Ten Tips to Build Confidence and Increase Sales
How is this for a scary thought: You can lose a sale before you get into work, before you have breakfast, and before you even get dressed. Why? You can lose sales before you even get to a pitch because of a lack of confidence. The more confidence that you have in yourself and your abilities as a sales person, the more success you will achieve. The converse is true too – if you lack confidence you are less likely to achieve, and for a salesperson, that means losing the sale.
There are lots of things that can damage a salesperson’s confidence. This includes things completely unrelated to the day-to-day aspects of your job. But it also includes sales rejections. Every salesperson has been there, and they are hard to take. This is despite the fact that every salesperson knows that rejection is part of the job – for some businesses, conversion rates are as low as 4 percent.
So, here are 10 tips to keep your confidence levels high so that you get more sales.
1. Positive Thoughts
All life coaches and personal motivators know that positive thoughts result in positive outcomes. But how do you keep your thoughts positive? One way is to take care regarding what you read, watch or listen to. That might mean, for example, that you have to remove that brilliant but depressing song from your playlist for a while in favor of more positive music.
2. Positive People
Associate with positive people as often as you can. In a work environment this sometimes presents challenges, particularly if you have colleagues who are negative. But you should spend as much time as you can with people who are confident and successful, as this will rub off on you.
3. Train Your Mind
Success starts in your own mind, so start thinking of yourself as being a confident and successful salesperson. If you don’t believe it, after all, no one else will.
4. Become an Expert
Work hard to become an expert in your field. This will improve your sales pitches as you will be able to add real value to your potential customers, but it does more than this. It will also give you confidence in your own abilities.
5. Long-term Thinking and Planning
Most people who lack confidence also lack the ability to plan long-term. In sales this means having a big enough sales pipe so that you are not relying on one or two sales in order to meet your target.
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6. Don’t Blame or Credit Others
Your success is not dependent on someone else. This is particularly important when things don’t go well as you won’t have anyone to blame. But it also means that you can take the credit and enjoy the moment when success comes.
7. Learn from Mistakes
This is a hard one as most people prefer to forget mistakes and move on. But regarding a sales rejection as a learning opportunity is a powerful way to turn the situation from a negative experience into a positive one.
8. Record Success
Keep a record of your successes. This should include your sales performance as well as other work-related achievements. The successes should include goals you set yourself as well as the small and unplanned successes that can be achieved each day with a confident mind.
9. Set Clear and Achievable Goals
You should have large goals that you aspire to, but smaller, achievable goals set on a weekly basis means you can experience regular wins. And it is easier to win when you are winning.
10. Apply this to Everything
Finally, you can’t just adopt these strategies in your work life and see them all fall apart in your private life. Confidence is a state-of-mind that cannot be easily switched on and off depending on the task being performed. It is much better to build confidence in everything that you do to help you become a better salesperson.
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