Mark Hunter's Blog, page 35

Welcome to Mornings With Mark!

Welcome to Mornings with Mark. What is it? Well, it’s me in the morning, just sharing some ideas and thoughts with you. Now you know me as Mark Hunter, the Sales Hunter. You know that I’m always talking about sales, but Mornings with Mark is not just about sales. In fact, I won’t be going down the sales path really all that much. I’ll talk about sales, but more about leadership and life – you and me.

So, what is this series? It’s me sharing a video of what I’m up to, and more importantly, how you can learn from me. I’ll share stories from my past and lessons learned. I’ll expound upon things that I’ve written in my books. And I’m going to share things that will be in my upcoming books. It’s just going to be about you and me having a conversation, like we were sitting down chatting over a cup of coffee.

If you think about the morning, that’s what you’re king of getting your head together. It’s when you’re really trying to figure out what you want to do for the day. What’s the plan? I’m in the same boat. Now people look at me, send notes and emails saying, “Mark, how do you do this? How do you do this?” Yeah, okay, I’ll share some of that, but you know what? We go through life together. We travel through life together. We’re on a journey. Success is not a destination; success is a journey. What I’m trying to do is make my journey, my success journey, the best I can. I want that to be the same for you. I want you to be able to enjoy success.

Now let’s stop and take a step back for just a moment, because I don’t think I’ve always been in this situation, and I don’t think you’ve always been in this situation. But what is it? It’s about evolving. It’s about building on every experience that we’ve had along the way. I think back over the years at the number of people who have impacted me. They impacted me when I knew they were impacting me; however, more importantly, they impacted me when I did not realize they were impacting me. You see, I didn’t necessarily realize it for some of these people for many years to come. I’m only now realizing the impact that people have had on me.

Think about that in your own life. Who are the people who have impacted you? And more importantly, who are the people who impacted you years ago, that you didn’t realize were impacting you, but now you do? It’s my goal to hopefully be one of those people that impacts you.

I’m Mark Hunter, the Sales Hunter. This is Mornings with Mark. I hope you sign up to check it out every Friday morning as I share new insights.

 

Copyright 2020, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter” Sales Motivation Blog.  Mark Hunter is the author of A Mind for Sales and High-Profit Prospecting: Powerful Strategies to Find the Best Leads and Drive Breakthrough Sales Results.

 

Sales Logic Replay

Meridith Elliott Powell: Alright, welcome to Sales Logic. The show where we dive into the strategies we cover the subjects we get specific on the topics you need to make sales easy, effective, and well, logical. I’m Meridith Elliott Powell, and I am here with my cohost-

Mark Hunter: Mark Hunter, the Sales Hunter, good afternoon, Meridith.

Meridith Elliott Powell: Good afternoon. We got a good show today. What, tell us a little bit about some things that we’re going to cover Mark.

Mark Hunter: Well, we’re going to be talking about this whole virtual selling thing. We’ve got a long question that came in about this great topic. We got a lightening round and man, it’s kind of a virtual world we live in, but we’ll get through it and you know what? We’re learning a lot.

Meridith Elliott Powell: We are so basically for anybody who’s new, this is the way that the show works. Every single week, we cover three things. Number one is we cover a viewer question. That’s right. This is your show. You get to send in. All you have to do is go to saleslogicpodcast.com or just post a question. From there we go into the topic of the day, whatever sales topic that we’re going to cover. And you are going to leave here with a lightning round. It’s your return on investment, the strategies, the steps, the things that you need to do to truly get return on investment. So, Mark, should I read this long question? Are we ready to dive into it?

Mark Hunter: I think you should go ahead and read that long question, because it’s good. It’s a good one. And it’s so real. It’s still real. And it’s so emotion filled because as you listen to the question, you’re going to hear yourself. You’re gonna hear yourself in it. Fire away.

Meridith Elliott Powell: All right. So I, this comes anonymously, but it’s a great question. Um, from, from one of our viewers, my husband, who is a manufacturer’s rep, has been tremendously impacted since March, by this virus – COVID. He depends on travel to make his living. He covers five states, and he also depends on product availability.

He’s 90 to 120 days out for some of his products due to China, not still not being fully ramped up. He does WebEx, Zoom, and daily telephone calls that he starts at 8:30AM, until 5:30PM. Right now, his team and his clients are screaming, “uncle.” We need a break from webinars learning and so much video time.

We have to get our arms around this. How do I keep in front of my customers? How do I keep my team motivated? They are suffering from information overload, video burnout, and a Zoom fatigue.

What a great question!

Mark Hunter: Welcome to 2020: the year of unknown reality. Yes. Hey, you know what? We are all suffering from this, so here’s what I’m doing.

I’m just picking up the telephone and having a phone call conversation. It’s been interesting, but this morning I had an almost a two-hour conversation with an individual. It was on the telephone and you know what? It was great. I had my earbuds in, so I was able to kind of walk around my office and, I sense he was working from home and doing the same thing.

No screen time. No worries. Oh, and I’m barefoot in shorts. Let’s go back to the telephone. That’s really what I’m telling people.

Meridith Elliott Powell: I think also you’ve got learn to space yourself. Um, it’s not realistic to be on video from 8:30 to 5:30. And I know you can say I’ve, you know, I’ve got to do this, but I think Mark makes a great point is really think about what calls have to be video and which ones don’t.

If you control the engagement – I mean, Mark and I were set to talk a couple of weeks ago and he said Zoom or telephone? I said, telephone, because I can’t turn that video on one more time. I don’t want to sit at my desk one more day. So control what you can do. You also know to schedule yourself mini breaks, just like you would do in the office, you know?

Well, back when we were on the road doing sales calls, you’d be doing, driving from one place to another. However, you’re going to be more effective as a salesperson if every hour, hour and a half, you just take a mini break. I mean, uh, my husband always laughed at me because what I do is I get up and I work for a couple of hours and then I’ll run downstairs to our home gym and I might get on the rower for 15 minutes or I’ll go outside and take a 20 minute walk. And then I come back in, but I take these little mini exercise breaks all day long. And I think you need to do the same thing, do something right that allows you to put a little bit of energy back into yourself in order to be able to keep it going.

Mark Hunter: Yeah, I’ll add a couple things to that. Just because you have one hour set aside for a Zoom call or what WebEx does not mean it needs to take an hour. I’ve been routinely now taking it may be an hour block, but I’m saying this is going to be done in 45 minutes. Just to give myself so that extra 15-minute break, just to decompress and do something. I think one of the reasons we’re getting this overload of screen time is because we’re just staring at this tiny little doc. We’re staring at the lens and it’s creeping us out.

