In the last 100 years, perhaps there has never been a time than the last 18 months, when resilience building for sales organisations and sales leaders became a shriller clarion call. With most organizations and people getting impacted by Covid-19, the R Factor (R for Resilience) mattered the most to ensure leadership effectiveness in the sales domain. However, it must be noted that to ensure continuous leadership effectiveness, resilience cannot be merely event based. It has to be “leadership lifestyle” based.

To be effective and successful, it is imperative that sales leaders do the following on a continuous “leadership lifestyle” basis under each of the 3 components of resilience:

1. Belief systems:

• Proactively make meaning from the experience of team-mates related to their personal goals in the context of organizational goals and get involved in supporting people to achieve their goals.  This surely is compassion in action.
• Sales is a domain where success and failure are the two sides of the same coin. Maintain and communicate a positive outlook. Help the sales organisation as a whole, as well as individuals; find hope, and identify and work towards realising new opportunities.
• Take a leading role in finding transcendence for the organisation and its employees. Provide inspiration, define routes towards transformation, and do whatever is possible to support individuals to achieve growth.

2. Organisational processes:

• Be a proponent for flexibility for employees, showing an openness to novel ways of working, acknowledging and accepting newer ways of relating and connecting to people.
• Focus and build connectedness, with individual team members and reporting groups. Give and encourage mutual support, show respect for personal experiences, and recognise the strains and stress of balancing new ways of working with team members’ possibly very stressful family situations from time to time.
• Help, where possible, to mobilise organisational resources to support team members and their families. Build networks of team members that are able to offer each other mutual support. If needed, and feasible, offer financial security and even direct financial support.

3. Communication processes:

• Be very clear and totally consistent in organisational communications, and clarify ambiguous information quickly, especially where team members are feeling high levels of anxiety about any unclear messages.
• Be brave and behave with open emotional expressions. Share your own pain, respond empathically to team members’ pain and loss, tolerate differences in the way people respond to loss – and don’t forget to offer respite too, with appropriate humour and expressions of happiness when justified.
• Reinforce what ought already to be within the mainstream organisational culture of collaborative problem solving. Brainstorm, share decision-making in appropriate ways, emphasise a democratic ethos, agree and focus on goals, and plan together with team members.
• Make timely and decisive decisions to bring change as organizations that suffer from “decision paralysis” rarely move forward.

Many studies have indicated the importance of resilience as both an individual and leadership trait. Resilience in sales leaders brings about a transformation in the way a sales organisation operates and prepares for the future. It alleviates suffering, builds trust and loyalty, and positions the organisation exceptionally well for facing future challenges. For a sales leader who is trying to be more resilient, an improvement on even a few of the bulleted points above will help.

This blog has been written by Meena Murugappan, Associate Partner at GrowthSqapes.

Today, customers do not buy products and services only. They buy experiences. According to recent studies, businesses collectively lose billions in revenue per year due to one unfortunate reason: poor customer service, leading to poor customer experience. The revenue figure quoted above has increased by almost 50 percent from just two years back which is pointing to a problem that is only getting worse as time goes on. These days, when customer experience is the veritable Fourth Industrial Revolution it isn’t enough to simply respond quickly to customer inquiries and offer guidance whenever possible. For delivering a memorable customer experience, we need to create a true, emotional connection with people and use customer service as a way to hone and strengthen it. In this continuum, our own customer centricity and ownership plays a major role.

For delivering a unique customer experience, emotional intelligence in terms of customer service comes into play – something that can not only improve our efforts, but also create a new competitive advantage for us in a wide range of ways that are worth exploring.

Why EI matters in customer service

We need to start thinking of customer service as more than just a utility-based interaction. When we think about service just as a client question to be answered, we lose out on multiple potential opportunities.  When we don’t, we are able to leverage those very opportunities. When customers make direct contact with our brand, they do it for a reason. It is this reason which offers us opportunities that we need to use to our advantage; through emotional intelligence.

Let’s look at 4 simple ways in which we can use emotional intelligence to deliver a unique customer experience

Empathy: empathy is the ability and the mindset to get into the customer’s shoes. It is the hall mark of understanding our customers. In many ways, success in this regard begins and ends with our ability and attitude to care about the person we are speaking to and the issue they are having. “Compassion” is a trait that should be a crucial requirement for anyone in the organization who has the potential to make contact with a customer, regardless of whether they’re technically in customer service or not. Furthermore, we incessantly need to look for reasons to care about our customers.

Building trust : In business, customers mean everything. They are the most important revenue drivers and our brand image builders. Ergo, what our customers think about us can affect practically everything. It is owing to this, that building customer trust makes all the difference. It is noteworthy that while relationships between businesses and customers are quite different from interpersonal connections, most of the core foundations are actually quite similar. Trust and respect are cornerstones of customer decision-making and using emotional intelligence to build trust , especially in an age when customers care more than ever about transparency and socially conscious practices is a critical success factor.

