How to build confidence and close more sales

Confidence! You either have it or you don’t. There’s confident people and there’s not. It’s the way that we are made. There’s nothing you can do about it.

That’s what perceived wisdom would have us believe about confidence but perceived wisdom about confidence, as about many things, is seriously wrong. Perceived wisdom can also seriously damage your sales results, your sales career, your business and potentially your life.

Know this, confidence is a mental programme. It’s something that we do not something that we are. It’s a way of thinking. That means that it’s something that everyone can learn.

The question is then – how important is it to you to learn it?

If you want to be a great sales professional or a successful business owner it should be very important to you. Confidence changes your sales behavioues and the way you approach challenges. It changes your actions and your results. It changes your image, your appearance to others and your influence skills when selling. Ultimately, confidence will change your sales results and your business!

Unfortunately, many not so confident people make excuses… the most common being, “Ah yes, but too much confidence will make me arrogant”. Wrong! More confidence just makes you more confident only more arrogance can make you arrogant!

Building confidence can be done in many ways – try some of these strategies and see which work best for you…

1. Ask for client testimonials

Collecting client testimonials after a successful sale can work wonders for building confidence. Imagine what it would be like to have a file of testimonials from delighted clients who all think you are just fantastic! Feels good doesn’t it!

Collecting client testimonials will also strengthen your beliefs about the value that your products, services or solutions provide to your clients. Salespeople who really believe in the value that their product adds sell more and at higher prices. That means more profits and more commissions! Most salespeople blather on and on about adding value but most don’t spend enough time really focusing on it!

When you take the time to solicit, compile and appreciate client testimonials you will feel more confident in the face of client rejections and cynicism.

What are you waiting for?

2. Compile case studies

Much like gathering client testimonials, compiling case studies is great for building your confidence. It is, of course, phenomenally useful for your sales presentations too!

Get detailed studies of clients that you have worked with successfully. Consider interviewing them to put together this study too. Sometimes we underestimate the real impact that our solutions and products have within the businesses of our clients. By taking the time to do this exercise we not only create robust beliefs about our solutions but we also ramp up our confidence and realise solid and credible marketing materials to boot!

3. Log personal successes, wins and sales

What has been your best success since you’ve been in sales? When did you last think about it? Probably not recently enough I would guess. In our society we are incredibly adept at minimising our successes. For most people this started as children when parents and teachers told us not to be “big-headed”! Many people take this to heart and never really appreciate success when they really do achieve something worthwhile focusing instead on the times that they fail!

This is not how to build confidence.

I attended a sales training seminar recently and one of the speakers said that you are only as good as your last sale. Now, I understand why he said this but I don’t agree with him. Clearly, what he really meant was that you shouldn’t rest on your laurels after you’ve made a sale. He meant to say that you should carry on working hard.

But he didn’t say that. Not at all. The (somewhat common) statement that he made was entirely different. What’s worse, most salespeople have probably heard this saying and probably believe it too. And that, as they say, is a problem…
 
Think about it. If you’re only as good as your last sale and your last sale was a disaster then what does that make you?

A-ha!

On my sales training seminars I help salespeople, business owners and entrepreneurs to believe this. You are a success. That fact never changes. My belief is that you are way better than even your best sale because you have unlimited potential. Now that’s a confidence builder.

Start now and log your best sales successes, wins and deals and use them to catapult your confidence into the stratosphere.

4. Visualise previous successes

Someone once said that we are what we think about most. I believe this to be true. Emotion is really a series of mental activities so we can “do” confidence any time we like by simply remembering a time when we were super, super confident. By actually remembering a time when we felt confident we actually start to feel more confident.

Try it out now. Think of a time when you were super confident. What were you doing? What were you thinking? What thoughts were going on in your head? Who were you with? Now double the confidence and live the moment like it was now.

Feel more confident? Of course you do. You can do this any time you need to, to feel more confident. The more often you do it, the easier it will get, the more confident you will become and the more you can use this technique to supercharge your sales results.

5. Vividly imagine being confident in future sales meetings, presentations, negotiations…

The next step from the exercise above is to choose a future sales situation where you might not feel so confident. Now lay that to one side in your mind and use the technique above to get yourself into a confident and resourceful state. When you are really confident, think about the "unconfident" future scenario but this time dealing with it from your super confident state.

