How trusting yourself and others leads to more sales opportunities
Throughout my business career I’ve found a saying that’s seems to be popular among both entrepreneurs and sales professionals alike and that is “sales cures all”. Unfortunately, this quote is missing a key component to making a sale and that’s trust.
Trust is the foundation to every sale and you will not only need to build trust with your customer but also trust within yourself.
Trusting Yourself
If you want to be successful at sales you must first learn to trust yourself. Trusting yourself mean you must know that your resources and abilities are not only enough to get the job done, but also worth the price you place on them.
When I first started my business, I didn’t have the level of trust within myself. Without trust, I started allowing prospective clients to hijack the sales process. First it was reducing my deposit, then it was reducing the time of delivery. Before I knew it I was producing work for clients at a fraction of what I was worth due to the lack of trust I had in myself.
So what does distrust looks like? Here are a few statements that led me down the path of overdraft back accounts and chasing people down for money:
I didn’t trust that I could get paid in full so I brake the cost into payments
I doubted my sales ability, targeting clients that didn’t have a budget for their project
I didn’t believe in saying no to the wrong clients so I could make time for the right clients
These are just a few seeds of distrust that were planted in my head. Luckily I had the opportunity to shift my mindset before things got really ugly.
Hopefully your seeds of distrust hasn’t started to grow inside of you. If you find yourself losing trust it’s important to come back to this section and understand that to be successful in closing your next sales lead you must start to trust yourself again.
Trusting Others
I think you would agree with me when I say that trusting others is one of the hardest things to do when trying to close a deal. As you start your sales process, you’ll quickly learn that anything is possible. Either the prospect has one of your competitors in the background waiting to match your offer or worse, they simply decide to put the project on hold (aka get cold feet). As much as I hate these negative possibilites, there are far worse things that could happen.
I remember the first time I ran into a sales slump. I was going into my third year of business and we were coming off a great sales cycle. All I could think about is how far the company can go from where we were at the time. Unfortunately, I didn’t think about the sales slump that was around the corner. I started feeling like everybody was either getting cold feet or a competitor was beating me on price. This sales slump I was in caused me to stop trusting future prospects that came to the table. I literally had potential clients sitting in front of me and all I could think about was:
This person isn’t serious
They don’t have the budget for what they are asking for
It’s holiday season, they are going to get cold feet and wait until next year
12-months later I ended the year with the worst sales year since I started the company and realized that the lack of trust was because of it. Since that year I’ve learn that you must trust the person sitting on the other side of the table if you want to close the deal.
It’s important to understand that prospective clients may still end up getting cold feet or reveal they don’t have the budget but at least trust won’t be an additional issue between the two of you.
Trust Doesn’t Come Overnight
Developing trust in yourself and others isn’t something that comes overnight. Much like anything worth having, it will take some time because trust is more of a skille than a trait. Everyday I go out into the world and engage with a client I’m activly trying to remember to trust the person in front of me and inside of me. You must learn to do the same.
About The Author
Quinton Wash is a digital developer based in Charlotte, NC. During his career, Quinton has experienced various obstacles that could derail any working professional's career. Armed with critical knowledge on how to excel one's career and business, Quinton shares his keys (major keys) to success here through his writing and public speaking.