In this episode of the Sales Leadership Awakening podcast, Erika Glenn, Chief Growth Officer of Redox, discusses the crucial role of self-confidence in sales leadership. Erika shares her journey of self-discovery and how overcoming confidence issues transformed her approach to leadership.
Erika delves into the definition of confidence in sales, the significance of open conversation, and the importance of authenticity in building client trust. Practical tips and strategies for boosting confidence in salespeople are also explored, emphasizing the need for preparation, honest communication, and individualized coaching.
“Confidence is being able to articulate well what you can do, the value proposition, differentiation, and how you can serve the client to meet their needs.“ – Erika Glenn
Key Takeaways:
- Recognizing signs of underconfidence in salespeople is crucial for effective leadership.
- Transparency and honest communication can build trust and credibility with clients.
- Individualized coaching tailored to each salesperson’s needs can significantly boost confidence.
- Practicing presentations and discussions is key to overcoming confidence issues in sales.
- Leaders play a pivotal role in modeling confidence and guiding their teams.
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[Transcript]
Introduction
[00:00:05] Colleen Stanley: Hi everyone. I’m Colleen Stanley and welcome to the Sales Leadership Awakening Podcast, where we bridge the knowing-doing gap for sales leaders. Joining me today is my co-host, Steven Rosen. Steven, I know we’ve got another great guest. I do not know how we keep finding these great guests, but I’m so grateful.
[00:00:27] Colleen Stanley: We’re going to be talking about the topic of self-confidence. I will turn it over to you to introduce our guest.
[00:00:33] Steven Rosen: I’d like to welcome Erika Glenn today. Thank you for joining us, Erika. Maybe you can tell our audience a bit about yourself, the company you’re working for, and the type of salespeople that you lead.
[00:00:43] Erika Glenn: My name is Erika Glenn. I am the Chief Growth Officer for Redox. Redox helps serve all health entities. Whether it be early stage startup, all the way through payers and providers with data, and making sure that the providers and the payers have that real-time information to make great decisions about the patient and member, I oversaw a division.
[00:01:03] Erika Glenn: So, at Redox, I have responsibility for about 75 folks, including everything from marketing, our SDRs or our sales development reps, our AEs, and directors of sales, as well as a partnerships team and the entire CS team. Anybody who touches a client from the point in time, they’re onboarded through the entire experience, sits within my organization.
[00:01:28] Erika Glenn: We are absolutely in growth mode and really excited to see the payer-provider market. This is a newer market for us, but the CEO, whom I worked with at CVS, came in October with a tremendous amount of payer knowledge and skill and then brought me to the fold in April. I’m really excited to see the growth that we’re going to experience at Redox.
[00:01:47] Colleen Stanley: So Erika, one of the signature questions we always like to ask every guest is with your big background, and you do have a big resume, was there ever a time where you had this sales leadership awakening moment? Any time when you’ve changed course as a leader because of some increased awareness?
[00:02:03] Erika Glenn: At a certain period of time when I was really ready to make that step up into a VP or really wanted to look forward to becoming a VP.
[00:02:10] Erika Glenn: Being more of a general manager, a division president, I essentially looked at where I was sitting. I had great relationships with my peers. I had beautiful numbers and the team was thriving, but I felt like I wasn’t being heard. I couldn’t quite figure out what to do to be heard because I was doing all the right things to make the right things happen.
[00:02:30] Erika Glenn: But in certain forums, I just didn’t feel like I had a voice. So, I called up an executive leadership coach by the name of Heather Monahan. I said to her, ‘Hey, Heather, I want to talk to you about working with you because I have articulation issues.’ She said to me, ‘Erika, you don’t have any articulation issues that you have confidence issues.’
[00:02:53] Erika Glenn: I said, ‘No, not me. I’m a strong female. I’ve done all these different things,’ and she has never been more right. I absolutely did just in behaviors and the way I was raised and taught to be very selfless. I was terrified of being arrogant, and so I went to this other side and dipped down into this other side of feeling of non-confidence.
[00:03:13] Erika Glenn: As that occurred, and I began recognizing the signs of underconfidence, it really allowed me to change the talk track to my sellers. There are different ways that it shows up. I just told you how mine was showing up. But I’ve come to some themes, both actually differently for females versus males. It was really an awakening for me on what I needed to do to level up, but also a really big leadership moment where I said, ‘Hey, I can’t be the only one experiencing this.’
