book study guide...emotional intelligence for sales leadership building leaders. redefining sales....

Book Study Guide

1

Emotional Intelligence For Sales Leadership

BUILDING LEADERS. REDEFINING SALES.

Chapter One WELCOME TO AN EMOTIONALLY INTELLIGENT SALES MEETING

QUESTIONS TO ASK YOURSELF:

How would you rate the involvement and engagement in your group sales meetings, on a scale of 1 – 10? One being low and ten being high.

How transparent is your sales team about sharing the “real reasons” they are not opening up new business opportunities, expanding business or closing business?

How would your sales team rate the effectiveness of group sales meetings in helping them achieve their sales goals?

ACTIONS STEPS:

→ What is the number one action/change you can make to create a sales meeting that is rated a “10” by you and your sales team? For example:

__Create meeting agendas with a defined purpose and objective. __Design role-plays to test one specific selling skill. __Create questions to facilitate conversation and “deep thinking.” __Develop contests and games. __Other

→ When will you implement the above changes?

→ Find an accountability partner to hold you accountable to commitments and actions.

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Chapter Two IT ALL STARTS WITH YOU


What do you enjoy the most about sales leadership/sales management? Hiring, training, coaching, holding salespeople accountable, managing up and down, documenting processes or playbooks.

What do you enjoy the least about sales leadership/sales management? Hiring, training, coaching, holding salespeople accountable, managing up and down, documenting processes or playbooks.

How is the least enjoyable responsibility affecting your ability to lead and develop a high-performance team? I.e. Avoidance, procrastination, inconsistent execution of the right sales leadership behaviors.

ACTIONS STEPS:

→ Carve out quiet time and ask yourself the powerful question. “Am I willing to do what it takes to become a well-rounded sales leader?”

→ Seek out a mentor, mastermind or training to gain new knowledge and insights.

→ Identify a skill that you’d like to focus on and improve each month. Eat the “sales leadership development elephant” one bite at a time.


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Chapter Three SALES DRAFT DAY


What is your “something?” What is your non-negotiable?

What red flags have you ignored when hiring a salesperson? What made you ignore red flags that turned into fires? Exhaustion, “falling in love”, logic.

When will you be tempted to shortcut all the steps required in hiring top salespeople?

What has been the impact of a poor hire on your sales team? Achievement of revenues?

ACTIONS STEPS:

→ Review any previous bad hires. Identify common traits in those bad hires to get crystal clear on your “something.”

→ Design behavior-based interview questions to uncover red flags you’ve missed in previous hires.

→ Identify a colleague that should be on your hiring team that will provide objectivity during the hiring process.


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Chapter Four MARSHMALLOW GRABBERS AND COOKIE MONSTERS


Analyze your current sales team and identify areas where “instant gratification” impacts sales results. I.e. Prospecting, skill development, major account selling.

Analyze your approach to hiring top salespeople. Where and how is “Me Wants It Now” sales leadership behaviors getting in the way of success? I.e. Not recruiting on a weekly/monthly basis.

How many of your previous “mis-hires” lacked delayed gratification skills? Where did you miss identifying these soft skills during the interview?

ACTIONS STEPS:

→ Teach your sales team the importance of delayed gratification and the impact on sales results.

→ Ask your sales team to identify three areas where instant gratification selling behaviors affect sales results. I.e. Practicing new selling skills, pursuing larger deal, giving up too soon on goals.

→ Slow down to speed up. Calendar block time for consistent recruiting each week/month to avoid the pull of instant gratification and “speed recruiting.”

→ Customize interview questions at the end of this chapter to your business to test potential sales candidates for delayed gratification.


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Chapter Five PASSION, PERSEVERANCE AND SALES PERFORMANCE


Analyze and evaluate your current sales team. What percentage of your sales team are quitters, campers or climbers? (Thank you Dr. Paul Stolz).

Review the previous six months of sales activity and sales results. How has/is lack of perseverance affecting achievement of sales revenues?

