In this chapter extract we will cover
. The definition of Emotional Intelligence (EQ).
. What you can do about it if you are low on EQ.
. Empathy; understanding other people’s hidden emotional drives.
. Neuro-Linguistic Programming – simplified for sales people.

What is Emotional Intelligence?
Emotional Intelligence has two aspects:
1. Understanding yourself: intentions, emotional responses and behaviour.
2. Understanding others: their feelings, their wants and expected behaviour.

You can soon get lost when you start reading books on this subject. Indeed, once you have read them you might end up knowing the theory, but not how to use EQ in practical terms. The books spend so much time discussing the what and the why, they miss out on the how. How can you discover your EQ? And how to find out other people’s EQ? I am going to address these issues in this article/chapter (extracted from the book: Ace the Sale!).

My definition of EQ for salespeople:
EQ enables you to maximize your own sales potential by firstly understanding yourself and then understanding how other people are made up – enabling you to communicate in a way that they would like, rather than from your point of view.

Emotional Intelligence is known as EQ which for the dyslexic people out there (of which I am one) does cause some confusion but highlights the recognition that EQ and IQ are similar; one is a measure of intelligence and the other a measure of the emotions.

Emotional Intelligence is more important than IQ
Research shows that EQ in a commercial environment may actually be significantly more important than information processing abilities and technical expertise combined. In fact, some studies indicate that EQ is more than twice as important as standard IQ abilities. Furthermore, evidence increasingly shows that the higher one goes in an organization, the more important EQ can be. For those in leadership positions, Emotional Intelligence skills are believed to account for close to 90 percent of what distinguishes outstanding leaders from those judged as average. IQ gets you hired, but EQ gets you promoted.

So what makes a great sales person and can EQ help?
I am sure you have heard many times people referring to someone as ‘a natural’. Or that someone can ‘sell fridges to Eskimos’. These sales people have great people skills or EQ; they are in tune with peoples’ emotions, body language and can read people. It’s a gift. Like playing great golf.
I can remember when I was working in presales on an account. When we finished the presentation the sales guy said to me:
“That went well, don’t you think?”
Went well!?! It was terrible, people were looking at their watches, there were no questions, and we really had not understood the client’s issues as we spent most of the time telling them how great we were. I could not understand how he could have come away from the same presentation with such a different point of view. We were clearly in trouble, and needed to do some serious rethinking if we were going to win the account.
The difference between the sales guy and me was in gauging how the pitch went. He had not tuned in to the unspoken signals that the people in the room were giving out.
Almost everyone at a pitch will be polite and tell you the meeting was a positive one, and that they can see good things ahead, but is this verbal reassurance backed up by the other signals they give out? If you can’t pick up on these signals – you won’t win many accounts, and sales will be a short career.

On the tee
We were setting up an agent network in Singapore and were asked to do a presentation to a prospective agent and their staff.
The sales guy spent an hour talking enthusiastically about the company and the products, he told his funniest jokes but not a single laugh (let alone a word) came from the audience. After he had finished he asked if there were any questions, no one said a word, no one moved. Hurriedly he went over to his sponsor and said “How did that go? They were all so very quiet.”
“Yes,” replied the sponsor. “Unfortunately no one speaks English.”
True story.
It’s all about course management – some golfers adapt to the circumstances and know when to take an iron off the tee, whilst others blaze away with the driver and consistently hook the ball out of bounds.

