Steps to Identifying Great Sales People

Controlling Emotions

The sales prospect asks, "Why should I buy from you?" Some form of this question will happen in almost every sales call involving your sales team. At this point, your sales person has a choice: To become emotionally involved in the sales situation and tell the prospect everything they ever wanted to know about your products, services and company, or they can begin to ask business questions about why the sales prospect is interested in buying from your company - choosing to control their emotions and find out more about the sales prospect's situation.

Emotional control in the sales process doesn't refer to your sales person losing their temper and blowing up at the future prospect. The type of emotional control we're talking about is made clear by the sales person's choice to stay in control of the selling process by not coughing up free expertise to unqualified sales prospects. The old reference to sales people that says, "show up and throw up" speaks to the concept of the emotional sales person. Top executives and owners of companies can be highly vulnerable to this weakness as well, due to their passion and conviction around their companies' abilities.

In the employment screening process, Seica Systems is able to accurately identify the tendency to become emotionally involved by asking employment candidates how their sales prospects decide to make buying decisions. During the interview process, ask a sales candidate this question: "Why should we hire you?" What you hear in return will give great insight into the candidate's ability to control their emotions. The more impressive their story about themselves, the higher likelihood they tend to become emotionally involved quite easily. Often the interviewer becomes quite impressed and emotionally involved as well. Impressive sales history and track record together by no means guarantee a successful sales person. Keep in mind, the candidate is giving their best sales performance during this interview. This is why Seica Systems recommends screening each sales candidate prior to any interview.

Hiring technical staff that will be expected assist in the selling process poses the same kind of business problem. Technical staff who will be asked to demonstrate how their skills are a solution to the sales prospect's business needs also tend to be quite vulnerable to emotional involvement in that their expertise shows itself much too early in the selling process. It's a human condition that we all love to be asked what we know and, if not well-trained, we love to tell what we know even more than we love being asked. Technical staff as well as sales people should be well-aware and well-trained in the area of controlling emotions in order to be given the best chance to out-sell the business competition.