Does your sales team possess an internal or external locus of control?

Where are you falling short in “persevering” for the best sales talent?

ACTIONS STEPS:

→ Teach the concepts of “camping” and external locus of control to your current sales team. Avoid creating big campgrounds and victim sales cultures. Sales development is a process not an event.

→ Ask your sales team to identify three areas in their professional life where they might be camping instead of climbing.

→ Find quitters a new home.

→ Customize interview questions at the end of this chapter to your business to test potential sales candidates for passion, perseverance and locus of control.


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Chapter Six ASSERTIVENESS AND SALES RESULTS


Analyze your current sales team. How would you rate each person’s level of assertiveness?

Where and how is lack of assertiveness affecting sales results? Examples:

___Inability to disqualify prospects that don’t fit your company ideal profile. ___Writing practice proposals because the salesperson didn’t uncover investment before writing recommendations. ___Not meeting with all the buying influences. “Going along to get along.” ___Not getting a second meeting scheduled on the calendar.

Where are you lacking assertiveness when interviewing potential sales candidates? Where are you going along to get along and not asking the deeper interview questions?

ACTIONS STEPS:

→ Teach the concept of assertiveness, passive-aggressive and aggressive behaviors to your sales team.

→ Ask your salespeople to identify specific situations, conversations or buyers that “trigger” them into passive-aggressive or aggressive selling behaviors. I.e. Not getting meetings with all the buying influences, arguing with prospects rather than understanding their perspective.

→ Customize interview questions at the end of this chapter to your business to test potential sales candidates for assertiveness.


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Chapter Seven ARE YOU HIRING A LEARNER OR A LAGGARD?


Analyze and evaluate your current sales team. How many of your salespeople are proactive learners or reactive laggards? Do you have any “buggers” on your sales team?

Where is lack of aptitude or attitude for learning affecting sales revenue? I.e. Not learning new selling skills and approaches? Not adopting tech tools that truly increase effectiveness?

What are you doing to create and model a learning organization? Does the sales team see you investing time and money in continuous improvement?

How many members of your sales team are regarded as thought leaders by your clients?

ACTIONS STEPS:

→ Start a monthly book club and assign a chapter each week. During group sales meetings, have each salesperson report on what they learned and how they applied the learning in their sales process.

→ Ask each salesperson to proactively seek out mentors and advisors that can help them improve both personally and professionally.

→ Customize interview questions at the end of this chapter to your business to test potential sales candidates for learning and improvement.


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Chapter Eight IS YOUR NEW SALES HIRE COACHABLE?


Analyze your current sales team. How many proactively seek feedback and coaching?

How many of your past “failures” in hiring can you attribute to lack of coachability?

Does your sales team have a fixed mindset or growth mindset?

How many previous “mis-hires” were not a culture fit because of their lack of humility and self-absorption?

How coachable are you? Are you modeling the behavior you expect from your sales team? Does your sales team see you seeking feedback?

ACTIONS STEPS:

→ Teach your sales team the key concepts around a coachability and growth mindset.

→ Ask your sales team to identify three actions or behaviors that demonstrate they have a growth mindset.

→ Ask your sales team to identify where they may have a fixed mindset.

→ Customize interview questions at the end of this chapter to your business to test potential sales candidates for coachability.


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Chapter Nine NECESSARY ENDINGS


Where are you taking more responsibility for your sellers’ success than the seller?

What are the reasons you are holding onto a poor performer? Examples: ___You have an empty recruiting sales pipeline. ___You have put in a lot of hours in training and coaching and don’t want to start over. ___The salesperson keeps promising to change and you keep believing the person will change.

How many of your previous “mis-hires” lacked a good work ethic?

Are you trying to coach a wise salesperson or a foolish salesperson? (Thank you Dr. Cloud.)

ACTIONS STEPS:

→ Take time to reflect and write down all the reasons you are holding onto a poor performer. Be truthful. “That which you are not aware of you cannot change.”

