Emotion Management and Sales Effectiveness
WHAT DO A FORMER hostage FBI negotiator, NBA coach, and top sales producer have in common? The ability to manage their emotions in challenging situations. And in the sales profession, salespeople are going to run into more than their share of challenging prospects, customers, and sales conversations.
Chris Voss is a former FBI negotiator and author of Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It. When I initially picked up Chris’s book, I was sure it would be full of examples of hard-nosed negotiating tactics. He discusses the hard skills of negotiation and bargaining skills that were important in his work with the FBI. But Voss also shares the importance of the psychological skills, the soft skills, needed in crisis intervention situations. He and his team members recognize the value of emotional intelligence, emotion management, and empathy in calming people down, establishing rapport, and gaining trust.
Phil Jackson, author of Eleven Rings, was a successful NBA coach. He led teams to eleven NBA titles, six with the Chicago Bulls and five with the Los Angeles Lakers. He’s been referred to as the Zen coach because of his incorporation of meditation into the development of his players. According to Jackson, meditation is very beneficial for developing a great basketball team:
Though mindfulness meditation has its roots in Buddhism, it’s an easily accessible technique for quieting the restless mind and focusing attention on whatever is happening in the present moment. This is extremely useful for basketball players, who often have to make split-second decisions under enormous pressure. I discovered that when I had the players sit in silence, breathing together in sync, it helped align them on a nonverbal level far more effectively than words. One breath equals one mind.
You can hire the smartest salesperson in the room. However, if the individuals you hire are not able to manage emotions, it will impact their sales success. Just like a hostage negotiator or athlete, salespeople must have the ability to execute the right selling behaviors under pressure. They must have emotion management skills.
Avoid the Trigger-Response-Regret Loop
I have been a student of human behavior for a long time. But for many years, I was missing the knowledge about how emotions affected my ability to show up consistently and effectively.
I’d listen to the experts on positive affirmations, learning the power of positive self-talk. “I like myself. I am confident. I am calm.” My library of self-help tools looked and sounded like something out of the old Saturday Night Live skits featuring Stuart Smalley.
Then, something or someone would show up and I would allow myself to get emotionally triggered. I’d respond in a manner that I would later regret. I call it the trigger-response-regret loop (see Figure 11.1).
FIGURE 11.1
As Ambrose Bierce said, “Speak when you are angry and you’ll make the best speech you ever regret.” And unfortunately, I’ve made a few of those speeches.
Emotion management is a skill that needs to be discussed, taught, and embraced by sales leaders. Without emotion management, good selling skills take a quick exit when a salesperson is in the middle of a crucial sales conversation. Increased education and focus on emotion management skills help salespeople avoid the trigger-response-regret loop.
How Does Emotion Management Affect Sales Results?
Let’s look at a hypothetical selling situation. Your salesperson is meeting with three potential buyers. Two of the prospects love the salesperson. The third prospect—not so much. It’s pretty easy to identify a prospect who doesn’t love you. He gives short, grunt answers or sarcastic responses such as, “You’re the expert . . . why don’t you tell me.” Or, the prospect deploys the new weapon of choice, bringing out the smartphone to return texts and messages as the salesperson is trying to run a high-level consultative sales meeting.
Without emotion management skills, it’s very easy for a salesperson to get emotionally triggered and default to the emotional reactions of fight or flight.
A fight response is just what it sounds like.
• The salesperson gets defensive, and as a result, starts speaking louder and faster. This response breaks all the rules of rapport that you taught at your last sales meeting.
• The salesperson starts a product knowledge war with the prospect. She shares all her brilliant expertise because, by the time this meeting is over, this difficult prospect will realize just how little he actually knows. She wins the war on product knowledge and loses the sale.
A flight response is quite different.
• It looks like a scene out of the famous sales movie Tommy Boy. When a prospect pushes back with objections or pointed questions, it’s easy for salespeople to default to “okey dokey” behavior. I’m outta here. I don’t get paid enough to put up with this behavior. I’ll give you a call in a few . . . years! Keep in mind, this behavior occurs after you have conducted a great workshop with your team on dealing with objections.
• How about this scenario: The texting prospect finally looks up and lobs a negotiation tactic at the salesperson. “You know, there are a lot of people looking to earn our business. Is this price the best that you can do?” The negotiation tactic emotionally triggers the salesperson and the regretful response is the discount dance. It sounds like a clip from the ’70s Bee Gees song “Stayin’ Alive.” “Well, I think we can do 10 percent off the investment we discussed. Not working . . . 20 percent?” The salesperson is now negotiating with himself! Wait a minute, you just sent this salesperson to a negotiation sales training workshop. And now he’s discounting without any concession strategy?
Let’s look at another sales scenario, one where positive emotions derail a sales meeting. Your salesperson meets with a pleasant, warm prospect who says all the right things. “This looks really interesting. We are always looking to improve. You know, if you’re not getting better, you are getting beaten.”
