Tripp Kramer is an author, podcast host, and the owner of Tripp Advice, where he helps shy men from around the world excel in their love lives by showing them how to develop solid-steel confidence. In this episode of the Salesman Podcast, Trip shares how salespeople can beat rejection and implement a state of unshakable sales confidence.
Featured on this episode:
Resources:
- Book: Magnetic: Cultivate Confidence, Become Rejection-Proof, and Naturally Attract The Women You Desire
- Book: Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance
- How to Talk to Girls Podcast
- Tripp on LinkedIn
- Tripp Advice on YouTube
Transcript
Will Barron:
Hi, I’m Will, and welcome to the Salesman Podcast. On today’s show, we’re going to talk about how to build unshakable confidence. Today’s guest is Tripp Kramer. Tripp is a dating strategist for shy men. He’s the author of Magnetic, and he has over 970,000 subscribers on YouTube. He’s killing it over there. And with that, Tripp, welcome to the show.
Tripp Kramer:
Well, thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here. It’s always fun to be in a podcast that’s not directly related to meeting women and attraction and those things. So it’s fun to be here. Thanks for having me.
Will Barron:
Dude, this works the other way around. We have so many guests on the show that have nothing to do with sales because sales after six years, 750 episodes is boring as heck. There’s only so many ways you can talk about picking up the phone, sending an email, and sales cadences and tools. So I appreciate you coming on the show, mate. Hopefully it’ll be fun for you and it’ll be, I’m sure, insightful for the audience.
Tripp Kramer:
Yeah, absolutely.
Confidence as Described By Tripp Kramer · [01:01]
Will Barron:
Just to jump straight into this, we’re going to talk about confidence. I like to define things and then we’ll make things practical for the audience later on. Do you have a definition of what confidence to you is and how do you define it? I’ve noticed in another episode of doing podcast, you mentioned the word calmness. How do you define confidence?
“The formula for confidence is competence plus the ability to step into the unknown.” – Tripp Kramer · [01:20]
Tripp Kramer:
So I have a formula for it, which is competence plus the ability to step into the unknown. That would be what confidence is. So competence plus the ability to step into the unknown. And so I can break that down even further. Competence just means that you are skilled in something, that you feel good at doing the skill or the action of whatever it is that you’re trying to perform, right? That’s competence. So you’re going to have a feeling of confidence when you are competent in whatever it is. So even that could be with sales, that could be with meeting women, that could be with playing an instrument, whatever it may be. But I also like to add in there the ability to step into the unknown because people who are able to step out of their comfort zone into an unknown space and they do that action regularly, they are someone who has more confidence.
“The people who are able to step out of their comfort zone into an unknown space and they do that action regularly, that’s someone who has more confidence. So that means that if you’re always doing things that scare you, that frighten you, that are out of your comfort zone, if you consistently do that, you’re actually going to feel more comfortable when you are doing something for the first time.” – Tripp Kramr · [02:04]
Tripp Kramer:
So that means that if you’re always doing things that scare you, that frighten you, that are out of your comfort zone, if you consistently do that, you’re actually going to feel more comfortable when you are doing something for the first time. So when you continuously do new things, you already feel this kind of confidence inside of yourself of like, “Oh, I’m used to this feeling. I know what this is like to do things that scare me.” And so even though it might still scare you to try something new, if you’ve done this so many times, it’s going to be a little bit easier. So I’ll give an example of my own life.
Will Barron:
Sure.
Tripp Kramer:
Is that I have a lot of experiences with doing public speaking. I wouldn’t consider this public speaking by the way. This is, I think it’s very different, but public speaking meaning, you’re speaking in front of a lot of people. But one thing I’ve never done before was officiate a wedding. So my friend, one of my best friends, he asked me to officiate his wedding. And this is a whole different type of public speaking, right? It’s like you are in charge of one of the most important days of this person’s life, two people’s lives plus two families. So this isn’t just like, “Oh, I’m going on stage and I’m talking about whatever it is that I talk about.” And also depending on what scares you, your friends are there, maybe your family’s there. So there’s a lot of eyes on you that I can build a lot of fear or tension. And while I was nervous to do it, it wasn’t as scary as it would’ve been if I didn’t have some experience with public’s speaking. And I don’t mean like the skillset in public speaking, more so, I’ve experienced the fear.
Tripp Kramer:
I know what it’s like to get up there and speak in front of people. I know what those emotions are like. So I knew what was going to happen. As long as I practised enough, there’s no getting rid of the fear that’s inside of you, that adrenaline. But I know from previous experiences that once you get up there and you start talking, you’re going to be super nervous for about 90 seconds and then it’s all going to dissolve. And just knowing that was enough to give me confidence in that arena. So actually that was a little bit of competence because I’ve done it before, plus the ability to step into the unknown, this unknown space that I’d never done before. So that would be my formula that I teach guys. And I say guys because I’m a dating coach for guys. So that’s where we usually talk about it.
