Over the past few years Ai (Artificial intelligence) or Machine Intelligence has entered the world of sales and as tech companies continue to explore how to use Ai to provide intelligence into predicting futures, analysing trends and trying to determine best options solutions it is still no substitute for Emotional Intelligence.
 
The truth is that Intelligence has always been an important aspect of sales and as exciting as Ai is, it is still only rational / calculated thought based on the IQ of the people who write the algorithms. Having this level of insight is, without doubt, valuable and can help direct sales people in the right direction, but in the world of SaaS and Business Intelligence selling, where the sale can be complexed, the sales person must engage the customer with both insight and emotion.

There are 2 parts of the brain the SaaS sales person must focus on:

The left hand side of the brain deals with the logical / rational thought processes. It concerns itself with the data and details behind the product / service such as features and benefits, price and competitors etc. The right hand side of the brain is more about the creativity and social aspects of our brain. It is more based around the wants and desires, ego, the social impact, trends, and overall how I feel about the solution. Latest research in Neuroscience has shown that 95% of all decisions are made in the Emotional / irrational part of the brain, yet too many sales people are taught the products and services in a rational features and benefits way. Value Based Selling has been taught (since the early 80's) to ask the ROI and Metric driven questions - which are needed of course, but does not make people buy.  Failure to connect with the Emotional brain often ends up with: 

• Deals becoming stuck in the pipeline
• Customer going AWOL not accepting or returning calls
• Being kept at arms length
• Customer telling you that it is on the agenda for the next board meeting (again!)

The reason behind this is because the rational part makes sense, and the ROI’s stack up, but the prospect is not emotionally engaged in the solution and therefore not motivated to proceed.

Getting your customer emotionally engaged in the solution is not as hard as it might appear, at Salecology we spend all our time in exploring how to raise peoples Emotional Intelligence to be able to read and connect with people better, but also their Social Intelligence to be able to influence peoples thoughts, decisions and actions. 

We will be sharing several hints and tips over the forthcoming weeks on how to increase your ability to engage customers and get them to say Yes.

Tips from:

• the initial connection and call,
• when is sales meetings - how to build rapport
• how to ask better, deeper more meaningful questions that uncover emotional triggers
• how to present solutions that engage the head and heart,
• how to fulfil their needs when objection handling and negotiation.
• How to get internal and external referrals

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