Brynne Tillman [28:19]: Welcome back to Making Sales Social! I am Brynne Tillman here with the amazing Colleen Stanley, who is the President and Chief Selling Officer of Sales Leadership, Inc, and is widely recognized as the leading sales expert in the integration of emotional intelligence into sales and sales leadership. With a career that spans from being a top-performing sales representative at Varsity Brands to becoming the first female associate to reach platinum status at the Sandler Sales Institute, Colleen has consistently proven that soft skills produce hard sales results. Colleen is also the author of three best-selling books: Emotional Intelligence for Sales Success, Emotional Intelligence for Sales Leadership, and the highly anticipated book, Be the Mentor Who Mattered, which launched in November 2025. Named by Salesforce as one of the top 7 influential sales experts of the 21st century and ranked as the number one global sales guru in 2024, Colleen helps organizations worldwide bridge the gap between knowing what to do and having the emotional intelligence to actually do it. What an honor to have you here, my friend! Colleen, welcome to the show.

Colleen Stanley: Well, thank you, and what a lovely introduction. I better live up to the bio, correct?

Brynne Tillman: Oh my gosh, every time we’re together, you live up to that bio and beyond. Really, you are so incredible. You have been a quiet mentor of mine—you may not know it, but I follow everything you do in the emotional intelligence world. I never paid much attention to it until you had your first book, and I went, “My god, this is magic.” I have changed so much of the way I approach the world based on what I’ve learned from you, so thank you.

Colleen Stanley: Oh, well, thank you for that, and you’re most welcome.

Brynne Tillman: A lot of good news.

Colleen Stanley: Centers.

Brynne Tillman: It’s funny that your book, The Mentor Who Mattered, is amazing, and I want to talk a little bit about that today. Ultimately, there are a lot of mentors that matter that are aware—they were your managers and your leaders. But there are a lot of mentors out there who don’t even know the impact they’ve made, and they matter too. I love that, and we’ll talk a little bit about that. But before we get into your genius, we ask all of our guests the same first question, which is: what does making sales social mean to you? And in this case, through the lens of emotional intelligence?

Colleen Stanley: For me, social selling is a thank goodness, because when I grew up in sales, you could not get online to research anyone. There was no internet. Now, some of your listeners might be asking, “How old is she?” I’m 100. Diet and exercise, pay attention, okay? And so, for me, there are so many great things that happen with social selling. Number one, people can get to know you, obviously, and you’re an expert in helping with that. Number two, it can give you a platform for really sharing your point of view. That’s an education platform, I believe, if you’re using social selling the right way. Rather than self-promoting, you’re really giving information that will help others learn, develop, and improve. If you do that well, that’s when they’ll reach out to you. You can do the proactive reach out, which is what your company is so phenomenal at. But if you’re out there delivering great content, people want to get to know you. At the same time, even if they never reach out to you, you’ve helped somebody.

Brynne Tillman: I love that. That’s great. I want to jump into EQ and the sales connection for a minute. You often say that when sales teams struggle, they’re quick to ask for more training, right? But the real issue is often underdeveloped EQ. How specifically do EQ skills help self-awareness and impact sales success?

Colleen Stanley: I’m so glad you’re framing the question that way because for many years, I taught consultative sales training, and I want to make it clear that those skills are very important. However, as someone who has got their 10,000 hours in the classroom, I noticed that often after you’ve taught something—the concept works, it’s proven—sales reps weren’t using that skill consistently or effectively on sales calls. That’s when I started studying emotional intelligence and linking each specific EQ skill to a selling stage. For example, we all know a first impression is important. How many people have you seen on Zoom that are sitting there like this, or in a face-to-face meeting? They don’t understand that their emotional expression is conveying that they’re really not interested or not that empathetic, so you might blow the first impression. If you take a look at business development, we all know you need to take time to pre-call plan, customize the messaging, and develop good, provocative, challenging questions. Except when we’re not doing that, it is usually due to the fact that you haven’t developed your delayed gratification skills, because you must put in the work before you earn the reward of a great call.

Brynne Tillman: Love that! Delayed gratification skills. That’s awesome!

