How to use Emotional Intelligence in your channel sales performance development – the challenge for me as a Coach!
Of the many challenges facing me as a channel sales performance trainer and coach, in their efforts to develop highly-skilled and successful channel sales professionals is the discrepancy between what they believe they accomplished during training and the results reported by managers once the person is on the job. What is learned and seemingly perfected during training is often not applied to challenging or difficult customer situations. Despite the efforts of trainers to provide intense "skill and drill" activities, feedback from field management suggests that channel sales personnel "need more training". One could argue that no one ever learned to swim or ride a bicycle by simply reading a book on the subject or having someone tell you all about it. You learn to swim or to ride the bicycle by doing it. First someone must explain what you should do and how you should do it. Then you need more instruction and help as you start to practice it. The more you practice, the better you get. The same type of process is what happens in a training – it makes certain, that you pick up the type of skills and competencies that you need in order to grow, change or even become a peak performer. This leaves however the trainers with the struggling task and question, to identify: "What stops this channel sales person from doing what he or she already seem to know?" many would argue that this "needs more training", however I do not think that to be right……….it is a matter of directing the channel sales person to practice the skills and thereby acquire the wished ability, it is unlikely that more "skill training" will make a difference. Once an individual has acquired the needed knowledge, it is likely the barriers to high performance reside in another aspect of professional development – to develop it, into a competence. That aspect of development involves complementing their psychological, cognitive and verbal ability with expanding the individual's emotional intelligence.
LOGIC AND EMOTIONAL CAPABILITY
Practicing psychologists in very diverse fields have found that it's not just a matter of developing "cognitive power and skills" to succeed. Whether one considers the counselor assisting a person experiencing feelings of depression, the sports therapist coaching an athlete to reach peak performance, or the business coach assisting an executive struggling to rebound from a major financial set-back, the evidence is clear--emotions play the major part in human performance that is distinct and separate from the individual's cognitive or physical ability. The research of neuroscientists such as Joseph Le Doux has substantiated the experience of practitioners that the emotional system of the brain acts independent from the neocorter, or logic system. The research indicates that some emotional reactions and emotional memories are formed without any conscious, cognitive participation. An excellent review of the research findings are detailed in Daniel Goleman's books on Emotional Intelligence. Goleman regards the two distinct mental functions as: the logical factual system and the emotional feeling system. He describes how reason originally freed people from the influence of emotion that would sometimes sway their logic in making sound judgments.
A new paradigm suggests that a more harmonized head and heart partnership is needed to balance human nature and logic. When combining the experience of psychologists and the research of neuroscientists the answer to the question regarding what limits performance is very clear. What stops people from doing what they already know how to do, is both their failure to recognize the impact that emotions have on their actions and the ability to know how to change it. This is especially true when there is a failure to apply knowledge and even skills under challenging or stress provoking situations. I have over the years realized that this performance problem, actually points out the need for a personal development coach to learn how to assist individuals in developing emotional intelligence. Developing Emotional Intelligence requires a very different learning methodology than is used to train for product or technical knowledge – as it is a personal competence.
TRANSFORMING CHANNEL SALES DEVELOPMENT
Given the increased competitive pressures of the global market place and major changes in customer requirements, channel sales professionals have found they must call on different decision-makers and buying groups than they did in the past. Not only that the channel sales has become more complex with more decision makers, influencers and possible blokers, they must be able to communicate business as well as personal value on all levels of the organization. These new realities can result in feelings in some way inadequacy and frustrated.
For many individuals this both requires additional channel sales technique training in the fields of "Selling to CxO's and Value Based Selling as well as developing Emotional Intelligence capabilities as these new realities require learning how to manage tension and increase personal comfort in adapting to various challenging situations and people. This adaptive capability cannot be acquired using traditional training methods. It requires that channel sales trainers modify their instructional methodology to include a Discovery Learning Process that assists channel salespeople in:
· Developing timely awareness of their emotions "in the moment"
· Managing emotion and using "emotional muscle" to enhance business effectiveness
· Increasing perceptual sensitivity to detect and respond to subtle customer signals
· Integrating emotional awareness with authentic behavior
This is a LEARNING PROCESS
As previously stated, developing emotional intelligence requires a new approach to learning. The channel sales professional needs to become aware of the impact various interpersonal verbal and non-verbal behavior has on their emotional reactions and how these emotional reactions influence their ability to effectively respond to channel partners. Standard training procedures focused on learning what to say or how to deliver an effective presentation. This type of training is aimed at increasing the channel sales person's interpersonal communication skills. Much of this communication training is based on the assumptions that if a channel sales person utters certain keywords, the customer will almost automatically respond in a positive manner. Strange that anybody today still would believe that…………for that would mean which just need to say something certain, in a certain way and we would succeed every time. Which is simply not true!!!!! We all know that a major problem occurs when the channel sales professional uses their best benefits and value verbiage, and the customer responds in an unpredicted or challenging manner. It is almost like a scene from a play where one actor speaks their lines to another actor who seems to have lost their place and fails to respond with the 'right' scripted words. Responding effectively to these unanticipated situations is impacted by the channel sales person's awareness of their emotions (needs, wants as well as value mindset and expectations) and understanding how these feelings influence their actions.
