Using empathy as a social skill can help you in all areas of your life. But it can help significantly in the area of sales prospecting and we talk about how to do that in this video.

What is empathy?
A definition that I found on a quick internet search is: “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another”

If we modify that for sales, we can define it as: “the ability to understand and share the feelings of the sales prospect”

Just to look at that by itself, it should be pretty clear that this would be a powerful thing to incorporate into our sales efforts.

Why empathy is helpful
 The reason that empathy is helpful is that whenever you are dealing with someone, you are always making quick decisions on what to say and do. If you make these decisions without using empathy, you are making decisions without valuable information.

It is similar to driving without a speedometer. You might have pretty good gut instincts when driving but if you don’t have the information that the speedometer provides, you will likely go too fast and too slow in certain situations. This can lead to accidents, fines, and bad relationships with other drivers.

Applying that to selling, empathy provides valuable information about what is going on with the prospect. Without that, you may move too quickly, move too slow, say or do something wrong, etc.

When you add the information that empathy provides, you can make better decisions regarding what to say and do and this should have a positive impact on your sales results.

How to have more empathy
Here is a quick process to add more empathy to your sales efforts.

  • Step 1: Put yourself in the prospect’s shows
  • Step 2: Digest the new information gathered
  • Step 3: Incorporate the additional information into your decision-making process

Understanding a prospect
If we stop to think about what is going on with most high-value target prospects, here are a few things that are going on with just about all of them.

  • We all care most about our own stuff
  • Get a lot of sales
  • Extremely busy
  • Are not in buying mode

Using empathy to adjust our approach
If those assumptions are safe to make, here are a few ways we can change our approach so that we communicate better when trying to sell to high-value target prospects:

  • Focus on their interest, not yours
  • Don’t sound like a salesperson
  • Respect their time
  • Don’t sell the product, sell the conversation

We hope this gives you some ideas for how to change and improve your sales and lead generation.