Introduction:
In today’s fast-paced business world, it can be easy to get lost in the numbers and focus solely on achieving targets and hitting revenue goals.
While this is important, it’s crucial not to overlook the human element in business – specifically, the importance of emotional intelligence (EI) in B2B relationships.
When it comes to successful business-to-business relationships, emotional intelligence is often overlooked.
But the truth is that understanding and responding to emotions in a way that nurtures trust and communication between partners can make all the difference when it comes to forging strong, lasting partnerships.
Emotional intelligence has been widely studied in recent years and many psychological studies have discovered its direct correlation with success in both professional and personal settings.
In B2B relationships specifically, having emotional intelligence helps create an atmosphere where people are comfortable being vulnerable.
This creates a safe space for all parties involved to share their feelings, fears and ideas.
A strong emotional connection between business partners is also important for trustworthiness and keeping commitments.
When all parties in a relationship are emotionally connected to each other, it’s easier for them to understand their partner’s needs and make a commitment to meeting them.
This mutual understanding strengthens the bond that exists between the two businesses and increases trustworthiness.
Additionally, having emotional intelligence helps to foster effective communication between the two partners.
Good communication should always be based on mutual respect and understanding, but this is even more important in B2B relationships because both parties must work together towards common goals.
Emotional intelligence allows both sides of the partnership to better understand what words or actions need to be taken in order to effectively communicate.
Finally, having emotional intelligence is essential for conflict resolution. Conflict can arise in any relationship and it’s important to be able to recognize this and address it quickly in order to avoid damaging the partnership.
It helps both partners to better understand why the conflict has arisen and how best to resolve it without putting the health of the partnership at risk.
In this article, we’ll explore what EI is, how it impacts B2B relationships, and how businesses can cultivate a culture of emotional intelligence to achieve better results.
What is Emotional Intelligence?
Emotional intelligence is defined as the ability to recognize, understand, and manage one’s own emotions while also recognizing and responding appropriately to the emotions of others.
Another way to explain it would be, the ability to identify, assess, and manage emotions in oneself and others.
In the business-to-business (B2B) environment, emotional intelligence is becoming increasingly important; emotional awareness, empathy and communication skills are crucial for successful outcomes.
Leaders in B2B settings must be able to properly motivate their teams while also understanding emotional cues from customers to ensure strong relationships are built and maintained.
It is essential that individuals understand emotional dynamics within a team setting in order to foster trust and collaboration.
By having emotional intelligence, better decisions will be made in any organizational environment or team setting.
There are four components of EI: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management.
- Self-awareness involves understanding one’s own emotions, strengths, and weaknesses.
- Self-management involves being able to regulate one’s emotions and behaviors in response to different situations.
- Social awareness involves being attuned to the emotions of others and understanding how they might be feeling.
- Relationship management involves using one’s emotional intelligence to build and maintain positive relationships with others.
The Impact of Emotional Intelligence in B2B Relationships:
Top B2B Leaders Agree that EI Skills are Essential:
In 1995, Daniel Goleman published a book titled ‘Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ’.
While Goleman wasn’t the first to coin the term, his work is widely credited with bringing emotional intelligence into the mainstream lexicon.
Twenty-seven years later, the concept is more pertinent and salient than ever.
In sales, it’s something we probably don’t talk about enough.
While in the world of B2B, it’s easy to focus solely on the numbers – hitting sales targets, increasing revenue, and so on.
However, emotional intelligence plays a crucial role in the success of B2B relationships. When businesses prioritize emotional intelligence, it can lead to better communication, collaboration, and trust between businesses.
This, in turn, can lead to better results, as businesses are better able to work together towards common goals.
On the other hand, low emotional intelligence in B2B relationships can lead to misunderstandings, conflicts, and even the breakdown of business relationships.
For example, if a salesperson is unable to recognize and respond appropriately to a client’s emotions, they may miss out on a valuable opportunity to build rapport and establish a long-term relationship.
Alternatively, if a team member is unable to regulate their emotions and reacts poorly to feedback or criticism, it can negatively impact team dynamics and the success of a project.
How to Develop Emotional Intelligence in B2B:
Thankfully, emotional intelligence is not a fixed trait – it can be developed and improved over time.
Here are some tips for cultivating emotional intelligence in a B2B context:
- Focus on self-awareness: Take the time to understand your own emotions, strengths, and weaknesses. This can involve self-reflection, taking personality tests, or seeking feedback from others.
