Confidence is a receipt

New reps ask how to sound confident. It is the wrong question, but it is the one everybody asks, usually in week two and usually right after a bad night.

Confidence is not a tone you put on. It is the residue of having done something before and come out the other side. You cannot talk yourself into it, and no speech I have ever given has installed it in anyone.

What installs it is volume, supervised, before it counts.

The reps who got steady fastest were the ones who ran the hardest part of the appointment out loud, badly, in a room with somebody watching, twenty or thirty times before they ever did it in a house. Not reading it. Saying it. Getting stopped and starting over.

That is unpleasant, and most people avoid it, which is why most people stay nervous longer than they need to.

The other half is evidence they can point at. This is the real reason I want reps reviewing their own recordings. Not to catch mistakes, although that happens. So that a rep who is convinced he panics under pressure can hear himself not panicking, in his own voice, with a date on it.

You can tell somebody they are better than they think. It does not land. Let them hear it and it does.

The hype version is faster and it works for about a week. Then there is a slow Tuesday and there is nothing underneath it.