Confident Selling - How To Speak With Confidence In Sales Meetings

How comfortable are you when it comes to selling something, when it comes to speaking up in a sales meeting, where the purpose is to communicate to someone, to influence someone, to get them to see things your way, see the value of whatever you're offering your product or service, so they're committed to giving you money in exchange for that. So it benefits you and benefits them. Are you able to do that? Are you able to put yourself out there confidently, speak clearly, impact the person? Or do you feel nervous, restricted, held back, shy, uncomfortable, and then afterwards you maybe feel critical of yourself? You messed it up, you should have done better. What's wrong with me? All that stuff? Then this is an incredibly important aspect of life, being able to sell things. Now, either you're in a field of sales or perhaps you're just in your own life, but it's an incredibly important skill. Now what this is not, this little video is not, you know, 35 ways to overcome objections and close your target. You know, I'm not a sales expert. That's not what I do. My expertise is in confidence, is in helping you identify the things that you do inside of your own mind and body that limit your confidence, that create anxiety and break through them, shift them, dismantle them, so that you're able to let your natural confidence come out and naturally influence people, connect with them, share with them, be who you are around them, and through that process have an effect on them that gets them to want to be engaged with you, want to buy your product, want to buy your service. So if you want to refine your sales skills with specific sales training, that's very valuable training, and I'd highly recommend it. But what this is going to be about is the underpinning, the confidence, which any sales trainer will tell you is the foundation of your ability to sell something. So think about that. Sales meetings. You know, if you're struggling with confidence in public speaking and you want to be in sales, I can bet it's affecting you in one of two ways. One is you're just avoiding the whole thing. You are not applying for that sales job. If you're in a company, you're not migrating over to any position where you'd have to do any sort of sales or presentations or perhaps you have your own business or company and you have a product that's amazing and it has an impact in the world and you want to make a difference with it and. But you're just not putting it out there. You're not, you're avoiding opportunities to go speak in front of groups or set up sales meetings. Another way that it might be affecting you is you are in those situations. You're not avoiding them, but you're just not effective at it. You're not communicating clearly. You're not getting conversions. People aren't wanting to buy something from you. You're just kind of doing. You're going through the motions, but it's not working. And if you're in either of those positions, then I'm going to share in this video three three tips that you can use starting today to help shift your experience in sales meetings to make a difference, to have a different result for you. So the first thing is I want to communicate this to you as an underpinning for everything else that you're going to do in a sales meeting. And it might seem obvious. You might think, well, jeez, I know that, but do you really know it? And here's what it is. You have a right to. To be there. In the sales meeting. You have a right to be there. You know, I've seen this so much in people when they're struggling with confidence is somewhere deep down they have the feeling or the sense that, I don't have a right to be here. I'm imposing on this person. I don't think that they really want me here. I'm pushing something on them, or I don't really know enough, or my service or product isn't good enough, or if you're in your own business or something and you're selling yourself and your services and it's like, I'm not good enough. But for whatever reason, there's a sense of I don't really have a right to be here. I'm taking this person's time, they're giving me their time, and I'm wasting it with this presentation. Now, I know those are extreme ways of phrasing it, and you might think, I don't actually say that or have that idea. But if you feel that sense of imposing on someone, then you do. You are saying that to yourself on some level, even if it's not fully conscious right now that you are not allowed to be there. You don't have full permission. And so the first thing you have to do is you have to give yourself full permission. I have a right to be here. Not only do I have a right to be here, but I have an exciting opportunity. I have something that is of such value that it's a disservice to them to not know about it. For me to not as clearly as I can communicate to them what this thing that I have that I'm offering, they have to know this. This is so important. This is a life changing, impactful thing. Even if it's a vacuum cleaner. A vacuum cleaner can be life changing. I was at my uncle's house not too long ago for Thanksgiving, and I noticed that he's got like five of these. Oh, thank God. They called rumbas. They're like these circular disc things that like go around and vacuum. And he's got one for every floor of his house. And he must have spent like over the course of the weekend, like two hours talking to anyone who would listen to him about how amazing his vacuum cleaners are. It was life changing for him. He's a happy man because of his vacuum cleaners. So whatever it is that you are selling, you have to say, I have a right to be here. This is important information. And in fact, that kind of attitude will actually help you get in the door with a lot of people versus, like, do you have five minutes and maybe I can share something with you? Maybe it would be valuable for you versus listen, give me five minutes and I want to share something with you. That can shift so much in your business that in two years your company is going to be entirely different than it is now. That was very vague the way I said that