The Soft Skills, the Emotional Intelligence Skills of Effective Sales Leadership
IT WAS THE BEGINNING of our selling season and I put my road warrior hat on to begin weeks of travel with my sales team. There was one particular rep, who I will call Denise, that I was determined to help break through and achieve her sales goal. In prior years, she always came close but as the old saying goes, no sales cigar. She lived in a part of the country where it was difficult to find top sales talent so I really wanted to help Denise improve rather than look for a new salesperson.
I accompanied Denise on several appointments, observed sales calls, and offered sales coaching after each call. We debriefed what went well and what could have been improved. I followed up the day of travel with a note outlining selling activities and skills to continue or improve.
Fast-forward to the end of the year and I found myself looking at a territory that once again fell short of the goal. Why? Looking back, I realize that poor achievement of goal happened for two reasons:
I didn’t have a people pipeline. I was guilty of falling into the instant gratification bucket of sales management. Instead of carving out time each week and month for recruitment and interviews, I settled for a below-average performer. Hope was my strategy rather than consistent prospecting for talent.
Like many sales managers, the coaching offered to Denise was focused on the mechanics of sales, selling techniques, and tips. “What other questions could you have asked? What do you think you did well? What would have been a better response to this question from the prospect?” I was focused on teaching and coaching Sales IQ, the hard skills of selling. Missing was education around the soft skills, the emotional intelligence skills of sales success. I was working on the wrong end of the sales performance issue. Today, I would change my coaching approach, recognizing that this salesperson wasn’t good at time management and wasted two to three hours a day, costing her precious time that could have been directed to prospecting or client retention. The coaching conversation, held today, would provide tools and insights to improve her productivity habits.
Denise got easily triggered when conducting sales calls with challenging prospects. As a result, she’d talk too much and listen too little. Her lack of sales results wasn’t just caused by poor selling skills. Today, I would work with Denise on the various tools and mindset needed for emotion management. That training would help her execute the right selling skills.
This is a far too common scenario in sales management. Hardworking, dedicated sales managers waste valuable coaching time because they are working on the wrong end of sales performance issues. They try to improve sales results by teaching more hard selling skills. In some cases, that is the fix. But in many cases, the root cause of poor sales performance is lack of emotional intelligence skills.
Now you might be thinking, wait a minute, I just read several chapters on hiring for soft skills, emotional intelligence skills. Why am I going to run into these selling challenges if I have conducted a thorough hiring process vetting for these skills?
You hired a human being. I have found in working with hundreds of sales teams and thousands of salespeople that demonstration of emotional intelligence skills can be situational. For example, a salesperson may possess a high degree of empathy. But once a quota is hanging over her head, empathy goes right out the window. She misses all the nonverbal communication going on in a meeting because her focus is on closing the deal rather than understanding the buyer’s perspective.
A salesperson who presents solutions too soon is often provided more training around asking questions. Again, teaching these consultative selling skills might be the fix. But this salesperson may need more coaching around self-awareness. She knows the questions to ask, but lacks the patience to ask all the questions.
You’ve hired a young, new salesperson and taught him the importance of relationships and conversations. But he is a digital native and continues to email prospects and customers rather than picking up the phone. This salesperson doesn’t lack selling skills. You have a salesperson who doesn’t buy in or believe your approach is better. Coaching efforts need to focus on examining and changing his current belief systems around such connections and conversations. It won’t do any good to hold one more conversation about the importance of building relationships.
Your role as a teacher and coach never stops, which means the learning for you never stops. Focus on learning the next set of skills to make you a more effective sales manager. Learn how to teach and coach soft skills, emotional intelligence skills.
Get to the Root Cause for Poor Sales Performance
We received a call from a vice president of sales who had a salesperson that was “on the bubble.” He was frustrated because the salesperson was at 60 percent of plan. This salesperson had been a top performer in her prior position, selling a similar product. The sales manager was providing coaching, with limited improvement. And in a very tight labor market, the vice president of sales was looking for any additional help to save this salesperson.
I assigned one of our Ei Selling® coaches, Rick, to this project. He’s very good at teaching and coaching hard selling skills. But in this coaching engagement, he quickly discovered lack of soft skills was the root cause for lack of performance. The salesperson was struggling with self-limiting beliefs about herself. In her new role, she was calling on bigger titles and decision makers. She didn’t think she had the ability to engage in meaningful conversations with high-level decision makers. Big office and big title syndrome were getting in the way of success. This salesperson was suffering from imposter syndrome, thinking that her prior success wasn’t legitimate. On top of that, she was experiencing some family issues that were creating a lot of stress, affecting her ability to focus.
Fast-forward to the end of the coaching engagement and this salesperson was achieving 110 percent of quota. This salesperson did need some help in learning new and better selling skills. But what really changed her sales results was improving the soft skills holding her back—skills such as raising her self-awareness around limiting belief systems. She also benefited from education and insights on how to limit and control stress.
Coach to the right end of the sales performance challenge and you will coach to greater sales results.
Years ago, I read a great book authored by Mark McCormack, titled What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School. I could have easily titled this book, What They Don’t Teach You at “Traditional” Sales Management School. While there are a lot of progressive universities now teaching emotional intelligence in their sales management programs, many managers did not attend these schools. Or, they attended school before such courses were offered and have not learned how to teach and coach the emotional intelligence skills needed for sales success.
The next section of this book isn’t going to focus on teaching and coaching the mechanics of sales management such as sales pipeline management, pre-briefing calls, or debriefing calls. We offer such programs and there are a lot of great sales management books, blogs, and podcasts focused on this important area of sales leadership.
The next section of this book is to help sales leaders become better at teaching and coaching the soft skills, emotional intelligence skills, of sales success. Sales managers, welcome to what they don’t teach you at “traditional” sales management school.