“When we smell confidence on somebody else, it lights up that area of our brain and we become more confident.” – Todd Caponi in today’s Tip 366
How do you get confidence?
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast. And I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from Todd Caponi and it stinks, but then a good way, Todd is the author of the award-winning best of 2019 book, The Transparency Sale. A top-rated keynote speaker and trainer as principal of Sales Melon LLC. And he’s also a managing director of Chicago’s Venture Scale. Here he is:
Todd Caponi: Hey everybody. Todd Caponi here. And let’s start with a key concept in the world of sales that we don’t spend enough time on. So first of all, when you think about the role of a sales leader or a manager, their role is to impart confidence on sellers, right? To make sellers confident. When we think about what the seller’s role is, a key part of it is to make buyers confident, make buyers confident in the decisions that they’re making. Without those things, nothing happens. So I think it’s time that we spend some quality time understanding what confidence is, some of the myths, and then how to build it up. So if you’re ready to get nerdy, let’s start with the definition.
So when you look up the definition of confidence, there’s really two core definitions. Number one is a feeling of self-assurance arising from one’s appreciation of their own abilities or qualities. So what does that mean? Well, it’s the confidence we possess within ourselves. The second definition is a feeling or belief that one can rely on someone or something from trust. So interestingly enough, that’s the confidence that others have in you. So confidence is something that you possess, but then others feel when they work with you. So here’s the interesting thing. If you have too little confidence, nothing happens, right? Nobody sells anything, nobody buys anything. But if you have too much confidence, the same thing happens. Nobody sells anything and nobody buys anything. So let’s get a little bit nerdy around some of the myths around confidence.
So first of all, there was a Ted Talk back in the early 2000 tens that said that you can essentially fake confidence through power poses and the language that you use. Well, it turns out that’s been completely debunked through science and how well, let’s start with this idea that you know that the conversations that you hear about how bears can smell fear on you, or sharks can smell blood in the water from far distance as well. It’s true. A lot of it has to do with their noses and their ability to do that. Like elephants can smell at an incredible rate. But it turns out that that’s a myth that those animals actually will take advantage of you when they smell that.
Here’s what happens, and it happens in human beings. So when I’m talking about here is absolutely applicable to you and me, is that we as human beings, we can smell emotion on other people. We can smell fear, we can smell confidence. So the crazy thing about it is that that confidence is actually, it smells. But here’s the amazing thing about it. It turns out that when we smell an emotion on somebody else, it lights up that area of our brain too. So, in other words, when we smell fear on someone else, our fear center in our brain starts to light up and we feel a little apprehension. When we smell confidence on somebody else, it lights up that area of our brain and we become more confident. So you have to possess confidence to impart confidence on other people.
So how do we get confidence? Well, let’s look back at that initial definition that it’s a feeling of self-assurance arising from one’s appreciation of their own abilities or qualities. So when we think about that, that’s the role of the sales leader and the sales rep themselves. And it comes from four things. Essentially it comes from learning. So managers impart an environment of learning on the sellers and sellers own it yourself. You’ve got to own that need to learn more. Number two is practice. I mean roleplaying. I know we hate to do it, but roleplaying is how you get confidence in your abilities, in the approaches that you take. Number three is experience, and it’s both the successes and then learning from the failures. But you’ve got to get out there and do it. And number four is something that leaders really need to focus on, and that’s creating a safe environment for people to test and to experience and to learn and to role play and to practice, but not thinking that if they screw up, they’re going to get fired. A safe environment as a core element of confidence as well.
So those are the elements that go into it. I hope this helps you think about confidence as a core element in your success or failure as a sales rep. and I’d love to hear your thoughts and what things you do to impart confidence not only in yourself but on others. Good luck. Thank you.
Scott Ingram: Now do yourself a favor and click over to DailySales.Tips/366 where you’ll find links to connect with Todd and to his book on Amazon. Follow Todd on LinkedIn, buy his book, The Transparency Sale, and then come on back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening.