“Empathy? I hate that touchy feely stuff”
“Empathy? I hate that touchy feely stuff”
Study after study has shown that KEY to solid relationships, selling, leading and parenting is empathy. Indeed, empathy is the prime characteristic of great salespeople.
Empathy is the ability to feel and understand what others feel. Exercising empathy, you can appreciate things you don’t agree with … from another’s viewpoint. Specifically for a salesperson, empathy is the ability to sense, understand, and respect the customer’s perspective, ideas, and feelings. To paraphrase the old Indian proverb: “If you want to understand me, walk a hundred miles in my moccasins.”
Empathy increases your selling productivity, because it increases your INFLUENCE over others. Empathy increases influence, because it’s a pre-condition to influence. Dr. Daniel Goleman, describing his decades of studying human behavior in Working with Emotional Intelligence, found that without empathy, our ability to influence and interact with others is severely limited.
We all become most open to influence when we feel the other person understands where we’re coming from. We drop our natural defenses, open our minds and listen to him or her. By contrast, if you’ve ever tried to influence a teenager, you may have heard the wail, “You just don’t understand.”
For salespeople, the desired outcome of showing empathy toward customers is simply stated: customers feel safe adopting the salesperson’s conclusions about the purchase, because those conclusions, in fact, support their interests. Isn’t that exactly what you seek from your customers? Their buy-in!!!
Therefore, if you want to sell to customers repeatedly and create “customers for life”, you need to link (or connect) emotionally with them. Empathy solders the weld for the two links.
Some believe that either we have empathy, or we don’t. However, Daniel Goleman has found that empathy has elements of skill and habit that we can acquire and extend. By working to deepen our empathy and compassion, we help ourselves to learn and grow.
Growing your empathy works when it comes from inside you. It must be genuine, or it crashes. Empathic feelings spring from the roots of our compassion. The best salespeople I’ve studied have their hearts in the right place. They deeply care for their customers.
In my experience, when we feel for people, we feel with people. Empathy and compassion connect us with others through a shared language of feelings and experience – one heart to the next. We enable our customers to begin to feel safe enough to talk about themselves – without fear of being judged, criticized, or abandoned.
The most productive salespeople show their compassion and empathy by listening, asking questions, connecting through common experiences. When they finally “get” the customer’s message, they echo it back. When it’s correct, it resonates. The customer connects. The customer relaxes and opens herself to reveal more, and then to listen to the salesperson.
“Listening is the art of using empathy to reach across the space between us. Passive attention doesn’t work.” (Michael P. Nicholsby) With your next customer, try listening with both ear and heart. Listen to uncover her inner wants and needs. If others have told you that you talk more than you listen, put this motto on your desk: “You can’t learn anything through an open mouth.”
Thus, people who love to serve others, who care about people, who can feel sincere empathy for others, make the best salespeople.
They also relate to the customer’s emotions. They empathize and connect. Having captured the customer’s imagination and trust, they can influence the customer’s thinking and emotions about the recommended products and services. Customers tend to buy in.
Have you ever sold a customer a second time? How big of an issue was price the second time? How does your approach differ when a happy customer re-enters your store? The fact is: when your customer feels you care about her, her trust for you increases and builds a foundation of the sale.
May I reiterate: this “touchy feely stuff “ is the essence of influence. Examine yourself, “How sensitive am I to customers’ feelings? Do I really listen to my customers? Do I try to understand how they feel? Or do I talk too much? Or assume too much?” Don’t be too lenient in grading yourself. The lack of this “touchy feely stuff” may be hurting your sales.
Remember, your customers are not thinking beings who also feel. They (and you) are feeling beings who also think.
Empathy I hate that touchy feely stuff - To learn more about this author, visit Sam Allman's Website.
Like this article? Share it with your friends
A few years ago in New York, I was explaining how salespeople increase their sales by showing empathy. A male attendee complained, “I hate this touchy, feely stuff.” Well, this “touchy, feely stuff” puts the best salespeople at the top of their game. If you aim to become a top performer, you’d better learn to relate to customer’s emotions. It could double your sales.
Study after study has shown that KEY to solid relationships, selling, leading and parenting is empathy. Indeed, empathy is the prime characteristic of great salespeople.
Empathy is the ability to feel and understand what others feel. Exercising empathy, you can appreciate things you don’t agree with … from another’s viewpoint. Specifically for a salesperson, empathy is the ability to sense, understand, and respect the customer’s perspective, ideas, and feelings. To paraphrase the old Indian proverb: “If you want to understand me, walk a hundred miles in my moccasins.”
Empathy increases your selling productivity, because it increases your INFLUENCE over others. Empathy increases influence, because it’s a pre-condition to influence. Dr. Daniel Goleman, describing his decades of studying human behavior in Working with Emotional Intelligence, found that without empathy, our ability to influence and interact with others is severely limited.
We all become most open to influence when we feel the other person understands where we’re coming from. We drop our natural defenses, open our minds and listen to him or her. By contrast, if you’ve ever tried to influence a teenager, you may have heard the wail, “You just don’t understand.”