Colleen Stanley: Yeah, and think about it, Bryn. A lot of times in sales—and I’ve really been giving people some tough love on this—we all know practice is essential to master anything. You go to a theater and you don’t see actors and actresses on the stage going, “Now, wait a minute, what’s my next line?” Obviously, we love watching athletics. Sales seems to be the only profession where we’re arrogant enough to think that we can run a really great conversation without practice. However, let’s back this up. Delayed gratification is the skill that allows you to practice. You’ll put in the tedium of practicing and role-playing to earn the reward of a well-run sales call. With every selling stage, what we did is we linked a soft skill that would help accelerate that selling step. Assertiveness is a big one when it comes to budget and uncovering the decision-making process.

Brynne Tillman: I love that. That whole delayed gratification—we talk a lot about slowing down the outreach to speed up the outcome. I feel like that bridges into that beautifully, so I love that. You’ve mentioned how poor empathy can cause a salesperson to miss nonverbal cues or fail to address the sales elephant in the room, which I love. Talk a little bit about how reps develop that empathy needed to read the room, because I feel like there are people who just don’t ever get it, and there are people who always get it, but you talk about how you can actually develop that.

Colleen Stanley: That’s the good news. With emotional intelligence, if you desire it, with focus and commitment, those skills can be improved. Here’s what’s interesting with empathy, and I’m sure you’ve seen it where it’s almost getting to be this cliché: step into another person’s shoes, see the world from their view. Well, that’s nice. However, in order to do that, you have to back up a couple of steps. Number one, empathy is a thinking skill before it’s a verbal skill.

Brynne Tillman: Mmm.

Colleen Stanley: If you never take the time to sit, think, and reflect, it might be, “How did I show up yesterday? How did I land on somebody?” It’s having empathy for the fact that maybe you were the emotional trigger. It could be sitting and thinking, “What is really this person’s worldview, and what’s informing them?” Where the unspoken objection comes in is if you are a person who has never developed that skill of paying attention. See, that’s another sub-skill of empathy. Empathy is first and foremost a paying attention skill. You don’t see a shift in body language, a change in tonality, or in eye movement. So, literally, you miss an unspoken objection or a hesitation. As a result of that, you miss the meeting after the meeting, because that’s when they start discussing the elephant in the room: “Well, they had a service failure, they kind of took care of it, but are they really good? They’re a small company, we’re a big company, do they really have the resources?” If you don’t bring that elephant up, they’re going to make up stories because you just left the building.

Brynne Tillman: So to speak. I think that’s so powerful. Empathy helps you to see the elephant. Without empathy, you’re in your own head, it’s all about what you want to achieve, and you miss the elephant completely.

Colleen Stanley: Yeah, when you take a look at empathetic people, they’re very other-absorbed. Not to the point where they’re martyrs—there’s a cost to having too much empathy, and that’s sometimes even the root cause of discounting or not getting clear next steps. But with the elephant in the room, you can sense a change in energy. People might think this sounds very woo, but think about when you’ve walked into a room and something’s not right. That’s energy. If you’re 100% present on that call, you will sense that energy. Then it might be as simple as saying, “I’m sensing some hesitation. However, I don’t know if I’m reading it right, and I certainly don’t know if I can get rid of your hesitation,” because you want to keep the person safe by which they will bring up the objection. A lot of times they don’t bring up the objection because they’ve all gone through that sumo wrestling thing where you bring up an objection, and then the salesperson takes it to the ground and says, “Well, we can overcome it,” which is totally against the neuroscience of how we need to sell out there.

Brynne Tillman: Oh, I love that. I’m going to throw out one of our tenets: detach from what the prospect is worth to you, and attach to what you’re worth to the prospect.

Colleen Stanley: I feel that’s what comes in here. I’m in this meeting to understand what they need, not to make a sale. If the sale happens, that’s great.

Brynne Tillman: But if I come into it going, “I have to ask all the right discovery questions so that I can close the sale,” you miss that elephant.