Adapting one’s persona
For me ‘people skills’, as it was called at the time, came early as I was brought up in a pub called the Bottle and Glass, between Aylesbury and Thame, in the South of England. My Grandparents had the Bugle Horn just down the road and they did hot food whilst my parents specialized in cold table. My Grandparent’s pub got overbooked most days and they would recommend the Bottle, and it was not long before my parents had a thriving business with all the local companies coming in for lunch.
As a teenager I used to help out in the bar. One moment I would be discussing how I wanted to become a chartered accountant with the chairman of Rothmans, and the next moment I would be serving the village idiot in the public bar listening to jokes he made up.
“Nick,” said Jack. “What happens if you dropped a nail in the Red Sea?”
“Hold on a minute Jack, I just need to serve the chairman of Rothmans a gin and tonic. I will be back with you in a minute. Right Jack. What was the joke again? Oh yes I remember something about a nail, sorry I just don’t know.”
“Nothing,” was his reply.
“Nothing?”
“Yes. Nothing. Because you would lose it.”
Jack never made up any good jokes; I bet you have never heard that one before.
My point here is that I constantly had to adapt and change my personality to suit whoever I was serving. I did not realize it at the time, but I was picking up valuable EQ skills at a young age.
We were also fortunate to have a great local trade and on Friday night we had barristers, accountants, sales managers, engineers and a number of self-made multi-millionaires. So by the time I was ready to start my business career I felt that I had met most types of people which meant that I could adapt. The only problem was that I had decided to become a chartered accountant and that required a ‘particular’ personality. None.
Anyway, I started my training as a chartered accountant, and can remember one day when I was working in the audit room. Another articled clerk had just joined and, like me, was probably doing the wrong job. We got on well and were talking as we worked. At that point the audit manager came in and split us up – no talking! My new colleague had to go to the library to work. How I got through 5? years in that business I will never know.
It was around this time that I was playing my best golf. I had managed to win two club championships in a row which allowed me to daydream, hoping that one day I could turn pro and leave the world of debit and credit. But my escape from audit and accounting was close. I was about to discover another world. A world in which having a personality was very important.

No EQ. What can you do?
So, if you have not got terrific natural EQ, or not had the good fortune to be brought up in a pub, what can you do to become a great sales rep?
Well the next best thing is to learn how to deal with people. When I was working as the UK sales director for JD Edwards our area Vice President at the time persuaded me to take a look at a sales course called ‘Empathy Selling’. I was in my mid 30s at the time, and one thing at that age is that you think you know it all; no you don’t think – you know you know it all!
Since I have retired from corporate work to run my own video and marketing company I have read more books on business than I ever did when I was younger. Books that would have made me even better. You never stop learning, and anyone who has bought this book and gets to the end, should hopefully pick up some tips and tricks that they did not know beforehand and will become a better sales person. It’s the guys who stop learning and acquiring information who will carry on making mistakes; these are the 10 to 13 handicap golfers that never get to single figures because they refuse to take a lesson or two.
In the same way that it’s always a good thing to go see your golf pro from time to time as errors can creep into your game, it’s a good idea to buy some books on selling or go on new courses. You are never too old to learn.
Anyway we started the ‘Empathy Selling’ training and it was simply amazing, it was like a light had gone on. This was the answer as to why I could communicate better than other sales people. I had been subconsciously trained over the years in the pub to react to different personality styles.
What Empathy Selling did was to offer a personality framework. A framework that broke people down into 7 core emotions.
1. Hustler: Desire for money.
2. Normal: Desire for social approval.
3. Mover: Desire for communication.
4. Double-Checker: Desire for security.
5. Artist: Desire to be creative.
6. Politician: Desire to win.
7. Engineer: Desire to complete projects.

Now, most people typically have two or three dominant emotions, as well as a balancing emotion (the normal).
You can work out what type of person someone is just by observing their behaviour, how they dress, the car they drive, the position they hold in a company, their office layout, how they talk, and whether they keep you waiting for an appointment.
I used this framework extensively at JD Edwards and later at The GL Company where we added all these fields into the CRM system so that when I reviewed an account I could quickly see what type of personality any prospect was.
Empathy Selling is the missing link and in my view should be included in all books written on EQ as it explains HOW to find out your core emotions and the emotions of other people.

Sell to the personality as much as the person
People ‘like’ people who are similar to themselves. Therefore adapt your approach for your audience:
. If you sell to an Engineer give them detail.
. Artists need technical and design features – ask them to imagine the benefits so they can dream.
. Movers want the big picture, and they want it quickly.
. Politicians don’t want to back down, so you need to sell slowly and influence them indirectly so they come up with the idea.
. Double Checkers need security; they need to be confident that they won’t lose their job if they buy from you.
. Normals want references.
. Hustlers want a discount and the names of prestigious companies that use your product or services.

If you are a manager, Empathy Selling can also be used to help you recruit sales reps.
Incidentally, the best profiles for sales reps are high scoring numbers for Hustlers, Movers and Politicians. You do get the occasional Engineer that can sell, but they will need high Mover and Politician scores in their dominant traits.

