How to Increase Confidence in Sales

Welcome back to The Daily Mastermind. George Reich III with your daily dose of inspiration, motivation, and education. Today I want to talk to you a little bit about sales. I want to talk to you about a business topic that a lot of people avoid, which is selling. And the crazy thing to me, and I've been in sales and marketing most of my life, is that most people avoid the concept, the topic, and even that area of sales, but what they don't realize is that everything in life includes selling. Everything in life includes communication and persuasion. And I think this is one of the number one skills that you can develop, even if you're not a salesperson. You've got to develop the communication skill and the art of persuasion, whether you're in a relationship, business, whether you're networking, whether you're marketing, or whether you are a salesperson, you might be a recruiter, you might be a high-level, high-achiever, you might be a manager or a leader, but the ability to effectively communicate and persuade is a skill that's going to help you in every area of your life. And so when we talk about sales, one of the things that a lot of people think of right away is this idea of confidence and how do you create confidence. Well, we were doing a sales training the other day. We're doing a lot of different things. I'm helping a buddy of mine to grow and expand one of his companies called Revd, which does fractional executive services for sales and marketing and strategy. And they have a sales training program called The Color of Sales. It's a great sales training program. I'll have to put some of the information as some links in the show notes. But the reason I love it is it talks about the anatomy and breaks down really effective sales training, but it combines it with the personalities and the colors the way people think the way they act the process and steps of the sale and this topic that we were training on the other day with a rather large group was this topic of confidence And one of the things that I thought of and I made a note that I wanted to share today with you on the podcast is people ask the question all the time, how do you create more confidence? It's very difficult for people to do sales. It's very difficult for people to feel confident in sales. And so I thought back, because most of my life I've been in this field, and I've thought about what is it that generates confidence. And there's three things, and I want you to write these down. that will help you and I want you to I want to really make a significant point here that it's not about whether you're a salesperson or not these are three things in any business that are going to help you to build your confidence and one is it's mastery of your product what you have to do is you have to believe in understand and know your product the more you understand your product your business model the company you're working with or the topic let's call it topic that you're going to be communicating about, the more you understand it, practice it, rehearse it, and master it, the more you're going to have confidence. And that's the product. The second thing is your presentation, your communication. See when you're communicating with individuals, the more you practice and rehearse and master your presentation, the more confident you're going to be because you're not going to be worried about it. Now there are all kinds of aspects we could talk about later, like rate of speech and voice inflection and tone, things that you can do to become and present yourself more confidently. But the more you master and practice your presentation, the more confident you're going to be. So those first couple of aspects of product mastery and presentation mastery are very, very important. But I also believe there's a third component of becoming confident in sales, and that component is your mindset or your presence. So if you think of these three components, you've got product, presentation, and presence. And really that presence, that mindset, that confidence is going to be developed many different ways It going to be developed by you surrounding yourself with confident people It going to be developed by repetition because the more you practice your trade the more you practice telling your story the more you practice your product and presentation, the more experience and belief you're going to get in your abilities and that's going to create confidence. But this mindset also comes from an internal sense. You've got to be able to deliver a mindset and that happens for confidence, But that happens by really creating that mindset of confidence internally through your self-esteem, through doing what you say you're going to do, by following through on, you know, I've said it a lot of times, how you do anything is how you do everything. That's really going to determine quite a bit how you portray yourself, and that internal sense of self-esteem is going to come through as confidence. So I wanted to make that comment because I believe that anyone, I don't believe there's a born salesperson. I believe that anyone can create significant confidence if they will master their product, their presentation, and their presence, their mindset. And I want to add one other little caveat to this episode, and that is kindness. I think one of the things that's lost a lot of time in sales, and we talked about this in the Color of Sales training I did the other day, is a lot of sales is missing kindness. And what I mean by that is I don't just mean being nice. I mean empathizing with the person you're communicating with or the client that you're selling. Because most people mistake kindness for weakness. Most people mistake kindness for not being assertive or aggressive. And I do believe that you can be a powerful, confident salesperson with kindness. Because when you combine kindness and strength, that's being assertive. And one of the best ways to do this is through empathy. Empathy is your ability to understand where your client, your customer, the other person you're communicating with is coming from and truly understand and help them to feel your kindness and feel where you understand where they're coming from. But it also belief enough in your product and what you have to offer that you willing to have strength and assertiveness to continue to control the conversation and drive them in a direction that you know will help them One of the techniques and things we use a lot of times is this transition called feel felt found. When someone comes up with an objection or they come up with some kind of an obstacle or they're dealing with a struggle, your product is too expensive. I really like what you're saying, but I don't know if I have the time or money or schedule to do it. We use this transition called feel, felt, found in sales, which helps you to portray empathy, but maintain control and direction of your presentation. So you might say, listen, I understand how you feel. Many people or many clients or many individuals in your situation have felt the same way. I understand how you feel. Many have felt the same way. However, I've found that if you continue to do what you're doing, you're not going to get the results you want. Or I've found that with this new solution, you're going to be able to eliminate some of those concerns that you have. So when you use transitions where you can, you know, feel felt found, when you use transitions, people will really truly understand and believe that you are understanding and empathizing with where they're coming from, but you're leading them through control and strength in an assertive way in the direction that's going to satisfy a concern that they have in a much better way. And so strength comes from confidence, but it also comes from empathy and kindness. And so I hope those are some techniques and some thoughts that will help you in your sales process. I'll put some links in the notes of this new Color of Sales training that we're kind of putting out there. I think it's been very, very effective for a lot of businesses. We have some really high-level clients that have been utilizing and implementing it. And I hope you have an amazing weekend. I look forward to talking with you this next week. We got some great things planned. My name is George Wright III, and this has been The Daily Mastermind. So go out and share this episode. Do me a favor and share this with somebody you feel can benefit, and I'll talk with you next week.