In one of the articles I recently wrote (“Sell It With Confidence”), I later thought to myself that many salespeople may not understand where confidence comes from. In my first year of selling, lack of confidence was a big problem for me as a salesperson. I really struggled and the numbers showed. I didn’t quite realize it at the time, but over the years when I reflected back to my first year at selling, I knew that it was a lack of confidence that really hurt my efforts. So where does confidence come from?
Learning. Learning and through your experiences. The more knowledge that I possessed about my products and services, and the more knowledge that I had about my customer’s problems, the greater my confidence grew. Knowing specifically how I could help them made me confident. Having this kind of specialized knowledge goes a long way with growing confidence.
You don’t have to spend countless hours knowing every single thing about your product. You do need to make it a habit of learning a few new things each week. Over time, this will help you with becoming a naturally more confident salesperson. Take time each day to learn something new about your products, your industry, and your customers.
When I first started selling accounting software, I pretty much knew nothing about it. As a result, there wasn’t a whole lot of confidence in my ability to sell and to convince customers to buy. So what did I do? Each time we presented the software to a customer, I would learn something new about it. A feature, or a function, and how it would solve a particular problem for my customer. I would make notes and learn. Then I took it a step further. I would review and study the help guides and the online tutorials and training that went with my product. I would understand how things worked and why they worked that way. All of this helped me learn my product much better than most.
What did all this do for my confidence? It went through the roof. I was no longer shy in client meetings being hesitant to speak about something for fear that I might be wrong. Instead, I would now speak up more, have more enthusiasm around a particular part of my product because I knew what it did and how it could help my customer. I got so good at it that the company would send me on roadshows to highlight our company and our products and I would give the audience product demonstrations on my own. I was so confident that I would often make jokes at myself or tell the customer things like, “If you think that is an amazing feature, wait until I show you the button that allows the software to print money!” The customers would love it. And they would buy.
Note that last sentence. They would buy because I was so confident knowing that my product would really help them that I knew deep-down inside that my customer should not go another day without my product! They would be foolish to do so and I would be foolish to allow it! This is what confidence will do for you as a salesperson. Use its power.
Confidence comes from learning. From your experiences and your understanding of a particular topic. The more you put into this, the more confident that you will become. Constantly be learning, constantly be building your confidence and your sales will increase dramatically.
-Happy Selling!