Mark Hunter's Blog, page 53

How Important is Credibility to the Sales Process?

Maybe the right question is: how do customers define credibility? The issue is that customers can’t see someone’s good intentions; they only see the results. This is the big issue when it comes to credibility and why  oftentimes there is a disconnect between a salesperson and the customer.

A salesperson can have the best intentions but still fail to deliver. It can be a big issue when a salesperson allows their assumptions to drive the customer’s expectations.

Bad assumptions destroy credibility! Ask any customer service department what their biggest struggle is and this is what they will tell you. This happens when the customer’s expectations do not line up with what is actually being delivered. Frequently, all of this plays out when the salesperson fails to identify the customer’s exact expectations.

Watch this 7-minute video interview I had with business growth coach and sales strategist, Meridith Elliott Powell: https://youtu.be/X563mEnl9_s

The impact of credibility shows up in a number of different ways. The salesperson or company with a high level of credibility always benefits from referrals and repeat business. The company lacking credibility, on the other hand, always finds themselves chasing the next customer.

Ask yourself: what level of credibility do you create with your customers? The trick here is that you actually don’t have the answer to this question; only your customers do. Go ahead and ask them. I’ll wait.

Don’t go thinking you can just pass off this topic of credibility. Not a single salesperson would say that they have fewer competitors than before. Credibility is not a nice to have- it is a must have! Credibility is the cost of entry to any relationship. This is especially true in today’s world where anybody can find out anything they want about you. What do I mean by that? Your reputation arrives before you. Before you have that first phone call or first meeting, keep in mind that the other person has already determined your level of credibility. 

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

10 Things You Can Do to Prospect Faster

We all wish every lead turned into a great prospect and in less time. You probably also want it all to take you less time than it takes to decide what you want to eat for lunch. That would be the greatest customer, right? Yes, in a perfect world, that could happen. I would be happy to settle even if the entire process only took 24 hours. The fact is that too often leads don’t go anywhere and we’re left with a painfully slow journey to try to get the next customer.

Here are 10 things you need to do to prospect faster:

1. Look through your list of customers and identify the top 3. Then, make a list of their characteristics and why they buy from you. Use this list to as a guide as you prospect. If the lead doesn’t possess any of these characteristics, challenge yourself in why you’re spending time with them.

2. Block enough time in your calendar to both lead development phase and qualify the prospect. Designate separate times to ensure both of these get done. You want to be sure to not emphasize one over the other.

3. Do not fixate on the number of leads you have. It shouldn’t ever be about that. The number you want to focus on is your number of qualified prospects.

Check out this 93-second video where I talk about your sales pipeline.

4. Work on quickly qualifying each lead by asking what they know about you and your company. Your reputation always arrives ahead of you and the better your reputation, the sooner trust is built. The single biggest driver in accelerating prospecting is the ability to establish trust with the prospect.

5. Make your prospects earn the right to become prospects. Even if they fit your perfect customer criteria, you still need to understand how you can help them. This means they have to be willing to articulate their needs in a way that you can begin to help them. The customer may be confused, so it’s your job to reduce the confusion. You’ll clear things up best by asking questions. This will get them to open up and share with you. Your conversations increase the prospect’s confidence and also deepens their trust in you.

6. Build your selling process around making it as easy as possible for a prospect to become a customer as you can. Don’t over complicate things. Everyone wants their next customer to be massive, but start with a small order first. Once you get that first small order, it becomes much easier to upsell.

7. Don’t stay with a prospect that is not forthcoming with giving information. Just because you know you can help them, let them go if they aren’t willing to dance with you. Don’t let your emotions hold you hostage to thinking that you need to keep focusing on them. Your time is too valuable. You can always come back to them later.

8. Never allow a conversation to end without a clear next step. Ambiguity never belongs in sales; it will just get you into trouble. Every conversation must end with the next step clearly laid out along with the prospect’s next action. The action they take regardless of how small it might be will indicate their desire to move forward.