- Practice self-management: Once you’re aware of your own emotions, work on regulating your behavior in response to different situations.
This can involve techniques such as deep breathing, mindfulness, or reframing negative thoughts.
- Build social awareness: Pay attention to the emotions of others and try to understand how they might be feeling.
This can involve active listening, observing body language, and empathizing with others.
- Prioritize relationship management: Use your emotional intelligence to build and maintain positive relationships with others.
This can involve effective communication, conflict resolution, and building trust.
Additionally, businesses can cultivate a culture of emotional intelligence by providing EI training and development opportunities for their employees.
The ROI of Emotional Intelligence in B2B:
Investing in emotional intelligence can have a positive impact on a business’s bottom line.
For example, a study by the Harvard Business Review found that salespeople with high emotional intelligence were 50% more likely to meet or exceed their sales targets than those with low emotional intelligence.
Additionally, a study by the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations found that companies that invest in EI training saw a return on investment (ROI) of $1.50 for every dollar spent on training.
Furthermore, prioritizing emotional intelligence in B2B relationships can lead to long-term benefits.
Building positive relationships with clients and business partners can lead to increased loyalty, repeat business, and even referrals to other potential clients.
Additionally, a positive work environment that prioritizes emotional intelligence can lead to increased employee retention, as employees are more likely to stay in a workplace where they feel valued and supported.
Understanding the Advantages and Benefits of Emotional Intelligence in Business Relationships:
Emotional intelligence is increasingly being recognized as a key factor in achieving success in B2B relationships.
By understanding and managing emotions, those in business can create and foster healthier, meaningful, and long-lasting partnerships.
When emotional intelligence is part of the equation, conversations become more productive, disagreements move toward resolution faster and overall trust between partners increases.
Being cognizant of emotional responses to situations also helps in reducing stress within a team or partnership.
With emotional intelligence playing a role, both parties benefit from better collaboration, improved outcomes, and greater potential for business growth.
We are also in an era of B2B sales in which the buyer is at the core of the sales process.
The “buyer-first” philosophy requires the seller to adapt to his or her customer’s needs, which are increasingly individualized and specific.
And this can only be done by a personal one-on-one connection.
If you only refine your solutions to meet these increasingly demanding customers, the results will fall short of expectations.
It doesn’t matter how good your product or service is if you don’t know how to sell it to a modern-day buyer.
Therefore, refining the entire sales process is crucial and you must start with the bottom line: establishing a strong connection with the customer.
Emotional Intelligence in Sales:
Emotional intelligence refers to one’s fluency with the language of emotion.
A person with a high EI is adept at recognizing and assigning meaning to their own emotions as well as those of others.
“In a very real sense we have two minds,” wrote Goleman, “one that thinks and one that feels.”
In B2B sales and marketing, there’s been a historical inclination to over-index on the rational mind at the expense of the intuitive mind.
But fundamental shifts in the business world are driving strategies toward striking a greater balance.
Buyers are seeking connection, trust, and advocacy. They’re looking to move beyond strictly transactional, rational relationships.
As sellers, we need to be more intuitive, perceptive, and observant, prioritizing these qualities at least as much as pitching, negotiating, and talking specs.
We need to put emotional intelligence at the forefront.
Benefits of Emotional Selling in Modern B2B Sales
Numerous studies over the years have found that sellers with high EI outperform those with average or below-average EI.
While there’s no universal formula for measuring emotional intelligence, it’s not the metric that matters so much as embracing the traits and skills that contribute to EI, and acknowledging how they can be advantageous in selling scenarios.
New discoveries through active listening
Active listening: LinkedIn’s State of Sales 2020 report found that this trait is valued above all others by buyers, but doesn’t rank among the top five skills sought by sales managers when hiring.
Attentive curiosity and thoughtful lines of questioning can open new doors and unearth pivotal insights during sales conversations.
Listening is a core tenet of emotional intelligence.
Why? It provides clarity around how someone feels.
For example, if the person you’re talking to isn’t on-camera, you might pay extra attention to their tone of voice or choice of words.
Conducting additional online research ahead of a meeting can set you up to ask better questions and more quickly get to the subjects your buyer cares about.
Last year at Forbes, Valerie Chan shared tips for finding emotional intelligence in a remote work environment. Some of her suggestions:
- Continuously self-assess
- Listen first
- Communicate deliberately and carefully
- Remain visible and approachable
“Without the usual physical interactions and sensory clues, managing our feelings and relationships in the workplace is less intuitive and more challenging,” Chan wrote, “but it is more important now than ever — especially to future-proof your business.”
