Role of Emotional Intelligence in Performance of a Salesperson

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Abstract

In the mid-1990s, the traditional buyer-seller sales style began shifting to a consultative relationship based model withan emphasis is on “satisfying the customers’ needs”and “not trading goods for money’. Understanding the perspective of the potential buyer and creating a potential need to buy the product started gaining importance.This in turn made good sales “being educating, consulting, solving problems, providing answers and helping”, the pre-requisites of a successful sales person. Emotional Intelligence which is based on these competencies, plays a very crucial role in performance of a sales person. This paper aims to study the role of an Emotional Intelligence in the successful performance of a sales person.

Introduction:

Ever since Daniel Goleman published his book on ‘Emotional Intelligence’ in 1995, experts in various fields have started realizing the importance of E.I. – emotional intelligence – as opposed to I.Q. – intellectual intelligence in various walks of life. The concept of E.I. has very strong natural link to the field of sales, besides the areas of general management and leadership.A strong causal relationship between ones’ emotions and success in the sales industry is proved by many research studies. Since sales positions demand that the sales professionals are required to relate to their customers, it is many times assumed that sales professionals have the ability to communicate effectively, empathize and respect their clients’ needs. The importance of employing emotionally intelligent salespeople becomes apparent today’s ever changing sales environment. (SojkaJ.Z. 2002)This research paper is based on the premise that one’s ability to be emotionally intelligent affects how one relates to and with others, especially one’s clients which in turn affects one’s performance in the sales position.

What is Emotional Intelligence

At the most general level, emotional intelligence (E.I.) refers to the ability to recognize and regulate emotions in ourselves and others (Goleman, 2001). Peter Salovey and John Mayer (1990), who originally used the term “emotional intelligence” in published writing, defined it as “a form of intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions”. Mayer and Salovey (1997) created four components of emotional intelligence:

SelfAwareness:It is the cognitive ability to accurately appraise one’s own emotions, feelings and behaviors. It also pertains to expressing one’s feelings. In short, this dimension relates to an individual’s ability to reflect self and understand his/her emotions.
Empathy:It refers to appraising the emotions of others. This interpersonal skill is critical to the salesperson’s ability to establish a type of interpersonal relationship with clients.
Social Awareness: It is the ability to perceive and understand the emotions and behaviors of others and to modify one’s own emotional response to such an understanding.
Emotion Management:Itrefers to the ability to regulate emotions and behaviors according to their situational appropriateness. This requires cognitive reflection on the potential way in which an emotional behavior will affect and be affected within a specific situation.

In addition, theymentioned that their research showedthat the development of emotional intelligence skills in sales people is positively correlated to an increase in profits.

The need for emotional intelligence skills is growing, specifically for sales professionals as Boyless and Bellamy discovered in their work, Emotional Intelligence: Today’s Sales and Hiring Advantage (2005):“Selfawareness, empathy, social awareness and emotion management, the key elements of emotional intelligence are critical skills for executives and sales professionals in the emerging service oriented firm of the 21’st century”. Boyless and Bellamy believe that everyone hasn’t ‘jumped on the bandwagon’ of EI because the EI philosophy isn’t ‘tangible’ in addition to requiring “top executives to look ‘inside’ themselves which many aren’t willing to do”.

In an effort to create an integrated EI framework almost ten years later, Boyatzis and Goleman (1999)defined it as: “emotional intelligence is observed when a person demonstrates the competencies that constitute self-awareness, social awareness, and social skills at appropriate times and ways in sufficient frequency to be effective in the situation”. Daniel Goleman (1998) created an emotional intelligence model that speaks about Emotional Intelligence Competency Framework with five specific groupings:

Self awareness – includes emotional awareness, accurate self assessment and self confidence;
Self regulation – includes self control, trustworthiness, conscientiousness, adaptability and innovation;
Motivation – includes achievement drive, commitment, initiative and optimism;
Empathy – includes understanding others, developing others, service orientation, leveraging diversity, and political awareness;
Social skills – include the ability to influence, communicate, manage conflict, exercise leadership, be a change catalyst, build bonds, collaborate and cooperate and operate well on a team.

Developing the ability to empathize and perceive others’ emotions, in addition to one’s own, through self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-motivation are few of the key areas of emotional intelligence that lead tohealthy interpersonal relationships. It is an established fact that relationships at work greatly influence one’s performance at workplace.

