Power Play #4: Scoring BIG in Sales with this SLAP SHOT
Have you ever found yourself second-guessing your abilities in a high-pressure sales environment?
Confidence isn’t just about believing in yourself—it’s about trusting your knowledge, refining your approach, and delivering your message with conviction. In this episode, we dive deep into the role of confidence in medical device sales, tackling self-doubt, fear of failure, and performance anxiety. Cynthia and Anneliese break down actionable strategies to build unwavering trust in yourself, enhance decision-making skills, and become a more assertive, high-performing sales professional. If you’re ready to step up your game and make confidence your competitive edge, this episode is for you.
Episode Chapter Markers
00:00 - Introduction
05:48 - Confidence vs. Arrogance: Why It Matters in Sales
07:53 - Overcoming Self-Doubt Through Knowledge and Preparation
11:40 - Fear of Failure: Shifting Your Mindset for Success
14:12 - Managing Performance Anxiety in High-Stakes Situations
19:56 - The Role of Trust in Building Lasting Confidence
26:22 - Conclusion and Call to Action
Must-Hear Insights and Key Moments
Confidence vs. Arrogance – The fine line between confidence and arrogance in sales and why customers respond differently to each.
Overcoming Self-Doubt – Practical steps to boost confidence by strengthening knowledge and refining communication.
Fear of Failure: The Silent Sales Killer – How fear of rejection or missing quotas can hold you back and how to redefine failure for growth.
Managing Performance Anxiety – Techniques to stay calm, collected, and effective in high-stakes sales situations.
Trust: The Core of Confidence – How trusting yourself, your process, and your decisions builds unshakable confidence.
Words of Wisdom: Standout Quotes from This Episode
“Confidence is the key to credibility—without it, your customers won’t trust you.” – Anneliese
“Fear of failure is just false evidence appearing real. Don’t let it hold you back.” – Cynthia
“Arrogance repels, confidence attracts. The difference is in humility.” – Anneliese
“Trust in yourself is the foundation of confidence—without it, everything crumbles.” – Cynthia
“Self-doubt is natural, but knowledge is your weapon against it.” – Anneliese
“Performance anxiety happens when you let fear take over. Breathe, trust, and execute.” – Cynthia
“Decision-making in sales requires conviction. If you hesitate, you lose the deal.” – Anneliese
“Confidence isn’t about knowing everything—it’s about trusting what you do know.” – Cynthia
“Assertiveness is confidence in action—deliver your message with clarity and conviction.” – Anneliese
“You can’t be a high performer without confidence. It’s the foundation of success.” – Cynthia
Follow The Girls of Grit:
We'd Love to Hear Your Stories!
Your experiences are important to us. Share how you've navigated catalysts for growth and personal transformation. Connect with us on social media or leave a review on your preferred podcast platform. Your feedback and stories inspire us and guide future episodes!
A Team Dklutr production
Blog Transcript:
Note: We use AI transcription so there may be some inaccuracies
Anneliese Rhodes: Welcome everyone to another episode of secrets and medical device sales brought to you by the girls, the grit, and we are so happy. Y'all continue to join in. And today I'm kind of feeling free. We have no headphones on. Isn't
Cynthia Ficara: nice? I know. Oh my God, I can feel my hair move now. Watch my hair might fall on my face because that was like a headband.
Anneliese Rhodes: Hey, it was a distraction when you were having a bad hair day. I know that for sure. But I can hear you very, very well in my AirPods. Thank you. Apple. So yeah. So for those of you that watch us on YouTube, we appreciate all your support and your subscribers. We're continuing to grow there as well. so yeah, enjoy the no headphone thing. anyhow, Cindy, I'm excited about today's episode. Why don't you tell our listeners about our
Cynthia Ficara: episode for the day. I am so excited. We are all ready on our number four power play in this series. I can't believe we're already the number four. And, you know, we even had somebody write in about helping them focus.
So I'm just going to recap if you haven't started from the beginning. But again, we're talking about power plays. It's really just coming off of ice hockey and how when the other team has a penalty. Now that player has to sit in the penalty box. Now the other team has an extra man advantage. So what do you do in those two minutes?
