Empathy, the ability to understand and share the feelings of another, is not something you learn in school. It’s not a skill taught in most companies either. But empathy in sales is the ability to truly see things from the other person’s perspective, which is one of the most underrated skills in sales.
If you don’t have empathy, you can’t truly connect with prospects. You can’t connect because you can’t understand. And you can’t understand because you can’t see things from their perspective. And that means you can’t truly understand their business challenges. And the sales cycle becomes longer and more complex.
Empathy in sales is a skill that is often overlooked but is becoming a vital part of sales in modern selling. The goal of empathy is to build up rapport with the prospect. When we are more empathetic, we are able to build trust, which is vital to sales success. As salespeople, we need to be better at empathy if we are to have a successful career.
In this podcast episode and post, we’ll look at how we can become better at developing empathy in sales to build influence and drive growth.
About Mandi
Mandi Graziano is Vice President of Global Accounts for HPN Global where she finds hotels and venues; negotiates pricing/contracts for her client’s conferences all over the world. Here she has earned the awards of Chairman’s Club, President’s Club, and Top Producer.
While on the hotel side Mandi worked in leadership roles in sales, marketing, and operations for Marriott, Starwood, Hard Rock Hotels, and Caesars Entertainment. While working for hotels she has been awarded Top Producer, Salesperson of the Year, Best Site Inspection of the Year, and Sales Strategist Award in 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2008. Mandi is currently an instructor at San Diego State University Hospitality; Tourism Management program teaching Site Inspection; Contract Negotiation classes.
Mandi is also the author of a relatable and remarkably funny book Sales Tales: The Hustle, Humor, and Lessons Learned from a Life In Sales, an Amazon best-seller in 5 categories and ranked #1 by Selling Power Magazine.
In this episode, she shares how we can use empathy in sales to easily influence and build trust to drive growth.
Some topics we discussed include:
- Why we should develop empathy in sales
- How to develop empathy in sales
- How Mandi overcame anxiety to become a public speaker and top salesperson
- The business bedside manner and how she recommends we use it
- 5 questions to ask to improve our business bedside manner
- SWEATworking – what is it and why it’s better than traditional networking
- How to keep up with public appearances and still build deep relationships
- Thoughts on events post-pandemic
- How we can use events to drive business growth
- and much much more …
Listen to the episode
Related links and resources
- Check out Mandi’s site
- Get a copy of Mandi’s book – Sales Tales: The Hustle, Humor, and Lessons Learned from a Life In Sales
- Get a copy of Mandi audiobook – Sales Tales: The Hustle, Humor, and Lessons Learned from a Life In Sales
- Learn from Aron North – 7 Ways to Bring Empathetic Marketing Into Your Growth Strategy
- Learn from Hoyin Cheung – Hybrid Events: 10 Things to Consider to Drive Business Growth
- Learn from Nicole Santer – How to Create a Thought Leadership Event That Actually Drives Growth
- Learn from Michael Solomon – 8 Powerful and Proven Customer Engagement Strategies to Drive Rapid Growth
- Listen to my interview with Joe Davy – 7+ Customer Engagement Marketing Strategies to Make You a Pipeline Hero
- Check out the article – 20+ Powerful Marketing Strategies You Should Copy to Grow Your Company Fast
- Learn more from Rajiv Lamba – What is Customer Empathy And Why it Drives Great Customer Service
- Learn more from Wouter Delbaere – How to Solve The Challenges of Outsourcing Services to Scale Growth
- Listen to my interview with Dr. Stephen Timme – Insight Selling: How to Increase Pipeline With Powerful Data
Connect with Mandi
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