There are many experts out there who will teach you how to be confident, but at the end of the day, confidence comes from within. It is wise to learn techniques and take advice from others, but never forget that you build your own confidence. Nobody can do it for you. Here are some concepts and ideas that will aid you in the process of building your own confidence.
Visualize what you want to achieve.
Visualize, meditate and focus on what you want to achieve. It is my belief that thoughts truly are things that inevitably determine our outcomes. Before anything was ever created in reality, it was created in the mind. You cannot build a bridge without first imagining it, designing it, and planning its construction. The same holds true with sales success.
Take time each day to be by yourself, to breathe deep, and to picture in your mind the type of success you would like to have. Daily repetition will cement this vision in your mind, and will start to guide your daily actions in the direction you have prescribed through visualization. Visualization gives you a sense of control over destiny and works to breed great confidence.
Show gratitude.
Just like with visualization, you must have a positive attitude with everything that comes in order to create confidence. A positive attitude starts with gratitude. Learn to look around and within you to find the blessings you have in your life and the things you are grateful for. Showing appreciation for the good things we have will help to attract more good things. Unfortunately, the opposite is also true. If you focus on negativity and complain about things you don’t like, you are more likely to attract more negative things into your life. Gratitude does not end with showing appreciation for the good things in life, but should extend to showing appreciation for life’s challenges as well. When things don’t go your way, do not complain or become critical. Try to see what lessons can be learned from the experience, Show gratitude for the opportunity to grow and learn. Without challenges, none of us will improve. Show gratitude for challenges and it will build confidence in your ability to work through them. Set goals.
Goal setting is a tricky game. We are probably all guilty of New Year’s Resolutions that didn’t last through January. Goals are a good way to map out where we want to go, but you have to be careful not to set unrealistic goals. I personally like to have 2 types of goals. First would be my Big Audacious Goals (BAGs) that define the overall direction I am headed over the next months or years. The second type of goals are mostly tasks that need to be ticked off in order to progress toward my BAGs. If you have been unsuccessful at goal setting in the past, I would suggest starting with something easy that you can accomplish every day or week. A mentor of mine once told me how he once struggled with goal setting until he set a goal to make his bed every morning. He focused on this goal and every day for a month he made his bed. He said it was a simple thing, but it started his day off with a small “win” that gave him the confidence each day to go out and tackle even bigger goals. Start with small, achievable goals and grow your confidence from there. Be accountable for your own success.
This is one of the most overlooked concepts in the business world. When things go well, we tend to pat ourselves on the back. Conversely, we often want to blame others when things don’t go right. Instead of blaming others, try to look at what you could have done better or differently that would have produced a different outcome. This is not to say you should be critical of yourself and get depressed. My point is that you should take ownership of any failures or shortcomings you may experience. When you start to recognize that there is always something more you can do to improve a situation, your confidence will grow with the knowledge that you are in control. It is important to note that you should leave the past in the past. There is nothing that can be done to change it, you can only affect the present and the future. Work with a script.
Last but not least, I have a bit of practical sales advice. Work with a sales script. There are mixed feelings among sales trainers about the effectiveness of sales scripts. Some say scripts are mandatory, others say they create sales robots with no soul. To be fair, I don’t believe in following a sales script to the letter in every situation. In fact, I really don’t like sales scripts in general. However, if you take the time to memorize key sales pitches and responses to objections, you will be more confident and powerful as a salesperson. The less brain power you have to allocate toward thinking of responses to routine questions, the more brain power you will have to actually close the sale. If you think you can’t sell without a script, it can ruin your confidence. However, if you memorize, rehearse and master the basics of your script, it can give you great confidence in any situation. Nobody wants to be sold by a robot, but everybody appreciates a sales person who knows what they are talking about.