Developing timely awareness of the intrapersonal communication isn't achieved using typical or standard training techniques. It is achieved through a process of recognizing and overcoming emotional barriers that can misdirect intentions. An approach titled Personal Development Learning Process was developed to facilitate examination of internal messages that trigger emotional reactions. The first step in examining one's emotional intelligence is to become more aware of internal communication. We all talk to ourselves, and many times this internal conversation (self-talk) has a negative or limiting impact on our actions. This awareness is especially useful for those who have been taught that emotional reactions must be avoided or somehow concealed. To increase this accessibility, the Discovery Learning Process uses a variety of video vignettes designed to evoke and help the individual examine their intrapersonal communication. Often this intrapersonal communication seems to be traveling over a fine internal telephone line with many resistors. People frequently mention that it may be a day or more after a difficult business call that they become aware of the full range of feelings they had that influenced their actions during the call. By increasing awareness of their intrapersonal communication and identifying how emotional reactions impact behavior; the individual is ready to examine especially challenging or confrontational situations.
Using the Personal Development Learning Process, professional coaches use various questions and inquiry techniques to assist individuals in overcoming intensive limiting reactions. Key performance breakthroughs occur when channel sales professionals develop the ability to immediately access their emotional reactions, recognize the impact certain interpersonal allergies have on their behavior, and develop the ability to respond in an authentic manner to the challenging situation. This learning process develops the emotional "muscle" and strengthens interactive competency.
INTERPERSONAL ALLERGIES
The secret about Personal Development is to find out where or how you can develop personally A particularly valuable application of the Personal Development Learning Process occurs when individuals learn that they are limited by certain interpersonal allergies. In a manner that is similar to physical allergies, where the individual's sensitivity is extreme; interpersonal allergies occur when a situation triggers a particular anxiety or fear. Albert Ellis, who pioneered investigation into a rational-emotive approach to psychological counseling, discovered that when certain beliefs and fears are carried to extreme an internal dialogue develops which limits the individual's interpersonal behavior. For instance, one of the common interpersonal allergies of channel sales professionals is the belief that they should be accurate and correct in their communication. This is certainly a rational expectation. However, when this realistic expectation becomes an exaggerated irrational expectation, the channel sales person feels they must always be right. The professional who holds this type of irrational belief and fears ever making a mistake will impose limitations on whom they call on and how they interact. By trying to limit the potential of making a mistake, they limit their ability to achieve performance breakthroughs and growth as a professional.
CHANNEL SALESFORCE EXCELLENCE
Overcoming the barriers to high performance and the challenges imposed by a rapidly changing market has prompted Chief Learning Officers and business managers to consider alternatives to the "skill and drill" approach. These traditional training techniques are necessary to establish foundational skills, but are insufficient when engaging sophisticated buyers and complex channel sales. High performance can be achieved when a learning process is used to develop the professional's cognitive, behavioral, and emotional abilities. Cultivating the individual's emotional intelligence in harmony with their knowledge and skills enables the professionals to adapt their interactive skills to achieve peak performance despite industry volatility. The main learning points for an individual using Emotional Intelligence in their channel sales performance is how to:
• Effectively deal with difficult situations
• Maintain your self-control even when under pressure
• Understand your emotions and gain more emotional awareness
• Persuade others to support your point of view
• More successfully build relationships with your channel partners
• Use emotional intelligence to strengthen influence, trust, communication, and accountability
• Understand the decision making process.
• Understand emotions and gain more emotional awareness
• Understand different buying reasons and how to address them
• Understand feelings and the reasons behind them
• Identify business as well as personal buying reasons.
• Understand how value impacts the psychological buying reflections.
• Understand the channel partners' value mindset.
• Use emotional intelligence in channel sales in identifying needs & wants of the different decision makers and influencers in the buying process
• Identify the explicit needs of the customer (value expectations).
• Recognize different value expectations at the different levels in the company.
• Develop flexibility in your communication style
• Ask the right questions that help open the sale.
• Include the personal value expectations of your listener into the channel sales messages/communication.
• Engage in appropriate actions, given the emotional content of a situation
I know that when we talk about Emotional Intelligence in one's own Channel sales Performance, that these are very psychological soft skills we are talking about and as you can read from my different article, do I strongly believe that channel sales excellence is made, not born. That's why I actually wanted to create this Blog and Forum and I'm dedicated to helping you personally grow beyond where you are today. There are several types of intelligence that human beings are equipped - with some more, with some less. Most people believe that the logical-mathematical type of intelligence (the IQ rating that many people focus on) has the most impact on whether you have success in life. That is absolutely wrong. If you want to do something that can really help you improve the quality of your life (in every way) - there is one thing that comes first: strengthen and cultivate your emotional intelligence as much as you possibly can. Many channel sales manager know that certain things they should do in a better way, but too often they don't know how - or do get started on the change process. We all work against some barriers that somehow keep us from doing what is best for us - and from realizing our true potential. If you need help in better understanding and exploit your potential in order to turn you into action mode and help you break through self imposed limitations that are holding you back from the power, balance, growth, and success that you strive for. Lets us talk about how I can help you explore how it is possible to build new levels of self discipline, strengthen and cultivate your emotional intelligence, overcome indecisiveness and uncertainty, and strengthen your confidence - helping you to remove the mental and emotional obstacles that are limiting your personal and professional growth, power and channel sales performance.
Regards your moderator Mark
