The Key To Building Your Confidence In Sales
“The 7 Ps” is a military acronym which, depending on how colorful the version, goes: “Proper Prior Planning Prevents Pitifully Poor Performance.” Catchy, right?
At Shore Consulting, we’ve turned it into “The 5 Ps: Proper Planning Produces Peak Performance.”
In other words, you make a plan for what you’re going to do about it before it actually happens.
Now certainly we’re all smart enough to prepare ahead of time for a big meeting, or a job interview, or a presentation.
But where we can sometimes be lacking is in our preparation for the small things we do every day – especially when it comes to our sales technique.
We’re not ready to handle an objection from our buyer, or we don’t know what to say on a follow-up call, or we’re uncomfortable about getting a registration card from a new prospect.
Proper prior planning can help us with all of those potential problems.
Preparedness needs to be one of your goals, so that you feel equipped to confidently respond to anything the customer might bring up in the sales conversation.
In fact, we need to be so prepared that we respond to every sales objection with calm confidence.
It’s one thing to be condescendingly confident; it’s quite another to display calm confidence.
Calm confidence is about seizing the opportunity to connect with your customers – to engage emotionally with them.
It’s about letting them know, “I get it. I totally understand where you’re coming from and I can help with that. Thank you for sharing your concerns with me.”
That’s calm confidence. Customers feel the calmness, they sense the confidence, and subsequently they embrace that state of mind.
Calm confidence is found at the core of effective influence.
Be assertive, take charge, and go to work on your PREPAREDNESS. Think of that moment in the sales conversation that causes you to go “Ugh” and embrace it.
Run with it. Figure it out. Practice it over and over and over again until you can give your customer calm confidence.
Be prepared to guide your customer through the purchase process and you’ll master another critical key to sales success.