Employee Performance

For achieving organizational goals, one of the key factors that anorganizationneeds to manage is the performance of it’s employees. Assessing an employee’s competency and measuring his/her productivity is essential in the overall plan of the organization. Employee’s performance is mainly managed by using various formal performance management techniques such as self appraisal, supervisor’s rating, MBO, 360 degree appraisals, peer evaluations, etc. This helps in ensuring employees’ contribution towards their own and organization’s growth & development. However, for attaining outstanding performance, emotional competence which is “a learned capability based on emotional intelligence” is quiteessential.

Before we discuss the relationship between Emotional Intelligence and its impact on Performance of Salesperson, we need to understand what are the different sales positions that organizations offer and a brief discussion of each of these positions.

Different Sales Positions & Their Description

Sales Positions can be broadly classified into four groups:

No. Sales Position Description

Deliverer or Delivery Salesperson A salesperson whose main responsibility is the delivery of a product to household consumers or to business customers. The salesperson also takes orders depending on customer needs, as well as reliability of delivery and personality of salesperson.
Order Taker A salesperson acts mainly as an inside order taker, who responds to customer demands.

Another type is the telemarketing salesperson who takes customer orders over the telephone.

A salesperson acts as an outside order taker, by responding to customer requests, like a trade seller, who also performs other tasks like setting up displays, distributing samples to retailers.

3 a) Missionary Salesperson A salesperson is expected to build goodwill and educate the decider, instead of the purchaser or user of the product.

b) Technical Sales Support Person A salesperson with a high level of technical knowledge. He is as good as a professional consultant.

4 a) Demand Creator/Order Getter Order-getters are salespeople who actively seek orders, and use creative and problem-solving selling. Creative selling includes sales maintenance from existing customers and sales development (from new customers).

b) Solution Vendor A salesperson whose expertise is in solving of a business customer’s problem, with the company’s products and services. It is problem-solving selling.

Characteristics of a Good Salesperson:

In the mid 1990s, the traditional buyer-seller sales style began shifting to a consultative relationship based model. “Relationship selling is a vast improvement over product selling: that which we would normally call ’traditional’ selling” (Franke, 1988). In relationship selling, the emphasis is on satisfying the customers’ needs and not “trading goods” for money, therefore good sales people are “educating, consulting, solving problems, providing answers and helping” (Franke, 1988). “The consultative style will be the cornerstone of success in the next millennium.”(Ekern, 1997).

Bryan Tracy, author of Advanced Selling Strategies: The Proven System of Sales Ideas, Methods and Techniques Used by Top Sales People Everywhere(1995) believes that three universal characteristics are essential for a successful sales person. First is the ability to “work hard” as sales is a very difficult profession. Sales person should be more of an “action” person, who is a “doer”, rather than a “talker”. Thirdly,successful sales people are committed to personal and professional development. “Selling is more psychological than anything else”, Tracy observed.

Sales Performance & Emotional Intelligence

Bryant (2005) found a positive correlation between the components of emotional intelligence and sales performance. He defines (adaptive) selling as “the altering of sales behaviors during a customer interaction or across customer interactions based on perceived information about the nature of the selling situation”. Bryant opined thatsuch kind of sellingis related to emotional intelligence and thata sales person with high levels of emotional intelligence will perform better in the profession than someone who with lower EI.

Selling is a multifaceted process comprised of multiple skill sets (Churchill, Ford, & Hartley, 1997). Anthony (2003) says “emotional intelligence in selling begins with the recognition that one must meet emotional agenda beyond the buy-and-sell transaction for a buyer to be satisfied with the transaction”. He believes that there are two critical questions which a sales person shall meet with emotional intelligence in order to convert a sales call into a sales order: a) Do you know me? b) Do you know how to approach me? Awareness on many levels, is a crucial component for meeting customer’s agenda. Awareness in the sales process includes three basic rules as described by Anthony (2003):

Prove and re-prove yourself:Customers have a tendency to be cautious and do not trust the sales process easily, therefore continually proving the worth of the product/service and validity of the salesman is essential.
Customers expect you to understand their needs: Anthony opines that customers have “hidden emotional agenda” and it’s up to the sales person to decipher these agenda and approach them accordingly.
This is not about you:People want to solution to their problems, want their needs and wants to be satisfied and “wishes” granted and it’s the salespersons responsibility to assure these expectations are met.