But again, I think it comes back to just saying what calls have to be on video. Because here’s the other thing I’m seeing, man. Please. Oh, mind if I share my I screen so I can show you warring charts? I was on a call yesterday. I have a board meeting tonight. It’s going to be a three-hour board meeting. There’ll be nine of us. And, the financial person’s gonna say they want to take the screen and we’re going to sit there and painfully go through the financials for the first six months of the year. And it’s like, really? Do I really have to do this? Why don’t you just email this to me? Let me take a look at it and let’s just have a conversation. Because what’s funny is up until about a year ago, we were very happy just doing telephone meetings. The board is all over the country, so we physically only get together once or twice a year. But for some reason, because we can do it on Zoom, everybody’s doing it on Zoom.

It’s time to stop Zoom. Period.

Meridith Elliott Powell: Well, I think, I mean, I think you’re making a really great point there, and that is, what can you do with people? I mean, really, as a sales professional, your clients are gonna love you. If you could send them things ahead of time that they could review so you don’t spend time on that call.

I think Mark’s making such a great point that every Zoom call, because Zoom defaults to an hour. I’m not sure what WebEx and GoToMeeting and, and all of those, um, do, I don’t know where their defaults are. But because it defaults for an hour, it gets put on your calendar for an hour and really ask yourself, does it need to be on there for that amount of time? I would say the other thing, and I haven’t really started to do this is really ask, do you have to be on there for the entire time?

I was doing a call a Friday of last week and I was part of the sales presentation. And I just let them know that I had back to back calls all day long. I would love to get on and share the part that they needed me to pitch, but, I didn’t need to sit through the hour and a half call. So I came on at the beginning. He put me first in the schedule and I was finished in 12 minutes. And I think the theme that we’re getting at is we have far more control over things than we realize we have over things.

You’re on all day long with clients. Well, as desperately as you want off video, and as desperately as you want some time back in your schedule, they want that too. So if you can be the sales professional who is stepping to the plate and taken a little bit of time with that, you’re not only gonna feel better and stress a whole lot less, but you’re also going to strangely get some competitive advantage with that.

So take a little bit of charge with your schedule.

Mark Hunter: I think that is well said. We should jump into the topic of the day, which is really framed around the question. How do you make virtual sales calls, virtual sales presentations? How do you make them compelling? Interesting. And what’s the tools that you use to move prospects to close? Mer jump in. What are your thoughts?

Meridith Elliott Powell: Yeah, you know, I think first of all, you’ve got to start with the basics, right? And the basics are, do you really understand how to use the technology? Do you know to look into the camera? Have you done everything you need to do ahead of time to make sure that your customer understands how to get onto the link and what they’re doing? But you have to be able to use the tools and you have to be able to appear competent when it comes to using the technology.

Mark Hunter: And along with that, please have the camera up at eye level. I mean, how many times have you been on a call where it the camera is clearly down, you know, on their laptop, on their desk. And there’s a reason why eye contact is so key. Put the camera in the correct place and have decent audio, you know, people get hung up on the backgrounds and you. I have completely different backgrounds here for those of you who are watching this live. And that’s fine, but I think we owe it to our viewers and customers, we owe it to people not to have a dysfunctional background.  I was observing a sales call and a salesperson was talking with a customer. The whole time behind the people are kind of on a side table, were two cats wandering around. I get it. It’s work from home. It’s BFH – buying from home and I understand you’re going to have a kid problem occasionally and a dog or something like that. But, you could probably put the cats on the floor. I don’t know – I mean, I’m just saying.

Meridith Elliott Powell: Yeah, I would agree with that. I also think that you have to really be paying attention to the non-verbal clues. I mean, one of the beauties of virtual is that we do have some of the advantages that we have there in person is that you can read the body language. So, you know, whether the customer wants to make some small talk and talk about the, you know, the picture of their kid playing football, but behind them or whether they would appreciate it, if you would just get to the point and stay focused on the problem at hand.

So you’ve got to really be reading those non-verbal clues and paying attention to what they want and adjusting your sales call, your virtual sales call to really work for them. This is something that drives me crazy. I am a get to the point person when I am on a sales call, I don’t want you to ask how I’m doing. I don’t want you to ask how my weekend was. I don’t want you to ask how COVID is impacting me. I mean, I’ll take one question at the front, you know, how are things going, Meridith? My answer is great, which is your signal to get to the point. Now, other people are completely, different.

If you asked my husband how he was doing, he was spend the next 25 minutes telling you everything about the fact that we did, we have done in the last week. We’re different and virtual still allows you to pick up those clues and you need to pay attention.

Mark Hunter: You hit on something there that we can’t forget. You still have all the in-person clues that you can pick up. Leverage them. Leverage them with your personality, by your tone, by your pitch, by words per minute. You can still put all of that voice inflection into it.

I think you said something good. You know, you ask somebody a question when they say great. That is, that is your signal. Uh, they really don’t want to go any deeper. But if they do, if they run off on something, then I’m naturally going to ask them a follow up question on that, because demonstrates that I care, but here’s the other piece.

Don’t allow the conversation to get so sidetracked and think that time is not of the essence. I think people working from home are more time-starved than ever. They’re more time starved. And they’re also finding themselves, this is what I find when I get somebody on a Zoom call. We have so many of these events happening every day that we’re literally going from this topic to this topic to this topic. You need to be prepared to take 20 seconds, to bring them up to speed as to what the expectation is for the meeting.

When I start off a Zoom call, I sit there and say, “Hey, this should only take about 30 – 35 minutes. Here’s what we’re going to cover. Good.” And make sure they buy in on that. And I have found that gives a lot of relief to people. Then say, “Okay, let’s go!”

Meridith Elliott Powell: Yeah, I think what you’re getting at really is that we need to probably plan the calls more than we’ve ever planned them before.

I’ve got 30 minutes and I know that I’m going to be talking to, um, you know, Susan Schumacher and Susan Schumacher is a relationship focused person. So I am going to get on there and ask Susan, you know, how her last bike ride was. And if her husband’s been able to go back into the office, you know yet, and what’s happening with her aging mother. But I’ve still got to keep that on track. I’ve still got to keep it moving in a way. And so I’ve got to plan it and allow for that and really think through how you’re going to get the call to where it needs to go in the allotted time.

Mark Hunter: And if there’s a next step meeting that has to be arranged, don’t sit there and say, “Oh, I’ll, I’ll send out a Zoom invite.”

No, no. Ask them. What method would you prefer we use for the next one? Don’t necessarily assume because you’re first all with the Zoom call or your first call was a WebEx that your next one is going to be. Because again, they may say, you know what, let’s just do it by way of telephone. That’s it?

