Mark Hunter's Blog, page 51

Sales is About Making a Significant Impact on Others

Do you agree or disagree with the title of this post? If you agree, it is probably because you see sales not as just a job but as a lifestyle. If, on the other hand, you disagree with the title or you have issues with it, it is probably because you view sales as taking advantage of others.

Video: Sales is Not a Job, Sales is a Lifestyle:

 

 

To me, sales is about making a significant impact on others. Your focus with each person you meet is to influence and impact them in a positive manner, and when you do, you are making a significant impact on them.

When you spend your time significantly impacting others, then sales is much more than a job, it truly is a lifestyle you live 24/7. When you view sales as a lifestyle, it is amazing the number of opportunities you will have. There are some who say great salespeople are just lucky because things have fallen in their lap. I say that’s not the case. I say they’re lucky because they’re living sales as a lifestyle, and as a result they see more opportunities.

I am going to challenge you to make the following item #1 on your goal list: ‘Be a person who significantly impacts others.’ My belief is that when you have this as your top goal, it will increase your ability to sell, because everything you do will be centered around impacting and influencing others.

Each day, count it a privilege to be able to have as your #1 goal to significantly impact others. Of the all activities you could be doing, sales is certainly one that allows you to focus 100% of your time significantly impacting others.

Who have you made a significant impact on this past week? Who will you make a significant impact on today? Your world is waiting for you, it’s your responsibility to make an impact.

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 Results

Are You Even Ready to Prospect?

How can you ever expect to achieve the results you need from prospecting if you aren’t prepared to prospect? Prospecting is tough enough, so you shouldn’t make it even harder on yourself. Watch this video to learn how you prepare to prospect to ensure you prospect effectively:

 

 

The worst thing you can do is sit down, suddenly start making prospecting calls or sending out emails and expect results. Most likely, you’ll be disappointed with your results. Prospecting effectively includes getting ready and this always has to involve working a day ahead. How you spend your time preparing to prospect the day before determines the outcomes of your prospecting. The work you accomplish beforehand has a significant impact on your results. I like to say, “tomorrow begins today,” and this is especially true when it comes to prospecting.

Getting ready to prospect is more than just having a list of people you intend to reach out to. Before the end of the day today, you should decide who you will prospect, what questions you intend to ask them and your goal for each person who you plan to contact tomorrow. Doing all of this ensures that you won’t waste your time or the time of those you call. Also, you’ll have more confidence with each call if you get ready the day before. Finally, planning ahead gives you goals so you can measure your effectiveness.

Did you notice that I did not tell you to decide what you’re going to say to the prospect? Rather, I told you to know what questions you should ask.  The last thing a prospect wants to hear is a long-winded pitch about you and your company. The only way you can expect to engage a prospect is by truly engaging them and this starts with asking questions to get them talking. Take time to develop questions that you feel will grab the prospect’s attention and engage them in the conversation. You will never be in a position to ask the right question at the right time unless you take the time to prepare.

When you take the time to prepare in advance to prospect, you’ll be amazed at your success!

Download my newest ebook, 50 Prospecting Truths to gain more insights on how to prospect 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 Results

Monday Motivation Video: Setting Your 2nd Half Sales Goals

What do you need to do over the next six months to close out 2019 strong? Look at last week’s success as well as your upcoming goals and up your game. You need to aggressively prospect and sell now through October so that November and December are bigger than ever. Don’t let the summer slow you down! People are still buying and selling. Set your goals higher, so you can achieve higher! 

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 Results

Tips & Ideas to Get Better Prospects

Prospecting does not have to be painful nor does it have to be as hard as you think. The first rule is to make every conversation one where you earn the right, privilege, honor and respect to meet with that person again. Sales and prospecting is not a slimy or ugly activity like some people describe it. I count prospecting and sales as an honor. When you prospect with integrity, you’ll gain customers who have integrity. Sales and integrity go together in the same way that integrity and prospecting do. One of the main reasons why I love sales is because it’s nothing more than having a conversation.

Watch the video to learn more:

Each sale occurs in three different ways: “repeat,” “get,” and “create.” The “repeat” is a measurement of the quality of the service you provide. The “get” is an indication of your marketing efforts; this is business that simply comes your way. What does this mean? It means that prospecting is about creating opportunities, and that’s what I say that sales is about helping others see and achieve what they didn’t think was possible.

Your time will always be your most valuable asset, so your prospecting process must be efficient. Don’t waste your time by thinking everyone is a lead. This can be a problem for some salespeople when they don’t really know what they’re selling. Always focus on the outcomes that you can help your customers achieve not on what you sell.

One great exercise that I share often is create a list of all the outcomes that you help your customers achieve. From your list, determine what type of person will most benefit from the outcomes that you offer. Once you clearly know your outcomes, you can begin to narrow down who it is that you want to target. This takes your funnel from wide to narrow.

When you have fewer prospects, you’ll be able to invest more time into the relationship with each one. When you spend more time together, their level of trust in you will increase. Furthermore, the level of trust you build will determine how much they’ll pay you.

