From emotional intelligence to sales success

Have you ever thought about challenging yourself by taking an IQ test? Anonymously of course, so nobody will know if your results aren’t so good. IQ is an indicator used to measure our cognitive abilities, which, broadly speaking, are understood as our ability to comprehend and deal with the world around us. Over the years, IQ tests have pigeonholed people into those more or less likely to succeed. Fortunately, as our knowledge of both business and psychology has improved, we’ve started to see the additional dimensions of our own potential. Research conducted by the Carnegie Institute of Technology shows that only 15% of professional success is attributable to specialist (technical) knowledge, while as much as 85% is attributable to engineering our own personalities. Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Prize winner in Economics, further fuelled the discussion on soft skills with research which indicated that people prefer to do business with those they like and trust, even if they know that their offer is neither the cheapest nor the highest quality.

This new sales reality brings emotional intelligence into play. EQ or EI, as the concept is commonly abbreviated, stand for ‘emotional quotient’ and ‘emotional intelligence.’ According to Psychology Today, emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize and manage both our own emotions and those of other people¹. Emotional intelligence complements cognitive, rational intelligence, and together they determine our individual potential. Emotional intelligence is measured using the appropriate standardized tools and should never be the basis for any sort of ranking.

Each of us is different, and if we are less developed in one area, we certainly make up for it in another. On the other hand, it is vital to know and be conscious of our own strengths and weaknesses in order to be able to take appropriate actions aimed at both taking advantage of our innate abilities and shoring up those areas where we find ourselves lacking.

Both in our relationships with ourselves and our approach to work

There are various scientific models which systematize and develop knowledge about emotional intelligence. Among the creators of such models, the most notable are Daniel Goleman, Jack Mayer and Peter Saloveya, whose research provided us with both measurement tools and useful knowledge. Since I’ve been involved with sales for many years, it is from that perspective that we will approach emotional intelligence, using the work of Daniel Goldman for further analysis. Based on my own experience, I think that his approach offers us the most concrete advice about the areas of EQ which we salespeople should devote our attention to. Following Goleman, as part of emotional intelligence, we can distinguish between two groups of competences²:

Group 1: Personal competence

Since every journey begins with a single step, when building better sales we should always start by looking at ourselves. It is our personality which determines how we behave, how we express ourselves, and how we perceive the world around us (including others). Emotions are our primary fuel, which means that our ability to recognize and manage them in accordance with the situation, together with our own self-awareness, is absolutely crucial to success. We can include the following as personal emotional competences:

a. Self awareness, and with it the ability to recognize and understand our own emotions, preferences, values, and intuitive assessments. In this matter, it is also important to know our capabilities and limitations, which have a direct impact on our self-esteem.