5 things sales reps can learn from TED Talk videos

Have you ever got an intellectual adrenaline rush? The experience when you were enlightened with something and were curious to dig deeper into that specific subject to know more. Well, this happens to many people while watching a TED Talk video.

The three-decade-old business of talking has influenced many and offered a plethora of information on different subjects. As a sales rep, you can pick up a lot of things from these TED Talk videos that can help you in achieving your sales targets.

“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest” – Benjamin Franklin

Five vital things to learn from TED Talk videos

What do you do during the dead time while commuting to work or waiting for a client? Check your Whatsapp messages or scroll through Instagram or Facebook. Well, you can invest that time in watching a few TED Talk videos.

Below are the things you can learn from the TED Talk videos:

1. How to stay calm in stressful situations?

Stress is your biggest opponent in sales. The stressed mind tends to do things that lead to serious repercussions. For instance, you might make errors while creating a proposal or squander an opportunity by making blunders during a sales call.

Sales is a game of calm mind. You are not at your best when you are stressed. So, take a deep breath and stay calm. There is always a way to deal with stressful situations. This is what even Daniel Levitin emphasizes in his TED Talk  “How to stay calm when you know you’ll be stressed”. He thinks there’s a way to avoid making mistakes in stressful situations.

Quoting Daniel Levitin-

“one of the things that goes out the window during those times of stress is rational, logical thinking. So, we need to train ourselves to think ahead to these kinds of situations.

I think the important point here is recognizing that all of us are flawed. We all are going to fail now and then.

The idea is to think ahead to what those failures might be, to put systems in place that will help minimize the damage, or to prevent the bad things from happening in the first place.”

2. Why is listening important?

It might be enticing to speak about the strengths of your product. But while doing that, you need to even listen to the problems of your prospects. Listening is an essential skill in sales.

The top sales performers talk for 46% of a call, which means they listen for at least 54% of it.

Till you don’t listen to your prospects, you can’t discover their problems. If you don’t find out about their problems, it would be difficult to present your product as a solution.

So, it is pivotal to listen to your potential buyers as it helps in establishing and nurturing a relationship.

In the TED Talk  “The Power of Listening” William Ury explains why listening is important. He asks us to join a listening revolution and assures that if we all just listen a little bit more, we can transform any relationship.

Quoting Willian Ury –

“Listening may be the golden key that opens the door to human relationships.

How do we listen? It turns out that we often take listening for granted as something easy and natural. But in fact, at least in my experience, real genuine listening is something that needs to be learned and practiced every day.

In ordinary listening, we’re hearing the words. We’re often thinking, “Where do I agree? Where do I disagree? What am I going to say in response?” In other words, the focus is on us.

In genuine listening, however, the spotlight moves to the other person.

We put ourselves in their shoes. We tune in to their wavelength. We listen from within their frame of reference, not just ours. That’s not easy.

In genuine listening, we listen not just to what’s being said, but for what’s not being said.

We listen not just the words, but to what’s behind the words.

We listen for the underlying emotions, feelings, and needs.

We listen for what that person really needs or wants.”

3. How to stay on the path of success?

Few of the sales reps stop putting in efforts once they achieve their monthly or quarterly sales targets.

They feel they’ve understood the sales game and can play it well now. Sadly, due do this overconfidence, most of them fail to meet their targets in the next quarter.

Well, sales is a field where you need to prove yourself continuously. If you slow down, your competitors might surpass you. So, you need to stay on your toes in this competitive industry. Keep exploring new strategies and different sales methodologies to convert your prospects into paying customers. You can’t stop trying, once you taste success.

In the TED Talk, “Success is a Continuous Journey” Richard ST. John has stated ways to achieve and sustain success. Through this TED Talk, he tries to remind us that success is not a one-way street; it is a constant journey. When we stop trying, we fail.

Quoting Richard St. John –

“Why do so many people reach success and then fail? One of the big reasons is, we think success is a one-way street. So, we do everything that leads up to success, but then we get there. We figure we’ve made it, we sit back in our comfort zone, and we actually stop doing everything that made us successful. And it doesn’t take long to go downhill.

And I can tell you this happens because it happened to me. Reaching success, I worked hard, I pushed myself. But then I stopped, because I figured, “Oh, you know, I made it. I can just sit back and relax.” Reaching success, I always tried to improve and do good work. But then I stopped because I figured, “Hey, I’m good enough.”

But when ST. John business hit rock bottom, he had to change his mindset. He went back and started from the beginning using the eight principles Passion, Work, Focus, Push, Ideas, Improve, Serve and Persist.

“I learned that success isn’t a one-way street. It doesn’t look like this; it really looks more like this. It’s a continuous journey. And if we want to avoid “success-to-failure-syndrome,” we just keep following these eight principles.

4. How to develop the skill of humor? 

Humour has great power, provided you use it mindfully. Humour can help in breaking the ice and building a rapport with the prospect. Humour can be tactfully injected in any sale situation. It helps in capturing the potential buyer’s attention. People with a good sense of humor are often remembered.

Humour makes you appear more confident, especially if you are well-prepared. You should know when to strike the humorous chord.

Some of the sales reps feel they cannot be funny. Well, humor is a skill that anybody can learn, and it can be very beneficial for sales professionals as it can help in making a lasting impact on the prospects. Andrew Tarvin, in his TED Talk, “The Skill of humor” shows that anyone can use humor.

Quoting Andrew Tarvin –

“Humour is a necessity. Because humor gets people to listen, it increases long-term memory retention, it improves understanding, aids in learning, and helps communicate messages.”

Andrew Tarvin is the world’s first humor engineer, and even he learned the art of humor.

“Humour is a skill, and if it’s a skill, that means we can learn it. Because I am someone who has had to learn how to use humor”

“It doesn’t matter, your age, your income, your perspective, your personality assessment, your senior superlative, or your celebrity doppelganger. Anyone can learn to be funnier. And it all starts with a choice, a choice to try to find ways to use humor.”

5. How to build up your self-confidence?  

In sales, you need to believe in yourself and your product. Yes, closing deals isn’t an easy task. However, many top performers are not only closing deals but exceeding their sales targets.

You just need to have self-confidence and a positive mindset that “you can do it”.  You might face many hurdles in the journey to close a deal. But if you have the confidence in yourself and a passion to win, you’ll find a way to convert the deal into sales.

In the TED Talk, “The skill of self-confidence,” Dr. Ivan Joseph, the Athletic Director and head coach of the Varsity Soccer team at Ryerson University speaks about self-confidence and how it is not just the most important skill in athletics, but in our lives.

Quoting Dr. Ivan –

“Self-confidence.” Without that skill, and I use the word skill intentionally, without that skill, we are useless as a soccer player. Because when you lose sight or belief in yourself, we’re done for. I use the definition of self-confidence to be the ability or the belief to believe in yourself to accomplish any task, no matter the odds, no matter the difficulty, no matter the adversity. The belief that you can accomplish it, self-confidence.”

Concluding thoughts

Sales is a field where you need to learn new things to excel constantly. The more you learn, the better you get at selling. Watch these and various other TED Talk videos to get better. Keep exploring new sales trends and technologies to improve your sales performance. Using a reporting tool, measure your sales performance for finding and filling the gaps that hold you back from fulfilling your sales target. Salesmate is one of the best CRM software that offers sales reports and many other features that can take you closer to your sale goals.