Emotional Intelligence and Sales Performance

The sales manager invests lot of energy and money to train the sales force but still the sales executives fail to perform. The reason here is not the lack of selling skills but lack of soft skills also termed as Emotional Intelligence skills.

Questions like-

• Can soft skills enable hard sales result
• Why should organization care for soft skills?
• How emotional intelligence linked with attaining sales target.

Defining Emotional intelligence in a nonprofessional’s language  is the ability to perceive one’s emotion and act as per the perceived emotion. Emotional intelligence training can be an effective tool to improve sales performance. The EI selling concept is unique in itself. This approach  integrates a consultative sales process with EI Skills. In the words of Dr. Goleman the EI adds to the IQ of which most of us today are more familiar .He elaborates that skills such as self awareness, emotional mastery,motivation,empathy and social effectiveness have a greater impact than  raw  intelligence on career success, outstanding individual  performance, leadership and creation of successful teams. The sales force work in an environment where social and emotional skills both are required. Their performance is related to their ability to manage social and emotional problems and to maintain high level of motivation to face problems arising due to negative feedback and failures. Hence maintaining a high emotional Intelligence in sales task accomplishment is necessary.

Dr. Manisha Gupta

Assistant Professor

Dept. of Management Studies