How to Build Sales Confidence | #7.2 Gratitude & Building Confidence With Others - Empathy

People often have the wrong idea that being confident means putting others down to make yourself look better. This is completely incorrect. Instead, in order to truly feel confident, we should try to understand how others feel. We’ve all encountered people who are less fortunate than us: those who don’t have a spare set of clothes, are unemployed, or don’t have friends or family to support them. From a human standpoint, even though it is difficult to relate to others, you can cultivate empathy by treating everyone with respect. I’m not showing empathy if I’m wandering around in Hugo Boss clothes avoiding others less fortunate or speaking out of turn, such as boasting about money or whining about my job. Wherever possible, we should strive to get on someone’s level and try to grasp what they feel and experience from their perspective and their frame of reference.

This philosophy of empathy is absolutely essential in sales. In sales, you’ve typically got a product or service that is supposed to solve another person’s problem, but, how can you support a customer and meet them on an emotional level when you don’t understand what they’re going through in their business or how their problems are impacting them? If you can empathise with their situation and understand their problem, you are much more likely to be able to solve it. People want to feel listened to and understood, and you can only do that by actively listening and then reflecting back to them what you’ve heard. This demonstrates that you’re empathising with their situation.

Empathy is a hugely overlooked factor in sales and one that I implore you to practise.

Safe Environment

If you’re new to sales, this portion might not immediately benefit you, but as you move up the ladder into leadership positions, knowing about a ‘safe environment’ will hugely increase confidence within your sales team. A safe environment is simply a space where you won’t be judged for expressing yourself. The best human-to-human interaction in a secure environment I’ve experienced has been in therapy, and the great thing about a therapist is there is zero judgement about the words coming out of your mouth.

This ‘no judgement space’ is also a great solution in a sales environment. Sales can be a stressful career, and it’s important that salespeople have an opportunity to air their feelings. A manager must work to create a safe environment that offers the salesperson an opportunity to share all of the challenges they’re facing, the scary calls they have scheduled, be open about their fears, and feel able to ask for support. If there isn’t a safe environment and the salesperson doesn’t feel comfortable expressing themselves, they’re less likely to approach somebody and speak up when they need help. A safe environment is a protected place where you can ask for help, share your challenges without judgement, and be supported correctly. If you are a manager, or a salesperson within an organisation, it is worth implementing a safe environment if one doesn’t already exist.

A Framework for Creating a Safe Environment:

1. The first to consider is the physical space you will use. It should be an enclosed room with no distractions. It’s okay for a room to be windowless, like an interior room, so the person-to-person interaction is entirely focused on the individual. This environment invites individuals to open up and share.
2. Create a safe space psychologically. Tell the person that you won’t judge them and that the conversation will be kept private. They must be comforted that anything said in the space is between the two individuals and not to be repeated outside. They must trust the other person will be there and listen, and the focus here is on active listening. So again, there is no judgement, just sharing opinions, providing guidance, and helping the individual within the safe space to share the challenges and experiences they might be facing.
3. Informing the individual to keep an open mind and to not be afraid of their own emotions. Assure them that this is a trusted and confidential space.
4. Focus on the emotion. If you’re creating the space for another individual, have patience and be a good listener. That means keeping your lips sealed, letting the other person take their time, being thoughtful and transparent in your questions, and allowing the individual to respond. For example, you might ask, “what do you hope is the best outcome of the challenge? How do you feel about the current experience?” Concentrate on the answers, which will unlock the individual’s emotions rather than just the practicalities. You’re trying to connect with the person at a deeper level so that you can understand their experience and the scenario impacting their emotion.
5. Reassurance and comfort. Once someone’s disclosed or shared something personal, you see underneath and draw back the curtain. That’s when you will realise an issue at work might not necessarily be triggered by something in the workplace. It could, instead, be triggered by something going on in somebody’s life, and they’ve now trusted you with that information. You told them earlier that they should have trust in you, and now you must show and demonstrate that trust in how you have taken on that information. Please give them the confidence that the information is safe with you unless there are serious actions to be taken. However, those actions should only be taken with the permission of the person involved.

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 .