Emotional Intelligence for Sales Leaders, with Colleen Stanley [Episode 811]

On today’s episode I talk with Colleen Stanley about her latest book, Emotional Intelligence for Sales Leadership. We’ll dive into why emotional intelligence (EQ) has to be part of your sales culture and how it starts at the top. We’ll then jump into how sales leaders can improve their own EQ and how to screen for it while hiring. Plus, Colleen will share the simple steps leaders can take to verify that candidates have the emotional tools required to succeed in sales.

Episode Transcript

Andy Paul: Colleen. Welcome back to the show.

Colleen Stanley: Thank you for having me. Having a delightful afternoon with you.

Andy Paul: Oh yeah. So, um, where have you been sheltering in place?

Colleen Stanley: Well, I live in Denver, Colorado, so we live up in the foothills. So we have been sheltering among the deer and the antelope, as we say,

Andy Paul: Oh, nice. So is like COVID resistant to altitude or not resistant to altitude.

Colleen Stanley: Well, we don’t, we don’t know about that, but the, uh, the elk and the deer don’t seem to be bothered much by it. Put it that way. So yes.

Andy Paul: All right. So we’re going to talk about your new book, Emotional Intelligence for Sales Leaders: The Secret to Building High Performance Sales Teams. So, um, yeah. What is the secret?

Colleen Stanley: well, you know, if it came down to one thing, wouldn’t we all be brilliant. So, um, but I think, you know, when I started the

Andy Paul: teased us with that and the title.

Colleen Stanley: I did I did. And you know, and really I started the book. There was, you know, four different sections, but I would say the one thing is what the first section of the book talks about.

And it’s getting your hiring process. Correctly. Right? Because if you’ve ever led a team, managed a team, I always say the difference between hell and heaven is hiring the right type of people. And obviously based on the work we do, I focused on how do you identify, recruit and hire emotionally intelligent sales.

So I think that makes life much easier for a sales leader a day to day and achieving consistent revenues.

Andy Paul: Yeah. Well, we’re planning on focus most on the hiring part, but yeah, I had to laugh because you have a section titled what they don’t teach you at sales management school. And I thought, huh? Where is that school? I mean, I don’t know many sales  managers that went to a sales management school.

Colleen Stanley: Well, you know, what’s in interesting is I sent the book, you know, for some preview. So we actually have some universities that are teaching sales management training. Now a lot of them have adopted sales training programs, but for example, Texas A&M, they actually teach a sales management, uh, a few courses there. So. They are the ones that say, Hey, wait a minute. We do teach this in our courses. So I had to actually change it to traditional sales management schools. So congratulations to the universities that they are offering some of the coursework.

Andy Paul: Yeah. Yeah. It’s interesting. You wonder how well it’s like anything you take at college and it’s like, okay, well, how applicable is this actually in the real world? And I sort of, yeah, I know there’s an increasing number of degree programs and have a lot of respect for the people that are, are running those programs. Uh, It’s always of interest. It’s like, wait, what’s the transition like for the students, when they actually get into sales, you know, is it that they have learned something that’s, that’s really applicable? Cause I look back my sales training, which is sponsored by a company when I first got employed years and years ago, but it was like, yeah, didn’t use too much of that.

Colleen Stanley: Okay. Well, you know, I do think, um, I think you’re always going to have a little bit of a disconnect, which might sound odd coming from somebody that does this for a living, because you can teach the models, the framework methodology, which I think is important because if you don’t have a framework, you’re kind of going out there and making it up every day. Right. So frameworks will shortcut it, but there’s nothing like being in front of a prospect or a customer that will actually, you know, test your ability to execute. And then frankly is it’s going to give you new questions and objections you didn’t even know about or think about. So some of it’s simple plea cannot be learned until you’re in the field. Having a conversation with a prospect or customer.

