Mark Hunter's Blog, page 49

Monday Motivation Video: Don’t Let Your Mind Hold You Back

Did you know you have all the power that you could possibly want? Whether you choose to believe it or not, you do! Your mind is the most powerful tool you own. All you have to do is use it to your advantage. Don’t end today with any regrets. Don’t let your mind hold you back. Just do it!

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

Do I Have Prospects or Are They Suspects?

It’s time to clean out your sales pipeline, your sales funnel or whatever name you choose to call your sales process but first, you need to ask yourself these two questions:

• How long does it take me to convert a lead into a customer?

• What percentage of leads do I convert into a customer?

Video: What’s in my sales pipeline?

 

 

Are you guilty of thinking every prospect will buy from you? Worse yet, are you guilty of thinking every lead is a prospect? It’s time to wake up and realize how much time you’re spending just chasing the air! I hate to say it, but it’s no different than watching a dog chase a car. The only thing the dog is doing is running and barking. In the end, the dog will never catch the car.

Your number one goal should be to protect your time, because it’s your most valuable asset; therefore, you should only spend it on highly qualified prospects that can convert into customers. Go back to the first two questions I asked at the start of this article. Work on decreasing the amount of time it takes you to close a prospect and increasing the percentage of leads you convert to customers. Make sure your time is well spent.

The answers to both questions are related, so if you answer them together, you will protect your costly asset even more. Your time is invaluable. If the lead won’t reveal their need to you early on, what makes you think they’re serious about buying? This is a huge issue salespeople fall victim to. You think that just because somebody downloaded something from your website that now they’re you’re next best lead.

Qualify fast and qualify hard by asking the lead to engage. Then, if they’re serious, they will engage, but if they’re not, they won’t. This isn’t a license to bug them with, “hey do you want to buy from me?” No, it’s about bringing new value with each message, but if they’re not responding and you can see that their lifetime value is not great, move on.

Don’t be the dog chasing the car! The faster you ask the tough questions, the faster you’ll find yourself with fewer qualified prospects. Yes, you read that right- I did say “fewer.” When you have fewer but better prospects, it’s amazing how much focus you can give them. When you start to do this, something really crazy happens – the car stops and you have yourself a customer!

Your assignment is to clean out your pipeline. Go ahead and give those lead and fake prospects, the ones we call suspects, back to marketing. Let them nurture them; that’s what they do much better than you. Your job is selling, not chasing cars!

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 To Get Past the Gatekeeper

We’ve all been there. You make the call and boom, you’re blocked by the gatekeeper. They won’t let you get to the person you want to speak with.

First off, remember that the gatekeeper is only doing their joy by guarding the gate. That’s what they’re supposed to do. They’ll let you pass but only if they feel that you are worthy. To understand how to get past them, you must put them in one of these two broad categories:

The first category is the admin / receptionist / security desk / or any other person who is responsible for stopping phone calls, unless they’re very important. The second category is the administrator who controls the schedules / sets the flow and often, actually runs the department you’re calling.

Video: How Do I Get Past the Gatekeeper:

 

 

You handle each one totally different, but it’s determined quickly which category they fall into. The secretary / receptionist rushes through the call, while the admin who runs the place is more engaging. In a perfect world, when you call, your objective is to have a name to ask for, not a position. There’s no harm in trying if you don’t know the name, but know that it will put you behind. Thankfully, getting a person’s name is becoming easier and easier with the web nowadays. I’ll deal with that in an upcoming blog post. Regardless, it’s still important for you to show them respect and understand they’re just doing their job. This is why I don’t view them as a gatekeeper but rather as a door opener. When asked the reason for your call, don’t smoke it or fake it. Be upfront and honest. Integrity is a must!!

State: I’m looking to discuss __________, or I was speaking with ___________ and thought it would be good for me to talk to __________ , or there have been quite a few changes with ____________ and I wanted to make sure _____ is up to date on them.

What you shouldn’t say is: I’m looking for whoever buys ________. If you say that, you’re getting yourself a ticket straight to the purchasing department. If they say they’re not available, ask when might be a good time for you to call back. If they say the person is unavailable, then ask if they might know the answer to _____ and ask them one of the questions you would have asked the decision maker if you had been able to speak with them. I like this approach, because it allows the gatekeeper to begin seeing you as having value. Keep in mind that your goal is to use the gatekeeper as the door opener. Treat them in the same way that you would the decision maker if you were talking with them.

