Colleen Stanley- Emotional Intelligence in Selling

Colleen Stanley, sales trainer and author of the great book called Emotional Intelligence for Sales Success is our guest for this episode. Colleen's sales training is unique because she focuses specifically on building EQ in sales. 

In addition to speaking about emotional intelligence, you'll hear Colleen talk about work/life balance and her opinion might surprise you. Also, Colleen offers a really nice gift for all listeners, so don't miss that toward the end of the episode.

Mentioned in this episode:
Colleen Stanley on LinkedIn
Colleen's books
Steven Covey
Email Colleen

Transcript

Do you think sales is a bad word? When you hear the word sales, I wonder what imagescome to mind. Whatever your relationship is with selling. I'm glad you're here. Let's have aconversation about how to sell like a good human. Hi, welcome to Conversations withGood Humans. I'm your host, Catherine Brown, and I'm.

Of the book called How Good Humans Sell Today On Conversations With Good Humans. I'm talking with Colleen Stanley, sales trainer and author of the great book called Emotional Intelligence for Sales Success. Colleen's sales Training is unique because she focuses specifically on building EQ in sales. I love the book, and it was actually one of my first guides on the role that EQ plays in sales.

I read it several years ago and I was so delighted that we were introduced not long ago bya mutual friend. I invited her to the podcast and she said, yes. Recording the conversationwas really fun and the time flew by. In addition to speaking about emotional intelligence,you'll hear Colleen talk about work life balance.

Her opinion might surprise you and she even has a gift. It's a really nice gift for all of my listeners, so don't miss that. Toward the end of the episode, you can also check the show notes. Here's Colleen Stanley. Colleen, I read Emotional Intelligence for Sales success probably six, seven years ago now, and I had read a little bit about about emotional intelligence prior to that, but I devoured the book because you took these concepts, you applied them to the selling situation.

And I was joking before the call that I'm so honored to have you on the call because it's a little bit like having sales royalty. If you study the soft si, the soft skill side of selling, and you don't think of training as just the way you write templates, scripts, things like that. Youreally do have such a lovely long standing reputation and it's an honor to have you here and to be talking about this topic today.

So thank. Well,

Colleen02:18

thank you. And I guess I can go by Princess Colleen now or something like that.

Catherine02:24

. . Thank you so much. I really am excited to share what we'll be talking about with our, ourlisteners today, because I think when people talk about emotional intelligence and selling,I think people equate it to empathy.

I think that they have some idea what the topic means, but I don't think it's nearly. Expansive as it could be. So I'm, I'm really looking forward to unpacking that. Let's start out and talk first about how you first became aware of the concept, just in general of emotional intelligence. How did you come across that and get the idea to apply that to ourdomain?

Colleen03:04

Well, I would have to say I cognitively became aware of it when a very good friend of mine,Marty Lason and her business partner, Scott Halford, introduced me to the concept they'dbeen teaching emotional intelligence in the leadership world for many, many years, right? And so they sat down with me and they said, You absolutely need to incorporate this into your sales training, sales leadership, training processes.

Now, at that time, Catherine, Literally, I don't even think I'd heard the word emotional intelligence, and I certainly had. Heard it in the same sentence as sales, right? Because yeah, we're supposed to be hard charging. Take no prisoners, . Yeah. Never take no for an answer. So to answer your question, when I started backing up, once I recognized what emotional intelligence was, I recognized that some of the best mentors I had in my life.

Had a lot of emotional intelligence, PI IQ people, but really emotionally intelligent people.So that's where once I got introduced to it, I started looking at my history, realizing howfortunate I had been to be surrounded by people that possess this skill.

Catherine04:07

So why do you think that it is not mainstream yet?

It's my opinion, it's not mainstream to have this conversation throughout sales, you know, B2B sales organizations everywhere. I feel like this is a concept in the leadership development space we're going on. Would you say 20, 30 years that the research has been out and they've been publishing and it's been very prominent and I know you do the work in this space and you know, you hear about it a little bit, but almost none of my clients ask me, Will you be covering this as part of training?

Will you talk about this as at, at, at, at, you know, at a conference? Why is that? Why dopeople think of sales training as so tactical still and. Addressing these human

Colleen04:56

issues. Well, part of it is I don't think people have really realized the importance ofdeveloping the whole person as it relates to getting higher performance, higherproductivity, and frankly, happier people.

Happier people stay at your companies as it increases retention rates and all thosewonderful things. One of the areas, That I think sales managers find difficult if they don'treceive some formal education and training around this is how do you take something thatseems intangible and make it tangible?

So for example, how do you teach someone to be assertive? So you can talk about assertiveness, the defaults if you're not assertive. But then how do you actually coach someone to be assertive? So I think that's been the disconnect they can buy into it, but they absolutely don't know how to teach it. And part of that is lack of formal training around that, this topic.

And

Catherine05:49

so this is where even if someone says they want to have a coaching culture, that might bea buzz word that people are using. But in actual practice, we don't know how to ask thosequestions or what it looks like to help someone design. A map of where they're trying togo if

Colleen06:09

we are advising them.

