At one time or another, everyone in Business Development has been faced with the challenge of being emotionally affected by what a prospect says on a call. It takes a person with a lot of experience and emotional maturity to be able to negate an emotional reaction, stay in an “adult role,” remain calm and stick to their planned dialogue.
If we accept the premise that it’s always easier to stay out of trouble than to get out of trouble, the question we should ask ourselves is, “What triggers us to feel things from an emotional perspective?” Once you figure out what your emotional triggers are, you can more easily learn to control them.
Most of what we react to emotionally is not offered with the intent of producing an emotional result. It’s our own preconditioning that causes us to react in a certain way … many times not in our best interest. Thankfully, that preconditioning can be changed. However, it requires concerted self-analysis to uncover what it is about a tone of voice, inflection, or circumstance that engenders emotional vulnerabilities in us.
Studying behavioral psychology and identifying how we’ve been conditioned to feel will aid us in recognizing these trigger points. Once we uncover these triggers and look at them from a conscious level, they lose the power they previously held over us.
To be successful in Business Development, we must learn to deal with other people’s emotions … without getting our own feelings involved.