Listening: A strongway to leverage emotional intelligence to our advantage in terms of customer service to deliver a memorable customer experience, involves both truly and deeply listening to what our customer is experiencing and our ability to maintain a positive conduct and attitude, throughout. To be emotionally more intelligent while listening, we need to throw out “the script“, the “broken record” and treat every interaction as unique as it actually is. We need to listen empathically and search for the bigger picture – to find out what the customer’s said and unsaid needs are and what we need to do to exceed customer’s expectations by focusing on the solutions.

The key to using emotional intelligence in customer service involves raising our own self- awareness. Hence, we cannot be afraid to check in on how we are feeling. Only when are able to read and label our own emotions, we will be able to read the emotions of our customers. Building our emotional intelligence skills enables us to leverage our emotional intelligence to do more than just answer customer questions or solve customer problems efficiently. We attain a position whereby we can create better outcomes across the board, taking a standard or even negative customer experience and turning it into a positive one. Consequently, this strengthens the emotional connection we have with our customers, thus increasing their brand loyalty.

This blog has been written by Namita Singh, Consultant & Project Manager at GrowthSqapes.

Let’s start by looking at the shifts that are happening in the B2B sales domain in three areas.

The impact of these shifts has led to the following outcomes in buying behavior

1. Longer time to make purchase decision
2. Not risking changing supplier for minor improvements 
3. More complex decision-making with new considerations of multiple stakeholders’ value and impact on organisation
4. More post-purchase anxiety

While everyone agrees that the way B2B sales is being done also needs to change, let us briefly look at the milestones of how sales has evolved over the last 100 years since Patterson brought in the concept of features, benefits and scripts in 1920 when customers had no information other than what the salespeople actually explained about what the product or service did till the present scenario where new paradigms of B2B selling is emerging.

1970: Linda Richardson introduced consultative selling when competition increased and buyers became more demanding focusing more on the questions and ‘consulting’ before suggesting a ‘solution’.

1980-1990: Solution selling gained popularity when software sales started, focusing more on selling the solution to your customer’s problem instead of selling the product itself. In 1988 SPIN selling was introduced as a simpler and sharper framework of solution-selling.

2012: Insight selling was introduced for customers so overwhelmed with information that they can’t accurately diagnose their problems or find a solution. Insight salespersons act as educators, teaching customers valuable insights for introducing disruptive changes and new approach

2020: A new paradigm of selling is evolving which incorporates the best of the earlier selling practices

The salesperson needs to become adept in using remote/digital selling tools to start building credibility while building their individual “brand” using social networking sites and create value even before they engage in dialogue. Recent CEB research shows that customers despite being better informed are deeply uncertain and stressed. With an excess of data on any solution, a large team of stakeholders involved in each purchase, and a growing range of options to choose from, buying decisions have become more complex and more and more deals slow down or even stop totally. Successful B2B purchase decisions are dependent on customers’ ability to successfully navigate complex institutional change. There also lies the capability of the supplier to provide strategic solution fit and add value which competitors will find difficult to match. Much against popular belief, Harvard Business Review research shows there is a 18% decrease in purchase ease with more information piling which, in fact, makes it harder to sell. B2B sales process, in the current scenario envisages to essentially progress through the following stages which will lead to buyer purchase decision

Now let us focus on the skills required by salespersons to be effective in today’s world.

A Gartner report suggests that 58% of salesforce will remain operating virtual by the end of 2021. And as we all know; selling in a virtual environment needs a different skill-set since customers have lower attention span and it is difficult to track cues and body language, especially when there are multiple stakeholders and the need is to arrive at a consensual decision.

The virtual selling skills include:

1. Pre-call planning with clear definition of roles, expectations and discussions to anticipate and strategize roadblocks.
2. Confirm participation and meeting agenda and engaging and mobilizing support in advance among the buyer group.
3. Prepare Meeting agenda minutely with prioritized topics and engaging stakeholders during and after the meeting.
4. Use of technology/ platform and tools to create engagement and impact become very important.
5. Virtual Presentation skills to ensure a connect from anywhere.

The future-ready skills include:

• Salesperson should already have the information about the industry trends and changes and of the organisation.
• Add to what the customer already knows as customers expect salespersons to come with insights and ideas.
• Communicating impact and outcome as only15-20% of salespeople talk of solution in terms of business outcome (Forrester research).
• Accurate assessment of sales phase and how to advance the sale linked to a well-defined sales process and tracking tools.
• Emotional connect at a deeper level to enable the amplification of the buying motivators.

Overall skill-building and mindset shifts are needed in the following areas:

1. Digital tools to uncover information on buyers
2. Understanding emergent and future needs of buyers and industry
3. Building emotional connect and trust with buyers
4. Managing multiple stakeholders with divergent expectations and personal motivations
5. Positioning and communicating insights in an engaging manner
6. Business scenario building and commercial acumen

Sales is a dynamic domain and is characterised by constant evolution. To survive, sales professionals need to continuously adapt.

For a better understanding of how you can succeed in overcoming the challenges and grow sales in the current situation in your organisation, feel free to contact Growthsqapes.

This blog has been written by Mr Sandip Mitra, Associate Partner at GrowthSqapes.