Hey, we’re going to run out of time here pretty soon. And I know we got kind of a lightening round so we should kind of jump into that lightening round. But we should just remind people that if you’ve got questions. You jump out to saleslogicpodcast.com, leave us a question or go out to social media and just use #sales logic. It’s amazing, we find them! So let’s see the lightening round. Let me pull up that lightening round question here. There it is.  Of course it naturally fits with what we’ve been talking about. What are top tips for selling virtually? Go!

Meridith Elliott Powell: Number one is that you need to plan the call. You need to have an agenda. You need to know what you’re going to talk about, and you need to share that agenda with the caller. Do as much ahead of time as you can possibly do.

Mark Hunter: I’ll say make sure the camera’s at eye level and you have a good audio.

Meridith Elliott Powell: Yeah, and be a professional. You need to get dressed up just as if you were on a call. Be conscious of your background and make sure that you are presenting in the way that you want to present.

Mark Hunter: If you’re going to share your screen, make sure you’re set up to share your screen. Too many times what happens is when people go to share screen, there’s other stuff up on their screen that maybe you don’t want that prospect or customer to see. Make sure you have that set up in advance.

Meridith Elliott Powell: Mark, I know this is lightning round. I love that one, but I was having a screen shared with me and the person forgot they were sharing the screen and they started answering email. So, yes you’ve really got to be conscious of what’s in front of you. I’m also going to tell you to be mindful of the environment that your client is selling.

Is buying from is listening to you from, I mean, if they’re used to being in an office with a lot of people versus now they’re at home and they’re taking care of, um, of two kids and you know, their significant other is home trying to work too. Try to be mindful of what type of environment they’re in and adjust what you need to do for that.

Mark Hunter: Which means you need to create a little more flexibility in the schedule. Cause if they say they need to take care of something, it’s okay. Excuse them. Let them take care of it. Quick piece to wrap this thing up. Well, I’ll let you do one more after this and that is make sure, you know, what is the defined method with which you’re going to connect?

How many times have you say, Oh, there’s a meeting on your calendar. Well, is it, is it phone? Is it whatever? Make sure you’re clear in the invite, how you’re going to connect.

Meridith Elliott Powell: Yeah. And I would say too, I’d say really keep it tight. Really be able, people don’t want to stare at a screen and listen to you for a long time. So make a point and make a lots of opportunity for engagement where they get to speak. Don’t sell at them. Sell with them.

Mark Hunter: Well, with Meridith saying, keep it tight. I guess that means we should start wrapping up the show. So I’m going to sit here and say, thank you for listening to Sales Logic this week. If you like what you hear, subscribe, rate, and review the show on your favorite podcast app.

If something we’ve said has earned you a single dollar, consider telling a friend about our show. It’s how we grow to help you grow. I’m Mark Hunter.

Meridith Elliott Powell: And I’m Meridith Elliot Powell.

Mark Hunter: Remember when you sell with confidence and integrity,

Meridith Elliott Powell: uncertainty suddenly becomes your competitive advantage

Mark Hunter: and the sale becomes logical.

Meridith Elliott Powell: We’ll see you next week!

Copyright 2020, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter” Sales Motivation Blog.  Mark Hunter is the author of A Mind for Sales and High-Profit Prospecting: Powerful Strategies to Find the Best Leads and Drive Breakthrough Sales Results.

 

The Sales Hunter Announcement

Well, there comes a time when you need to make a change. My book, A Mind for Sales, has impacted more people than I could ever possibly imagine. The comments and notes I get back are absolutely over the top. As a result, it caused me and my team to ask ourselves how we can really communicate with all of you – the people I love and value so much, the community, the sales community – in a better way?

Let me share with you some changes that my team and I are making. I will walk you through each day of the week and how they will be laid out moving forward.

The first thing on MONDAY is a new piece that we like to call the Weekly Sales Kickoff. If you’re going to kick off Monday, you might as well have Weekly Sales Kickoff. This is a new piece that I’m putting out as part of the Sales Hunter University. You’re going to want to get signed up for it. In it, I put out a video every Monday that is wrapped around inspiration, training and application.

I understand that some of you might have already been receiving the Monday Message, because you’re in one of my programs. The Monday Message has now become the Weekly Sales Kickoff, but it’s better. You’re going to love it. I encourage you and your whole team to get signed up for it. It is going behind a paywall. It’s absolutely important.

Now, that’s on Monday, but that inspiration, training, and application is not just for Monday – it’s for the whole week. Also on Monday, you’ll see on my blog and social media (Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter) lots of talking, sharing and discussing A Mind for Sales. Again, because I want to make sure you get your week off to a good start. I’ll be sharing a lot of meat that didn’t get in the book, so tune in. You’ll see this by way of memes, videos, blogs, etc. Don’t miss it on Monday’s on social media!

Next up is TUESDAY which is a really cool day of the week, because it’s the day I get to cohost Sales Logic Podcast with Meridith Elliott Powell. This is a great podcast for anyone but especially those of you who are salespeople. We launched it back in February. I encourage you to subscribe to it on iTunes, Stitcher or however you subscribe to your podcasts. You can also catch us live on Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo, LinkedIn, etc. Make note that the podcast time each Tuesday varies, just because of our schedules; however, we do our darnedest to try to make sure we’re live every single Tuesday. You’ll want to capture that!

Midweek on WEDNESDAY will still contain the most meat of the week with a new blog and video. That content will continue to come to you, like we’ve been doing every Wednesday for the last 15 years. I don’t even remember exactly when we started, but I believe it was about 15 years ago.

THURSDAY contains a new piece to our blog and video which you’ll receive a link to so you can watch it. On Thursdays, you’ll also be able to read a transcription of the Sales Logic Podcast from the week before. If you don’t catch Sales Logic Podcast live on Tuesday, you can always go out to social media, YouTube, or catch it on the blog. That’s new on Thursdays.

FRIDAY will be an exciting day each week, as I bring you something brand new called Mornings with Mark. My team, and I really credit them for urging me, has been wanting me to do this for a long time. Finally, I’m starting it, and I want to really embrace it. I’ll admit I’ve been a little hesitant, because I just don’t like talking about myself. My team has told me, on and on, that I need to do this, because I get so many questions, comments, and feedback from people who genuinely share and pour their hearts out to me.  In turn, I want to share and pour my heart out to them – to you. So we’re calling that Mornings with Mark.

This is not about sales. It’s not about leadership. I call it just about life and the day-to-day that we all do. Mornings with Mark will be posted on YouTube every Friday morning. These videos will be shot in a very casual setting with my iPhone, no studio, no editing – just raw me sharing life with you. I’ll share stories from people over the years, but really, it’s a chance for you to stop and reflect. This will also be put out on the blog each week, and of course you can see the video on YouTube.

