Mark Hunter's Blog, page 46

“Vendor of the Year” the Award You Want to Lose!

It’s that time of year when people start thinking about annual awards. Let’s put this particular one to rest. Trust me, you do not want to “win” the vendor of the year award. I don’t care the customer’s criteria nor how much you like them receiving “vendor of the year.” It’s just wrong! It’s like having your picture on the cover of a Sports Illustrated magazine – you’re picked and then you lose.

Why do companies even give out these types of awards? The answer is simple: they want to somehow make the vendor feel good about bending over backwards to give the customer everything they want. They want others to drool over the award and how they create a better partnership with the customer next year, so they can win. Maybe the award should be called: “suckers we want you to be jealous and give us everything next year.”

I remember meeting with a VP of Sales and him sharing about all of the awards they had received during his time as VP. Each award had a story that involved his ego and how he had saved a relationship. The stories ranged from the mildly interesting to quite frankly, painful. He was quick to tell me that the CEO was in awe of the accolades, and they were a key reason why he was able to get anything he wanted for his sales team. When I left the office, I wanted to take a shower to get all the stink off of me that I had heard.

This VP of Sales was fixated on “winning every vendor and industry award he could.” It didn’t matter who was giving it or why it was being given, he wanted it. To him, the awards were more sacred than a 1,000 “likes” on a teenager’s Instagram post. Just like the teenager gets sucked into the social media world, he and ultimately the entire sales team were sucked into “award alley.” The problem with this is that “award alley” doesn’t go anywhere; it’s just the place where garbage trucks pick up dumpsters of stinky garbage.

When we focus on awards, it’s amazing how much effort we’ll put in to solving the customer’s problems. We bend over backwards! Then, we’ll look the other way when the customer does something against our terms of sale. It’s crazy how quickly the rational action goes away to now just doing it all for the customer out of fear of not living up to the award. I also find it interesting how quickly a customer will hold a vendor hostage over an award the vendor previously received. This happens far too often. As a consultant, I get to frequently travel with salespeople on sales calls, and I can tell you about more than a few occasions where it’s happened. In one situation, the account manager told me about a customer who was routinely submitting their orders late and still expecting 100% on-time fulfillment. The buyer was quick to respond with the fact that the account manager’s company had received top honors the last two years, and unless they got their orders in on time, they wouldn’t get the award a third year.

Awards are not given out without expectations. The customer who takes the time to create and give out awards is doing so for a reason. Why do you think a mother congratulates a child on making their bed? Or, why does a boss give out bonuses? It comes down to one thing: acknowledge past performance to create future behavior! Go ahead and tweet that!

Your job is to do the best job possible. That includes taking care of the customer but never forgetting who signs your check. It’s fine if you want to give me an award, but I’m not going to do something for you that I wouldn’t do for someone else just to receive recognition. The award I want to receive is the award of knowing that I’ve helped you the customer achieve all of your desired outcomes.

Cop yright 2019, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter” Sales Motivation Blog.  Mark Hunter is the author of High-Profit Prospecting: Powerful Strategies to Find the Best Leads and Drive Breakthrough Sales Result

When Do I Close A Sale?

You feel good about the customer you’re talking to. You feel like they really want what you have to offer. Based on your feelings, you quickly proceed to lay out an offer for your customer, but suddenly, the customer starts throwing out objections. You go from feeling excited about making your quarterly quota to feeling hopeless.

Learn more about when to close a sale in my video:

 

 

If you talk to 10 people about this issue, you’d probably get 10 different theories about how to solve it. The solution does not have to be complex. The answer boils down to simply answering this one question: do you know what challenge / issue / opportunity the customer is trying to solve? Until you have the answer to that question, you will not be able to close the sale. Let’s not kid ourselves – customers don’t want to buy anything. What customers truly want is to satisfy a need, and that need might be obvious or it might be tangled up in something much bigger.