How do you hyper focus? And we're taking this power play into your day to day job in medical device sales. So we are very excited because we believe that you're going to be extremely confident in how to deliver power play number four. You want to know why? Because today we are talking about. Confidence.
My favorite topic. My favorite
Anneliese Rhodes: topic is confidence.
Cynthia Ficara: You believe you're feeling confident that you can absolutely deliver a power play.
Anneliese Rhodes: Absolutely. 100%. Yeah. So, everybody's like, oh, well, confidence is easy, right? I mean, I'm always confident. I have everything. No. We're not always confident. And there's a lot of situations, especially new situations where you may struggle to find some confidence.
And so today we're going to talk about some of these situations where we may struggle. I know I have struggled in the past and in the present with. Situations where I'm like, I really wish I had more confidence in this situation so that I could have Delivered the message more strongly spoken to that leader more directly met with that physician better sold the product better, you know, whatever it is I feel like there's a lot of times when we still struggle So we're going to talk about that today and really give you guys some good things to think about And by the end of this episode you should absolutely not only be feeling more confident have an idea of how you're going to go out there and rock that world
Confidence vs. Arrogance: Knowing the Difference
Cynthia Ficara: Absolutely. And I want to start as basic as this sounds with a definition, because I will say confidence is one of those characteristics that can often be misassociated with other words. So clearly I want to define confidence simply as confidence in sales. That is. As a belief in one's ability to handle challenges and succeed in sales.
So it's a vital quality for salespeople to have, especially when you are a high performer or you're in a high pressure role, which let's face it in sales, it's pressure, right? You need to hit a number. Yeah. So in clarifying this, I want to. Talk about another word for a minute. It's called arrogance.
I'm sure if all of you just take a minute, you can think about a person who comes across as arrogant. Now, as high performers, I want to differentiate that. So there is a fine line between these 2. So confidence is a positive quality. Arrogance. Is a negative quality. So your customers would clearly prefer to deal with a confident sales professional.
What's going to happen if you're arrogant, they're going to want to turn around and run. Right? Nobody wants to have somebody pushing something on confident people can remain. I think a good word is humble. You're forever learning. You're open to learning. You're respectful. You listen. And I think that from the opposite side is that.
An arrogant person kind of doesn't have that humble quality, right? their presence really, what's the word I'm trying to say overstates their knowledge or they magnify, that's a good word. They will magnify their abilities beyond the real true state of what it is. So even though some people may look at that and say it appears as confidence, it's actually a way of concealing a lot of self doubt.
Anneliese Rhodes: sure everyone out there has an example that's popping into their head right now. And I literally just had about 10 of them fly through my brain. But I will tell you, there is one person that I'm thinking of now that I have come into contact with in the past, like seven, eight, nine, 10 years or so. And this person was absolutely an arrogant rep.
And I will tell you, Cindy. His arrogance ultimately led to a very bad outcome in a case. And you know, what was interesting is that when I first met this person, I thought to myself, gosh, he's like. I would love to say a really bad word right now, but I'm not going to, but you know, for all of y'all out there, it's a big D word.
And I thought, you know what, you are not all that in a bag of frigging chips. And I started questioning him and I could tell right away that he definitely didn't know what he was talking about, but yet he had this arrogant side to him. And I'll tell you what, it led him down a really bad path and he ultimately ended up.
losing his job. yeah, you really need to be aware of this. I think that this is such a great point. Cindy, as we go through confidence today, a really key word that should be tied along with confidence is being humble. You know, really understanding that you are still so lucky to be where you're at in the presence of surgeons and nurses and techs in a hospital room with patients lives on the table at stake in the cath labs.
outpatient surgery centers, wherever you're at. It is so important to make sure you are always following that right path of being humble and confident versus arrogant.
Cynthia Ficara: You know, that's something we, we kind of align in a lot of our discussions about really being self aware of how you are and understanding, and all that ties in together.
Anneliese Rhodes: I think it's really important that we distinguish through that. what do you think we dive right in and talk about some Yes.