Combining Miller Heiman with Empathy Selling
What’s really interesting is when you combine the types of personalities listed above with Miller Heiman’s types of buyers. IT staff, for example, will normally be Engineers / Double Checkers, they need detail and reports to make decisions. But if you meet an IT person that shows little engineering quality (in terms of personality), then they might be struggling in their role and internal politics could be rife as they try to hold down their job, or rely on bluff and bluster to get by.
As mentioned in the previous chapter one of the most important Miller Heiman buyers is the Coach. Time for an anecdote.

On the tee
I can remember an occasion when one of my sales team was really pleased with himself after coming back from the 19th with one of his prospects declaring that he had found the Coach in the deal and that the Coach was helping us. However, once we ran the personality test, we found out that our Coach was very likely to be a Mover (someone that always starts things, speaks to everyone, but rarely finishes anything). We quickly deduced that this person was likely to also be helping our competition as well as us. We altered our strategy accordingly, found another coach and won the deal.

The best Coach is actually a Politician. Someone who wants their own way, who has authority, and who has the motivation to get things done. It’s this element that Miller Heiman and other sales processes miss.

Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP)
So Empathy Selling identifies the 7 core emotions and we know to adapt our sales mode to support the characteristics that these personality types represent. But this is not enough to build great EQ. NLP, which has its advocates (and which has its sceptics), fills in the gaps but it is a massive topic and again there are hundreds of books out there. When you start to read them you may get confused as it is so all-encompassing.
As with most things, there are ‘elements’ of NLP that can help sales people, and my take on NLP is this:
. It will help you to present and communicate better by understanding how people are hardwired to receive and compute information.
. It will help you look at sales situations from other people’s points of view.
. It will help you to concentrate on people’s faces when you talk to them which gives the impression that you are interested in what they are saying.
. It will help your confidence, ahead of an important meeting or presentation.

Whether NLP offers validated insight into human behaviours and functioning is a moot point. Sales people need to use what works, and I shall run through what I have seen to work at the sales coalface.

How people are hardwired
When we are born, we are hardwired to receive information in three predominant ways, and people will have a preferred means of acquiring information.
1. Visual. These people want to see things in pictures, so will switch off if there is loads of text and written material.
2. Kinaesthetic. More touchy feely people who want pick up a report, or want to use your product or service as part of the demo.
3. Auditory. These people learn by listening and are easily distracted by noise. They like reading but find writing difficult, as they are better at telling.

These definitions can fit most people, and if we look to combine what the three categories above tell us, with a bit of Empathy Selling we can see that Movers and Artists, for example, will normally be visual. Engineers and Double Checkers are often Kinaesthetic. Movers, Politicians and Double Checkers will be auditory.

My point here is that whenever you do a presentation you need to ensure that you are communicating in all three ways. Never have a slide presentation just full of words as the Visual people won’t respond to this. Conversely don’t have a presentation that is just pictures – you will leave the Auditory and Kinaesthetic people cold. Your presentations need to offer a bit of everything.

When we did pitches I would make sure that we had hand-outs during the presentation especially for the kinaesthetic people. It was so interesting to see how these people used hand-outs. They didn’t really read them at the time but they did like to ‘flick’ through them, and it adds substance to a presentation. Don’t leave hand-outs on the table to give out at the end – as the kinaesthetic people will want to get their hands on them as soon as possible and will feel frustrated during the presentation.
A good example of using all 5 of the senses (we have only covered 3: Sight/Visual, Sound/Auditory and Touch/Kinaesthetic) is in real estate in the US. Realtors/Estate Agents know the tricks of the trade. When there is an open house viewing – you will go into a property and there will be some soft background music (hearing) and a coffee pot on the go with a lovely aroma (olfactory/smell, that’s a new sense) and you might be invited to taste one of the lovely cookies on the kitchen counter (gustatory/taste, the last of the 5). The agent will ask people to physically feel things like door handles, surfaces (for quality) and get purchasers to look closely at particular features. It’s a multimedia experience!

Learn more about the Ace the Sale Methodology at: http://bennionkearny.com/Ace-The-Sale-software-hardware-services-sales-book-ebook.htm

To learn more about the “Ace the Sale” methodology for selling B2B software, hardware and services (by author Nick Gomersall), please visit: www.bennionkearny.com/IT-sales-book.htm