3 Reasons Why Empathy Will Make or Break Your Deals

Empathy is critically important in sellers – in fact, this one skill can make or break your deals.

In this article, I give three reasons why empathy plays such an important role in sales. (Next week, I’ll address how to cultivate it.)

First, there’s a glaring issue when it comes to empathy: it isn’t it prioritized enough in sales. Granted, empathy has almost become a buzzword. But most of that attention is in the context of leadership. This makes perfect sense since leaders are leading humans—and humans are complex.

But sales is all about human interaction too. Regardless of the rise in digital sales and the amount of research buyers can do on their own, B2B sales still hinges on communication between one human (the buyer) and another human (the seller).

Here are the 3 reasons why empathy will make or break your deals

Reason number 1:

Empathy is how you bridge a gap between one person’s perspective and another, in order to understand a problem to be solved.

I love how Sherry Turkle defines empathy in an article in HBR: “Empathy is the act of putting yourself in someone else’s problem in the hopes of understanding, of bridging a gap.”

B2B sales is all about helping customers solve problems. In order to solve those problems, the seller must first understand them. In order to understand them, the seller must use empathy.

Reason number 2:

All humans have a driving need to be seen, heard and understood.

Even more so in the sales world where buyers are inundated with “me me me” pitches from sellers. These pitches leave the buyer feeling invisible and irrelevant. That’s because the spotlight is on the product, not the buyer.

Instead, when a seller is empathetic to a buyer and takes the time to understand the buyer’s situation, perspective and problem, the buyer can enjoy the rare and precious feeling of being understood. Don’t underestimate the powerful impact this has on the sale.

Reason number 3:

Empathy starts with curiosity, which prompts the seller to ask critical questions to gather key data points.

Curiosity is about showing interest in the other person’s world. Sellers should of course do their research in advance, and anticipate the problems and recurring trends amongst buyers. But when speaking with each individual, they must get curious to understand that buyer’s unique world. Sherry Turkle recommends we embrace not knowing – “you can’t put yourself into someone else’s situation if you have preconceptions.”

To put it another way: without curiosity and empathy, glaring pieces of information will be missed by the seller.

For example, imagine a buyer says to a seller: “we need to speed up our employee ramp-up time, and that’s why we’re interested in your LMS platform.”

If you’re selling that LMS platform, it seems like you’ve got the green light to talk about your product now, right? Wrong!!

Not until you understand things like: What’s driving the need to speed up the employee ramp-up time?

How long is it taking now? By how much do they want to speed it up? How much is the current ramp-up time costing the business in terms of productivity, salaries, missed opportunities, etc.?

Do you see how asking these questions first, and gathering these key data points, can only strengthen your product recommendation when you do present it? 

The only way to get there is to use empathy.

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Now, there’s a glaring issue when it comes to empathy: how do you actually strengthen this critical skill?

That’s what I’ll dive into next week, in part 2. Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss it! 

Also, share this newsletter with anyone who could benefit.

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"3 Reasons Why Empathy Will Make or Break Your Deals"