This is music to the salesperson’s ears. Finally, an easy prospect, one who gets the value of what she is selling. In her enthusiasm, she tosses aside the company sales playbook. She skips over the qualifying questions and selling stages because she’s “got one.” The very nice prospect asks her to put something together to which the salesperson gives a resounding yes.
When she returns to present her solutions, the conversation suddenly changes. The positive, lovely prospect starts throwing out excuses such as, “We’re actually doing pretty well. I need to run this up the ladder.” Or the old standby excuse, “This is more expensive than I thought.” (We want to get better but we don’t want to invest any money to get better.) Another practice proposal buried in the proposal graveyard.
Many sales managers scratch their head and ask, “What happened to all that great training and knowledge I provided?” What happened is that emotions are running your sales team’s meetings rather than effective selling and influence skills. It’s the classic knowing and doing gap.
The Neuroscience of Effective Selling
Teach your sales team the hard skills, the consultative selling skills, Sales IQ. But devote equal time to teaching your sales team emotional intelligence skills, Sales EQ. One of the first concepts I recommend teaching is the neuroscience of effective selling, emotion management.
You don’t have to be a neuroscientist to teach these basic concepts to your sales team. Keep it simple and take your sales team on a high-level tour of the brain, starting with two areas that affect a salesperson’s ability to consistently execute the right selling skills.
The first stop on the tour is the prefrontal cortex, often referred to as the executive center of the brain. This is where logical, rational thought resides. It’s the part of your brain where intentional learning takes place and where problem-solving skills and good judgment reside.
The next stop on the tour is the amygdala, better known as the reptilian brain or lizard brain. This part of the brain was developed almost 200,000 years ago and it hasn’t evolved much. Like the prefrontal cortex it has a job, and its number one job is to keep a person safe and alive. It’s always scanning the environment, looking for threats. And here is where it gets interesting for salespeople and sales managers.
Under threat, perceived or real, the reptilian brain has the ability to override the logical brain, the prefrontal cortex. It’s commonly referred to as the fight or flight response. When a sales call isn’t progressing as planned, consultative sales training skills jump out the window, and negative emotions jump in the window, taking over the sales conversation.
Daniel Goleman is the social psychologist credited with bringing emotional intelligence out of academia and into the commercial world. He sums up this reaction well in his groundbreaking book, Emotional Intelligence. “When the amygdala is activated, it acts like a tripwire telegraphing a message of crisis to all parts of the brain. This messaging creates a series of physiological responses in the body.”
One of those responses is the release of cortisol, a stress hormone, which affects clarity of thinking. Other responses are an increase in heart rate, breathing, and blood pressure. These nonproductive reactions set your salesperson up for a trigger-response-regret conversation.
We’ve all conducted a sales meeting and upon reflection asked ourselves the question, “Did I really say that? Oh, why didn’t I say this?” It’s because emotions ran the sales meeting rather effective selling and influence skills.
Salespeople with high emotion management skills are able to deliver peak performance on demand, regardless of the selling circumstance. Effective sales managers help their sales team understand the people, places, or situations that fire up their emotions and derail sales conversations.
Emotion Management and Self-Awareness
Emotion management is only improved with increased self-awareness. In the words of Socrates, “know thyself.” Without self-awareness, salespeople (and sales managers) are bound to repeat the same mistakes because:
That which you are not aware of you cannot change.
Teach and encourage your sales team to carve out quiet time in the morning, before their day starts. Give your sales team permission to check in with themselves before checking into any of their electronics.
It is only in the stillness that a salesperson gains clarity of thought. A chaotic mind is not a clear mind. A cluttered mind is not a clear mind. Improved self-awareness helps salespeople gain insights on people or situations that cause them to fall into the trigger-response-regret loop.
Share the following questions with your sales team to help them make better choices in their daily conversations with prospects, customers, and peers.
What triggers showed up yesterday that caused me to respond in a manner I regret?
• What can I do to change my response to that trigger?
Am I the trigger? Did my communication style, intensity, or tonality cause my prospects, customers, or peers to default to fight or flight responses?
• What can I change or adapt to create safe conversations rather than defensive conversations?
What difficult triggers will show up today in my interactions with peers, prospects, and clients?
• What will I do or say to make the outcome of the interactions move in a positive direction?
I’ve seen salespeople spend a lifetime running on the sales gerbil wheel, dealing with the same issues over and over. This behavior leads to exhaustion, burnout, and self-doubt. None of which helps a salesperson enjoy the profession of sales or earn more business.
During one-on-one coaching sessions or team meetings, continue to remind your sales team of the importance of carving out time for introspection and reflection. Repetition is the key to mastery, so keep repeating:
That which you are not aware of you cannot change. That which you are not aware of you are bound to repeat.
Managing the Autobahn of Emotions
The reality is there will be times that a salesperson can’t stop their immediate emotional reaction to a sales trigger because they haven’t fully rewired their brains to respond differently.
It’s similar to driving on the German autobahn. Speeding cars can suddenly appear out of nowhere and zoom past you at speeds exceeding one hundred miles per hour. The same thing happens with emotions because the reptilian brain responds in a nanosecond. It quickly speeds past a salesperson’s logical brain and good judgment.
