Can your sales team look beyond their emotions to close the deal?
It’s a simple question that can have far-reaching effects.
If your sales team isn’t trained to recognize how their emotions play into their sales process – and if they’re not given the tools to make a decision in spite of those emotions – they may be losing opportunities that would otherwise be theirs to win.
Salespeople are human! Like all humans, they can often be emotional decision-makers. Unfortunately, too often those emotions get in the way of closing the deal. Due to the nature of the sales process, there are quite a few ways emotions can get in the way.
Introduction
The most successful salespeople know how to sell without emotion. This means they’re able to control their feelings so they can follow the steps necessary to make the sale.
Does your sales team allow their emotions to get in the way of closing their deals?
Chances are good they do! That means fewer closed deals, a shrinking (or dried up!) pipeline, and a lot of wasted time, money, and energy.
This article demonstrates why you should consider hiring a team that’s not emotionally attached to their prospect’s decision to buy. We’ll cover 3 ways emotions can ruin any sales process, and 3 ways to help solve the problem…let’s dive in!
Sales is an Emotionally Charged Industry
Emotions drive buying decisions, but whose emotions matter most? Usually, we focus on the consumer and their emotions…in the eyes of the buyer, the sale is always personal.
But what about the salesperson’s emotional relationship to the sale?
Every member of your sales team faces near-constant pressure from many angles…
- From the company to succeed
- From management to keep their numbers up
- From a personal perspective, they want to make money, be successful, and keep their job
This can obviously make someone emotional when it comes to selling!
Often, they get too much in their own head and stop listening to the prospect. No longer able to remain in the moment, they allow their emotions to get the best of them, sometimes with disastrous results.
When going into a sales meeting, the best-performing salespeople know they need to have their emotions under control. They act as if they are calm, collected, with barely a care in the world.
Too often poorly trained and underperforming sales professionals make the experience about them and their emotions, needs, and wants instead of focussing on the customer.
Sadly, this is something that can be really difficult to “train out” of someone, no matter how much sales training they do. But, below we’ll share some tips and tricks that may help your sales team see there is a different way to handle their emotions (that’ll lead to you both making more money)!
Focusing on the Commission Can Lead to Mistakes
Many of those who go into sales do it because they like to earn money…it isn’t because they enjoy being told “no” or like bringing donuts into random offices and chatting with reception staff.
The sales industry offers those individuals who have the right skill set, the ability to make an almost unlimited amount of money.
But, what sets the high achievers apart from those who never truly succeed, is what they do during one of the most critical points in the sales process…
Just when it seems like it matters most, the best salespeople will actually stop focussing on their commission and take a “let the chips fall where they may” attitude about the sale.
If they focus on the commission, they are likely to make some key errors during a critical part of the sales process – like forgetting the sale process itself! They’ll skip steps in the process or not ask the right questions.
Basically, as they become desperate (and that desperation starts to show), they turn sloppy, and the deal becomes more likely to fall apart.
Who Needs Who Here?
In any given sales negotiation, the balance of power should be on the sales professional’s side. They can only maintain this leverage if they keep their emotions out of the negotiations.
“You need them more than they need you” is not the mindset that leads to sales success.
If a salesperson is desperate to close the deal, they usually allow their emotions to take over. They run the risk of discounting the asking price or adding things to the deal that can significantly impact the bottom line for your company.
So, What Should You and Your Team Do?
It’s simple – you know emotions drive the sales process, and we’re all humans, not robots. There is no way to remove emotions entirely from the sales process, so you need to make sure your team can handle their feelings before they go on their first sales call for your business.
Some things that may help:
- Assess your sales team’s emotional readiness before you hire them.
A big part of hiring a new sales team member is figuring out if they’re emotionally ready to go out and sell to customers. To discover the Top 5 Questions You Should Be Asking Your Candidates, click here.
- Give them tools to identify their emotions, understand them, and manage them
Have emotional intelligence skills training, sometimes called EQ or EI, be a part of your onboarding and continuing sales development process. It’s a relatively low-cost, high-impact step that can have a significant impact on your team.
- Establish a culture of emotional accountability
Salespeople need to be accountable for their own behavior, and leaders need to be accountable for how they manage those behaviors. Take responsibility for your role in ensuring your company has the right culture in place…one that sets your team up for sales success.
In conclusion
One of the biggest mistakes salespeople make when trying to close a deal is getting emotionally invested in the outcome. They can get so wrapped up in their own agenda they lose sight of what’s really important to the other party.
As a result, salespeople can feel frustrated when prospects don’t take action right away, when they don’t close deals, and when they leave money on the table. This feeds into their money mindset flaws that tell them they shouldn’t be talking about money in the first place, and become a self-fulfilling cycle of misery, missed sales, and decreasing revenue.
It is critical for business owners to recognize that the greatest challenge to their sales teams is not the prospect, but themselves. Emotional intelligence, self-awareness, and self-management are the keys to success in today’s marketplace.
Learning how to build an emotionally intelligent sales team that closes deals is the foundation of any successful business, but it can be difficult to do on your own.
To discover more about how we can help you hire the right sales professional, the first time click here.