18

The Sales EQ and Sales IQ of Teaching and Coaching

MIRROR, MIRROR, ON THE wall, am I modeling what I am teaching at all? It’s a great question for all of us in sales leadership roles to ask ourselves.

I’ve focused on the importance of teaching your sales team emotional intelligence skills. In the next few chapters, I will turn the focus back to you. Look in the mirror and ask: Am I modeling the emotional intelligence skills I teach?

Quite a few years ago, we were referred to a company that was interested in obtaining EQ coaching for one of their top sales managers. Steven was a classic example of a sales manager who was really good at the mechanics of sales management. He was intelligent and good at holding his sales team accountable to activity metrics and sales results. His sales team was hitting quota and they were also starting to hit the doors, leaving the company because of his abrupt and condescending sales management style.

Senior management was looking at the crystal ball and the future didn’t look bright for Steven. He was putting up the numbers but his behaviors didn’t support the core values of respect and teamwork espoused by the company. This caused many employees to question how serious the company was about these so-called core values. Could they be ignored as long as you were making lots of money for the company?

They didn’t hire us for the engagement; however, I couldn’t get this young sales manager out of my mind. So much potential there that might not be achieved. Out of curiosity, I reached out a few months later to his boss, asking about Steven. I received a short and not-so-sweet return email: He’s no longer with the company.

Steven was a classic example of high Sales IQ and low Sales EQ. He was the smartest guy in the room that no one liked. He didn’t have the ability to build trust and respect with his team or other managers at the company.

Emotion Management and Influence

Let’s revisit the neuroscience of influence. An effective sales leader is good at emotion management and is consistent in how she shows up. This consistency builds sales cultures of trust because a key component of building trust is consistency. The sales team isn’t worried about what type of emotional reaction will occur when they share a mistake with you. They don’t have to watch and see what kind of mood you are in, before approaching with a question or problem.

Trust and respect are earned through congruency in what you say and do. Children observe the actions of their parents, not their words. Children grow up to be salespeople, ones with the same habits of observation. Salespeople watch a sales leader’s actions more than their words.

They watch to see if you:

             Remain calm in the face of adversity

             Are respectful in conversations . . . even when you are upset

             Listen to all aspects of a situation before jumping to a hasty conclusion

             Are fully present in all conversations and meetings

             Demonstrate empathy or emotional apathy

             Are willing to hold the truth-telling, difficult conversations in an assertive, not aggressive manner

 

The Gift That Keeps on Giving—Mentorship

I was fortunate to have a great boss and mentor, Kline Boyd, when I was a vice president of sales. He possessed both Sales IQ and Sales EQ.

It was time to set sales budgets for the year. We were moving from an October to September fiscal calendar to a January through December fiscal calendar. It was a lot of numbers crunching and I asked my seven regional managers to turn in their sales projections for the year, providing them with the format with which to create their team’s sales goals.

I don’t recall exactly what I did wrong in the sales forecasting model, but it was wrong. My not-so-happy CFO informed me that I needed to start over and get the numbers to him ASAP as other departments were waiting on my sales numbers to complete budgets.

I was really upset and during my lunch break went to a nearby outdoor shopping complex and begin walking around. I dreaded the upcoming conversations with my regional sales managers. I was worried about how stupid I would sound when I had to tell Kline of my huge error. I was looking down, mumbling to myself, replaying worst-case scenarios in my head, and ran right into my boss. He noted my face and asked, “What’s going on? Are you okay?” I did my best not to do the ugly cry. “You didn’t hear—I screwed up the entire sales forecast. We have to start all over.”

I’ll never forget his nonjudgmental, nonemotional reply. “Well, I guess you won’t do that again.” That was it. He knew I didn’t need any lecture because he recognized I was doing an exceptional job of flogging myself. I have to admit that, at the time, I was too young to appreciate his calm, consistent demeanor and depth of emotional intelligence.

Today I do, and have shared his many words of wisdom long after working with him. Kline modeled the behavior he expected from others. He modeled great leadership, empathy, and emotion management, which earned him trust and respect from everyone who worked for him.

