Dave Cowan

Rather than creating scripts and pitch decks that encourage you or your sales reps to tell your story, start developing questions that prompt prospects to tell you theirs. Traditional salespeople tell prospects what they think the prospects need to know. Effective sales professionals establish themselves as trusted advisers by asking questions that make their prospects contemplate ideas and alternatives they wouldn’t have thought of on their own.

Demos can be an incredibly powerful tool to help your Account Execs close the deal. But they can also be the kiss of death if used to talk about features and benefits that your prospect may not need or care about. Indeed, the more features you highlight the higher the perceived cost to your prospect – whether they say so or not. So, if your sales process includes showing demos to unqualified prospects, train your team to use the demo to qualify the prospect, not sell to them.

If you're an SDR who wants to become a top notch Account Executive, you can start by understanding the types of people you’ll be selling to, the day-to-day business challenges each faces, and the types of questions each is likely to ask. With that information you’ll be able to formulate a questioning strategy that enables you to uncover their real questions, concerns, and motivations. Do that, and when the opportunity comes, you’ll be well on your way to becoming a top Account Exec.

If you’re a Business Owner, Founder CEO, or Sales Leader who has never thought about Emotional Intelligence, you’re probably wasting time, energy, and money hiring, training, and coaching sales reps (and other employees) who may be good enough, but they’ll never be great. High emotional quotient scores correlate directly to success of the individual and the companies where they work. So, if you’re not measuring EQ – and other critical competencies required by the roles for which you’re hiring – your setting yourself up for mediocrity at best.