Empathy – Know Where to Draw the Line
Doyle Slayton | Dec 14, 2008 | Comments 15
I have seen sales people who have high empathy… while others have no empathy at all. So I decided to put it out there on LinkedIn…
“What do you think? Is it an advantage or a disadvantage for a sales person to have a high level of empathy?”
Most responses favored empathy as one of the most important sales characteristics. I don’t think the answer is that easy. Lance Cooper explains…
“I think I’ll take the contrarian view and say that the answer to this question is… YES/YES
It is both an advantage and a disadvantage depending upon the ‘amount’ of empathy or need to nurture that you may have (and how short your sales cycle is). Most validated personality profiles show that, on a scale of 1-100, empathy levels in great ‘high-activity’ salespeople range around 40-60%.
The higher your score – the higher your listening skills, but, also, the higher your score – the lower your time management skills – especially if you have a lower goal-orientation. For those salespeople with short sales cycles, time management means getting ‘x’ amount of appointments and quotes out each month. Too much empathy causes someone to spend more time than necessary with a prospect or customer. This is especially true if a salesperson has a high empathy score and a low ego score. In this case, a salesperson tends to defer so much to others that personal goal achievement becomes unimportant or unattended.
A high ego score tends to balance out a high empathy score and this combination will makes someone highly persuasive. So, the answer is not as easy as yes, high empathy is great. One could listen and nurture others so much that their isn’t enough activities accomplished to meet quota levels… and the salesperson is fired.
Thanks, as always, and continue to help us get better.”
-Lance
Lance Cooper is the President of SalesManage Solutions – Coaching People from Good to Great,™ Recruiting and Coaching the Best™. Sales Manage Solutions knows that great coaches inspire, challenge, and get the best from those on their team.
So… here is the new question. Is it easier for a sales person with low empathy to develop enough empathy to succeed… or is it easier for a high empathy sales person to decrease their level of empathy and succeed?
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The question is not “Is empathy good?” but “What is emapathy?” and “Is empathy a major motivator in a decision to buy?” The answer to these questions is in understanding the behavioural styles of the buyer. Some will want and need empathy. While others will want control. The skill is can you recognise the styles of your buyers and can you adapt your style to them.
The second as important question is what are the values of the buyer and can you link the sales process to their values. Values are what motivates us all, not just buyers. The only problem is most of us don’t even recognise our own values let alone those og the person we are trying to sell to. Understanding the behavioural style is the first step in showing empathy, but understanding and linking the sale to the values of the buter is the first and last step in the sales process.
Gary Lear is the founder of Development Beyond Learning, a development company based in Australia, but working in Asia and the USA. Go to our web site at http://www.dblearning.biz
The trouble I have with this dialogue that Mr. Cooper has written, with all due respect to him and his accomplishments, is that all sales calls are situational and vary in need from one to the next. You must have empathy at times in which it is needed to improve the relationship with your customer as well as the respect and genuine care that you have for that individual as a person and not just a client. I was told once when I was a teacher that “They do not care about how much you know, until they know how much you care.” I do believe that customers can see through us as salesmen and can pick out those who are genuine and in genuine. We must have a bit of both as stated above as well. We must have a plan in place, if one person requires more time than the other then so be it. We must make true relationships that will grow and that we nurture over time. People do business with people they like. That is a proven fact. All the statistics in the world and the opinions of those that are degreed higher than I cannot lead me to believe that the effective salesman’s success can be charted or graphed on what works and what does not. Each customer is different from each other and to be effective we must be able to adjust our behaviors, conversations, empathy levels, and attitudes in order to win at each appointment.
First to clarify, Empathy is having the ability to put yourself in another person’s shoes (vs. sympathy which is to feel sorry for another) and is a proactive behavior that is paramount to successful sales and a common characteristic shared by successful salespeople.
By it’s definition, it requires active listening as a primary ingredient. The most effective salespeople listen an average of 80% of the time and speak 20%.
Between the active listening and the processing of what a prospect is communicating, it’s a pretty sure bet that close to 80% of the time will be spent (by the empathizer/salesperson) listening. Viola!
Of course there’s a lot more to making a sale than being empathetic, and the missing ingredient in all these comments is the genuineness of the empathy. Token empathy will boomerang!
The bottom line is that genuine empathy is a critical sales ingredient that will carry many otherwise lost sales through to the finish line, but that many other factors (approach, follow-up, product/service knowledge, industry knowledge, etc.) all play a role.
Sales is the most rewarding of careers but –because it requires such depth of both business and psychology disciplines– is also the most challenging.
Where else can you sell people the products and services they need to help them solve their problems and do it by being a shrink without even a shingle?
