The definition of emotional awareness. Not only is being aware of what's happening,
but realizing how our actions may then affect someone around us. You're listening to
the Audible Ready Podcast, the show that helps you and your teams sell more
faster. We'll feature sales leaders sharing their best insights on how to create a
sales engine that helps you fuel repeatable revenue growth. Presented by the team of
Force Management, a leader in B to B sales effectiveness. Let's get started.
Hello and welcome to the Audible Ready Sales Podcast. I'm Rachel Kletmoller.
Thank you for joining us today. Joining me for our conversation is Diana Shelley.
Hi, Diana, Hi there, Rachel. This is Diana's debut on
the Audible Ready Sales podcast. Que the drum roll, Papa. We're so
happy to have her with us. Diana is a facilitator at Force Management,
and I've spoken with her several times over these past couple of months, and
she really is passionate about helping sellers excel at their craft. And so today
we're going to talk about some of those soft skills that can help you as
a salesperson. These are the things that are often missed or you know,
they may be not the main thing in your traditional sales trainings, but they
can really make a difference in your conversations. Maybe we call them a soft
communication skills, Diana. Let's just start a little bit and talk a little
bit about why these are portant and the difference that they can make. I
like that you call them self communication skills, Rachel. But while the word
is soft in the Senate's right, one of the biggest mistakes the seller can
make is to really underestimate the power of these skills. Solf. Communication skills
are an integral people asset for organizations, and because there's been emphasis traditionally on
hard skills and job related skills, these are typically missed and high or even
developing individuals. However, I would say that we're starting to see a shift
in trend and then recognize more as key traits and skills, and because we're
seeing adults training and development programs starting to seek ways to incorporate them in to
their program because they're seeing the importance of these in the interaction between certainly sells
people and their customers. But when we tap into these, we place ourselves
in the best position to close the deal. Yeah, because great selling is
really great communication. You cannot be a good seller if you're not able to
communicate well. And all of these things make a difference. So let's run
through some of these soft skills how those of you listening as salespeople can execute
them in your meetings even this week. A lot of that these skills can
help you, particularly in those early meetings when you haven't established a relationship.
When we spoke before this recording today, you talked a little bit about reading
the room, emotional awareness. Let's start there and talk a little bit about
what the goal is here as salespeople. What is being emotionally aware? Well,
you mentioned the word rachel early in meetings, and I think when we
talk about emotional awareness, that's so important because I read a stat recently that
ninety three percent of communication is nonverbal. That means these soft communication skills,
this emotional awareness of reading the room validates that the importance of that overwhelming percentage
because the spoken word only accounts for seven percent of communication, basically seven percent
of the truth in that moment. So what can we do as sellers with
emotional awareness? Right? We need to watch for typical behavioral movements early,
so that when we see a shift, we immediately can recognize that shift and
double down as to why we're identifying something that might be uncharacteristic or maybe that
shift reveals that the customer is uncomfortable in the moment, and if we're not
being emotionally aware, we're going to miss that. And that's a for us.
Now, if we're not in person, which happens a lot, and
we're only on the phone, we can listen for tone inflection as well as
moments of silence, because that's also part of those nonverbal cues. But one
example I like to give of reading the room is we can now pivot the
conversation where it needs to go based on the conversation or these nonverbal cues.
So what made prompt my pivot might be someone could join the meeting late,
the priorities change at the last minute, or since we last spoke, or
there's an urgent matter that's come up that I need to address that was previously
unknown. So the salesperson who can be what we call it at forced management
audible, ready to read that room and see that behavioral shift in body language
or even hear that change in tone is the seller that will excel in their
career because they're meeting the client where they are and then they're able to take
them on the journey. And that shift causes us to focus on their agenda
instead of ours and lets them know we're there to solve a problem and not
just all a deal. Now we're working together to collaboratively solve their problem.
Yeah, that emotional awareness is so important, and as you said, it's
really important for us to sales people to have empathy for others, identifying with
solving others problem. I find a definition on emotional awareness and it said it's
emotional awareness is awareness of your actions and feelings how they affect those around you.