So, what is this all about? It’s about really delivering better content to you, but it’s all under the umbrella of what we call The Sales Hunter University. This is a program my team and I launched a few months ago, and it just keeps getting better and better. The Sales Hunter University has three main levels…

LEVEL ONE  is the Weekly Sales Kickoff. I want you to buy that. It’s only $9 a month. Yes, you heard me – $9 a month. Hello, that’s like one cup of coffee at Starbucks a week. You can totally do that!

LEVEL TWO  includes Weekly Sales Kickoff and a library of videos – all centered around my 3 books ( High-Profit Selling , High-Profit Prospecting , and A Mind For Sales ), as well as access to all of my masterclasses. We put a new masterclass out there every month. You get the full library of them, including PDF files and all.

LEVEL THREE  is ALL OF THE ABOVE, plus enrollment into my very special coaching program . This is what I call group coaching, where I do two sessions a month. Each session takes place in a very intimate setting, so you can ask your questions, get answers, and really gain additional insights and practical tips.

Those are the changes. Wow! It’s a lot. Yes, it is a lot, but it’s my commitment. My goal is to influence and impact as many people as possible. I believe that if I use every medium out there, omnichannel, we’ll be able to do just that. That’s my hope.

So, check out the website, check out the content, and get enrolled in the Sales Hunter University. Would you do that today? I promise you won’t be disappointed. At three different levels, there really is a price point that fits everyone.

Copyright 2020, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter” Sales Motivation Blog.  Mark Hunter is the author of A Mind for Sales and High-Profit Prospecting: Powerful Strategies to Find the Best Leads and Drive Breakthrough Sales Results.

 

Welcome to the Weekly Sales Kickoff!

It’s my honor to share a new event I am starting today that I want you to take advantage of. In my book A Mind for Sales, I talk a lot about the importance of Mondays. In response to your comments, I’m pleased to now be a part of every one of your Mondays; however, you’ll need to sign up for it because in two weeks, it goes behind a wall and will only be available to members. It’s called Weekly Sales Kickoff, and I want you to sign up to get it every week.

Each Monday morning, the Weekly Sales Kickoff will contain three parts. One is inspiration, two is development, and three is application. What do I mean by each of those? Inspiration is first to kick your week off right. Second, development will help you from a training standpoint. Finally, application is all about how you can put it into play right away. If you’re watching this, I want you to show it to your sales managers. I want all of you to receive this every Monday, because it’s how you’re all going to make the most of Mondays. I did write the book A Mind for Sales, and there’s a chapter in it about how to make Mondays great. Let’s get into the first piece of inspiration right now this morning.

If you have the ability to help someone, it is your responsibility to reach out to them. Today – right now – more than 1,000 people need to hear from you. There are more than 1,000 people who need to hear from you, except they won’t hear from you unless you pick up the phone and reach out to them. You have the ability to help somebody, and if you have the ability to help someone, it becomes your responsibility to do so.

Think about this for a moment. If somebody knew you needed help and they could help you, regardless if you think you needed help, but they chose not to reach out to you, wouldn’t you be upset with them when you eventually found out? Yes, you would. You would be upset. This is what’s beautiful about the role of sales – we get to help people.

You see, if you have the ability to help someone, it’s your responsibility. Let’s say you saw a house on fire but didn’t know the people in it. Because you didn’t know the people who lived there, would you say it isn’t your responsibility to try to help them? No! You would immediately work to find out if they’re all okay and what you can do. You would do that, because you have the ability to help someone. You wouldn’t sit there and say, “Well, I don’t know those people, so I’ll let somebody else do it or well, maybe I’ll send them a Facebook message or I’ll try to connect with them on Instagram.” No, you would reach out to them right away. Sales is about urgency. Your job is urgent, because you have the ability to help people. I can’t stress this point enough. There’s 1,000 people – really more than a thousand people,  there’s tens of thousands of people out there who need what you have – but they will never know unless you reach out to them.

Let’s move into the development part. This has to do with a piece I talk about in my book, A Mind for Sales. It’s called “CFT” – customer facing time. How much time do you spend customer facing? Challenge yourself by asking this question: am I truly spending time customer facing / CFT?

CFT is about one simple thing: getting in front of your customers or customer facing time. All too often I see salespeople spend their time doing everything but get in front of customers. They take care of this report and that, especially when it comes to prospecting, but they don’t actually spend time with their customers. I want you to focus on doing one thing and that is increasing your CFT. Break it down into CFT with existing customers and CFT with prospects. I find too many salespeople afraid to prospect, so they spend all their time with existing customers. That’s why you must break it down into these two buckets – CFT with existing customers and CFT with prospects. I told you in the inspiration part that there’s 1,000 people out there who need to hear from you. So, what’s holding you back?

With that said, let’s dive into the last section of application. I want you to look at your calendar and begin blocking out time. Create a matrix of four boxes, each of which contains some form of CFT. Now, there is CFT for existing customers and prospects like I shared with you in the development piece. Let’s break it down even further, because you will spend some of your time planning and some of your time doing.

While you set aside time on your calendar for CFT, talk with your sales manager and your peers about how much time you should spend prospecting. Then, when you break it down, devote time to plan to prospect as well as time to actually do it. Planning is like preparing the prospect. This includes getting your leads in order, getting your call-to-actions in place, and emails ready, etc. All of that is preparing the prospect, and then there’s the actual prospecting time. You see, if you wind up only having one bucket, you’ll spend all your time planning and preparing without actually doing, or accomplishing, anything. So, take time to set aside two separate buckets which are two of the quadrants in your four-quadrant matrix. In the other two quadrants, there’s CFT for existing customers and CFT work that you’re doing for existing customers. It’s interesting that the CFT work for existing customers always seems to overpower everyone’s calendar. Therefore, you have to block it and tell yourself you’re only going to allow 30 minutes for it – that’s it! Otherwise, if you don’t block that time, it will wind up taking up the whole day. You’ll be busy, but not productive.

Your application here is very simple. Create four boxes and start assigning an amount of time to each one. You don’t have to assign time every single day in each of the four. Chances are, you will assign time every single day with existing customers, but maybe not with prospecting. That may only happen every other day or maybe only a couple of days a week. You know your situation, but you have to create dedicated windows of time.

The four windows / blocks of time for CFT are:

Prospecting Planning
Prospecting Execution
Existing Customer Planning
Existing Customer Execution

Plan and prepare first, and then do it – that’s execution. With prospects, that means picking up the phone, making the call, sending the email, etc. Make it happen! This is CFT in terms of working on customers and actually connecting with customers. Remember again that each person will have a different set of time allocated to each box.