9. Do not be afraid to ask tough questions during the prospect-qualifying phase. Your objective is to confirm that they can be your customer. If they won’t engage with you now, what makes you think they will engage with you later on?

10. Never lose site of what expectations you can deliver. In the urge to close, it’s easy to make claims about performance and how the customer will benefit from what you have to offer. If you fall into this trap, I promise it will quickly come back to haunt you. Don’t get loose with what you say, or you will find your employer cutting loose from you.

Finally, never forget this quote that I use a lot: when you prospect with integrity, you will get customers who have integrity.

If you have not read my book, High-Profit Prospecting, I strongly suggest you grab a copy. You will find numerous strategies and techniques to help you prospect. Find out more at 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 Results

Monday Motivation Video: Great People Help Others Achieve Success

Great companies exist because of great people. It’s that simple! Are you one of those great people? Are you associating yourself with great people? Helping others achieve greatness is an important quality of sales leaders. Take time to help others achieve greatness this week. You and your business will reap the benefits!

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

Is Your Ego Keeping You From Listening / Sales Leadership Lessons

Show me an egotistical person, and I will show you a person who isn’t listening. If someone feels like they have all the answers and know it all, then why should they listen to anyone else? Primarily, to an ego driven person, everyone else is purely there to make them look good. That’s it!

Big ego equals poor listener. I can’t say it any simpler than that. This confirms that the person with the big ego will never be a great salesperson nor will they ever be a great leader.

Sales and leadership is about connecting with people, and this means listening to people. The only person an egocentric individual wants to listen to is themselves. The first universal thing of every egotistical person is that they are quick to view everyone else as stupid and not hesitant to say it out loud to whoever is listening. Second, they always loathe doing whatever it takes to ensure that they are the center of everything.

Sadly, I see the results of a big ego play out in sales with a high degree of churn among customers and fewer referrals. The egocentric salesperson will consistently have a lower lifetime value from their customers than the humble salesperson.

In leadership, the ego driven person will always be plagued by high turnover and lower productivity from their salespeople. Ask yourself, would you want to work for a person who doesn’t value others?

Sales leadership is thinking of others more highly than yourself by putting them and their needs first. It’s about ending each conversation with earning the privilege and the honor to meet with that person again.

Check out this 40-second video: What is sales? It is people connecting with people.

https://youtu.be/uaQk8kSz6Q0

Also, be sure to read my blog post from last week where I write about the need to be both authentic and transparent.

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

Who Makes a Great Prospect? 4 Questions You Must Answer

You cannot afford to waste your time with prospects that will not become your customers. Your time is too valuable! All prospects are not the same. The sooner you know who is good and who isn’t, the better off you will be.

By getting answers to these four questions, you’ll also help turn them into better customers by offering them more value. Too many salespeople wait too long to get answers to these questions and it leads to having a pipeline that’s essentially a sewer line. What I mean by this is that the prospects in their pipeline are only doing one thing: plugging things up.

Check out my 2-minute video on these 4 questions!

So, here’s the first question: is the prospect asking you great questions? If all they are doing is listening and not asking you anything, it’s hard to know if they are really interested. A customer will show that are engaged by asking questions. The more engaged and the more motivated they are, the better the questions they will ask you. Too many salespeople waste time with prospects who just want to learn something. That kind of prospect is only choosing to listen to you, because they have a need and unfortunately their need isn’t to buy anything from you. I hate to say this, but sometimes their need is to get your information in order to gain more leverage to negotiate a better deal with their current supplier.

Next question is: do they have a need that you can help them with? This sounds basic, but the key for you is to build on their need. This can be done by simply asking them questions and then asking follow-up questions on what they share. Just let them talk. Remember that the good insights are not going to come out right away. It probably won’t be until after your second or third question that really good information will unfold.

