How confident are you in your product, service, and business? Do you believe you have product market fit? Do you believe there are deals being done in your market, and are you confident that if you have the opportunity to compete, you will win? Now, look around you. Do all of the members of your team share your confidence? In particular, do your marketers and sellers share your confidence?
Confidence and attitude can make all the difference in a competitive market. It is said that dogs can sense fear. A corollary in business is that buyers and customers can sense confidence and commitment or lack of it, and it colors their behavior toward vendors. If you think you will lose, buyers sense it and chances are pretty high you will. On the positive side, if you have confidence and believe in yourself and your team, you can win over a skeptical buyer.
Think about your own personal experience. When you consider buying electronics like a TV, you probably do some research, and you may go to a big-box store to see the various models. If you have questions, you might ask a salesperson for help. Within seconds you can tell if they know what they are talking about or if they are just reading what is on the box. The ones that confidently differentiate models and explain features worth having versus features that don’t matter, become trusted advisors. The others are a waste of time and you will likely walk out without making a purchase. A lot of that is training and knowledge, but what really stands out is when a salesperson demonstrates confidence that they are the expert and you should listen to their opinions.
Magic happens when everyone on your team projects confidence in your product and makes it evident that your team knows its stuff and will provide buyers and customers with an unmatched level of service and expertise. Competitors come and competitors go, and on any given day, a competitor may have a feature or a function that stands out as different or better than your equivalent capability, but that never lasts for long. In the competitive market, you are running a marathon not a sprint, and customers and prospects need to sense your confidence and belief that you are their best choice for the long haul. Your team has to project confidence that the totality of what you bring to the table far exceeds the competitors’ offerings, and a feature here or there should not be determinant for a buyer that is taking the long view.
Confidence is expressed in a lot of different ways. A powerful message of confidence is the willingness to say ‘no.’ Deep down, buyers and customers know you can’t or won’t do everything they ask. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. If your answer to every question or request is ‘yes,’ at some point you lose credibility - it is too good to be true. Acknowledging a limit or a shortfall by saying ‘no’ not only shows confidence, it also makes the rest of what you say sound more believable and true. If you are willing to say ‘no’ to this, then your ‘yes’ to other items must be true. Don’t say ‘no’ just to make a point, but if you are confident in your strengths and believe that your offering is solid, then sometimes an honest ‘no’ communicates your confidence and conveys that you are trustworthy.
Many enterprise software companies are dependent upon a small number of transactions each quarter to reach their goals. Unfortunately, when dealing with the law of small numbers, if a few deals don’t make it across the finish line by the end of the quarter, the company will fall short of target. Without a surplus of opportunities to work, each deal becomes critical, and everything needs to close. Like a dog that senses fear, when a team is desperate to drive in every possible deal, buyers perceive the desperation and interpret it as risk. Risk causes them to slow down, rather than speed up their decision process.
By contrast, when the team projects confidence, it lowers the perceived risk level for the buyer. Like the dog that starts wagging its tail after you speak calmly to it, prospects start thinking “if you are not worried, then why am I worried?” Confidence is calming, and calm creates a moment of zen for buyers to develop their own confidence and commit sooner rather than later.
Building confidence in your team is one of the most important roles for the CEO and executive leaders. It has to be real and honest, or the team will never embrace it. Employees are smart and they have a keen sense of skepticism and a terrific BS meter. The starting place is to build trust based on honest and open dialog. Not everyone sees the whole picture of the business, and it is human nature for junior teammates to fill in the gaps with skepticism. The leader’s job is to hear their concerns and help them gain confidence and belief. Back to the start, if you truly believe in your product, service, and business, then it is up to you to project that confidence to your team and help them reach the same conclusion. If your team is confident, then they will take that into the market. Confidence wins.