How to Become Bolder and Increase Your Levels of Confidence · [04:50]
Will Barron:
Without getting too nerdy, but if we consider this an actual mathematical formula, can you increase your skill level to compensate for a lack of… I’m going to use the word boldness, the ability to jump into the unknown? And then inversely, if you don’t have the skill set, perhaps you’re new to sales or you’re new to the industry that you’re selling into, can you on a lack of skill increase the boldness that you have to achieve the same amount of confidence overall?
“How bad you want something does translate to confidence.” – Tripp Kramer · [05:32]
Tripp Kramer:
I think so. Yeah. I also, I don’t put this part of the formula, but I do discuss this concept. Is how bad you want something does translate to confidence, to stepping into the unknown, getting out of your comfort for its own, whatever you want to call it. There’s that desire, right? I just believe, if you don’t have that big of a desire, your fear or your boldness, your lack of boldness will just keep you at home doing nothing. But if you have a really strong desire, like if you’re on a sales call and you’re like, “I need to make this sale.” Right? There’s times when… and I know this, I’ve done sales calls. I’ve done hundreds and hundreds of sales calls, by the way. I know we didn’t really discuss that. But if you feel like I need this sale, I need to make rent money, right? There’s a strong desire in you.
Tripp Kramer:
It’s like you got to make this happen. You got to just get in there and play your A-game. Michael Jordan, I got to just get something inside of myself that’s going to go. I got to perform, and I got to do as best as I can. And I think that that can outweigh the fear that one might have, that desire. So for example, I work with guys who want to meet women and it’s very scary to approach a woman, that’s what we talk about. Mainly that’s where the confidence formula comes from and all that. And it’s very scary to do it, but it gets to a point where not every guy, depends if you’re successful or not, but the success comes down to the guy saying I’ve had enough of this. I’m sick of being scared. Sitting here doing nothing, being scared to go approach that woman, or having so many regret of I had an opportunity but I didn’t take it. And then finally, and I know I got to this point too. So I experienced this myself, is your desire outweighs the fear and then that allows you to take action.
Will Barron:
Does a-
Tripp Kramer:
I don’t know if that answered your question, but hopefully it did a little bit.
How to Grow Your Confidence When You’ve Got No Skill or Experience · [07:43]
Will Barron:
It does. And I want to touch on fake until you make it in a second. I’ll circle back to that, but I can’t remember the quote and I’d butcher it anywhere. I’m terrible repeating quotes on this show. I always get emails from people saying I’ve got it wrong, but there’s a Tony Robbins quote, similar to what you’re saying on the lines of a decision is made in an instant, but the build up to that decision can take as long as it needs to take. And that’s my experience with starting a business, getting into sales in the first place. Meeting women back when I was super shy as a younger fellow. I didn’t have the ability to turn on a level of extrovertedness that I have now, which I’ve learned via selling and being rejected time and time again, right?
Will Barron:
So I appreciate you for saying that, but at what point in this scenario… and we can paint a picture of a… let’s say to add real context to this, there’s a young lad called Sam who’s watching this. He’s just got out of university, college. It’s his first job, and he is suffering from perhaps a lack of confidence in both his skill and his boldness to jump in and make cold calls. Do cold emails, knock on doors, whatever it is because he is fearful of rejection. And we can talk about what rejection is perhaps and whether we should be fearful of someone saying no. Maybe we can talk about that in a second. But is the process that Sam, our example here, needs to just go through the pain, do it over and over, mole in the fact that he’s not making any money and his colleagues are crushing it all around him to the point where there is that moment of snap, and he makes a decision to push through some of this and change things. Or is there a way to narrow that timeframe and speed all this up and become confident quicker?
Tripp Kramer:
I mean, that’s where the competence comes in. So I’d say that’s where the competence comes in. So if you’re someone who’s scared of rejection, I think, when it comes to cold calling, unfortunately, I think that you got to get a couple under your belt, and that’s where you really just got to push yourself to do it. I think it’s the mindset. Here it is. It’s the mindset of knowing that you’re not going to make the sale. You’re just going in knowing that I’m not trying to make the sale, I’m just trying to get good at this process. And that mindset forces you to become outcome independent so you are not just focused on, “Well, I got to make this sale or I got to perform really well.” And this is identical to what I teach guys with meeting women. It’s the same thing.
Tripp Kramer:
They get really scared because they don’t want to get rejected, and they’re trying to get the number. And there’s something really valuable there that they want is they want that number or they want that approval from the woman, whatever it may be. And I say, “Go into that and don’t focus on what’s going to happen in terms of the outcome that you desire. In fact, let’s move that outcome a little bit closer.” So instead of going, okay, I need to get the number. I need to get laid. I need to get a girlfriend. How about let’s just go into, I need to have some conversations with some women. So with guys who are into sales and trying to get good at sales, why not just, I’m just going to go and see what happens. And you become more of an observer, and you stay a little bit more present and not so outcome dependent.
Tripp Kramer:
So then in theory, this should help the fear go down a little bit. And that’s what I’ve done with everything in my life too, is like anything I wanted to do because I learned this is, well, I’m just going to go and I’m just going to try. It’s not really about failure. And it’s funny how our mind is so powerful. We can just create all these labels that we create for ourselves, and then it causes the emotional distress. The fear, the lack of confidence for someone who’s just graduating, who’s saying I’m going to do this for the first time. You’re not meant to be good at it. In fact, if you do get a sale, beginner’s luck, 100%. It’s like that’s just what you have to do, you have to jump in and you have to try it, and you have to see what happens. So more curiosity than it is, a strong desire to get that outcome that you’re looking for, which is probably the sale in this case.