 

Look in the mirror. Are you modeling the emotional intelligence skills you expect from your sales team? I am a work in progress and certainly know that I’ve not liked the reflection I’ve seen in the mirror on more than one occasion.

The Sales Management Trigger-Response-Regret Loop

You’ve hired good salespeople and have invested time teaching them EQ skills needed to be successful in their role as sellers. But the fact is, you will still encounter situations where you need to hold a truth-telling conversation, a difficult conversation, even with very good salespeople. You hired a human being and human beings bring faults and blind spots that at certain times will need to be addressed. (If you are married, in a serious relationship, or raising children, you know what I’m talking about.)

For example, you’re meeting with a salesperson who is behind plan for the first time in two years. You share the intent behind the coaching conversation, which is one of help and support. Your human salesperson starts lobbing excuses back to you. “You know, if I didn’t have to spend all my time fielding questions because of our lousy delivery team, maybe I could sell something. I’ve checked out the competition . . . we are just too high-priced.”

If you are like most of my high-achieving sales leaders, excuses are like nails on a chalkboard. Without self-awareness and emotion management, excuses can send you into the trigger-response-regret loop, elevating your “high need to be right” response. At this point, it’s easy to turn into a trial lawyer, delivering a closing argument that that lays out solid answers to every excuse preventing success.

Your bad behavior flips on the salesperson’s trigger-response-regret reaction. Now you are both fighting for the need to be right rather than the need to get it right. Little knowledge is transferred—and forget about any behavior changes. Emotions are running this conversation, not effective coaching and training skills.

Our logical, rational brain recognizes these reactions are not the correct responses. But when emotions start running conversations, the reptilian brain takes over, bringing with it the fight or flight reactions. Good coaching and rapport skills are nowhere to be found. It’s the classic sales management knowing and doing gap.

Take Your Own Medicine

You’ve taught your team the power of downtime and reflection. Make sure you walk the walk and instill this powerful daily habit into your own morning routine. Your emails and texts can wait—you really aren’t that important. Sorry.

If you didn’t handle a conversation well with a salesperson, carve out quiet time and get to the root cause of your reaction.

                 That which you are not aware of you cannot change. That which you are not aware of you are bound to repeat.

The root cause for your emotional reaction might be the same as those discussed in chapter thirteen. Look in the mirror and examine your belief systems and the stories you are telling yourself about the salesperson. Stories create emotions, which affect the actions we take or don’t take. Emotions affect the skills we apply or don’t apply. A negative story about a salesperson creates negative emotions, which create trigger-response-regret coaching conversations.

Here are stories that I’ve heard from more than one sales manager when presenting this concept during our sales management workshops:

             He’s just lazy and doesn’t want to do the work.

             If she didn’t have something to complain about, she wouldn’t be happy.

             He is always looking for a magic formula for success.

             She doesn’t care if the company loses money on this deal. That’s why she keeps discounting.

             He is just trying to protect his territory and knowledge by not putting data into the CRM system.

Look at those stories. Are they going to create positive emotions and positive coaching conversations? Uh, no.

Get Curious

A coaching tool that I’ve learned from other leadership experts such as Keith Rosen, author of Sales Leadership, and Brene Brown, author of Dare to Lead, is to shift my negative self-talk from judgment to curiosity. Keith Rosen advises sales managers to get “radically curious.” I’ve found that a curious mindset shifts my thinking from judgment and head know-it-all to that of an investigator. I become an observer of the conversation, rather than a fixer of the conversation. My investigator role keeps me curious and focused on examining any and all clues to solve the mystery of why a salesperson isn’t executing the right selling behaviors.

Curiosity thinking forces you to ask yourself questions that create different answers:

             What else could be true? (Maybe the salesperson is embarrassed. Everyone else on the team is having a killer year.)

             Wonder what’s really going on here? (Worry. The salesperson was planning on her quarterly bonus for her son’s college fund.)

             What part of this story am I making up? (Are these excuses really self-doubt in disguise?)