→ Calendar block time each month to proactively reach out and connect with potential sales candidates. Fill your people pipeline and avoid desperation hiring practices.

→ Evaluate each salesperson on your team to determine if you are trying to coach and develop a wise person or a foolish person.


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Chapter Ten THE SOFT SKILLS, THE EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE SKILLS OF EFFECTIVE SALES LEADERSHIP


Review your coaching conversations with your sales team. Are you focused on teaching and coaching consultative selling skills, emotional intelligence skills or a combination of both?

Conduct an informal win-loss analysis with your salesperson. If a salesperson isn’t achieving sales activity goals and results, is lack of sales results due lack of soft skills, hard skills or a combination of both?

What new training and coaching skills will you need to learn in order to coach to the right end of the sales performance issue?

ACTIONS STEPS:

→ When preparing for a one-on-one coaching conversation, design coaching questions to determine if the salesperson needs help in the development of EQ skills, consultative selling skills or a combination of both.

→ In analyzing sales performance challenges, consistently ask yourself this question: What is the REAL root cause for lack of execution and sales results?

→ Find an accountability partner that can support you in up-leveling your coaching skills, one that understands and believes in the power of teaching both the soft and hard skills of selling.

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Chapter Eleven EMOTION MANAGEMENT AND SALES EFFECTIVENESS


How would you rate your current sales team’s ability to manage emotions during difficult sales conversations?

What are specific selling scenarios that cause your sellers to default to fight responses?

What are specific selling scenarios that cause your sellers to default to flight responses?

How would you rate your current sales team’s level of self-awareness? Do they keep making the same mistakes or do they learn from their mistakes?

ACTIONS STEPS:

→ Teach your sales team the important concepts around the neuroscience of selling.

→ Ask your sales team to identify people or situations that create a fight or flight response. Next, ask them to write down “stories” that they are making up about people and situations. Now, ask them to write down what else could be true. Change the story and you change the emotional response.

→ Teach and encourage your sales team to carve out quiet time each morning BEFORE they check their smart phone and emails. Incorporate this question into coaching conversations. “How often are you carving out downtime and reflection time?”

→ Design reframing questions to shift your salesperson’s thinking and actions. I.e. “What’s good about this? What else is going on with this customer? What kind of pressure is your prospect under to make a good decision?”

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Chapter Twelve EMPATHY AND INFLUENCE


Where are you allowing your sales team to be half-present in conversations? Do you have a paying attention sales culture?

How tuned in is your sales team to their own thoughts and emotions? How is that level of attunement affecting their ability to connect with prospects and customers?

How comfortable is your sales team bringing up the “sales elephant” in the room, the unspoken objection?

How many “meetings after the meeting” is your sales team missing?

ACTIONS STEPS:

→ Teach your team the difference between validation and real-world empathy. Validation is repeating what a prospect or customers says. Empathy is the ability to state what a prospect is thinking or feeling, even when they have not expressed their thoughts and emotions.

→ Teach your sales team how to bring up the unspoken objection with empathy. Ask your sales team to identify an unspoken objection. Then, ask your team to write down what a prospect is thinking or feeling about this objection. I.e. Switching business from a long-time vendor. Now, ask them to create an empathetic statement which demonstrates that the salesperson understands the prospects fears, worries and doubts.

→ Model and create a culture of paying attention. Ask your sales team to put away their “adult binky” when engaging in conversations. Empathy is a paying attention skill. Paying attention is a habit that is only developed by repetition.

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Chapter Thirteen WHAT DO YOUR SALESPEOPLE BELIEVE?


Analyze your current sales team. What are the invisible beliefs in each salesperson’s briefcase? How are those invisible beliefs affecting sales results?

What self-limiting beliefs does your sales team have about their abilities?

What self-limiting beliefs does your sales team have about the products and services they sell?

What self-limiting beliefs does your sales team have about the company?

