Give Them Confidence (A Note to the Sales Manager)

You are responsible for the salesperson you are providing your clients. When you hire, you can easily believe your are hiring for your company, but you’re really hiring for your clients and prospects.

The salesperson you put in front of your client needs to create value for them.

Your success as a sales leader depends upon the success of the individual salespeople that make up your team. Sending out salespeople who lack the confidence to sell breeds a lack of confidence in your clients and prospects. Send them out with the confidence to succeed and to produce that confidence in your clients and prospects.

Give Them Training

Your salespeople gain confidence when you train them to create value for your clients.

When you look at the best organizations in the world you find the best training programs in the world. This is true of sports teams, military organizations, orchestras, ballets, rock bands, and some companies. The best organizations in the world are well rehearsed. They study. They’re continually improving their skills and constantly receiving feedback.

What do your salespeople need trained in to be confident in their ability to create value for your clients? What skills do they need for your clients to be confident in their ability to help them make the buying decision they’re making?

Training improves confidence. You know where you are. You know your part. You know what you are supposed to be doing to achieve the outcomes you need. To your clients and prospects, this looks like confidence and competence.

Prepare Them to Create Value

There is no reason to allow your sales force to make sales calls without planning for that call. Unprepared salespeople don’t create value; they’re just nice guests.

It’s easy to get trapped in spending time evaluating territory plans, reviewing pipelines, and strategizing on opportunities. But the moment of truth for sales organization occurs when the salesperson sits down across from their client or prospect. They either create enough value to deserve the next commitment or they don’t.

A good sales call plan takes into account what the buyer needs from the sales call, what the salesperson needs from the call, and the outcomes both need in order to move forward. Knowing where you are and where you are going improves confidence, and it’ sales mistake to believe the buyer has a process (much of the time they want to be led).

If the client isn’t confident in the salesperson’s ability to help them, they aren’t going to agree to move forward. If the salesperson isn’t confident about how to create that value, neither the salesperson nor the client are going to be confident moving forward together.

Your clients and prospects expect a well trained, well prepared, confident, value creating salesperson. This gives them the confidence to say yes.