If you’re a salesperson you’re paid to sell.

But if you’re not sure how to position the product or service with a new client or you aren’t sure how your client’s industry could use your offering you will be less confident and less likely to sell to that customer. You don’t want to look stupid. You don’t want to admit you don’t know.

It’s human nature.

We’re all afraid of failing and looking stupid.

Fear keeps us from doing many things. Especially those things that our boss expects us to do and know how to do. Who goes to the their boss and says: “I know you think I know this and I know you’re paying me to know this but I don’t know this. Can you help me?”

No one.

So, consider your performance program or incentive program a great place to “remind” your audience of things they should know that could be helpful closing sales. I know … they’re supposed to know these things. But we all have so much on our minds today it’s never a bad thing to remind people of key messages that help us be more confident.

That’s why I always recommend a learning/quizzing component in our reward and incentive programs. Always.

Trust me. It takes little effort to do a few quizzes in your program and reward people for “relearning.”

Remove their fear.

You’ll be surprised how much more productive confident, knowledgeable people can be.

And don’t look down your nose on them not knowing something. You’re in the same boat. Here’s a challenge for you.

Find the volume of a cylinder without using google.

That’s something YOU “learned” in high school but probably can’t do now. We all have only so much RAM. Don’t get mad about it. Lean into that fact.

Help your people out. Give them a bit of a nudge.

PS:

Because there are you nerds out there who have to figure this out … I’ll save you some keystrokes:

The formula for the volume of cylinder is: π * r2 * h