because I don't know what your product or service is, but there's an excitement and a certainty about what you have and, and you feel like you have a right to be there. And really what's underneath all that I don't have a right to be here is self worth stuff, self esteem stuff, like, I, I'm not worthy, my product's not good enough, I don't have a right to be here. So if you're struggling with that and you want to go deeper, you got to check out the confidence code. The confidence code is all about self esteem, and it'll help you accept all parts of yourself and start to find that full permission and worth inside of yourself. So the second thing you need to do to maximize your confidence in sales meetings is you have to learn how to connect with the group of people that you're talking to. Now, this is a slightly higher level of public speaking. You know, the lowest level of public speaking is to give a presentation where it's preplanned. You have your exact slides, and the lowest level of that is to look at the projector and read your slides. You know, that's like, we're talking like college level presentation there where someone is like, and Actually, some college professors did this, which always boggled my mind. When I was in school, I was like, this person's job is to communicate and teach. And what they do is they like, so. And they just literally read, you know, back in the old PowerPoints that were like all blue backgrounds with yellow text, and you just, you'd flick to the next slide and it's like three huge chunks of text that they just, like, typed up and. And they just start reading it. And I remember being in classes like that, and I was like, this is like a revolver to the head. I can't handle this. So that's the lowest level. The next level is you have your prepared presentation on the slides and you just, you go through it. You do the same thing every time with every group. And here's the thing, and I say it, and that's that. But what I'm talking about is a higher level of public speaking ability, which is the ability to truly connect and relate to who. Who you're speaking to. The best way to do that is to get into their world. You have to understand the world from their perspective. Now, the best way to do that is to start with some homework. Who are you going to go speak to? Who are the kinds of people you're going to be approaching? What problems do they have? What challenges do they. Do they face in their daily lives or in their business? Wherever you're trying to help, provide them with a service that's going to help them. What challenges do they face? What can you offer that will help them? What is it that they really want? What do they desire? What are they frustrated about in their lives? What's not working for them? And if you do your homework and really start to think about those things and maybe even talk to some people and get ideas, get the actual answers from their mouths, then you're going to start to develop a much more powerful ability to empathize with the people that you're talking to. And no one wants to be sold. They want to be connected to, they want to be heard. They want to be understood. And when you can do that, then you have an incredible ability to influence, to encourage, to guide, to support, to offer something of value to them. And so one way, and the most powerful way to do this, other than just doing your homework ahead of time, is to ask questions, is to explore. And the best way to do it is say, let me ask you a question. What is the biggest challenge that you face in this area right now? And then reflect back what you hear so you're saying, the biggest challenge you face right now is that the three people in your sales team don't follow the instructions that you put forward for them. Or you're saying, the biggest problem right now in your life is that you want to go to the next level in your company, and. But you don't know how to ask for a raise or you feel too nervous to do that. So you reflect back what you hear, and you know you're doing it right. When the person's like, yeah, and that's the good. That's the magic word combination. Yes. And they feel heard. And sometimes they don't even say yes. They just say, yeah, they just say and. And they want to keep telling you, you know, it's working when they want to share more. So you got to ask questions. And again, there's sales trainings all about this, that you can learn all the specifics of what kinds of questions and how. But the key thing here is to get into the world to empathize with them, to connect with them, to reflect back what their needs are, because you really want to be, hopefully, providing a real service or product that really meets their needs. Now, if you're trying to sell some crappy product that doesn't actually work and is just like a bunch of hype and packaging, then maybe you shouldn't have confidence in it. Maybe that anxiety that you feel is your moral compass that's telling you you're doing something wrong. And that's a whole different issue. But the key here is if you know what you're selling is a value and you really can find the truth in that, even if it's a vacuum cleaner, then how do I connect with these people and really draw them out? And you could. And it's powerful in a presentation to ask questions to a group. You know, we never do that. We almost think, well, I can do that one on one. But in a group, what am I. Who's going to. Who's going to say anything back? And you can do all kinds of things. You could just leave it open and see who they respond. You could direct a specific person, like, excuse me, you know, hopefully you've gotten a few names or, you know, their titles. Like, but, you know, excuse me, Mr. Thompson, in your opinion, what's the biggest challenge here? Something like that. You can also say, how many of you have struggled with X? And you raise your hand. That's a much easier way to get a response. There's so many ways to ask questions, to engage a group, but the key is, and you pay attention to how they're reacting to you, how they're responding to you. You'll see if you're making an impact. And the third thing that you have