When the gatekeeper / door opener does connect you, say “just in case we get disconnected, what’s his/her extension?” If they are blocking you at all points, here are a few techniques to try:

-Ask for sales. It’s amazing how they always answer the phone!

-Call before 8 AM or after 5 PM

-Call a different office location

-Call a number just a few digits off from the main number

-Call Friday afternoon / over lunch

-Always call a different day / time and record it.

-Change up your phone numbers

When you have the gatekeeper’s name, use their name when you get someone else. For instance, you say: “This isn’t Barb, is it? Hi _________ great to meet you, I’m looking for _______ .” When doing that, it’s amazing how the “guest answerer” starts viewing you as somebody they should know. From then on, they will forgo the normal gatekeeper response and connect you. Don’t stop just because you’re getting blocked. Remember the same thing is happening to your competitor and chances are, they are not being as diligent as you are.

Be sure to download my ebook on 50 Prospecting Truths! 

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: What Will You Google Today?

What are you most likely to Google today? What question do you want Google to answer for you? If you’re a parent, ask your kids these questions. Successful people are always trying to quench their thirst for knowledge. Whenever you see or hear something that you don’t know or understand, take a moment to ask Google and learn. As your knowledge increases, your ability to benefit others increases. Make it a Google week!

Your Reputation Arrives Before You Do

You can run, but you can’t hide. You can fake it, but you won’t make it. The era of thinking that you can behave one way in one situation and a different way in another is long gone. Your reputation arrives before you do.

It continues to amaze me that salespeople think they can craft this perfect image with customers but behave like a jerk in other situations. Each conversation we have and each sale we make leads to the next one; there is no such thing as a dead end conversation. Too often, I salespeople respond is a less than professional manner to one customer and then become shocked when other customers won’t do business with them.

Watch my video below:

 

 

My mother always said good news travels fast but bad news travels even faster.  In today’s world, this truth applies more than ever. Your reputation arrives long before you do. The customer who you want to meet with will check you out online before agreeing to work with you. Before you buy from the customer, they will talk to others who know you and your reputation.

Don’t think that you can be nice and polite to one customer and then go ballistic moments later with someone else. A true leader is the same with each person they meet, regardless of their stature or position in life. Warren Buffet uses a phrase a lot that goes something like this, “it takes a lifetime to build your reputation, but you can lose it in a moment.” Think about the power of that quote the next time you’re tempted to get upset with someone.

It’s more than other people observing your two-faced behavior, it is the damage that you do to your own mindset. Once you allow yourself to have split-behavior, it’s amazing how easily it can creep into more and more of your thinking and change your mindset. Ultimately, we do what we think, so the best way to ensure you have a solid reputation is to only think in an honorable manner.

Your reputation does arrive before you do. Your customer is checking you out on Google before they will ever allow you in their office or even talk to you on the phone. Your reputation is built on two things: first, the things you craft, create and write on social media sites and second, how you behave in the real world. The two had better line up, so don’t think that you can fake it. Yelp gives us reviews about a restaurant and similarly, our customers speak to others about us.

The question we have to ask ourselves is: are my actions consistent? I am the only one that can craft my reputation. I cannot blame anyone; therefore, it’s up to me to be consistent in what I do, say, write and share. If you don’t walk and talk the same language, you will be seen as a fraud.

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 Do I Use Email to Prospect?

How effective are your emails? You want to think that the email you just wrote is perfect and sending it out to 100 prospects will result in at least 90 meetings. If this is you, there’s no need for you to read any further; however, I suspect this is not your case, so let me share my techniques for using email to prospect.

Watch my video to learn how to use email to prospect:

 

 

Use email as simply one of your contacting tools. Email works best when it’s used alongside the telephone and other methods of communication. Just because email is easy to use and you can send out a lot of emails quickly does not mean it is the only method you should rely on. Remember that email must be of value to the prospect; it’s not all about you! Your prospect did not wake up this morning thinking about how much they want to hear from you. No, they have their own problems to worry about; your objective is to help them.

Write the email so it reads best from a smartphone. Most prospecting emails are written on a laptop or desktop, yet they’re read on a smartphone. When in doubt, send the email to yourself and see how it looks on your smartphone. Your email must have a call to action; this is something many salespeople miss. Let’s not kid ourselves, the percentage of prospects that don’t respond will be few, but that’s not a reason to leave out a call to action.