Right, Exactly. So, so to play on your point, you've got a sales manager that they are doingthe, you know, consistent coaching cadence and good for him or her. However, thecoaching is around the tactical skills. They actually miss basic skills such as, you know,how did your lack of emotional self-awareness, Play into the outcome of this salesmeeting.

How'd your self limiting beliefs impact the actions you took or did not take? So they don't even know how to frame up the coaching questions that develop the soft skills. So often it's around the tactics, which as you and I know are important. However, it is the soft skills that help you with the consistent execution of the right selling behaviors and to

Catherine06:53

learn how to self-reflect, to learn to.

To deconstruct something, whether you win or lose, and get to a place where you canself-assess. What was I believing when I was doing that? What was I thinking? What mighthave been in my own way? I feel like I've trained myself to do that more, but it's because Iam surrounded with, I have personal friendships who are executive coaches.

It's their language, tearing them use what questions and how questions and the framingof things that I have imported in my own life. It's not because I was trained to sell that way.So I just think it's so wonderful that you can help people learn how to help others practiceas opposed to having this be simply a good.

Colleen07:44

And that's where it kinda lay, It's in the theory world, and if you can't apply it, it's maybe not even due to lack of, um, awareness or belief system or buy-in. They simply don't knowhow to teach and coach it. And, and you just mentioned something very important, Katherine, is the self-reflection. So this is not a new concept, uh, for heaven's sakes.

How much more do we need to talk about mindfulness and meditation and the positive outcomes from it? But I do believe this is where you have to examine your belief systems because if you believe carving out quiet time each and every day, preferably in the morning will improve your day, will improve your professional outlook, your personal outlook, you will absolutely take the time, but until you change that belief system.

You are not going to take the time to self reflect. And so as you well know with all thetraining you've had, that what you're not aware of you cannot change. And that whatyou're not aware of, you're bound to repeat. So we're on these just, you know, salestreadmills going to nowhere because often we're repeating the same selling mistakes.

It's so

Catherine08:49

true. So for our audience that knows some of these aspects of emotional intelligence,let's, let's give them our categories for this. Okay. So we discussed that there are fiveareas, maybe there's a better word than areas. So please correct me on this. I'm talkingabout the categories of self-perception, uh, self, self expression.

Interpersonal decision making and stress management. The assessment I'm most familiarwith is called the eqi 2.0. Those are the five categories that the subscales are under,where you get mapped after you take this assessment. What would we call them besidesareas, is, what's the correct word for that?

Colleen09:28

Uh, I think you've got it.

That's the same assessment we use with clients, and they're called subscales. You cancall them, uh, composites, uh, attributes. Uh, but your, all the language adds up to the.Okay, great. Okay, great. So

Catherine09:41

what we want our listener to understand is that all the things a person is measured in, sonot just empathy.

Empathy is one subscale in the five and under the five. So there there's several things thatgo into self-perception, several things that go into self-expression, several things that go into interpersonal. And so, When I read the book, you know I read, you have mapped what you think are the most important, some of the most important traits that a person can practice to grow in their emotional intelligence, to be successful in selling.

And I agreed with all the ones you picked. I thought. I thought they were super interesting.I'm so bullish about beliefs that I think the things that fall under the category of selfperception are actually my favorite. I would say for most people, this is what I'm noticingwith my client. Now, to be fair, it might be confirmation bias.

Like I already think this, so I'm looking for it. It's, you know, seeing it in people, but I feellike what you believe is possible for yourself and what you believe about selling and thatthat internal. Dialogue you have in your own brain is the driver for the actions that we takeor the actions we avoid.

And so I'm always preaching about this in my talks. It's the essence of my keynote calledHow Good Human Cell is Noticing the Common. Stories we tell and how we get in our ownway and why we don't do our follow up. It's because we decide for other people, becausewe are believing the story we're making up.

So I, I would like to make the case that the things under self-perception are the mostimpactful, but that's a pretty grand sweeping statement. So I wanna give you a chance torespond to that.

Colleen11:20

Well actually, when we are working with clients that desire to build a more emotionallyintelligent sales organization, we start with that composite and the key skill beingemotional self-awareness.

Because just like I said earlier, that what you're not aware of, you cannot change. Andunderneath self-awareness and and understanding why you do things, not do things atthis. We live in the knowledge age, so we've got more information to be good people,smart people, wise people, skinny people. So , it's no longer lack of knowledge.

It's understanding why we're not doing the behaviors that we know will produce betterhappiness and outcomes here. So that often under self-awareness. Examining your selflimiting belief systems because you know what you believe will direct the actions you takeor don't take. It will direct the skills you learn, apply and study.

And so let's take for example, our current, um, environment. We've got record highinflation, gas prices, looming, recession, recession, you know, the list goes on. And whatI'm talking to a lot of my sales teams about and sales leaders about is. Actually your beliefsystem would be this is a terrible time to sell.