Focus your prospecting not on what you share but on the questions you ask. The three types of questions I like to include are short questions, commitment questions, and follow-up questions. Each time you engage a prospect, your objective is to gain a micro-commitment from the prospect that allows you to move the process forward.

One technique I like to follow is what you see on every bottle of shampoo: rinse and repeat. These two words are as essential to prospecting as they are to washing your hair. You must be willing to repeat the prospecting process over and over but each time with a new message. Once is not enough! The frequency will vary based on what you sell, how people buy and who is your customer.

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 Results

Monday Motivation Video: How Was Your First Half of the Year?

How was your first half of the year? You may feel like the first couple months didn’t go as you hoped. That’s ok! You should still take some time right now to celebrate what you did well. Write down your successes. That will help set you up to win even more going forward. Build on your success, so you can make the second half of the year the best it can be!

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 Results

What Is Your Company’s Prospecting Culture?

Quit blaming salespeople for bad prospecting habits when you as the sales manager are the one with the bad prospecting habits! Culture starts at the top. If you want your team to focus on prospecting, you must make it a priority.

Your role as a sales manager/leader is not to be the best prospecting person. Your job is to coach and support the job of your people when it comes to prospecting. Each time you change your sale’s team focus to resolving petty issues with existing accounts rather than prospecting, you’re defeating yourself.

Check my video on this same subject:

Prospecting is not something you wake up in the morning excited about doing. I’m sure there are a few people eager to, but don’t kid yourself into thinking you’ve hired all of them! Too many companies are missing on their plan because of a failure to properly prospect.

Here are four quick things you as a sales manager can do each day to prospect correctly:

1. Ensure each salesperson has a dedicated block of time to only prospect. Honor this time by making sure they won’t be distracted by having to take care of other things.

2. Check the goal and results each person achieves during their dedicated prospecting period. The best thing you can do it help hold your people accountable.

3. When each person finishes prospecting, ask them what they learned and how they can use it to improve their prospecting skills. This goes a long way in helping create a learning culture. Ultimately, your goal is to ensure each salesperson can also coach themselves.

4. Ask each person what their prospecting objective is for the next day. As I say often: “tomorrow begins today.” It is imperative that your people know what their plan is, including who they call and the objective for each one. Doing this will keep them from using their prospecting time to prepare but not actually do it.

If every sales manager does these four things each day, it’s amazing how much more prospecting their team will accomplish. Creating a prospecting culture begins with doing and living out these four items each day.

Don’t forget to watch my video out on this same subject! By the way, if you have not picked up a copy of my book, High-Profit Prospecting, go grab one. While you’re at it, buy multiple copies for each member of your team.

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 Results

How to Prepare to Prospect – 10 Things You Need to Do

If you fail to properly prepare, you are setting yourself up for failure. This doesn’t just apply to prospecting but everything you do. Prospecting is already a tough task; it’s only made tougher when you fail to prepare. Below are 10 steps you need to follow to ensure you’re prepared to prospect. Check out my video where I further discuss these 10 items:

1. Don’t focus on what you sell, but rather, on the benefits and outcomes you provide. Those people you reach out to don’t care about what you’re selling, they just want solutions to their issues. Take 5 minutes and write down all of your customer’s outcomes that they have received because of buying from you.

2. Know who you plan to contact. The days of making random phone calls are gone. Ask yourself: who is your perfect customer and what outcomes can you help them achieve? Focus on prospecting with the people who align closest to your perfect customer.

3. Know your talking points and know them well. The last thing you or the prospect wants is a lame conversation that doesn’t go anywhere. You need to know what questions you will ask to open up and engage with the prospect. It’s not about asking them how their day is going or if they have time to talk. Your priority is to immediately engage them with a question that they find interesting.

4. Understand your objective. If you’re making initial calls, your objective is to secure a time for a discovery call. Keep in mind that your initial call will probably catch them off-guard, so don’t expect for them to have time to talk to you. That’s an unrealistic expectation.

5. Accept the fact that your calls are an interruption to the other person’s day; however, do not allow that to stop you. There is no better time to make the call than right now. Always view your upcoming calls as an opportunity for the prospect to unexpectedly see how you can help them.

6. Focus on reaching out to prospects. In order to do this successfully, you’ll need to clear your desk and block your calendar. Then, honor the blocked off time in your calendar and commit to only prospecting. Do not fool yourself by thinking that you will prospect after you get everything else done. That will never happen.

7. Set specific goals for each block of prospecting time. As you know, prospecting can become tedious and routine. It’s important that you have an achievable goal of the number of calls or conversations you want to have. Make a goal and then congratulate yourself once you achieve it.

8. Always know what you will say if a gatekeeper answers or you get the person’s voicemail. Your response to both of these is different than if you reached the decision maker. Know in advance exactly what you intend to say.

9. Make sure your CRM / Sales Engagement software is open and ready. Personally, I prefer VanillaSoft for this activity.

10. Before making each call, take a couple minutes to be thankful for your opportunity to reach out and help people. Each call is unique and each call has the potential to be the best. It’s up to you to be ready and to have a great attitude, regardless of how the other party responds.