Some places where we really can feel that confidence lacking and we wish that we had more. Yeah, I think one of the very first things is We all do this is self doubt, when you, like I mentioned early on in the episode, when you're walking into a new situation or a new set of physicians you're calling on or a new product that you're selling or a new job that you just got, I think all of us kind of feel that overwhelming feeling of inadequacy or just that lack of self worth and that's not uncommon, guys.
Everybody feels that it's totally normal. And I think it's really important to step back first and give yourself a little bit of grace. And then truth be told, if you're having that self doubt and it is regarding a product or a company or whatever it is, the very first thing you can do is just build your knowledge, build that well of knowledge to build up your, foundational strength so that you have the confidence to deliver the message appropriately and very confidently versus.
Not knowing what you're talking about. So I think if it's something where you are, let's say you're giving a speech for the very first time. Well, first of all, everybody's going to have those fluttering feelings and those butterflies. I know I definitely did early on in my career and it's nerve wracking to stand up on stage, especially in front of your peers or colleagues or higher ups for that matter.
And deliver a message that you want to get across, know, in that situation, it's not going into the books and learning more, it's going over that speech a million trillion times. Giving it to other people so that they can give you feedback on it and then just getting comfortable with the fact that there is Gonna be a little bit of uncomfortableness and you have to be okay with that
Overcoming Self-Doubt Through Knowledge and Small Wins
Cynthia Ficara: I think you bring up one of the most important parts of getting over self doubt is the knowledge knowledge is power and I think that when you know you have The knowledge behind you, it slowly builds confidence.
So I want to just take this a step further. So for those that say, okay, that sounds great. How do I do this? Well, one thing you can do is just number one, set very small, attainable goals to get there. don't think that, all right, all of a sudden I doubt myself and am going to. Just do one thing and all of a sudden I'll have no doubt anymore.
Just take baby steps and really recognize very small accomplishments. And you know what I really think will help you build your confidence is when you start to write down these really small successes and achievements. It's like when you write a whole week of wins and where you're winning, and then you start documenting that.
And then if you feel those self doubt creeping in, pick up what you wrote and realize, wow, I shouldn't feel this way because I won this. I did this. I did this. And suddenly you see the bigger picture. Your self doubt is probably the number one obstacle. To having confidence, at least in my opinion,
Anneliese Rhodes: no, I agree.
And again, we all struggle for me. Everybody does, from the time you're little, I don't know if I can hit the ball that far. You know, I don't know if I'm going to make the team right during tryouts for basketball or whatever it is. So I think it starts at an early age and you were so right, Cindy, just remind yourself of all the reasons why you should be there while you are in this company, while you are selling the products and while you are calling on the customers.
So, Self doubt. Yeah. Not to be, yeah. Not to make it small. it's actually probably a major part of that, not having that confidence.
Cynthia Ficara: And I believe there's one more part to self doubt is take the self out of it. Okay. So when you're going in to meet a customer, it's not always about you, right? It's not always your focus.
So maybe the doubt is more, think about what message you're delivering, what impact are you trying to make? And if you doubt the conversation you're going to have there, your confidence is gone. So take yourself out of it, pull in the knowledge, like we said, write down what you need to know and really focus on your message and not so much yourself.
Anneliese Rhodes: I love that. That was a great idea. Number two, I have this one is fear of failure, fear of not hitting either the goals you set the goals for the company, your number, you failing and just not performing the way that you should perform. I mean, I think that. Fear creeps into everybody and It can really hinder your career growth if you're not careful because it can absolutely take over your mind.
It's like a mind hack It's like oh all the feet. I mean fear it'll paralyze you if you're not careful So I really think that that's important to number one recognize that and then number two How do you get yourself out of that fear? Well, first of all, you can share that insight with somebody else you can say hey i'm really Not feeling comfortable with this situation or this doctor that I'm calling on, or this case that I'm about to go do.
Do you have any insights? Can you share any information with me? You know, I know you've done a ton of these cases. I'd love to learn from you. You know, things like that, that you're gonna just better yourself and get rid of some of that fear right away. But I think it's really important to identify that early on because, man, fear it can really paralyze you.