Colleen Stanley: Yes. You will not bring up the elephant if you are too attached to the outcome, because you’re actually afraid you’re going to plant an objection. What I always like to tell my clients is you’re not going to plant the objection; they’re already thinking it. It’s our job to have a truth-telling conversation by which to bring it up empathetically. I don’t know if I can get rid of the objection, but we can at least have a conversation around it. Again, let’s say if you’re a company and you’re on the early side of the commoditization curve, the biggest concern is, “Gosh, this product sounds great, who else has used it?” Well, you don’t have this big history of people using your product, so what’s the elephant in the room? “Are we guinea pigs? Are you guys going to be in business?” Those are the conversations you need to have in order to move any kind of sale or relationship forward.

Brynne Tillman: I love that. I think that’s an exercise every sales team can do: write down every single objection you’ve ever heard, and all the ones you’re afraid you’re going to hear. Let’s know them. I think that’s awesome.

Colleen Stanley: Well, they do know them. Going back to what you said, losing—I’m going to put my words on it—losing the attachment to the outcome of the sale. If you’re so attached to getting a yes, this is where you start overselling. This is where you don’t really go into deep discovery because you’re trying to be efficient versus effective. People will sense that if you’re just checking the box. If you’re really curious, here’s what I tell people: do not schedule back-to-back meetings. I’ve seen people lose deals because they’re scheduling meetings so tight, and just about the time the conversation’s getting deep, they have to go. That leaves the prospect not feeling so good. Little things can throw off the trust factor.

Brynne Tillman: That’s great! Buffer makes a big difference. A buffer in your calendar—I love that! Even for the recap, right? Even for you to grab notes after that call.

Colleen Stanley: For you to go back to, like, “This is what I heard.” Yes.

Brynne Tillman: When that happens fast… I had an in-person dinner meeting with someone recently. It was really fun because I hadn’t done that in a while. By the time I got home, she had sent a recap email: “Here are the next steps, this is what you’re going to do, this is what I’m going to do.” The fact that she took the time to do that was so meaningful. Give them the buffer to do that. If you have meetings back-to-back, you don’t remember, even if you have notes. I want sales leaders to hear that. Go ahead.

Colleen Stanley: Because they’re the ones that are hammering, sometimes, appointment after appointment after appointment. We all know—and it will not be earth-shattering for your audience—that quality over quantity. It’s easy to say, hard to do, because that goes back into the instant gratification bucket. “Well, if I keep running appointments, then I’m busy,” but I’m not productive. You have to dive deep into belief systems, which falls under the self-awareness umbrella. You have to really dive in: why am I not doing what logically has been proven out there? I mean, you’ve got books like Deep Work, which talks about giving yourself those buffer times. A lot of times, if you start backing up why you’re not doing what you’re doing, you actually don’t believe it, and then here’s what happens: you often have to do it before you believe it. Sometimes you just have to take the leap of faith that, you know what, if I give myself buffer, I’m still going to get my work done and I’m going to get the number of quality calls in, but you have to do it before you believe it.

Brynne Tillman: Yeah, but leadership has to encourage it instead of discourage it, right? Instead of saying, “How many appointments did you have today?” They need to be managing to the right behavior.

Colleen Stanley: Well, they’re modeling the behavior. If you’re running around with your hair on fire, you’re sending a message: “Hair on fire is good around here. Hair on fire means I’m important and I’m getting a lot of stuff done.” Well, you’re getting a lot of stuff done, but I don’t know if it’s the right stuff. Do not kid yourself, your team is watching you. How you show up every day is how they’re learning to show up every day.

Brynne Tillman: I love that, and I’m going to bridge that into your newest book, The Mentor Who Mattered. What can sales leaders and CEOs do today to move from a boss culture to a mentorship culture and be productive?