[00:03:39] Erika Glenn: As I listened to more and more sellers, really picking it out and being able to go back and talk to them and say, ‘Where do we need more education? What do we need to do here to make you more confident?’
[00:03:48] Steven Rosen: I think it’s great. It shows a lot of confidence. This is one of your areas of passion, for sure.
[00:03:53] Colleen Stanley: Did you know about executive coaches? Did somebody advise you to get an executive coach? What was the impetus behind picking up the phone?
[00:04:00] Erika Glenn: I had been pretty active on LinkedIn. I had seen executive coaches. At the time, I believe I was in a program of general management and leadership executives. So, I was in these training programs, but I really felt stuck, and I really didn’t feel like I could get a nonbiased opinion of why I was stuck.
[00:04:14] Erika Glenn: I wanted somebody that I paid for and I knew was going to give me a very unbiased opinion on what I needed to do to change. Based upon LinkedIn and understanding more about coaching and then really feeling, okay, I got to do something different. I’m not exactly sure what this is, but I think this is an excellent step.
[00:04:32] Erika Glenn: I need to find somebody who has been in sales leadership. That’s wanted to do more. It’s been where I’ve been and could potentially help me, and Heather Monahan delivered on all of those promises a hundredfold and continues to deliver for me.
The Power of Modeling Confidence and Transparency
[00:04:51] Steven Rosen: Can you share with our audience, your definition of confidence in sales? It might seem obvious, but why is it so critical for salespeople?
[00:05:01] Erika Glenn: The definition of confidence is being able to comfortably have an open conversation. I always say I do not enjoy going and just presenting to folks. I enjoy sitting down, and having a conversation needs to be a discussion.
[00:05:15] Erika Glenn: If you don’t know the subject matter expertise well enough, or there are areas where you dip out, and you feel like you don’t know what I’m talking about. A lot of sellers don’t know how to work their way around it. It is okay to say, ‘You know what? I don’t have as much expertise in this area. Let me ask and come back to you.’ Make sure you have somebody, whether it be in the clinical realm, a clinician, or in the technical realm, a technical person, to help give you that confidence, and then make sure that your story is very fluid together.
[00:05:39] Erika Glenn: But confidence really is being able to articulate well what you can do, the value proposition, the differentiation, and how you can serve the client to meet their needs.
[00:05:57] Erika Glenn: If you can’t do that from a place of strength and you’re constantly looking down and you’re constantly fumbling with your hands and you’re constantly all the nonverbal things, the client’s going to pick up on it and they’re not going to think that you have a solid product. It’s really important to bestow confidence, but you also can’t overdo it because if you overdo it, that also is a turnoff for many people.
[00:06:17] Steven Rosen: So, are there any tricks that you use? Like preparation and saying, ‘Let me get back to you so you don’t get startled,’ or other tricks that you use to help people become more confident?
[00:06:29] Erika Glenn: I think part of it is you do have to teach them how to walk around the uncomfortable cause there are going to be uncomfortable moments that come up.
[00:06:36] Erika Glenn: The way you teach that is a little different depending on the subject matter and how you can walk around but a really good way is to help me understand that more. Ask more questions to articulate so that you can keep pivoting and walking around what you need to in order to get a client comfortable enough until you can get them more information and also remain confident in the conversation.
[00:06:57] Steven Rosen: That’s a really good tip. Thank you.
[00:06:59] Colleen Stanley: I was not even thinking about bringing this up, but you’re in NASCAR country, right? Way back when I was in corporate, I was with a company, and we were approaching the NASCAR market. We had never done any business there, but I had a rep that felt like our product line could be launched there.
[00:07:16] Colleen Stanley: So, I went to the Charlotte Speedway and that was back in Ricky Rudd and Mark Martin, and I’m thinking, ‘What are we doing here?’ So, we decided that we were going to walk into all these appointments with confidence and say two things. Number one, we know nothing about licensing with NASCAR but, number 2, we know a lot about custom manufacturing. We’ll leave it up to you if you want to partner with us or take advantage. I will tell you just having the confidence to admit we didn’t know what we were doing, and we walked out with licensing agreements.
Navigating Areas of Uncertainty with Honesty and Authenticity
[00:07:49] Erika Glenn: I think there’s something authentic to that. People who meet me will be like, ‘Wow, the realness.’ I don’t have any issues.
[00:07:56] Erika Glenn: Now, corporately, many people have issues in there. I was indoctrinated and taught that if you are transparent and real, that can be viewed as a weakness. It helps in the cell to be very real as to what you do or what you don’t know, and just be honest. Obviously, you want to have a good foundation, but I think it’s okay to say, ‘I’m really well versed here and not over here, but here are a few things I can tell you, and let me go in this direction.’
