How to Build Sales Confidence | #10 Maintaining Success Sustainably

We live in a LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok-preoccupied world and are thus constantly comparing ourselves to people we don’t know. We see a virtual story they want to put out in the world rather than actually who that person is. We don’t know exactly what they do, what they’re good at, what they’re not good at, what their limitations are, what their failures are, what their worries are, and what their insecurities are. We don’t know any of that on the whole. Yet we compare ourselves to other people when really, the only person you should compare yourself to is the person you were last week, last year, five years ago or ten years ago. Only worry about how much you have improved as an individual.

Monitor your progress by comparing yourself against targets you set for yourself and not those of other people. For example, measure yourself against the person you were yesterday.

I reflect on this often. A small example is that I’m doing five sessions of exercise weekly, which I wasn’t doing before Christmas. One of the things I’ve started doing is running in the mornings before work. I used to do that successfully in the past but had a period last year where I was somewhat depressed, and I didn’t want to exercise, against my own good advice. However, if you look at them compared to what I’m doing now, I’m proud of myself. I’m proud that I got myself through that depressive episode and that I’m on my feet and working on a new business. However, then I log onto LinkedIn, and I see people that have similar businesses to me, and they’ve been doing it for five years, and I start to think that I should have the same success as them, and it begins to eat away at me. I remember to only value what I’m gaining and how I’m developing myself, rather than comparing myself to others.

Spiritual

Thinking about your spirituality above material things will help you always keep your feet on the ground. Being mindful about how you relate to something is more important than the things that you are looking to gain. It affects how you see yourself instead of how you interact with material things and the things happening around you. You’re more likely to be centred and happy if you focus on the spiritual aspects of your life than your material things outside of yourself. You can’t necessarily change what’s happening when you gain material things, but you can change how you relate to those material things once you’ve achieved them.

Love & Friendship

Sales is about relationships. So, if you seek out friendships in your career, you are in a great position to develop good relationships. Bring love to the table, and care about the outcomes. You’re persuading people to go down and express a loving perspective rather than a hunter mentality, ‘seek to kill’. So often in sales, they talk about having a ‘hunter mentality, which is seeking out businesses, but it’s not a great phrase, as what do hunters do? They kill animals. That’s not love; that’s not a sign of friendship and not rewarding. Whereas if you can seek to solve someone’s problems and genuinely change their life and business, you’ll find a lot of love in those scenarios.?

This is the positive mindset approach you should take in your sales process. Not many people will talk about this, as maybe it’s a little bit to the left, but I feel that if you treat people as you want to be treated, they will respect you, and you’re going to develop a friendship. That leads to a form of love—not in the sense of ‘being in love—but in a sense “, I love working with this person because they make me feel good. They solve my problems, and they help me achieve my goals”.?

If you can do those three things, you can keep a great relationship with someone, which is a huge positive that stays with you in your career and life. I’m now very close friends with several people I’ve sold to, and I can’t think of a better indication of the relationships I’ve created than maintaining long-term friendships due to a sale.

Remember to Have Fun

Without a doubt, this element is crucial! If you’re not having a good time, you need to reflect on what you’re doing. If you’re being successful yet burning yourself out, it’s not sustainable and won’t be fun. If you’re making money, but you’re having a hard time with your boss week in and week out, that’s not fun. It’s essential to try and have a good time because it comes across how you express yourself with the people you’re interacting with. There should be an element of fun in every stage of the sales process, so you must find out what parts are fun so that you can double down on them.

Thai culture has a word, ‘sanook’, which means finding fun in every endeavour. In the spirit of sanook, the Thai people try to find joy in everything they do, whether work or pleasure and in every action. I believe the west could learn a lot from that mindset. There are so many mundane aspects in the prospecting role of a salesperson—which is when they have to do their outreach—but if you can find fun in changing a few words in your emails, or you can see the fun side of someone telling you to “piss off”, you can even embrace the rejection. Try and find the fun in making someone successful and happy. That way, you will have a better time and be more successful. So fun and confidence are essential to making sure you make the most of your day and week.

Developing Your System

A system is a group of parts that are connected and always work together to get the same result. In your daily life, having effective systems in place is crucial for being productive throughout the day, and to make these systems, you need to think about their structure, how useful they will be, and the tasks they will require. For example, when you talk to someone, you need a plan to determine their needs, which is called the discovery conversation.

To achieve an effective outcome, you need to have several systems working together seamlessly, and developing a sense of intertwining and integrating these systems is vital to becoming a successful salesperson. Without efficient systems in place, it’s difficult to achieve sustainable success.

The various systems necessary for success can be categorised into task-based, emotional, and framework systems. Task-based systems focus on the practical aspects of completing a task or achieving a goal, and emotional systems are centred around managing and controlling emotions to remain focused on the task at hand. Framework systems help you decide what to do and make sure that all the parts of the system work well together.

James Ski is CEO & Founder of Sales Confidence, a company dedicated to the professional advancement of sales professionals, & author of the debut professional development book How to Build Sales Confidence.?        

This is an excerpt from How to Build Sales Confidence by James Ski, the full version of which you can purchase here .