Often, the customers does not even know the real reason they are looking to buy and that can make answering this question so tricky. The customer may have thought something initially and even told you; however, between then and the time you close, their need changed. A key reason why it changes is because of your questions to the customer and the ensuing thinking they did. Don’t view this as an issue to be avoided. It is a benefit to be exploited.

You owe it to the customer to probe and ask about why they’re looking to buy. Just because the customer wants to know the price does not mean you’re obligated to give them a price. If you quote a price before you know their need, you’re doing the customer a disservice.

When you close early, you risk of closing the sale based on a customer’s false belief. Your goal is to close the deal on the full value of what you can deliver. When you close the sale on the full value, you raise your worth in the eyes of the customer.

When it does become time to close the sale, you owe it to the customer to repeat to them their need / issue / opportunity that you’re going to solve by them buying from you. This simple approach to closing helps the customer stay on track. It helps point out why they’re buying and gives you an anchor point should an objection arise. If the customer does raise an issue, you are set up to ask a follow-up question that ties their objection to their need to buy.

Not long ago, I was getting ready to close with one of my customer’s and they objected telling me the price was too high. Immediately, I came back and asked the customer a question about the issue they needed to solve. When I got the customer thinking about their problem again, the price suddenly became a non-issue and they bought. I closed the sale.

So, the rule is simple: never attempt to close a sale until you fully understand the customer’s need and reason for buying. The more you are able maximize the size of the customer’s opportunity / issue / challenge, the more you are able to maximize the price.

If you’ve missed the other blogs in this series, be sure to go back and read them. You won’t want to miss out on this valuable content. For your convenience, I have included all of the links below.

Blog Post and Video: Week 1: How Can I Tell If I Have Qualified Prospects or Just Bad Leads?

Blog Post and Video: Week 2: Confidential Information

Blog Post and Video: Week 3: Knowing the Customer’s Timeline to Buy

Blog Post and Video: Week 4: Does Your Call to Action Engage the Prospect?

Blog Post and Video: Week 5: Fake Prospects, Fake Buyers, Fake News

Copyright 2019, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter” Sales Motivation Blog.  Mark Hunter is the author of High-Profit Prospecting: Powerful Strategies to Find the Best Leads and Drive Breakthrough Sales Result

Monday Motivation Video: You Don’t Need to Be Born to Sell to Be Great

People who are born to sell do not exist. Anybody can be a great salesperson. All it takes is a high level of commitment to help others. Value comes before price, and price comes before closing. When you create enough value by focusing on the outcome the customer is looking for, you create a higher price. And then what happens? You close the deal!

 

 

Copyright 2019, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter” Sales Motivation Blog.  Mark Hunter is the author of High-Profit Prospecting: Powerful Strategies to Find the Best Leads and Drive Breakthrough Sales Result

Which is Better: the Big Sales Pipeline or the Narrow Sales Pipeline?

Since our first day in sales, we have been taught to have as many leads as possible. We’ve also been told when you think you have enough, keep going and get more. It’s like saying your goal is to eat as much food as possible and don’t stop eating regardless of how full you are. Both of these activities are stupid. I’ll assume that you can handle the eating one on your own, so let’s deal with the lead issue.

Which is Better the Big Sales Pipeline or the Narrow Sales Pipeline?

 

 

The answer is not more leads, but better leads. You want fewer leads that you can spend more time with. Your most valuable asset if your time, and you can’t afford to waste spending all of it doing nothing but managing a list of names that have zero value to you.

Ask yourself who your ideal customer is. Then, look at your current customers and identify what their good traits are. Your objective is to develop an ideal customer profile. If you sell into several industries, you may need to make an ideal profile for each industry. The end goal is to create a target that you put all of your leads up against.

