How systematically are you and your team developing Soft Skills?
Soft Skills are now seen as the new hard skills for the 4th Industrial Revolution. They are referred to as employability and enterprise skills. They are transferable between industries and occupations. Soft skills include things such as communication, teamwork, and problem solving, as well as emotional judgement, professional ethics, and global citizenship. These universal soft skills also form the foundations of good selling and customer service.
Deloitte Access Economics forecasts that soft skill-intensive occupations will account for two-thirds of all jobs by 2030, compared to half of all jobs in 2000. The number of jobs in soft-skill intensive occupations is expected to grow at 2.5 times the rate of jobs in other occupations. That’s a big workforce change, similar in magnitude to other major trends, like the shift from ‘blue-collar’ to ‘white-collar’ work, and the growing participation of women in the workforce.
There are other skills of course that will shape the workforce of the future. Accenture describes several defining features: human and digital, cooperative and collaborative, knowledge and task-based, and flexible and fluid. This requires a tech-capable, responsive, and adaptive workforce.
Those with the right skills in the right context will increasingly choose how, where and when they work. However, developing the softs skills of our employees is beneficial for any business and its customers.
Having staff who are competent and confident in soft skills, especially selling and customer service, will become more important than ever as a way for businesses to connect with customers and differentiate themselves from their competition.
It’s been estimated BY Deloitte Access Economics that employees with effective soft skills could increase revenue by more than AU$90,000 per person. Just think of those client and team conversations that address issues and opportunities effectively and promptly; that avoid the unnecessary back and forth of justifications or arguments; that leave people feeling heard, understood and validated; that create relationships built on trust and transparency; that get stuff right the first time.
People with better interpersonal and self-management skills, such as teamwork, collaboration, communication skills, problem solving and critical thinking to name a few, make and create much healthier (i.e. mental health), more productive and happier customers and work environments.
Sales and Services Skills – the ultimate in Soft Skills Capabilities
Sales and Service are the epitome of Soft Skills; they are ubiquitous but very poorly understood and applied effectively for the most part.
The expression ’great salespeople are born not made’ is a myth of epic proportions. Most people can learn how to apply soft skills effectively which means they can learn how to sell and service as well. However, The Deloitte Access Economics Report shows that:
- Effective communication skills are in short supply
- One quarter of all workforces have difficulty filling entry level vacancies because of a lack of effective soft skills
- Three quarters of organisations report a workforce skills gap in soft skills
Soft skills have essentially been taken for granted by business and they have been largely ignored by mainstream education and pushed to one side in favour of technical skills – the hard skills.
This needs to change, fast.
Developing healthy relationships based on mutual respect, clear intentions and purposeful outcomes underpinned by quality listening and questioning, the ability to reflect, having perspective and seeing things from the other’s point of view, participating in constructive respectful debates and discussions to find effective solutions, and a desire to find common ground and collaborate so we can move forward leads to fantastic outcomes on very level.
So how do we cultivate soft skills in ourselves, our teams, and beyond?
Step in Micro-credentials
What are Micro-credentials and what do they have to do with soft skills and selling?
Micro-credentials are designed to help you develop your skills, demonstrate your capability to the world, and give you an edge in an increasingly competitive job market.
Micro-credentials are valued because they develop workplace capabilities that enhance employability and career progression as well as make for better workplace relations.
Micro-credentials are an assessment-based record of focused learning achievement verifying what the learner knows, understands and can do. They are evidenced based and once developed can be easily demonstrated and observed.
Delivered as “bite-sized” chunks, they have stand-alone value and may also contribute to or complement other micro-credentials or macro-credentials. As such they are much more versatile than traditional programmes, like Bachelor or Master courses, while they can still feed into those.
This is also one of the best ways of learning and developing mastery in lots of areas including all the soft skills necessary in sales and customer service.
At Barrett we have invested years in developing a Soft Skills competency framework, education, content, and tools in soft skills that teach people how to apply these soft skills in their daily work practices and in life including Barrett’s Sales Essentials Online topics, modules, and programs which have been designed to be a micro-credentials library of soft skills including sales skills.
Many of our clients and their sales and services teams are experiencing the positive impact in both sales results and quality of relationships when they deliver regular snacks of soft skills training to their teams via fortnightly 1-hour group webshops for instance. Something as simple and time efficient has a huge impact on many levels.
While most of our work is in the sales and service space for obvious reasons, the pathway to taking these practices to the broader workforce and community is wide open.
Remember everybody lives by selling something.
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