[00:08:22] Colleen Stanley: Yes, it’s what you said, I don’t have the clinical, but I can bring in an expert, and from a leadership point of view, knowing that you had a self-discovery with yourself here, how would other leaders start spotting that it’s a lack of confidence because I think with some of the research you’ve done in self-reflection, it can be disguised and look another way but what they’re actually looking at is lack of confidence, not the observable behavior.
[00:08:49] Erika Glenn: You heard me talk about more of the meek approach where you don’t stay as strong, your voice, the tone, the pitch, all those things drop down, and you’d start looking down some more of the subservient ways.
[00:09:10] Erika Glenn: I have seen a lot of females, and this sounds so bad, but they go almost into more of a stage where they become almost a little bit ditzy, and it’s because truly I have watched it happen to multiple females themselves where they don’t know what to do. They kind of panic and the pitch of their voice goes high. I have seen that very commonly with females. With males, I see a lot of confidence issues being masked with arrogance.
[00:09:28] Erika Glenn: Instead of it being able to admit the weakness, much more to an arrogance that really turns the client off a lot. Either one of those can cost you a sale just based upon the nonverbals, the strengths because you are a reflection of the company and the product so if you’re not able to come from a place of strength and talk about that product, the product doesn’t stand a chance, no matter how good it is in market.
[00:09:52] Colleen Stanley: What’s the first step once you’ve identified the real issue that it’s not lack of knowledge or skill? We might diagnose the wrong issue, and you’re sitting there saying that this is a lack of confidence. What would be the first step a sales leader would take to diagnose and start course correcting?
[00:10:12] Erika Glenn: That’s a good question. I had this happen at Redox. I came in, I started listening to some client calls, and my sales leader said to me, ‘That person has a lack of confidence.’ I said, ‘Yep, what are you going to do about it? How are you going to fix it?’
[00:10:25] Erika Glenn: He said, I’m going to talk to them. I said, ‘Nope, you’re not.’ He was like, ‘What do you mean no?’ I’m like, ‘You are not going to talk to them.’ They are already suffering from, ‘Oh my gosh, I don’t know this. I will lose my job because I don’t have confidence here.’
[00:10:39] Erika Glenn: I said it really depends on the person and how much they can handle. As a leader, you have to realize that there’s flexibility in the way you handle it, and there are different ways to give feedback. There are several messages that I send through LinkedIn.
[00:10:57] Erika Glenn: When I see things happen from a seller’s perspective, what typically happens is they come in, and they’ll say, ‘Hey, you know what? I have that problem. Can we talk about it?’ There may be a process where you truly can sit down and say, ‘Hey, I noticed this, and I’ve been there. Here are a couple of things that I did to try to change that.’ Again, the way that you handle it depends on that person, where they are, and the way that you can best get across without hurting them. You have to realize that as a leader, you have the ability to hurt them more than you help them.
[00:11:23] Steven Rosen: It’s interesting because, in one of our other podcasts, I shared a story of a client whose reps’ heads would go down to their chest whenever they were struck with the same objection. We work to help them because one of the realizations is sometimes your body language gives you away.
[00:11:38] Steven Rosen: If you’re not, head ups, shoulders back, chest out, not being arrogant but that body language communicates confidence. If you’re hit with something, you have to face it head-on because that visible body language communicates with the client, whether consciously or subconsciously.
Fostering Growth and Confidence Through Practice and Role Modeling
[00:12:00] Steven Rosen: You were talking about coaching somebody. I’m very big into how you coach salespeople and would love to understand how you coach your sales leaders to help their reps build and maintain their confidence. When you’re hitting rejection on an ongoing basis, especially, for example, SDRs, that’s an area that could be very difficult if you lack the confidence even to survive.
[00:12:21] Erika Glenn: Yeah. So, to coach my sales leader depends on the sales leader once again, as to the things that are most effective.
[00:12:28] Erika Glenn: It also depends on their personality because you can have a little spitfire that’s going to go back and hurt them. You can have somebody with a more calming personality, which different measures work that way, but they may also not hit it as hard as they need to. It is a balance to understand that sales leader and how the sales reps respond to that sales leader and coach them to coach the others appropriately.
[00:12:54] Erika Glenn: It’s really about knowing the personalities of your sellers, the personalities of your leaders, and how best to combine them to truly build that high-performing team.
