Is Empathy The Most Important Selling Skill?
CEO of Sales Readiness Group (SRG), author, speaker, and business executive with 25 years of management, consulting and sales experience. getty  Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella often speaks of how his career  and his company  have been shaped by empathy. He views it as a quality to be consciously cultivated, practiced and applied  not just as something nice to have, but as the core to the innovation agenda in the company. He believes empathy can be a differentiator when working with clients. Empathy is the ability to imagine yourself in someone elses position and understand their situation. Its the capacity to feel what another person is experiencing from within their frame of reference. Its not always easy to do. Empathy is the foundation of consultative selling. First, you have to acknowledge some negative stereotypes. There is a perception that salespeople lack empathy, and some of it is warranted. This may be a stereotype because salespeople are too busy pitching, not listening, and thinking they already know the answer  treating the customer as a potential sale instead of a human being with a business need. They are often so busy 'selling' that they dont take time to understand the customer or the background behind their business problems. Sales professionals generally know that relationships are foundational but may not be aware of how to take them to the next level. By framing empathy as a key to developing rapport, leaders can encourage sales reps to do as Nadella suggests: cultivate, practice and apply empathy in their daily interactions. At Sales Readiness Group, we work with sales teams every day across various industries and geographies to improve the performance of their sales teams. The interactions with thousands of sellers every year have given my team and me a unique perspective to answer the question "Why is empathy important in selling?" We hear what techniques and skills are working with their clients and prospects. What I hear from them is that selling has gotten more complex across the board. There are more people involved, and buyers are further along in the buyer process  so the opportunity to simply sell based on a relationship has diminished. The trend toward virtual meetings that spiked during the Covid-19 pandemic compounded this challenge. When selling in a virtual world, people may feel more isolated and their personal and professional lives may overlap in the same space and time. There is less room for humanizing interactions  unless salespeople intentionally create them. Empathy helps individuals become better consultative sales professionals who are working to solve customers problems in creative ways  ones that add more value than the competition. It also helps us recognize how their unique needs may be changing in a fast-paced marketplace that is still recovering from the impacts of the pandemic. There are many techniques that contribute to building empathy in a sales conversation. First, before even meeting with a prospect, sales reps need to invest time researching both the company and the individual. This will help them lay the groundwork for understanding the customers business and personal objectives. To the greatest extent possible, you want to understand personally and professionally whats going on in their world. During sales conversations, a sales reps role is to ask thoughtful questions and take the time to actively listen to their responses, showing genuine concern for the customers situation. They should avoid talking about their solution until the customer has had the opportunity to discuss their problems thoroughly. The key is to consider the business problem from the customers perspective and contemplate what it means to the individual personally and professionally. Throw away your pitch deck for the first sales call. Instead, ask questions. Summarize whats being told to you. Talk less than the buyer  seriously. Active listening is foundational to bringing empathy into your practice. To understand the buyer, you need as much information about them as possible, and you need to listen to what they tell you. Listening to the buyer allows you to build a more relevant sales proposal and, ultimately, have a better chance of closing the deal. Building empathy among salespeople isnt a one-and-done proposition. It may take intentional training and follow-up coaching to make every member of a sales team proficient at applying the techniques mentioned. Empathy is a proactive investment and returns dont always happen immediately. Being the go-giver and doing things without the immediate promise of a sale can really differentiate you from the rest of the pack. In the second quarter of 2020, many businesses  SRG included  suffered from the dramatic effects of the pandemic. New business opportunities seemed to disappear overnight. But that didnt mean we stopped working. From March through May of last year, SRG was busier than ever, scheduling webinars, engaging in customer conversations and check-ins, all while talking to new prospects. There was little promise of immediate sales, but the team invested more time than ever to build relationships through empathy. There was no guarantee of a payoff with this approach, but we were fortunate enough to follow Q2 with the best quarter in company history. Just as with any other selling skill, continuous improvement in empathy should be a goal for the salesperson, their manager and the organizations leadership. Demonstrating empathy starts at the top. Forbes Business Development Council is an invitation-only community for sales and biz dev executives.