ACTIONS STEPS:

→ Design specific pivot questions to shift a salesperson’s self-limiting beliefs. I.e. Do you have the worst prospects or are you targeting the wrong prospects? Are prospects telling you that you are too young or are you telling yourself you are too young. (Ask, don’t tell. People believe their own data.)

→ Identify areas where a past failure is impacting a salesperson’s ability to move forward. Design coaching questions that will help the salesperson embrace the lessons learned from the failure. I.e. What are three things that you learned from losing this deal? How will these lessons help you win the next opportunity? When other people are attempting new ventures, how often do they immediately succeed?

→ Research and share stories at your group sales meetings where people have overcome adversity. Ask your sales team to identify the attributes that allowed the person to persevere. Then, ask them how those same attributes can be applied to overcome obstacles in the sales profession.

→ Listen to Diana Nyad’s TED talk at your next sales meeting. Ask your team to write down five things that they will “find a way” to accomplish.

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Chapter Fourteen YOU DON’T MAKE MISTAKES. MISTAKES MAKE YOU.


How would you rate your current sales team on their ability to deal with and handle failure?

What impact does fear of failure have on your sales team’s results? I.e. Not calling at the right level? Not taking risks and selling into new markets and decision makers?

When giving well intended feedback, how does your team respond? Do they take the feedback on their role performance, their WHO, or their self-worth, their DO?

ACTION STEPS:

→ Teach your sales team the concept of separating your DO, your roles in life, from your WHO, your character and self-worth.

→ Create a sales culture that is fierce about learning the lessons from failure. Conduct the failure exercise from Chapter 14.

→ Normalize failure. At your next sales meeting, share stories of successful people that failed before winning. Move beyond rhetoric and show real world examples. I.e. J.K. Rowling, Walt Disney, Viola Davis and Steve Jobs. Get the story behind the glory. Ask your sales team to identify the attributes that allowed the person to persevere. Then, ask them what attributes can be applied to the sales profession.

→ During one of your group sales meeting, ask each salesperson to bring a recent failure or setback. Ask the sales team to discuss the lessons learned from the failure. Ask the follow-up questions:

• How will these lessons help you on future engagements?

• When would you have liked to have learned these lessons? Sooner or later?

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Chapter Fifteen STRESS, SALES, SUCCESS AND SATISFACTION


How would you rate your current sales team’s ability to deal with and manage stress?

___ Poor ___ Average ___Excellent ___Very situational – based on the origin of the stress

How would you rate your ability to deal with and manage stress? What behaviors and attitudes are you modeling to your team?

If your team is average on dealing with stress, how is that affecting their ability to perform at peak performance each day?

ACTIONS STEPS:

→ Teach your sales team the importance of focusing on what a person can control versus what a person can’t control to decrease or eliminate stress.

→ During a group sales meeting, ask each member of your sales team to write down what they can control and what they can’t control in the sales profession. Then, ask your team where they are putting most of their focus, time and energy. Remind your team that which they focus on grows and expands. Is your sales team growing solutions or growing problems?

→ When you see or hear a salesperson moving into blame and victim mode, ask the powerful coaching questions: What part of this situation do you need to own?

→ Ask your sales team write a letter to a tough prospect. Instruct your team that the letter must include the lessons learned from a difficult conversation or sales meeting.

→ Include humor in your sales meetings. Ask each person on your sales team to share their worse sales call. The stories will be hysterical and laughter is a great way to alleviate stress.

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Chapter Sixteen FOCUS: BE HERE NOW


Do you have a FOMO sales culture? (Fear of missing out.) How is FOMO affecting your sales team’s ability to be present and focused in every conversation?

What expectations are you setting and modeling in regards to focus? Do you allow salespeople to multi-task during training and coaching sessions? Or, is your sales team singularly focused on learning and growing?

How is lack of focus affecting your sales team’s ability to demonstrate empathy?

