In sales and marketing, a healthy level of self-efficacy can contribute greatly to the amount of success you enjoy. To understand this, it is necessary to know what self-efficacy is and how much it affects you as you go about your business.

Defining Self-Efficacy

Self-efficacy is a term we hear far less often than other words closely related to it like “self-esteem”, “confidence”, and “self-worth”. However, self-efficacy is a well known concept in psychology and is a variable psychologists focus on when working with their patients.

According to Positive Psychology (click this link to read the entire article: What Is Self-Efficacy), self-efficacy is not self-image, self-worth, or any other similar construct. While it is often assigned a similar meaning, it is actually defined quite differently. Rather, self-efficacy is the belief people have in their own abilities, specifically their abilities to meet challenges ahead of them and complete tasks successfully. General self-efficacy refers to a person’s overall belief in their ability to succeed, and there are many circumstances in which it manifests itself. For example, academic self-efficacy, athletic self-efficacy, comedic self-efficacy, and body image self-efficacy.

When comparing self-efficacy to self-esteem, self-esteem is focused more on “being”, such as content, happy or enthusiastic. On the other hand, self-efficacy is focused more on “doing”, such as belief in your abilities to make a presentation in front of a large group of people. A healthy sense of one feeds the other, but they are separate notions and they definitely affect people’s actions in different ways.

When comparing self-efficacy to motivation, motivation is based on an individual’s “desire” to achieve. On the other hand, self-efficacy is based on an individual’s “belief” in their own abilities to achieve.

Taking this one step further, self-efficacy is the belief people have in their own ability to influence the events that transpire in their own lives. In actuality, it influences the coping behaviors they use when they are met with stress and challenges. It also determines how much effort they will expend to reach their goals as well as how long they will continue to pursue those goals. With that description, self-efficacy is a self-sustaining trait that grows stronger as people work through problems on their own terms. Stronger self-efficacy develops as positive experiences occur.

Recognizing Self-Efficacy

People with a healthy level of self-efficacy are relatively easy to recognize. They tend to be individuals who achieve, accomplish, and succeed at just about everything they do more often than others, and their confidence, self-esteem, and self-worth are usually high because of it.

For example:

1. A student who is not particularly gifted in a certain subject but believes in their own ability to perform well in that class is someone with a healthy level of self-efficacy.
2. Someone who has failed in numerous romantic relationships but honestly retains a positive outlook in their ability to find lasting happiness with their next prospect has a healthy level of self-efficacy.
3. A freshman on a varsity sports team who has never competed against older teenagers but truly believes in their ability to hold their own when competing at that level has a healthy level of self-efficacy.
4. Someone who agrees to MC a dance show in front of a large audience even though they’ve never done anything like that before has a healthy level of self-efficacy.
5. A boxer who keeps getting up despite getting knocked down multiple times by an opponent because they believe in their ability to win that fight has a healthy level of self-efficacy.

While it would be easy to continue listing examples, you probably know several people with a solid sense of self-efficacy. What makes them easy to recognize is their unwavering belief in their own abilities to alter how their life goes. In contrast, people with low self-efficacy do not have a solid sense of belief in their abilities and tend to believe outside influences mostly determine how their life goes.

With that said, it should be pointed out that balanced self-efficacy is best. For instance, people who blame themselves for everything negative in their lives probably aren’t healthy or happy a lot of the time. On the other hand, people who don’t blame themselves for anything are probably not completely in touch with reality and most likely have trouble relating to and connecting with others.

How Self-Efficacy Can Improve Sales and Marketing

A healthy level of self-efficacy is attractive, just like confidence, self-esteem, and resilience. People with a healthy level of those variables seem to enjoy greater success in life. While this statement is true in general, it is just as true with professionals who work in sales and marketing.

One quality that has a powerful affect on how well someone performs at just about anything is how much confidence they have in their own abilities to succeed. According to Napoleon Hill, author of Think and Grow Rich, “thoughts are things”. Someone’s thoughts clearly influence what they do and how well they do it.

In business, professionals who believe in themselves and the companies they represent spend less time feeling doubt, worry, and a lack of confidence. Instead, they focus mostly on overcoming obstacles, pursuing prospects, and preparing for meetings. What enables them to do this is a healthy level of self-efficacy, and it usually produces a higher income for themselves and more revenue for the companies they represent.

MediaFast Video Marketing Products Improve Self-Efficacy

In addition to being affected by self-efficacy as explained above, MediaFast video marketing products help professionals who work in sales and marketing. Not only do they help them feel more confident in their abilities to succeed, but they also help them appear more modern and interesting. Most importantly, MediaFast video marketing products are sales and marketing tools that actually help them perform better.

Effectively, video marketing products have some powerful advantages over other sales and marketing tools. Not only do they portray scenery, circumstances, sounds, body language, emotions, actions, and reactions more accurately, but they also get watched far more often than other sales and marketing tools get read. For prospects, they’re simply much more interesting.

At MediaFast, we realized several years ago that videos were the wave of the future. We also understood that sales and marketing professionals who adequately included them in their strategies would benefit greatly from doing so. Because of those two beliefs, we positioned ourselves to become leaders in the video marketing industry. So far, that decision has paid off greatly for us and our customers.

To learn more about the video marketing products we offer and how using them can help your business, contact us today.

John Bynum

Having owned an advertising magazine in Utah, I’ve worked in marketing for over twenty years.

I started writing for MediaFast in 2014. The first time I held one of their video brochures, I thought something like, “Wow! This blows away our magazine and any other print advertising I’ve ever seen. This is like a TV commercial, and I’m holding it in my hands. Amazing!”

Since then, video brochures, video mailers and video boxes have become leaders in marketing performance. It’s a privilege to write about them. I also love MediaFast—with its top-notch product quality, industry leading customer service, and all of the wonderful people I get to work with.