Andy Paul: Exactly exactly. Was interesting. You, you raised something with this question about hiring, but in more general, you talk about in the book, which is something I’m hugely passionate about is that you as an, as an industry and less than a professionalist, I sales as we spend. What I think is a disproportion amount of time focused on the seller, right? We’ve got 50% of sellers don’t make quota. The problem is the sellers and everything comes back to the seller. But I really think everything that shortfalls and shortcomings we have in sales start with management. And, and you address that in the book. You talk about, you know, culture starts at the top and, and emotionally intelligent sales teams have emotionally intelligent leaders. I think that’s individual’s performance is directly affected by who they’re working for.

Colleen Stanley: Well, you know, it’s the old ad age, Andy, as we know, people watch what you do versus what you say. Correct. So it’s modeling and it starts when you’re a child, right? So your parents can be saying this, but if they’re doing this, that’s the behavior you’re going to adopt. And in fairness to the sales managers, I’ve said this more than once, I believe they get set up to fail, right? Because we all have seen this movie, right. Top producer gets promoted and they’ve spent four to five to eight years honing skills such as prospecting, business development, closing, negotiation; great selling skills. Then they land in sales management and they have to take this sharp right turn and now they’re supposed to know how to hire, transfer the knowledge that made them successful, run effective sales meetings, conduct one on one coaching sessions, and those are entirely different skills than selling skills. So this is where I often say to companies, if someone hasn’t received the training education somewhere along the line, You may need to provide it whether you want to or not. So that’s what I’ve seen. I think they get set up to fail a lot.

Andy Paul: Provide the training, how to be a manager.

Colleen Stanley: Yes, how to be a manager because you know, one of the real disconnects I will see is, uh, just in training and coaching. And training is very different than coaching. And so I’ve even seen some sellers get promoted and they’re pretty good teachers, right?

But once you’ve taught the knowledge and the sales person still isn’t demonstrating the right behavior, skill, attitude that is no longer a training issue, that is a coaching issue, which is a whole different set of skills. You have to diagnose it. How do you coach self limiting beliefs? How do you coach fear? How do you coach delayed gratification?

So again, there’s so many new skills to be learned as a sales manager, and they’ve got to put in the quote 10,000 hours, in those types of skills, just like they did and becoming an effective sales producer.

Andy Paul: Well, but we don’t, again, we basically, we don’t train, as you talked about, but I also think that there’s this disconnect that happens as is, and this gets back to your idea about culture is yeah, a lot of managers really don’t think it’s part of their responsibility really to coach. All right. It is, they get split by this, uh, you know, Hey, I need to be on top of the metrics because there’s increasingly we’ve got more data that’s because of the transparency the tools provide. And I’ve got report on that and I’ve got all these other responsibilities and demands being placed on me by my leadership that, yeah, the coaching sort of ends up taking a backseat and to me, that, of all the skills and all the things that you do as a manager, that’s the thing that you just shouldn’t be spending. And I’mm not talking about coaching deals. I’m talking about coaching the people. You should be spending you know all the fractions of time things you deveote time to, that’s the one you should be devoting the most time to.

Colleen Stanley: And I believe everyone knows that. So I think the reason coaching falls off of the calendar is a couple of reasons. And you just mentioned, one is we’ve got lots of data rights. We’ve got now CRM tools and we can analyze pipelines top of the funnel, middle of the funnel, full funnel, whatever you want to call it. But I do think with the onset of CRM tools, we confuse analysis of data with coaching. So I find a lot of sales managers think deal review is deal coaching, and it is not. Deal review is simply looking at metrics. But deal coaching as you well know is okay, if this a seller consistently has opportunities that fall out at stage three, right.

Or if this seller consistently is putting prospects in the pipeline that shouldn’t be there, that’s where the coaching comes in. And so I think there’s a little bit of confusion that if I’m looking at data with the seller, I’m actually coaching them. And that is absolutely not true. And so I think that’s where some of the confusion comes in.

Andy Paul: Yeah. And I, I draw a distinction between opportunity coaching, which is sort of what you were talking about and, and development coaching for me is, is yeah, if somebody has deals that fall out at a certain stage, then I don’t look at that as, you know, coaching an opportunity, I’m coaching that person about something that’s happening, that they’re doing repeatedly, you know, it’s a behavior that needs to change. Um, and, and yeah, to your point. Yeah. I think this is one of the issues that I think we struggle with as a profession right now is yeah, I’ve got a lot of data that sort of tells me a bunch of stuff. Um, what I do with it?