Handling objections and rejection
Emotional intelligence is partially defined by the ability to manage and modulate one’s own emotions. Sales can be a trying job at times, but reps rarely benefit from projecting their disappointment or frustration onto customers.
The capability to smoothly and calmly navigate tough points in conversations or undesired outcomes helps keep relationships and reputations in good standing.
Developing empathy and self-awareness
There’s a lot of talk about empathy in sales these days, and rightfully so.
However, it can sometimes feel like a vague ideal. Of course we want to see the world through our customer’s eyes, but that’s not so easily done in practice.
Empathy and self-awareness are two of the five components of EI in Goleman’s model, and, as Alan Mallory, wrote on LinkedIn a few years ago, they feed into one another.
“Before we can be empathetic, we need to have a good sense of our own self-awareness and gain insight into our own emotions,” he argued. “This is how we improve ourselves and expand our mindsets – by seeing things from another person’s perspective.”
Inspiring action:
The ability to connect emotionally and spot subtle cues can help salespeople generate energy and momentum in a meeting.
As Steve Renard of Crowned Fox Adventures described this dynamic to Super Office:
“A salesperson needs to be aware of the emotions of the audience (the purchaser) and be sure to ride the right emotional wave to inspire the purchaser to action. It’s not about hitting them over and over with data and analytics and information. It’s giving that information a story and a soul that the purchaser can relate to, react to, and understand.”
Emotional Intelligence in Customer Experience:
Customer experience refers to how your customer feels about your brand as a result of their interactions with it throughout their relationship with your brand.
There are many factors that go into how your customers perceive your brand.
Engaging emotional intelligence throughout your interactions from the beginning is extremely helpful in understanding your customers’ emotional needs and providing them with an experience they can relate to and, ultimately, prefer to others.
Being aware of your customers’ emotional needs helps you engage with your customers, which is the most effective way to increase the customer experience.
Customers that are more engaged with your brand purchase more, are more loyal, and more likely to promote your brand.
How to Develop Emotional Intelligence in Sales Teams
The purchasing process is an emotional experience for many consumers. The more sales representatives and marketing teams understand emotional intelligence, the better off they will be to make that emotional connection and increase sales.
So, how do we increase this soft skill among sales teams?
An expert in the field, Gordon Tredgold, created a list of tips for businesses to increase their emotional intelligence.
Tredgold’s tips include reminding sales teams and leadership to be more mindful, less reactive, and empathetic. His tips are:
- Listen more than you talk
- Respond instead of reacting
- Put yourself in their shoes
- Apologize for mistakes
- Don’t interrupt
- Show vulnerability
- Empathize
- Smile more to create a positive environment
- Ask instead of telling people what to do
- Praise people around you
Becoming more aware of your own emotions and understanding how others feel will help sales teams increase emotional intelligence and create an environment more conducive to engagement.
Examples of Emotional Intelligence in Advertising:
Marketing teams can also use these tips to understand their customers as a whole and create campaigns based on emotional connections.
Some examples of emotionally-driven advertising campaigns include:
Coca-Cola
The Coke brand has used emotionally-based advertising for a very long time with slogans such as “Have a Coke and a Smile” and “Open Happiness.”
One of their other ad, “Share a Coke – Share a Feeling” campaign encourages customers to share a Coke and an emoticon with their friends to tell them how they feel.
Apple
Apple uses emotional intelligence to understand consumers well enough to build a lifestyle that their customers want to be a part of.
Apple’s emotional connection has more to do with making products that we need and that are physically close to us, plus stylish and trendy.
Uber
In 2020, as Uber was unable to provide its popular ride-sharing service, they continued to advertise, encouraging people to stay home and stay safe in a socially-responsible and caring advertising campaign.
Uber’s CEO has stated the importance of emotional intelligence since he joined.
Conclusion:
In conclusion, emotional intelligence is crucial for success in B2B relationships.
By prioritizing emotional intelligence, businesses can improve communication, collaboration, and trust between businesses, which can lead to better results.
Additionally, investing in emotional intelligence training and development can have a positive impact on a business’s bottom line, as well as lead to long-term benefits such as increased loyalty and employee retention.
As we move forward in the business world, it’s important not to overlook the human element in business and prioritize emotional intelligence in all aspects of our professional relationships.
— I work with SaaS companies and am a specialist in content marketing strategy and conversion optimization.