This has been your weekly inspiration, development and application. My job is very simple: to help you have the most powerful, most incredible, most successful week possible. You start that by kicking off your Monday fast! Look for another weekly sales kickoff next Monday morning, and make sure you sign up to receive this every week.

Copyright 2020, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter” Sales Motivation Blog.  Mark Hunter is the author of A Mind for Sales and High-Profit Prospecting: Powerful Strategies to Find the Best Leads and Drive Breakthrough Sales Results.

 

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How to Use Email to Prospect

Just because something is easy does not mean it is the best solution. Let’s be blunt that email is without a doubt the easiest method to use when it comes to prospecting. There’s a reason why your inbox is flooded with prospecting emails. Anyone can send an email and with the automation tool, anyone can send out 1,000 emails in under a minute; however, just because it’s easy and fast does not mean it works. Open rates are down, and it’s difficult to break through because too many people are making very dumb mistakes. Let me walk you through 10 ways you can make email a much more effective prospecting tool, but first watch this quick video: 

How to Use Email to Prospect:

1. Realize email is valuable real estate 

Yes, the entire email is valuable, but two parts of it are without a doubt the most valuable. That is the ‘subject line’ and the ‘first six or seven words.’ This is true, because those are the only two parts people see when looking at the email from their smartphone, which is the case with the majority. For me, I base my decision to read the rest of the email off solely those two parts.  

Keep both parts tight. Because it’s valuable real estate, the subject line and the first five or six words have got to seriously engage and grab you. Trust me, it won’t work to say, “Hi, my name is …” or “Hi. Let me introduce my company.” No way! Both parts – the subject and the first five or six sentences – must engage the prospect in every way.  

2. It’s not show and tell 

Too many prospecting emails written by lazy salespeople are nothing but a dumping group where everything is dumped into it.  These people think they want to show their prospect everything with hopes that something catches their interest. Unfortunately, all that ends up happening is a bad case of show and tell for the prospect. Hey, this isn’t grade school anymore. Your customers can learn all they want to know about you – and frankly, more – on the internet. It’s not show and tell. What you want to do is inform and pique their interest, yet without giving away too much information to make a decision in order to make sure they talk to you before deciding anything. 

 3. Email is only one tool  

Don’t think for a moment that you’re going to use email as your only prospecting tool – you’re not! If you do think that it’s your only tool, you’ll miss out on a tremendous amount of business. Email is just one of the many tools. There’s also the telephone, social media, text messaging, voicemail, and so many other forms of communication out there today. Use email as one of the tools, but not THE tool.  

The number of salespeople I meet who say they rely 100% on email for prospecting frightens me.  It amazes me that these same salespeople are often the same ones struggling to meet their quota. There is not a direct correlation between the number of emails sent out by a salesperson and the number of sales made. You can argue with me all you want, but remember the old saying: “even a blind squirrel will find an occasional acorn.”  (Sorry squirrels, I didn’t mean to upset you.) 

4. Keep it short 

The easiest way to keep it short is to see if it passes what I call the one swipe test. What is the one swipe test? It is when you’re able to read the email on your smartphone with only one swipe of your finger. If you can’t read it with one swipe, it’s too long. I talk about this in two of my books, High-Profit Prospecting, and A Mind for Sales. This means your email should not be more than four to six sentences long. Keep it short and the message about them, not you. You’re not writing direct mail copy. Length might work great with direct mail copy and maybe with some other items, but when it comes to prospecting, short always wins.  

5. Inform but don’t educate 

Now, I talked about this earlier under number two, but let’s dig deeper. What I mean by inform is engage and pique their interest but not as far as to actually educate. If you educate completely, they won’t need you. Save the education piece for when you’re on the telephone with them or face-to-face, when you’re actually in front of them. All you need to do is inform and engage the prospect.  

6. Create a CTA 

Create a Call To Action (CTA). Too often, salespeople fail to do this. It’s mind blowing the number of prospecting emails I receive that don’t have a prospecting message. What a shame when we’re not creating a prospecting message. It must have a call to action if it’s a prospecting message, one that pulls you back and asks you to do something. Ask a question to engage them. You want them to do something, so prompt them. Don’t simply refer them to a link, that’s never a call to action, just a call to discourage. You want to engage by having them reach out to you. 

7. It’s for them, not about you 

100% of your email must be focused on them. In fact, I’ll even say a good prospect email doesn’t fully reveal what you do. I don’t care. You just want to pique their interest, so they need to call you. It has to be about them. If the email is about you, why are you sending the email? They can go to a website and get that information. Be careful to not get caught up in what you think is important. The only thing that matters is what the customer / prospect thinks is important. That is whatever they are thinking, and I bet you they’re not thinking about you. 

8. Connect the dots

What do I mean by this? Connect the dots on what’s happening in their industry. Connect the dots back to maybe a previous discussion or an inquiry they made to your website. Connect the dots back to maybe one of your webinars that they sat in on. Always connect the dots. This helps show the prospect that it’s not some robotic email but rather a personal email sent to them. That makes them feel cared for.  

9. Ban the template 

That’s right, ban the template. It’s so easy to get caught up in those one or two or three emails that you like, and you just keep popping them out. It’s easy because you can just change one name on it. No. Let me tell you something – your prospects can see right through that. They can see through that because it’s very quick for you to rationalize away as to why the email is really good. No, all you’re doing is rationalizing away why you don’t want to spend the time to craft a unique, personable email. 

10. Personalize it

I don’t mean just add the prospect’s name to it. Anybody can do that! Actually, there’s plenty of programs that can add a name from a database. More than that, you need to personalize it by including something relative to them. The email must contain something pertinent to your prospect, that will connect them. This is key!  

Go back through my ten ways to make email a much more effective prospecting tool. Watch my video and stay tuned as I plan to dig into this in future videos. Also, I will dive deeper into this in my online course, The Sales Hunter University. Go check it out! Most of all, grab my books and start reading today, A Mind for Sales and High Profit Prospecting. Then, drop a review on Amazon or wherever you purchased to help spread the word. Buy it, read it, and pass on what you learn!

One final note when it comes to using email for prospecting, don’t think for a moment the results you get will mirror another person’s results just because you use the same email. It’s just not the case. I’ve found far too many variances to say anyone can replicate someone else.

Copyright 2020, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter” Sales Motivation Blog.  Mark Hunter is the author of A Mind for Sales and High-Profit Prospecting: Powerful Strategies to Find the Best Leads and Drive Breakthrough Sales Results.

