Soft Sales Skills Preview

It is often said that hard sales skills will get you in front of a customer, but you need soft sales skills to win over and keep the customer. Soft sales skills are essential attributes that complement technical or the harder selling skills and are related to how salespeople interact with customers or prospects and navigate their environment in today’s interconnected and fast-paced world. The importance of soft sales skills lies in a salesperson’s ability to enhance their personal effectiveness, improve interpersonal relationships, and contribute to overall success in various aspects of life, including work.

How to Develop Soft Sales Skills

Developing soft selling skills requires conscious effort and ongoing practice. This is the reason our training course initiates the knowledge trip from communication and active listening. Paraphrasing a military quote (you can lead if you haven’t learnt to lead), you can’t build soft sales skills if you haven’t been exposed and treated with soft skills. Remember that developing soft sales skills is a continuous process that takes time and effort. Be patient with yourself and celebrate your progress along the way as you learn, implement, and reflect.

Example: Understanding Emotional Intelligence.

Definition: Ability to recognize, understand, manage, and use emotions effectively. 

Work on developing empathy and emotional intelligence by putting yourself in others’ shoes, recognizing and understanding their emotions, and responding with sensitivity and understanding. Actively practice empathy by trying to understand others’ perspectives and experiences. Engage in activities that broaden your worldview and expose you to diverse perspectives and opinions. Understanding emotional intelligence is essential for personal development, effective communication, and building customer relationships. Key components of emotional intelligence are self-awareness, self-regulation, social awareness, empathy, and interpersonal skills. Self-awareness is the foundation of emotional intelligence. It involves being in tune with your own emotions, strengths, weaknesses, values, and motivations. Self-aware individuals recognize their emotions as they arise and understand how they influence their thoughts, behaviours, and decisions.

These emotions, impulses, and reactions in various situations need to be self-regulated. It involves maintaining composure under pressure, managing stress effectively, and responding thoughtfully rather than reacting impulsively. Self-regulation also includes being adaptable and flexible in the face of change. Recognizing and understanding one’s emotions should be as they occur because this is very important since emotions influence thoughts and behaviour. As a practical example, you should start recognizing when stress affects decision-making, a most common emotion for all.

Similarly, self-motivation (driving oneself towards goals) is another excellent area to build our emotional intelligence. What drives and makes us passionate about? How can we set goals for clear and achievable objectives, and how can we overcome challenges like maintaining motivation in the face of obstacles? How can we keep a positive attitude for continuous improvement? Self-control is also very important, helping to manage emotions effectively. Controlling impulsive reactions in challenging situations by remaining calm and ensuring emotions don’t cloud judgment are very important. Social awareness is the ability to understand and empathize with the emotions, perspectives, and experiences of others. It involves accurately reading social cues, recognizing non-verbal communication, and showing empathy and compassion towards others. Socially aware individuals are attuned to the dynamics of interpersonal relationships and demonstrate respect for diversity and inclusion