[00:13:03] Steven Rosen: For our listeners, can you share a situation in which you’ve coached someone in a particular situation and how you went about it?
[00:13:10] Erika Glenn: I had a sales director, and she was another underconfident one, but so unbelievably, incredibly smart and talented, tons of potential, but she felt like she needed to be perfect in everything she does and every word she said.
[00:13:23] Erika Glenn: If she had a meeting set up the next day, she would completely lose it—just lose it. This woman has been doing these presentations for many years, so it wasn’t like she was a new sales rep. It wasn’t like the content was new. Part of what was effective with her was going back and saying, ‘I got you. I know you have this. Here’s the subject matter and here’s what you need to discuss.’
[00:13:45] Erika Glenn: I would present in front of her multiple times, and she would say to me, ‘Can you just present one more time? Can you take this client and will you present so I can listen and then I can change it to what works best for me and be able to take it and reflect and teach others?’ A lot of times it’s what they need and what they need to hear.
[00:14:13] Erika Glenn: A big thing has been me going first. Nobody wants to go first with a new product coming out of the gate—anything like that. I am the first to raise my hand and say, ‘I am okay with making a complete idiot out of myself.’ You won’t tell exactly like I tell it because I have a different approach than you do.
[00:14:28] Erika Glenn: If you try to mimic my approach, it will sound ridiculous. You all have to find your own words, but you can at least see the story and how I create the story, and then you take it and make it your own, and let’s move forward.
[00:14:42] Steven Rosen: So much of it is practice, as you’re saying, and having a good leader who will role model the behavior so you can see what great looks like.
[00:14:50] Erika Glenn: The fun part with that particular director is she came back. We ended up introducing a lot of additional products after that point, and I could call her the day before and be like, ‘Hey, there’s this new product coming out and I can’t do this presentation.’ But she could do it once she had the building blocks and figured it out how to do it.
[00:15:08] Erika Glenn: Then she would step up and take the building blocks and say, ‘Okay, I have this, and here’s what I know, here’s what I’m going to do, this is how I’m going to set it up, and here’s the differentiation, the value, and bam.’ It was through asking questions, but we got her comfortable after many years of having to prep for three or four days in a row in front of the mirror and practicing where she literally could just go on the fly if she needed to and have that conversation.
Conclusion
[00:15:35] Steven Rosen: That’s a fantastic development. Coaching certainly helps. Colleen, do you have any key takeaways from today’s very interesting conversation about self-confidence?
[00:15:45] Colleen Stanley: There were about two things. Number one is modeling, and we all know it. We’ve heard the pithy quote: people watch what you do. The second thing I’m fascinated by, and I think it’s one of your superpowers, is you’re really good at doing individualized coaching. This person needs this. This person needs this. For example, when you talked about what the sales leader needs and what the salesperson needs to combine those, that’s a talent.
[00:16:07] Colleen Stanley: All of us know everyone needs to be coached in different ways. The fact that you take the time to model it with a very individualized approach is easier said than done.
[00:16:18] Steven Rosen: That’s fantastic. For me, what I thought was insightful was being open and honest about not knowing something and being transparent and real.
[00:16:27] Steven Rosen: In sales and being honest, I think part of the challenge many salespeople face is there’s a reluctance from the client in terms of, ‘Are they telling me the real story? Can I trust them? Are they an advisor?’ I think it’s not to show that you’re weak but to be honest and say, ‘Hey, you know what? I don’t know this, but I’ll bring you an individual that can help.’
[00:16:44] Steven Rosen: For me, that was a really good insight for someone who may lack confidence. It’s okay to ask, ‘Can I get back to you on this and make a note?’ And follow up and get back. I think that’s the genuine part of sales. I think has a lot of merit as opposed to rambling off an answer that you say with confidence, but there’s no substance there.
[00:17:05] Steven Rosen: So, Erika, I want to thank you. I know you’re passionate about this, and keep being passionate about helping people become more self-confident because they’re going to do better in their careers, they’re going to make more money, and they’re going to feel better about themselves.
[00:17:23] Steven Rosen: As we wrap up another insightful episode, and I think there are some really good insights here, we hope that you’ve enjoyed the Sales Leadership Awakening podcast and that you’ve gathered some strategies and some coaching approaches to bridge that gap between knowing we have to help our people be more confident and actually doing it. Thank you once again, and thank you, Colleen. It’s been fun.
[00:17:38] Colleen Stanley: Yeah. Thanks, Erika!