It also means that you value others, listens value others, and you
want to listen to their wants and needs be able to empathize or identify with
them on different levels. And that's what it is. We talk a lot
about reading the room when we're talking about great discovery and don't just push for
next steps if they don't make sense. I kind of chuggled a little bit
with your nonverbal point about how much communication is nonverbal, and you know that
all that goes into like your zoom meetings, are you looking at the camera
You're sending over communication just as you're sitting there listening. I had a professor
one time when I was doing my grad school work in communication is a small
group of people. It's like maybe twelve people, and he stopped the class
Diana, and looked at me and said, your nonverbals are amazing. And
I was like, oh my god, what does that even mean? Hey?
And what signals have I been sending in this real? Wise? Up
there talking? But I digress. I digress well. Ever since then,
I'm very cognizant of my own non verbals. But what tips do you have
for salespeople to help them be more emotionally aware as they conduct their calls?
Well? As you share, Rachel, the definition of emotional awareness not only
is being aware of what's happening, but realizing how our actions may then affect
someone around us. So, as a seller, I need to be assessing
if my pace in moving the conversation forward is too fast, especially if the
customer is still contemplating something I shared, Because moving ahead of them means right
that I've I've left them behind in the sales process and we're not aligned and
I could miss something, and since most communication is nonverbal, I need to
also be flexible and taking what I'm either seeing or hearing you mentioned zoom meetings,
and adjust my behavior to stay aligned with the customer. So the definition,
as you said, also includes listening and then empathizing. And many times
in the sales cycle, I've seen a seller here's something such as a pain
point from a client, and they'll respond with something like uh huh, and
then they immediately moved past the comment without either acknowledging or even empathizing, and
they're pushing forward basically with their own agenda. And this tells the customer we
didn't hear what they said, and we certainly didn't empathize with what they're going
through. It's such a good point. I also was reprimanded on that point.
I was in a sales call and at the manager, I was with
the person's set of value driver, and I moved on to my next question,
which I thought I was seeking a little do He was like, if
they say a value driver, never move on. It's so easy to do
so, Rachel, it is so it's as you said, like and I
mentioned earlier, are part of this is really executing good discoveries, you can
be in sync with your buyer. We talk about buyer alignment all the time,
and we have a lot of great content and executing great discovery. Be
sure to check out the show notes of this podcast. I've linked several of
those resources there. But as you know, in discovery, it's not just
what you say, it's also how you manage the conversation you talk. You
know, that's also about moving on managing the conversation. So yeah, I
think you know you mentioned managing the conversation. I think that's important is being
present in the actual conversation because sometimes again we have our list of what we
want to accomplish, and I have a couple of ideas that I can share
before we wrap up. On one way that I stayed in tune with a
conversation because you could miss something that's changed. One of the things I also
used that worked really really well for me when I was selling out on the
field. It's I called it the power of the pause. It was one
way to stay active in the listening. But also if I saw or heard
something that caused the client to be uncomfortable in the moment, I need to
explore that otherwise I may think I have a deal that I really don't,
and again I'm leaving the client behind. So as a seller, right we
all tend to be more outspoken, comfortable speaking. But what we do is
we sabotage the silence by speaking too soon. And that's why I call it
the power of the pause, giving them pause in space to think or speak.
And the moment I try to sabotage that silence and give a suggestion is
the moment I don't hear their vantage point which is always going to be better,
or give them time to expand their mindset. I have to give them
that space, and it's in that pause where amazing things happen. We don't
want to take the pressure off too soon because they're thinking. Another important thing
I think that we can do as salespeople is have a willingness to have hard
conversations where we get to the truth or root of the issue. Because most
people will say they listen well, but active listening means I'm listening for something
that's causing impact enough so that that customer will actually get off go. Because
staying a status quo in a deal is one of the number one reasons we
can lose a deal. So they we may have on the flip side a
client that gives a whole litany of issues or objectives, but it's the key
sales reps that can actively listen and prioritize to figure out what are the one
or two things that the client is going to spend time, money, and
resources on in order to move forward, because the rest can just be noise,
at least at that moment. But the problem is most reps are so
focused on what they're going to say next it prevents them from actively listening.
So I used to use a format I called above the line below the line.
