In sales, confidence is non-negotiable.
And yet, new and experienced salespeople alike frequently struggle to confidently deliver their pitch, answer their prospect’s objections, and drive home the sale. Trust me: Learning how to sell with confidence is one of the most important skills to master on your way to becoming a sales pro.
But where do you get that confidence?
Today, I’ll share how anyone can become a confident salesperson and manage any objection with conviction and unshakeable self-assurance.
Why Does Confidence Matter in Sales?
Managing objections—and many other parts of the sales process—is about transferring confidence. Your prospect has doubts, fears, and concerns about your solution, and an objection is simply an expression of those doubts and concerns.
Sales is about accomplishing a transfer of confidence.
Your job as a sales rep is to convey your confidence in your product/service to the customer so that they believe your confidence more than their doubts.
Confident people speak with certainty—and this certainty can persuade prospects.
Here’s a funny story to illustrate this principle. In a psychology class, a man jumped up and stabbed another man with a banana. The “stabbed man” had a fake blood package strapped to his body, stumbled to the ground, and “bled” everywhere.
Police came to the scene and interviewed the students. When questioned, students described a knife in much detail. Even though what they actually saw was a banana, their brains knew that you can't stab someone with a banana. So, they assumed a knife—they made the perception match the story.
Our brains strongly desire congruency. If our perceptions conflict with the story in our heads, the brain will more often than not make the perception fit the story, not the other way around.
If delivered with enough confidence, people will often buy your story.
In B2B sales, sales cycles are long—usually at least four months. In a typical firm with 100-500 employees, an average of seven people are involved in most buying decisions—which means you need to have way more than just one confident sales conversation.
7 Tips for Building Confidence in Sales—and Closing More Deals
Whether you’re a manager hoping to encourage your sales team or a sales professional looking to elevate your own confidence and career, these tips are likely to improve sales performance across the spectrum.
1. Learn How to Fail
Here’s the real secret to confidence in sales (and life): facing success and failure. You need to expose yourself to plenty of both, more than most people dare to. To be truly confident, you need wins. You need to experience the feeling of accomplishing goals and success—in sales and in life.
But building genuine, unbreakable confidence requires you to experience massive failure. You need to trek through hard times, face tough challenges, and take the punches (and objections) as they come. These are the moments when you really learn about yourself, what you’re made of, and what you’re able to overcome.
The struggles force you to dig deeper than you ever would voluntarily. And then, when sales (and life) throw shit at you, you already know that you're capable of overcoming big stuff—no matter how difficult it feels at the moment. It's not about proving it to the outside world. It's about proving it to yourself.
How do you apply this in real life?
Not by shooting yourself in the foot or intentionally creating chaos. Rejection itself—repeated and protracted—is one of those challenges that can ultimately forge the most confident sales leaders. So, just do this: Take on bigger challenges, aim for higher goals, and strive to accomplish things you've never dared to attempt.
2. Research Your Leads
Before entering the sales conversation or making that cold outreach, you’ll want to know who your leads are and what they need.
When you do proper research before talking with leads, your newfound knowledge will make you more self-assured—and that self-confidence will come through in your sales presentation. (Don't know how to prepare a sales presentation? These examples can help guide you).
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Successful salespeople already understand the importance of understanding their leads and prospects. How can you create value and solve their pain points if you don’t know what those pain points are?
To get this information, you can use various avenues. Learn about their company and common industry pain points via their website or third-party articles. A quick LinkedIn search often provides some good insights, too. You know what to do. Just make sure you “get” them! Research and preparation will bolster your confidence.
3. Role Play Sales Calls
Practice makes perfect? Maybe not—but it does bring about improvement.
Confidence in sales comes with experience and hands-on practice in a safe and constructive environment, which takes sales training to the next level. Consider role-playing sales calls with a sales manager or even a colleague. Navigate your pitch through a gauntlet of objections and unwelcoming body language/vocal tone. Get tough with it!
Then, seek feedback. Confident people aren’t afraid to ask for help. How did you come across during the conversation? Were they able to rattle you—and if so, how can you prepare for the real thing?
This practice helps you to build sales confidence in a low-risk environment.
4. Use the Right Tonality
Often, it is not what you say—but how you say it—that’s important.
Tonality in sales is the way your voice sounds when delivering your sales pitch. Confidence is often conveyed through tone. There are three main types of tonality:
- Question: This involves raising your voice at the end of a sentence to encourage contemplation from your audience.
- Statement: Here, your voice is flat and consistent to demonstrate neutrality.
- Command: A command involves lowering your voice in tone to convey gravity.
In sales, there are also eight patterns of tonality, including absolute certainty, urgency, and reasonability. Each one accomplishes something different in your interaction with the prospect. When applied correctly, these tones support your sales pitch and customer relationship.
Pacing, cadence, volume, and even body language are all at play here. Especially with cold calling, it’s important to hit the right note. This is the perfect opportunity to role-play and apply the feedback you gain from the experience.
5. Start Your Day with Gratitude
Positivity has power. Grateful people feel less stress and experience increased overall mental and physical health. They also exhibit lower heart rates during stressful experiences, and in sales, that calm impacts your body language, which impacts your perceived confidence, which impacts your sales pitch. So, let’s practice positivity and gratitude.
At the office, congratulate your coworker who just got that big promotion—or the one who closed a super challenging deal. Email your sales manager, thanking them for their recent guidance, support, or resource sharing. Reach out to the customer who wrote that sociable tweet about their experience, thanking and checking in with them simultaneously.
And guess what? Experiencing and expressing gratitude shouldn’t be limited to your career.
Gratitude isn’t complicated. It’s just necessary.
6. Use a Sales Script
Sales scripts are helpful tools that provide structure to sales calls. However, they should never be used to the point of sounding robotic or overly scripted.
The purpose of a script isn’t to have reps memorize and recite the words verbatim. It’s about equipping you with a standard procedure you can access when needed. Selling is a highly complex skill; like other highly complex skills, it helps to have these routines in your repertoire.
When sales reps have a concise one or two-sentence script, it frees up mental RAM to focus on message delivery—rather than content. It helps you sell confidently, even when you don’t feel all that confident.
When used appropriately, sales scripts help you close more deals and reach greater sales success.
7. Record Your Sales Calls and Listen Back
Mirrors help you identify your strengths and weaknesses. But mirrors aren’t just glass—sometimes they’re other people, and sometimes they’re you.
Listening back to your own sales calls can highlight areas for improvement. When you’re trying to foster confidence, you need to listen for sections of the call where you demonstrate a lack of confidence. This can sound like hesitation, unprepared answers, or sometimes, even audible voice trembling.
Maybe when asking for action (the sale, scheduling a meeting, etc.), you hum and haw. Maybe your voice dips just a bit when they answer the phone, or their objections knock your pitch off balance. Identify these things, correct them, and do it all again.
Using a CRM like Close that lets you record and listen back to your sales calls will help you out.
Confidence in Sales Starts with the Right Tools
So, do you feel more confident? Probably not yet. Consistent confidence takes time to build and sustain, but as we’ve seen, it’s worth the work in progress.
The right tips and tools can empower your delivery and launch you toward meteoric sales success. You have the tips. Now, consider the tools. We suggest you try out our CRM for inside sales teams.
Close helps you better understand your prospects and skillfully manage your customer relationships, both of which help you feel more prepared and confident with every interaction. Explore our solution with a no-risk 14-day free trial.