Building Confidence is All About Boldness But Being Desperate Enough to Put in The Work · [11:57]
Will Barron:
It seems to be… Tell me if you agree with this as well. There’s two weird paradoxes here that everyone will know. The first one I always call it a commission breath. So when you’re desperate for the sale, you’re perhaps talking to people that you shouldn’t be talking with, and they can smell that desperation on you via the phone and things don’t go quite as well as when you’re just trying weird tactics to close them and drag them back in. So if you’ve got commission breath and you’re desperate, you’re less likely to close a deal than if you’re calm, you’re confident. Your pipeline is full. You know that it’s just a numbers game. At a certain point, you know that you’re going to have four conversations and you’re going to close one of them and everything’s going to be great. So there’s a paradox there of being desperate leads to less sales. Being calm and cool and collected leads to more sales.
Will Barron:
But then there’s an additional paradox here, which you mentioned earlier on, which I call gun to head selling. So back in my office, in the room next door, I’ve got a picture, big blown picture on the wall of a… We don’t have guns in the UK, obviously. So I have no idea what gun it is, but as if the gun is the barrel’s pointing down at me. And if I’ve ever been soft, if I’m ever going, “Well, I’ll do that tomorrow, or that deal make me feel uncomfortable, or this should probably have another zero on the side of it.” The hero of this story if I was in a film would stick a zero on and see what happens to the conversation. I look at that picture and I call it gun to head selling, and I go, “Sod it, let’s give it a go,” and it forces me to be bold. It’s a prompt to be bold.
Will Barron:
So it seems, and paradoxically, you’ve got to push things out there and test things. And you’ve got to put yourself under pressure of failure to have higher levels of success. So there’s this weird paradox of you can’t be desperate, but you’ve also got to pretend there’s a gun to your head and there’s an element of desperation to push you forward. Is that fair to say?
Tripp Kramer:
I would say so. And I want to throw in something interesting too. There’s also times when you can feel over confident. So you are so confident that you go into maybe a sales call or maybe even with a woman, and you feel that it will just happen for you like that. The confidence is so strong that you’re like, “I’ll make this sale.” No problem. And then you know what you do, you throw away all the principles and then you don’t make the sale, and you get humbled. And you go, “Oh, wait a second.” And this happens to me a lot too, by the way, with sales, when I’m signing people up for my programme. I’ll be like, oh, thinking they know that this programme is the best, because I’m so confident in what I teach and what I sell, and the results that guys get.
Tripp Kramer:
But I can’t throw away the principles because the person on the other end of the phone, they don’t know that. And so I can’t just go in too calm. You still got to be on the ball or else, again, you’re not going to get that sale. Even for women, you go in too confident, but you’re too calm about it, or you just like go, “Oh, this woman’s just going to like me because…” Just because you feel that way, well, they don’t know that. So you can’t throw away the principles of building attraction, just like I don’t think you can throw away the principles of what it means to make a sale. So I just wanted to throw that in there as well. I feel like that’s another thing that I’ve come across, you got to make sure that you’re still sticking to the guiding principles of what makes the sale.
Comparing Confidence, Shyness, and Arrogance Using a Simple Bar Chart · [15:25]
Will Barron:
Would you say then perhaps confidence is… if we have a bar chart, this would be better if I could draw it out, but I’ll do it with my hands in the air. And this is super unhelpful for the tens of thousands of people who are going to listen to this episode, but play along if we can. We have a line. In the middle, we have confidence. Perhaps one side we have shyness and then the other side, I would call it arrogance. And we’re trying to be bouncing somewhere in the middle. Is that a way that we could perhaps visualise this?
Tripp Kramer:
I think so. Yeah.
Will Barron:
You don’t sound convinced on that.
Tripp Kramer:
I mean, I have another thought.
Will Barron:
Sure.
Tripp Kramer:
Okay. So I would say here’s shyness and here’s confidence, if we’re looking at the spectrum. So on this end is full confidence, this end is full shyness. And arrogance, because you said that was on your spectrum, all the way to the other end. Is that correct? Arrogance.
Will Barron:
Yep.
Tripp Kramer:
Yeah. So I would almost say arrogance is kind of off this chart. It’s like something different. It’s actually insecurity. I think that people, and that’s why I take it off the chart, because it doesn’t really mean shyness either. It’s just arrogance is someone who is equally, almost could be equally as insecure as the person who’s shy, right? The person who’s shy is insecure. We know that. But arrogance is also, again, not on the chart because they’re not shy, but it’s kind of similar to that. So that’s why I would take it off of that chart. If someone who’s arrogant, that’s someone who needs to tell people or show people what they have, whatever that means.
