The confidence paradox every sales leader should know

Observation 🧐

Start before you feel ready
In Adam Grant's book Hidden Potential, he shares a powerful insight about language learning that every sales leader should take to heart. "The only way to learn to speak a language is to talk it out loud and to use it as you're acquiring it."

Grant goes on to describe a woman who learned multiple new languages when she stopped worrying about how she sounded and just started speaking before she was “ready”. 

This got me thinking about the learning curve when we start a new role. In Sales, you change companies and that means you change products, buying personas and talk tracks. 

Most sales onboarding follows a predictable pattern: weeks of classroom training, product demos and endless PowerPoint presentations about methodology. New hires consume information passively, believing they need to master every feature and benefit before they can have their first real conversation with a prospect.

This is a flawed approach. 

While you may not know anything about product features and benefits, when you start a new role you can rely on the skills you do have, namely your ability to connect with a buyer, your sales instincts, and business acumen. 

The "Speak Before You're Ready" Approach to Sales onboarding

Grant's language learning insight transforms how we should think about sales training. Instead of waiting for perfection, we should embrace productive struggle from day one.

• Shadow calls on Day 1

• Don't wait until week three to expose new hires to real customer interactions. Have them listen to live calls immediately. They won't understand everything, but they'll start developing an ear for natural conversation flow, customer objections, and authentic responses, not scripted ones.

• Embrace the discomfort early on 

• Stop front-loading product training. Start with basic role-playing exercises in the first week, even when new hires feel unprepared. As Grant emphasizes, we should "speak the language early on, even if we only have a basic level of proficiency." The discomfort of not knowing everything forces active learning and retention. 

• Territory Assignment ASAP

• We often give new employees too much time before we allow them in front of customers. Pair them with experienced reps, but put them in real selling situations where the stakes matter. Not next month. Not when they've memorized the feature list. Now.

Why This Works: The Science of Learning Under Pressure

When we force ourselves to perform before we feel ready, several powerful learning mechanisms activate:

• Active retrieval: Instead of passively absorbing information, we're forced to recall and apply knowledge in real-time

• Immediate feedback: Real customers provide instant feedback and we learn what works and what doesn't

• Emotional engagement: The slight anxiety of being unprepared actually enhances memory formation and skill development

• Pattern recognition: Exposure to varied, real-world scenarios builds intuition faster than controlled practice

• With struggle comes learning: There is tremendous value that comes when we push through the struggle of learning a new skill.  

• The Confidence Paradox: we become more confident faster when we start selling before we feel ready. Confidence comes from competence, and competence comes from doing, not studying.

The Bottom Line

Adam Grant's insight about language learning reveals a fundamental truth about skill development: we learn by doing, not by preparing to do. 

Stop trying to create "ready" salespeople. Start creating salespeople who are comfortable being uncomfortable, who learn by speaking the language of sales before they've mastered every word.

Because in sales, just like in language learning, fluency comes from conversation, not textbooks.

Ultimately, the goal should be to create a safety net, not a safety blanket. New hires should feel supported but not sheltered from the reality of selling.

Thought Starter  🤔

Love 🥰

I am a massive Adam Grant fan and his latest book Hidden Potential is an incredible read. He shares thought provoking insights like how:

• Procrastination is a common problem when you’re pushing yourself out of your comfort zone.

• Expectations rise with accomplishment and the better you’re performing the more you demand of yourself and the less you notice incremental gains (Hello perfectionists!!).

• Skills don’t grow at a steady pace, sometimes you have to go “backwards” and learn a new path forward in order to get better.

A must read for anyone who wants to meet their full potential in life and at work.