How many hours of productivity does your sales team lose each day due to lack of focus?

ACTIONS STEPS:

→ Make a decision. Stop accepting and believing that your salespeople don’t have the ability to focus.

→ Model the behaviors of focus you expect from your sales team. Stop multi-tasking during training and coaching conversations. Calendar block an hour for completing complex tasks.

→ Conduct an exercise with your sales team. Divide the team into two groups. Assign each group three tasks: Return 10 emails designed just for this exercise and write two handwritten thank you notes. Group A completes one type of tasks before moving onto the next. Group B multi-tasks and returns 3 emails, writes a thank you note, then back to three emails, then another note, then back to final emails. “Time” each team to see who completes the tasks first.

→ Ask each salesperson to change their screen saver to the words: Be here Now.

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Chapter Seventeen IT’S TIME TO TEACH TIME MANAGEMENT


How would you rate your current sales team’s time management skills on a scale of 1 – 10? One being low and ten being high.

Where is poor time management and productivity habits affecting your sales team? I.e. Inconsistent or ineffective prospecting? Not enough time invested in skill development? Sending generic prospecting messages?

Where is instant gratification getting in the way of sales results?

How is low impulse control affecting your sales team’s ability to manage their calendar and schedule?

How is your sales team investing their early morning hours? Are they waking up to reflect and think? Or, are they waking up to rush and react?

ACTIONS STEPS:

→ At your next group sales meeting, walk your sales team through the instant gratification and delayed gratification chart from Chapter 17. Next, ask each salesperson to identify areas where instant gratification is affecting their sales performance. Raise the seller’s awareness in order to change behavior. That which you are not aware of you cannot change.

→ Teach your sales team the steps and skills of mind mapping. Apply your delayed gratification skills and don’t rush the exercise.

→ During one-on-one coaching sessions, role play with each salesperson the “guard your calendar” sales technique.

Prospect: “Can we connect at 1 pm?” Salesperson: “I’m sorry…I am already booked at that time. Is there any chance you are available on…”

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Chapter Eighteen THE SALES EQ AND IQ OF TEACHING AND COACHING


How well are you modeling emotional intelligence, emotion management, to your sales team?

What stories are you telling yourself about members of your team? What type of emotion does that create toward the salesperson? How do the stories affect the actions you take or don’t take with a salesperson? I.e. He’s just lazy and doesn’t want to change or improve.

How would you rate your ability to know, care and understand what your salespeople are thinking or feeling?

How comfortable are you holding the crucial sales coaching conversations? Are you able to be assertive and state what you need nicely? Or, do you default to passive aggressive or aggressive coaching behaviors?

ACTIONS STEPS:

→ Carve out quiet time each day to reflect on how you are showing up as a sales leader? What events or conversations are creating a trigger-response-regret reaction in you?

→ Examine the stories you are telling yourself about a member of your team. Apply extreme curiosity and ask, “What else could be true? What else is going on?”

→ When pre-call planning coaching sessions, include the “S” framework of empathy. Identify areas where you can demonstrate more empathy during coaching conversations.

→ When preparing for a crucial sales coaching conversation, write out possible responses from the salesperson that could trigger an emotional response from you. Next, craft appropriate responses that incorporate empathy and assertiveness.

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Chapter Nineteen THE NEUROSCIENCE OF TEACHING AND COACHING


Analyze your current sales team. Where is each person on the J-curve of learning and improving? Write down the associated emotions this salesperson is feeling at the bottom of the J-curve.

How much time are you devoting to coaching, role-playing and practicing new skills? Where are you giving into the pull of instant gratification instead of investing the time in training and development?

What checklists could you develop to help your sales team avoid the Dunning-Kruger effect?

What stories can you share to improve learning and retention of sales concepts?

ACTIONS STEPS:

→ Teach the J-curve concept to your sales team. Normalize the difficulty of learning new skills. Incorporate this language into coaching sessions. “Where are you on the J-curve? How are you feeling about mastering this new skill?”

