7 Sales Talks to Maximize Your Team's Productivity

Ankur Srivastava

By Ankur Srivastava, CEO of Swarmsales

Great sales skills don’t just materialize from the ether. Much of the best advice – particularly as it relates to maximizing the efforts of sales teams – is passed on verbally from knowledgeable experts. Professional-oriented lectures are a prime source for such information. Here are seven such talks that I found useful, along with a look at the lessons they teach, and how those lessons might improve productivity for B2B sales pros.

Kelly McGonigal — Dealing With Stress: In her 2013 talk, “How to Make Stress Your Friend,” psychologist Kelly McGonigal tackles a burden that has sapped the productivity of many a salesperson: stress. Far from urging the complete removal of stress to boost productivity, though, McGonigal instead argues that embracing stress is the path to success.

“Can changing how you think about stress make you happier? Here the science says ‘yes.’ When you change your mind about stress, you can change your body’s response to stress.”

In short, McGonigal teaches that stress isn’t as bad as most have been taught to believe, and with some changes in mindset, individuals can turn stress into a powerful motivator. This is great news for sales pros, as the nature of enterprise sales necessitates stressful situations. Learning to conquer that stress grants a distinct advantage for job performance and productivity.

Amy Cuddy — Improving Your Body Language: How important is body language as it relates to success? Social psychologist Amy Cuddy believes it’s a crucial component, and in her 2013 talk, “Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are,” she delves into how something as simple as the way a person stands can change how confident they feel, among other factors.

“Our nonverbals govern how other people think and feel about us. But, do our nonverbals govern how we think and feel about ourselves?”

To this question, Cuddy believes the answer is “yes,” citing the example of how being forced to smile can make an individual feel happier. Being able to convey strength and self-assuredness goes a long way in the world of sales, where negotiating and …

… gaining the trust of clients is part and parcel of the job.

Celeste Headlee — Getting Better at Talking: Having a silver tongue is almost a required trait for top sales professionals. From trying to find out what a client needs to closing a deal, few other skills come into play quite like being able to have a great conversation. In 2016, radio host Celeste Headlee provided tips for doing exactly that, courtesy of her presentation, “10 Ways to Have Better Conversations.”

“Is there any 21st century skill more important than being able to sustain coherent, confident conversation?”

For those that want to improve their skills, Headlee believes a combination of knowing when and how to talk, along with when and how to listen, form the bedrock of having discussions that matter. Toss in some honesty, brevity and clarity, she says, and the road to conversing better becomes that much clearer.

David Grady — Avoiding Bad Meetings: While it might not be practical for sales pros to only attend the meetings they want, David Grady, in his 2014 talk, “How to Save the World (or At Least Yourself) From Bad Meetings,” advocates employing a few strategies to combat meetings that waste time.

“Everyday, we allow our co-workers to steal from us. And I’m talking about something far more valuable than office furniture — I’m talking about time.”

Instead of accepting every meeting request mindlessly, he argues, it might be more prudent to suss out the objectives behind a meeting and find out if there’s an alternative to having said meeting — a great benefit in a profession where time is of the essence.

Eddie Obeng — Keeping Pace With Change: If there’s one constant in the world, it’s the fact that it continues to change. According to Eddie Obeng, the trick is to understand and adapt to changes as they come. His 2012 talk, “Smart Failure for a Fast-Changing World,” highlights three changes the 21st century has introduced and advocates for a concept of “smart failure” to achieve greater productivity.

“They switched all the rules around. So, the way to successfully run a business, an organization, or even a country has been deleted, flipped. It’s a completely …

… new set of rules in operation.”

Being able to deal with a landscape in flux, particularly where technological advances and new concepts like freelance sales are concerned, would behoove any professional looking to get ahead.

Angela Lee Duckworth — Embracing Determination: There are challenges on the road to success. Angela Duckworth, in her 2013 talk, “Grit: The Power Of Passion & Perseverance,” states that soldiering through these challenges can help individuals become more productive.

“What if doing well in school and in life depends on much more than your ability to learn quickly and easily?”

Her conclusion is that grit can help individuals conquer challenges that intelligence alone cannot. For sales pros, learning to keep their noses to the grindstone may well be the deciding in getting the job done.

Tom Wujec — Respecting the Process: Even complicated problems have solutions. In a 2013 talk, “Got a Wicked Problem? First Tell Me How You Make Toast,” Tom Wujec introduces audiences to the concept of using collaborative visualization to find these solutions.

“What’s interesting is that after visualizing the entire business, systems upon systems, they reclaimed $50 million in revenue, and they moved from a D-rating to an A-rating.”

Being able to break a complex challenge into smaller parts and formulate a solution is a benefit that can help salespeople and teams in navigating the hurdles of the B2B world and exceeding their goals with greater consistency.

What speaker has inspired you? Tell me in the comments, and for more on sales excellence, check out my previous list of the five habits of wildly successful salespeople. 

Ankur Srivastava is the CEO and co-founder of SwarmSales, a trusted global platform for targeted enterprise sales.