Hiring the right candidates can be a daunting task. Especially for competitive, high-impact positions like Enterprise Account Executives. More senior candidates have different needs and expectations within the interview process than entry-level hires. So, how can you ensure that you’re making the right impression and closing the best talent?

One of the primary differences between those who are successful and those who struggle to create the results they profess to want in their life is their view of who and what prevents them. The first group, those who create success for themselves, believe that the only person capable of preventing them from having what they want is the person who stares back at them in their mirror each morning. The second group, the group that struggles, believes that everything wrong in their life and their world is caused by someone or something outside of them.

First, and most importantly, no one cares about your success as much as you do—or as much as you should. Your life is your own, free and clear. The second factor you might recognize, as bad as it sounds, is that no one cares enough about your success to try to prevent you from creating it. No one is going to lift a finger to stop your ambition.

 

The Circumstances of Your Birth: Fate may have located you in some part of the world that doesn’t provide a great environment for building success, yet plenty of people find their way out of those circumstances by leaving those places. You may have had the good fortunes of being born into a family with very little money, even though you might have been hungry. For many people, their hunger manifests itself in a type of insatiable appetite to improve their position. The people who stay in environments that don’t provide opportunities don’t stay because someone prevents them from leaving, but because they don’t leave. No one will make any real effort to keep you poor, even your friends who’ll criticize you for “being too good for your old hood.”

 

Your Lack of Education: You didn’t go to the right schools. Or maybe you did go to the right schools but did so little that you may as well have stayed home. Perhaps you didn’t go to school at all. There may be people who believe you need formal education for some job, but there are countless entrepreneurs with nothing more than a high school diploma, many of whom have built incredible business and lives. You can find a path to success without an education, or you can work a day job and go to school at night and get yourself the sheepskin, should you so desire. No one will prevent you from taking either of these paths and outside your family and friends, no one will stop to notice, let alone stop you.

 

The Rigged System: You may be confronted with the idea that the system is rigged against you, and it can feel like the movie, The Matrix. In some ways, life every much resembles that movie; you can do what you want once you recognize your power. What you may notice is missing, however, is that no Mr. Smith is chasing you around, working to prevent you from exercising your power and liberating yourself. All of the things that block you are in your mind; the limits you place on yourself are far greater than any external constraints you might imagine.

The list of external forces you might use an excuse for not having the success you want is inexhaustible, starting with the few ideas above. This list also includes your parents, your boss, your lack of resources (an obstacle that always collapses when confronted with your resourcefulness), the Government, the President, Republicans, Democrats, giant companies with money and power and lobbyists, or, if you have a conspiracy bent, the Illuminati.

Only You Can Stop You

The only person who can stop you from being the better version of the person you are now is you. As tragic as this is, it is also fortunate. Because you are the only thing preventing you from whatever you might call success, you already possess the power to change your mind, change your circumstances, and create the life you imagine in your mind’s eye.
First, you have to know what you want from your single life.

Second, you need to recognize and act on your hunger. Acting on what you profess to want is the only proof that you really want it. Not acting on what you profess to want means it is nothing more than a pipe dream (well, for you, anyway). The difference between you and the people who have what you want is that they wanted it enough to act on their desire, and you have not yet done so.

Third, and most importantly, you need to recognize there are no external factors that prevent you from succeeding. Instead, most of the external factors fall into one of two categories: 1) They are excuses you make, whether they are due to a lack of confidence or a lack of will, or 2) They are the external excuses that have no relation to you and your goals, they provide you with something to point at to absolve yourself of responsibility to yourself.

The only person that can prevent you from having what you want is you. Only you can remove the single obstacle standing between you and success.

One of the variables to success in sales is self-confidence. You create a sense of certainty for your clients when you are convicted about who you are, your ability to help produce better results, and the advice you provide them. When you are not confident, you create a sense of uncertainty, your contacts wondering if they are taking too great a risk buying from someone who isn’t sure of themselves.

 

1. I am a large part of the overall value proposition. Your prospective client is deciding who to buy from according to the experience they have sitting across the table from you, engaged in a conversation about change. The way that they’re judging your company and your solution is through that conversation. Your ability to successfully engage in a conversation that creates value for your client is what generates a preference to work with you and buy from your company. This makes you a rather large part of the value proposition.
2. I believe that I belong at the table when my prospective clients are considering a change. One of the factors that provide an immense amount of confidence is believing that you deserve the right to sit at the table when your clients or prospective clients discuss the kind of change you can help create. When you recognize that the value you create by engaging in this conversation can help them solve their problems, address their challenges and take care of new opportunities that will improve the results, you recognize how important it is that they consult with you before making any decision. If your presence would provide a better outcome, you should have the confidence that you deserve a seat at the table.
3. I believe that I can help my prospective clients identify areas where they may be able to improve the results, even when those better results are unknown to them. When you have the business acumen and situational knowledge that allows you to see areas where your prospective clients can improve, you can act with certainty in pursuing a meeting, knowing that the conversation will allow you to find an area where better results are available to them.
4. I believe that I can create value for any contact who will provide me with an opportunity to meet with them. The operative words here are prospective clients. When you know for sure that you are going to be able to create value for your prospective clients, even if it’s only perspective that helps them understand some variable component of their business, they will leave the conversation with some new possibility.
5. How I sell is a greater factor in winning deals than what I sell. When you know how to sell using a modern, consultative sales approach, you recognize the advantage that you have over your competition in the position you occupy for your prospective client. When you are playing the game at a different level, your approach is the defining, differentiating experience that allows you to win over your rivals.
6. My experience allows me to recognize patterns and quickly understand some of what I might need to teach my prospective client to compel them to change. This is a very difficult dichotomy. Your experience may allow you to recognize a pattern long before your client is aware of their challenge. At the same time, you need to provide your prospective client with the experience of discovering the need to change and the better outcomes available to them. Most of your situational knowledge is subconscious, picking up the patterns without recognizing that you are doing so. This provides a very high level of confidence.
7. Because I have sold the outcomes I help my clients produce many more times than my prospective client has decided to buy those results, I am the one who should lead the conversation. This idea is very similar to belonging at the table with your clients and prospective clients. Not only should you be there to give them advice, but you should also offer them advice on how to decide to change, what options they should explore, how to manage the internal process, and how to ensure they achieve the outcomes they need.
8. Because I’m a consultative salesperson, I am a peer to any contact sitting across a desk for me. If you do not believe that you are a peer, you believe that you are less than that. The desire to become your client’s trusted advisor means that as it pertains to the outcomes you sell and produce for your clients, you are more knowledgeable than your party across the table. Confidence in sales comes from not believing that you are inferior to your prospective client, nor should you be servile or overly deferential. You believe you are a peer, and your client will feel like you’re a peer.
9. The information I share with my clients is valuable enough to them that they would have to pay a consultant to obtain a similar set of insights and experiences. At some point, you will walk out of a sales call and recognize that you just provided your prospective clients with insights and ideas that are worth hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. You may discover that you’ve done this in an early conversation exploring change and because you haven’t won their business, you’ve delivered value a consultant would charge for without providing the solution. The fact that you can provide that kind of value gives you the confidence necessary to sell and win big deals in B2B sales.

 

Your confidence is one factor in providing your prospective clients to buy from and take your advice, and isn’t something you are going to learn in sales training. You have to work to get this for yourself. If you lack any of these beliefs, working to gain confidence in those areas will improve your approach and your results.