Emotional Intelligence Blog

Commercial Services Industry

Overview
Sales professionals are under tremendous pressure today both from their own management, their prospects, and existing clients.  This pressure can cause even experienced, high performing salespeople to get emotionally hi-jacked.  Research shows that negative emotions such as anxiety, frustration, fear, irritation, etc. literally keep a person from accessing everything they know, minimizing the likelihood of a successful outcome be it in a discussion or a negotiation. By learning to be aware of and manage their emotions sales people can strengthen their resiliency to bounce back in a positive, constructive way that enables them to win and keep business.

Setting
From time to time when we provide our Building Resilience and Agility by Enhancing Emotional Intelligence Skills™ programs for people internal to a company there are some seats that are available.  This occurred with a client company of ours in early 2011 in Seattle.  When seats are available we ask if the client would allow people from other companies to participate — assuming of course that they pay for their seat in the program.  One such attendee was an experienced sales woman from a commercial services company in the midwest.

Elements of Our Emotional Intelligence Skill-Building Program
Over our sixteen years of providing Emotional Intelligence training we have found that there are several key elements that, taken together, help to ensure that participants experience immediate, significant, and sustainable improvement in performance, relationships, health, and more.  Those elements include:

• Invitation/Information Email — Spells out the benefits participants can receive in the form of Personal Goals they would like to achieve.
• Personal Goals Interview — During these confidential 1-hour interviews participants discuss their top three Personal Goals and sample situations that are occurring at work or outside of work that are causing them to choose those goals.
• Workshop Training — Participants learn and practice simple, proven techniques to improve skills in the Emotional Intelligence competencies: Emotional Self-Awareness, Emotional Self-Management, Emotional Self-Motivation, Empathy, and Nurturing Relationships.
• Coaching Sessions — During these confidential 1-hour sessions participants share examples of when they have used the techniques and the benefits they have experienced.  If they are having any difficulty applying a technique we work together to find solutions.

A Difficult Sales Situation
One of the participants in the program was an experienced sales woman of a multi-national commercial services company.  I’ll call her Sandy – not her real name.  Although she had been successful in her position for several years (exceeding quota each year) she was experiencing several signs of stress and emotional mis-management including high blood pressure, taking problems home with her, lack of respect for clients, avoiding confrontations, mad at her clients, and mad at her boss.

Sandy identified Managing Emotional Reactiveness as one of her Personal Goals.  The situation she described was about a problem she was having with a $500,000 a year client she had.  During a contract renewal meeting with her client, the client told Sandy that her company was outperforming their major competitor.  A few days later after Sandy sent the renewal pricing, the client told Sandy that she “happened” to look at the numbers again and Sandy’s company and their competitor were running neck and neck.  The client also said that her budget had been cut for the services that Sandy provided and if Sandy didn’t give her the services at a lower than current price, she would take 50% of the business and give it to Sandy’s competitor!

After discussing the situation with her boss, Sandy met with the client and agreed stating that she would give the client the lower price, with the stipulation that the client would not give any of the business to Sandy’s competitor.  The client agreed.  About a week later Sandy found out that the client had, in fact, given some of the business to Sandy’s competitor.

At this point Sandy got really angry, fuming in fact.  She took it as a personal affront.  She also started to think that the client’s budget had probably not been cut at all.  When I did my interview with Sandy she said that the effect this had on her included a sore neck and back, headaches, sleepless nights, being short and snapping at people, expressing negativity to others both at work and at home, and feeling like work is a fight every day.  When I asked Sandy what her “desired state” would be, she said she wanted to handle situations like this calmly and not raise her voice or over-react.  She wanted to respond to issues in a positive way without telling everyone about it in a negative manner.  And she wanted to be able to sleep through the night without waking up worrying.

The Workshop Training
During the workshop Sandy learned simple proven techniques that improved her skills in emotional self-awareness, emotional self-management, empathy and nurturing relationships.  She practiced those techniques on real work and home situations and developed a “Skill Practice Action Plan” identifying when she could use each of the techniques after the training.  All of the participants were assigned “homework targets” in terms of how frequently they should use each of the techniques.  Immediately after the training participants began receiving a daily email reminding them to use the techniques.

At the conclusion of the workshop Sandy expressed that she was excited about how the techniques had helped her during the training and was looking forward to using them at work and at home.

The First Coaching Session
About a week and a half after the workshop I called Sandy for our first follow-up coaching session.  Instead of the low-energy, hurt, suspicious woman I talked to during our interview before the training, I now was speaking to a confident, focused, motivated woman.  I asked her to give me examples of how she was using each of the techniques she learned.

The first example she shared with me was about the $500,000 client who she was so upset with before the workshop.  Sandy explained how she was aware of her emotions before talking to the client and how she had used one of the techniques to stay calm, positive and focused — not on the money or the competitor but on her relationship with the client.  Sandy said she felt calm, in control of her emotions, and was honest with the client about how she felt.  She also reiterated why her service was superior to the competitors — not in a pushing way but in a friendly, polite way.  She used the listening technique she learned in the workshop to make sure the client felt heard and understood.  At the end of the conversation the client agreed not to use the competitor and gave all $500,000 of the business back to Sandy!

I asked Sandy if she thought she would have achieved the same results without the training.  She said she doubted it.  She had been so emotionally hijacked and would probably have stayed that way without the techniques.

As Sandy shared other examples of how she was using the techniques.  Sandy said that a few days after being back to work several people independently noticed how much more relaxed she was.  Even her boss noticed.  She also said that between the day of the training and our coaching call the vice president of the office she worked in came to town.  She said, “Whenever he comes to town he ruffles everyone’s feathers.  But I didn’t let that happen to me.  I just used one of the techniques to stay calm.”  She said without learning the techniques in the program she didn’t know what she would have done.  She was also happy to report that she had not had any headaches since the training and was already sleeping through the night better.

The Benefits of Improving Emotional Intelligence Skills

• The Building Resilience and Agility by Enhancing Emotional Intelligence Skills program enables people to achieve immediate, significant, sustainable improvements in performance, relationships, and health.
• The program also enables participants to experience improvements in specific personal goals such as reduce stress and worry, manage conflict constructively, improve motivation, etc.
• The benefits to the organization are many and varied.  In this case the return on investment (ROI) in the example Sandy shared after only a couple of weeks was 125:1 which included the cost of the program, travel, room and board!