Nobody's gonna switch vendors. The only way they're gonna buy is on price. My belief, and it's based on going through four financial downturns. So, uh, listeners, I'm a hundred years old, Pay attention . So my experience, but it's also been based on my belief system, is that this can be the best time to sell because in good times, Companies are flush with cash in good times.

Uh, companies are almost getting a little arrogant. They're starting to believe their ownpress because of their success. So why should I consider other vendors, other ideas,recommendations in tough times? There is no one that's the smartest person in the room.Therefore the smart companies will be open to new conversations and this can be thebest time to be prospecting.

That's by belief system, which has led to me taking the actions not to be fearful duringthese times because I believe people are more open, smart organizations, and I work withsmart organizations as you do. Love

Catherine13:31

that. You're making me think about how, So I had a program that I was offering that was a12 module.

Sales training system that I developed. The first half's on belief second half is on what youand I might think of as the how-tos of the sales tactics. And nobody was signing up for myclass in May of 2020 , as

Colleen13:53

you might imagine. Oh, wasn't that a fun time? Yeah, right. So it

Catherine13:57

was, But I think of that adage that says necessity was the mother of invention.

And what happened is I started signing up for every personal develop. Inexpensive or free seminar from people I respected that I could possibly find because I, I have a small staff, but I have employees that count on me and I did not want to tell them I could not pay them, and I did not want to make a change and I had to figure something out.

And so, but bringing this up, this context, I also wanna share that it was an investment inmy own personal development to increase my belief that I was after because I thought, Iknow I have. A creative mechanism that's integrity. Selling calls it your creativemechanism. I know I have a creative mechanism.

I know that I have in me the ability to invent and to. Be flexible and to have us evolve the way we need to, to respond for such a time as this, because people needed more help selling virtually not less. It was a matter of just figuring out the right offer, but I was doing everything I could to work on me and my personal habits because I wanted to get to where I believe people like us do things like this.

Like I wanted to get to where it was. So second nature for me to, to truly believe I can figure this out. My team matters. Smart people, we can figure this out, right? And it was sointeresting to watch that all you need, this is distress management, right? But all you needis a little bit of duress and you start to see what people are really made of.

And I'm not saying that in a self congratulatory way, I'm confessing. I worked really diligently. I mean, I was not, it was not natural for me to. Stay super calm, not let the cortisol run through my body, and to invent and create calmly. I had to, I had to be very deliberate about that. But I just watched people throw up their hands and even have sales calls with me where they would say they were a big enough company.

They would say, You know, my guys aren't great selling virtually, and we're just used to bein front of people and basically we have enough distributors in what we sell that we'reprobably just gonna write. I literally had a CEO tell me that, and I thought, How did I evengo on this call? I should have pre-qualified it better.

This is a waste of my time, because they weren't trying to grow and change through thatexperience. Right, And it ties all the way back to both stress management and beliefsunder self perception.

Colleen16:19

Right. Right. Well, if I had to unpack what you just share, so number one, you had highself-awareness that you had a stuck point, right?

Because again, that what you're not aware of you cannot change. However, you also hadenough under this same composite of self regard and self regard is the ability to admityour strengths and weaknesses. And so you are sitting there going, You know what? I'mconfident. But I got a blind spot here. I need some help getting over this blind spot.

So then you applied because of your awareness, a competency of stress tolerance. Andpeople that manage stress well are resilient. They're gritty. They take charge. They takecontrol, they take action. So if I had to unpack your story, I am seeing three EQ skills atplay here. Hmm. Self-awareness. I got a blind spot.

I'm not gonna beat myself up, but I'm gonna take action. And that's what allowed you tocontinue to be highly successful and where you are today.

Catherine17:19

Thank you. I thank you for that. I think that's true. It wasn't executed perfectly, but I thinkthat that's true. And what I learned also, now let's

Colleen17:26

talk about perfection.

Perfection is overrated. Progress is not, And so what you did was probably just keptprogressing  towards perfection. That's right. And I learned

Catherine17:36

a lot about myself in the category of decision making because what I learned is that I. Iwill, I want input. I want input to come to me, and then I make a decision.

I need to, to ride that course for a while and, and, and, and give it time because I can be easily distracted. I can wait to try to get too much input. And it's like, you know what? You're the leader. You make a decision, like make a decision and go with it. People will follow you if you show them where we're going.

And it's, it's back to that storytelling. Metaphor, we were talking before we startedrecording about the hero and the guide and this idea that the salesperson is a guide. AndI'm a guide internally to the people inside my company. I'm a guide to clients when I sell,and so sometimes, um, we definitely don't wanna let.

The perfect, the enemy of the good. Right. Where it's like we're gonna Yeah. Keep goingand evolve and, and figure this

Colleen18:29

out. Well, you know, and I think to your point with decision making that as a compositewith a subscales underneath it, problem solving impulse control. Again, it was yourawareness. And you had the awareness that, gosh, sometimes during tough times, shinyobject syndrome can take over.

