Do You Believe You Can? Or Do You Believe You Can’t?
I believe that one of the defining and significant qualities of the most successful people we know is confidence. It is their inner belief that they can achieve anything they want to achieve, and enjoy as much success as they wish - however they personally define success.
Of course, success is different for all of us. Some people use overt material indicators to show the rest of us that they think they have made it. Certainly, post-Thatcher, the British tend to judge each other based on the house they live in, the quality of their car and most recently, how exclusive their children's school is. It doesn't seem to matter that the house may be heavily mortgaged or that the car belongs to the company.
But let's get back to my assertion that successful people - genuinely successful people - have considerable inner confidence and self-belief. If you think about it, it is quite obvious. Success is not an easy thing to obtain, if it was, everyone would be successful and the word "unsuccessful" would not appear in our dictionaries.
Did young Tom Edison ever lose his self-belief, even after 10.000 "failures"? Apparently, after about 9.000, Mrs E questioned his sanity but Tom, visibly unmoved by her taunts simply replied “You’ll see the light one day, my dear”?
Did the visionary Walt Disney ever question his theme park plans, even though more than one hundred banks rejected his requests for financial backing? “You want to do what Walt?”?
Did any of the most successful authors give up after their manuscripts were rejected time after time? JK Rowling had Harry Potter turned back more than eighty times, I am told. I wonder how those eighty editors are feeling now. The eighty-first really did get the cigar!
No, none of them did, because they had such strong self-belief.
In professional selling, cultivated sales skills, the use of a clearly defined sales process and in-depth knowledge, for example, will only take us so far. Without that strong inner belief and confidence, we will never, ever, over-achieve.
When doubt enters our minds, confidence slips out via the back door - they can never co-exist.
Be assured, confidence really is the key to success but take care because arrogance is the exit door!
Jonathan Farrington is the CEO of Top Sales World and the editor of Top Sales Magazine. TSW is a unique, international online community dedicated exclusively to the profession of sales, bringing together the industry’s best-known sales experts to provide information in the form of how-to-guides, articles, webinars, podcasts and so much more. He is also the principal of Jonathan Farrington & Associates, a consultancy focused on helping clients prepare sales teams for the future. For more articles, thoughts, white papers etc. please visit Jonathan's personal website, Jonathan Farrington.
Ventas Trotec en TELUX
8 年if you think you can or if you think you can't, either of both, you'll be right.
Global Head of Content at 360Learning
8 年Discussing confidence is such an interesting exercise, because everyone seems to have a different definition (as you showed) of what success is, but also of who should have confidence and in what situation. Some people believe expressions of (over) confidence in the face of poor performance is a show of bravado, foolishness or indeed arrogance, as you mentioned, while other see it as stoicism or optimism. And then there's the Imposter Syndrome, which unfortunately affects women more than it does men --> (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/work/how-to-be-confident-at-work-and-get-over-imposter-syndrome-in-6/), which makes one think they shouldn't have confidence even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary! If there was one misconception about confidence in the world of sales Jonathan Farrington that you could clarify, I'd be curious to know what it would be?
Life Coach & Hypnotherapist
8 年Good post. Confidence does indeed go beyond the technical aspects of selling. It also extends into the confidence a salesperson has in their company, products and services. If low in any area, it will non-verbally communicate to prospects to stay away.
Advisor Retailtech at PicPocket-Labs, Inc.
8 年I believe I will give it my best shot, learn from my mistakes and keep going! I believe that my inner drive to succeed will make me successful not what is on my resume. I wish that hiring managers would begin to look at the skill set of a person and not the experience in a particular industry. I remember driving 3 hours for an interview with a nationally known juice company only to be told that there must have been a mistake in the pre screening process. This guy refused to take the interview beyond the first 5 minutes. He told me that since I never sold juice in the past I could not possibly understand the complex market and get up to speed as fast as he needed. Really? It's situations like this that make me suceed!
从业者
8 年GOOD??????