Colleen Stanley: Correct. And I think going back to a point you just made between opportunity coaching and development coaching, in both of those what I’ve seen sales managers at least try to do, they coach to what I called the Sales IQ. Right. Okay. Let’s see which consultative selling skills you’re missing, which hard skills are missing.

But often if you dig a little deeper, the reason either the wrong opportunities are being put in the pipeline, or they’re not progressing, can be due to lack of soft skills, emotional intelligent skills, such as assertiveness, reality testing, impulse control. So when they do go into a coaching conversation, they tend to only coach to what might be half of the performance challenge problem.

Andy Paul: So I was just laughing. Cause what you’re saying is sales reps have an impulse control problem is they can’t resist the impulse to throw bad prospects into their pipeline. Okay.

Colleen Stanley: Well, let’s take a look at what impulse control is. Is, they may, uh, they may not have the time to really analyze who is my best prospect. Right? And so, you know, some companies have this pretty well wired. They’ve got the lead scoring, et cetera, but in many organizations you don’t have that level of sophistication.

So you have to really apply delayed gratification and really study your win loss. Hey, why am I winning? Why am I losing? And then apply that same scrutiny to the exploratory conversations, or even who are your targeting there. So some of that could be a skill set, but others is delayed gratification, which is slowing down to put in the work to think and analyze so future work is better. So instant gratification, impulse control. I’m just going to go prospect. Well, that’s great. You’ve done your activity, but you are confusing being busy with being productive.

Andy Paul: Yeah, I mean, right. And all that. So it gets back to, uh, what’d you talk about is the need for self awareness. The self aware seller should have some idea of that yeah this is what I’m doing, I’m substituting activity for something meaningful. Uh, but I think it, I think it, you know, it gets back to what you’re talking about with the emotional intelligence is so much in sales is fear-driven and I think that’s really true with managers as well, because I think most managers really don’t want to be managers.

Colleen Stanley: Well, that’s a great point. And, and, and so that would be called self-awareness in reality

Andy Paul: testing.

Colleen Stanley: Yeah, And,

and as I discussed in the book, I spent a chapter on it. And, and so I think, um, you know, sometimes we feel like we need to raise our hand. Uh, maybe we believe that’s the right way for career path. And, you know, all of these beliefs that have been put on us from who knows, blame it on your parents, we do everything else. Right. And so, um, But when you take a look at it, just a couple of examples, you know, a really good sales person that loves hunting, right? That’s the popular sales training term. Well, when you go into a sales leadership role, you’re still hunting, but you’re hunting for top talent and you’ve really got to ask yourself, are you going to get as jazzed viewing multiple candidates, uh, setting key performance metrics for meeting new players on your team even if there isn’t an opening. And if you don’t get real jazz by that, that’s a good part of your position you’re not going to enjoy. Or do you get as excited helping a sales person learn how to close the business or deep down, do you really just still love closing it? And so there’s nothing wrong with either answer. You just need to be aware of, I really enjoy being a producer more than I enjoy being a manager and a leader.

Andy Paul: Yeah. Well, I like that analogy you drew in the, in the book you just raised again about, uh, you know, a manager part of the job is to have to build a pipeline of people. And, and I think the distinction though, is in my mind at least, is that as a hiring manager, I’m actually more of a buyer than a seller to that degree.

But, but I think that, that, it’s still a great picture. First sales man have in mind. Is that okay? Yeah, they are responsible for the sales product, right? What happens in front of a customer, that’s ultimately the responsibility of the manager. What happens there. I mean, if you have people that aren’t performing, that’s not the person’s fault, that’s on you. Right. The fact they’re out there in front of that person in front of the buyer, and if they’re not performing well, that’s on you and, and it’s, and then you really have to start from that perspective. So that does start with yeah. Is you, especially if you’re not very good at, at collectively as an organization at choosing the right people. Yeah. That pipeline becomes essential.