Well, let's try this idea. Let's try this idea. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, there are times to gather data and then there are times just to move. And if you didn't make the right decision, learn the lesson. Make the course correction move forward. So again, that's what I'm hearing with your story there. You gathered the data, but you became aware of where you could have analysis paralysis or you could have shiny object in a syndrome andboth do not end well, by the way,

So again, but that's, that goes back to that first composite of self-perception, no die cellself. But if you don't carve out the time for reflection, I don't know how to tell any of yourlisteners. There's just no shortcut to improving self-awareness other than carving out the.So what does

Catherine19:30

that look like?

Not people like you and me that say yes to the things we wanna say yes to and no to the things that we wanna say no to. Right? Like if people, like people who are entrepreneurs who create their own schedule, in my opinion, have no excuse. Because that's either about awareness or they're just not ready to commit for whatever it is, right?

Mm-hmm. , if I don't make time for revenue generating activities, it's nobody's fault but mine. If I say yes to too podcast, it's nobody's fault but mine, I have to take responsibility. Mm-hmm.  an employee who has a quota or they literally are in a culture that says you haveto make X calls a day, who would you say to them, and, and, and hopefully you have a chance to coach their manager, but what if,

Colleen20:12

what if you don't?

What would you say to. Well with the BDR or any role account executives, you know the number one tool that will allow you to get the activity done, and maybe it's being dictated by the company. Okay? Let's say it's being dictated. What activity you can do is calendar blocking and I now, if you take a look at calendar blocking, it's been around since the beginning of time.

Steven Covey is really the one gets a lot of credit for this. You know, you've got lots of other productivity experts. I am still amazed at how many salespeople do not calendar, block their calendar. I mean, I think they wake up and they just go to work. I calendar block my entire week. It takes about 45 minutes to 60 minutes to do that.

That's called delayed gratification. That's controlling the impulse to just jump in. So it'sthe difference between delayed gratification instant. Now, if you needed to report to yourmanager, what you would have to do is slow down to speed up, and you start. Reallyanalyzing your business. Hey, I made 10 outreaches that were quality versus 25 that werecrap.

And you show the manager I made 10. They were quality because I customized my valueproposition to the message, to the persona. All those fancy weirds we use in tacticaltraining, and look what my outcome was. Well, the manager is not gonna care if you gotthe same or better results from 10 versus 25 activities.

But we don't know how to sell up to the manager because we're not slowing down andanalyzing our business. It's called slow down to speed up. Have the awareness again,where instant gratification is getting in the way of delayed gratification. Yeah. Yes. Yes.

Catherine21:53

And do you think that that is more about a person not doing it because they literally havenot had the time block modeled, so they just really don't know, So it's not like they'remaking an intelligent choice?

Or do you think that comes back to deserving this and belief too, that somehow theydon't believe that they enjoy to, they, you know, deserve to experience that muchsuccess. And if I would actually get my act together and get that organized, I would. Anew height in the quota that I exceed in the money I make.

Colleen22:22

I do believe this is an activity. You must do it before you can change your belief system.Now I'm one of these people that frankly, I'm a pretty good student. So if I see somebodyelse being successful and they tell me to do this, I do it. Okay, me too,

Catherine22:35

. I don't wanna reinvent the wheel.

Colleen22:36

That's crazy. I know what, But there are some individuals that literally what you have tocoach them on is do this activity and it will change their belief.

Because their belief right now is I don't have time. Um, I've gotta be busy, not product. Um, they see their emails filling up, so they, they do the multitasking, which again, we all know multitasking doesn't work. So a lot of this is examining what makes me believe that taking 45 minutes of calendar blocking and then honoring the calendar is not going to produce the outcomes I want.

And so it's a little bit of both, is, you know, change the belief system or do the activity tochange the belief system. This is reminding

Catherine23:17

me I have different. Big time motivational speakers, people that are paid hundred K, 200 k,I don't even know what the upper limit is of, you know, big, big copies. 50,000 person.

I like to follow those folks and listen to how they interview on podcasts and what they say. And one recent example of this where I thought, let's not reinvent the wheel. This gentleman was talking about how he actually always takes the time to fly in the day beforeto see the room. And then has a whole pre-talk ritual that he goes through where he visualizes being there.

And it has an extensive visualization practice. And I'll tell you, Colleen, I just, you know,years ago, would've thought that was just too woo woo, too silly. I've had success withdoing the visualization. So now I watched someone like that and I think, Well, I'm not beingpaid a hundred thousand dollars.

Give a keynote . And they are, and I, I need to learn from this. Right? Like, would yourather be right? Or would you rather get better? Right? And I use right in air quotes for ourlisteners, right? Mm-hmm. , like you can be right about that for yourself, but you're notgonna grow and change. And so, yeah, I think that's so interesting.

So what else would we say? What else would you say about, I guess to our, this will be to our sales managers who are listening. What else about teachability? What are other EQ traits that we're looking for? You know, with that teachability and, and, and how can we use this in finding the right people? Cause sometimes, Someone new comes in the company and they've got a group of people that actually are not that flexible or that open or that teachable.

So how does, what does

Colleen24:51

EQ have to do with that? Well, that's where, again, under the same composite ofself-perception, I coach a lot of my sales managers to interview and vet for asalesperson's self regard. And again, as we slightly mentioned before, that's the ability toadmit your strengths and weaknesses.