While a salesperson may not be able to immediately avoid a fight or flight response, you can teach your sales team how to limit their emotional response.
Reframing or reappraisal is a powerful tool that helps salespeople move from irrational, survival thinking to rational thinking and actions. Reappraisal allows people to change their interpretation of a situation. It’s making a decision to put a new frame around an existing picture, perhaps an existing sales scenario.
When you dig deeper in the root cause of emotional reactions, you will find that most emotions are created by the stories salespeople tell themselves. We are all great writers of fiction and the main character in our stories is often fear. This emotion is great at generating the wrong actions or no actions. Fear generates negative emotions and negative sales results.
Salesperson’s Story: “I’m New to This Industry”
Fear of being found out, being asked a question that the salesperson doesn’t know the answer to. Fear that the prospect is going to know more than they do about the product or service. Salespeople avoid calling at the right level in the organization for fear of looking stupid. Fear is why they continue to meet with prospects who have no buying authority but appear safe.
Help salespeople reframe their stories. Change the story, change the emotional response, and you change the sales outcome. Create coaching questions that reframe a potentially fearful selling situation. The questions below elevate a salesperson’s awareness around the negative stories—the false stories—they are telling themselves. That which you are not aware of you cannot change.
What’s good about being new to the industry?
• I don’t have biases and assumptions; therefore, I offer a fresh perspective.
• Since I am new, I am going to naturally be more curious and ask more questions and better questions. I don’t even know enough to engage in a product dump!
What’s the worst thing that can happen if you don’t have the answer? What will be your response if you don’t know the answer?
• I have a great team where I can find the answer and I can quickly follow up with the prospect or client. Since follow-up is one of the biggest complaints expressed by prospects and customers, I can control that activity.
Change the Question to Change the Emotion
It’s difficult to manage emotions when a prospect or customer is being aggressive and, in some cases, in attack mode. The natural human response, spurred on by the survival brain, is to attack back or launch into defend and justify conversations.
Teach your sales team the power of the pause. Stop, step out of their shoes and into the shoes of their prospect or customer. Slow down and ask the powerful questions:
• What else is going on here?
• What’s making this prospect or customer react or overreact?
• What is this person fearful about?
By asking these questions, the salesperson moves the conversation from their reptilian brain to their prefrontal cortex, the logical brain. Your salesperson will move from defensive behaviors to curiosity and even empathy.
• “I wonder if this prospect doesn’t even know the right questions to ask. Maybe that’s why he keeps asking about price.”
• “Hmm . . . I wonder if this prospect is under a lot of pressure and I am the recipient of her stress?”
Change the question, you change the emotion and you change the resulting actions.
There is a wonderful scene in a movie where the concierge of a fine hotel is grooming his protégé on how to greet and manage their guests. He shares great advice for reframing conversations with upset guests.
“Remember, if one of our guests is upset, they really aren’t upset. They are fearful. They are fearful they are not going to get the experience for which they paid.”
This wise mentor was teaching his mentee empathy, which helped his mentee reframe conversations with upset customers. Empathy, rather than fear, allows his mentee to avoid the trigger-response-regret loop in challenging customer conversations.
It’s important to teach your sales team that their biggest competitor in winning new business is not the obvious one, the known competitor. Their biggest competitors are sales ghosts of the past. Your prospects and customers have dealt with a number of salespeople over the years. Unfortunately, many salespeople overpromise and underdeliver. Often, when a prospect or customer is pushing hard, it’s because they fear they will be taken advantage of. They resort to pushing because it’s the only way they were able to get problems resolved in the past.
A great reframing question to teach your sales team is, “I wonder what sales ghost is showing up in this sales meeting?”
Ask powerful questions to change your sales team’s emotional and nonproductive responses.
Take a Deep Breath
Upset customers, difficult questions from a prospect, certain negotiation tactics can trigger the reptilian brain. The body immediately responds, getting ready for fight or flight.
First responders, the military, and athletes employ tactical breathing to reduce stress and calm down. And in sales, there are a few sales meetings that feel like fire and combat!
Teach your sales team the power of breathing when they feel emotionally triggered. Something as simple as taking a few deep breaths sends a message to the arousal center of the brain, the reptilian brain, that everything is going to be okay. Breathing helps your salesperson get back in control so she can execute the right selling behaviors and skills, even in difficult selling situations. It even helps when holding a conversation with your spouse or kids!
Help your sales team remain emotionally stable so they are able to execute the right selling behaviors, even in difficult selling situations.
Sales Leaders EQ Action Plan
1. Teach your sales team the neuroscience of sales, emotion management. Train like a former FBI hostage negotiator and NBA coach.
2. Improve your sales team’s emotional self-awareness. Encourage them to start their day with downtime and introspection. Stop repeating the same selling mistakes.
3. Enlighten your team around the power of reframing their stories.
4. Teach your sales team to manage their emotions by asking the powerful questions.
5. Don’t forget to breathe!