7-2-2014
I can still smell the wet rubber, feel the chill of the 37-degree air, and the sound of Coach Tom Norton's feet banging on the wooden bench. Oh, the memories of playing Peewee hockey. Other than my dad, Coach Tom Norton was my most memorable coach.
Mr. Norton was a raspy, silver-haired man who always wore a tie when he coached. I followed that same tie-wearing pattern when I coached my son?s Peewee team 36 years later. Coach Tom stood about 5? 7? but in our eyes he was a giant. He commanded attention, he demanded respect, and he insisted that you be decisive in your actions even if you were wrong. ?Do it with passion and gusto; even if you?re wrong!? he yelled.
During one of our practices, I was racing to center ice for a puck but then thought the other defenseman was getting it, so I stopped . . . so did the other defenseman, thinking apparently that I was going to get it. Coach Norton blew the whistle and screamed my name. ?Schmidt, which one are you, Alphonse or Gaston?? I had no clue what he was talking about and he could see it in my eyes. Then he started making erratic flailing gestures with his hands and body and muttering, ?After you my dear Alphonse. No after you Mr. Gaston.? Coach Norton looked quite silly in this display but I didn?t dare laugh. He said, ?If you don?t understand, look it up when you get home, son.?
Today as I was at baseball practice with my 14-year-old, Carver, and I started thinking of Coach Norton. The boys on the team were not throwing the ball with decisiveness; they were lobbing it as though they were unsure where they should throw it. Then there was a pop-up in the infield and the shortstop and 2nd basemen both ran for the ball, each deciding the other was going to catch it. Neither did. It was Alphonse and Gaston.
I finally looked up Alphonse and Gaston. (Okay so it took me 36 years to look it up, but we now live in a world with iPhones so I just asked Siri.) Turns out Alphonse and Gaston are a comic strip; the 1906 creation of Frederick Burr Opper.
The bumbling pair had a humorous repartee with being overly polite to each other. They were so polite that they never got anywhere because they were always waiting for the other to make the move first. ?After you my dear Alphonse, no, please, after you Mr. Gaston.? On and on this would go, while the pair didn?t make any progress. How the heck Coach Norton expected a 13-year-old to know about an ancient comic strip is beyond me.
Coach Norton was making an excellent point. Confidence means the difference between getting the job, the prize, the sale, and the puck . . . or not. Imagine going to a doctor and having him say, ?Ah, well, ah, you see, Mr. Schmidt, I?ve ah done the tests, and well, I think, you, yeah, I think we should probably take your appendix out.? Now contrast that with the doctor who walks into the room and says, ?Mr. Schmidt, I have good news and bad news. The good news is I can stop the pain, the bad news is it requires surgery and we need to remove your appendix tonight.?
A sale is simply the transference of confidence. If you have enough confidence in your product and solution, the prospect will share that confidence and make a buying decision. Confidence breeds confidence.
Amy J.C. Cuddy is an Associate Professor at Harvard Business School. She has done some groundbreaking research on the issue of confidence. You can find more about her research here.
The research is called Power Posing: Fake it till you make it. Here is what Amy suggests:
"We are influenced, and influence others, through very unconscious and implicit processes," she says. "People tend to spend too much energy focusing on the words they're saying?perfectly crafting the content of the message?when in many cases that matters much less than how it's being communicated. People often are more influenced by how they feel about you than by what you're saying. It's not about the content of the message, but how you're communicating it.?
In my experience, the closing ratio between a ?confident seller? and a seller lacking in confidence is dramatic; the confident seller closes 90 percent more than the non-confident seller. Harsher is the fact that sellers who lack confidence don?t stay in sales very long.
It?s all around us. Those with confidence win, and those who lack confidence lose. As Amy Cuddy suggests, how you ?present?? yourself is more important than the words you use.
So today, if Coach Norton would yell, ?Schmidt, which one are you, Alphonse or Gaston?? I would puff out my chest, look him square in the eye and say ?Neither, Coach. I?m the one with the puck.?
The old saying is ?knowledge is power.? I?d add to that: Knowledge is power, power is confidence, and confidence gets sales results!
Jeff Schmidt is EVP and partner with Chris Lytle at Sparque, Inc. You can reach him at Jeff.Schmidt@Sparque.biz
Twitter: @JeffreyASchmidt
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/schmidtjeffrey
Add a Comment Send This Story To A Friend