Now, Testing for learning is another aptitude, and we can talk about that in a minute, buthere's why self regard is so important. I think all of us have had it, uh, the experiencewhere you were giving feedback to a salesperson, you were doing it perfectly. You know,we like to call it the sandwich method.

Something positive, the area of improvement. Wrap it up with something positive.Somebody that doesn't have great inner confidence is. Confidence. They tend to getdefensive. They start deflecting. They become really professionals at putting it back onyou. Now, this emotionally triggers a sales manager. So then they start backing off.

They become passive aggressive or aggressive in their coaching. And the bottom line is no behavior changes. So with people that have high self regard, they tend to be coachable. They're raise their hand people, they're saying, You know what? I need to own this one. I didn't do the pre-call planning. I didn't practice enough or frankly, As you're getting better in life and anything you are going to take, some face plants are going to fail.

Yeah, high regard. People sit there and go, Okay, I failed. What's the lesson learned hereand how will this lesson serve me moving forward? So they've got a belief system thatfailure really serves them well. So they're optimistic. Now on the learning side, I don't thinksales managers are vetting candidates enough for their aptitude and attitude towardslearning.

This is problematic because the world is changing. Your business in six months is going tobe different in another six months. And so if you don't have somebody that wants to learn,likes to learn. I gotta tell you, they're like a car. Right after you've hired 'em, they startdepreciating because they're not growing and improving.

They don't have any desire to, So that's something, again, it's a soft skill that we need tovet pretty heavily for in the interview process. I'm struck as you're

Catherine26:56

talking about this, I'm thinking about the last couple of years and how I think peoplethought I need, I need video communication classes. I need.

To learn to sell without going face to face. I need the, And I'm not dismissing people whoteach those things because they do need those things also. But there was more to it,right? What if everybody who thought I needed this tactical training, instead of learning tospeak right into the zoom, like I am now staring in the circle, right?

Mm-hmm. . So it looks like I'm looking at you, you look like you're looking at me, but really we're looking at the circle. Yes, that's important, but. What if, What if people had doubled down on their emotional intelligence training ? What would've happened? And do you know people who did? Maybe without naming names, but you know, do you have an example of where that served them?

Because that feels to me like, Oh, that. Those traits are what would get you throughbecause you would have that creativity and you would be adaptable and you

Colleen27:59

could evolve. Absolutely. So it was interesting when everyone started getting, as I call it,wrapped around the axle, uh, virtual selling, right? And I was sitting there and I'm just oneof these very pragmatic people and remember, I'm a hundred years old,

And so I finally just started sharing with my clients a question, or, or maybe it was a statement. I said, You know, virtual selling is not new. And I, and they would go, What do you mean? I said, Virtual selling has been around forever. If you picked up the phone and called someone and closed a piece of business over the phone, that is virtual selling.

And just by sharing that story, people go. Huh. And I said methodology, Goodmethodology works regardless of the media. So we were teaching, you know, someuniversities years ago, uh, they were doing online sales calls before online becamepopular. We taught the same exact methodology to them as I did my face to face accountexecutives.

So what we had to do was change their belief system. Virtual selling isn't that mysterious.It's not that scary. There are some, you know, skills you need to learn, change andimprove to be more effective. But I just, I was not buying into. Limiting belief that this isjust brand new . So I've, I love that. No, I think that you're right.

It comes back to beliefs

Catherine29:25

again, right? It comes back to beliefs again. Like, well, what if you were to shift this? Whatif you were actually to believe that you have already done that in a different way? So this isan iteration of something that you've already done. Instead of a new thing, you must nowgo tackle on top of homeschool.

Your three kids and

Colleen29:43

everything else. Well, and let's talk about that because one of the things you had to shiftwith people is, okay, you literally only have maybe five or six hours a day because you'rehome schooling. That was the reality. Now what can you do to control that? Well, this iswhere you get fanatical about being productive.

You get fanatical about prioritizing. You get really good at saying no to when you, you know, disqualifying prospects that are never going anywhere. And literally, if you read, uh, some of Ke Newport's work, he's, uh, the author of Deep Work. He will talk about you as ahuman being, can really only do about four to five hours of deep work every day.

So instead of feeling guilty as a. You know what? Figure out those four to five hours andwork it. But that's a belief system you. So

Catherine30:33

for my audience, I promise I didn't tell Colleen Police come say belief system over andover . It's just that we are, we really are like-minded about this and that so much doescome back to this.

And it reminds me, I had a pastor years ago who would say there's nothing as practical as a good theology. And I think similarly, you think you're talking about something that's esoteric or philosophical, It's like, no, it's actually. Everything. It's very practical because when you can slow down and notice that story you're telling yourself, you can catch yourself in the act and you can choose differently.

But when you are on autopilot, then that stress management flies out the window and youmove into avoidant or talking too much on sales calls or whatever is your habit and yourgo to, because you kind of temporarily lose your mind. I'm saying that you knowmetaphorically, but you're not. You're not actually.