Colleen Stanley: A couple of thoughts here. We all know managers are getting busier, and you’ve got this whole seismic change with AI. However, I’m also reading they’ve got more direct reports. When I was a regional sales manager, I had 18 direct reports because we were a startup, which is ridiculous. But if you think about it, we didn’t have all the distractions back then, either. There was a part where you could manage that many because I think the environment was setting you up to be successful there. But let’s go back to the mentorship topic. Number one, what I believe—and my goal with companies—is to create a mentorship culture. Everyone in the organization should have the idea that they’re here to mentor. The senior reps are here to mentor the new hires or younger professionals, and younger professionals can mentor one another. If something’s working great for you on a call, share it with your peers. To me, this means that companies are going to have to hire differently if they believe mentorship matters. There are a lot of statistics out there proving that it adds to the top and bottom line. In your hiring process, are you really hiring people who are willing to be other-absorbed, or are they just self-absorbed? You can get a lot of Lone Rangers. Are we setting the expectation at this company that no one goes it alone? Look up, look around. Who needs help? Everyone has something to contribute, and we have story after story like that in our book, Be the Mentor Who Mattered. You can be a resiliency mentor, an encouragement mentor, or a tough love mentor. You don’t necessarily need a title to be an effective mentor.

Brynne Tillman: I really love this concept. It really has a “high tide raises all ships” mentality inside of a company. Back in the day, before email, we were competing against each other. Every week, in the call center, you had points for talk time, appointments set, and all these things. Your goal was to be number one on that list. It was a competition, but what I’m hearing is that you’re rewarded if you’re helping whoever’s below you move up.

Colleen Stanley: Absolutely. In cultures that are creating competition within, remember: the competition is outside the building, not inside the building. Why in the world would you want all this energy and knowledge wasted? Why wouldn’t you want that knowledge sharing? When I was a VP of sales, you can do the stack ranking, number one through whatever, but I also always showed how everyone was doing towards their goal. For example, on incentive trips when the company was growing, a million-dollar rep would be on a trip with a $250,000 rep, because for that second rep to grow that territory that year, it took as much work as the million-dollar rep. What we did is we measured how you were doing against your goal.

Brynne Tillman: Oh, I love that!

Colleen Stanley: You can do both—honor the number one rookie, but also have clubs that honor hitting your goal. I think that’s where the structure, the reward system, and the recognition systems are often wrong.

Brynne Tillman: Yeah, and I love that each individual is competing against themselves. They can control it.

Colleen Stanley: Yes!

Brynne Tillman: I have the ability to outdo what I did yesterday to get to my goal, versus outdo the person sitting next to me to get to my goal. One thing I wanted to ask you—and this is something I hear all the time with prospects and clients—is they want hard data to prove success. I might call that a hard skill that leads to a KPI I can see move the dial.

Colleen Stanley: Would you run?

Brynne Tillman: Talk about how soft skills can move the dial way more than those hard skills. Share your philosophy around that, and how do you talk to leadership when you get the pushback of, “If I can’t see it in my CRM, it doesn’t count?”

Colleen Stanley: For the research, I’d have them go to Gallup Research. Think about this, Bryn. How many years has Gallup reported that if you have a best friend at work, you have higher employee engagement, more productivity, and retention? I don’t have the stats right off the top of my head, which is why I said go look at Gallup, as they’re well-researched. Let’s think about this: if you have a mentor at work—somebody who is looking out for you, cares for you, and noticed in a meeting where you got shut down or maybe a day you’re just not feeling good—that’s a best friend at work.

Brynne Tillman: Mmm.

Colleen Stanley: How much further do you need to look than the research that Gallup keeps showing year after year? The other thing I would say is: quit trying to quantify this. I’d ask this question: have you ever worked with a jerk? Have you ever lost people at your company because you did not fire the jerk? Because the jerk wasn’t willing to learn? Some people don’t know they’re being jerky, really. They’re kind of calloused, and they’re callous because they’re clueless. That’s where emotional intelligence training can take place, but if somebody isn’t willing to change, just start looking at the revolving door. If you have a sales manager who is always about the numbers—and those are important—however, they don’t know how to lead and develop people, just look at your retention rate. We know what the cost of hiring, training, and onboarding a new rep is. It’s in the couple of hundred thousands. Do that math.

Brynne Tillman: And I’m sure that’s including all the deals missed, right?

Colleen Stanley: No.

Colleen Stanley: That number gets phenomenal. Think about yourself as a customer. When you’ve got a brand new rep, and it’s a service that you’re going to use all the time that requires human interaction, if you’ve got a new person each time, there’s a part of you that starts subconsciously wondering what’s wrong with this company. I have to retell my story over and over. Trust erodes, and pretty soon you start shopping and looking for possibly another vendor to direct your business.