Fear of Failure: Redefining What It Really Means
Cynthia Ficara: Exactly. And we've said this many times before, but if you're just tuning into this 10 series of power play, what we have spoken about here before is what is fear. It's false evidence appearing real. And then the second part of that fear of failure will define failure. Okay, it's failure. Just that point.
Customer said no. Okay, I'm coming in and I think I'm going to have a conversation trying to sell my product. They say no. Well, I'm Is that really a failure, or is that just one step closer to going back and realizing maybe my series of questions isn't focused where it should be. Maybe I'm not really getting my customers needs.
Again, we're in sales, and I have to know what my customer needs. So, if I have the wrong end goal in mind, Maybe I'm, not failing at all. Maybe I'm just in the wrong direction.
Anneliese Rhodes: I swear sometimes you just really turn things around, Cindy. I was like, already I'm like going down that, I'm a failure, I'm this, I'm that.
And you're like, just look at it differently. It's so positive. You know? You always like Fit it the better way. So thank you for that, for always being my confidant in the person that's like, listen, it's not that big of a deal. We can fix this. It's gonna get better . But you're right, you're real. It's all mindset.
You do need to define that. Failure and failure looks different for everybody. You know, it's not all the same, but
Cynthia Ficara: I agree.
Anneliese Rhodes: Yeah, it can absolutely kill that confide.
The Mental Game of High Performance
Cynthia Ficara: So, we've already mentioned two things. We've talked about self doubt and we've talked about fear of failure. Now there's another portion of this that Lisa and I thought really goes into, problems people have, or maybe I'll use the word like pain points to not having confidence, and that's performance anxiety.
And I can just think of so many different situations, whether it's back to high school, back to taking a test, like, okay, let's put it that way. It's test time. You got to sit down and perform and you got to do it right. All of a sudden, all these feelings creep up and you're anxious, but it's not really.
The knowledge it's the environment you just put yourself in and that can trigger that type of anxiety and sometimes when we let that situation overtake us, we lose all we don't want that to happen.
Anneliese Rhodes: Yeah, I can definitely identify with performance anxiety in terms of like my son because he gets anxious, he's in the SAT, you know, he's in the SAT world right now, taking SATs and ACTs and studying and trying to, you know.
Just whatever it is super score your SAT. I don't even know but like this is like the thing they do that makes my stomach knot I know I know I remember see I'm already anxious so if you have performance anxiety over like, you know you're gonna get a lot of companies do this where like you go through the training right and then at the end of the Six weeks or two months or whatever it is You got to take a test to make sure that you are You know the knowledge.
You've studied it. You can write it out on a test. Well, a lot of people actually like tense up during that time. I actually don't. I'm not that kind of performance anxiety person, but I am the performance anxiety person when, and I'm just going to throw this out at you, when you're a high performer. And you don't perform to where you think you should be, that can also beat you down and make you lose confidence.
Because just like you said, define failure, define what you are thinking as a number not hit or a fear, not number, but not, um, A goal not hit or something that you've identified as only being I'm only successful if I get to President's Club, Well, maybe you didn't make President's Club because it was only the top five people and you were number six.
Are you all of a sudden crappy? Are you all of a sudden like a terrible rep? No. Everybody would argue, oh my gosh, you've literally gotten yourself almost all the way to the top. It could have been a 10th of a ranking that you missed out on. Does that all of a sudden mean that you're not a confident performer, high performer?
Absolutely not. So you have to define that and be aware of it. So I can absolutely say that I struggle from this one.
Cynthia Ficara: And I will say that I really love that you tied this into happening to people who really are at the top. I think that's really important because so many times you think you can do great or then something happens and that doesn't mean you fail.
So let's think about it. Whenever something doesn't go the right way, how can we fix this? Well, I can come up with a really, one way that comes to mind is practicing. So what you need to do is go back and think about, okay, where did I not feel confident? How am I gonna build my confidence up? I'm gonna practice.