→ Write down the number of hours you will devote to sales coaching. (Not deal review.) Calendar block those hours and review your calendar at the end of the week to see if you accomplished your coaching goals.

→ Create tech-free zones when teaching or training. If technology is a key part of the training, ask your team to turn off email and other alerts. Focus. Be here now.

→ Review your sales process and create a checklist for each selling step and stage. Embed those into your CRM system to keep reinforcing skills and behaviors.

→ Carve out time before each group sales meeting to research/share a story that illustrate a sales concept.

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Chapter Twenty SALES IS NOT A DEPARTMENT


How many people and departments have contact with your prospects and clients? How would you rate the current client experience with other departments and people?

What other people in your company should be meeting with your customers to gain insights and perspective?

How much time are you investing each week/month in building relationships with other departments in your organization?

ACTIONS STEPS:

→ Conduct a secret shopping excursion at your company to gain insights on the prospect and customer experience. When you identify gaps, work with other members of your team to provide training and install systems to improve any gaps in the customer experience.

→ Invite other departments to join your sales team on video conferencing calls, face-to-face meetings, trade shows or any other client facing activities. After these engagements, brainstorm with other departments on how the entire company can better serve clients.

→ Set a goal for internal relationship building. Calendar block time for connecting over virtual coffee, lunch or meeting. Avoid the pull of instant gratification and put in the work to build connections and relationships.

→ Build a sales village. Sales is not a department.

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Chapter Twenty-One ARE YOU RUNNING FAKE MEETINGS?


How would you rate the current effectiveness of your sales meetings on a scale of 1 – 10? One being low, ten being high.

Are your sales meetings development meetings or complaint/roll call meetings?

How much time do you invest in planning and preparing for your group sales meeting? Or, are you conducting “wing-it” meetings?

What would need to change to make your sales meetings GREAT?

ACTIONS STEPS:

→ Get clear on your one thing. Make a decision. Do you want to conduct average sales meetings or GREAT sales meetings?

→ Create an agenda for your next three group sales meetings. Get clear on your purpose and agenda for each meeting. Are you working on skill development? Attitude adjustment? Brainstorming on how to sell into a new industry?

→ Once you’ve identified the purpose and objective for each meeting, identify the resources you will need to make it a GREAT meeting. Do you need to create facilitation questions? Design roleplays and practice sets? Research motivational videos?

→ Identify other experts you can invite into your meetings to share their insights. You don’t have to be the smartest person in the room.

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Chapter Twenty-One WHAT WILL YOU DO?


As you review the many ideas shared in this book, what are the top three priorities for you in becoming an even more effective sales leader?

___Improving your hiring and selection process. ___Teaching your sales team both the soft skills (Sales EQ) and hard skills (Sales IQ) of sales. ___Improve ability to hold the crucial sales coaching conversations. ___Demonstrate empathy before advice. ___Better diagnosis of the root cause of sales performance issues. ___Emotion management and self-awareness. ___Identifying and improving your sales team’s self-limiting beliefs. ___Improving your sales team’s time management and productivity habits. ___Creating a learning culture. ___Building your sales team’s resiliency and adversity muscles. ___Conducting more effective sales meetings. ___Creating a sales village and a better client experience.

What obstacles can get in the way of improvement and change?

How committed are you to creating a high-performance sales team?

ACTIONS STEPS:

→ Choose three areas of focus for each quarter.

→ Create a SMART plan for each goal. Specific, meaningful, action oriented, realistic, time table.

→ Calendar block the specific actions that need to be accomplished each week. Avoid vague plans which lead to vague outcomes.

→ Find an accountability partner that will hold the truth telling conversation with you. Connect each week to track, share, adjust and celebrate.

→ Congratulate yourself each week. You are walking the talk, taking action and improving the lives of the people that you work with and for.

book study guide...emotional intelligence for sales leadership building leaders. redefining sales....

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