Asking questions moves the conversation from your reptilian brain that is busy fueling your emotions and fears to the problem-solving part of your brain. This shift allows you to apply the hard skills, the coaching skills, needed to diagnose the sales performance issue. Curiosity thinking moves you from the need to be right to the need to get it right.

Take a lesson from Brian Grazer. He is the producer of such movies as Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind, and Splash. He’s also the author of A Curious Mind: The Secret to a Bigger Life. Brian has engaged in hundreds of “curiosity conversations” with people from all walks of life. Those conversations reward him with the gift of perspective, new insights, and different points of view. Grazer points out that you have to care about someone to wonder about them. When you sincerely wonder about a person, you naturally ask more questions and better questions.

Sales managers, if you really care about your salesperson, get really curious about the truth for lack of sales performance. Ask more questions, better questions, and you might just find the answers are totally different than the story you are making up about the salesperson.

Curiosity Sales Coaching

Take a look at some common sales coaching scenarios where sales managers fall into defensive coaching behaviors rather than curiosity coaching behaviors.

Scenario One

Salesperson: “You know, I just have a bad territory.”

Defensive sales management response: “Your territory actually has more qualified prospects than other regions across the country. In fact, let me show you the data.”

Curiosity questions: “Is it a bad territory or do you have a really tough competitor in this territory? Is it a bad territory or do you need more help in strategizing on how to connect with the right prospects in the territory?”

Scenario Two

Salesperson: “Our marketing collateral is outdated.”

Defensive sales management response: “The marketing department just updated this collateral. Compared to the competition, it’s twice as good. When I started in sales, we didn’t even have a marketing department and I still hit quota.” (And I walked ten miles to school . . .)

Curiosity questions: “Tell me more about what is outdated. What are you hoping marketing collateral could do to help you win more business? What does updated look like?”

Scenario Three

Salesperson: “I could win more business if we just had better pricing.”

Defensive sales management response: “We have plenty of customers that are buying our products and services at full price. Let’s talk one more time about selling value, not price.”

Curiosity questions: “Is it our pricing or are you targeting the wrong clients? When you have won business at full margin, what have you found to be the common theme for winning this type of business [i.e., pain point, competitor, trigger event]?”

Apply the same soft skills you are teaching your sales team. Examine your self-limiting beliefs, your stories. Become a sales investigator and apply curiosity. The shift will help you execute the hard skills, the coaching skills, of sales management.

Empathy and Influence

As discussed in chapter twelve, empathy is the mega influence skill. And boy, can we blow it in sales leadership. I certainly have.

It’s easy to fall into the “my intent is good but my approach was way off” program. In a desire to help your sales team improve, sales managers forget the power of empathy and influence. Sales leaders are assertive and good problem solvers. However, those same skills can become their Achilles’ heel. When a salesperson presents a problem, the sales manager puts on her fix-it hat and immediately starts offering advice.

The problem is, salespeople can’t hear your great advice until you’ve demonstrated that you’ve heard them. They are just like your prospects and customers. They are human beings who have an inherent desire to be understood.

In your fast-paced world as a sales manager, apply self-awareness. You are busy and may want to “rush empathy.” Sorry, empathy can’t be rushed. Empathy is a paying attention skill. You must be present to win. It requires being highly aware of how you show up to daily conversations and coaching sessions. Make a decision where you want to be. Focus and pay attention.

Be here now.

Grow Your Sales Management Empathy Skills

Empathy is developed by tuning into your own emotions, what you are thinking or feeling. How can sales managers possibly influence salespeople, human beings, if they don’t know what their sales team is thinking or feeling?

They can’t.

In the quiet, reflect on various selling scenarios you experienced as a seller. Did you ever:

             Feel intimidated by a prospect or customer? What thoughts went through your head?

             Experience self-doubt? What were you thinking or feeling?

             Feel discouraged because nothing seemed to be working or closing?

Dig beneath the superficial layers of thinking, which lead to generic labeling of emotions and canned coaching conversations. Take time to reflect and tune into your emotions, which in turn helps you tune into the emotional state of your salespeople.

