The Power of Confidence

My experience has taught me that people want to buy from sales people who are confident in their abilities. Taking control of circumstances and situations around you will develop your self-confidence. When you consider amount of rejection that many sales people encounter, fact that many salespeople lack self-confidence is not surprising. Top performing people in any industry typically possess a high level of self-confidence. They may not necessarily possess this confidence all their lives. I have not always have a lot of self-confidence. Outwardly I was Mr. Confident while on inside I seriously doubted my abilities. I had to wrestle with my own mental baggage for years before I became internally confident. Learning to deal with this begins with letting go of your personal baggage. Mental baggage is a collection of all situations we have experienced or encountered during our lifetimes. We carry all this baggage around in our heads and draw from it when appropriate situations present themselves. Perhaps you tried to join a school sports team when you were a child. Your athletic abilities in that particular sport were average; for that reason you were unable to make team. You filed away this experience in your subconscious until a similar situation to it came along. You immediately recalled previous performance and outcome, and told yourself that you were not capable of successfully meeting current challenge. Consequently, you did not make effort required to meet it. We all carry around this mental baggage. It influences us in everything we do, both in our business and personal lives. How it affects us when we sell is very simple. Mental baggage may consist of customers who have been rude, abrupt, or angry toward you. Baggage can include situations from earlier in our work careers or even from our childhoods. As time progresses, this mental baggage weighs heavier and heavier. Yet we continue to drag it around with us into every sales situation. Over time our attitude turns sour, we become pessimistic and jaded, and we get frustrated with challenging customers and prospects. Our productivity drops, our performance slides, and our job security may even be threatened. We become increasingly bitter toward our chosen occupation, customers we serve, and life in general. Our mental baggage is a weight on our shoulders.

The Art of Giving Great Service

Sales is tough to get right, and depends on retaining those customers, yet people do it badly and unprofessionally all time. It's really not difficult to learn art of good service, and if you get it perfect, you will see those rewards.

Let's look at an example of service from my point of view:

I usually buy a sandwich from one place only. I always go there, as I get top services and sandwich is nice. I could go anywhere, but I choose to go to this place.

Price has nothing to do with it. I can get a sandwich cheaper elsewhere, but reason that I don't go elswhere is so simple, and it's scary that so many businesses fail to capitalise on this easy technique. The answer is that guy knows what my order is I only have to walk in and they prepare my sandwich without asking what I want. I suppose speed of service is part of it - never much waiting in there but it saves me from repeating my order every time I want same thing.