A study was conducted by Manna and Smith (2004) to determine if: a)Is emotional intelligence training necessary for success in the sale profession andb)If emotional intelligence and awareness training to be included in sales training programs.Sales persons were requested to respond to a series of questions concerning sales training and related sales experience. The studyshowed that there is an obvious relation between skills such as communication skills, negotiating skills, emotional intelligence, presentation skills, as well as the capacity to differentiate among personality type and the success of sales people. Deeter-Schmelz and Sojka (2003) explored a relationship between sales performance and EI. When combined with Cooper (1997) and Goleman’s (1998) work, their results suggest a strong correlation between the emotional intelligence and success in sales positions.

In today’s world, there is a dramatic shift in customer requirements. This coupled with intense competition has made sales peoplerealize that they must call on different decision-makers and buying groups, if they want to succeed in their roles. However, the needs and perspectives ofthe new about the products and services to be purchased, often make sales representatives confused, leading sometimes to feel inadequate and at their worst moments, get annoyed with prospective buyers.

Managing their emotions requires more than additional sales technique training. It requires learning to cope with stress and tensionas well as enhancing one’s personal capacityto adapt to challenging circumstancesThe traditional training methods are not designed to suit these requirements. It needstrainers who are capable of modifying their instructional pedagogy to include an “inside-out” process that equips salespersonswith:

Developing awareness of their emotions “in the moment”.
Managing emotions and developing their “emotional muscle” to enhance effectiveness.
Sensing and responding to subtle customer non-verbal signals.
Integrating emotional awareness with authentic behavior. (Mehnert, 2011)

A study by the Hay/McBer firm in Boston of Fortune 500 companies including AT&T, IBM and PepsiCo showed that top sales people of these organizationshad higher emotional intelligence than average salesmen. It revealed that the following five EI competencies were crucial in predicting the success among salespersons:

1. Intuition & Empathy: It refers to the salesman’s awareness of the prospect’s feelings, needs and concern. This competency is important in a sales role for the reasons mentioned below:

Attitude towards others: One’s ability to look positively and objectively upon others.
Understanding Others: An intuitive sense of a prospect’s and/or customer’s feelings and perspectives and showing an active interest in their needs.
Customer service orientation: The ability to anticipate, recognize and meet customer’s needs.

2. Result Orientation & Decisiveness: This is the salesperson’s adeptness at inducing desirable responses from the customer or prospect.

Communication: Sending clear and convincing messages that are understood by the customer or prospect.
Influencing: Using effective tactics and techniques for persuasion and desired results.
Gaining Commitment: One’s ability to develop a motivational act.

3. Self View: This is the salesperson’s level of courage and self-esteem that provides thick enough skin to persevere through various obstacles he/she encounters throughout the sales cycle. This competency is important to a salesperson for the following reasons:

Handling rejection: One’s ability to handle a “no” or a non-sale and to not take it personally and be able to recover and restart quickly to try again.
Self-esteem: The higher the self-esteem, the more passion and courage in the social arena.

4. Self Awareness: This is knowing one’s internal states, preferences, resources, strengths and limitations. This competency is important in a sales role for the following reasons:

Self Confidence: One’s ability to believe in one’s own abilities and strengths to personally take charge of achieving and exceeding one’s goals.
Persuasiveness: One’s ability to stand one’s ground in negotiations and in handling sales objections to exude to the customer or the prospect that the product or service meets their needs.
Competitiveness: One’s desire to win and be perceived as competent in the eyes of other, as well as desire to be personally recognized for their accomplishment.

5. Self Expectations: This is the salesperson’s emotional tendencies that guide or facilitate reaching goals and their sense of personal commitment t
responsibilities. This competency is important in a sales role for the following reasons:

Achievement Drive: Striving to improve or meet a standard of excellence one imposes on oneself.
Initiative: Readiness to act on opportunities without having to be told.
Optimism: Persistence in pursuing goals despite obstacles and setbacks. (Poskey, 2006)

It is evident that these are the essential EI competencies for successful sales career. The salesperson however well he knows the product or services inside out, would not be successful in the long term, without possessing these essential EI competencies.

Conclusion

Emotional Intelligence is an important skill that has the potential to improve the performance of the sales-persons. Though people do not possess EI competencies at birth always, they do learn them in the course of life. All sales people have the ability and capability to improve both their Emotional Intelligence and their salesmanship skills for themselves as well as their organizations. An importance of Emotional Intelligence in the success of sales careers must be realized by sales professionals which will enable them to improve their career prospects..

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