Practicing the agency that you have as a human being because you either don't know orhaven't

Colleen31:31

been taught. Right, And you know, and this is why, emotional self-awareness under whichbelief systems rest, you know, being aware of the stories, but you know, self-awareness isthe mega skill in EQ to be aware of when you're not being assertive, stating what you neednicely.

And when you don't stay what you need nicely, you end up writing practice proposals, being aware of when you're not, um, really engaging in delayed gratification. So you never become skillful at sales, you're. Kind of average, but you never achieve unconscious competence. Right? Uh, being aware of when you're playing the victim card instead of being accountable to say, No, I need to own this one.

And so it is such an important skill to continue to develop. Uh, but again, it goes back to that practice of carving out quiet time to think. And then I would also say to your point, surround yourself by some really good. Individuals that truly have your back. They're the truth tellers. And they'll say, You know, I, I gotta tell you, Catherine, on this one, I'm gonna disagree with you.

You know, I'm, I'm very lucky that I am married to a truth teller. And I would, and I think my husband Jim, would say the same for me because we will call each other on behavior, but we have enough respect for each other that will sit and think and go, you know, He's right.Or there's times I'll go, No, we're gonna disagree on this one, but it's okay.

We're at least having the truth telling conversations. Yes, and this

Catherine32:55

is my, my least favorite subscale on the Eqi is reality test.

Colleen33:02

. One of my favorite

Catherine33:03

is that it's so interesting, The reason I would say it's my least favorite is because I thinkthat it requires other people in the way that you're saying now.

That's the way you get around it to me, and that when I say get around it, it's, I don't meanthat, Let me start over. Reality testing to me is because you are self reporting on these assessments. If you're not good at it, I don't know how you fill out the questions to show itto, to show that you need work on it, because it is.

To some extent, it's like capital tea truth and small tea truth. It's like, mm-hmm. , my reality I'm experiencing is the reality I'm experiencing. And so I think people really strugglewith this, and to me it just is one of the hardest things to measure, I guess is the point I'm making. But if you take this in community with other people and you ask for people to weigh in, I think it can get closer to what is really reality.

So that

Colleen33:57

gets to the company and things. And, and I think a way to improve reality testing. And let'smove a little bit from a, just looking at sales from that very tactical point of view. This iswhen, if you will, slow down and do an informal, you know, if your company's not payingfor formal, informal win loss analysis.

You will start seeing the reality of where you're putting opportunities into a pipeline thatshouldn't have been there. Yeah. Your optimism got in the way, frankly, because youhaven't been consistently prospecting. You're just kind of putting anything in the pipeline.Yeah. So sometimes if you'll slow down now that does take a person that has self-esteemthat can say, You know what?

I need to own this. So that's sometimes a way that you can bring reality testing is simply,you know, looking at some of the numbers in your pipeline. But then it does takeownership to own. That's

Catherine34:45

very practical. I like that. Mm-hmm. , that's very good. Before we wrap up, I wanna be sureto ask and give a chance for my listeners to know those who haven't read the book.

What else would you like to say about some of the key elements that you see in starperformers? What are other aspects of emotional intelligence that you see in spades? I

Colleen35:03

would say with star performers that some of that we've talked about self-awareness, selfregard, they do possess empathy, but they possess it in the right degree because toomuch empathy.

You let people off the hook. You feel sorry for your prospects, your customers you tend todiscount. So we have to kind of kick that one in. Check. I would say delayed gratificationskills, optimism has been proven that it will make you money there. Um, but let's talkabout some things even outside of e.

Work. Work is never old fashion. And you know, it seems, and I think what we have to becareful, and this is where I'd say reality testing comes into play. You know, in our day andage, often we see the glory of successful people, but we never know the story. And thestory is generally years and hours of hard work there.

And so I still see some of my top producers. They have really put in the work, and I really coach a lot of young sellers on this because they're being given this message and I don't know where they're getting it. Like, I need work-life balance. And I'm gonna be really blunthere. You're 20 or 30, you haven't even worked long enough to worry about this.

So work right now, because the research shows you can be your most creative, you've gotthe most energy in your 20 and thirties, and then when you have built up your territory,your customers, your e. You can let the, your foot off the gas a little bit. Yeah. But be,that's reality testing. There are times and seasons in your life.

You are going to be wildly outta balance. Quit stressing about it. Yeah. You're going to getback in balance. Yes. I have very balance, you know, life now mine's, my schedule's a littlecrazy this fall and that's, that's on me. But for the most part, I'm picking and choosingwho I wanna work. That didn't happen 20 years ago.

Okay. Yeah. I'm

Catherine36:47

getting to that place too. Yeah. And I'm grateful. I'm grateful for that. But I get asked by a lot of women entrepreneurs, especially those that have really small kids, cuz they wanna know. You know, should I get a nanny? Should I, should I get help with, with my children now so that they're thinking if I get help now, maybe I can actually help with pick up later.

