Grant Leboff: Phil, I think one of the things that people struggle with in selling is keeping their confidence especially get a couple of Nos or a deal that goes south and you thought it was going to happen and suddenly self-esteem goes down a bit. How do you, when you’re in that role day in day out, keep that level of confidence up?
Phil M Jones: Sure. I mean there are a few things to think about. Firstly you’ve got to understand that confidence is probably like one of the most important ingredients for you to have to succeed in professional sales; without it you are useless. I have seen people talk themselves out of a sale just because they’re kind of turning up to a meeting with the viewpoint of, “You don’t really want to buy this, do you?” I see a lot of ‘sales prevention officers’ existing in the world because they’re lacking in confidence in themselves.
I think we also need to understand where confidence comes from. Firstly, people are so fearful of rejection in this world of sales, but rejection is definitely part of the game. We should be okay with rejection because they’re not saying no to you, we’ve got to get through a certain number of nos. Now I’m not a believer in this “every no is one step closer to a yes” philosophy. For me that’s nonsense because if you care, the Nos hurt. You just have to accept them, you don’t have to like them you just have to accept them and understand a no is only a “no not today”.
I think if we’re talking about how we can arm ourselves with more confidence we’d better to understand where confidence really comes from. Think about anything you’ve ever done in life, is you don’t find a position of confidence until you’ve had experience. It’s people that are new at something who say, “I can’t do this because I’m just not confident.” That for me is one of the most stupid things to ever because you’re never going to be confident for something you haven’t done like a hundred times.
Maybe just go do it, fall on your face, mess some stuff up. Be okay with it not being perfect. I hear about people, “I’ve got to do this perfect pitch, I’ve got to do this perfect close.” Or, “This is a dream opportunity, I must make it right,” and they get so scared of doing it right, they mess it up. I think the more you can let go of something being horribly wrong or perfect and find some happy space between the black and the white and in the grey, people give themselves some room to grow.
Grant Leboff: Do you have any tips or techniques for people just general things when they’re on the road, they’re going to meetings, perhaps one or two have gone badly. They’re trying to sort of accept it but like you said it can hurt sometimes especially if they had high hopes for whatever it was. Have you got some techniques or tips that you say to people, “These are things you can do just to keep your chin up?”
Phil M Jones: Yeah sure. Well success is about winning, success breeds success and the more that you win at things the more confident that you feel. The difference though about sales is it’s never black and white. It’s not you meet somebody today the buy today and I win, you meet somebody today they don’t buy, I lose. Measure out that grey. Give yourself some levels of success before you do anything. For example, if you got the meeting and you turned up and you were there on time, you’ve succeeded to a point. If you found out from them the key information as to how you can introduce your products and services to them and show a way that can help, you’ve succeeded to a point. Try and get yourself like six, nine, 12 different levels of success at every activity be it a phone call, a meeting, a pitch, a presentation, any of those things and see how many you can get.
Not one success or one failure, how many of the potential successes could I get? This gives you something else too is it allows you to dream a little bit bigger. In every single sales person meeting, phone call, every single one of them people leave stuff behind in opportunity. If you put the thought in before the meeting, you can probably get more in the meeting as opposed to the drive-away thinking, “I should have asked. Why didn’t I mention? Why didn’t I bring that with me? Why didn’t I leave that behind?” Put that thought in first and create 100 things that could make you successful. Then if you leave with 36 of them you did a pretty good job, as opposed to only one success and the successful or failure option.
Grant Leboff: That’s important, isn’t it? I think you’re right people see sales as a zero-sum game, it’s all or nothing. Actually to be really good at sales you have to see the incremental stages to every sale. Doing that the help you say to help with your confidence as well you’re starting to see the incremental stages. Do you find that’s important?
Phil M Jones: It’s incredibly important because gone are the days of being a market trader with a smash-and-grab approach where you’re going to try and sell somebody something they don’t need and then run for the hills. Most people are looking for some form of relationship with the client and it also takes time to romance somebody over a period. This isn’t something inappropriate on the first day, we’re looking for marriage of our customers if we’re going to make them blossom and grown into something that is truly valuable to both parties long-term.
If you don’t get the true result you went for first time round, instead of coming away thinking you failed, you should be coming away thinking, “Well what do I need to do next in order to be able to develop this to where I want it to go in the future? How do I evolve this? What questions do I need to ask? Where is the next stage that I can influence this decision at a future point in time? Now I failed, what do I need to do next?” It keeps you moving rather than stagnant.
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