Take some time with this visualisation and notice how you act, think, move and feel differently than you normally would. Note the changes in attitudes, beliefs and behaviours. Learn what you need to learn and then repeat the process a few times over.

Next time you get into this kind of selling situation you are far more likely to access or be able to access your more confident state. If it doesn’t work perfectly at first, keep practising. The more that you practise, the better this process will work for you.

6. Ask your clients why they bought from you

One of the most empowering things I ever did was by mistake. Life’s funny like that I find, it has a tendency of teaching us what we need to know but most of us ignore it every day!

Anyway, I was doing some research with my clients and customers to help me to improve my sales results. I wanted to know why they bought from me in the first place to see if I could use this to my advantage in future sales situations.

It’s certainly fair to say that I did get some great sales tips but one of the main things that I discovered was that I had loads of clients who wanted to tell me all of the positive reasons that they bought from me and not from my competitors. Understandably, this gave me a major confidence boost!

Bonus!

7. Acknowledge and accept compliments, “Thank you…”

In our society we are really good at refusing compliments. Have you ever worked really hard on something and then when you got a compliment said something like, “Oh! It was nothing”?

We all do it. As I said earlier, this sort of thing is usually trained into us as children! When you think about it, what we’re really doing is refusing the compliment! I’m sure that the “grown-ups” who taught us this practise were only doing their best but frankly it’s not useful for either you or the “complimentee”.

Next time someone gives you a compliment say, “Thank you” and shut up. This approach might feel a little uncomfortable at first, maybe even a little like you’re being arrogant. (How weird is that?) But once you get into the habit of accepting the compliment you will feel liberated. What’s more the “complimentee” will feel better too so a real win-win situation.

8. Ask, “Why do you say that”

Here’s a technique that I use that will help you to build confidence. It is an extension of the technique above.

Let’s say that someone comes up to me and says, “Great speech” after a sales conference or seminar. I say, “Thank you. Pleased you enjoyed it. What particularly did you like about it?” And then I shut up and listen.

Three things are happening here. I am accepting the compliment, “Thank you.” That’s great for me! Secondly, the “complimentee” feels heard. And thirdly, I am seeking concrete evidence – “What particularly?” to support the compliment and to make it even more powerful for me.

I’m not saying that you should use this approach all of the time but when you do use it, it is an important way of underpinning your growing confidence.

9. Model confident people

To be successful you need to model successful people. Modelling is an approach to analysing, understanding and copying someone else’s success strategies. It is based on the principle that if one person can do something, so can another! Modelling is one of my preferred strategies for achieving anything that I want to achieve.

First off, find someone who can really do what you want to do. In this case then that is someone who is extremely confident. Even better, pick an extremely confident business or sales person. Analyse their values, beliefs, emotions and behaviours and then try them out yourself!

The beauty of modelling is that you can model not only people that you know but also people that you’ve read about or know of. Obviously, the more information you have on someone, the more effective this approach is likely to be.

if you haven’t got anyone to model then invest some time and money in reading, listening to or watching sales books, sales audios and sales DVDs from sales and business experts. From these you can not only learn the skills but uncover the attitudes and beliefs too.

10. Ask yourself better questions

Use this technique when you are preparing for an event – whether cold calling session, sales meeting, sales negotiation or sales presentation - where you think you may not be quite as confident as you’d like to be.

Take some time beforehand to construct some questions that will focus your mind on how you can be more confident. These pre-selected internal questions will focus your thoughts and therefore your emotions. The quality of your internal questions is essential if you wish to be more confident.

Here are some starters for ten… “How can I feel confident in this situation?”, “How would I behave if I was totally confident?” and, “What do I need to learn to feel confident all of the time?”

So there we are, 10 tips for building super, sales confidence that will allow you to influence more effectively, sell more congruently and win more sales. These strategies are incredibly powerful but remember… Reading them is not enough. You need to take consistent action.

What can you do to start building your confidence and your success today? 

Related posts:

1. The Sales Apprentice 2009: Sales training tips from the hit TV show, week 12, the final The final of the Apprentice. Cool, professional Kate versus passionate,...
2. Getting the Sales Superstar Mindset, sales training video 2 of 3 Part 2 of Getting the Sales Superstar mindset, sales...
3. Get the Sales Superstar Mindset, video 3 of 3 Part 3 of Getting the Sales Superstar mindset. Sales...
4. Is this the simplest sales training tip ever? What makes a great sales effort? What blasts one company...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.