“An arrogant person is someone who needs to tell or show people what they have. This could be a skillset, it could be an item, an object, whatever. And they need to show that or need to say it because they actually don’t feel good about themselves. So they want that validation. But if someone knows they’re good at something and they’re secure with themselves, they don’t feel the need to tell everyone.” – Tripp Kramer · [16:51]
Tripp Kramer:
Could be a skillset, it could be an item, an object, whatever. And they need to show that or need to say it because they actually don’t feel good about themselves. So they want that validation. So I would say the spectrum is full confidences on this end, and you’re actually super secure. So the person who’s super confident and super secure, they’re not trying to show off. They don’t need to show off that, because they know they have it. If someone knows they’re good at something and they’re secure at themselves, they don’t feel the need to tell everyone, right? I mean, that’s my thought.
How to Measure Your Levels of Confidence · [18:06]
Will Barron:
That makes sense. I guess where I was going with it is maybe arrogance. I can change that word, but almost like an irrational confidence. So a confidence when you don’t have competence and perhaps you’re not jumping into the unknown. You’re just arrogant in that you are assuming confidence as opposed to having other people kind of validate the skill set, the boldness, and anything else that ties in. So with that then, Tripp, I think this is useful to define things, right? Because then we know what we’re aiming towards. Before we get practical, is there a way to measure confidence knowing from the audience that want to improve this? Obviously, if you can set a number on it, or there’s an objective way to measure it, we can see progress, and obviously, that’s self-fulfilling from a motivational standpoint and another standpoint as well. Is there a way to measure your confidence so we can see where we’re at and hopefully where we want to go?
“Confidence is the point where you’re taking action and not caring to fail.” – Tripp Kramer · [18:49]
Tripp Kramer:
I think that when you know you’re confident or at least the start of confidence, it’s like your… I don’t want to say inability. It’s the point where you’re taking action and not caring to fail. I would almost say that is a good measure. It’s not really quantifiable. Could be, I guess if you measure how many times this happens in your life, but it’s saying I’m going to step into the unknown or do something that’s hard, or do something I’m scared of. So any of those three, and you just do it anyways. I think that there’s a level of confidence in that, and that’s what would be the beginning of confidence. And then I think it becomes excitement. So for me, talking about sales, I don’t remember ever being nervous. I probably was. It was so long ago.
“When you start doing something new, at first you’re scared, so you don’t have the confidence. And I think you’re always going to be a little nervous, but once the excitement exceeds the nervousness, that to me is a sign of confidence, because if you start to get good at something, you’re probably more excited to go and do it.” – Tripp Kramer · [19:43]
Tripp Kramer:
I think I was always more excited because I just learned how to sell and that was fun. But even let’s just say with women, right? At first you’re scared, so you don’t have the confidence. And I think you’re always going to be a little nervous, but once the excitement exceeds the nervousness, that to me is a sign of confidence, because if you start to get good at something, you’re probably more excited to go and do it, I would imagine, right?
Will Barron:
Well, it creates then a feedback loop, right? I think it might be Angela Duckworth’s book, Grit. I’m sure she talked about it on the podcast with me, this idea… Oh, no. Whoever it was. I’ll link it in the show notes, the previous episode that we touched on this. But it’s this idea that talent is just how lucky you are at the beginning and then how many other people register that look, tell you how good you are and then at the age it happens. And then all of a sudden, you’re talented because you’ve had this positive feedback loop that, hey, you threw a lucky three pointer when you were 14. The coach said, “Well, done well.” And that fed back into you practising more because of social pressure and other things as well. It’s probably maybe similar with dating and women and that kind of world, but also in sales. I remember the first day in my first proper medical device sales role, my boss was like, “This is a list of surgeons that we currently work with. They love the company, they love the product, give them all a call, book yourself in and just go and have a chat with them.”
Will Barron:
So I was like, “Okay, that makes sense. That’s not particularly scary.” But then the bastard just sat behind me. So we’re in a conference room and he sat at the desk behind me. I could feel him just staring at the back of my head. So obviously, you get there like, “Well, okay, he’s now listening to everything that I’m saying.” And my confidence from this task, which is a simple enough task to do, an appropriate task to do for a medical device salesperson, my confidence just shot into the ground because I had someone critiquing me. But now the first call went well, second call went well, my confidence went… His name was Steve, Steve buggered off then and went and do some actual work as opposed to just pestering me.
The Role of Luck and Positive Feedback When Trying to Build Competence and Skill · [22:01]
Will Barron:
But if my first call would’ve sucked, my confidence would’ve went down and then he probably would’ve tried to give me some advice and coaching. Depending of how my ego was back then, that I might not have took that on board. And then you can quickly spiral out of control and go into the other pathway. So a lot of this, when you’re first starting off, when you’re trying to develop competence and skill, a lot of it, tell me if you feel the same, Tripp, especially from the dating, it’s just luck.
Tripp Kramer:
Well, if you get to that point, yes, sometimes I think. Sure. Yeah. Sometimes it’s luck. I mean, if you like have a quick win, I believe that can be luck. And what’s interesting is something you’re saying is I deal with a lot of guys though that don’t have a positive feedback loop. So I think the real question is, how do you get good at something with the lack of positive feedback? Is there a way to get good at something without a loop of positive feedback because I’ll have guys go out and get rejected so many times. So they’re not getting any positive feedback from those interactions. It’s like you have to artificially create a positive feedback. It’s like you have to tell yourself to keep going. And then I say that has to do with resilience. And so I feel like resilience is the key.