Maybe I'll be available because my business could be at a point where I could let my footoff the gas a little. Or they're, they're feeling bad, like they wanna be available and sothey're thinking maybe I'll wait and defer and, you know, and, and make myself available tomy family most of the time now.

And then I'll grow that later. And my advice typically, of course people are all different, butmy advice typically is get those skills and figure out what you're really good at as early as you can. I don't think a person only has, you know, a limited number of gifts. I don't think you have a fixed calling that's gonna be the same your whole life.

I think you have chapters of your life, right? But everybody needs skills. So one thing I'vekept communicated to, you know, these young women is I said, Look, I put in eight yearsin c. On the plane, traveling, making presentations, attending sales methodology training,learning enterprise complex sales as an account manager.

And I did that and I did the reps and made the mistakes. And you know what? Now I have stories for my book.

Colleen38:08

great because

Catherine38:09

I wrote the proposal that was should not have been sent and got outsold in differentsituations, like I learned the hard way. Through that process though, I learned that I waspretty good at cold calling.

And that the lead generation piece on the front side was something that I actually enjoyedand in fact enjoy it more than this, what I would call the second half of the sales process.It's still true to this day. I like the qualifying and early relationship building. That's fun forme. Well, that led to my first business, right?

Because I realized, oh my gosh, people will pay you to do this for them because they hate cold calling. Everybody has things like that, you know? Right. You, if you learn this is your niche in accounting, right? Or you learn this kind of law, or you, whatever it is, right? If you learn these things, you'll have freedom later, and that is about practice.

Colleen38:59

It's and, and practice is about being clear. I think it's being clear on your goal, and it's alsoputting in the work to earn the reward that's delayed gratification. And that's an EQ skill. Itis kind of under the same umbrellas in the EQI 2.0, the impulse control. You know, I amsomeone that has practiced a lot.

I have, uh, I, when I got started in this business, I was really struggling the first year. And here I'd been a VP of sales, a fast growing company. You know, I had all the, you know, you got the resume. And a really good mentor of mine gave me great advice. He saw that Iwas getting a little stressed. He said, Clay, we're gonna change your.

And here's your goal. I want you to get to a hundred no's as fast as you can. Now, of course, I thought, Well, I can certainly hit that goal  because I'm well on my way. And then the second piece of advice was he said, Because by the time you reach a hundred no's, you'll heard. Every story, excuse stall. And then he said, When you come back from a sales call, get coaching.

So if it doesn't go well get coaching. So that's what I did. I may not have gotten the quote business, but I got the lesson and I would get on the phone with a mentor and say, Well, the person said this, what should I have said? Then I would know what to say and then I'd go out and do it again. So, yeah, like I said, there's no shortcut to success there.

Everybody's life is theirs. So, you know, I'm saying twenties and thirties, but you knowwhat? If you want to take a break, There is going to be plenty of time to be successful. Solook at your life and at the end of it, are you gonna be looking back and saying, I'm reallyhappy with the choices I made?

Catherine40:32

Yes, and I think one thing that we share is a lot for selling.

I mean, there will always be a need for great sellers and I, I do think that it's really cool. Some people find it very scary, but I think I call. This, it's like a challenge to look and say, you know, in marketing automation, when so much can be automated and oh my gosh, theAI tools that can write for you, now you pick the voice you want it to be in and you give it, you know, give it some templates and say, This is what I want it to sound like me.

The stuff it can produce as a machine instead of a person. It's amazing. I mean, we'll justkeep seeing advances like this. I think though, There will be, there'll be opportunities inplaces for people who want to love other people and serve other people through sales.And what we sell will be different and what it will look like will be different.

But I believe it'll require emotional intelligence. It'll require something. There'll be things that humans can do for decades to come that it, that, that machines will not be able to re. Perfectly. And so I agree with you. I think if you, you know, you could sit out for a season, have it look differently, but one of my personal missions is to reform the way people think about selling so that they see it as a dignified, honorable, wonderful way to get to that aspirational identity you have for yourself.

Why is it that you're working? What is it that you want? Mm-hmm. , Um, you know, I'm in astage of life where I have adult children who are starting. Pair off and you know, beforelong they'll start having their families. And I have a pretty clear vision of what I want mygrandma life to look like. I mean, I really do.

You know, and, and, and, and, and the means that it will take to do the things that I want to be able to do for them and that. As a driver, that really makes me trickle all the way down to the daily revenue generating activities. Did I make my calls? Did I do my follow up? Did it make it to my calendar? Did I do, you know, win loss review for myself?

How is the health of my pipeline? I can really make that connection and see that becauseI've practiced practic, practiced seeing how those reps tie to that

Colleen42:43

bigger. Absolutely. And you know, and that's what's interesting where I think whyemotional intelligence was so intriguing to me. I saw so many hard working salesmanagers and sales people, and.

Because they didn't have the knowledge of the soft skills. Uh, again, that repetition of, youknow, coaching someone the wrong way, or not individualizing the coaching or making theselling mistakes, but not realizing that it was a soft skill, holding them back. And so, youknow, I saw a lot of salespeople and managers making boatloads of money and terriblyunhappy and.

