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The Journey Never Ends: Continuing to Develop Your Authentic Confidence in Sales
The Challenge of Maintaining Confidence in Sales One of the biggest challenges we face in sales is maintaining genuine confidence through all the ups and downs. We've all been there—those moments when we question if we belong in this field, when a tough client shakes our belief in ourselves, or when a deal we have worked on tirelessly falls apart. These moments can make our confidence feel fragile and inconsistent. Even for seasoned salespeople, confidence isn’t static; it ebbs and flows, often leaving us wrestling with self-doubt more often than we'd like to admit. Why Confidence in Sales Is So Elusive The reason behind this is simple: confidence is not a permanent state. It is a dynamic, ever-changing feeling that gets impacted by various external factors—like rejection, competition, and even our own internal dialogue. We’re often conditioned to think of confidence as something we either have or don’t, but in reality, confidence is more like a muscle that needs constant work and care. Moreover, there is pressure to be "authentic" while making sales, which makes this journey even more challenging. Authenticity in sales means staying true to yourself and your values while also doing what it takes to achieve your targets—a delicate balance that even the best of us struggle to maintain at times.
Technology
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Do You NEED LinkedIn?
I'll save you the trouble of reading the article. The answer is...it depends. (Isn't that the worst? When the author asks some big bad question to start and won't give you a straight answer?) If you look beyond all the irrelevant selfies, manufactured beef and ass kissing, there IS value on LinkedIn, when you know how to use it. The reason I said "it depends" is because salespeople are typically trying to do one of two things on LinkedIn: Sell Build a brand Selling on LinkedIn This is the holy grail.
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We need to hire more salespeople
"Tis the Season" - Annual Planning Season that is! The old way of thinking is ingrained in the minds of many Revenue Leaders, and boards, but as the landscape of SaaS continues to evolve rapidly, a shift in mindset is necessary. It is no longer about simply hiring more salespeople to exceed already ambitious growth targets. The focus needs to be on maximizing existing resources effectively and focusing your sales capacity towards the most successful customer profiles. There is so much wasted capacity, spending time on ill-fitting prospects for the sake of pipeline metrics, think about how you can reduce the noise for your reps so they can be more successful and measured in their efforts. You have to work this into your model. From your TAM, work out how much is Serviceable (SAM) and then how much of that is truly Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM), the part of the market that you can not only service, but that you want to service, have to service and have a right to win!
Overcoming The Emotional Rollercoaster In Sales
Sales is often compared to an emotional rollercoaster, with salespeople frequently facing difficult emotions that can impact mental performance throughout the day. One minute you might be celebrating a closed deal, and the next, you're feeling anxious or disappointed when a client suddenly stops responding. This constant shift between emotional highs and lows can be exciting at times, but more often, it's draining and harmful to your well-being. In the early days of my sales career, I often experienced this when leaving the office at 5 p.m., feeling a strange buzz—a tangled mix of happiness, frustration, anxiety, and sadness. But instead of trying to understand these emotions, I found ways to escape them. I’d spend hours partying, drinking, or playing video games, avoiding the discomfort of facing how I truly felt. This worked for a while, but eventually, it all caught up with me, leading to panic attacks, difficult sleeping and an inability to sell effectively the next day. The reality is, you can’t just ignore emotions—they don’t disappear. The harder you try to push them away, the more they build up.
Why Sales Enablement Charters are B.S. (and how to do better)
Have you ever seen an Enablement conference keynote or webinar titled “How Our Enablement Charter Saved the Organization”? Me neither. And yet, we spend an absurd amount of time and effort finding templates, customizing them, meeting with stakeholders, explaining (for the tenth time) what exactly Revenue Enablement does, and getting all of our stakeholders to literally sign on the dotted line… only to end up with the same problems we had before. We fight fires. We become fixers of broken things. Sellers still think of us as harbingers of pointless busywork (training), instead of strategic partners in their success. As a profession, we in enablement give far too much stock to these charters. We cling to them like they’re some magical shield that will save us from the chaos of stakeholder requests. We find the perfect template, make it our own, and get the "buy-in" we so desperately covet. And yet, the same issues arise—the very ones we wrote a charter to save us from in the first place. So why don't I like charters? Here's where I've seen them fail, and how we can fix it.