Better to have high empathy and learn how to control it. Having low empathy is a personality, almost a psychological state. By the time you get in sales, and are therefore an adult (well….) it is unlikely this will change barring a major life change such as death of a very close relative.
I agree with you on the good and bad. I sold in both long and short sales cycles. I have taken several personality type test and my empathy level is almost off the chart.
Empathy is an important character in the sales individual but it certainly relevant to the sold product or service…I believe it applies more when it comes to machinery and operations and services within such industry..Otherwise it may not be applicable in other cases…On the other hand , within the prospecting phase it is essential to define what really works and turns on customers as sometimes they may not need that empathy.
See “What Makes a Good Sales Person” published by Harvard Business Review more than 30 years ago. I have not seen anything written since that does a better job of covering this subject.
I would categorize myself as a high empathy person. I demand such a high level of empathy in order to give the prospective client permission to feel comfortable and to give myself the time to understand them. When I understand them better, I understand their needs better. One place where I get lost is that I can get lost in so much empathy, I FORGET that I am there to sell and to serve. Then, if I let it go on even longer past this realization, I may miss an opportunity. If this happens, I can then end up rushing through a sales presentation, which ruins the empathic mood I’ve just created. In other words, my high empathy style ruins the opportunity to serve. If I remember to not lower my empathy, but leave time for the empathy of listening, AND the empathy of serving, I feel much more successful. And, my sales numbers reflect that successful feeling.
From my point of view, the bad things the article points about empathy are not really about it: it says it is bad if you don’t know how to adjust your schedule, or it may be bad if you lack some other skills or you might have a low ego…
So empathy is great, even if you score a 100%, and the problem may be that usually people who are good at empathy lack some other areas of knowledgement/skills/etc.
Great points Doyle!
Self awareness is the key… Each situation calls for different levels of empathy. If you know you tend to over do the empathy, then you can moderate it based on the situation and let it roll when its called for.
In my experience, empathy is very important in the sales process. Empathy is the very thing that helps us as professionals, appreciate the concerns and challenges that face our client.
Having said this, it is important to know where the boundary is. We can’t and should never allow ourselves to trade places with our customer to the extent that we are now burdened with their problems or sucked down a wormhole of indecision and poor choices. There is indeed a very fine line between empathy and assuming their problems for our own.
In general, I usually ask the client how I can help. As a rule, I ask this once and once only. If the client actually has a proposal of how I can help, I can now decide if I really am in a position to help.
If the person does not take me up on this offer but continues to wallow in their problem, I use that as my signal to distance myself for the time being.
The idea is that I can help my clients best if I remain sound and professional. The moment my empathy gets the better of me, I fail to be of any use to the client or to myself.
This is the way I try to balance my need to be efficient and at the same time, care for my clients. Care for all of my clients, not just the one in front of me at that particular moment.
By the way, this is a great topic. I have enjoyed reading the responses.
Thanks,
Jason
This has been an interesting topic, made even more interesting by the ideas put forward in the comments. My comments are taking a page or two out of Marcus Buckingham & Donald Clifton’s book Now, Discover Your Strengths.
If we look at empathy as a talent, using it effectively would make it into a strength that will help someone become a more effective salesperson. The notes above about understanding how the prospect/customer is feeling, along with being able to “hear” more are good demonstrations of that.
More importantly, spend effort on areas we are talented in to become better and more successful. If one of your natural abilities/talents is empathy, spending time – energy – effort on building skills around your talent will help your sales increase.
Conversely if you aren’t naturally talented in empathy, spending your efforts there will make you “less bad” but not skillfully empathetic.
I do believe that we can work on the areas we are talented in and come up with the same results (the whole idea of getting to the same destination by taking different routes). Personally I am not at all empathetic (although can be compassionate), but do have other talents that have produced a successful sales career.
I agree with a lot of the things that have already been said.
However, I have a different view on empathy in that sense that I feel that empathy should be viewed as a tool. A tool that you can use, if I may put it bluntly, to achieve your goal.
So, is empathy needed in the salesproces? I certainly do believe so.
I think a salesperson however should always be “guiding” the empathy, and not having the empathy guide you.
In regards to having empathy in sales, I believe having just enough can make you one of the best sales reps out there. On the other hand, too much empathy can undermine your ability to help a business. When in balance, empathy makes you care, it makes you listen (one of the most important aspects of selling), and it makes you want to do everything in your power to make a positive difference in someones life/business. That’s great. On the other hand, too much empathy can tend to cloud good business judgment (loss of valuable time, underpricing, over promising, etc).
If you are in the world of advertising, it is important that you have a lot of empathy. Like putting yourself in another shoes. This way you will understand/know if the ads has a great impact or not.