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Collection of tracks for demonstrations
Building Your Confidence in Sales
Brought to you by Assemble You.
It's time to work on YOU. So sit back and listen to practical, actionable advice to accelerate your progress.
Confidence. It’s the skill we all want when selling and the skill we all hope someone has when they sell to us.
That might be a big ask, but over this course, we will be breaking down the different ideas of what confidence is and how you can generate it in your sales approach. By the end of this course, you will be able to identify where your inner confidence comes from and how to use it to your advantage. Let’s get into it.
Let’s start with first impressions. When it comes to being confident in sales, your customers will likely see you before they hear you. They can’t see inside your brain, and they can’t see the nervous thoughts or worries in your mind… but they can see your body language. So, if you want to seem confident, you need to look confident.
You can emulate the self-assured and positive energy of confident leaders using very simple techniques. Andy Carlton, CEO of LinkedIn, advises “Are you slouched over or down? Do you lean to the side? Catch yourself. When you create the right pose, you speak from a position of power and authority - confidence!”
Look for little ways you can smarten up your behaviour whilst selling, and you’ll be surprised at how naturally your speech and thoughts follow. By sitting up straight and speaking clearly, confidence will come smoothly.
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When it comes to sales especially, there is a bit of a misconception that a confident salesperson is only confident because they’re lying or being dishonest. But when finding your confidence in sales, you don’t have to lose yourself along the way: you will be your most confident when you are being your most authentic.
And this is a skill you can have some fun with too. Guy Kawasaki, the co-founder of Garage Technology Ventures, has perfected the approach of “schmoozing”, which sounds corny but is based on core personality principles. He believes that we can win people over and be effective sellers when we put ourselves on the table as equally as the thing we are selling.
“Good schmoozers unveil their passions after they get to know you. Great schmoozers lead off with their passions. Your passions make you an interesting person.”
Ultimately, as good as your product or service is, you are the vehicle that makes sure it arrives to the customer. Talking about your passions can interest and engage potential customers and can be used as your hook.
Try practising talking about your passions with your friends and coworkers. Simply talking about your passion will make you smile and give you energy. From there, see if you can copy that and talk with the same levels of animation and excitement about whatever it is you are selling. You will see that your pitch instantly kicks up a notch.
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Now, if you have come to this course because you’ve faced some bad experiences - or anticipate them - then one of the concepts you may be most worried about is networking. Networking is crucial for sales because it’s where you have the opportunity to introduce yourself and build contacts, but it’s also an area where you need heaps of confidence.
Networking has a bad reputation for being quite dog-eat-dog, but maybe it’s time to shift your perspective and approach it from a different angle. One tried-and-tested method is “Palm Up” networking, devised by Christine Comaford-Lynch, CEO of Mighty Ventures, which will allow you to let others lead the interaction and show that you are genuinely being nice without wanting anything in return. Christine explains:
“Palm up networking embodies the spirit of service, of giving and wanting nothing in return. When you network “palm down” you’re grasping for personal gain. Palm up = heart-oriented interaction. Palm down = greedy grasping.”
You don’t want to appear greedy or desperate - especially when trying to build clients. Networking is a great place to try this method because we can practice being friendly and approachable in new situations and offering our politeness and good nature to strangers. After all, if you were to offer someone a gift, you would be comfortable and confident when you do so. So with “Palm Up” networking, imagine that your kindness and generosity are the gifts you are giving to everyone you speak to. You’ll be surprised how far it gets you.
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To be confident and kind to others means that you are being confident and kind to yourself, and that includes exerting some self-restraint from time to time. This includes regular self-assessments and check-ins to ensure that your confidence is authentic and genuine, but also getting comfortable with the idea that you don’t and won’t ever know everything.
That might sound strange, but Deborah H. Gruenfeld, Professor of Leadership and Behavior at Stanford School of Business, points out that confident people are comfortable admitting to their limitations and asking for help. Speaking to Harvard Business Review, she explained:
“It’s better to know when you need help, than not. A certain degree of confidence - specifically, confidence in your ability to learn - is required to be willing to admit that you need guidance or support.”
Remember, confidence is useful to leadership and management, but it doesn’t mean that you have to be a shining idol of perfection. Even if asking for help is something you worry about, by practising it regularly and confidently - maybe in your personal life - you are showing accountability for the issue and a willingness to fix it.
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Now let’s think about how you already show confidence in your life and how you can use that in sales. Have you ever noticed how you walk and stand differently when you’re wearing your favourite clothes? The attire that makes you feel good could bring out the best in you and propel you into a forward-thinking mindset.
Well, think of confidence like that chosen outfit. It might not be something you want to wear - or need to wear - every day, but when you do, you feel bold and strong. So on your sales calls or product pitches, imagine yourself putting on that outfit and gaining more confidence with every piece. What you’re doing is creating your confidence alter ego - and don’t worry, you don’t need to be the world’s greatest actor to do this.
When speaking with the Tony Robbins Podcast, Todd Herman (performance coach and advisor) said, “It’s understanding that there are nuances to your life, and then designing the version of yourself that you want to show up in each of them.”
Just like that smart outfit at the end of the night, you must always remember that you can leave your alter ego at the end of the day. If you are a naturally introverted or nervous person, you can return to that when the call for confidence has passed.
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Lastly, let’s address that elephant in the room. Perhaps it’s easier to shore up your confidence when things are already going well.
Say you’ve been speaking to a customer for thirty minutes, built rapport and even made them laugh… only for them to say they’re not interested. Well, how do you handle failure with confidence? Confident people don’t resign themselves to failing but certainly don’t shy away from it. Confident people know that the sky is truly the limit and that the first step to any new task is a positive mental attitude. And this attitude is shared by the best in the industry. Even Forbes challenges their readers with this thought:
“Who says you can’t accomplish something? Regardless of what it is, you can do it. The only thing holding you back is time and your belief system. Defeat is never absolute unless you choose to make it absolute. View things not accomplished as merely works in progress.”
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A huge part of developing your confidence is embracing rejection. As James Ski, CEO and Founder of sales events business Sales Confidence, says, “you've got to learn to love the no and embrace the no”.
James talks on The Power Skills Project podcast about how resilience is an essential characteristic here, considering “every no is getting you one step closer to the yes.” Increasing your self-confidence is an essential tool in helping you “be persistent, be relentless, and also recognise you have to put in a lot to get to the outcome of yes that you are working towards.”
Maintain the confidence to keep going. Prioritise your emotional and physical well-being in order to do this. Working in sales can be tough, but doesn’t have to be unsustainable. James explains how “there are times that you need to up the ante, up the intensity, do a few extra tasks, get in earlier, stay late. However, that’s got to be balanced against taking time to recuperate, recover, rest, refresh.” He advocates building confidence by taking care of yourself and knowing your limits.
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Confidence isn’t a get-rich-quick method nor a guaranteed way to lock in success in business. Sometimes you will lose the client, or a presentation will fall flat. But it will be crucial in building relationships and forming connections with people - be they customers, clients, or your fellow sales folk.
Throughout this course, you will have learnt that the key to finding confidence in sales isn’t a magic trick or a life hack. It’s you. You are the person that people want to see looking comfortable and composed. By building on what makes you an engaging and interesting person, as well as identifying your limitations and asking for help, your confidence will bloom over time and turn you into a skilled, charismatic salesperson.
This week, remember when you last encountered a ‘no’ and how it made you feel. Now you’ve developed further knowledge of confidence, consider how you could have used this as a catalyst for self-improvement. Identify how that ‘no’ might have got you closer to a ‘yes’.
That’s all for now, have a rewarding day!