Virtual Selling

7The Four Levels of Sales Intelligence

Virtual sales excellence and acumen requires that you:

• Become adept at connecting disparate ideas, data, and patterns; and leverage these mashups of information to offer insights and solve problems via virtual communication channels.
• Have insatiable curiosity for and courage to explore and learn new technology.
• Possess an evolve-or-die mentality.
• Be willing to invest in acquiring new knowledge and skills.
• Become a keen observer of nuanced human behavior—your own and that of others.
• Hone the ability to accurately sense, respond to, and influence the emotions of stakeholders, while advancing toward a defined sales outcome in both synchronous and asynchronous communication.
• Have the discipline to be aware of and in control of your emotions.

A combination of innate intelligence (IQ), acquired knowledge (AQ), technology acumen (TQ), and sales-specific emotional intelligence (EQ) allows you to seamlessly blend and balance multiple sales communication channels.  You become more agile and flexible. You move faster with less effort. You make a bigger impact. You become a person with whom people want to do business.

These four types of intelligence are tightly intertwined, each connecting, affecting, and amplifying the others. With virtual selling, people who combine high IQ, AQ, and TQ with high EQ dominate any field or discipline they pursue. These “high Q” people are at the very top of the food chain.

• IQ—how smart you are—is fixed. It is baked ...