to do, which is a huge confidence thing, is you got to be direct and ask for the sale. You have to be direct and ask for the sale at some point in your presentation, your conversation, and you're drawing them out with questions. You're not there just to help them understand themselves better. You're there to provide them with a solution, with something that's of value. Now, assuming that the questions that they answer for you indicate that what you have to offer is truly of value. And I really believe this. Like, the deepest form of confidence comes from integrity. So if someone tells you something and they're like, yeah, you know, they want the rumba or whatever, and you're like, well, actually, I have a vacuum you use with your hand. And it's not really what you want, but here's why it's great. Maybe you're not really meeting their needs. Maybe you are just trying to know, pull one over on them. And really that's. You're not going to have the deep confidence. Maybe you'll get the sale and you have a little boost of confidence from having some more money in your bank account, but you're not going to have that deep, rock solid confidence that only comes from integrity, from believing and knowing that you're living your values and that you're a good person. And so when it comes to asking for the sale, you get clear that you're aligned, that you have something that can be of value to them. And. And then you have to be direct. You have to say, so here's what I want to offer to you. It is this service, it is this amount, it costs this much. This is what it will do for you. Is that something that you want? How can we make that happen? It's really clearly saying it. And this is something that I had to learn because I said my background is not in sales, it's in coaching. First therapy, being a therapist and psychologist, and then coaching and confidence coaching. All the stuff I do now. But there's sales in that too, right? Someone calls me and they say, hey, I wanted to talk to you about confidence coaching. And then so I do. I'm really good with the first part of knowing that I have a right to be there because they're calling me. I'm good with the second part of listening and drawing them out. Like, what are you? What are your challenges? What are you facing. That's one of my skill sets. But what I was not good at is putting forth a proposal. So I would talk to someone. We talk for an hour. I'd be doing a great session with them, and they'll be like, well, I don't want them to feel like I'm selling them something. And I certainly, you know, don't want to feel like they're going to be upset with me for some reason. It's kind of irrational idea. So what I would do is I would either not ask for it or I would do it in a really tentative way. And that's the key piece here. You have to do it in a direct way. I would be like, so maybe we could, you know, do some something or other. And they'd give me the slightest hint of I'm not sure, or any sort of uncertainty. And I'd be like, well, well, it's fine. Don't worry about it. We'll talk about it later. It's absurd. It's like, no, we're not going to talk about it later. We need to talk about this now. Do you want to change this in your life? This is incredibly important to you, isn't it? How can we make this happen? And then in that is dealing with what's called unsealed world objections. But maybe the person's like, oh, that's costs a lot of money. I don't know if I have that much money. Geez. Well, how much were you anticipating spending? You know, what is the value to you that if you invested in yourself, what could it possibly bring to you in terms of literally more income? But maybe even things that are not tangibly valuable, like a relationship. What is having the love of your life in bed next to you when you go to sleep at night? How much is that worth? And that's worth. That's priceless. So you have to get clear on asking for the sale and then having a dialogue about it. And that's where I was really nervous and really anxious, probably from my background in therapy where we're taught that it's bad to sell yourself and your services. You should be kind of like a saintly Mother Teresa figure who just wants to heal the world for no contribution. You should just do it out of the goodness of your heart. And so bringing it into the coaching world and the business world and realizing like, no, this is incredibly valuable and we need to exchange something. I need to live. And so let's talk about that. That's too much. Okay, what might work for you? What else can we do? How about this program instead? Would that coaching package work better for you? And now I'm much more comfortable in long dialogues where there's clear proposals. This is my proposal to you. This is how much it costs. This is what we'd be doing. This is what you can expect to gain from it. What do you think? And that comes from a deeper level of confidence and the question you might be having as you're watching this is, okay, Aziz, how do I do these things? How do I build that confidence? And my answer to that, like it is for a lot of confidence questions of how do I build it? Is to do it. Is to practice it again and again is to do it even though you're scared to do it. So notice where you get that hang up and then just set the intention of this time. I'm going to do it. And if there's specific fears, working through those fears. And if you're really inhibited, then you got to check out the program Confidence Unleashed, which will help you notice what your story is, the ideas you have in your head that hold you back and then give you a wide range of tools and techniques of working with your body, your emotions, your mind, your physiology to break through the patterns that keep you feeling stuck and tight in your body. So that's one way to do that. Another way is obviously contact me for confidence coaching and then we can go specifically deeply into your situation. But in any case, apply what you learn here in sales meetings and I look forward to talking to you more in the future. Until we speak again. May you have the courage to be who you are and know that you're awesome.