Tripp Kramer:
Now, I guess hopefully, someone’s teaching you resilience unless you kind of figure it out on your own. Maybe you’re listening to a podcast like this or you have a coach of some sort, but that’s really the biggest thing, and that’s the hardest thing. And then when it comes down to luck, hopefully you get it. I know I definitely had some luck when I was doing sales for the first time, when I was first signing people up to my men’s coaching programme. And I did have some big sales of guys that, I mean, I don’t even know now that I think about it. I don’t even know if it was luck. I was really putting in the right effort. I was doing the things I needed to do. I guess it was kind of lucky that it was someone who was very wealthy and then they could sign up for my programme.
Will Barron:
I think you’re underestimating yourself there. So we did a show a couple weeks ago on the science of luck and serendipity, right?
Tripp Kramer:
Oh, interesting.
The Science of Luck and Serendipity · [24:04]
Will Barron:
The science is super clear that you engineer your own luck. And if you are an optimist, your brain will look for patterns of success, and so you’ll prospect people who are more… It’s unlikely that it just happened chance, that you got on the phone and in touch with people who happened to be wealthy. Even if you weren’t consciously doing it, you knew that they were a better prospect, and so you probably engineered those calls. If a 14-year-old called you up or got on your diary and you had a sales call with them, you’re more likely to… I don’t know if this would be true for your business, but you’re more likely to… I would be more likely to cancel that call, free up the space, and then it’s some rich dude who’s got a Lamborghini in his profile picture or whatever, it shows some kind of affluence, I’m more likely to take that call. So it’s not luck that that person showed up, it’s serendipitous in that you’ve engineered that environment to have success from.
Tripp Kramer:
Yeah. So optimism, it sounds like. That’s one factor. Also this kind of sounds a little bit like law of attraction, which I don’t really believe in that, in the kind of woo-woo sense. But this is what I believe the law of attraction really is, is you are looking towards and thinking about the goal, right? It’s like you know that an affluent person is probably better to get on the phone with because they’re going to have the resources to purchase your thing versus someone who’s 14. So it’s really understanding your goal and how to get there, and being so zeroed in and focused on what that is. So then you’re generating those opportunities for yourself. And I guess that’s the luck formula, isn’t it? It’s preparation plus… I forgot.
Are Confident People Rejection Proof? · [26:00]
Will Barron:
It’s just the number of swings that you have at the bat that you are happy to be positive about. And this leads us into this idea of rejection, right? Are confident people, Tripp, rejection proof, or do confident people still feel the pain of that girl ghosting them or that customer slamming down the phone and calling them an asshole because they cold-called them before they got to work or whatever it is? Do confident people still feel that pain or do confident people… it’s just water off a dog’s back, it’s not personal, it’s not anything, they’re just rock and rolling afterwards?
Tripp Kramer:
I think that most people do feel it, it’s just the scale in which they feel it. So I think that someone who’s just starting a business, who’s getting rejected and they’re just broke and there’s no money coming in, no sales being made. Everyone that rejects you is going to be a harder punch to the gut. But I think that as someone who has had a lot of success is that, yeah, I think there’s still going to be a twinge of, “Oh, that’s stung.” But I think it gets down to the point where it’s so small that you feel it because you’re human and you’ll feel it, but how long will it really stick with you?
Tripp Kramer:
I’d say probably not too long. Once you’ve had the competence and you’ve gotten the reps in, and you’ve gotten all the rejections that you’ve had in your life because you’re going to get rejected always more times than not. So it becomes a little bit more numbing. I think it’s all from experience, and I hope that’s motivation for that Sam character. Is like, you got to get the reps in. So time to start now. Stop worrying about whether you’re going to get that sale or what’s going to happen with it. You got a long road, let’s go. It’s time to start.
Will Barron:
How much of this-?
Tripp Kramer:
Don’t let it beat you down.
Mindset Versus Discipline in a Salesperson’s Journey to True Confidence · [27:50]
Will Barron:
How much of this, Tripp, when we talk about resilience, you’ve used that word a bunch, I totally agree with this, how much of this comes down to mindset versus discipline? And just for another layer of context, the first training in our training programme over salesman.org, it’s called selling by the of numbers. We get your ultimate goal for the next 5 to 10 years. We break it down as to how much revenue you need to bring in each year, each quarter, each month. How many calls, emails, what cadence you need to achieve that amount of revenue versus your target. And then we give you a daily target of… And it blows people’s minds when we do this. Because typically, it’s like you’ve got to make 10 calls and send 4 emails a day. You just got to do it reliably over years to make it happen.
Will Barron:
It’s not complicated. You see people’s stress levels and the pressure and the emotions kind of drop when we get to that final number when we go through in the coaching and the one-on-ones that we do. So that’s the discipline side of things. How much of resilience come down to doing a process like that, and then sticking to it and having discipline versus the mindset of being an optimist? The mindset of being rejected and not taking it personally. Obviously, the answer is both but where’s the place to start if we’re trying to become more confident? Do we need to focus first on the discipline or work on our mindset?
