Rule number one of cooking. Before you cook anything, prepare everything. Is the same true for selling?

We’ve all met them. Those high performing sales people who carry a certain aura. You know when they’ve entered the room. They’re filled with self-belief and comfortable in the company of senior people. Where does this confidence come from? Were they born with it or did they develop it with time? If it was developed, how did they do that?

The Wimbledon tennis champion, Arthur Ashe, said ‘One important key to success is self-confidence. An important key to self-confidence is preparation.’ As a five time major champion Mr. Ashe knew a thing or two about linking self-confidence to preparation. Let’s apply that mentality to selling confidence.

Having a great understanding of your products or services is a good start. In this digital age where clients engage sellers much later, your ability to guide them to a decision is an important foundation. Clients expect sellers to fully co-ordinate and integrate their needs across all sales channels.

Understanding your client, their organization and the markets they operate in starts to get you to the next level. Have fresh ideas and perspectives so you can tell them things they don’t know. Advising your client on what should be keeping them awake at night rather than asking them what does has serious value and changes the nature of the engagement.

Now that’s all well and good, but how do you communicate those perspectives to a client effectively? In other words, how do you want to ‘come across’? In my experience, sellers typically demonstrate three behavioral styles. It’s possible that all of us can demonstrate the three styles in different circumstances but we tend to default to one of them consistently.

The first style is an apologetic or meek and mild one. The seller views the client as the boss and the seller is their servant. Good service and compliance to client process are the focus. Lacking confidence, the apologetic seller hopes they’ll be liked enough for the client to buy from them. Rick Page told us ‘hope is not a strategy’ in his 2001 book of the same title!

At the other extreme, we have the arrogant seller. Lacking self awareness, these sellers focus on themselves, their bonus and their product. They demonstrate little empathy with the client. Their main focus is to manipulate any requirement to a sale. The arrogant seller also lacks confidence.

In the middle we have the assertive seller. They are not pushy or a pushover. They are emotionally intelligent, mature, curious and authentic, putting the client first. They help rather than sell. The assertive seller is working out if the client and the seller are going to do business together (rather than please buy from me or hurry up and buy from me attitudes we see in the other two styles). The assertive seller views relationships as a meeting of equals.

So clearly, we want to be assertive whenever we can. But how do we develop the confidence to consistently demonstrate this behavior? One lesson we can learn is from sport. High performing sales people and elite athletes plan and prepare in detail - whether that’s in training, warming up before an event or during the event.

Before a game, they research their opponents or the pitch, court or course they’re playing on. In the game, they have consistent ‘pre-shot’ routines. They have a plan. Think of a footballer preparing to take a penalty, a golfer before a shot or a tennis player pre-serve. 

The former world champion boxer, Mike Tyson, once said in response to a question about his opponent’s plan to beat him ‘everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth’. In other words, plans typically withstand a short amount of ‘enemy fire’ – and that can often be true. So, our confidence comes from the planning process rather than the plan.

How many of us have prepared for a client meeting sitting in their car park, spilling a double shot macchiato on your laptop and wondering how many of the highly technical, text dominated, 68 slide PowerPoint deck we should really focus on in the one hour meeting we’re about to enter? By the way, for current pandemic times read sitting in your kitchen wearing a smart shirt and shabby shorts on Zoom whilst home schooling the kids!

Instead of editing slides why not start with what you want to achieve at the meeting? In other words, what actions do you need your client to take to move you closer to working together? Note we’re focused on their actions rather than ours. If you come away from the meeting with all of the actions and your client with none, which style have you just adopted?

When you’re thinking through those outcomes, be ambitious. Think of all the things you may need and the order you need them. It’s not guaranteed you’ll get them all but you stand a much better chance of getting some (or maybe all) if you’ve worked it through beforehand.

How do you want to make your customer feel? Yes, that’s right, feel! Why is this important? We all make decisions emotionally and then rationalize with logic afterwards to align heart and head. So to get the client to take action (and to do so quickly) you’ve got to unlock some emotions. Are you going to make them worried or excited about something that could happen to their market and business? Or maybe just reassure you can help them? 

It’s human nature that we prefer to deliver good news rather than bad – whether that’s to a friend, a colleague or a client. But its also human nature that we’re more likely to be moved to action quickly  by bad news than good and if you’re preventing a bigger problem down the line, you’re actually catching your friend, colleague or client before they fall.

How will you carefully deliver these messages and then hold a debate around it that inspires action? What objections might you have to overcome? Anticipate them, rehearse them, test them, role play the discussion, visualize the meeting. This is the assertive approach – anticipating the emotional reaction and forming the messages accordingly.

You’re not trying to get to a situation where you’re right and the client is wrong. Win-lose is an arrogant and unrewarding position for both sides. Instead, you’re trying to get a discussion going where the client respects your point of view. Its something they haven’t thought of - a different perspective. The client may or may not agree with it, but they recognize the value you bring in helping them build a better answer.

The client may ask you what we need to do next. That’s great news – notice the key word ‘we’. They’re getting collaborative. Your next step could be a joint workshop with your client’s colleagues where you define the problem and answer together. There is nothing quite like a design thinking garage with lots of Post-it notes to build a relationship! Whatever the next step is, ensure you’ve thought it through beforehand so that it moves the client and you forward together.

There are lots of other things you can do to prepare for your engagements from agreeing an agenda beforehand to ensuring you’re wearing your lucky socks on the day. Clearly, some are more practical and will help you more than others! Abraham Lincoln said ‘Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.’ Preparing for meetings isn’t the only way of building your confidence but its certainly a very important one. Make sure you invest time in it. 

If you have thoughts or tips on this and other ways to build selling confidence, please share them in the comments section.