Harvard Professor, #1 New York Times best-selling author and renowned social scientist Dr. Arthur Brooks has something to say that every sales leader needs to hear. After watching him in conversation with Jessi Hempel on LinkedIn Live earlier this month — “Finding Meaning in your Work” — I picked up his book The Meaning of Your Life and read it last weekend.
I was hooked from the first page — and enjoyed his reference to Emerson’s essay Self-Reliance and the reminder that real meaning comes from within, not from the noise and complexity we surround ourselves. So much so I picked that up as well.
Dr. Brooks argues that in our technology-dominated world, most of us have been pushed to the left side of our brain — trapped in an elaborate simulation of our own lives. Busy, complex, and relentlessly optimized. But stripped of mystery, meaning, and genuine human connection.
Sound familiar? It should. Because we’ve built our sales teams the same way.
The left brain thrives on logic, structure, and process. The right brain is the seat of empathy, intuition, and human connection.
We’ve spent the last decade building left-brain sales machines.
CRM workflows. Cadence tools. AI-generated outreach. Scoring models. Sequenced follow-ups.
All useful. All necessary. All completely insufficient on their own.
Because your buyer isn’t a process. They’re a person.
They have fears about making the wrong call. They have a boss they need to impress. They have a story — and they’re waiting to see if you’ll take the time to understand it.
And here’s what hasn’t changed in 100 years of selling: customers buy from those who created real value, earned their trust, and who they know they can count on when things go sideways. And they will.
No algorithm builds that. No cadence earns it. Only people do.
I’ll tell you what I know from experience. The biggest and most strategic deals I’ve been fortunate to be part of didn’t start with a pitch deck or an an outreach email. They started with a write-on-a-napkin kind of conversation — people, a real problem, and enough trust in the room to think out loud together. There were challenges along the way which we worked through that ultimately resulted in innovative global firsts in healthcare.
That doesn’t happen in a sequence. It happens in a relationship.
Emotional intelligence in selling isn’t a soft skill. It’s the hard skill most sales teams have quietly let atrophy.
The reps who win long-term aren’t the ones with the best tech stack. They’re the ones who know when to stop talking. Who can read the room. Who make the buyer feel genuinely heard.
AI can optimize your sequence. It cannot replace your humanity.
Time to feed the right side of the brain again.
What are you doing to build EQ in your team? 👇