We need to hire more salespeople
"Tis the Season" - Annual Planning Season that is! The old way of thinking is ingrained in the minds of many Revenue Leaders, and boards, but as the landscape of SaaS continues to evolve rapidly, a shift in mindset is necessary. It is no longer about simply hiring more salespeople to exceed already ambitious growth targets. The focus needs to be on maximizing existing resources effectively and focusing your sales capacity towards the most successful customer profiles. There is so much wasted capacity, spending time on ill-fitting prospects for the sake of pipeline metrics, think about how you can reduce the noise for your reps so they can be more successful and measured in their efforts. You have to work this into your model. From your TAM, work out how much is Serviceable (SAM) and then how much of that is truly Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM), the part of the market that you can not only service, but that you want to service, have to service and have a right to win!
Use AI to Spark Curiosity, Not Kill It
AI is making sales worse. There’s a massive over-rotation to doing things ‘at scale’ that’s propped up by evidence that it works. But just because something works sometimes, doesn’t mean it’s the right path. Case and point: look at your inbox. We are all missing the point I know there’s an argument for how important relationships are in sales, but let’s be real, relationships built on lies are going to end. So no, you did not “come across my profile” and even the well written ones that are less detectable, are disingenuous unless it’s made explicitly clear it came from an AI. Beyond my own opinions on AI SDRs, the buying experience is objectively worse than it has ever been and AI is to blame, it’s not just top-of-funnel. It just sounds so good on paper. “AI is going to make us faster, more efficient, more data-driven. It’s going to completely change how we sell.” Everybody is missing the point.
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Sales Operations
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Optimize Partnerships with Lead Generation Agencies
How Sales Leaders Can Optimize Partnerships with Lead Generation Agencies Finding the right lead-generation partner can be a critical element of success. While lead generation agencies and partners are widely available, not all partnerships yield the desired results. Understanding how to assess, choose, and optimize these relationships is essential for sales leaders. To maximize the outcome of working with a lead generation partner, examining your current internal processes and objectives is essential. This article will walk you through defining, choosing, and collaborating with a lead generation partner that aligns with your sales strategy. 1. Understand Your Own Sales Process First Before reaching out to potential lead generation partners, closely examine your current sales system. Ask yourself: How are you currently generating leads? What methods are working best? What gaps or inefficiencies need to be addressed?
Outbound / Prospecting
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How to Provide Value on Your Pitch
It takes just a few seconds on LinkedIn to find someone pitching the "BEST COLD CALL FRAMEWORK!" guaranteed to revolutionize your outbound strategy. Unfortunately, most of this advice revolves around generic approaches, focused primarily on titles or industries. You might hear pitches like: "When I talk to Directors of Sales, they often tell me..." "Most leaders in the healthcare industry struggle with..." If these pitches are working for you, fantastic! But if these generic templates aren’t getting you results, it's time to try something different. Let me introduce you to an approach I’ve personally used, implemented, and taught throughout my sales career—the Groundswell Approach.
Podcasts
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Marketing
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LinkedIn’s Authentic Edge: Why ‘Real You’ Marketing Outshines the Polished Pros
Are we deceiving our audiences on LinkedIn? Alright, that might be a tad harsh. Let me rephrase. In an era dominated by AI, building a personal brand and establishing yourself as a Subject Matter Expert (SME) on LinkedIn drives more company traffic than ever before. People crave authentic connections with real individuals. But what's really happening on this professional networking platform? The LinkedIn Landscape Out of the mere 1% of active users who post on LinkedIn, 75% of those users seem to embellish their content. Okay, I'll admit that the 75% statistic is false. But now that I have your attention, let's delve deeper. It's natural to want to showcase our best selves through our experiences and content, aiming to gain followers and boost engagement. However, presenting an inauthentic version of yourself can actually harm your personal brand and company in the long run. Why? Because within that small percentage of LinkedIn users posting online, word spreads quickly and people eventually uncover the personality behind the profile picture.
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