The subject line must be compelling and of interest to the prospect. It’s not about you. Don’t think for a moment that you can use a “bait and switch” subject line. After the subject line, the first 75 characters is what I like to call, “golden real estate.” When viewing an email on a smartphone, the prospect will only see the first few words of your email, so don’t waste those words introducing yourself. Use the first few words to build on what you wrote in the subject line.

Limit the entire email length to less than 6- 8 sentences / 3 paragraphs total. Long emails get deleted, especially when they’re viewed on a smartphone. The shorter it is, the more probability the prospect will read it. Introduce yourself in the second paragraph. It’s adequate to state your name and company, but going so far to say how long you’ve been in business and how great you are will turn the prospect off.

Prospecting emails are not “capability presentations.” That’s why including attachments, brochures, etc. are always a bad move. The objective of the prospecting email is to gain just enough interest to generate a next step. Don’t think for a moment that you can keep sending the same prospect an email each day or even each week until they succumb to the pressure and respond to you. If you send more than 3 or 4 emails to a person in a short period of time and they don’t respond, the chances are their spam / junk filter is going to pick you up. Yes, everyone’s email system is different, but the fact remains that spam filters are designed to do their job. A spam filter’s job is not for you but for your prospect.

Download my new ebook, 50 Prospecting Truths that’s full of ideas and strategies to help you prospect more effectively.

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: What Is the One Item You Can Do 10x Better?

Take one item this week and go all the way with it. You’ll gain a lot of satisfaction and joy when you just do one thing very well. Success will come if you narrow your focus to one task. Doing so will not only increase the level of competence and confidence you have in yourself but also the level of competence and confidence others have in you. Find one thing to do with all out passion and intent today!

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

Time Management: How Will You Use Your Day?

We all say we have too much to do. Even my 84 year-old in-laws claim they’re too busy to get everything done in a day. I think the question is: do we have too much to do, or are we mismanaging our time? You have customers and prospects that need to hear from you today; yet, the majority of you reading this will not reach out to everyone you said you would by the end of the day. Having the best of intentions doesn’t work. Thinking about doing something doesn’t work. The only thing that truly works is having a plan and executing it, and that includes how you intend to use your time.

Watch this video to learn how have better time management:

 

 

You have little chance to make the most of today unless you took the time yesterday to prepare for today. The phrase I love to use is “tomorrow begins today.” Unless you take the time today to make preparations for tomorrow, you won’t do it. The process is simple.

First, start with the big outcomes you want to accomplish over the next year. Yes, I said the next year. If all you do is focus on what you need to do tomorrow, you won’t accomplish your bigger goals. Your goal each day should be to do something that will move you a little closer to achieving at least one of your big goals.

Second, look at what you need to do that would best be done by someone else or with someone else. Don’t look at yourself as working alone. Always view yourself as a part of a team. Also, your job is to not just use your team, but elevate them. The bane of time management is thinking that you are the only one capable of accomplishing everything. The most successful people always surround themselves with others.

Your third step is to allocate your time into concise blocks of 15 minutes to 90 minutes to work on whatever task you need to do. It is amazing how much our work expands to the amount of time we have, unless we force it into a set block of time.  Think about how many things you check off your list the day before you leave on vacation. Why is that? It’s simple! More is accomplished, because a far more attractive activity is waiting for you the next day. You know you only have one day left to get whatever you need to do done.

Fourth and finally, at the end of each day, evaluate what you did. Then, do two things: celebrate your successes and with a critical eye, assess what you could have done differently. It’s only when you successfully use your own time that you’re be able to fully achieve what you are capable of.

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

What Do I Do When a Prospect Goes Silent?

You have the perfect prospect. You know how you can help them. You have that initial phone call, and everything feels good. They share great information and provided even more information and insights in response to your questions. You feel like life is good. The call ends and you’ve both agreed on a clear next step: another call next week. You feel good about the time blocked for the call next week. Then, two days before the next scheduled call, they send you an email letting you know that they’re cancelling. Their note is short and sweet and goes something like: “My priorities have changed. I’ll contact you if I see a need to speak again.” Your heart sinks. They’ve blown you off. It’s even worse if you don’t hear anything and they don’t show for the call or respond to your message when you tell them you’re waiting. So, what do you do?

Get all the answers in this video:

 

 

How do you respond to these situations? How should you respond to these situations? Let’s run through a checklist of what you need to do. The last thing you want to do is have a conversation with yourself or worse yet, crickets and an empty pipeline.

