"Difficult prospects are a fact of sales life, and dealing with a difficult buyer who makes a sale harder than it needs to will always suck — and from time to time, you're bound to deal with an especially difficult buyer who makes a sale especially harder than it needs to be, and that experience will especially suck."

It wasn’t that many years ago when the expected image of a hotel general manager was a tall, most likely white, man sporting a folded handkerchief in the pocket of his perfectly tailored black blazer. Things have come a long way, and quickly, in the hospitality industry since that era. Corinne Heyl has worked at multiple luxury hotels in leadership positions and is now VP of Hotel Operations for The Boca Raton, overseeing four related hotels in South Florida: The Yacht Club, The Tower, The Cloisters, and The Bungalows.

Successful salespeople possess many skills. They need the confidence to present sales pitches, the motivation to increase sales for their organization, and the passion and knowledge to promote your product or service. However, their most essential skill may be emotional intelligence. High-level sales involve emotionally connecting with customers. Creating genuine connections means understanding and harnessing your own emotions as well as your prospects’ and customers’ emotions.

Have you ever searched for an item on Amazon and you not only found the item you were looking for, but found around 100 variations of the same product. They appear to be the exact same thing but since there is a huge difference in price, you look closely and learn that the cheapest products are Chinese rip-offs that don’t work, don’t last, and don’t include the same features.

Why the real key to success in this business is being a chameleon. Lately, it seems as if I've been inundated with requests for advice. Whether it be from Gen Z newcomers to the world of sales or veterans looking to hone their skills, I've been approached repeatedly by people who somehow think I know better. As good as this feels, it also makes me want to reassess what I share with those seeking counsel. And it makes me especially sensitive to the advice those same people might be getting from a Google search.