Confidence is a must-have trait for successful salespeople, balanced with a healthy dose of knowledge and humility. Why is confidence such a critical aspect of the sales toolkit? In this video, we're going to talk about how to overcome challenges by building self-confidence. By the end of this video, you'll be able to understand why building self confidence in the face of challenges is an essential part of the SDR role and identify concrete strategies for building self-confidence through challenges. Now, why is building self-confidence so important in the SDR role? You may think that confidence is defined by how you shake hands with someone, how big and bright your smile is, how well you network in a room of strangers. The root of self confidence is actually trust. Building self-confidence is rooted in building trust in yourself, your worth, and your abilities. As an SDR, you're going to face a lot of rejection. When you're performing the role of an SDR, especially at the beginning, you're going to feel like you're stepping outside of your comfort zone multiple times a day. You'll be learning a lot in a short amount of time and likely making a lot of mistakes, and that's okay. The good news is that generally, the way that we get more confident in something, is by doing that thing over and over and over again. Through repetition, you figure out how to improve your processes and how to feel more comfortable with the tasks and with yourself. The SDR role is challenging, no doubt about that. But here at SV Academy, we encourage you to embrace the challenge. We encourage you to approach challenges with curiosity and intentionality. To explore the challenge from every angle and think about ways to overcome the challenge, and then to do your very best. For example, SDRs face a lot of rejection, especially in the beginning. You might encounter days, even weeks where you're unable to book a meeting with a single prospect, and this can be very discouraging. Especially if your goal, or your quota, is to book an average of two meetings per week, but you go two whole weeks without booking a single meeting. In this example, the outcome wasn't what you hoped. But I'm here to tell you that that's okay. You went through a learning experience and this will make you even more prepared and confident the next time that you face the same challenge, or even a different challenge. What are some concrete strategies for building self-confidence through challenges? One strategy is to know your sphere of influence. Start by identifying and understanding the challenge in any related factors. In the above example of going for two whole weeks without booking meetings, there were things about that challenge you could control, things within your sphere of influence, such as the number of prospects that you outreach and the quality of your messaging, and things that were outside of your control. Maybe it was the start of a global pandemic or many of the majority accounts that you've selected to target that week were out of office, attending an industry-wide convention. So many people in sales development focus way too much time and energy on things outside of their sphere of influence, and you want to make sure that you don't do that. So if there are moments where you're stressed out or you're anxious again, think about what's in your sphere and what's out of your sphere, and how to best use your time that you have when you're performing in the role of an SDR. One area that you can always improve upon is your knowledge, of your product, of your customers, of your industry, etc. Knowledge and the ability to effectively communicate it can give a person confidence. The same skill helps the best salespeople outperform their peers. The next strategy is to reflect on prior accomplishments. When you have a challenge that comes your way, I'm willing to bet that you've already been through other challenges in your life that you're proud of. Even if that previous challenge you are able to overcome doesn't completely relate with the challenge that you're facing at the moment, the key takeaway is that you have overcome challenges. When something in the past was very difficult, you didn't give up. You persevered, and you were able to achieve a certain level of success, right? Reflecting on what you've been able to accomplish in the past is critical. To help you build self confidence, you'll need to face any challenge in the present. A third strategy to support you in building self-confidence through challenge is to celebrate your strengths. When a new challenge comes your way, it's natural for some self-doubt to kick in. When this happens, try to identify the strengths you have that can help in that scenario right away. Maybe you're very collaborative and coachable, and so you seek the support of others, or maybe you're very resilient and you can remind yourself that you actually thrive under pressure. Another strategy is to assemble your resources. Think about your resources that you have that you might be able to lean on, whether it be a book, or a quote, or a blog post. I personally love watching motivational videos or putting on that perfect song to get me in the right head space. This helps me to excel no matter what challenge comes my way. The final strategy for building self-confidence through challenge is to create an action plan. If you have something that seems like a huge mountain you have to overcome, it's common to start off by just staring at the mountain and thinking, ''Oh, I don't know what I'm going to do.'' Now, you can stay stuck there, but you're going to remain stressed, right? Instead, shift your attention away from the size of the mountain or the obstacle and focus on the apex or the end point. What is it that you want to achieve? What will it feel like to achieve it? Visualize that endpoint, and then reverse engineer an action plan by working backwards from the goal. For example, let's say that you've set yourself an audacious goal of crushing your monthly quota by 65 percent. Your monthly quota is to book 13 meetings, so you set yourself the goal of booking 20. To reverse engineer an action plan, you might say to yourself so, ''I have a goal of booking 20 meetings. Let's see what I have to do to be able to achieve that and what steps I have to take.'' You work backwards from there. Determine what you need to do right now and each step along the way to achieve that goal. How many meetings do you need to book to hit your weekly goal? How many per day? Can you even get as granular as hours or minutes? What activities do you need to focus on each hour in order to make progress towards your goal? With these five concrete strategies, know your sphere of influence, reflect on prior accomplishments, celebrate your strengths, assemble your resources and create an action plan, will help you build self-confidence in the face of any challenge you encounter as an SDR. Remember, sales is hard, especially in the beginning where there can be a lot of rejection. A confident attitude allows you to maintain a next mindset, where there's always another call to make, e-mail to send, or prospect to find, and the next one could get you a meeting.