Uh, you know, in life we should be in a, uh, and this is a fun profession. I mean, my clients, I take it very seriously. My clients are my friends, but I have fun and I am not gonna be in this business not having fun. However, when you've got the complete set of skills, so the soft skills and the hard skills, That's when sales becomes fun, that's when it becomes enjoyable.

That's when it becomes easy. And so, um, yeah, that's my mission at this point is, youknow, really creating these communities out there where, you know, people. Like eachother. They play well. They have fun together. They're making good money. And you knowwhat, If you're worried about making a lot of money, then donate it.

There's a lot of non-profits that can use your dollars. So , So get up for that. Yeah. And uh,so my, my mission at this point is, yes, I know you're going to make the dollars if you learn EQ and. And, but I also know you're going to have a more enjoyable, fulfilled life. You're gonna be a happier person. You're gonna be a person that people want to be around.

Yes. And at the end of the day, I think that's what counts. My friend,

Catherine44:22

um, Drew Bird that administered my eqi assessment, he likes to say this quote where hesays, There's no one in your life. Who wouldn't be happy with you improving youremotional intelligence, . Everyone in your whole life would be happy for you to do this.

I love that quote, like personal, professional. It's where it all kind of bleeds. Bleeds out toother

Colleen44:45

things, right? Oh, it absolutely does. I mean, when you really study, even the concept ofemotion management, which comes into under all of this, is, you know, you just, uh, whenyou develop your emotional intelligence, you don't get that triggered.

You don't wake up looking to be offended If somebody does offend you, you think of the saying, Well treat others the way they should be treated, not the way they deserve to be treated. And you're not having these highs and lows. And I see a lot of people, they're just like a rollercoaster and, you know, At the end of the day, mentally they're depleted.

And the other thing, and I'm starting to talk more about this physically, they're not veryhealthy. And so, you know, they're sitting there, as you mentioned earlier, they got cortisolpumping through, um, stress, uh, inflames your body. It, uh, fatigues you, you're notsleeping well. And so pretty soon, um, that catches up with you.

This is, this has got some physical implications to it as well. If you don't learn how to raisethe, uh, uh, EQ quotient in your.

Catherine45:45

Oh my gosh. I want everyone to know you have a book for sales managers that you hadcome out in 2020 in addition to the one I referenced earlier. So please mention that andthen tell people where to

Colleen45:57

find you.

Yeah. So, uh, thank you for that. The book title is Emotional Intelligence for Sales Leadership. So this is written for sales managers. The first part of the book is really on how to hire. Emotionally intelligent salespeople. So how to incorporate that into your hiringand interviewing process. And then the next section of the book is how to really apply EQ skills in your coaching approaches with your team.

And then the final part of the book is really having them understand how people learn. Youknow, the neuroscience behind learning repetition, why focus is so important. Get rid ofthe multi-tasking, be present. And, uh, so yeah, it's, and we've gotten really nice reviewson it, so I encourage everyone to pick it up.

Amazon's probably the easiest place to go. If your listeners pick up the book, have 'em,email me and I'll send the book study guide . So we've got a book study guide for both.Oh, that'll be great.

Catherine46:50

So we'll put your email in the. In the call notes so people have access to that. Thank youfor that. And I want to mention again, to the group the emotional intelligence for salessuccess.

Your first book is for everyone and I, a lot of my listeners, Colleen, are, um, owner sellers.Mm-hmm. , they're small businesses, entrepreneurs. They sell complex B2B things, butthey're getting better at it for their own business, for themself. They all need to read thatthis is, this is them. And then I have not read the second one.

But I'm thinking of several clients who will benefit from it. So I will get it, read it so that I can recommend it, and I'll be sending it out to some of the clients who pay me for sales training. Cause they have, you know, they have people under their care that they need to get better at coaching and they want to, they just, they don't know how.

And also they're not many people that are teaching people to be good sales managers. There is a, people just get promoted into this role and there's not a lot of good, good training on how to do it. So I know of a handful of people in the whole world that I. Are really leaders in teaching people how to do this and, and so I'm really honored to have oneof them here.

Oh, thank you. Is there anything else that you wanna share before we sign off?

Colleen47:58

Uh, you know, if they go to our website, uh, sales leadership development.com, we've gota couple of free quizzes and free assessments they can take. And so I'd encourage themto pick those up and that can maybe get 'em started on the journey.

Mm-hmm. . So great.

Catherine48:12

So great. So follow Colleen. And like let us know. She'll, we'll share her email address andwe can figure out how to help people go from there, because there's no one in our lives, , as my friend Drew would say no in our lives and won't be happy if we improve ouremotional intelligence and a party maker.

Make us more money as well.

Colleen48:31

Absolutely. Yeah. More money. Easily and happier. Mm-hmm. ? Absolutely. Thank you somuch. Thank you. All right. Thank you.

Catherine48:37

I'm so glad you joined us. If you would like me to come and speak with your organizationabout how to sell like a good human, please contact me through the website, how goodhumans sell.com.

Thanks and talk with you again.