How to improve sales confidence

We are very interested to see if improving sales confidence and reducing a negative mindset is important as we ease out of lockdown. As a result, we decided to create a LinkedIn Poll aimed at SMEs to discover how they felt about getting back in front of customers. The question we polled was...  

"What is the the one thing in your sales process that might get in the way of growing your company in the next 6 months?"

What won was quite insightful, Sales Confidence & Mindset. If you ask SMEs why their business failed, you will often hear a common response "I didn't have enough customers". And this is because many SMEs are great at what they do, they have amazing products or services but they just don't have the sales skills in house or the sales confidence to build their customer base.

Low sales confidence and a negative mindset will result in lost sales opportunities, revenue and ultimately profit. 

We all get sales dread at some point! 

I know what it's like, I have so been there! When I first started in sales I had really bad sales call dread. I was worried what the people on the other side of the phone would think of me, because there is such a negativity around sales. My lack of confidence in my sales skills made me frightened to act! Will they think I'm too pushy? Will they be rude to me? Will they reject me? Did they hate my proposal? They are too busy to take calls... I'll ring later ... negative mindset ultimately leads to procrastination!

Your are normal! 

Thing is, this is totally normal! Don't be so mean to yourself, human DNA is programmed to avoid things that put us in danger. When we are out of our comfort zone or convinced something bad is going to happen we avoid it. Think about it, if we are fearful of doing something, our subconscious will try to stop us doing this because in the past, fearful things normally meant something bad was going to happen. This is why most people don't go out and get customers, fear.

Challenge your mindset! 

If you challenge your mindset you will discover that done correctly selling is not scary at all. Too many people don't learn the skills required to sell and then wonder why they find it uncomfortable. Imagine if you could make calls with a positive approach, talk to prospects with confidence & purpose and be proud of your sales role? You Can! Here are ways to challenge your sales mindset...

• Remember that people want to buy your product to solve their problem
• Sales is a proactive money making activity - make time in your diary for it
• Keep at it.. don't give up!

Your mindset is the biggest thing between you doing sales activities or not. You can do more sales activities and as a result, you will create more sales opportunities. It's as simple as that! 

Strategies & tools

There are things you can do to help yourself get over the fear of sales activities. Without these we can often mess up by fumbling on words or not getting our point across well because we start sales activities with a negative attitude.

• Self regulate your emotions - this tool will increase your sales activity dramatically!
• Create a plan of action - prepare!
• Manage your time better
• Be a Dr. Pepper Advert (ask me what this means 🙂)

Understanding why you have low sales confidence and improving your sales mindset will improve sales positively in your business. As a consequence, you will be creating more opportunities & more customers resulting in more revenue and profit!

I truly believe that with the right skills and confidence, sales is not scary... sales is fun!

If you want to find out more about how you can improve your sales skills and change your sales mindset, please get in touch or find out more about our sales training specifically for SMEs.