If you want to enhance your ability to sell, there’s one sure way: by increasing your emotional intelligence.
Emotional intelligence, sometimes called EQ, is the ability to identify, regulate, and communicate one’s emotions and to identify and respond appropriately to others’ emotional cues, whether verbal or otherwise.
Emotionally intelligent individuals often make excellent leaders and salespeople, given rapport’s large role in sales. As Connor McKnight, Sales Development Rep at Arootah, noted, “Building rapport is about creating a genuine connection. When you understand your customer’s emotions, you’re not just making a sale; you’re making a lasting relationship.” While emotional intelligence is a common focus in executive coaching for those looking to sharpen their business leadership skills, it’s a universal skill anyone can improve.
Interested in the impact?
Consider these eight ways that developing high emotional intelligence can improve your sales effectiveness, plus five actionable steps to start enhancing your emotional intelligence today.
8 Ways High Emotional Intelligence Can Improve Your Sales
How exactly does having a high emotional intelligence improve your sales skills? It all comes down to how you interact with your clients, manage your emotions during the sales process, and appeal to potential clients’ emotions.
1. Higher Empathy
A big part of developing emotional intelligence is learning the skill of empathy — being able to relate to someone else, their needs, and their situation. The more empathetic you are to a potential client’s needs and pain points, the more they’ll feel as if you truly understand them. Additionally, if you know your client’s needs and pain points, you can better tailor your sales pitch.
2. Helps Maintain Professionalism
The sales process can be stressful. When you’re confident that a deal is sealed, unforeseen circumstances may arise, causing your client to waver. In such moments, it’s tempting to let frustration take the wheel. However, possessing a high EQ equips you with the foresight to identify and manage escalating emotions before they reach a boiling point. This skill enables you to address challenges calmly and constructively, ensuring that neither the potential sale nor your career is compromised. With a high EQ, you’ll remain professional, logical, and in command of the situation, even when the direction of a sale takes an unexpected turn.
3. Enhances Motivation
If you control your emotions, you can direct intense feelings toward achieving your goals, using them as motivation instead of falling into disruptive and negative emotional patterns.
4. Strengthens Social Skills
Enhancing your ability to express and understand emotions improves your social skills, which are vital in sales. Building rapport and establishing trust can lead to more successful interactions and transactions.
5. Improves Conflict Resolution Skills
Not every sale goes completely smoothly, but if you have a high EQ, you’re more likely to be able to resolve any conflicts that arise during the sales process, ensuring that you get the results you want.
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By providing your email address, you agree to receive email communication from Arootah6. Builds Influence
As alluded to, emotionally intelligent individuals can influence others by tapping into their emotions. Emotional intelligence enables sales professionals to influence and collaborate with clients, aligning sales strategies with client needs.
7. Creates Better Self–awareness
Awareness of one’s emotional state can prevent misunderstandings and miscommunications that jeopardize sales opportunities.
8. Increases Your Ability to Handle Feedback
Emotionally intelligent sales professionals can handle criticism constructively and use it to improve their sales techniques and strategies.
5 Ways to Boost Your Emotional Intelligence
Now that you know how elevated emotional intelligence can enhance your sales skills, you might wonder how to develop it further. Here are several strategies to consider.
1. Practice Self–awareness
Strive to gain a conscious understanding of your emotions and the way you express them. Ask yourself what you’re feeling, the reasons behind these emotions, and how you communicate them to those around you. It’s possible that your intended message isn’t what others perceive. Consider maintaining an emotions journal to track your feelings, their triggers, and how effectively you manage them.
2. Cultivate a Growth Mindset
Begin harnessing your emotions for growth. Embrace the idea that you can use any negative emotions to fuel your success through dedication and hard work. Along these lines, seek feedback regarding your current EQ; if that feedback is less than stellar, learn from it.
3. Seek Regular Feedback and Coaching
Don’t just seek EQ-related feedback once. Regularly ask peers, managers, and mentors to evaluate your EQ and guide you on where you can improve. You might also consider working with a career coach to develop your EQ further.
4. Engage in Mindfulness and Self–care
If managing your emotions is the most challenging part of EQ, it might be a sign that you need to practice mindfulness and self-care, such as certain stress-relieving habits, more regularly. Consider incorporating meditation, yoga, or similar activities into each day.
5. Reframe Challenges as Opportunities
As part of cultivating a growth mindset, begin reframing challenges as opportunities. A “crisitunity” mindset means viewing crises or setbacks as opportunities for growth and learning rather than giving up.
The Bottom Line
By leveraging emotional intelligence, sales professionals can create a more positive and productive sales experience for themselves and their clients, ultimately leading to increased sales success.
Looking for more help in boosting your emotional intelligence and sales skills? Join us for our upcoming sales webinar on August 27th at noon EST to discover the ultimate sales process and turn your leads into sales.
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