Tripp Kramer:
I’d say mindset. I’d say mindset because you’ll get killed faster. If you don’t have the mindset and you’re going into with the techniques, the tactics, the discipline, and doing what you need to do, it is possible that you will end up crashing and burning. But like you said, it is both, because like my formula says, confidence equals competence. So you kind of have to act to build that confidence, but I do feel that if you don’t have some sort of mindset going into it, you have a risk of crashing and burning. But there will be very minimal risk of crashing and burning if you go into it saying, “All right, man. This is a process. I know this is a process. I’m going to get really excited when I finally do get a sale, but I don’t want to have the expectations too soon because I’m just starting this process.”
Tripp Kramer:
Say that to yourself, that helps with your resilience, and then you can go into your discipline as you call it, and doing and taking the actions. So then when you start to feel that overwhelm of it potentially not working out, because you’re going to have low numbers when you start anything, you can come back to that mindset and that gets you back on the bike even faster, right? Fall off the bike. You want to go on and hop on the next day and try, or do you want to do within five seconds and try? So I hope that with the mind you get on faster, so you can get better faster and therefore build more confidence through the competence act. Time is of the essence, especially when you’re trying to build confidence.
The Quickest Way to Cultivate the Right Mindset for Building Confidence · [31:20]
Will Barron:
Do you have any thoughts from a practical standpoint of how to instil the… Because what we’re saying here is not rocket science, right? Other people have covered similar ground on other podcasts. But I find that whether it’s a book or speaking to someone like yourself, Tripp, with a wealth of knowledge in this area, or listening to a podcast or a mentor, sometimes something just clicks and then it goes in your brain and then you go, “Okay, that’s common sense. I’ve just not been doing this for the past 25 years for some reason. I’ve no idea why.” So with that said, do you have any practical ways, even with your clients maybe, to drill some of this mindset stuff home? You mentioned the law of attraction, I think it’s bullshit. I think you’re alluding to as well. I don’t think it’s bullshit, I know it’s bullshit.
Will Barron:
We’ve had someone from the film on the show to talk about how bullshit it is. But with that said, are we doing affirmations? Are we sticking Post-it notes to remind ourself consciously of what we are setting out to achieve on our laptops, our work laptops? Are we having a coach getting on a call every week and just beret us and bully us into doing it until it becomes from a good place before it becomes natural? What’s the best and quickest way to implement the mindset side of things so that seemingly everything else can fall in place?
Tripp Kramer:
Well, all those work on some level, right? I mean, I think the best thing you could ever have as a coach, because you have someone else on your corner who’s helping you do the work, and they’re dedicated to helping you do the work. So obviously, that’s going to be the best that you could do. But even with a coach, like I coach guys, I’m still going to tell them something that they need to do to coach themselves. Because when they’re in that moment, when they need to go and talk to a girl, I’m not going to necessarily be there. And maybe I could, right? And then I don’t know, that I’m with them forever, but there’s going to be a moment, no matter what in their life where they’re not going to have someone in that exact moment. So what do they do? Well, I think the best is, I guess, we can call it like an affirmation or just a reminder.
Tripp Kramer:
And I don’t necessarily think that you should be even putting it in your phone or anything. It should be something you memorise, and just to remember. And I literally say this to my clients when they’re going over and approaching a girl, is they have to tell themselves that they’re doing this to get better, to practise to do the approach to talk to her, or whatever they’re trying to get better at. They’re not trying to get her number. They’re not trying to take her home because there’s other things that need to be done to get to that point. So you need to focus on what do I need to do today to get myself to go over and approach her and talk to her, because if that’s not going to happen, then nothing’s going to happen. So you have to remind yourself in that moment, and maybe that’s something with someone to do with sales.
Tripp Kramer:
I like to say also it’s kind of specific to what it is that you’re trying to learn. And this is a way of what’s called deliberate practise. So in the very, very, very beginning, if you’re a beginner salesperson or you’re just starting to approach women, then the object is to just pick up the phone and have a few things that you know you can say. Or for the guy it’s just to go up to the girl and have like a couple things to say and that’s it. And then see what happens and see where you can take it. And then you can come back to the experience and you can reference the experience to then see what needs to be done better. So the big overall idea is, remember, you’re trying to get better at this skill, which hopefully makes you more rejection proof or makes you feel more rejection proof.
Tripp Kramer:
And then whatever it is that you’re trying to build. So maybe like for example, in sales, okay, now you’re like all right, I’m comfortable making the calls, but I’m not really so good at building rapport. It’s good to build rapport in a couple minutes in when you’re first talking to someone. Again, I’m not a master at sales, but then I know that’s one thing that I’ve learned. And then it’s like, all right, let’s get really good at rapport. Let’s just take this call and let’s get so good at rapport, and let’s see what happens there. And then maybe you start getting good at that and then you go to the next technique, and the next technique or whatever it may be. But it’s about kind of being aware of where’s my sticking point and then zoning in on that sticking point and nothing else. So that helps you build confidence in that area because it’s pushing you and motivating you to do the action to then build the competence
Will Barron:
You have just made this super practical for the audience, I feel. All we’ve got to do if we are unconfident, if that is a word, inconfident, unconfident, if we-
Tripp Kramer:
So I’ve researched this a lot, unconfident is a word. Unconfident.