 

How to Manage Your Time In a Pandemic

Let’s talk about how you manage your time in a pandemic. In my book, A Mind for Sales, I talk a lot about time management. Let me tell you that there are some big issues that people overlook. The issue of how to manage your time is one of them. Right now, your time is more valuable than ever. Don’t be like everyone else and waste it away.

You’re in a work-from-home situation, or you may be one of those that’s gone back to the office or back on the road. Still, let’s be real – there are a tremendous amount of people continuing to work from home. Even if you have gone back to the office or traveling like before, there’s still a tremendous amount of change around you. You have to remember to break your time down into four different buckets. Before I share the four buckets, watch this video: [image error]

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The first bucket is your existing customers. You have to make sure that you are devoting time to them, because guess what? Every decision is in play right now, and I mean every single decision. Just as you’re trying to steal customers from your competitor, your competitors are trying to steal customers from you. You must ensure that you have time allocated for your existing customers. Sometimes we run into a problem doing this, though. Too often, we spend too much time with our existing customers. Hang with me here, and I’ll come back to this thought in a bit. 

The second bucket is prospecting close-in opportunities. These are opportunities that will close this quarter, this month, whatever it might be. This is stuff that is in the middle of your pipeline and down. You want to always make sure you are maximizing those opportunities and bringing them into fruition right now.  

The third bucket is all about what you’re putting in at the top. In other words, what is your lead generation process, and how much time are you allocating to that process? 

The fourth and final bucket is strategically analyzing where your business in your specific industry is headed. Consider what’s going on in our world right now. How is that influencing your particular business?  

So, let’s walk through each of the four buckets… 

First, let’s take our existing customers in the first bucket. It’s very easy for us to become fixated on just taking care of existing business, but that’s called customer service. I want to be focused on existing business, existing customers, because I want to get incremental business. Think about the other divisions, other people. Where are they? With your existing customers, ask yourself how you can serve them at an even deeper level. Challenge yourself, so you don’t just get caught up giving customer service. 

Bucket number two involves those that are midway in your pipeline and down. So, how can you close them now and how much time should you allocate to do so? I like to allocate no more than 30% of my time to existing customers, because it’s important that I allocate at least 30% of my time to those customers that are halfway there and bringing them down through. Again, let me reiterate that if I don’t keep bringing new customers into my mix, I become more and more reliant on just my old customers. The main goal is to close those customers midway in your pipeline and down in as simple a manner as possible. Then, they will move from this bucket (number two) to the first bucket, and you can continue working on them. To recap, we’ve discussed 30% for existing customers and another 30% for close-in prospects. That’s 60%, so that leaves you 25% – 30% to prospect up at the top. 

Now, make note that your actual numbers may vary. I’m just sharing this because it’s worked for a lot of people, and particularly for most people that I work with right now in this pandemic situation. So, tell yourself that you’re going to spend 25% – 30% of your time on just new leads – getting new leads in, qualifying them, etc. You may have a good customer service department, who’s taking care of existing customers, so you can dial that down to just 20%. Then you have another 10% to give 40% up here to prospecting. Again, you’ll need to look at your own numbers but just make sure you’re staying very focused on time and putting everything in your calendar. Let’s be honest, if you don’t put it in your calendar, it never happens and prospecting at the top will never happen. For myself, I must be deliberate about scheduling prospecting in calendar. I put it in my calendar in two-hour or four-hour blocks – whatever amount of time you decide – for “X” number of times each week. That makes me focus on it.

Now, if you’ve been following along here, we’ve accounted for 30%, 60%, and now 90%, so there’s still 10%. With this last bit, I strategically look at what’s happening out there in the industry. Do not take your eye off the long-term ball, because there are always new opportunities available to you. Now, do you call this the shiny object syndrome? It’s not. It is the focused opportunity syndrome. In other words, you’re looking for the focused opportunities that are developing that you can get to. This may be focused opportunities that you can take to existing customers, or use to get new leads. Either way, spend 10% of your time looking beyond. 

This is how you manage your time as a sales person in the middle of a pandemic – divide your time into these 4 buckets and you will find success. Remember if you don’t manage your time, your time will manage you.

Go grab my book, A Mind For Sales. I want you to read it. One chapter discusses how to start your week off right. Monday’s are your best day of the week, except I don’t want just Mondays to be your best day. I want every day to be your best day of the week! I hope you see why reading the book, A Mind for Sales is absolutely necessary to your success. Buy it, read it, and share it. Post a review on Amazon or wherever you purchased it, and help spread the word about how to have a mind for sales!

Are You a Proactive or Reactive Salesperson?

The new norm is there is no norm. Did you wake up this past January and think that 2020 would be what it is now? Probably not. This is causing a real problem, because it’s making too many salespeople be reactive in nature. You can’t afford to be reactive. More than ever in this point in time, you must be proactive. I wrote the book, A Mind For Sales, where I stress the importance of having a proactive mindset. Believe it or not, you can’t control what’s going on out there. I can’t either. Neither one of us knew what would transpire over the last 60 to 90 days and we have no idea what will unfold over the next 60 to 90 days. 

Video – Are You a Proactive or a Reactive Salesperson? 

The problem I see is too many salespeople hunkering down and saying, “I’m just going to take care of existing customers. I’m going to just react to what’s happening out there.” If this is you, I urge you to stop now. This is the time, more than ever, to be proactive. You probably wonder how you can be proactive when you can’t determine what will happen in the future, but you know what? You do have control over what you’re going to do, and you can help control what your customers and prospects choose to do too. 

Be proactive in bringing ideas and solutions to your customers. More than ever, you need to be their R and D, (research and development) Department right now. You need to reach out to prospects because you need to be the one that helps them with the many decisions they need to make. Since we’re in the middle of summer, I know how easy it can be to just kick back, relax a bit, and just wait until fall to see how things evolve. However, you don’t know what will happen – good or bad. If you’re not proactive, you will waste valuable time. 

Starting right now, work on getting out of the reactive mode and into the proactive mode. Be proactive in bringing ideas to your existing customers and helping them find solutions. Most importantly, be especially proactive with your prospects. If you don’t control your future, why should anybody else try to control it for you? You own your future. You own your success. It all starts by being proactive with how you reach out and do sales every day, every hour.

In my book, A Mind For Sales, I share that being a successful salesperson really comes down to your mind because your mind is your greatest asset. Learn how to develop a proactive mindset to change your mind for the better.

If you haven’t read it, go buy a copy today! Also, do me a huge favor and post a review on Amazon. Reviews are the best way to help spread the word.  

Copyright 2020, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter” Sales Motivation Blog.  Mark Hunter is the author of A Mind for Sales and High-Profit Prospecting: Powerful Strategies to Find the Best Leads and Drive Breakthrough Sales Results.

