9 tips for sales confidence

9 tips for sales confidence

The importance of sales confidence can’t be understated. You can know everything about your product and possess significant experience in the field, but if potential buyers don’t perceive you as confident, you’ll never succeed. You can offer all the discounts in the world on the amazing features of your product, but if you don’t know how to sell with confidence, customers won’t trust you. And trust is the foundation of customer acquisition, loyalty and lifetime value.

What is sales confidence?

Sales confidence is the ability to enter a room and sell your product to anyone there with ease. We’ve all met people with this type of confidence: it’s the person who speaks about something with such passion and conviction, they turn everyone around them into believers.

Learning how to sell with confidence doesn’t mean that you feel 100% confident all the time – no one does. Rather, selling with confidence means immediately putting a customer at ease by talking to them with conviction and sincerity. It means bringing your purpose to every sales conversation. It harnesses the law of attraction to create a cycle of positivity and confidence that brings people to you, instead of you chasing them down.

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Why is sales confidence important?

The hard truth is that without sales confidence, you’re not going to meet your sales or business goals. Would you buy from someone who didn’t seem confident about their own product or skills? Probably not. Knowing how to sell with confidence – and how to teach your sales team these skills – is essential to building relationships with customers and ultimately influencing them to buy your product.

It’s often said that confidence matters more than competence. Confident people get the raise, earn the promotion and make the sale. Tony puts it this way: success – in life and in business – is 80% mindset and 20% skill. Sales confidence is a big part of the

that will help you get ahead.

How to sell with confidence

Sales confidence is not a skill people are always born with, but it can be developed. Here are ten sales confidence tips that can help you achieve the massive success you desire.

1. Make a good first impression

People judge you within seconds of meeting you. It’s just a fact. The first impression you make on potential buyers is vital to how to sell with confidence – and it’s done entirely through your nonverbal communication. How are you approaching them? Are you shuffling to them? Do you stand to the side, with your arms folded across your chest? This posture makes you appear closed off and unapproachable. Are you looking at the floor, or out a window, instead of making solid eye contact? A buyer will see this behavior and decide you’re flaky. And you haven’t even started talking yet.

a man and a woman are shaking hands over a table .
2. Change your body language

Building confidence in sales starts with your body language, which sends a silent message to everyone you communicate with. You want to appear knowledgeable and trustworthy to customers while putting them at ease. Stand up straight and curb any nervous habits. Fidgeting makes you appear insecure when you want to look calm and collected. Changing your physiology can actually make you feel more confident, so throw your shoulders back. Adopt a power pose, like putting your hands on your hips. When you project confidence with your body, the customer will feel they are in good hands – and be more likely to want to do business with you.

3. Practice mirroring

Mirroring takes advantage of mirror neurons in our brains to help us build rapport and connect with others. You can mirror someone by using similar body language, matching their tone of voice and adjusting the words you choose to better communicate with them. This deepens your connection to the person and often leads them to a more favorable response. All these are important elements, but don’t forget physical feedback. Nodding and smiling, when appropriate, shows the customer that you’re listening and allows you to build further rapport.

a person is holding a mirror with a reflection of a person standing on a pier .
4. Transform your state

As you’re researching building confidence in sales, take stock of your current state. When you think about making a sale, how do you feel? Are you anxious? Does it make you excited? If you are operating in a state of fear or uncertainty when it comes to securing sales, you’ll alert potential customers to your negative mindset, and they will go elsewhere. To train yourself to be comfortable and relaxed when making sales, you first need to recognize how you’re really feeling. Focus on that feeling: if it’s negative, let it pass and replace it with an empowering belief. If it’s positive, reinforce it. You’ll be in total control of your emotions in no time.

a woman is standing in a field with her arms outstretched and birds flying around her .
5. Develop an alter ego

Todd Herman, who was a guest on The Tony Robbins Podcast, is an expert in helping people adapt to challenging situations. One of his top sales confidence tips is to develop an alter ego that allows you to step into a different persona to achieve your goals. For example, if you lack sales confidence, create an alternative version of you that is the best salesperson at your company. How do they talk? What kind of words do they choose? Notice their body language and sense of self. What changes would you make to your own posture and language to walk like them and sound like them? Once you know how to create an alter ego that serves your mission – making sales – you can channel this person whenever you need.

a person is handing a credit card to another person in front of a plate of food .
6. Learn about meta-programs

Sales confidence doesn’t always come naturally – many top salespeople have just figured out how to read their customers’ meta-programs. There are seven meta–programs, or mental processes that determine how you see the world. For instance, does someone have an external or internal frame of reference? If someone has an external frame of reference, they turn to sources outside themselves to validate their decisions. If they have an internal frame of reference, they don’t need the approval of others. If you’re selling a product to someone with an external frame of reference, you’d tell them statistics about how many other people have purchased the product or provide positive customer testimonials. If you can decipher which meta-programs someone uses, you can build a customized pitch that influences their decisions – the essence of how to sell with confidence.

two women are sitting at a table looking at a tablet .
7. Improve your communication skills

Communication is about much more than mirroring body language and learning meta-programs. The most essential skill when it comes to selling with confidence is actually practicing deep listening. From there, you can anticipate objections, create solutions ahead of time and gain commitment from your customers. You can even learn how to adapt your communication style, another advanced strategy that many great leaders have mastered.

8. Use visualization

Communication is about much more than mirroring body language and learning meta-programs. The most essential skill when it comes to selling with confidence is actually practicing deep listening. From there, you can anticipate objections, create solutions ahead of time and gain commitment from your customers. You can even learn how to adapt your communication style, another advanced strategy that many great leaders have mastered.

a close up of a human eye surrounded by binary code .
9. Feed your mind

Learning how to sell with confidence is all about having a growth mindset. This means that you believe you can always continue to learn, and you look at challenges as opportunities instead of obstacles. To embrace a growth mindset, feed your mind with new information that inspires your sales confidence and teaches you new skills. Surrounding yourself with others who can elevate your skills to the next level is also a key way to continue to feed your mind. You are who you spend time with, so don’t settle for anything less than extraordinary.

10. Leverage sales training

Every salesperson needs training. Not a one-time seminar or a couple of hours of online courses, but consistent, ongoing training. Even the best salespeople can benefit from refreshing their skills once or twice a year. New sales hires require even more training. Managers who want to build superstar sales teams must invest in the latest software and take the time for comprehensive training. When salespeople have been properly onboarded, oriented to the product and trained on how to connect with customers, sales confidence comes naturally.

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