If you’re looking to secure your business, you have come to the right place. Whether you’re a business owner, in direct sales, or have a traditional career, you want to reach critical mass. This is when people see your business as the place to go for your product or service. You’re the go-to person for what is needed. Maybe you look at businesses who have achieved this secure point, and you wonder how they did it. The answer is simple: to reach critical mass, you must keep moving forward. No matter what the economy is doing, or what other external situations might influence your career, forward momentum is essential to secure your business.

Now, this may sound paradoxical, since my goal is to show you how to secure your business, but here’s the truth:

There is no such thing as a secure business or career: there are only secure people.

We may try to hide behind the trappings of “fake it till you make it.” It’s tempting to act like your business is bigger and more successful than it really is, in hopes of drawing in more business, but that’s just a false front. There is a better way: if you want to secure your business or career, you have to become a secure person. This type of individual has confidence in his abilities and embraces his own personal value. How can you build that kind of confidence when you’re often so keenly aware of where you fall short?

Reasons for low self-confidence

Many of us, including myself, have been told all the things we would never be. Growing up, I was not considered the kid in my community who was going to make it, not the kid who was best and brightest. I wasn’t a great student, and expectations for me were low.  We may lack confidence because of past failures, and we can’t forgive ourselves. We don’t realize our own value, and we aren’t confident in our abilities.

You might be wondering why, in an article about how to secure your business, I keep talking about self-confidence. The reason is that without self-confidence, it’s very difficult to achieve  success in life. Think of it this way: in a math equation, one times zero equals zero. A hundred times zero is still zero. You can have a hundred skills, talents, and achievements, but if you have zero confidence in them, they count for nothing.

Secure your business by building self-confidence

1. List your skills and accomplishments.

Start by making a list of what you can do. These may be as complicated as open heart surgery, or as simple as smiling at the grocery store cashier. What have you been successful at? Do you harbor rescue animals? Manage an office? Keep your kids clean and fed? Maintain an efficient filing system? Tie intricate fishing lures? To increase your confidence, review the list regularly and add to it as you think of more things. This practice will increase the value you place on yourself. Confidence is part of your personal value.

2. Check your work ethic.

A good work ethic comes from having a plan for what you’re going to do each day, and then doing it. Of course, not every day cooperates – unexpected events can sideline you. But generally, do you have a daily action plan that you work through?

Affirmations can be powerful. The book Success is a Choice explains that affirmations alone are useless, because your subconscious knows when you’re lying. However, when you back up your affirmations with action, it builds your confidence. Now your subconscious believes you!

3. Increase your skills.

Learn new things, whether it’s IT or social media or sales training. Whatever your field is, sharpen and build your skills. The world is changing at light speed, and you might be letting it pass you by, feeling that you can’t keep up. But you actually can conquer and learn something new. This will automatically increase your confidence. Strong skills and confidence go together like peanut butter and jelly!

Tactical skills will gain you the ‘most cluck for your buck’. We call these the ‘how to do something’ skills. Assess the skills you need to be good at to increase business. For example, how to find quality leads, how to book appointments, how to deliver great sales presentations, how to close a deal, are all essential skills for success in sales. A business will not grow or last very long if one of these areas are lacking.   

To effectively increase your skills:

– Budget for training. Set aside enough resources for you to stay on the cutting edge, not only in your profession, but also in social media, because it’s here to stay!

– Read every week. You don’t have to buy books: there are mountains of free information on the internet. Look for relevant YouTube channels, ebooks, and blogs. If you’re not educating yourself on a weekly basis, you’re not moving forward and not securing your business and career.

 

4. Don’t compare yourself to others.

This destroys self-confidence, and it will suck the life out of you and your business faster than anything. It might be a natural response to look at someone who is more successful than you and be envious or jealous, but don’t fall into that trap. It is a waste of energy and time, it’s negative, and it will only pull you down. You’ll end up blaming the rest of the world, and feeling shame for your lack of accomplishment compared to theirs. It’s like strapping lead weights to your back before trying to swim the English Channel. Don’t do it!

5. Develop emotional intelligence.

This one will take some time and study, but it is well worth the effort. Bolstering your emotional intelligence will improve decision making, increase team performance, decrease occupational stress, increase personal well being, and increase leadership ability. This is a rich area to mine for success.

“We don’t see the world as it is: we see the world as we are.”

We are not objective: we are always being jerked around by our emotions. If we’re going to overcome the monsters in our own lives, the things that stop us, that keep tripping us up, we have to become more emotionally intelligent.

What does emotional intelligence involve? You have two types of competence. Personal competence is recognizing emotional triggers and be able to work through and overcome them. Social competence is being aware of people around you, improving your listening skills so you can even hear the emotions behind words. This allows you to adapt and deal with people much more effectively.

The best book I’ve read on this subject is Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by Bradberry and Greaves. Not only does the book teach you about the topic, but it also gives you an online assessment to evaluate where you stand. The results tell you what to focus on as you study the book, working through lists of different strategies for overcoming the emotional triggers in your life. You can even take it again later to see where you’ve improved.

6. Break up your work into manageable chunks.

Take big projects or difficult tasks and reduce them to small bite-sized pieces. If you know you should make two hundred phone calls in a month, do ten per day. In our training, we’ll give you the skills, so all you have to do is make the calls. Don’t be overwhelmed by everything you need to do. Pick one thing at a time and focus on it.

7. Allow time.

Just as Rome wasn’t built in a day, realize that building confidence takes time. You can’t make a change today and expect overnight results. When your mindset has been a certain way for a while, it’s a process to reconstruct it.  When Joe and I first got into business, we knew nothing about it, so we were hesitant to really commit. But as we discussed our options, Joe said we should do it, because he had already seen us do the impossible. I wasn’t expected to become a second place Metropolitan Opera winner. He wasn’t expected to become a successful football coach. But we did them, and that built our confidence. As our skills and experience grew, we started to value ourselves, which enabled us to eventually secure our business.

Final thoughts on how to secure your business

In order to secure your business and career, it’s vital to build your own confidence. This is a process, but you will succeed if you have the patience and persistence to follow through. Assess what you’re good at, build and follow an action plan every day, and hone your skills,. Evaluate your progress without comparing yourself to others. Thoughtfully and honestly cultivate emotional intelligence. Tackle small pieces of big projects. All of these steps will carry you along on your journey of growing self confidence, which will make your business and career secure.

 Joe Pici is ranked in the TOP 30 for sales by Global Gurus. The Pici & Pici sales boot camp trains tactical skills covering the complete sales cycle. If you are looking to secure your business and future, check out our website at www.PiciandPici.com