No matter your occupation, you’re going to find yourself making sales. At home, you sell healthy meals to your kids. When you participate in conference calls or talk to clients, you sell strategies and services. In fact, every time you give your opinion, you attempt to sell an idea.

In short, every conversation is a sales pitch — you want to sell yourself as a confident person. The hope is that people will place their faith in your opinions and ideas, but this can result in added pressure and stress. SUCCESS Magazine, a publication that gives it readers the information they need to achieve success in all areas of their lives, including the personal and the professional, offers these tips to Americans hoping to improve their sales pitch:

– Sell yourself first. If you have an idea, defend it to yourself before bringing it up before your intended audience. If you have no faith in your ideas, you cannot hope to inspire faith in others.

– Challenge yourself. If you’re making a proposal, you might be suggesting a tactic, developing a product or performing a task in which you have no experience. Yes, you should look before you leap, but if you never make the jump, you’ll never progress. Promise that you can do things before you know that you can, then strive to meet the challenges you set for yourself.

– Stop making excuses. Yes, the economy is poor at the moment, but that doesn’t mean that all business transactions have ground to a halt. People still need to buy goods and services, and that means that you can still sell them. Indulging in anxiety over the economy, the state of your business or your job position will only interfere with your ability to sell.

“In this economy, what people want most from you is confidence,” says CNBC contributer and radio host Mel Robbins. “So ditch the economy as your excuse. And pick up the phone. You may feel awkward at first, but trust me. The person on the other end of the line wants exactly what you’ve got: a huge jolt of confidence.”