Colleen Stanley: Yes, it does. And you know, when we, um, I remember years ago we had a, it was really quite a fun group. You know, we’re doing a sales management workshop and of course there was a problem as we call it the problem child sales person. But you know, this is again, we’ve all had this story. Top producer brings in a lot of revenue. Is an absolute pain in the neck, right. Is not polite to other departments, kind of shortcuts some of the details that need to happen to make the order flow through the system. And finally, after listening to about three case studies about this same particular rep, I remember looking at the manager saying, you do not have a person problem. You have a recruiting problem. And he was, he looked at me and yeah, I don’t get what you mean because I said, if you had ten other qualified salespeople lined up to take this position, you would not be here putting up with this inappropriate behavior. It’s the same thing that happens in sales. If you have a full pipeline, you don’t bother pursuing prospects that are transactional, rude, kind of not committed.

So the concepts of great selling and great sales management that can have a lot of similarities, but you need to know how to bridge that gap. And I remember he just looked at me, he said, you’re right. So think about it. Do you have a people problem or do you have a recruiting problem? And it’s usually a recruiting problem.

Andy Paul: Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, I think it’s a mix of all those. I mean, so, I mean, I guess the question is, is, is you know, as a manager, are you trying to hire great salespeople or are you trying to hire people that can become great salespeople?

Colleen Stanley: My philosophy is probably a little skewed because I was really fortunate. I started with a very small company that now, today is the largest in the world in their industry. They post revenues of over $1 billion. However, when I started, they would be, I guess the term today would be, they were a startup. So I’ve always felt very grateful that they gave me an opportunity. However, when I look back, I would say my boss really knew how to hire people that actually were pretty high on what we call today resiliency, sales grit had a good work ethic and we were really coachable and all of us were hungry to learn.

So I believe you can teach people if they’ve got some of those qualities in place first, because Andy, I’ve always been surprised when I, um, I’ll go out and speak to a group of CEOs or VPs of Sales and they’re in the room because they possess the attribute of learning. Uh, EQ world would call it self actualization.

Right? I have asked this question, I can’t even tell you how many times, how many of you and your hiring interview guide for salespeople have included specific questions about a sellers, aptitude and attitude towards learning. And you know what I get in the room, people look left, they look right, and then they start nodding their head. Now, so here you have a room full of learners, but they’ve missed incorporating vetting heavily for coachable people and people that love to learn big disconnect.

Andy Paul: Why do you think? I agree a hundred percent. I was always sort of mystified by that, because what you’re saying is, look, if we’re really screening for us are screened for curiosity.

Colleen Stanley: Yes. Yes.

Andy Paul: And, and so don’t you want to screen for curiosity, because this is one of the primary, if not the primary attribute, not only a human being needs to have, but a human being in sales needs to have.

Colleen Stanley: Well, you, you would think they would be vetting for it. Here’s what I think must, might happen. And I certainly had this happen in my own life, and this is not to do the invisible pat on the back, but I think sometimes you will assume because you’re hungry to learn, everyone else is the same. You assume that gosh, I’ll do whatever it takes. So you assume other people will. Yeah. So had done that bad thing called assumption and we know how that word dissects out. And so I think there’s some assumptions that are made there and that’s why anytime you have a system or a process, what’s great about that is it does put some guard rails in to remove your personal biases. Right. So that’s the reason you have methodology. You have playbooks, you have metrics, it simply removes bias and it, it makes you more objective in whatever you’re trying to accomplish.

Andy Paul: Right. I think that’s one of the areas where companies don’t invest enough in process and metrics is in hiring. You know, I’ve had this conversation and one of the reasons why I wanted to talk about that part of your book, cause I’ve been having a lot of conversations on the show about it is, still how much hiring is serve seat of the pants and, you know, made up on the fly and, and yet there’s processes, you can put in place that to your point is remove some of the biases from recruitment and from hiring and enable you to track the results of your hiring, to the performance of the people that you hired.

Colleen Stanley: And tracking meaning okay if they possess this set of competencies, that’s a pretty good predictor that we’re going to have this outcome. Am I aligning with what you’re saying?

