MARKETING
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The rise and fall of great sales leadership Senior sales leaders lose their emotional intelligence, reveal Ben Laker and Rita Trehan
It’s a truth acknowledged in every marketing book published last year: sales are made when we appeal to a customer’s human nature. Emotional intelligence (EI) is vital, allowing the salesperson to read the emotions of other people, responding empathetically whilst simultaneously controlling and expressing their own emotions. High EI makes it easy for a customer to say “yes!”. Yet mastering its component parts – resilience, influence, communication, flexibility, empathy, creativity – is no small feat. A study of more than 28,000 professionals from nine sectors (including more than 2,800 in sales) by EI testing and training firm, JCA Global, reveals – as you might expect – that successful salespeople, on the whole, have EI scores significantly higher than average. But careers Dialogue Q2 2019