It's kind of like role play. Right? So you can sit down, go through the conversations. Let's say, let's just take, for instance, it was an in service, okay? Say you were in servicing and something just, maybe the person you were with was so important that you let that overtake what you were concentrating on.
So now, maybe go back and practice, video yourself, watch yourself, practice. And when you start to go through this, when game time comes again, that anxiety is going to go away because you add the knowledge. And you've practiced enough to do it. Another thing is something that when these moments happen, it's as simple as just stop and take a breath.
You know, just take a deep breath, let the air go in, let the air go out, calm your nerves a little bit. If you have the opportunity to count even to five, great way to reset. And that performance anxiety can actually go away and you can have confidence and deliver an excellent performance. I love that.
That was great. I think so. One other, area, I think that really, really can be, what's the word I'm looking for? delivered in with confidence is all about decision making, right? So like if you're confident in your decision, everything is different. If you think you're making a decision and you're second guessing your everything, your body language, it can kind of like paralyze some of the actions or the results that you're thinking about.
But like, if you really think about how confidence affects a decision in sales, it pulls in everything we just said, knowledge, especially knowledge. So like, I don't know, I mean, can you think of a time where if confidence Please a part in your decision.
Anneliese Rhodes: Yeah, or voicing my opinion on something, and I would like in that too. There's been many, many, many times as I'm sure for you as well, where it's a group of people on an email and it's a decision that needs to be made. And you have one opinion and the next person has a totally different opinion than you do. And you're like, yeah, but this is why I feel the way that I do and this is what I think we should do based on X, Y, Z.
And the next person's like, well, it should be this. And the truth is, is they're actually not wrong. They're just looking at it from a different perspective. But it does make me take a second and go, ooh, maybe I shouldn't have said that. Ooh, maybe I should have said something else. I lost, confidence in that moment. So I think at this point, Cindy, we should reveal our secret because in this situation that I'm talking about with decision making, our secret is so relevant, and that is,
Cynthia Ficara: I agree. A hundred percent. So why don't you tell everybody out there for our high performance and confidence. What do we as the girls of grit believe the secret behind confidence is?
Trust: The Ultimate Key to Confidence
Anneliese Rhodes: It's trust. Trust in yourself, trust in your decisions, trust in your message, trust in your brand. Trust in all of it, that will really help you stay confident, not only be confident, but stay confident when you are up against these hard situations, like a decision that needs to be made.
I'm sure you've had to make decisions, Cindy, in your leadership roles where you're like, you know what, man, I really feel strongly about this, but I still have my worries about it. But you had trust in yourself. And in the decision that you were going to make, and you made it,
Cynthia Ficara: that is so true. And trusting yourself.
I mean, you know, maybe another way of saying that is kind of like your gut instinct or those, instincts that, you know, you need to trust, you need to make a decision. And sometimes you can't verbalize why you want to go one way or the other. Maybe it's just a feeling. It's pulling in that emotional intelligence.
You must have a plate of knowledge that's making you feel that way. But when you take that minute to trust. What you think and how you feel that decision making becomes so much more succinct, definitive with confidence. So when you have confidence, it absolutely in sales helps that complete progression when you have definitive decision making, think that, that's why, you know, when we sat here talking about this, trust is crazy, how it underlines everything.
If you doubt yourself.
Anneliese Rhodes: Yeah.
Cynthia Ficara: Well, maybe you need to be thinking about trust. What else do you need to know? Fear of failure. Trust you're on the right path after, you know, performance anxiety, going back to thinking about that. Trust in what you need to be discussing and the impact you're making and have the confidence to make a decision.
But in all of this.
Anneliese Rhodes: So what you're talking about is so important with trust and it brings to mind this example that I'm going to leave you guys with because I think it's really important to think about your customers are very confident.
They're very confident in their skills, they're confident in their knowledge, they're confident in their treatment of their patient, they're confident in their staff, they're confident in everything that they are doing in their entire careers. If you walk into an OR or a cath lab or even an office and you are lacking confidence, They're not going to want to work with you.
