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The following post is an excerpt from Ambition's brand-new eBook, 25 Epic Videos to Inspire Your Sales Force.
These days, everyone is looking for new, inventive ways to fire up their millennial sales reps. So today, as part of a two-part series this week, we're unveiling 5 more epic YouTube videos that will inspire your Millennial sales team.
5 Videos to Motivate Millennial Sales Pros
As with our previous posts, we're embedding each YouTube video in this post and attaching an accompanying writeup explaining its applicability to the sales profession.
We hope you enjoy these videos and check out our new eBook - free to download from the Ambition Academy. Cheers!
1. Kare Anderson - Be an Opportunity Maker
If you manage a bunch of twenty-somethings, well, you’re in luck. Because this TedTalk from Kare Anderson is tailor-made for Millennial sales professionals.
The thesis of Kare’s presentation starts with a single, existential truth:
In our professional capacity and in our personal relationships, every human being seeks the same thing from our peers: attention and recognition.
Not exactly earth-shattering, right? In all likelihood, you’re in sales because you’re the type of person who
a) craves attention and recognition to an even higher degree than the average person, and,
b) possesses the self-awareness to pursue a career in the perfect professional field for someone with those tendencies.
Sound right? Good. Because Kare Anderson is here to remind you not to follow the first instinct you always have in your quest to earn the attention, trust and respect you so crave - talking about yourself.
Follow any great sales mind of today - John Barrows, Matt Heinz, etc. - and you’ll notice a common thread amongst their tactics and strategies: Demonstrate a desire to help, a capacity for listening and the ability to provide actionable remedies to your prospects. First and foremost. Always and forever.
What comes last? Talking about yourself. If you want people to never return your sales calls, never answer your cold emails and never take your sales pitches seriously, make the content of your communication all about you, your company and your product/service.
If you want success in sales, you have to make it about the prospect. Going deeper, you have to make it about you, the prospect and the service you provide working together to solve their most pressing problems and enabling them to realize their most important aspirations. It’s that simple.
Or, as Kare puts it in her brilliantly straightforward title, “Be an Opportunity Maker.”
With the caveat that, in a vacuum, the product/service you’re offering is not an opportunity. What percentage of working single mothers earning $35,000 a year will return a voicemail about an “opportunity to buy a timeshare?”
At the end of the day, it’s not about you, it’s about the person on the other end of the line. The products or services you offer will never be as dynamic as your list of potential clients.
This video is a resounding reminder of that reality - and it will stick with you and your sales team for many years to come.
2. Frank Underwood - Lessons in Ruthlessness
There are a lot of villainous terms you can use to describe Kevin Spacey’s amazingly compelling lead character in House of Cards: Corrupt. Deceitful. Treacherous. Murderous. Downright evil.
And while we can’t condone encouraging your sales reps to use every possible tactic - no matter how craven or amoral - to successfully complete their conquest for greatness, we absolutely will condone encouraging them to adopt the cockiness, cunning and peerless communication prowess of Frank Underwood in this video.
Presented without context, this compilation of pithy Underwood quotes requires zero knowledge of who he is, why he is doing what he’s doing, or, for that matter, any familiarity to House of Cards.
The video opens with the only thing you need to know: “Frank Underwood has a ruthless commitment to winning.”
Let’s be real. In the sales world, “Rah-rah” speeches and “feel-good” phrases only goes so far in terms of inspiration. Sometimes, in sales, it’s better to let your sales team get pumped up by some choice words from the bad guy.
3. Ellen Degeneres - Tulane Commencement Speech
Famed comedian and talk show host Ellen Degeneres’s commencement speech to the 2009 graduating class of Tulane University (its Hurricane Katrina class) is a tour de force in combining humor, empathy, vulnerability and personal experience to give a 10 minute carpe diem message to the viewing audience.
Before we dive into the contents of Ellen’s speech, it bears noting that, like sales professionals, comedians make a living off one thing: Excelling as communicators.
In many ways, being a sales professional bears much in common with being a comedian on stage. There’s the indifferent, at times downright hostile audience. There’s the expectation to be entertained and to see value (in either ROI or laughs) from you, the professional.
Then there’s the shared commonalities of those who excel in both businesses - by captivating audiences en masse, letting people in and getting them to do likewise, using expert word choice, timing and cadence to deliver your message with maximum impact.
And, last but not least, remarkable resolve, commitment to craft and ability to overcome adversity.
It’s that last shared trait that Ellen touches upon most poignantly in her speech. She became famous by making people laugh.
But she didn’t become Ellen until she took a step beyond that, became true about who she was to the general public and persevered against adversity by remembering why she got into the business in the first place.
As a sales professional, you’re here to help others. Remember those you’ve served, open up with them and, if the need arises, don’t be afraid to go to them to help you overcome your toughest moments of adversity.
4. Kerri Strug - Documentary from the 1996 Olympics
You have two types of people on your sales team:
- Those old enough to remember watching the U.S. women’s gymnastics team in the 1996 Olympics.
- Those who have no idea who Keri Strug is or what she accomplished, against all odds, one fateful night in Atlanta.
The good news is that, for both parties, this 13 minute documentary of Keri Strug’s comeback from injury to nail the final vault attempt and secure a gold medal will be one of the most inspiring things they watch all year.
For the vast majority of us -- who well remember the moment but haven’t watched the actual footage in years -- the 12-minute mark of this video will serve as a stirring, goosebumps-inducing reminder of the greatness, determination and sheer heart Strug exhibited as the entire world watched on.
In this video, you get the ultimate depiction of triumph over adversity -- on the biggest stage imaginable. Perfect for inspiring a Sales Force on a dreary morning.
Overwrought by recent defeats and adversity? Watch this video and realize how miniscule, how eminently conquerable the antipathy from your last failed close truly is. Now, go out and stick the landing.
5. The XX - Intro (Seamless Edit)
The last two clips on this list are both looped audio tracks designed to enter you into the zone for a long-term bout of productivity.
The first of those tracks is this 2.5 hour cut of “Intro” by the XX, the only modern pop song to make the list.
There are no lyrics to speak of. No peaks or valleys. No verses or choruses. Just a continuous sonic wave that, without overpowering the listener, registers an absolute 10 on the intensity scale.
In the 5 years since its release, I’m amazed at the number of video clips I’ve come across that have used this song as the backing track, for purposes of ramping up the intensity of the film’s footage.
Everyone from HBO executives to the National Hockey League to amateur YouTubers have used the XX to build intensity, create the aura of inevitability and greatness, and signify the arrival of a high-stakes, pivotal point in their film’s subject matter.
In other words, this is the type of music you want soundtracking your sales force’s real-life conquest to take over the world.
Put this on in your sales bullpen and it’ll make even the most mundane sales call feel like the biggest moment of your rep’s life.
Where to Find More YouTube Sales Inspiration
Our 25 Epic YouTube Videos to Inspire Your Sales Force eBook has everything you need to keep your team fired up for the next decade.
Download your free copy of the eBook and get your very own YouTube library of motivational sales videos. And for questions and comments, please feel free to comment below. Thanks and best of luck to your sales force moving forward!
Ambition: Hold Reps Accountable to Sales Performance
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Modern sales leaders use Ambition to enhance sales performance insights and run supercharged sales reports, scorecards, contests, and TVs via drag-and-drop interface.
Ambition is endorsed by Harvard Business Review and AA-ISP (the Global Inside Sales Organization). Hear more from business leaders who use Ambition in their organization.
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