Empathy: The Sales Skill You Didn't Know Mattered

I was online reading something about salespeople when I came across a list. I love a good list. This one was listing all the qualities that make a great salesperson: self-starter, persistent, thick-skinned, confident, motivated. All the usual suspects.

But I think it missed one of the most important ones: empathy.

I’m not sure empathy is something you can teach. But if you’re reading this and thinking, "Uh, I don’t know if I have any empathy," start reading fiction. Seriously. Books force you to see the world from someone else’s perspective, and that is essentially what empathy is.

I happen to have a ton of it, and I believe it’s one reason I’ve done well in sales. I can usually see all sides of a situation. I understand why my client feels the way they do, but I can also understand the person sitting across the table. I care about what happens to everyone involved.

And that might sound like the exact opposite of what we’ve been taught about great salespeople.

There’s this idea that salespeople are out for themselves. Get the deal. Get the commission. Hit the number. Move on to the next one. And sure, those salespeople exist. But some of the best salespeople I’ve ever met aren’t like that at all.

Sales is a hard job no matter what you sell. You spend a tremendous amount of time trying to understand what people want, what they’re afraid of, what they’re not telling you, and why they make the decisions they make.

Empathy makes you better at all of it.

Because when you can genuinely put yourself in someone else’s shoes, you stop thinking only about how to make the sale and start thinking about how to help the person make the right decision.

And ironically, that makes people much more receptive to buying from you.

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