“If you want to do a really great job at reaching out and connecting with them, start to communicate your point of view to them as it relates to those other pieces of their pie” – Jack Wilson in today’s Tip 394
How do you practice empathy?
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from my friend and birthday buddy. Jack Wilson. Jack is the Director of Franchise Development at CinchIT and Sales Rebellion coach. Here he is with today’s tip:
Jack Wilson: What’s going on Daily Sales Tips community. I want to share with you a practice that I find really helpful and actually establishing a baseline for empathy when it comes to prospecting or even dealing with current customers. We all talk about having empathy and practicing empathy as one of the most important characteristics of a successful sales professional. And honestly, in 2020 I feel like empathy has become one of the biggest buzzwords. But as much as we talk about it, how do we practice it? How do we learn how to be more or have more or to practice more empathy? So I’m going to walk you through a really quick exercise that you can do with any of your prospects or customers to understand how to be more empathetic.
So for the practice first, whether it’s in your mind or it’s on a piece of paper, I want you to draw a circle. And above that circle, I want you to put a title of you. This circle represents what it is that you care about the most. So for a sales professional, as you’re dialing, as you’re creating your outreach, think about what you care about the most. And in most cases, it’s going to be what it is that you sell. So I’ll just use myself as an example, I’m in the managed service industry. So inside that circle is IT. It’s my professional expertise. Now I want you to next to that circle to draw an even larger circle and above it, I want you to put the title of the persona you’re reaching out to. So for example, sake, let’s just say you’re calling on CFOs. Like in my shoes, many times the CFO has decision making power when it comes to IT services. Now your circle was a hundred percent contained with IT or your product or service. But what slice of that larger circle for the CFO represents IT or your product or service. I want you to draw that slice. And then for the rest of that circle for this CFO, I want you to fill in the other pieces of the pie. So for a CFO, it could be audits, budgets, revenues and expenses, tax filings, or just think now is the time of year when they’re doing year-end financial statements. So as you start to look at these two circles next to each other, juxtaposed. How much of your pie actually occupies the mind of that CFO. And you could start to empathize what they care about as you’re calling on them. So most people stop here when it comes to practicing empathy, but we need to remember that it takes yet another step.
So draw another circle, still a larger circle. And above that circle the person, the man, the woman, the father, the mother of the CFO rather. So that person outside of their occupation. So you take their circle, all the slices of their job pie. How much of their life circle does that occupy and draw that small slice and then start to fill out the rest of the pieces of that pie. So you’ve got their job or their occupation, their family, bills, interests, friends, hobbies, a number of other different things that they care about or they’re concerned with. As you start to look at these three circles, you’ll notice that there you are all the way to the side, the smallest of those three circles.
So as you call in your prospects or you call your current clients, use this imagery to consider the other things that are on their mind or that are occupying more of their brain space. If you want to do a really great job at reaching out and connecting with them, start to communicate your point of view to them as it relates to those other pieces of their pie. Not just as a professional but as a person as well. So I hope this helps you get out there and practice better empathy.
Scott Ingram: Now if you want an easy way to practice better empathy. Think about what Jack might want right now. I bet he’d love to connect with you on LinkedIn and hear that you listened to this tip and what you thought about it. You’ll find a link to Jack’s LinkedIn profile and to CinchIT at DailySales.Tips/394
Once you’ve reached out to Jack. Be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!