Andy Paul: If we have a scorecard, which I think everybody should have a scorecard when they’re hiring people. You have, you decide what’s important, right? What’s the year, but the non negotiables, you called it. And, and I love the thing about you know, thesomething missing, but, but you’re gonna, you’re gonna score these various, it’s going to be, you do an off the shelf assessment.

It could be, you do a test of some sort. It could be, you know, to find out whether the coachable, so they have to do a sample presentation. It could be there, their interviews. Um, you know, it’s still hard. I believe that companies, these days bring somebody in a candidate. That’s one of the finalists and they’ll say, look, we’re going to talk to five people today. And all five people ask different questions. I mean, the state of the art is that you have all five people asked the exact same questions and the exact same order. So you can compare the answers and, and have a score that again, takes some of the subjectivity out of it.

Colleen Stanley: Right.

Andy Paul: So that’s what I talking about. Okay. Okay. We score total possible score is 50 on the scorecard. We’re not gonna hire anybody less than a 40 and then yeah, go back two years later and say, okay, well, how did the people that we hired at a 40 versus a 42 versus a 44 do.

Colleen Stanley: Right. Right. And you know what, it’s, it’s the same thing as prospecting, right? Lead scoring for a prospect. If it doesn’t hit this score, you don’t get to go into my pipeline and we don’t apply that same. See the, the principles can be so similar, but for some reason we don’t bring it over into the hiring process.

And I would, I’d say the other place that’s missing is if they do have any semblance of a very defined hiring playbook. So to your point, they’ve got a competency and they’ve developed three questions around that competency and three different people ask the question because I’ve seen where salespeople can be very good interviewers and they tell the same story over and over.

Right. But nobody knows it cause they’re not comparing the answers, but another area that I think people miss it, they may vet for the hard skills, subject matter expertise, years in the business, uh, you know, uh, contacts, uh, years of selling-

Andy Paul: What I call the, what I call the blah-blah-blah things. Yes.

Colleen Stanley: And you can vet those actually pretty easily without even talking to a candidate. I’m not saying you don’t, but those things you can, you can somewhat fit, but what they miss are some of the soft skills, right? The emotional intelligence skills and even interviewing for core values. I have found company, you know, they they’ve got the cards, you know, they’re beautiful cards or laminated and then again, in our hiring workshop, I will ask. Okay. And how many of these questions are vetted for in your hiring process? And again, I get the look left, right and then it turns into a nod of no, so that, that’s what we see happening out there and there’s just not a systemization around it.

Andy Paul: Well, that’s that’s the bottom line is you have to systematize hiring and we’ve done that in sales. We’ve increasingly dop it in sales, do it in the hiring as well. And that’s yeah, I mean, you talk about values questions. I, I think that’s so critical when you have your team of interviewers who are, you know, have this list of questions they’re all going to ask is you have to include in their questions about the person’s values. I mean, this is, you talk about building a culture, but you know, people have to be a culture fit.

Colleen Stanley: Yes, absolutely. And I remember interviewing years ago, uh, she was going to be more of my assistant, but I knew teamwork was one of the core values here. So I asked her the question around teamwork. Hey, give me an example of a time when you helped a member of your team and one of your prior positions of which you received no recognition or credit. Because I was also kind of testing for selflessness and you know what, and she came up with a great example. Um, I’ve also asked the question because I personally, um, don’t do well with blame, excuses and victims. So I actually learned this question from Don Finn, he’s an HR consultant and he said, tell me about a time when you’ve been treated unfairly.

Now, if you’ve lived long enough on this planet, you’ve been treated unfairly. Right. And so everyone has a story, but what’s interesting if you listen to the answer, people that have what I think term locus of control, if it is to be it’s up to me, they’ll say, yeah, this was unfair, but you know what, I learned this, I learned this and this was the good outcome.

The ones that tend to be victims and blamers, they’ve got a story and boy, they are still hanging on to that story. They chew on it every day. They ruminate every day and right there, you’ve got a score. And that that’s, that would be my non-negotiable. The answer on that one.

