“It’s not about feeling the same feeling. It’s about being able to understand what someone else might be feeling and the ability to share that feeling.” – Jason Bay in today’s Tip 360
Why this is important?
Join the conversation below and check Jason’s interview on the Outreach Sales Engagement podcast!
Blissful Prospecting
Jason Bay on LinkedIn
Jason’s interview on the Outreach Sales Engagement podcast
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today Jason Bay from Blissful Prospecting is back with another of his killer prospecting tips. Here he is:
Jason Bay: All right, let’s talk empathy. So this is a big topic in sales right now. I think there’s some confusion around what empathy actually is and this is inspired from a conversation I had with Scott Barker on the Outreach Sales Engagement podcast. And one of the big things that I believe is very important is distinguishing between what empathy is and what it is not. And this is inspired also by a post that I saw on LinkedIn where someone basically said: “Empathy is not needed in sales because you shouldn’t feel the same feeling as your prospect.” For example, if they’re frustrated, you shouldn’t also be frustrated. So that is not the definition of empathy. Empathy is actually the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. That’s straight out of the dictionary there. So it’s not about feeling the same feeling. It’s about being able to understand what someone else might be feeling and the ability to share that feeling.
So why is this important? The reason why it’s important is prospects are people just like you in me. And the big thing is in order to sell effectively, we have to have a good conversation with someone. And the way that people become close is through having conversations where people are on the same page and they can empathize with each other and they can understand what the other person’s thinking, what they might be feeling, that kind of thing.
So in prospecting, this is extremely important because you have a very short window to really build an establish empathy, whether they be through a cold call or through an email and get that person open to just listen to you, even if that’s for 30 seconds, 60 seconds, whatever it might be. So I want to give you two or three things that you can use right now to practice having a little bit more empathy in your outreach so that when you go to do this, it’s much more effective.
So one of the things you can do before you fire off that email or before you make that cold call is rehearsed what you’re going to say and ask herself and run this by people in your team as well. What am I going to say here? And how is that going to make the prospect feel? And you could even go a step further and ask herself, how do I want the prospect to feel? Do I want them to feel excited? Hopefully, right? Do I want them to feel a little bit intrigued? Maybe you probably don’t want them to feel frustrated or mad or angry, right? So go through your messaging and pretend like you’re on the receiving end. Talk to people on your team and ask them how this would make them feel. That’s number one.
Number two is something that you can practice on the or email when someone actually expresses a frustration. So, for example, if you open up a cold call and you ask someone,” Hey, have you been, and someone’s like, you know, my day is not really going well” don’t just skip and go right to your thing. Don’t. And don’t just say, you know what? I hear a lot as well, “No problem.” And then you go straight into our pitch. That’s a chance for you to be a little human there. And you could say something as simple as like, “Oh Hey, it sounds like you’re, you’re frustrated. You know, I’m really sorry to hear that.” Or “Hey, you know, sounds like it’s been a long day. You know, we’re just getting back from the break. I’m sure that you’ve got a lot on your mind. So I appreciate you taking a couple of seconds here.” So just acknowledge how the person may be feeling that they’re frustrated and let them know that that’s okay. So that’s a really, really simple thing that you can do there.
Another thing that you can do, and this is a more advanced thing that takes a little bit more time and something I talk about a lot is customer interviews. So one way that you could get in the shoes of your prospect a little bit more and understand what they might be going through and where their challenges and frustrations lie in relation to your product or service is to interview them and ask them about their challenges and their frustrations prior to using your product or service. And people are going to say all kinds of crazy things about their current solution and what they hate and what they like and what they don’t like and that kind of stuff. And you can lead with that in your prospecting conversations.
All right, so hopefully that helps with empathy. I left a link here that you can check out on the show notes as well. If you want to listen more about how to use empathy in your prospecting with my conversation with Scott Barker on the Outreach Sales Engagement podcast, that’d be linked up in the show notes and thanks for taking a listen.
Scott Ingram: If you’ll click over to DailySales.Tips/360 you’ll find a link to Jason’s interview with Scott Barker on the Outreach Sales Engagement podcast as well as links to Jason’s LinkedIn profile, Blissful Prospecting, and all that good stuff.
Then make sure you come back tomorrow and every day after that, for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!