Practical Step-by-Step Guide to Ultimate Confidence · [35:37]
Will Barron:
Unconfident. If you are unconfident with cold calls, you should break your cold call up into segments. Just getting through that first bit of the barrier, the fence that the prospect is in inadvertently, but obviously going to put up because they’re busy and you’ve interrupted them. Okay, you’ve done it. Just do that 100 times, 50 times. Then you’ve got to share the value. Then you’ve got to break the thought process that they’re in so they give you an actual answer rather than an instinctual answer. Then you’ve got to close the next. And if you just break things up, you could do this on a tally chart, and just don’t do this with your best prospects perhaps. Do this with a list of customers on a Friday afternoon that you’re just going to burn through that perhaps you’re never going to be able to sell to anyway. You don’t want to do this with all your best prospects and leave a bad taste in their mouth, but just burn through 100 calls of, “Hey, I got the hook. I got the hook. I failed, I failed, got the hook.”
Will Barron:
Use a tally chart, go for 50, break it up into different steps. That over the course of a few Fridays where you are being lazy and you probably weren’t going to do much anyway because you just chill out on a Friday at work which you shouldn’t do, but people do. And it is what it is. A month of that, four afternoons of that, you’re going to come out with different person and go back to the very top of the show. Your competence is going to be way higher and you’re not really jumping into the unknown anymore. You don’t need the boldness because you’ve seen every excuse, every objection that’s going to come your way. And then you can perhaps transition this to your prospects that are more likely to close, more likely to buy, and have better success and results from it. Is that a practical step-by-step guide to-?
Tripp Kramer:
I would think so. Or even for sales people, once they get really good what’s the last step? I would say objections, right? Sure. I feel that’s the hardest thing to get through, and in all the steps. So objections, why not just practise that with your friends or just in your room by yourself. Just pretend that someone gave you that objection and practise what are you going to say to that objection, whatever the objection is, right? The money objections, the time objections, I got to talk to my wife objections. I know all those common ones, and just be so good and be a sniper and like, “Okay, I know all the objections and I know what to say when they give me the objections.” And then those like sub objections, because there’s always like the main objection and then they say something else, it’s another objection.
Tripp Kramer:
And what do you say to that? Because you’re going to be responding to that. And so I feel you can even practise that on your own. Of course, it’s a little bit harder because you don’t have someone who has their own personality and own experience to kind of throw you off and things like that, but still you can practise that. I even had guys, if we were to correlate this to meeting women, I have guys you can practise conversation in a room all alone. And I teach guys a method to do that, which is you go to Google, you type in random word generator. There’s a bunch of websites where if you press a button, it just generates a random word from the dictionary. And so what you do is, every time a word pops up, you practise with that word.
Tripp Kramer:
So let’s say it’s garage, you practise saying a statement based on the word and a question based on the word. So for example, for garage, it might be, “Oh man, I haven’t had a garage in a long time. I parked my car in the street. ” Or a question would be, “What’s the biggest garage you’ve I’ve ever been to?” Again, not that interesting, but you’re coming up with a statement and a question. So what is that doing? That’s actually helping you with continuing conversation because conversation is a lot of it, not all of it, but most of it is listening to what someone’s saying and going on a tangent off of what saying, based on what they’re saying. So that means that if you can do that little exercise at home and practise that, you are going to get good at being really quick on your feet to then be able to continue a conversation based off of what someone is saying.
Tripp Kramer:
Instead of maybe just asking a lot of questions. Again, this isn’t related to sales. The point when I’m saying here, well, actually it could be in the rapport section. So I take that back. Building rapport, and they say something and then you continue a conversation based on what they’re saying. So that’s something you can do at home. So another thing, what I’m saying here is where are the areas of this skillset that you might be able to practise without even having to go on the call or the approach? And of course, it’s going to be like level medium or level easy when you’re doing it on your own, and it’s always going to be level hard when you’re with that person, because you don’t know what they’re going to say next, but you can train for that and it can become easier. So there’s a way to get confident without even doing the actual literal skill.
Will Barron:
So two things, I don’t want to plug it too much because the audience will know all about it. Our training programme has a software tool called The Sales Coach that will throw objections at you and get you to handle it. And also in the training product, I do role plays. I’ll jump on a call with members of students within the programme, we put the videos in where appropriate. We don’t want to make anyone look too stupid if they’re struggling. We want to help them, right? But we put the videos in the community. The community feed back, I feed back at the end of the session as well. And there’s other coaches and there’s other sales trainers who could do similar things with you. But yeah, you’re right.
Tripp Kramer:
Cool. That sounds super valuable.
Will Barron:
It is. I don’t want to plug it too much as the audience will-
Tripp Kramer:
No. See, can I just say something here?
Will Barron:
Sure.
