Have you ever had “butterflies in your stomach” prior to speaking with a customer? That nervousness can be caused by uncertainty or lack of confidence.
As was typical in the industry when I started out, I spent many days traveling with a senior salesman or sales manager until they felt confident that I was ready to represent the company on my own. One day, I was making calls with my sales manager and I was having severe troubles. I would stumble over my words, lose focus and have to start my memorized presentation over, and sheepishly hand brochures to the customers in the hopes that they would simply place an order and I could leave quickly. I could tell my boss was getting frustrated with me, and I honestly thought this would be my last day due to my lack of confidence. It was late in the afternoon, and getting close to quitting time when we called on a customer, and that experience would forever change my life. As we walked into his office, I noticed that he had a guitar leaning up against the wall. As a guitarist myself, and knowing that I was probably fired anyway, I asked him about it. This sparked a very natural conversation between two guitarists that ranged from various amplifiers and accessory equipment to the many bands we had both played in, to the groupies that followed the bands and some of the things we had seen and experienced with them. After about 40 minutes of this, I realized that my boss was fidgeting a bit behind me and started to panic a little bit. I did the best I could to bring the conversation back to the product that we were selling and to my surprise, he actually bought some! I almost lost it! The most unprofessional sales pitch I had ever delivered had worked and I was walking away with an order. To say I was confused about what had just happened would not have even begun to convey what I was feeling.
As we walked out of the office and got back into the car, my sales manager was smiling, almost laughing, at what he had just experienced. I started up the car and started to drive away when he turned to me and said, “If you can do that at every call, you will be my best salesman” He then went on to explain to me that what I had unwittingly done was taught in sales training courses the world over. The confidence I had when I noticed his guitar (and realized I could talk to him one on one) had allowed me to develop a relationship almost instantaneously. That relationship led to closing the sale.
From that point on, whenever I go to see a new customer, I am scanning the office for something I know a little bit about, just to develop that commonality. The boost of confidence that will create a bond that opens the door for me to make the sale. It gets easier as I get older and my experience grows, more experiences = more things to talk about and more confidence because I have had successful experiences.