They're going to look at you because a lack of confidence also displays the fact that you probably don't know what you're talking about to a certain degree. And there's no way that they are going to have that trust in you in order to work with you. And therefore. They're not going to use you. They're not going to buy your products.
You have to be so confident in the way you deliver your messages, the way you speak with your customers, the way you sell your products, everything else, decision making, emails, every little bit of what you do in the sales world has to be done with confidence. Remember being humble is also part of that, but you must be confident because I will tell you they will not work with you if you do not exude that confidence.
Assertiveness in Sales Confidence
Cynthia Ficara: Exactly. And all the benefits of having confidence in sales is that you're really credible. all of this leads to credibility with your customers and you can really impact them making a lasting impression. I want to mention one more aspect of being a high performer with confidence. And that is when you actually deliver the confidence and with assertiveness. Okay. So again, at the very beginning, I really tried to differentiate between confidence and arrogance. Correct? Well, now I think it's important how, when you have confidence, you can be assertive. So they're both important, right?
Confidence in sales really refers to that person's belief in their abilities and product. it allows them to present with conviction. Well, assertiveness in sales means you confidently communicate your position and value proposition to a customer. While you stand firm on certain key points, but still being respectful and customer focused.
So essentially it becomes the active expression of that confidence in sales. So assertiveness can be the way you deliver in sales. So know, you can have the confidence, but then how are you going to deliver it? Right? Yeah,
Anneliese Rhodes: absolutely. How
Cynthia Ficara: is it going to come across?
Anneliese Rhodes: Yeah, it needs to be assertive, you know, and we talked about assertive versus other characteristics, but I think confidence and being assertive Having the knowledge behind you to back that up having the way about you.
All of these things are so important So I really think you guys today we talked about a couple different things And again, we know that this isn't easy every day. I mean, we're out there with you We're out there working. I doubt myself all the time. I definitely have the performance anxiety. I have the fear of failure I have it all But at the end of the day, I really try and remind myself, especially when I get down on myself, and I'll call Cindy, I'll be like, Oh my gosh, today was the worst day ever.
And she'd be like, listen, Lisa, you need to remember X, Y, Z. And then I'm like, Oh yeah, that's right. You're right, Cindy. You're right. But you know, today We talked about this because it's such a key trait to have this to be a high performer. You guys, you have to have confidence. If you don't have confidence, I really don't know if you can get everything that you want to get accomplished.
So we talked about confidence with regards to self doubt, you know, how to overcome that self doubt, know, think, learn things, be curious about things, always be learning, fear of failure, define the fear, define the failure, make sure it's even there, make sure it's just not false evidence appearing real, which is what fear is.
And don't let it hijack your brain performance anxiety that can look so different for anybody from test taking to just being a high performer and not Performing to the level that you believe is that true level, just stop yourself, give yourself some grace, take a break, and really try and redefine, and look where you're at, and look at it in like reality, and you know, decision making.
you're all going to come up against areas where you're going to have to make a decision, whether it's with a higher up, whether it's with a doctor, whether it's in your business, whatever it is, you guys are going to have to make these decisions. You have to be confident in your decision making in order to do this.
And the last thing is assertiveness. And that goes right along with confidence. I think this whole entire time we've been talking about it in a roundabout way, but that's really what it is. And remember, the key to confidence is trust, trust in yourself, trust in your knowledge, trust in what you stand for, and know that you're there for a reason and really truly believe that you have the confidence to do whatever you've set your mind out to do.
Cynthia Ficara: So everybody out there, our call to action today is our power play for confidence.
We want all of you to just think and identify one area in which you believe you are lacking confidence. Take the information you just learned and apply it. We would love to hear from you. Feel free to DM us or write us about how you have. Gained confidence to go out there in your two minute power play.
Good luck out there. Great selling every high performer.
Anneliese Rhodes: Do you ever find yourself struggling with self doubt or fear of failure as you work towards your sales goals? What about performance anxiety or difficulty making tough decisions?
Cynthia Ficara: Today, we will explore the topic of confidence and its crucial role in achieving high performance. Stay tuned for Power Play number 4.