The third question is: do they have a timeline for making a decision? The prospect might have a need but if they aren’t in a position to make a decision right then, do you really want to focus on them? Most likely, no! Your time is valuable. You don’t have to discard the prospect, and you certainly want to give them a reason to buy now, but let’s not kid ourselves: if the customer’s timeline can’t be changed then the only thing you’re doing is wasting your time.

The final question is: do they have the money? I’m not tell you to directly ask them that, but I am saying that you have to be willing to probe quickly. This is why I like to ask, “how have you made decisions like this before?” With that question, I am looking for them to bring up how cost is a key part of their decision making process. Don’t think what the prospect shares is absolute truth because every decision is different, but I will take what they say and use it to help with my follow-up questions.

The sooner you have answers to these questions, the sooner you will be able to determine the prospect’s value and how much of your time you should devote to them.

I encourage you to download my latest prospecting ebook that deals with how to send a great prospect email. With this ebook, you’ll also be able to gain access to a free 14-day trial to Salesgenie which is a helpful tool for finding great leads to prospect.

Don’t forget to also watch my 2-minute video on these 4 questions!

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: Are You Giving Referrals?

I bet you love getting referrals, but do you love just as much giving them? The next time you get a call for a job that just doesn’t quite fit you and your area of expertise, refer them to someone you know that does. By doing so, you’re helping others but also getting yourself excited. I am a better salesperson when I am eager to give referrals, because I know I am helping others see and achieve what they didn’t think was possible.

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

Sales Leadership Requires Being Authentic and Transparent

You can’t just run and hide. You can’t exhibit one style on Monday and then be a completely different person on Tuesday. The days of faking it are over. We’ve all read stories and seen companies falsely live out their mission statement.

News flash! This same behavior that we see in companies is sadly alive and well in all of us. Too often, a person will profess that they are a great leader and then immediately turn around and do something stupid. I’ll be blunt…people are always watching! The era of thinking that you can have two styles is gone, mainly thanks to social media and the increased level of visibility in our society.

How can you expect anyone to respect you, let alone pay attention to you and what you’re saying if they see you modeling two different kinds of behavior? It’s an understatement to say that this is an issue. More importantly, don’t go around thinking that just because those around you are like this that you can be too. Our world is crying out for authenticity and transparency. Think of the friends that you have: would you choose to be friends with them if you never knew how they were going to behave?

Leadership is not merely talk. Real leadership is actions and that is why I firmly believe that actions carry more weight than words. That’s definitely the case for me. The expression that we all will have our 15 minutes of fame at least once in our life no longer applies. We are on 24/7; there will never be a moment when somebody isn’t watching.

Living a life of authenticity and transparency means that you’re genuine in every situation at every moment. The bigger your footprint in your company, with your customers, and in your community, the more authentic and transparent you need to be. Too many times I talk to people that feel the opposite: because they are bigger than life, they can get away with more. False!

Take a look at the people around you. Who is transparent and authentic in how they live? I’m sure you notice a peace and calmness about them. Why? Because they don’t ever have the stress of having to fake it and they don’t have to worry about their actions in the moment or afterwards. Authentic people don’t live with regrets.

Today, your goal is to be 100% who you are. Don’t try to be somebody else or fake your way through something. Live like this and you’ll start down the path of being truly authentic and transparent. Trust me, the world will value you the most if you are real.

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 Competitor is Not Who You Think It Is

You probably think your competitor is the big evil company that just came out with a more superior product than yours. No! That big evil company is not your primary competitor. Your two biggest competitors are:

1. Your own self-limiting doubts about what you can’t do.

2. The “no decision” response that too many customers ultimately decide on.

I think far too much time is wasted on thinking that the answer to a sales slump and to even finding great prospects is developing a solution to beat a competitor. Skip the effort and first focus on your own mindset. Second, think about the number of sales that simply die due to a decision never being made.