Tripp Kramer:
Fuck that. Can I swear? Fuck that. Plug it. It helps. You have something that helps. I’m trying to… I think that’s a mindset too. And by the way, I’m guilty if it’s still because I said the same thing as you. Not to plug, it’s like why wouldn’t you plug? If I was a person who was listening to this and I needed help and someone said, “Wait, there’s a programme where I can go on and they throw objections at me and that’s going to help me get better. Thank God they said that. I need to get that. I need to get to the next level.” So anyway, going off on a tangent, so I feel that we need to plug the things that are valuable, and that’s what sales is, right?
Tripp Kramer:
It’s saying like I have something… So I’m on the phone, I have something so valuable. The pen, right? That’s fine. That’s like in Wolf of Wall Street. I have something so [inaudible 00:42:13] pink, fem little pen here, and I know that the person on the phone, if they’re a good lead, they would just crush it if they had the pen. So it’s like my job as a salesperson to do anything I can because they don’t know, they’re on the other end. You know they don’t know, it’s your job to let them know in any way possible that the pen or the phone, or whatever it is that they need, that they’re struggling with, that they need to get this thing. I don’t know, that’s how I feel sales. And there’s a lot of different ways to do that, but they have to know and it’s your job to know. And if it’s not a fit, it’s not a fit, right?
Tripp Kramer:
It’s like, well, they were never someone who is going to be a good lead. I get on the phone sometimes with guys who are interested in coaching and if I know that like it’s not really a good fit, I’ll just let them know and we just get off the phone and so be it. Or if it’s like, “Oh, my gosh, this person has the problem that I can solve for them.” And I know 100% that if they sign up for this programme, they are going to solve the problem and be so happy that they did it. The problem is they don’t know that yet. So I need to do everything in my power to get them to know how powerful it is. Of course, going back to the plug, this is not a sales call, this is just kind of plugging things so people understand that they have opportunities. I don’t know, I feel it’s the same idea. I try to do it on my podcast, I’m like sign up for coaching. I’m like, “You have to, it’s so good. Because I know it works and I know that you need it.”
Will Barron:
I’ll be totally blunt and honest with you, and the audience will enjoy this as well, Tripp. And we can wrap up with this point, mate. I don’t plug it so much on the podcast natively as perhaps I could do because we cannot… and this is a good problem to have. We just can’t fit as many bookings in our diary for myself and the other sales reps in the team. So every time I plug it, the diary gets booked up for the next week, and then I get loads of emails complaining. So I want people sign up for a call to see if they’re a good fit when it makes sense to them as opposed to me not being confident and strong in the pitches that come on the show. But for other people, that makes total sense, what you just shared. And you should be proud and excited, and what’s the point in…
Parting Thoughts · [45:12]
Will Barron:
Your job as a salesperson, it’s not to add value to the customer. It’s not to be their best friend. It is the bottom and the basic of everything, is to drive revenue. And so it’s your duty, corporate duty to the shareholders if it’s a large organisation that you work for, to the founders if it’s a smaller organisation. If you’re a small business owner, to your freaking self if you want that nice car and that big house and that swimming pool to make these deals happen, and obviously, that comes from being confident and confidently pitching and sharing. So I appreciate that, mate. We’ll do some kind of code in the show to this episode and we’ll give you a commission for plugging the show on our behalf. I appreciate that. With that, Tripp, tell us where we can find out more about you. Tell us where we can find the YouTube channel and the podcast and everything else that you put out as well, mate?
Tripp Kramer:
Yeah, for sure. Well, if you’re listening to this on the podcast, I think your next step would be if you like what I’m saying here or if you’re a guy who’s shy or you are a person who wants to learn about being better at communicating, and more importantly, in that sense, meeting women and attracting women, you’re going to want to go to my podcast called How To Talk To Girls. It’s called How To Talk To Girls. That’s on all the podcast platforms, so you’ll find it. And then if you’re on YouTube or listening to this, I don’t know, somehow in any other way, all my other social media is Tripp Advice, which is the name of the company. So you can find me on YouTube. I have over 1,000 videos giving free advice on how to meet and attract women.
Tripp Kramer:
And some guys, if they’re like, “Well, actually, I’d like to just really take the next step,” I suggest you get my book, which I guess I’ll plug here. Why not? So the book, people love books. I wrote one, it’s called Magnetic. And funny enough, in the title: Cultivate Confidence, Become Rejection-Proof and Naturally Attract the Women You Desire on Amazon. Check it out if you want to take that next step, if you want to really learn the full system that I teach, and it’s only like 10 bucks on Amazon. Check it out and you’ll learn a lot. Otherwise, come check me out on the podcast or the YouTube channel.
Will Barron:
Amazing stuff. We’ll list the book, the podcast, everything else that you’re up to Tripp on the show notes to this episode over at salesman.org. Tripp, I want to thank you. Again, I appreciate… I always say this for guests like yourself. I appreciate you’ve took a bit of a tangent to come on a sales podcast, but I think everything that we chatted about is totally relevant. So I appreciate you taking that bit of a leap into the unknown to come on the show and I appreciate you and your time and for joining us the Salesman Podcast.
Tripp Kramer:
Cool. Thanks for having me. Glad I did it. Glad to be here.