You’ll stay focused by creating your perfect customer profile, and it’ll keep you from getting caught up chasing every lead. If keep your eyes on the ideal customer, you will become much more direct with your questions and the process to help you determine if the lead is worth your time. Your objective is to qualify fast to allow you more time with fewer prospects. Spending more time with fewer prospects will allow you to understand their needs better and faster. As a result, you’ll be able to create more value for your customer and do so in a shorter period of time.

Success is not found in the leads you get but rather, in the sales you create, and it begins by knowing who your best customer is.

Check out Mark’s ebook called 50 Prospecting Truths here.

Copyright 2019, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter” Sales Motivation Blog.  Mark Hunter is the author of High-Profit Prospecting: Powerful Strategies to Find the Best Leads and Drive Breakthrough Sales Result

Fake Prospects, Fake Buyers, Fake News

The prospect agrees to take your meeting, and they even agree to your demo call. Both indicate that they are going to make decision quickly. Then, it’s time for you to close the deal and boom! You get hit hard as this new favorite customer tells you that they have to take it to others to get an approval to buy. Suddenly, the potential to make your quarterly number is going up in smoke!

Find out more about how to sell to multiple decision makers in my video below:

 

 

You can’t be in sales long before dealing with this issue. Sadly, this all could’ve been avoided. It’s not hard. The solution lies not in being more forceful with how you close, but rather, being more open with how you prospect.

Customers have egos. No surprise there, but too many salespeople don’t know how to leverage it. That’s the real problem. Your goal is to build on the customer’s ego in the prospecting phase and not when you’re trying to close the deal. When you’re in the prospecting phase, the customer will comment more openly with you. This is the phase when you ask the following questions:

How have you typically made decisions like this in the past?
Who else do you think would have some ideas on what we’re talking about?

Both of these questions are excellent. Why? Because they’re non-threatening to anyone, other than Attila the Hun or Julius Caesar. These questions help you discover early if there are others who may come into the picture late in the buying process. If you don’t ask, why should the prospect tell you?

When you ask these questions, you’re listening for other names and for the prospect to mention something about a timeline. You’re listening for clues. Whatever their response, ask a follow up question. In the prospecting phase, follow up questions work so well for two reasons. First, you get answers to key information during a non-threatening period of the sales process. If you wait until you’re trying to close to ask these questions, you run the risk of the customer leveraging their response as a negotiating tactic. The second reason I like asking this question early on is how much it helps create trust between you and the customer.

When you fail to ask these two questions early on, you allow the prospect to be in control. For the prospect who is used to taking all of their buying decision to a committee or someone else, it’s normal. For you, on the other hand, that’s anything but normal. It’s a problem. When the prospect has to involve others, your position suddenly weakens. Sure, you can ask to be part of the discussion with the new buyer. Typically that doesn’t happen, though. If you fail to know from the beginning, a lot of your selling process becomes no better than watered down soup.

If you’re going to sell, you need to know your audience. If you’re having to sell to an intermediary and you can’t get around that, your focus should be on prepping the intermediary to do their job. When you know what you’re facing, you know how to move forward. More importantly, when you know what you’re facing, you won’t be surprised when closing the deal.

If you missed the first parts of this “How Can I Tell If I Have Qualified Prospects” series, be sure to check out the blog posts and videos below:

Blog Post and Video: Week 1: How Can I Tell If I Have Qualified Prospects or Just Bad Leads?

Blog Post and Video: Week 2: Confidential Information

Blog Post and Video: Week 3: Knowing the Customer’s Timeline to Buy

Blog Post and Video: Week 4: Does Your Call to Action Engage the Prospect?

As I continue to share on this topic of prospecting, I suggest you take 2 important action steps. First, buy my book, High-Profit Prospecting – available in paperback, audio book and Kindle. Second, join my High Profit Sales Coaching program. I promise both will yield valuable results for you and your business.

