I’ve always heard that you need to believe in yourself first, if you expect others to believe in you. Scott Ginsberg, aka “The Nametag Guy” said, “When you believe in your value, they believe in your value.” I believe that self-confident people have qualities that everyone admires. When you’re self-confident, you inspire confidence in others, in turn finding success. On the other hand, low self confidence manifests negativity and self destruction.

Competence

Without an underlying competence, I don’t believe you can really achieve true self confidence. Rather, you lean to a sort of shallow overconfidence. Competency needs to be tied closely to reality. The reality is that you can’t be everything to everybody, and you can’t be an expert without logging appreciable hours learning your industry, and specifically your job, in achievable steps.

Perception

Confidence is a perceived value. How do your clients and prospects perceive you or your company’s products, services, ability to deliver, customer support and so on, as a solution that will ease their pain, or help their bottom line? Your confidence inspires the confidence of your clients and prospects, either positively or negatively.

Visualization

When I attended Victory 2000, one of the things I took away from Tony Robbins presentation was how dynamic "visualization" can be as a weapon in your arsenal to achieving success. Visualizing yourself as self confident will do wonders for your career. Think positive. Think – I can do it.

My Recommendation

To become truly self confident in a way that leads to ongoing success, first set some achievable goals – small battles that you can win, then build on those. Then celebrate your victories. Hold your head high and answer questions with assurance, and those you can’t answer, admit straight up that you can’t, but promise to get them an answer (and then do it).

To your success

- Steve

Both are key area to develop personal uniqueness but you should also open to the ideas and opinions of others.

Absolutely .. you have to have an open mind.

I think it's important to remember that some people are naturally more confident than others, regardless of expertise. Don't be too hard on yourself. Confidence takes a lot of time to build for some, but it's still possible.

Oh also, I really balk at the whole visualization thing. It sounds too much like that movie The Secret. Thinking positive is great, but imagining it has magic powers to change your life is dangerous. Just keep a level head and remember, success can be measured in many ways, not just through monetary gain.

The key, I think, is to build confidence in small achieveable steps. You set yourself up for failure when you set your goals out of reach. Sure, some people are are just naturally confident, but those who aren't can raise their level of confidence over time.

And visualization has been proven to work. I used to weightlift a lot, and it was widely known that only half of the battle in competing was physical ability - the other half was mental attitude. With the right attitude, you can achieve things you never imagined possible.

The danger is in being overconfident.

Overconfident or underconfident, both are bad I guess. And I do certainly agree that having a strong mental attitude is important, and don't doubt that visualization can help with that. I guess I'm just wary of the quick fix and I think we need to be careful not to put people down when they don't succeed just because we have. It's that attitude-- if I can make it, everyone can-- that makes people lose compassion for those who are less fortunate. But yeah, if visualization works for you, go for it!

Good points Steve. Being confident will definitely help in sales and marketing. Confidence can sometimes be a great way to smooth over something you don't know much about too, as in, if you are confident in the answers you give a prospect they will believe.

Mark