Prospecting is the start of the sales process. If you want to have closing deals, you have to spend the time developing your prospects. I like to sum it up this way: your level of prospecting this month determines the level of deals you will close next month.

Finally, let me end with a quote that I use often: our goal with each person we meet is to earn the right, privilege, honor, and respect to meet with that person again. This applies 100% to prospecting, because when we prospect with integrity we will get customers who have integrity.

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 Results

Monday Motivation Video: How to Get Focused and Achieve More

How many things are you focused on this week? Probably a million, because we all feel like we have a lot to do. You will accomplish more when you intentionally focus your mind in the moment. For the next 15 minutes, set your mind on the one task you’d like to achieve right now. Get in the zone, and stay there! Be focused and you’ll achieve even more success.

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 Results

Your Reputation Arrives Before You Do

Before a prospect meets with you, they do one thing: Google your name and your company! They want to see what the Internet says about you. How well or poorly does the Internet speak of you? Watch my video on this here!

 

It’s not good enough to just have a social media reputation that isn’t stupid. Today, it’s about having an image that says you’re smart. So, what does this mean for you as a sales leader? It means that you can ditch the endless commentary about the sales awards you’ve won and the number of “Top Seller” trips you’ve been on. Your prospects don’t care! In fact, these accolades can actually turn off a prospect, because it makes it seem like it’s all about you.

Instead, you want your social media profiles and LinkedIn displaying how you care for those you work with and your industry.  The easiest way to do is to post a news article about something in business or your industry once a week. When you post/share it, go ahead and add a couple comments of your own. Doing this helps others see you as insightful. It shows them that you look outward at the bigger picture of what’s happening around you. They will better understand that you’re more than just a salesperson, you’re a sales leader.

Remember that your prospects are busy. The last thing a prospect wants to do is sit through one more presentation. Prospects would rather glean insights from people that will help them achieve their goals. The salesperson who loads up their profile with only information about themselves and their company is not going to be seen as salesperson.

Prospects have options and customers have options, so this means you must bring them value even before you arrive. Your reputation always arrives before you. Furthermore, it’s your reputation that will determine if you even get the meeting.

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 Results

Prospecting and The 10 Rules You Need to Follow

You don’t just think about prospecting. Prospecting is something you do, and you do it daily.

Watch this video: 10 Rules of Prospecting, to learn more!

1.The number of deals you have to close directly reflects the amount of time you spend prospecting. The prospects you close with next month and next quarter are the people you prospect with right now.

2. Don’t start what you can’t finish. A single phone call will never be enough. You have to be prepared to reach back out to the prospect numerous times over a period of days, weeks, or even months before you have a meaningful conversation.

3. Focus on the outcome that you provide rather than on what you sell. You do what you do because you can help others. The benefits that you offer and the outcomes that you deliver are what matter most.

4. Always have a dedicated time to prospect each day and each week. If you think that you will just get to prospecting once you have everything else done, you’re wrong. There will always be demands on your time. You must schedule prospecting in your calendar just like you schedule any other appointment or meeting. It needs to be part of your routine. Prospecting is no different than showering; it’s best done daily.

5. Prospecting is about interrupting people. They will never know how much you can help them until you first reach out. Accept the fact that you are an interruption; the only way that you wouldn’t be is if they were already your customer.

6. When you hear the prospect say, “just send me some information,” realize that they are simply saying that to get rid of you. It’s a phrase to easily end the conversation. New salespeople get excited when they hear a prospect ask for more information. Don’t fall for this request before first asking them questions to uncover more of their needs.

7. Prospecting is not networking. There’s nothing wrong with networking, but it is not prospecting. Networking is about creating relationships over time and these can turn into prospecting situations, but always view networking as having a long-tail that takes time.

8. Using lines such as “just checking in”or “how’s your day going?” are a waste. It’s your job to bring new value each time you reach out to them. When the other person hears these kinds of phrases/questions, it can show them that you don’t know what to ask for and you don’t have anything new to say. Simply put, it indicates that you are wasting the prospect’s time.

9. Never think that you can rely on a single form of communication. Always use every communication method available. The person who thinks they can rely solely on email, LinkedIn or anything else as their sole method of prospecting is downright lazy. You can take this to the bank: lazy prospectors quickly turn into broke prospectors.

10. Don’t expect your calls or emails to be returned. You can’t send one message and think that your work is done. There’s a reason why companies such as Coca-Cola spend so much on advertising- because they know they need to. Certainly, your name and your company isn’t as well-known as Coca-Cola, so if they feel like they need numerous messages to create sales, you do too.

So, there’s the 10 rules you need to follow in prospecting. Spend 10 minutes thinking through each item on this list. What do you need to change? What do you need to do more of? Prospecting is the start of sales: when we prospect well, we will close well. Learn more in my video, 10 Rules of Prospecting: https://youtu.be/REv0dB3n_6g

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 Results