Empathy: Advantage or Disadvantage?

[Doyle Slayton]

I have seen sales people who have high empathy... while others have no empathy at all. What do you think... Is it an advantage or a disadvantage for a sales person to have a high level of empathy?

[Lisa Fausey]

That's a very good question and takes some thought. I consider myself to be an empathetic person without being pathetic. In other words, I can understand and feel the financial challenges of a customer I'm meeting with and be able to relate to their situation but I am not so involved that I forget why I'm there, to make a sale. Now, I'm not heartless by any means, but I have a goal and today may not be the day my goal is met with that particular customer due to their situation, but I can certainly feel what they are feeling. I think being empathetic is an advantage because it helps me relate to others and they get that and appreciate it. It helps them develop trust in me and confidence that I understand where they are at this point in time.

I can also see where empathy can be a negative for some people, particularly in closing a sale. A sales person who over-empathasizes may lose sight of their goal in making the sale and never close it. They may allow emotions to become part of their sales process and therefore make emotional decisions rather than business decisions.

Boy, tough call here. For me advantage.... I think.

I'm going to share this thought with my manager and ask him to let me teach on this topic.

Lisa

[Cristina Parcalabu]

I think that is a really big advantage to be an empathic sales person. Just think about the situation when the person that you are presenting your product/service to is not giving you too many details about his/her needs but you can feel, you can guess if it really needs it, you know when you have to insist or not. If you know that the person does not really need that product from the discussion or the nonverbal signals and you try to help with an advice, or you just back off leaving a good impression, you may be contacted later on when the potential client may need you product, or he recommended you to a friend/ colleague.
Good luck in being empathic!

[Harold De Buck]

In a timing frame, empathy is an asset MT & LT. In short term, hard selling it's not.
In consultative selling one simply needs this.
Very important however is not to lose the focus on business. We sell & we remind...in our own empathic way if we master empathy.
greetz,
Harold

[jim stringer]

We must always strive to be on our customers "agenda", not ours. The 2 "E's" of sales that help us do that are "Ego" and "Empathy".

Never attack a persons ego.
Always show empathy.

The advantage of showing empathy is that we move over to the customers side/agenda. The disadvantage comes when we confuse empathizing with believing a false objection. This happens when we are not truly on our customers agenda, and just blindly following a script. If we try to show empathy after the fact as objections come up, it would really be just showing false concern to try to strengthen our own agenda. If you are a great actor you may get away with it, but it isn't the proper way to sell. "Sell on to others the way THEY want to be sold" (This is what empathy really is)

How do we know when we are really showing empathy as apposed to just saying what we think they want to hear?

I believe it is in our timing. If we go through a whole presentation, then empathize with their objections and let them off the hook at the end, we are showing sympathy. If we show empathy at the beginning before we get deep into the presentation, we will move to the customers agenda and will be presenting "with" them instead of "at" them. Objections will then become just little problems we are solving together. (Customers agenda, not ours)

If we are using some sort of a structure like:
Warm up
Intent statement
Discovery
Body of the presentation
Close or set follow up appointment...

We can start the "empathy" phase during our intent statement by using a "Ben Duffy". Which is a little statement we add to our intent that lets them know your goal is to discover if it is right for them, not sell them regardless.

I use something like this. "My job here is to show you everything my product can do for you, and what I can do for you if you want it. However, if we determine together that this isn't right, I promise, I wont even ask you to buy. So, lets explore this together and see what we come up with. How does that sound?"

Then I go into my discovery phase, and keep "checking for agreement" throughout. This will keep them from throwing curve balls at me later.

Again, my empathy puts me on their agenda, which allows me to find all of the things I need to sell. Hot buttons, buying motive, personality type, REAL objections..