How to Keep a Prospect Engaged

Let’s be real: prospecting, even for the best of people, is tough.  You can have the best product, the best benefits, and even great prospects but boom, the dreaded thing happens.  The dreaded “thing” is the prospect who simply slows things down or worse yet, just goes silent on you.  Suddenly all of the work you’ve done to cultivate the prospect and create another satisfied customer falls to the wayside. This happens to everyone. Unless you’re somebody who sells the simplest of items for the cheapest price, I bet you’ve experienced your fair share of prospects going radio silent.  

So, how do you keep a prospect engaged? When you’re prospecting, you’re making call after call and doing everything you think you need to do but still… nothing. Pretty soon a day turns into a week, a week turns into a month and even a month turns into a quarter. What’s the solution? Let’s dig into 10 things you need to do to keep a prospect engaged, unless you’re happy chasing prospects who never turn into customers. 

Video: How to Keep a Prospect Engaged

1. Connect Each Conversation 

You have to link every communication together. Each conversation is not just a phone call; it’s also a voicemail, email, whatever form of communication you choose to use. This means that you take what you learned on a previous call, repeat it back to them, and then motivate them to build on it. Ask them more information. By doing this, you keep them engaged because now they know you’re listening, you’re paying attention. They can see that you value their opinion. 

2. Value their opinion  

This means you ask to get their point of view. Tell them you want their opinion about something. Ensure that you’re always getting their stance, because often you’ll wind up just getting blank statements back. Make them go deeper than that. In the prospecting phase, that’s information you want to uncover because it will help you close really without having to discount by truly knowing where they’re coming from. 

3. Always build value 

Each time you communicate, no matter what avenue, build value with your prospect. Whether this is over the phone, via email, etc. Always build value or “ABV.” You do this by sharing a new piece of information with them in each conversation. Then, link back to something they shared with you previously. It’s your job to help them see why what you’re offering them and how you’re helping them will help them become better. Remember that the goal of sales is to help others see and achieve what they didn’t think was possible; this starts during the prospecting phase with you. 

4. Ask questions 

Never communicate with your prospect without asking questions, and asking questions that are focused on them, their needs, and where they’re coming from. It doesn’t matter what form of communication you’re using. Then, take that further by asking them a follow-up question based off whatever they share with you, to build the relationship. This gives you material and information to come back to so you can do what I said in number one – connect each conversation. 

5. Bring new insights 

Now you’re asking how bringing new insights is any different from always building value. They are two different things. Let me explain what I mean by bring new insights. Share with your prospect what you learn from talking to other customers. Or you could say, “I just saw this in the news. Here’s what’s going on in the industry.” This is bringing new insights, and it allows them to see you as a peer. Also, it encourages them to see you as a subject matter expert. Best of all, this allows them to see you as a partner they can’t live without because keep in mind that credibility sells. People want credibility. By building the conversation with sharing new insights, you bring credibility to the relationship. 

6. Focus on them 

It’s never about you. They don’t care about all the awards you won. They don’t care about the history of your company. They could care less about any of that. All they care about is themselves. Keep your conversation solely focused on them. That is what will impress them. If they really want to know more about you, they can find out on the internet, or they can ask you. However, let them bring it up if they’re interested. Let them initiate asking you about yourself. You never want to be the one that walks around pontificating about how wonderful you are. 

 7. Create high-value CTA 

Always create high-value call to actions (CTA). What are high-value CTA’s? This is about creating a next step every time you communicate with them, because high-value CTAs engage them. They are call to actions that they invest in. For example, I’ll say, “Hey, looking forward to our call next Tuesday at two o’clock. Take a look at this document. Let me know your opinion on it before we meet.” This not only creates a CTA, call to action, but gives more value by asking them to do something for you. I always look for prospects to do something for me in between our conversations. This helps me measure how focused they are on what I have to offer. If they only engage with me when I start the conversation or when I call them, they might be engaged; however, I know they’re really engaged when they’re communicating back to me, and they’re starting the conversation. 

8. Continuous involvement 

Don’t ever let dry periods occur. You can’t afford to. There may be three to four weeks planned in between calls due to various circumstances or something going on, but that certainly does not mean you remain silent. You must continually stay in front of them. This may be with an email, or a link to something. This is how you constantly build value and bring new insights. It’s crucial that you do not allow them to forget about you, although remember that it’s not about you. It’s about the information that you bring.  

9. Know their needs 

Everything you’re doing in the prospecting phase is designed to accomplish one goal: know their needs. The deeper your conversation, the greater their level of confidence in you, the greater their level of competence in you; therefore, the more they’ll share their needs with you. When you know their specific needs, you can drill down and really exploit them. I don’t mean exploit them to take advantage, but to fully understand. Don’t hesitate to push back. It’s ok to pry with each step and each phase you go through, because in each one, you earn the right, the privilege, honor, and respect to be able to communicate with them again and go deeper. 

10. Be a peer 

Don’t be a salesperson, a vendor, or a supplier. You want to be a peer. When you’re seen as a peer, prospects will want to do business with you. They’ll also treat you with the utmost respect, because they value you. You will be seen as a peer when you do steps one through nine.

Don’t forget that I wrote the books A Mind for Sales and High-Profit Prospecting, both of which expound upon how to keep a prospect engaged. Writing these books are my ways of being seen by you as a peer who can help. I’d love to hear your thoughts, so drop a review on Amazon or wherever you purchased the book. Grab your copy today!  

 

Copyright 2020, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter” Sales Motivation Blog.  Mark Hunter is the author of A Mind for Sales and High-Profit Prospecting: Powerful Strategies to Find the Best Leads and Drive Breakthrough Sales Results.

 

How to Have a Mind to Prospect

Do you have a mind to prospect? In my most recent book, A Mind for Sales, I talk about prospecting being one of the key pieces within sales. Right now, I’ll walk you through 10 things that you need to do in order to have a mind to prospect.  

Video:  How to Have a Mind to Prospect:

1. It’s only a conversation 

All you’re doing is talking to somebody. Far too many salespeople put an unnecessary amount of stress on the phone calls that they have to make. No, you’re not going to create world peace. No, you won’t solve world hunger problems. It’s just a conversation, so relax. Some of your conversations will go well, and some won’t. It’s ok.

2. Know your objective  

Before you make the phone call, know what your objective is. Often, salespeople think they’re going to go all the way to get the sale. Unless you’re in a very simple item, that won’t happen. On the call, you’re just going to do two things. First, secure one piece of information. Next, come up with a next date and time to have a follow-up meeting. Chances are, the person didn’t expect your phone call and honestly doesn’t have time for it. That’s it. Know your objective before you make the call.

