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5 Skills for Building Stronger Client Relationships — Part #1
Selling with Emotional Intelligence
“Know thyself” is good advice for everyone, including sales professionals. “Emotional intelligence” is smart business.
“Doors open and close in our lives because of emotional intelligence or its absence.”
A Fish Story
When a man on a train sees a fellow passenger eat an entire herring except for the head, which the passenger pockets, he can’t restrain himself from asking, “Why did you put the head of a fish in your pocket?”
The passenger explains that fish is good for you, and that the healthiest part of the fish is the brain. So, he saves fish heads for his children.
After thinking about this for a while, the first man offers to buy the fish head for a dollar. He eats it and then turns to the man who sold it to him. “Hey, wait a minute!” he says. “I could have bought a whole fish for less than that!”
“See,” replies the other man. “You’re smarter already.”
Closing sales of all kinds (not only of fish heads) is as much a matter of emotion as of logical analysis. Cultivating emotional intelligence how you respond to various situations based on your…
