15 TED Talks For Every Salesman in 2022

I would like to start this article with a little confession: I’m the kind of person that prefers watching movies and TV shows to reading books.

Don’t get me wrong, I love reading. But when it comes to understanding, I simply choose something that has less waffling and doesn’t make me fall asleep.

That’s why I love TED Talks. Especially Sales TED Talks. It’s entertaining, not tiring and very useful.

It’s not a secret, that to be a professional or just a many-sides person, you need to deepen your knowledge. The world moves and we should move with it.

If you don’t keep up with all the changes and trends in 2022, you can find yourself smiling and nodding while in fact ‘what on earth are they talking and laughing about?’ is in your head.

To avoid these situations, I picked up the 15 best sales TED Talks that will not only develop your sales skills and let you understand your customers better but also make you see the world, people, and in particular yourself in a different way.

Otherwise, how can you sell something in 2022 if you are stocked in the past?

Best Sales TED Talks to train your sales skills

This section of purely sales TED talks provides current sales techniques that will change your approach to the job. You will learn how to add value to your business, develop a relationship with your clients, and make them happy by giving them what they want. I tried to collect the best sales TED talks. I hope you will find it useful.

1. Simon Sinek – How great leaders inspire action.

Why is Apple so much more innovative than its competition? Even though they have the same access to the same talent, the same consultants, the same media. So what is it at play here?

In the example of Apple, Martin Luther King, and Wright Brothers he shows how all the great inspiring leaders and organizations work, act, and communicate. Based on his discovery, he created «The Golden Circle» – the world’s simplest idea that probably will change your view on how the world works. Why? How? What?

This strategy will help you improve your sales skills. People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.
I’m pretty sure you can answer the «what» question, and if you are good enough you can tell how you do it. But do you know why?

Without «Why» your product or service doesn’t have any value. It’s just another computer, sneakers, or anything else you are trying to sell. «Why» makes your product stand out from other similar ones.

Once you watch this video, you will start thinking the way Apple, Martin Luther King, and other inspiring leaders do, the complete opposite to everyone else.

 

2. Malcolm Gladwell – Choice, happiness, and spaghetti sauce.

«There is no perfect Pepsi, there are perfect Pepsis» – Howard Moskowitz, a person we should be thankful for reinventing spaghetti sauce and the whole food industry.

Malcolm explains the whole revolution that Howard Moskowitz made and the importance of horizontal segmentation: there is no good or bad product, there is no perfect product or imperfect product, there are only different kinds of products that suit different kinds of people.

He highlights that people can’t always explain what they want, deep down.

Understanding this concept will save you time and power, completely change your mind on your customers’ desires and make you and your clients happy.

 

3. Vanessa Van Edwards – You are contagious.

When you see someone what part of the body do you look at first?
Can we catch emotions? Do we catch emotions on the phone?

As we all know, the connection with your clients is one of the things that determine the deal outcome. Understanding how our brain adapts emotions will let you be 100 steps ahead of your competitors.

As humans, we are constantly sending and decoding body language signals. We also do it emotionally and chemically. That means we are contagious in 3 different ways: nonverbally, verbally, and emotionally.

What if I say that you can use carefully chosen gestures, words, and emotions to increase your chances to become more likable by the customers?

Moreover, in this video, you will find examples of conversation starters that could spark or create some kind of excitement and make you more memorable.

Since people can catch emotions on the phone and verbally trigger dopamine – the neurotransmitter we produce when we feel pleasure, why not use it for your benefit?

Analyzing your phone calls with your clients will let you find out the mistakes you make while speaking and develop your communication strategy.

How can you do it?

Volume patterns: in really good conversations the volume goes up, in really bad conversations it goes down.

The brain tends to look for hits, not misses.
“Been busy lately?” doesn’t mean “Yeah, I’m so understanding and sensual, buy something from me”.

Over against, their brain immediately looks for all the hits of “been busy”. They think of all the negative things that have happened: the stress, the busyness.

Analyzing the words you choose will allow you to bring some positive into the conversation and be more memorable and likable by the client.

Call Recordings is a great way to analyze your conversations with customers.

Monitoring calls leads to a better customer experience. Keep track of important calls and conduct proper training with the call recording application.

4. Mace Horoff – If you’ve had sex, you know how to sell.

It’s just a matter of motivation.

Think back to the last time you wanted to have sex.
If you can entice that person to be intimate with you then you can sell.

In this video, Mace is comparing sales to sex and giving a lot of great advice: «When it comes to sex and romance that things are better if we slow it down. Salespeople need to do the same thing.»

Thanks to this funny TED talk it will be easier for you to build a sales strategy.

If you want to be a great salesperson then think like a great lover.

5. Patrick Renvoise – Is there a Buy Button inside the brain.

We don’t have a single self brain, we have three selves brain: the new brain, the middle brain, and the reptilian brain.

People buy using the reptilian brain. Understanding how it works will let you develop your approach to customers.

Patrick speaks about what stimulates the reptilian brain, how companies use it in advertising, and how to apply it to life itself.

As an example, Patrick mentions the problem with the urinals at Amsterdam airport. They had a lot of leaks. To solve it they used one of the stimuli of the reptilian brain – vision. So they printed a fly in the middle of the urinal which helped man be better at aiming. As a result, they reported an 80 percent decrease in spillage.

