6 Steps To Create and Maintain Your Sales Confidence

Revered sport psychologist, Dr. Bob Rotella, describes confidence as “the aggregate of thoughts you have about yourself”. Since we are emotional beings, our thought patterns can be advantageous or as most of us have experienced at one time or another, destructive, resulting in a decrease in confidence.

More than any other business discipline, sales professionals are like athletes;their performance is measured in terms of wins and losses, their accomplishments expressed in hard numbers by the week, month, quarter, and year. Yet, unlike athletes, most sales professionals do not have a blueprint of fundamentals they can access when they start doubting their abilities.

Two of the greatest quarterbacks of all time, Tom Brady and Payton Manning, are famous for their work ethic, preparation and ability to bounce back from poor performances. Even their confidence levels can be shaken, but what they do better than most of us is they immediately zero in on specific fundamentals critical to their craft and get back to focusing on execution. They are able to do this efficiently because they have a blueprint of fundamentals they constantly work on as part of their preparation every week.

Here are six steps to improve your sales confidence:

1. Assess capabilities: In order to understand your strengths and weaknesses, it is critical to objectively assess and establish your baseline of sales competencies.
2. Prioritize areas of focus based on assessment: Focusing in one specific area is the most effective way to make positive progress.
3. Practice with a purpose: Prior to practicing a particular skill, ask yourself “why” am I doing this? Connecting effort with desired outcomes is a very powerful motivator.
4. Visualize success: Through your own eyes, see yourself successfully executing a particular sales fundamental during a sales engagement.
5. Perform: It is game time; go for it; it is the moment for which you have prepared.
6. Critique performance: The most important step. Whether you do it yourself or solicit feedback from a peer and/or manager, the goal is to pursue excellence not perfection.

Do you have a blueprint of sales fundamentals that you can refer to when you experience a dip in your sales confidence?

Listed below is the assessment I use to coach sales individuals and sales leaders.

http://whatisyouredge.com/the-quiz/ – – – for individual contributors

http://whatisyouredge.com/the-quiz/ – – – for sales leaders

Once you have completed the quiz, you will be given a total assessment score (100 points total), as well as individual scores for each area of sales competencies. By assessing sales competencies in each individual area, you will be able to quickly identify strengths and pinpoint the areas where improvement is needed.

Quiz Results – Example

If you are interested in learning more — click on this short video on how to increase your sales confidence. 

Contact us for workshop or performance coaching information.