The remote workspace has become a familiar place to many since the beginning of the pandemic, and although the comfort of working from a sofa, a kitchen table, or nook has its benefits, the boundaries between work, play, and relaxation can become blurred.
For sales teams, it is important to stay motivated and engaged when carrying out the sales process steps. Each cold call is an opportunity for a sales development representative to build a relationship. An individual must be able to deliver a concise message including only the most relevant information to be successful, as well as have a strong ability to critically think throughout the sales process steps.
However, when a sales development representative is unfocused on a cold call, it is apparent on the other end of the phone. Improving mental function with brain activity is one of the best ways to increase chances of success in sales, especially in a remote workspace with many distractions. Research showcases how increasing brain activity through “mindfulness” can enhance working from home, develop greater empathy for their prospects, and better connect with their work and values.
Best Mindfulness Practices When Working from Home
The juxtaposition of living and working from the same place can be difficult for sales teams to maximize their output. This environment creates a challenge for sales development representatives to compartmentalize the relaxation of being home and the fast-paced nature of working in sales.
Studies suggest that meditation may increase the density of gray matter in the medulla oblongata in the brain stem, which translates to better control over largely automatic processes. This would be consistent with self-reports of decreased arousal when reacting to aversive situations. For sales development representatives, facing rejection is inevitable, making it all the more important to develop and practice resilience.
In the context of remote work, it might feel difficult to carve out time to dedicate towards experimental forms of meditation. However, research shows that even brief intervals, even as little as 5, improves executive attention and the ability to sequence information with increased ease in people who were considered novices to meditation. Meditation could take various forms, including practicing positive thoughts, breathwork, or yoga.
Mindfulness practices also do not have to include meditation at all. Rather, being mindful is about observing one’s thoughts and feelings about the present moment without judgment. This might include taking a walk, washing the dishes, or doing nothing. Mindfulness can be challenging under times of stress, yet those stressful moments are when the brain activity is crucial.
How Does a Sales Development Representative Improve with Mindfulness
Mindfulness and meditation practices can allow sales teams to improve in different areas of the sales process steps, including slower reactions for improved critical thinking, enhanced listening skills, stronger empathy for the prospect’s needs, and mental resilience after rejection
You may have heard empathy in terms of “putting yourself in someone else’s shoes”. While this is part of practicing empathy, we must understand ourselves before we can understand others. By practicing mindfulness, we can develop self-awareness, and therefore develop better connections with others (Decety & Jackson, 2004). For sales development representatives, this translates to more relationships built and higher sales success.
Emotional intelligence and critical thinking are just a few of the skills that we can enhance through mindfulness practices. The ways in which the universal understanding of work has shifted calls for a change in how the sales development representative tackles the day-to-day. The fusion of the workspace with home has altered the pacing of the professional world, dictating the need for a novel approach to each minute of the workday, including time dedicated to mindfulness practices.
Since the immediate work environment has been affected recently, the time spent redirecting thought processes and re-centering oneself becomes increasingly valuable. The practice of traditional meditation and other forms of mindfulness practices, in the smallest of intervals, has the potential to enrich sales development representative’s work and their workplace interactions. Because of its long-term effects, time dedicated to this practice is hardly time wasted.
Moreover, in exercising the ability to meditate, one can more freely develop their meaning of work and home and decide with more intent where the two worlds can overlap. Oftentimes, coming back to oneself can be a challenge, though the rewards of sustained mindfulness only compound as the practice of meditation becomes more seamless.
References
Brief Mindfulness Meditation Improves Attention in Novices https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2018.00315/full
Meditation and Neuroplasticity: Using Mindfulness to Change the Brain → https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=DlnH-qadA08C&oi=fnd&pg=PA185&dq=meditation+and+neuroplasticity&ots=2TdOYU0_NP&sig=42XRygmM3HHljpvBU7NXDkQLAsA#v=onepage&q&f=false
Decety, J., & Jackson, P. L. (2004). The functional architecture of human empathy. Behavioral and cognitive neuroscience reviews, 3(2), 71-100.