I'd either draw a line on a piece of paper or use one note
any other software program, and I wrote above the line what I had to
get before I got off the call, something critical that I needed to know
from myself and my team, my organization, and so I knew that those
were key things that were very very important. And then below the line I
would put things that might be nice to get or understand, but if I
didn't get them on the call, it wasn't critical. I could schedule them
for the next call. But that allowed me to stay in the moment and
actively listen with the client, but still look down as I took notes and
check my lists to make sure I got what I needed, because that's just
as important. So it's not about this data jump for the customer, but
expanding the mindset which creates value in order to get that next conversation. That's
really a really great point because you want to be in the conversation. So
if you have a good way to take the notes, that kind of takes
your mind off of capturing everything. I mentioned zoom calls earlier. You talked
about it a little bit, We talked about nonverbal communication, but I want
to hit that point again because we know the majority of communication is nonverbal and
so many of us are doing are these sales calls over Zoom, Google me,
whatever the technology is, and it just adds another air into how we
communicate. So what are some of those advantages we can give ourselves as sellers
when it comes to this virtual communication nonverbal communication. Well, I think whatever
we can and you touched on this, get on a zoom call instead of
calling the client on our cell phone. And sometimes we get very comfortable,
especially with an existing customer, where we just text or on our cell phone.
But then we're missing those nonverbal cues that the client may be sharing no
matter how long we've known them with their body language. So this allows you
to also be audible ready because now I'm seeing a shift and I can meet
the client where they are and dig into as you mentioned earlier, critical discovery,
dig into the pain points, dig into the objectives. The other thing
I would say is, as much as you can try to separate meetings,
don't try to have one meeting at the executive level and one with someone at
the technical level at the same time. If you can help it, it's
going to be harder to read the room because these audiences have very different pains
and goals they're trying to achieve. As long as I gave the why I
needed to separate meetings in how it helped them. Actually, because most of
the time an executive level person doesn't want to hear the technical nuances and vice
versa, we're not connecting with them. So as long as I told them
why it would help and stated my case, I almost always got the yes
on that so that I could achieve what I needed to. One of my
favorite sayings is you have not because you asked not, so ask for what
you need. It's going to set you up for success. And then the
other tip I would say is give a short recap of your conversation after you
have it, because that helps. At force management, we call it the
mantra. But this works especially well for clients that I would say are a
visual instead of auditory. And so you know, then I asked them,
I invite them to work with me on what I may have missed because anytime
we have a working document with the customer, we're creating collaboration, we're ensuring
alignment, and we're giving this working partnership if you will, to achieve their
goals. Yeah, how you own that next step after the meeting and how
you follow can really make or break future conversations. We have a great podcast
on that. I think I've called it What We Heard. I'll put it
in the show notes. It's all about like your follow up, helping you
craft that email, the walk around slides, whatever you want to do,
but another critical component of communication and also something that helps facilitate additional conversations.
I love the point you made about separate meetings, Diana. We talk a
lot about not trying to do too much in the meeting, and as it
relates to this topic, if you try to do too much, it's going
to be harder for you to communicate effectively because everything's going to get modeled.
You're talking to different audiences, different stakeholders, different needs, wants, points
of contention, all of those things can really make it more difficult for you
to execute some of these skills that we've talked about today. So true,
okay, so great tips here for those of you listening. I love this
podcast because I think Diana gave many of you out there things you can do
today on your calls. Do them, let us know how it works,
and leave us with some final thoughts here Diana for us to take with us
this week. So, studies show that emotional awareness can actually be improved,
and there's quite a few resources out there to help. So don't mistake this
for a skill that's not important, and always seek to improve it because it's
what helped me to excel as a seller and achieve right quote a year over
year. And I had a boss that once used to say, you seem
to notice everything. And what I would leave you with is everybody movement,
every tone, every word that a client says is a key data point.
It's up to us to put the pieces of the puzzle together to display the
picture and the outcome that they're looking to achieve. That's great, and that's
the bottom line. Thank you for joining me for this conversation, Diana,
sure, thanks for having me, Rachel, Yes, and I will let
all the listeners know that Diana had great nonverbal communication as as we recorded this
podcast. Thank Rachel. All right, Thank you Diana, and thank you
to all of you for listening to the Audible Ready Sales Podcast. At Force
Management, we're focused on transforming sales organizations into elite teams. Are proven methodologies,
deliver programs that build company alignment and fuel repeatable revenue growth. Give your
teams the ability to execute the growth strategy at the point of sale. Our
strength is our experience. The proof is in our results. Let's get started.
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