Andy Paul: Yeah, I agree. I think that that is, is a, a big red flag is because again, for me, when I hear answers like that, it’s, it’s people coming at it sorta from a perspective of fear again, and, you know, the fear of being judged and so there has to be an excuse for that.

And, and I think this is, to your point about emotional intelligence in general, not just a sales manager management level is think a lot of failure of, of those who fail in sales is our under-performance is due to fear, right? Fear to extend themselves fear, to invest, uh, fear of fear of failing, obviously. Right. And, and yeah, we, we have to be able to help people with that. Uh, and that’s why when you’re talking about, and the point I’d raised before is, yeah, your seller is only going as good as only going to get as good at that as their managers are good at it.

Colleen Stanley: Well, and as, and as good as they are at coaching to failure, right. Because, you know, I find this whole conversation around failure a little bit humorous, right. Because. Andy we’ve all heard that cute quote you learn more from your failures than your successes, right. And everybody goes, yeah and then I will pose this next question. So how many companies have you ever walked into and observed a big failure wall? Right. Screwed up here. Got out sold here. Didn’t do enough precall planning here, product sucked. And so we talk a good game, but we don’t walk a good game. Because if we truly learn more from our failures, why aren’t we celebrating them?

And so I think a lot of managers too, and I’ve heard you say that a couple of times today, they may not know how to identify fear or if they do, they don’t know how to coach people beyond fear. Right. And the same thing with failure. So how many sales managers in their group meetings are saying, okay, let’s start, what was your biggest failure this week? And what lesson did you learn and how will that lesson serve you moving forward? I mean you normalize failure because the fact is if you’re out there trying something new and today in this pandemic, boy are sellers having to try things new, right? New industries, new decision makers, new ways of selling.

You’re going to take a few face plants, so normalize it, but give, have them actually have to state the gift that they get from failing and take it from what I call rhetoric.

Andy Paul: Yeah. Well, it’s interesting you talk about that though cause I, you know, when you I’ve been thinking about it, as you’re talking this last bit about, do we learn more from failures than from successes? Cause I. I don’t know. I hope somebody asks me oftentimes I’ll show you know, guests will ask questions to me about what did I learn?

The big lessons I always learned came from my successes, the ones I remember today, I’m sure I learned from my failures as well, but I mean, you think about the context of sales. We talk about, you know, momentum and flow. Well that comes from building on your previous successes. So it’s, it’s, um, thinking about that.

I’m not, not, I mean, we’ve all heard the story, you know, the saying for all of our lives and, but I think it’s, I wonder, you know, you look in the military, the military always does this after action reports, you know, lessons learned, um, Yeah. Do you learn as much from failures to different successes? Because I think the thing with this theme of success is that, and this is the part that works.

Our struggle with that saying is that it’s not, I look at successes. I had, it was, and I, by and large in my sales career and sales management career, or doing sort of large complex products, but is, is. Every situation was different. Right? And so every, every winning opportunity, we had numerous forks in the road where I had to make decisions.

And, and, you know, we learned through doing that, Hey, those were the right. We made those right decisions most of the time. And maybe we made some wrong decisions, but we were able to correct it. Uh, but on balance. No, no, I don’t wanna get sidetracked, but I just it’s triggered me on that one is, is, uh, is I think people, maybe I think people don’t spend enough time learning from their successes because that’s, you are, you have all these points during that process where you could have made the wrong choice and failed, but you made the right choice and you should learn from that.

Colleen Stanley: So I think what you might be struggling with is I have a feeling you are somebody know, and I’m I’m,

Andy Paul: No, that’s fine.

Colleen Stanley: with it, but I was sensing you were, I think what the question might be in your head is I don’t think you ever really struggled making a comeback from a wrong decision.

Andy Paul: No, right.

Colleen Stanley: To come back factor pretty quickly because in the years that you sold enterprise sales, I’ve got to believe at some point you made a wrong decision.

