Advanced selling skills are something that all leaders want for their sales team. We often see new skills and techniques as something to be applied when we interact with a lead or a potential client. But good training will go deeper than artifice – it will bring about genuine behavioural change.
It’s fine that your sales team are smart and are able to pick up on new tips, techniques, and tools that come from sales training; but emotional intelligence is crucial when it comes to closing deals and during the management of key accounts.
Emotional intelligence, on a personal level, allows for people to have more success in every area of their life: physically, emotionally, socially, and financially. While it may seem like this is something that your staff are either born with or not, the reality is that emotional intelligence can be taught with proper coaching and proper self-introspection. You can learn about yourself with a Enneagram test, so this is a good place to start. Only when you know yourself are you then able to communicate with others in the most effective way.
But why does emotional intelligence (EQ) benefit a sales team? EQ allows your staff to better self-manage, be socially aware, and to build more meaningful relationships. These traits are crucial when it comes to generating leads, communicating with potential clients, closing deals, and maintaining great relations with current clients. It’s not just something that you should look at in regards to sales management training; rather, EQ is something that can benefit the whole of your sales team. A change in behaviour can change the way in which your business’ employees see the world and can, in turn, boost their performance and desire to do well at work.
How Do You Bring About Behavioural Change?
Changing behaviours is something that is continually misunderstood – particularly in the sales management environment. You may try to introduce new techniques or behaviours to your sales group during a sales training program or training courses. It’s easy to think that this is all it requires from management. But there’s a chance that your sales team will completely reject these changes, especially if they personally fail to see the value of these adjustments or if they feel management is unfairly pushing the changes on them. It will take time for a sales group to adjust to these changes. It’s very easy to get frustrated when this happens, but implementing changes in behaviour requires patience and repetition from sales management.
This is why sales management training is incredibly important to get right. Managers must be trained in how to properly convey and continually reinforce behavioural change. This involves exposing salespeople to new behaviours and ideas, practising this with them until they’re comfortable, giving them time to adjust, and then continually repeating the procedure until it is second nature to your salespeople. It most certainly does not come from one conversation, one email, or one sales meeting. It requires continual coaching.
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