The Unbeatable Sales Cocktail: Confidence vs. Conviction
Confidence in sales stems from
thorough knowledge of your company, processes, products, and their applications.
However, the actual engine that closes deals is conviction—the unshakable belief in your company's core strengths. In my
sales training assignments, I frequently encounter salespeople with low
conviction. This isn't due to a lack of knowledge, but to an inability to
powerfully position the company's strengths and communicate why its perceived
weaknesses do not diminish the core value it offers.
The Confidence-Conviction Gap: A Case Study
Consider a salesperson who is
highly confident in their product knowledge but has low selling conviction. In
the back of their mind, they harbour concerns about a company's weakness—say, a
limited number of service centres. When a customer inevitably pinpoints this
same weakness, the salesperson's conviction falters. They stumble, failing to
pivot the conversation to a compelling strength, like superior quality and
reliability. They forget to share powerful success stories of customers who
have rarely, if ever, needed a service centre. The weakness becomes a stumbling
block in the seller's mind long before it becomes one for the buyer.
This gap explains a critical
market reality: a good product with weak conviction often
fails, while an average product with firm
conviction frequently wins.
Your Action Plan: For Sellers
If you are a salesperson reading
this, your mission is clear:
1. Deeply
understand your company's unique strengths. Know them like the back of your hand.
2. Proactively
identify how your company's perceived weaknesses have minimal impact on
customer outcomes. Arm yourself with data,
testimonials, and logic to reframe the narrative.
Your Action Plan: For Leaders & Entrepreneurs
If you are a manager or founder,
your responsibility is to architect this conviction:
1. Assess
your team's levels of both confidence and conviction. They are not the same.
2. Transparently
present your company's strengths and weaknesses to your sales force.
3. Educate
and equip them with the narrative and
tools to explain why your weaknesses do not undermine the customer's primary
goals.
The Ultimate Truth
Sales is the art of helping a
customer buy. If the salesperson does not honestly believe in what they are
selling, convincing someone else to consider it is almost impossible. Master
your knowledge to build confidence, but cultivate your belief to unleash the
transformative power of conviction.
M.L. Narendra Kumar
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