If you do not take care of your customer, your competitor will. (Bob Hooey)
As you probably know, there are 2 different types of selling styles: Transactional and Relational. Transactional selling is focused on the product or service whilst relational is more about the needs of clients. Both approaches to selling can be effective, but if you’re looking to go beyond just making a sale, and you want to retain customers and build strong relationships, then the focus should be on relational selling.
Transactional Selling is all about the short-term. Get the sale, at all costs. The focus is on winning this one sale without much thought to the customer needs or the longer-term.
Relationship Selling is about building long-term relationships. The salesperson gets to know his/her customer, their needs and their wants, within reason.
Emotions are part of being human, and ignoring them, even in business, is detrimental. Economics may be guided by supply and demand but purchase decisions are still influenced by emotions. Emotions in a buyer-seller interaction are important. At the heart of sales success is the ability to connect with people in a meaningful way. Fortunately, emotional intelligence can be developed and honed, enabling sales professionals to initiate meaningful conversations and nurture relationships with customers.
EQ Fit Sales Assessment
An excellent tool that has been added to the Six Seconds psychometric offering is the EQ Fit Sales Profile. This assessment is a real-time measure of how an individual applies 8 success factors to influence others, it also shows the individual’s preferred approach to sales, and highlights which strengths they can leverage and what opportunities are available for growth and change. The profile identifies where the salesperson is on the Fit Sales Wheel.
Going deeper into the Fit Wheel, shows the amount of focus and energy the salesperson is putting into each success factor. The quadrants are an important part of the Fit Wheel. The size of the ‘slice of the pie’ (the size of one quadrant compared to others) can provide very interesting insights.
Relational versus transactional … long-term versus short-term approach. If one quadrant dominates the Fit Wheel, is that an accelerator of success OR a road block? How balanced is the Fit Wheel and how is this impacting the desired results or outcomes of the individual in their particular role?
By identifying the makeup of each individual’s wheel we can start to develop the areas of opportunity to further enhance or even modify the sales approach. These success factors were identified from extensive research and are defined as:
- Initiative: driven to take action
- Persuasion: build trust and persuade others to buy
- Accountability: manage the sales cycle for useful results
- Direction: the ability to maintain focus on what is important, right priorities
- Friendliness: the ability to engage and build rapport
- Understanding: understand decision drivers and patterns in others
- Persistence: ability to bounce back, be adaptable, mental agility
- Resourcefulness: identify and connect needs with solutions
The EQFIT® Profile is unique in how it combines emotional intelligence(neuroscience) with practical experience and a wealth of research to provide real-time measures of critical success factors to gaining and applying influence. From this data, the elements for success in unique cultures, organizations, and roles can be identified, and pathways for development created.
Success starts with self-awareness, so this provides a great starting point for sales. These success factors are also correlated with the 8 EQ Competencies that form part of the EQ model of self-awareness, self-management and self-direction.
Let’s look at the success factor of ‘initiative’. The EQ Competencies that have the greatest impact on Initiative are: Engage Intrinsic Motivation, Navigate Emotions, and Exercise Optimism. Whilst Friendliness is most impacted by Increasing Empathy, Enhancing Emotional Literacy and Exercising Optimism. Once the salesperson recognizes which factors to develop, we can embark on further EQ development. Already, just from an awareness of their EQ Fit profiles we have seen positive changes in sales teams.
Success in sales is critical to business growth and sustainability. What are your strengths and opportunities, and do you know the strengths and challenges of your team?
Contact me to learn more about EQFIT® Profile and using it in your business.