You need confidence when you deal with high-level decision-makers, strong candidates, and even stronger gatekeepers. If you don’t sound like you have it, they won’t even take your call. And if you do get through, they’ll think you’re an amateur.
Have you ever heard a mousy recruiter on the phone? It’s so sad and sounds something like this: “I’m sorry to bother you, Joe, but you aren’t interested in exploring other opportunities, are you?” What’s even worse is that those recruiters who are doing this don’t even know they sound this way. They think they sound great and confident, but really they don’t.
Here are the seven steps to make confidence a core competency.
This takes time and work, but anything worthwhile usually does. If you make minor changes in how you grow in your confidence, it will give you a greater return because most of the people who listen to you will really want to consider what you are saying.
Enlist the help of your team. Have them evaluate recordings of you getting beat up over the phone. Have them listen to your calls and judge you in how confident you sound.
- Recognize that confidence is a byproduct of achievement. Look at the major achievements that you have scored so far this year. Once you start achieving success, you will achieve more success. Success always leads to more of it, so learn how to build on it. Once you have a great client call, make another great client call. Put off the urge to run around the office and tell everyone about the candidate that just accepted the offer. Wait an hour and make five more phone calls to your best clients during that time. Use that energy as leverage to help you achieve more success. Think back to the time you were a kid and mastered some sort of activity. Maybe it was gymnastics, soccer, baseball, playing an instrument, performing in a play. Remember how confident you felt when you hit the home run in little league or played your instrument in front of a large crowd? That’s how we grow in our confidence. We learn the lessons of achievement and build on them. In the search business, it’s the same way. We take our success and build on it.
- Daydream about your success and act as if you have already achieved it. When your clients sense that you are a successful recruiter, they respond to you that way. Tenure has never been a requisite for success in the business, and if you have had more than one person in the last six months ask you how long you’ve been in the business, then you need to reevaluate how confident you sound. If you sound confident, then you must be tenured. And if you’re tenured, you must be successful. Don’t worry about being a big biller. Just learn how to sound like one on the phone and people will respond to you as if you are one.
- Read as if your life depended on it. Read books on motivation, success, and achievement. This is how real changes take place at the very depth of your soul. And when it starts there, on the inside, it usually manifests itself in expressions of confidence which positively draw people to you. Remember that this business is about relationships, but the most important one is the one that you have with yourself. Invest time in developing you.
- Write down your own life core values. Ask yourself this question: “If I had all the money in the world and all of my relationships were perfect, what’s left over?” When you seek to identify those core premises and values that govern all that you do, and when you take the time to write it down, you are embarking on an exciting voyage of self-discovery, which builds your confidence level. People can pick up on phonies over the phone real quickly, so when you define who you are at the inner most depth of your being, you are building authentic character. This is the age of authenticity. Start declaring it and defining it and watch how much people are drawn to you.
- Write your personal mission statement, the purpose of your life. Ask yourself this question: “What is the purpose of my life?” When we chart out the direction of where we are going, we usually increase our odds of getting there. When we can see the future and declare it as our purpose, people are drawn to us. Confidence is a byproduct of knowing who you are, and that’s where big billings start.
- Keep a journal. Document your victories and frustrations and all the feelings that go along with them. When you have a problem that you need to solve, write down the issue in your journal and you’ll usually come up with the answer.
- Remember that success is a choice and it usually is harder than the status quo. For the next 30 days, make a decision to work on the above steps and see how much more people are drawn to you.