See Figure 18.1 for the “S” framework we teach to move beyond superficial and generic coaching conversations.

image

FIGURE 18.1

For example, a salesperson states emphatically that the new CRM system is too difficult. Now, you know from other members of your sales team that the new CRM system is easier and twice as effective as the old system. Your initial response might be to make up a story about the salesperson. “This salesperson is always pushing back on change.” Or, you get emotionally triggered and start defending and justifying the new system. To build your case, you share success stories from salespeople on the team who aren’t having any problems with the new CRM system.

Yeah, this is a great way to make an emotional connection and build trust.

Slow down. Stop and really think about your salesperson’s perspective, whether you agree with it or not. (Easier said than done.)

Step into your salesperson’s shoes. Empathy is being able to hear the conversation that is not being said. What the salesperson is not saying is that change is difficult. This conversation is not about the new CRM system. This conversation is about change. The salesperson is still in the hard phase of learning. She’s not a digital native, so technology is intimidating to her. The change to the new CRM means it takes more time for her to complete tasks.

The empathetic sales manager states what the salesperson is not saying, what she’s really thinking or feeling: “I am guessing that your frustration with the new CRM system is because it’s slowing you down, which is taking time away from revenue-generating activities. And it certainly doesn’t help when you see other salespeople liking the new system when it’s only bogging you down. Am I reading this situation correctly?”

When you hear a resounding yes, you’ve achieved empathy. Be still and avoid moving into solving the problem. Ask questions to learn the salesperson’s story. “Tell me more what’s going on.” Effective coaching is just like good selling skills. You need to hear the salesperson’s story before you can offer solutions.

Once you learn more of your salesperson’s story, then and only then can you move to a coaching and training conversation. Salespeople can’t hear your great advice until like they feel you’ve heard them and understood them.

 

Empathy and Effective Sales Coaching

John is a great sales leader, and after completing several of our courses, he shared with me new insights gained from increased self-awareness. “I had no idea that I was putting members of my sales team into a fight or flight emotional state. I’ve always invested time in debriefing sales calls, but now I realize that my debriefing sessions sounded like an interrogation, rather than a helpful coaching session. It’s no wonder my sales team often defaulted to defending and justifying their actions. I didn’t demonstrate empathy when a salesperson would bring me a loss and ask for coaching. My immediate response was to focus on solving the problem to prevent it from happening again.”

Salespeople can’t hear your great advice until you’ve demonstrated you’ve heard them.

 

Sales Management Empathy Misses

Here are some other common examples of empathy misses in sales management. My observation in working with sales managers is their problem-solving approach is filled with good intent. They really want to help. But the coaching framework is incorrect. Sales managers: empathy first, advice second.

Take a look at some coaching scenarios where well-intentioned sales managers reverse the framework, offering advice first.

Sales Scenario

A salesperson has been working on a deal for nine months. A new decision maker has joined the company and is bringing in a past relationship to now be considered for the work.

Possible response by sales manager: “Well, let’s strategize on how we can gain access to this new buyer. We can still win this business. What questions should we ask to best position ourselves?”

Empathetic response: “That’s a bummer. You’ve worked so hard on this deal and now it looks like you have to start all over. And on top of that, you’re probably feeling a little betrayed that your internal champions aren’t doing more to move the deal your way. Am I correct or off base?”

Sales Scenario

A salesperson has been doing all the right activities and is still not filling the sales pipeline.

Possible response by sales manager: “Okay, let’s look at the activity plan again and specific tactics associated with those. We can turn this around.”

Empathetic response: “You’ve got to be feeling a little discouraged because you are doing all the right things and yet nothing is popping. And you might even be wondering if you have what it takes to make it in this position. Am I correct?”

Sales Scenario

A salesperson has a longtime customer who is really upset with him because of missed deadlines caused by another department in the company.

Possible response by sales manager: “I’m happy to get on the phone and deal with the customer. I’m so tired of department XYZ falling short.”

Empathetic response: “Those are really tough calls to take and I know you must be feeling a little unappreciated because the customer doesn’t seem to remember all the extras you’ve done for their company. And it certainly doesn’t help when you didn’t create the problem. Am I correct?”

