The unique challenges they face

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It starts with understanding who is involved in the purchase and who will be affected by the purchase beyond the obvious decision-maker to identify other stakeholders and potential influencers. Gaining this knowledge means your sales reps need to do research and have honest conversations with decision makers and others affected. Of course they are unlikely to know everything they need to know on the first call. Discovering those less obvious relationships takes time. However, if they are open and honest they are more likely to hear real answers even if it takes a few phone calls. Once they’ve identified everyone involved they’ll have a better idea of how your product or service can help and what factors are most important to potential customers.

Fake intimacy though as this can be easily noticed. Anthony Iñarino points out that those one-to-one emails are actually one-to-many. For example if you send a follow-up email that is personalized with the prospect’s name but is clearly templated Email Marketing List in the body text  it doesn’t reference relevant insights related to the prospect then it won’t help you build a relationship. Empathy Empathy is a key skill for salespeople. Often defined as the act of putting yourself in another person's shoes. You may not be able to understand, but you can work to understand what it's like to face those challenges. To do this you have to look beyond the personas and focus on the characters themselves.




For Andy Paul author and founder of , it’s not just about understanding what they’re feeling but also why they’re feeling that way, using cognitive empathy to understand context rather than being purely moved by emotion. I think we tend to turn service into compassion which doesn't work for them but understanding does. This is another quality that cannot be faked. If prospects suspect that your sales reps’ empathy is nothing more than empty platitudes or words in a sales script it will have the opposite effect and lead to distrust that further alienates them. Honesty and Authenticity Honesty is at the core of every relationship. Yet honesty and sales don't always have the best history.