3. Create success in others 

Your goal is to help others achieve success. When we sell, this is what we do. Whenever I close a deal and help a customer, I’m creating success in them. When you prospect, you’re starting another person on that journey towards success. That should excite you. It excites me! Whenever I make a prospecting call, I am beginning someone on a path to success.  

4. Mind games 

Your mind plays incredible games against you, and tells you why you can’t do something. In your head, you might hear: “Oh, you can’t do this. Oh, you can’t.” That’s not true. Then, your mind will tell you: “Oh, you need to take care of this customer,” or “You need to do this. Take care of this.” Your mind will always tell you everything you need to do except prospect. Then, you end up being busy, but not productive. It needs to be your goal to turn that negative prospecting mindset into a positive one. So, how do you do that? Look at all your current customers and make note of how you’ve helped them achieve success. Then, remind yourself that’s the reason why you prospect. When we prospect, we help customers. Take time to think through the people, the companies, and really the families that you’ve helped. It’s then that you begin to take that negative mindset and turn it into a positive one.  

5. Set goals you can achieve

Too many times, I see people sit there and say, “Well, my pipeline is empty. I need to fill my pipeline within 30 days.” Trust me, that won’t happen. That’s an unattainable goal. You set goals that you can achieve. Don’t set goals that somebody else achieves, set goals that you can achieve. This means that if you’re struggling with prospecting, set yourself very simple goals. Maybe you set a goal to make just prospecting calls today. That’s it! Get over that hurdle and then you can increase it to six, and seven, and ten, and so on. It’s important to set goals that you’re capable of achieving, because momentum creates momentum and that will work to your advantage. 

6. Work your plan 

Often, salespeople will prospect a little bit but it didn’t work, so they try something else, and then they try something else. Work your plan. Hey, this is why I encourage so many people to pick up my book, High Profit Prospecting. It’s filled with a whole bunch of sales prospecting plans. Stick with your plan, because the results of prospecting don’t occur on the first call. The results from prospecting occur way down the line. I like to use the example of a farmer. He/she goes into their field to plant some seeds. They put those seeds in the ground. They come back a day or two later, and nothing’s growing. Nothing’s happened. They don’t say, “Oh well, let me plow the field under and I’ll start over again.” No way! That’d be insane. Again, maybe they put seeds in the ground and come back a few months later or a few weeks later. There’s stuff growing, but there’s nothing to harvest. Not for a moment do they think it didn’t work and they should cut it up, throw it away, and start over. No. Every farmer knows that they have to let it come all the way to harvest. Prospecting is a lot like that. You won’t get results on the first call. They’re going to come on call 14, 15, 18, 20. That’s just the way it is – always. However, you’ll never get to 14, 15, 18, 20, unless you first do one, two, three, four, five. You’ve got to work your plan.  

7. Leverage your time

I talk a lot about how easy it is to get distracted. Well, I hate to break it to you but if you don’t leverage your time, your time will leverage you. Again, your time will keep telling you, “I got to do this. I’ve got to take care of this.” However, you’ll never get around to prospecting. Or maybe you say, “I’m going to prospect tomorrow,” but you end up spending all day preparing or planning to prospect and never actually make the call. When I talk about leveraging your time, I am referring to breaking it down into three windows.  

The first window of time is planning to prospect followed by preparing to prospecting. The third and final window of time is actually prospecting – making the calls. Now, let’s break that down.  

Planning means looking at your plan. What is working in your plan? Are there some emails that you need to change the wording of? Are there some voicemails that you need to tweak? Do you need to modify something in your playbook and cadence?  

Next, you prepare to prospect. This involves looking at the prospects that you intend to call in your next prospecting cycle / prospecting window and asking yourself what information you need to gather and if your accomplishments are clearly laid out. Do you know the information that you need to share with those prospects?  

The first two steps are crucial so that when you get to your prospecting window – whether it’s one hour, two hours, whatever chunk of time you’ve allotted – you are ready to prospect. This guarantees that you actually make the phone calls and get it done. Otherwise, you’ll probably spend all of your time preparing and planning and never actually doing it.  

8. Know your outcome

What do I mean by know your outcome? These are the outcomes that your customers achieve. Look at your current customers to see the outcomes that they achieve. I am not talking about what you sold to them. I am referring to the outcomes that they achieved because of your relationship with them. When you zero in on that, it’s amazing what you’ll see. Chances are you’re prospecting prospects that are similar to your current customers. So, that means the outcomes that they should expect to achieve are probably similar to what your current customers have already achieved. When you know your outcome, you become a lot more confident in the questions you can ask and the conversations you can have.  

9. Peer support

This is a necessity. Sales is not a solo activity, it is a team sport. Peer support is a must. You want to have other people (one or two or three other people) who have you on their team, and they are on your team, so you’re constantly supporting one another from a prospecting matter. You help motivate each other, you help hold each other accountable, you help them overcome obstacles, and you celebrate success together. The key is doing everything together. I wrote a whole chapter about mastermind groups in my book, A Mind for Sales. This is absolutely critical for success in sales.  

10. Motivation / Celebration

Don’t sit there and say, “Well, my boss doesn’t motivate me.” It’s not your boss’s job to motivate you. No. All your boss can do is create an environment for you to motivate yourself. It’s your job to motivate yourself. That’s entirely up to you. One way to motivate yourself is by celebrating, but don’t look at somebody else’s accomplishments and get discouraged. No, only focus on your results and what you’ve achieved. You define your success. 

You are on your own journey to success. That means you benchmark yourself against what you did yesterday, last week, and last month. Zero in on that. Stay in your lane and focus on you. Don’t dwell and think, “I want to be like that …” That is a good long-term goal, although initially it will probably discourage you.  

Finally, always celebrate your wins no matter how small. Prospecting can be very mind numbing. I get it, yet there are successes that are worth celebrating no matter what. A small success might be having one successful phone call or it might be just getting the phone number or setting up a time to meet up. Consider all of those success – whatever it is. Focus on the wins. Be absolutely clear as to where you’re going. By celebrating success, you put yourself on a journey towards not only having a mind to prospect, but having a mind for sales. And the success, the results, and the rewards will follow.

If you haven’t already, go grab a copy of my books that I mentioned in this blog, including A Mind For Sales and High-Profit Prospecting. Both reads will offer you insights into planning and executing your prospecting plans. When you’re done, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Share a review on Amazon or wherever you purchased the book. Reviews are the best way to help spread the word.

Copyright 2020, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter” Sales Motivation Blog.  Mark Hunter is the author of A Mind for Sales and High-Profit Prospecting: Powerful Strategies to Find the Best Leads and Drive Breakthrough Sales Results.