You might think that both of these reasons are unique, but let me share how both are intertwined more than you realize. When a customer fails to make a decision, they are only doing so because they haven’t found a good enough reason to buy. Furthermore, the reason why they haven’t found a good enough reason to buy is because of two things: they were not the right prospect or you didn’t create enough value for them to see.

Let’s now link what I just shared back to the big issue of your mindset. When we don’t have the right mindset, we can’t see or even think clearly. Ask yourself: would you want to go into surgery with a doctor who does not have the right mindset? Absolutely not! You want your doctor to have the right mindset about what needs to be done. A doctor never reaches that decision until first making an accurate diagnosis. Your customers should be no different. The last thing you want is to be laying on the operating table and hear the people looking over you say, “I think we have this all wrong.”

Your customers want to make the right decision and for them, that sometimes means making no decision. Let’s now go back to your mindset. The first thing a doctor knows they need to do is to have you, the patient, be confident in their work and skills. Second, the doctor knows that he or she needs you to feel confident in the outcome. Now, most doctors do not even want to entertain surgery if they don’t think the patient is a good fit.  There’s a reason why often doctors will not perform a complicated surgery on an older person; the risks far outweigh the reward.

Are you beginning to see how this all fits together? The doctor has to have a clear mindset to make the right decision and when they do, the right outcome is achieved for them and the patient. Your job in sales is no different. If you have the right mindset, you will be able to select the right prospects. The right mindset will allow you to properly diagnose the prospect. In turn, that will  create maximum value and turn that prospect into a customer.

You’re probably now asking how you get the right mindset. I’ll boil it down to two things: first, you must absolutely believe that you are capable of making a difference. You know you can because of the impact you’ve had on other customers. If you’ve done it once, you can do it again! Second, you must know that it IS your job to help others and to help them get to a better place, whatever or wherever that may be. When you are certain that you can make a difference, it is amazing how intentional your questions and the entire conversation becomes. The more intentional you are, the more of an impact you will make. The bigger your impact, the more value your prospects will see and ultimately, the more customers you will have.

It’s time to quit focusing on the big evil competitor. Instead, focus on yourself and the difference you can make.

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: What Questions Should I Ask?

Get excited to ask questions this week. Ask your peers, your customers and those highly respected individuals around you. Everyone should ask questions, but leaders especially. Asking questions is one of the best ways to learn. How are you going to improve yourself this week? Start by asking great questions and applying what you learn.

Am I Productive or Just Busy? Sales Leadership Lessons

It is easy to think that just because you’re busy, you are productive. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The words “busy” and “productive” are often polar opposites.

I see salespeople and sales leaders spending countless hours updating reports and building out spreadsheets. These same people are quick to say that they just don’t have time to prospect or meet with customers because they’re busy. They are busy doing “busy” work.

Ask yourself these two simple questions before you start working on anything:

Will this make a difference with a customer?
Will this grow sales or increase profits?

If you lead a sales team, I hold you responsible not only for the work you create for your people but also the requests you get from others above you. During my days of leading sales teams, I remember how often I pushed back on marketing, finance and other things to stop the chaos! Honestly, I wish I had pushed back even harder. Every hour that a salesperson spends doing reports, etc. is another hour not spent with a customer.

Think about this for a moment: if a salesperson is responsible for generating $1 Million in sales per year, then each week they need to generate nearly $20,000. Now divide that number by 40 hours per week and it works out to $500 per hour. This means that each spreadsheet that a salesperson spends two hours a week working on costs $1,000 per week! Do you think that spreadsheet is worth $50,000? I doubt it! Yes, that’s a simple example but if you were to get serious about the revenue per hour that a salesperson is expected to generate, we would all start to wipe out much of the stupid busy work.

It’s not about being busy but about being productive by being busy on what really matters. I can’t stress this enough. Your goal for this week is to keep the two questions I asked in front of you to challenge you each time you’re about to do anything that’s not customer facing.

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