FIRST OF ALL, THANK you for reading this book. Writing a book is similar to throwing a party. You wonder if anyone besides your relatives are going to show up or read the book.
Thank you for showing up to the party. I am humbled and appreciative because I know it’s more comfortable to keep doing what you’re doing. Learning new ideas, skills, and behaviors isn’t easy. If it were, we’d all be very skinny millionaires.
I could end this book with motivational rhetoric such as the Nike slogan, “Just Do It.” Or, “If it is to be it’s up to me.” But I won’t because you know all the slogans and pithy quotes. Instead, I will simply pose the question: What will you do?
Will you continue to hire salespeople based on just their hard skills and statistics on their sales resume? Or, will you incorporate emotional intelligence skills into your hiring processes?
Will you expand your training and coaching sessions to include education around emotional intelligence skills? Or, will you settle for teaching the familiar sales techniques that you know so well?
Will you model the behaviors you expect from your sales team? Behaviors such as downtime, focus, empathy, and emotion management? Or, will you continue to model hurried and harried sales conversations and meetings?
Will you take time to build deeper relationships with clients and peers? Or, will you keep talking about the importance of relationships without making time for relationships?
Will you create sales meetings that educate and motivate? Or, will your sales meetings look more like a scene out of the movie Groundhog Day?
What will you do?
I’ve found life to be much more enjoyable as I continue on my journey to becoming a more emotionally intelligent person. Drama is reduced because of improved emotion management skills. (Yes, I am a recovering bull in a china shop.) Professional and personal relationships are better because of increased self-awareness and other awareness. Intentional downtime has decreased the number of empathy misses I make when holding conversations. My professional work is even more rewarding because of our unique approach in combining soft skills and hard skills training. I’ve had more than one salesperson and sales manager say to me that the integration of both has made achieving revenue goals easier and their job more enjoyable. That’s a real win for me.
Please stay in touch. Connect with me on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/colleenstanleysli/. Or opt into our weekly vlog/blog with great sales and leadership tips, www.salesleadershipdevelopment.com/blog. Even better, give me a call at 877-287-0916. I’d welcome learning more about what you are doing to build an emotionally intelligent sales team.
It’s time for a new perspective. It’s time to incorporate emotional intelligence skills into your sales and leadership processes.