Brynne Tillman: Gosh, I love this. This is great. I’m going to share with you something that I learned based on my learning from you that has changed the way I do business, before I get into our last question. I’ve switched to permission-based selling. Instead of saying, “Here’s a link to my calendar, pick a time that works for you,” I say, “Please tell me your preferred way of scheduling. If it happens to be via calendar link,

Colleen Stanley: God.

Brynne Tillman: here’s my link.” There are a few things like that in my world, even in connecting on LinkedIn, which now is translated to every client I work with. Instead of saying, “I have a blog post I think you’d find helpful, here’s the link,” I say, “I have a blog post on this topic that you might find helpful. If you’re interested, let me know and I’ll send you a link.” That permission-based approach I got from your EQ philosophy: make it about them. It’s not about “I want you to have the link,” it’s “I want to offer the link if you’re interested.” We had a specific conversation internally around that lesson and we tested it. What we found was based on something you said at an event that blew my mind, and I wrote it down. I came back to the team and we sent the link to 100 first-degree connections directly, and we asked permission to send the link to another 100 with tracking. Out of the 100 where we just sent the link, 19 people clicked through. Out of the 100 we asked permission,

Colleen Stanley: 69 asked for it, and 58 clicked through.

Colleen Stanley: I wanted to share that inspiration with you, because it now

Brynne Tillman: gets paid forward to everyone I work with.

Colleen Stanley: Oh, that’s wonderful. You know what’s also behind that? It’s the neuroscience of emotional intelligence. What I’m hearing you say is when

Brynne Tillman: Yes, I’m sure.

Colleen Stanley: As crazy as it sounds, when you ask permission, you put the other person in control. When you take away control, you actually start activating that reptilian brain—the amygdala—in a very small way. Because you start taking control away from people, they will fight for control. This is why, going back to what we talked about earlier, if you go in attached to getting a yes and all of this, it’s literally kicking off that part of the brain that goes into a little bit of fight or flight, and it might go into a full-blown amygdala hijack depending on how you’re running the sales call. Thank you, I’m so glad to hear that, and good for you that you tracked it so you’ve got some hard numbers there. That’s wonderful.

Brynne Tillman: That’s exactly what you talked about. I was raised in a world where you have to take control of the call, of the conversation. That is now switched, and I’m like, I don’t need control. I want to know what you need, and if I can help you, it will come out naturally.

Colleen Stanley: And

Brynne Tillman: it does. Thank you for that. My last question as we wrap this up:

Colleen Stanley: Okay.

Brynne Tillman: Is there a question I should have asked you that I didn’t?

Colleen Stanley: “How does somebody get started?”

Brynne Tillman: That’s a great question. How does someone get started?

Colleen Stanley: I think it boils down to one thing: make a decision. Make a decision that if you believe emotional intelligence and mentorship matters—or maybe you don’t fully believe it yet, but you believe it enough to try it—then make a decision. Now, if you decide that it doesn’t matter, then quit worrying about it, quit talking about it, and just go on with the rest of your life. But when you make a decision, from there, you start carving out small bits of time to learn more about it. You start listening to different podcasts and reading different books. It all because you started with the decision: “I am going to get better at emotional intelligence. I am going to get better at looking up and around to see who I can help and who I can mentor.”

Brynne Tillman: I love that. I am sure there are sales leaders and business owners right now going, “Oh my gosh, I need to talk to Colleen.” How do they get in touch with you?

Colleen Stanley: A couple of ways. Obviously, I’m on LinkedIn, thanks to all the good coaching you’ve given as well. Our website is salesleadershipdevelopment.com, and they can check out our YouTube channel, where we have lots of videos and shorts that offer quick 2- and 3-minute trainings. Any of those places work.

Brynne Tillman: Great. Thank you so much, as always. I just love every minute I get to spend with you.

Colleen Stanley: Oh, you are too kind. Thank you for this. Appreciate you having me as your guest.

Brynne Tillman: Oh my gosh, I’m sure every one of my listeners is saying thank you for having her as a guest. It’s a win-win-win for sure. And as we close this out to all of our listeners, when you’re out and about, don’t forget to make your sales social.

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