Emotional Intelligence in Sales Part 2
Welcome back to our miniseries on Emotional Intelligence in sales! In today’s installment, we’re going to elaborate on Self Awareness. As we said in part 1, Self Awareness is the ability to understand your own emotions. Only 36 percent of people can identify their emotions in the moment (Bradberry and Greaves, 2009). It is considered a personal competence. It’s what helps you process why you’re scared, “Oh, they might say ‘no’ to my closing ask.”
Let’s get started with an example!
You’re standing patiently in the sweet spot. The best place to greet a new or returning customer. Your hands are sweaty. You focus, pay ever more attention to the door. Your brow is sweaty. “I just need to greet the next customer, and this feeling will go away.” No one comes in. It’s raining out, and the normally busy Saturday foot traffic isn’t arriving. You maintain your composure and continue looking at the door. There they are! A customer!
You walk politely to greet them and give them a nice sweaty handshake. They look up at you, a little taken aback. This is a first, you’ve greeted them 10 times before without so much as an out of place hair. “What’s going on?” they think, but well, they came here on a mission, the show must go on. You take them around the store, help them as normal, but something is just off. The customer leaves without making a purchase, and you sit down. It’s the end of the workday, time to move the inventory back to the safe and call it a day.
Reflection: On the way home, long after the emotions have left, you think about what happened. That customer has bought something every time they’ve come in, but not today. “Did I just lose a lifelong customer over a sweaty hand?” It’s too late for self awareness to help you in this situation, but it’s not too late to help you tomorrow. Let’s dig into these emotions and find out what happened.
You were standing in your favorite spot. You had a meeting earlier with your boss about how important it is to close out the quarter strong because your numbers are not looking like they normally do. You look at your boss and promise to redouble your efforts. Taking this as a good sign, your boss leaves it at that. They don’t want to micromanage you.
“Wait, how am I supposed to redouble my efforts? I’ve been working as hard as ever and things have just been slow.” Your boss is gone, and now you don’t get to ask for any insight. “How are you expecting me to increase my output? What do you consider success for Q4? Is it really hitting my numbers, or is it something else that you’re thinking about?”
EQ is the summation of one’s Self Awareness, Self Management, Social Awareness, and Relationship Management.
Know Yourself: Now, lean into your Self Awareness. Feel the sweat on your palms. Use that physical output to realize something is wrong underneath. In reality, we don’t know what the issue was in that situation, but we know how you can determine that for yourself. The point is to look inwardly, not to hide. Once your palms are sweaty, it’s time to lean into your emotions, not shove them away.
“Why do I feel this way?” It’s because my boss is setting too high of expectations. It’s because the weather is keeping people from coming to the store. It’s because I have a stack of items to go through, but no way to go through them while I’m in the sweet spot. It’s because things at home haven’t been going well. I was hoping to catch up on sales and take a couple of days off to be with my family. Now I won’t be able to because there wasn’t an opportunity to get ahead.
Whatever the reason, you need to know it. Determining the reason your palms are sweaty, as opposed to tuning it out and staring at the door ever more intently, is Self Awareness. When you become self aware then you can use your emotions to help make decisions. If you know you are feeling worried and anxious about hitting your numbers and it is a slow day at the store, instead of staring at the door, it may be time to go through your customer list and follow up with previous visitors. There are digital tools available that make that possible without leaving the sales floor.
Self Awareness Practice: To become skilled in the other facets of Emotional Intelligence, you must start with your own self awareness. Ask yourself why you feel a certain way. Ask yourself what external situations make you feel that way. What internal situations make you feel that way? With practice you can identify your feelings, the causes, and work through them to a solution instead of letting your emotions control you.
Practice this daily in the coming week, and you will likely manage to enhance your self awareness. Yes, it may be uncomfortable, and that’s yet another emotion you will need to analyze. After a lot of practice, this should become a habit and second nature.
In the next part of this miniseries, we’ll dig into how you can manage your actions and responses to these emotions, through Self Management. This is where you’ll learn how to acknowledge your sweaty palms and still be yourself when interacting with your customer.
Wishfluence Connection: Wishfluence helps sales staff have a plan of action for contacting customers with daily notifications and recommendations, removing stressors that may affect daily interactions with customers.
