4 Ways Meditation Helps Salespeople

Meditation is a taboo topic in sales. No one likes to admit that they need a break, a chance to really center themselves. Salespeople need meditation more than most people, given how stressful a career in sales can be. Centering yourself keeps your mind from scattering in different directions, allowing you to truly focus.

A lack of focus is the biggest hurdle keeping reps from hitting their numbers.  Meditation allows you to direct your mental and emotional energy towards your goals, instead of distracting you from accomplishing them. Like all good things, it takes time and practice to make meditation work for you.

The mental and emotional health benefits of meditation directly correlate to being productive and handling stress on the job - which is essential for anyone in sales. If you’ve had a quota, you know what stress is. Dedicating part of your day to quieting your mind and centering yourself will create surplus benefits in other areas of your life, helping you sell more as a result.

1. Focus

Meditation allows one to “Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water” as Bruce Lee put it. This changes your perspective for the better, letting you see situations more clearly. It also improves your concentration, training your brain to focus and ignore distractions.

Full concentration is the key to completing the daily challenges salespeople encounter. From planning your day to negotiating a contract, you can't afford distractions if you want to operate at peak performance. Everything you do impacts the rest of your responsibilities. If one thing is out of balance, your entire day will be off. 

Learning to focus your attention benefits your customers too. Meditation helps active listening, one of the most important skills in sales. If you find yourself forgetting meeting details, or losing track of what your prospect is really looking for, meditation will help. You’ll understand your customer more deeply by focusing on what they really mean when they speak. Harnessing your complete focus and attention in social situations is a superpower for salespeople.

2. Kick Back and Relax

How do you relax on the path to sales success? It sounds contradictory, but relaxation is extremely important for clearing your mind of daily stressors.

Many people go to work with their mind cluttered with personal problems, slowing them down and wasting their energy. Meditation allows your mind to release stressful thoughts and your body to release built-up tension. Meditative relaxation off the job will make your more productive on the clock, making you more productive and improving your decision making abilities.

Controlled breathing has been shown to reduce stress and increase alertness. When you take slow, steady breaths, your brain receives the message that all is well, explains Dr. Brown. It also helps you feel more calm and collected before sales meetings, which is important because how you communicate in sales is just as important as what you communicate.

3. Self Awareness

Being successful in sales is about more than persistence and hitting quotas. Much of success in sales stems from a person’s emotional intelligence and ability to show empathy. Empathizing with your customers puts you in their shoes, giving you a better perspective into why they’d want your product.

According to Psychology Today, emotional intelligence is the ability to identify and manage your own emotions and the emotions of others. Emotional intelligence and empathy go hand in hand. Knowing this, it should be clear why having emotional intelligence would be extremely important in sales. Being able to identify with your customer’s emotions will make it easier to also realize how to approach them and identify what kinds of things they will respond better to.

4. Think About It

Meditation helps you gain insight into situations while improving blood flow and oxygen intake - aiding your decision making process. This is because your reaction time will be slowed, allowing you to come up with more ideas and better questions. Slowing down your reaction time will also allow time for reflection and more thoughtful responses. Insightfulness will allow you to think more strategically and integrate all of your knowledge in your final decision.

A recent study  has also shown that meditation also improves overall brain function. In this study, participants with mild forms of cognitive impairment practiced meditation. After eight weeks, results showed that the part of their brain associated with memory improved.

Along with memory, meditation improves the brain in other ways. Many studies conducted at Carnegie Mellon University and Harvard University have shown that regular meditation actually reduces stress and improves immune function. All of these benefits accumulate to make you a healthier, more productive sales rep. And all it takes is 20 minutes a day.

Check out these meditation tips to start increasing sales today.