Copyright 2019, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter” Sales Motivation Blog.  Mark Hunter is the author of High-Profit Prospecting: Powerful Strategies to Find the Best Leads and Drive Breakthrough Sales Result

Monday Motivation Video: Your Mindset Shapes Your Customer’s Mindset

Did you know that you have some brilliant customers? The mindset of your mind dictates the mindset of your customer. When your mind is negative, it’s amazing how quickly your customer can have a negative reaction. Take time this week to positively think about your customers and the outcomes you can provide them.

 

 

Copyright 2019, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter” Sales Motivation Blog.  Mark Hunter is the author of High-Profit Prospecting: Powerful Strategies to Find the Best Leads and Drive Breakthrough Sales Result

Why Sales Is Not a Profession

Recently, I had a discussion with a sales manager about how to connect with customers.  This was no casual conversation; it was serious, because he was with a start-up company who had 18 months at best, to achieve critical mass. The sales manager knew me well from my work with him at a previous company. The longer the conversation, the more animated we both became. Everyone around us could clearly see that we were having a good time.

One thing that made our time meaningful was our complimentary view of sales. Neither one of us think of sales as a job. This became evident when we began scoping out the ideal salesperson for him to hire in the coming weeks. With an 18-month window to scale the company in a highly competitive vertical, the last thing we needed was to hire people looking for just a job.

I remember part way through our conversation, we burst out laughing and again, to the dismay of the people next to us trying to enjoy a quiet dinner. We laughed, because we both agreed that the solution was to only hire people like us. Why did we believe that? Simple! We both don’t see sales as a job or even a profession. Both of us view sales as a lifestyle.

Watch my video on why sales is not a profession:

 

 

Hiring people who view sales as a lifestyle is not a “nice to have” but a “must have” requirement, because of the nature of the sales process and the incredible outcome it provides customers. The product the salespeople is asked to sell is not a product. Rather, it is an outcome, because it will change the customer’s life going forward. Trust me, hiring a salesperson who views sales as a job and make it all about the products they sell fails faster than fast.

When salespeople view what they do as a lifestyle, it’s amazing how well they listen and deepen their relationships. When the sales manager looked at his business plan, this was the only type of salesperson he could afford or wanted to accept.

How do you view sales? Do you view it as a job or a profession, or are you one of the few who look at sales as a lifestyle? There are 3 traits that separate those viewing sales as a lifestyle. The first trait is a passion for listening. The second trait is energy and grit to view sales as something you do 24/7. Finally, the third trait – and the secret sauce – is an  unwavering commitment to help customers see and achieve what they didn’t think was possible.

For those who live with the perspective of sales as a lifestyle, the opportunities are endless and the adrenaline never fades. Have that mindset!

Copyright 2019, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter” Sales Motivation Blog.  Mark Hunter is the author of High-Profit Prospecting: Powerful Strategies to Find the Best Leads and Drive Breakthrough Sales Result

How Can I Tell If I Qualified Prospects-Does Your Call to Action Engage the Prospect?

We talk a lot about making sure each phone call has a specific call to action. The most frequent call to action is an agreed to time to meet next. But there is far more you can do and should be doing. When a prospect agrees to meet with you again, it does not require enough on their part to guarantee they will become a customer.

More on engaging your prospect below:

Yes, an agreement to meet again may turn into your prospect becoming a customer, but wouldn’t you feel better if you were guaranteed they were going to become your customer? The approach I have personally found to be most helpful over the years and as I train other is to get the meeting scheduled and then engage them in an activity they are to complete on their own time.

There are two key ways to ensure you do this with excellence. You can either use information they shared with you or you provide them with additional information to create an activity of interest. Let’s look a little closer at how this could unfold.

The first approach is simple. As you conclude your call and are gaining the commitment for the next meeting you say: “I will email you a short document tomorrow and I would love to get your input on it before we meet.”

What you are now doing is asking the prospect to invest their time to read and respond to you. If a prospect has zero interest in buying from you they will not do it. But if the prospect has interest in moving forward with you, they will be highly likely to follow through with your request. This is an easy approach to help you begin to determine the quality of a prospect.