Let’s go back and dissect the situation. Your initial excitement of getting what you think is a qualified lead is now long gone. The problem began when you failed to do the two-step follow-up even in your excitement. Don’t go thinking that the thank you email you sent immediately following the call was enough. That’s what every salesperson does. If you want to be a top performer, you must go further. You need to send them a second communication a couple days later where you provide another keen insight and a question along with how you’ll share this and more information during the next meeting with them. This second step is key as it helps to keep their interest level high before the next call.

Let’s shift gears now and talk about how you engage the prospect that will not respond. First, ask yourself: are you giving the prospect a reason to respond to you? If all you’re doing is throwing them information, who is going to blame them for not responding. You want to engage them with something that sparks their interest. The best way to do this is by calling (and yes, leave a voicemail if they don’t answer) or emailing them. State a comment they shared with you and ask them a question about what they said. People love to have their comments and feelings validated. By asking them more about what they shared with you, they will feel valued. I’m amazed at how effective this strategy is in getting people engaged.

The frequency of your messages is always something salespeople struggle with. My answer is simple- the speed and frequency of how often you follow up will be driven by the following three things:

First is the person you’re dealing with. The lower the person is in an organization, the more frequent you can follow up. The higher up the individual, the longer the timeframe should be between attempts. Second, the frequency with what you sell is being purchased. If what you sell is seen as a commodity and the customer is buying from your competitor, you need to reach out frequently. If what you sell is a capital expenditure, your follow-up might be closer to once every 7 – 10 days. Third, is the urgency the customer expressed in proceeding calls. It’s only natural if what they said sounded critical, then you owe it to them to reach out more often.

What does all this mean to you? It means that if you’re selling a commodity, the customer has expressed a real need and you’re dealing with a low-level person, I would call them daily. If I’m dealing with a senior level manager making a capital expenditure, I would call them every two weeks.

These are only guidelines. The key is to develop a plan and stick to it. Too many salespeople fail to follow through themselves. No wonder customers go silent; often, its due to the salesperson. There’s no reason to sit back and allow a customer to go “radio silent” on you. It’s not their job to break the silence, it’s your job to give them a strong enough reason to break the silence.

Check out my ebook on prospecting “10 Reasons Most Prospecting Plans Fail”:

 

10 Reasons Most Prospecting Plans Fail eBook

 

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 Do I Overcome My Lack of Confidence When Prospecting?

I get asked this question a lot, and feel like it is one of the biggest reasons why salespeople are not successful and ultimately end up leaving the profession. Until you can overcome this fear, there is little chance that you will ever be successful. Your lack of confidence is quickly going to be seen by the customer and will either turn them off towards you or make them take advantage of you if they decide to buy.

Here’s a video on this topic:

 

 

Your lack of confidence stems from your unbelief in yourself and how you can help others. When you lack self-confidence, you feel that what you’re doing is intrusive and bothersome. The only way to overcome this is to stop and shift your thinking to the positive outcomes you help others achieve. Focus your thinking on all the ways that your customers have benefited from what you sell. The value you create is not in what you sell, it’s in the outcomes your customers achieve.

The second major area that destroys confidence is with those your associate. We become like those we most spend time with. It makes sense that if you associate with negative people, you will become negative. Personally, I choose to not associate with certain people because of their ongoing negativity. Instead, I intentionally seek out optimists, those people with a positive attitude and outlook on life. So, who do you need to replace in your life? It’s not harsh thinking. This is the real world, and if you want to be in the best position possible to help others, you must monitor closely those you connect with around you.

The third area to work on is setting goals you know you can achieve. Of course, we all want to set “shoot for the moon” goals but that’s a waste of time if you lack the confidence to accomplish even modest goals. I coach people to set simple goals that you know you can achieve right in the first hour of the day. It’s amazing how much confidence and momentum you gain by quickly achieving a simple goal. It sets you up to achieve the next one and and the next one. Then, with each one your confidence will increase and you’ll be more successful.

The fourth and final area to work on is take the time to thank others. Be fully aware of all that you have to be thankful for. Regardless of your situation, you have much to be thankful for. Take time each day to thank others, and take time each day to help someone else. You’ll be amazed at how much your own attitude and confidence changes when you help others and show gratitude. Confidence is not something you’re born with. Confidence is something you earn each day through your actions and how you choose to respond to things around you. The more confident you are, the more opportunities will come. Self-confidence is the foundation from which success is built.

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