Emotional Intelligence and Sales, Technical and Customer Service Professionals

For over a decade, people from all organizational levels - from executives to administrative staff - have participated in Emotional Intelligence (EI) training programs. Despite the fact that the pressures and challenges at various organizational levels are quite different, people experience the same emotions. When people enhance and develop their EI skills, they become internally self-managed and capable of making their greatest contributions. And when employees work in that zone of peak performance, so does the organization. Below are examples of how development of EI skills can benefit business professionals such as sales people, customer service representatives and technical professionals (i.e., engineers, analysts, information technologists, scientists, etc.).

Sales People:

Sales People frequently work with difficult prospects and customers. They often find themselves in adversarial situations over price, features, delivery schedules, etc. As a result of these situations, the sales person and the customer can feel anxious, fearful, frustrated and sometimes angry. This can lead to a downward spiral of negative emotions where sales people are unmotivated, customers are unsatisfied and sales decline.

When sales people enhance their EI skills, they become more capable of controlling or managing themselves and thus the situation. They are not as apt to let the customer "push their buttons". They can stay mentally focused on the key issues and not "give-away-the-store". Research has revealed that optimism is a critical sales trait in that the more optimistic a sales person is, the higher their volume and sales dollars. Optimism leads to persistence which leads to more sales. Enhanced EI skills enable the sales person to empathize with the customer allowing for better communication and faster, more effective problem-solving. Consequently, the strong positive customer relationships that are developed ensure better cooperation and higher sales when problems do arise.

Customer Service Representatives:

Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) deal with angry, frustrated customers continuously throughout their day. They find themselves being verbally abused through no fault of their own. The customer's anger, frustration and rage can cause representatives to become nervous, mad, disgusted, and angry themselves. If the representative does not have a high level of EI skills, the discussion may escalate and require the intervention of the CS Supervisor. Or worse, it can cause the company to lose that customer. An upset customer will typically tell 10-15 friends about the poor treatment he or she received.

CSRs who have enhanced their EI skills can easily manage their emotional reactiveness to angry customers, maintaining a calm, polite and sincere attitude and conversation with customers in-the-moment. Loyal customers tell their friends. Higher customer loyalty leads to higher profitability.

Technical Professionals:

Technical Professionals are constantly under pressure to do more with less faster, better, and cheaper. They work long, hard hours to complete projects. They are challenged to work with many people from different functions, to create and innovate, and do tasks, in many cases, they would like to avoid. These situations can cause technical professionals to be agitated, resentful, anxious, frustrated, and stressed-out much of the day. These negative emotions cause what is known as "emotional hijacking" which is a physiological response in the brain that literally keeps people from thinking clearly. Creativity is blocked, communication is hampered, and more mistakes and errors are made.

Enhancing the Technical Professional's EI skills provides them with what they never were taught in school. They build interpersonal skills that allow them to get other technical colleagues to help them when they need it through learning how to manage their own emotional reactiveness to people and situations. Enhancing EI skills increases the likelihood that projects are completed on schedule, using the best, innovative thinking available.

Results:

As a result of attending EI training programs, business professionals have achieved some impressive results. Participants have reported a range of 20% to 40% reduction in stress and worry, 20% to 35% increase in personal productivity, 15% to 35% increased teamwork and similar improvements in personal motivation, management of emotional reactiveness, creativity, work/life balance and more. These increases can translate into positive return on investment for the organization.