The second approach is to send the prospect an email after your initial meeting and restate a comment they made in the meeting and add additional insight to it or some further information. You conclude the note by asking for them to respond to you before the meeting as it will help you in making the next meeting even better.

There are certainly many variations you can use. The key here is to keep the prospect engaged even when you are not there. This is especially critical if the time between your two meetings is several weeks. When there is too much time between meetings you run the risk of the prospect losing interest. Only the most motivated prospect remains engaged on their own. Your objective is to not only qualify better but take the prospect who is on the fence and move them to your side.

A key benefit to implementing this approach is the effective use of your time. Relying on meetings either on the phone or in person as the only way to move a prospect along does not allow you to optimize your time. Using this approach allows you to make each meeting with a prospect that much more valuable, which in turn, typically allows you to close the deal faster.

If you missed the first parts of this series, be sure to check out the blog posts and videos below. In the coming weeks I’ll be sharing more!

Blog post and Video: Week 1: How Can I Tell If I Have Qualified Prospects or Just Bad Leads?

Blog post and Video: Week 2: How Can I Tell If I Have a Qualified Prospect-Confidential Information

Blog post and Video: Week 3: How Can I Tell if I Have Qualified Prospects-Knowing the Customer’s Timeline to Buy

As we talk about this subject over the next several weeks, I suggest you take 2 important action steps. First, buy my book, High-Profit Prospecting – available in paperback, audio book and Kindle. Second, join my High Profit Sales Coaching program. I promise both will yield valuable results for you and your business.

Copyright 2019, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter” Sales Motivation Blog.  Mark Hunter is the author of High-Profit Prospecting: Powerful Strategies to Find the Best Leads and Drive Breakthrough Sales Result

Monday Motivation Video: Making a Difference to End the Decade Strong

There are less than 90 days left in this decade, but that’s still plenty of time to make it happen. What’s the difference you will make? What do you want others to remember you by this year? Set yourself up to have the greatest decade yet in 2020!

Copyright 2019, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog. Mark Hunter is the author of High-Profit Prospecting: Powerful Strategies to Find the Best Leads and Drive Breakthrough Sales Result

Who Is The Best Person to Motivate You?

Who would you say? Your family? A boss? A co-worker? Somebody famous? I hope you said “no” to each one of those questions, because the best person to motivate you is you! Why would you want to delegate an incredibly important task to someone else? Why would you put your success in the hands of someone else?

You are not only the best person to motivate you, but you are also the only one who can motivate you. You have your mind and your thoughts. Yes, even how you respond to things is up to you. You have far more power to control you than you realize, and it starts with motivating yourself.

Video: Who is the best person to motivate me?

 

 

It’s good to have others around you who want to help. I know I have many people in my life who want to help me. The more the better, but in the end, all any of these people can do is help create an environment for me to motivate myself.

Motivated people know they are in control. That’s why when things don’t go as planned and others around them lose their mind, they are still motivated and don’t get discouraged. If we allow those around us to own our motivation, we’re nothing but a pinball being tossed from side to side in a pinball machine.

The person who relies on someone else for their motivation will find themselves mirroring the behavior of that person. Wow, nothing like not being your own person! As attractive as another person might seem and regardless how motivated they may come across, they are still not you and never will be. Only you can be you! Success is not what others do to you. Success is what you do, and it starts with being motivated.

There’s a reason why I emphasize how we start our day. The beginning of the day is the platform in which the rest of the day is built. When we start it in a positive, excited and motivated frame of mind, it’s amazing how much better the rest of the day goes.

Your objective today and everyday is to own your own motivation. View your motivation level as the fuel in your emotional tank, and your goal is to use the tank to power you through each day.

Copyright 2019, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog. Mark Hunter is the author of High-Profit Prospecting: Powerful Strategies to Find the Best Leads and Drive Breakthrough Sales Result