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Emotional intelligence is not only good for developing personal and professional relationships, it's also great for B2B sales. Work on it! Here’s how and why:
We are in an era of B2B sales in which the buyer is at the core of the sales process. The "buyer-first" philosophy requires the seller to adapt to his or her customer's needs, which are increasingly individualised and specific. And this can only be done by a personal one-on-one connection.
If you only refine your solutions to meet these increasingly demanding customers, the results will fall short of expectations. It doesn't matter how good your product or service is if you don't know how to sell it to a modern-day buyer. Therefore, refining the entire sales process is crucial and you must start with the bottom line: establishing a strong connection with the customer.
At VAEKST, we know that scalable sales require a good impression and a personal connection. To get there, business development representatives (BDR) must be socially and emotionally intelligent, since this allows them to build rapport and maintain relationships that can extend over time.
Flick quickly through the menu to discover the key takeaways!
Emotional intelligence (EQ) is one of the skills considered most important for the development of personal and professional relationships. The concept was introduced by Daniel Goleman in 1995 and it’s been considered since then as a particularly important skill that helps improve relationships, problem management and communication in the workplace. In short, EQ makes individuals aware of their own and others' emotions and enables them to manage relationships productively and respectfully high cost.
In a field like B2B sales, where the work starts with understanding your customers’ needs and leading the conversation, an emotionally intelligent B2B BDR is aware of his or her limitations and strengths, can tolerate rejection, is willing to learn, is internally motivated and resilient. Best of all: EQ can be taught and trained, and here's how.
The World Economic Forum listed emotional intelligence as one of the most important soft skills to develop to improve performance at work by 2025. Yet it is still an unknown field for many, and perhaps even within your team.
The first step is to encourage transparency and normalise the expression of feelings and thoughts. Sharing work experiences as part of workers' daily lives will make them feel that their frustrations are shared and that they are moving in the same direction.
At VAEKST, we have found that information-sharing workshops are a very valuable tool to inspire and motivate each other to a more information-based approach, regarding strategy and sales implementations. We know that our business developers have a lot of "silent knowledge" that we felt they needed to share and incorporate in the search for the best approach on strategy and calls. These workshops help our team share experiences across projects, ideas and knowledge on customers behaviour and, at last, helps us prevent the silo mentality that can be so damaging to the organisation.
In an environment where emotional intelligence is encouraged, employees feel that their opinions and feelings are heard and valued. This can help lower the employee turnover rate, and that's what you're looking for in your B2B sales team because you want long-lasting, high-quality customer relationships and you don't want to waste money on training new BDRs.
The key is an efficient onboarding process that is well thought out for your purposes. At VAEKST we have designed a complete three-week onboarding process to train our business developers and accompany them during their first stage in the team. The process includes coaching sessions, workshops, expectations sharing and feedback, and ongoing support until the new sales rep can stand on their own feet. The idea behind this map is to get a clear and honest understanding of how our team works. Trust and transparency are our cornerstones.
Aggressive sales strategies have traditionally been considered the most effective way to go about B2B sales. However, the mutation of the buyer's attitude and the diversification of their pains and, consequently, solutions, have forced BDRs to develop soft skills to deal with them. Today, only B2B business developers who understand the power of listening and rational, empathetic decision-making can achieve great success.
Managing emotions has emerged as the key to a more efficient sales strategy that facilitates and accelerates the customer's journey through the sales funnel. And that, in the end, increases revenue.
Our mantra, "less talking, more listening", lays the foundation for a philosophy that encourages us to always learn from each other, whether it is a prospect, a customer or a colleague. Our business developers understand customers' needs as a result of listening to their concerns and those of the rest of the team.
We have a solution we trust. The next step is to bring it out there, find you, see if we're a good match and assist you. Let’s start by listening. Let’s talk.