Following Patrick’s 6 stimuli pattern will help you to find your customers’ buy button.

Furthermore, as this sales TED talk is addressed to the customer, you will see this process from their perspective.

Best Sales TED Talks on how people work.

This section includes the best psychology TED talks that will make you understand people a bit more.
Without understanding your clients, their needs and desires, their pains and gains, what do they think and feel, hear and see, say and do, you will not be able to succeed at work.

1. Rachel Botsman – We’ve stopped trusting institutions and started trusting strangers.

Who do we trust?
Rachel defines trust and explains the trust revolution that happened recently.

She focuses on how technology is transforming the social glue of society, trust between people.

While we used to place our trust in institutions like governments and banks, today we increasingly rely on others, often strangers, on platforms like Airbnb and Uber.

Watch this trust TED talk to make your business more transparent, inclusive, and accountable.

Remember, without trust, there are no deals.

 

2. Lera Boroditsky – How language shapes the way we think.

This TED talk is very useful for people that work in an international company or have many clients from abroad.

This language TED talk shares examples of how different languages impact the way we orient, count, describe, discriminate the colors and pay attention to things.

Understanding the differences will help you better understand your international customers and make it easier to reach them.

 

3. Sheena Lyengar – How to make choosing easier.

Do you know how many choices you make on a typical day?

Every person makes on average about 70 choices.

That’s a lot!

Some of them are smaller, like choosing what to wear. Some of them are bigger, like choosing a job.

But the more choices we make, the more our brain is getting overloaded.

Sheena speaks about overchoice and how does it influence buying. She provides 4 techniques that will help you make choosing easier for the customers and help to avoid consequences of choice overload problem.

Check if your business doesn’t make people overloaded and if so, find out the way to solve it below.

 

Best Sales TED Talks on how to deal with a sales job

This section includes TED talks about stress, emotions, rejection, professionalism, motivation, and success.
You will learn how to achieve success, what mistakes people make when they want to help, and how your body gets ready for challenges with the help of stress. I’m sure you will not regret watching these videos.

1. Kelly McGonigal – How to make stress your friend.

Attention! This TED Talk about stress can save your life!

Everyone knows that the job of a salesperson is not easy. Working with people can be stressful.

Increasing churn rate, losing clients to competitors, difficult prospects, pressure from management.

Stress makes your heart pound, your breathing quicken, and your forehead sweat.
But does it harm you?

You have to watch this video. It will drastically change your mind about stress.

 

2. Eddie Obeng – Smart failure for a fast-changing world.

The rules on how the world works have changed. Eddie is trying to explain what happened to us at midnight 15 years ago while we were asleep.

Something or someone switched all the rules around, so the way to successfully run a business has been deleted.

People didn’t notice that, so they are still trying to respond rationally to a world which they understand and recognize, but which no longer exists.

He highlights the important changes you need to understand to be better at your job.

 

3. Ernesto Sirolli – Want to help someone? Shut up and listen!

A good salesman doesn’t sell the product but sells the solution to the problem the customer has. How is it different from helping?

Ernesto speaks about common mistakes that people do while helping, and shows how real help should look like.

Very often salespeople talk too much and don’t listen to the prospects. They forget that their reality may be very far away from the clients’ reality.

Without listening you will never understand customers’ pain, never see the challenges you need to face, and never be able to help.

And if you are not helpful, will someone make a deal with you?

 

4. Angela Lee Duckworth – Grit: The power of passion and perseverance.

Do you know what determines success?

While working as a school teacher Angela was wondering what makes some students doing well in a test, and others not. She realized that IQ wasn’t a playing card here.

After deeper research, she found out that it’s not the ability to learn quickly and easily, social intelligence, good looks, or physical health. There is something else that makes you succeed in life.

So maybe then we can learn how to be successful?

This TED talk will give you motivation and let you focus on developing a small but extremely important characteristic, responsible for success.

 

5. Shonda Rhimes – My year of saying yes to everything.

Most people who love their job had those moments when they are fully focused on work. At some point, it’s easy to drown in it. Then you may not notice how life passes by you.

At such moments, when you are hard at work when you are deep in it, there is no other feeling. And this feeling becomes you.

Shonda has a name for it: The hum. The hum is a drug, the hum is music, the hum is God’s whisper in the ear.

If you love your job, you know how the hum feels like.

But what if you loved your job but you lost your hum? What are you now?

In the moving talk, join Shonda on a journey through her “year of yes” and find out how she got her hum back.

I think it’s one of the most inspirational ted talks. Wanna play?

 

6. Richard St. John – 8 secrets of success.

Why do people succeed? Is it because they’re smart or just lucky?

Richard used the opportunity of being surrounded by successful people to make research and answer this question.

In this 3 minutes video, he names 8 things that lead to success.

 

7. Ivan Joseph – The skill of self-confidence.

Without self-confidence, we are useless as salespeople. When you lose sight or belief in yourself you are doomed to failure.

How can you make someone believe in you and your product if you don’t believe in yourself?

Ivan defines self-confidence and shows a couple of ways of training this skill.

Let’s build it together!