You screwed up. I just suspect. I just suspect Andy, you went okay. Moving on. For many individuals, they may not have that psyche or as well developed as you, yours is. So a lot of times what sales managers can do to build that is just remind people, separate your do from your who. If you have a, if you have a failure, it’s on a roll performance, so it doesn’t have anything to do with you as a human being.

So I suspect you had some of that built in already, which is great. And hopefully you’re hiring for that, but I can tell you. There are X amount of salespeople that situationally, they might start taking things personally, they might start having some self doubt, let fear creep in. And I think for whatever reason, you were pretty well equipped, which is great.

Andy Paul: My parents loved me. Um,

Colleen Stanley: Makes a big difference. I got news for you. Not everybody’s going from a, that type of home. It became from a very critical home. Guess what? You don’t screw up around here. If you screw up. Wow, there is a price to be paid. So I think that’s a, that’s what I call the invisible suitcase that can show up to offices. Even when you’ve done a good hiring process there might be some invisible things showing up in the briefcase

Andy Paul: Well, I grew up, I grew up in a very competitive household, so dinnertime was competitive. Four kids, I was the youngest of four, uh, oldest of fourwas genius level smart. Um, and yeah, we were, we were very competitive and in our conversations, so, uh, yeah.

Colleen Stanley: I grew up in a family of eight and the only thing we were competing for was food. So there was no conversation you had to eat quite rapidly.

Andy Paul: Well, yeah, I had that challenge with m-as I was the youngest by my next oldest brother who was second in line and the kids is, yeah, we would fight for who would go through the, the, the food line last in terms of filling our plates. Uh, cause we both had big appetites. Yeah. If you were not the last one, you weren’t coming back for a second.

So, but yeah, I mean, I think that being in that competitive environment though, is, is we learn not to take things personally.

Colleen Stanley: Correct. So think about it. If somebody comes from a household where opinions were not challenged and it actually, that was the norm. Can you imagine a person when they get with a C suite buyer, which you are obviously facing an enterprise sales, a C suite buyer is going to challenge you. I mean, and they’re not doing it to be mean they’re not, you’re doing it because of whatever, whoever you are, a sales person, they’re simply going to challenge you because guess what?

If I’m going to make an investment, I really want to know you and your company, the ones to invest in. So you had training for how many years on, Oh, this is normal. But boy, if somebody grew up in a household where it was don’t rock, the boat. Can ask questions, can’t be challenged,they may not do well in sales, so you shouldn’t even hire them. Or it can be very situational to where, when they get with that type of personality, they don’t bring forth some of the skills such as assertiveness, uh, emotion management, and remaining calm in those conversations. And so that’s where some of the coaching needs to happen.

Andy Paul: Yeah. I think one thing I took from that was, yeah, I questioned everything and part, yeah. Partly because, well, partly because my older brother was very active in the antiwar movement back in the sixties and seventies. And we had these conversations about all this all the time and, and you know, that was the whole challenge, authority question, authority, timeframe. And I just came from that perspective. So yeah, I would still to this day. Yeah.

Colleen Stanley: Training class when you were 10.

Andy Paul: Yeah, I didn’t know it, but I mean, you know, I, I tell people is, you know, why do you take what your customers tell you at face value, for instance, right? That’s why you ask questions as you’re digging, you’re you’re uncovering, but you see that in sales people all the time is, Oh, well the customer said this about the requirements, like, yeahbut did you dig into that? Do you just accept that? Um, and that’s sort of an . Annoying characteristic I have as I just. There’s one boss told me once he said or asked him once he said, don’t you ever just say yes to anything?

So, all right. Well, Colleen, it’s been a pleasure to have you on. How can be people out more about the book and connect with you. And it is a good book. People should, should definitely go out and buy this one.

Colleen Stanley: Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. Uh, so go to our website, which is salesleadershipdevelopment.com. You will see the book featured there. Uh, Linkedin with me. I’d love to hear from you and yes, go out and buy our book. It’s in Barnes and noble, Amazon, Emotional Intelligence for Sales Leadership.

So thank you for having me as your guest today. I’ve enjoyed the conversation.

Andy Paul: pleasure to talk with you again and we’ll do it again.