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Consultative Sales Training
Ei Selling™: The Intelligent Way to Sell and Influence - Printable Program Outline and Topics
The World is Flat---Your Sales Don't Have to Be! SalesLeadership integrates the best sales techniques with motivational sales training.
The information age is demanding a fresh approach to sales and selling skills. The sales force of the future needs to be equipped with critical thinking skills, consultative selling skills, the ability to build solid client relationships and referral partners. In a world gone flat, your team needs to be able to sell value, not price.
What the heck is emotional intelligence and why should sales organizations care?
Dr. Reuven Bar-On defines emotional intelligence as:
"...an array of non-cognitive (emotional and social) capabilities, competencies and skills that influence one’s ability to succeed in coping with environmental demands and pressures.”
In everyday language, emotional intelligence is typically referred to as “street smarts” or “common sense.”
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Instead of us trying to convince you, we’ll let the research make the business case.
- Optimism is an emotional intelligence competency that leads to increased productivity. MetLife selected salespeople on the basis of optimism and they outsold the lower scoring MetLife salespeople by 37%.
- American Express put a group of Financial Advisors through three-day emotional awareness training. The following year, the trainees’ sales exceeded untrained colleagues by millions of extra earnings.
- In analyzing data from 40 different corporations, the differentiator in star performers and average performers was the level of emotional intelligence versus pure intellect and expertise. (Goleman, WEI, cf.Jacobs and Chen, 1997)
- In a 1996 US Air Force study, 1500 recruiters were test to discover common EI traits among recruiters who achieved 100% of their quota. By duplicating those EI traits, retention rate increased 92% saving in excess of 2.7 million.
(Source of this information was the website for the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations.)
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How does lack of emotional intelligence skills impact sales results?
Thousands of dollars are invested in sales training each year. Often, there is a gap in learning and execution of skills in the real world. Well intentioned sales managers continue to coach sales skills; however, lack of sales results isn’t always tied to sales skill. Poor sales performance can often be tied to low emotional intelligence skills.
It’s the expensive gap between knowing what to do and actually doing it. You can teach closing techniques and still have salespeople not ask for the order.
Some Examples:
Knowing vs. Doing: The Emotional Intelligence Skills Gap
- Discounting and getting price shopped
- Inconsistent prospecting activity
- Not talking to the decision maker (s)
- Spending hours on unqualified proposals
- Selling too small of deals
- Low on resiliency
- Present too soon
- Ineffective listening skills
- Poor at building likeability factor
Self-Regard – The ability to respect and accept yourself as basically good.
Low scores in this area can lead to discounting. If a salesperson doesn’t think they are of value, they charge less and discount without any concession strategy. If salesperson doesn’t think they are of high value, why would a prospect? Low self-regard can also affect the resiliency and bounce back factor after hearing no or losing a deal. Instead of moving on and up, the less resilient salesperson takes rejection personally and resists doing the activities necessary for sales success.
Impulse Control – The ability to wait in order to obtain something that one wants.
A salesperson scoring low in impulse control (delayed gratification) thrives on the opposite: instant gratification. This may affect a salesperson’s ability to consistently prospect for new business. A salesperson scoring low in this area gets easily frustrated if their business development plan doesn’t yield immediate results. As a result, they quickly give up doing the sales activity necessary to open up new opportunities. Instant gratification can also affect a salesperson’s ability to navigate through large, major account sales. Salespeople scoring low in impulse control (instant gratification) often grab the low hanging ‘sales’ fruit because it is easier and quicker to sell. Click here to read an article on impulse control.
Assertiveness – Composed of three basic components. (1) The ability to express feelings; (2) The ability to express beliefs and thoughts openly; and (3) The ability to stand up for personal rights.
Good sales managers teach their salespeople to meet with all the buying influences before putting together a recommendation. They work diligently with their sales team on pre-call planning strategies. So when the salesperson doesn’t meet with all the buying influences, it can no longer be attributed to lack of knowledge or training. The real reason can be that the salesperson isn’t assertive enough during the sales process to expect and get a meeting with all the buying influences. They go along to get along and put together a proposal to a decision maker who can say no, but can’t write a check.
Lack of assertiveness also shows up in the salesperson’s ability to set and get agreements. They end up in ‘chase mode’ because they have not clearly defined and gained agreement to the next step of the sales process.
Empathy – Tuning into what, how and why people feel and think the way they do.
A salesperson scoring high in this area senses the dynamics occurring during a sales call and has the ability to adapt and adjust. They pick up on the non-verbal cues of that comprise almost 90% of true communication. Empathetic salespeople have the ability to step into the shoes of their prospects and customers which enhances connectivity and chemistry.
Click here to view SalesLeadership’s Emotional Intelligence Skills Wheel.
Consultative Selling Skills
Consultative selling skills continue to be very important in building a high performance sales team. SalesLeadership’s trainers are experts at teaching high level influence and selling skills. Our instructors practice what they preach. They aren’t just platform trainers, teaching from a manual. They are prospecting, meeting with prospects and closing business. Here are the common selling challenges we hear and eliminate:
- Price Objections – Is your team meeting with the right profile? Do they know how to quantify the cost of the problem or opportunity? There is also a new competitor in the market place: doing nothing.
- Ineffective Prospecting – A strong business development plan is diversified and time is invested where there is the biggest return on investment. Today’s sales professional must be proficient at building referral partnerships, sales 2.0 tools, public relations, marketing, email prospecting, speaking, and the list goes on. Does your sales team have an effective lead generation plan in place?
- Differentiating from the Competitor – People buy emotionally, not logically. If you’re still selling features, advantages and benefits, STOP. FAB is an intellectual selling approach that immediately puts you in the same category as your competitor. If your prospect hears the same story from everyone, you simply sound like a commodity. I.e. You have good service, deep bench of expertise and been in business 20 years. And the last time we checked, prospects don’t pay much for a commodity.
- Chase Mode – This is when salespeople are leaving voicemail messages and emails with no return phone call….even after the prospect told him/her to follow-up in two weeks. The EI Selling System™ subscribes to a partnership sales approach where both parties clearly agree on the next step. Truth telling is one our foundational selling skills. Create a selling environment where both the prospect and salesperson are truthful on whether or not the prospect has a problem big enough to fix, is committed to fixing (that equates to time and money) and if the salesperson’s organization is the best solution. Closing the sale becomes easier once you eliminate game playing.
We practice what we preach and don't make recommendations without a face-to-face appointment or phone consultation.
For more information, please call 866-708-1128 or 303-708-1128 or email us.
SalesLeadership, Inc.
355 Union Blvd.
Suite 300
Lakewood, Colorado 80228
303.708.1128
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