For salespeople, the desired outcome of showing empathy toward customers is simply stated: customers feel safe adopting the salesperson’s conclusions about the purchase, because those conclusions, in fact, support their interests. Isn’t that exactly what you seek from your customers? Their buy-in!!!
Therefore, if you want to sell to customers repeatedly and create “customers for life”, you need to link (or connect) emotionally with them. Empathy solders the weld for the two links.
Some believe that either we have empathy, or we don’t. However, Daniel Goleman has found that empathy has elements of skill and habit that we can acquire and extend. By working to deepen our empathy and compassion, we help ourselves to learn and grow.
Growing your empathy works when it comes from inside you. It must be genuine, or it crashes. Empathic feelings spring from the roots of our compassion. The best salespeople I’ve studied have their hearts in the right place. They deeply care for their customers.
In my experience, when we feel for people, we feel with people. Empathy and compassion connect us with others through a shared language of feelings and experience – one heart to the next. We enable our customers to begin to feel safe enough to talk about themselves – without fear of being judged, criticized, or abandoned.
The most productive salespeople show their compassion and empathy by listening, asking questions, connecting through common experiences. When they finally “get” the customer’s message, they echo it back. When it’s correct, it resonates. The customer connects. The customer relaxes and opens herself to reveal more, and then to listen to the salesperson.
“Listening is the art of using empathy to reach across the space between us. Passive attention doesn’t work.” (Michael P. Nicholsby) With your next customer, try listening with both ear and heart. Listen to uncover her inner wants and needs. If others have told you that you talk more than you listen, put this motto on your desk: “You can’t learn anything through an open mouth.”
Thus, people who love to serve others, who care about people, who can feel sincere empathy for others, make the best salespeople.
They also relate to the customer’s emotions. They empathize and connect. Having captured the customer’s imagination and trust, they can influence the customer’s thinking and emotions about the recommended products and services. Customers tend to buy in.
Have you ever sold a customer a second time? How big of an issue was price the second time? How does your approach differ when a happy customer re-enters your store? The fact is: when your customer feels you care about her, her trust for you increases and builds a foundation of the sale.
May I reiterate: this “touchy feely stuff “ is the essence of influence. Examine yourself, “How sensitive am I to customers’ feelings? Do I really listen to my customers? Do I try to understand how they feel? Or do I talk too much? Or assume too much?” Don’t be too lenient in grading yourself. The lack of this “touchy feely stuff” may be hurting your sales.
Remember, your customers are not thinking beings who also feel. They (and you) are feeling beings who also think.
Empathy I hate that touchy feely stuff - To learn more about this author, visit Sam Allman's Website.
Like this article? Share it with your friends
 | |
 |
No article feedback found. |
| |
Leave Your Feedback |
 | |
| |||
Dianne CramptonDianne Crampton is an executive leadership coach, team culture consultant, author and president of TIGERS Success Series, Inc. Dianne has been helping CEO's and Executives connect their employees to their core values and goals for over 20 years using the trademarked TIGERS team culture process, which stands for trust, interdependence, genuineness, empathy, risk and success. To download a free white paper on behaviors that build strong teams and behaviors that will predictably tear them down go here. Dianne's contribution to the 2010 Pfeiffer Consulting Journal (an imprint of John Wiley and Sons Publishers) entitled TIGERS Hearted Teams is available in November 2009. Her new book TIGERS Among Us: 5 Winning Business Team Cultures And Why, Three Creeks Publishing will release in March 2010. To receive publishing discounts, subscribe to the free TigerTracks Newsletter here. - Visit Dianne Crampton's Website |
|||
|
To learn more about the Evan Elite Author Program please contact us. | |||
 | |
|  |
Subscribe to Sam's articles
 | |
|
|  |
 | |
|
| |
 | |||||||
|
 | ||
 |
||
 |
||
 |
||
|
| ||
 |
| Have you written articles that would be of value to entrepreneurs? Become an expert on our site by publishing them! Expose yourself to a wide audience, drive more traffic to your website and get more sales! Click Here for details. |
|
|
 |
| Modeling the Masters: Learn the true secrets behind Walt Disney's business success factors & grow your company! Video produced by Phanta Media |
|
|
 |
"Learn straight from Evan how you can Make a Full Time Income (And More) from a Website"
Click Here To Learn More |
|
|
|
|
Get advice & tips from famous business owners, new articles by entrepreneur experts, my latest website updates, & special sneak peaks at what's to come!
|
|
|
 Making It Happen Special Report Goal Setting A Clean Desk Memorandum Template 2 |
|
 | ||
 |
Top 50 SEO Posts - 2007
Top SEO Posts of the Year | |
 |
Top 50 Productivity Blogs
Top Blogs To Watch In 2008 | |
| ||
 | ||||
| ||||
|
| ||||
| ||||
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||
|
Email us your ideas on how to make our website more valuable! Thank you Sharon from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for your suggestions to make the newsletter look like the website and profile younger entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez and Sean Combs!
|
|
|
| ||||||||||
|
| ||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||