Salespeople can’t hear your great coaching advice until they feel like you’ve heard them.

Emotional Self-Awareness, Assertiveness, and Crucial Sales Conversations

There is a great book titled Crucial Conversations authored by Patterson, Grenny, McMillan, and Switzler. The focus of the book is teaching managers and leaders how to effectively hold the difficult conversations, the crucial conversations.

I also call these conversations truth-telling conversations. They aren’t easy conversations and many of us are average, at best, in holding them. Remember, you can hire a great salesperson but chances are at some point you will need to hold a truth-telling conversation.

Organizations grow and change in order to remain relevant. This means your sales team will need to grow and change. People don’t like change because it represents the unknown.

The unknown represents the possibility to fail so human beings resist new ideas and ways of conducting business, even when the new ways of conducting business will ensure future success.

Emotion management, assertiveness, and self-awareness are key emotional intelligence skills in holding truth-telling conversations.

What Makes Truth-Telling Conversations Difficult?

No one looks forward to a difficult conversation. Can’t we all just get along? When I dig into the real reason sales leaders aren’t holding truth-telling sales conversations, I find the emotion of fear rearing its ugly head again.

Fear is one of the big reasons people in general aren’t assertive in stating what they need. They fear losing something, and as a result, aren’t assertive in nicely asking for what they need.

             Parents don’t discipline their children for fear of losing their love.

             Spouses put up with rude and condescending behavior for fear their spouse will leave.

             Customers don’t send cold food back in restaurants for fear of the waitstaff not liking them. (Or something worse.)

Sales managers are not assertive in asking for what they need and, in many cases, put up with inappropriate selling behaviors because of fear.

             Fear the salesperson will leave and take the company’s best clients.

             Fear the salesperson will leave and be hard to replace. Your industry isn’t that sexy and it’s hard to find good salespeople.

             Fear the sales team won’t like you. Your need for approval is getting in the way of asking for what you and the company need.

             Fear that a truth-telling conversation will change the sales culture.

Hello. Time for a Reality Check

During our Ei Sales Management Training Program, I conduct an exercise asking participants to write down the name of an acquaintance and the name of a really close friend or relative. Then, I ask them to write down if they’ve ever had a conflict with the acquaintance, close friend, or relative.

About 95 percent of the time, participants write that they have not had a conflict with an acquaintance. But almost 100 percent will state they’ve had a conflict with a close friend or relative. This exercise raises self-awareness around the topic of conflict. The reality is, the closer the relationship you have with a person, the greater the probability you will need to engage in a truth-telling conversation.

 

Denial and Caretaking Sales Cultures

Several years ago, I met with a very nice CEO who proudly shared the history of her company and their family culture, their nurturing culture. But the more we talked, the more I realized she didn’t have a nurturing culture; she had a caretaking culture. This “family” was a cross between an adult nursery and a senior retirement home. Reps were whining about everything (nursery) and many had settled into complacency (retirement home).

This very nice CEO was in denial. What she described as a nurturing culture was really a sales culture that avoided accountability and difficult conversations. Her inability to hold the difficult conversations was the root cause for declining revenues and a culture of entitlement. When I asked questions around accountability and responsibility, she gave several excuses as to why she couldn’t set expectations for new selling behaviors needed to remain relevant in a changing business environment. However, their competition wasn’t whining or retired on the job. They were busy taking this company’s best customers!

This CEO lacked the assertiveness to hold truth-telling conversations with her team. We agreed not to do business because success would require changes she was not willing to make.

 

Assertive, Aggressive, or Passive Coaching Behaviors

Many sales managers possess high assertiveness because this is a soft skill found in many top sales producers. But the demonstration of this soft skill can be situational—and I have observed more than one sales manager not bringing this important skill into their sales leadership role. It often disappears when conducting the crucial sales coaching sessions. Sales leaders default to aggressive coaching behaviors or passive-aggressive coaching behaviors.

