, a person outside the company. If we are bad at interpersonal communications, how can we expect to succeed in the very craft that relies on communicating and building relationships with people outside of our organization?

We’ve already discussed on how important knowing how to build relationship and influence others on other contents. But the underlying fact is that being good at people is very crucial in sales.

Then there is AQ or adversity quotient. AQ is a pretty new thing. It is described as how people face challenges and adversities in life. There might be an argument that AQ is the difference between successful salespeople and those who failed. Sales is a very challenging craft.

We face 8 or 9 rejections and failures in every one success. Out of 10 people we approach, only 1 is interested. Out of 10 prospects we call, only one is interested. Out of 10 people we make a presentation, only 1 will buy. In here you can see how frustrating and challenging sales is.

Having low AQ or not being able to handle crisis or challenges could be the downfall of any salesperson no matter how smart or good at people they are.

Lastly there is EQ. Emotional Intelligence is defined as knowing how to manage your emotions and that of others. Emotional Intelligence is a very broad and deep topic to a point that countless of books have been written to address this intelligence. In fact, there is even a saying: IQ gets you hired but EQ gets you promoted.

Emotions, as we have discussed in other contents, is a pretty weird but powerful thing. It is chaotically powerful. And emotional intelligence as it relates with sales is not just crucial but more so a powerful weapon that could work for us or against us.

In fact, we have said countless times: people buy with emotions and justify it with logic. What this phrase means is that most of the time, most of us make a decision based on our emotions and then we just come up with a logical argument or excuse on why we did what we did.

Emotional intelligence might not be the most important intelligence when it comes to selling but it is very crucial in succeeding in sales. With it, we can close sales.

With it, we can build trusted relationships with key stakeholders through the power of empathy. With it, we can make prospects buy since people buy with emotions and justify it with logic. And with it, we can sell more since what is selling but just the transference of emotions.

And if we are going to look at it, Emotional Intelligence touches Social or Interpersonal Intelligence and Adversity Quotient. With strong EQ, a salesperson can face any challenges and persevere. With strong EQ especially on understanding and managing the emotions of others, a salesperson can easily influence and persuade the other person.

But all emotional intelligence starts and ends with the emotional state of the salesperson. If the salesperson is unhappy, desperate, and frustrated; things will not end well.

No matter how good the salesperson is, if they are not in the right emotional state, chances are they will just ruin the opportunity they have.

In other words, for a salesperson to succeed, he/she must have a pretty strong emotional intelligence especially in how they manage their own emotions. The right emotions will work for the salesperson and the wrong emotions will work against them.

Our emotional state of mind is important in a way that how we feel affects what we do and how we do things. We have talked about this so many times. If we feel frustrated over something, its pretty hard to call a prospect and remain calm.

Yes, we could remain calm but not without willpower. If we feel happy and hopeful, we treat the prospect better and we are able to make the prospect feel that they are indeed very important people.

Just think of it this way. If for example you are a salesperson and you feel desperate to make a sale, wouldn’t that sense of desperation affect how you treat your prospects? In a way, mas pushy and aggressive ka. This is not necessarily a bad thing.

But emotional intelligence as it relates to our own emotions does not just stop there. It also applies to how we manage how we feel. Lets face it, a lot of times we do not control how we actually feel.

In the last example, it is our desperation that forced us to finally contact clients whom we have not contacted for a very long time. The result of which could lead us to the sale which we wouldn’t have made if we are not desperate.

The thing is that same emotion, the feeling of desperation, can result in making the sale or it could result in the sale being farther away from us. That feeling of desperation forces us to work harder, be more aggressive, and actually contacting and asking for a sale from all possible clients we have.

At the same time, if we are in a sales presentation, the prospect will be able to feel our sense of desperation and all the more not want to do business with us.

On the other hand, our sense of desperation could lead us into making decisions that will affect our long term sales career like being too aggressive to our clients which will make them block us forever. This feeling of desperation might even make us do unthinkable and unethical things like forging a contract.

Its pretty much the same emotion. One resulted in a win and another in a failure. The difference? Emotional Intelligence or knowing how to manage one’s emotions.

But for now, the strategy that will instantly make us be more emotionally intelligent is being aware of our own emotions. Yes, this might sound like common sense or “what in the heck are you talking about” thing but being aware of how we feel is actually the first step in being able to manage our own emotions.

There are countless of books that have talked about how we can better manage our emotional intelligence. We are no experts in this field thus we recommend you to read books on EQ if you want to learn more.

If you know you are angry and that you cannot show that anger, the more we can control our own self. Of course, it does not take away the anger nor take away the chances of us being angry towards others but it makes us more logical in how we think. It allows us to be more conscious of how we feel and how it can affect others.

If lets say before you go to a sales appointment you start imagining yourself making a really great sales presentation as if you are Leonardo Dicaprio from the Wolf of Wall Street, you go to the sales presentation with this sense of conviction.

The other thing is in managing what we put into our mind. If all we read or hear are bad news, automatically we feel negative towards the world and towards life and that is not a good thing.

The main point is this: unless the salesperson is in the right emotional state, making a sale is as hard as it gets. Not that it is unachievable but rather it affects the way we treat prospects, what we say and how we say, and ultimately our attitude towards them and our work.

Next week, we will be talking about emotional intelligence as it relates to the prospect.

The key here in being more emotionally intelligent (at least instantly) is to be careful of what we put in our minds (either what we read and hear or what we think) and being aware of our own emotional state.

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