If a sales manager hasn’t fully mastered self-control and emotion management, the likely default is an aggressive approach. The sales manager tells the salesperson, in no uncertain terms, what changes are expected. The delivery of the message is accompanied by tense tonality matched by an even more tense facial expression. This approach kicks off the trigger-response-regret loop between the sales manager and the salesperson. A salesperson might respond defensively, which escalates the conversation. Or, she might respond in a passive-aggressive manner, appearing to agree with expectations laid out by the sales manager. But silently, the salesperson is resentful and has no intention of doing anything the sales manager has suggested. The result is little change in selling behaviors. And the sales manager is revisiting the exact same issues the following month.

Without self-awareness, sales managers can default to passive-aggressive coaching behaviors during the crucial coaching conversations. Fear makes another guest appearance. The first sign of pushback from the salesperson on expected changes leads to “okey dokey” behavior from the sales manager. “I can’t lose this salesperson. I don’t have anyone to put in this position. He might go to the competition and take all of our customers.”

The sales manager goes along to get along and doesn’t stay firm on the new expectations needed for success. “Well, let’s talk about this again.” (Like in the next fifty years.) The sales manager and salesperson hold the same conversation over and over again because the passive-aggressive sales manager isn’t assertive enough to finish the difficult coaching conversation.

Assertive sales managers are comfortable holding truth-telling conversations around improvements in selling behaviors such as poor attitude, missed sales results, lack of following necessary processes, or being a better team player.

The assertive sales manager brings a combination of EQ skills to the difficult coaching conversations—skills such as self-awareness, empathy, and assertiveness. She is aware of triggers that cause her to default to aggressive or passive coaching behaviors. She brings empathy to establish the foundation for a good conversation. And she brings assertiveness to state expectations and changes needed in a manner that can be heard and received.

Let’s take a look at what a self-aware, empathetic, assertive truth-telling coaching conversation might sound like regarding a veteran salesperson’s lack of participation in the monthly group sales meeting.

“Jim, I wanted to address your lack of participation in the group sales meetings. First of all, I do want you to know how much I appreciate your consistency in achieving goals . . . I never worry about you or your work ethic. And if I were in your shoes, I’d actually be wondering one of two things [Empathy]:

             Why do I have to attend these meetings? I’m hitting quota.

             These meetings just take me away from making more sales.”

“Am I correct?”

“Yes. No offense, but I find sales meetings a waste of time. I think you should just spend time with the salespeople who need help instead of making the rest of us sit in meetings, listening to their problems.” (Watch your emotional response to Jim’s answer.)

“Well, that makes perfect sense.” (Apply empathy and assertiveness. Stay the course.) “Here’s the problem. Maybe you can help and maybe you can’t. We are growing and adding a lot of new salespeople. Like me, you were here in the early days. And if you remember, one of the reasons we’ve experienced success is that, in the early days, we all had each other’s back. We did a lot of sharing and brainstorming, which helped everyone close business. Would you agree or am I making this story up?”

“Yeah . . . I remember. Those early days were tough. We didn’t have a brand or market share.”

“Well, I know this type of collaboration is the winning formula for future success and I need your help. As the top producer, I need you to show up to meetings, put aside your other work, and be open to sharing your expertise and experience, which will help ramp up our new hires to quicker success. Our sales team is only as good as its weakest link, and I want to make sure all of our links are strong. It’s two hours out of your month . . . can you do that?”

“Yes . . . two hours isn’t going to kill me. Got it.”

The emotionally intelligent sales manager works hard at developing emotion management, empathy, and assertiveness skills. This powerful combination of EQ skills allows you to effectively hold truth-telling conversations.

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, are you modeling what you are teaching at all?

Sales Leaders EQ Action Steps

          1.  Carve out quiet time and examine the negative stories you might be making up about members of your sales team.

          2.  Develop your curiosity skills. Put on your sales investigator hat during coaching conversations.

          3.  Bring the powerful skill of empathy to your coaching conversations.

          4.  Practice the “S” framework of empathy.

          5.  Review and analyze recent coaching conversations. Did you demonstrate assertiveness, passive-aggressive, or aggressive communication skills?