Mark Hunter's Blog, page 69
July 25, 2018
Evaluating Your Prospecting Methods
Does your prospecting process need evaluating? Maybe the question I should be asking is, “Do you even have a prospecting process?”
And an even deeper question I want you to get to is, “Why should I even believe what I’m doing is effective?” I get asked a lot of sales questions each week, but the issue of prospecting accounts for at least 50% of the questions I get.
Last week I did a webinar on this issue of rebuilding your prospecting process. I had so many people ask to see it that I went ahead and moved it over to YouTube to make it easy to view. Yes, the video is 45 minutes in length, but it’s worth watching. Here it is:
Below are 5 questions I want you to ask yourself:
What is the % of new business I get by prospecting vs. referral?
What is the % of business I received in the last 12 months from customers who I didn’t have 12 months ago?
Where do my leads come from? What % are ones I generate?
How quickly could I replace the business generated by my top 2 customers if they stopped buying from me?
Do I know what parts of my prospecting process are effective and which ones are not?
I suspect answering these questions set off some alarms. If they didn’t set off some alarms, then you’re part of the one tenth of one percent of salespeople. Congratulations!! Just don’t get too comfortable. Things can change quickly.
If you’re like the vast majority of salespeople who get sick to their stomach when answering these questions, stop what you’re doing. I don’t want you to get sick while reading this. What I do want you to do is to commit yourself to getting serious about this prospecting issue.
I’m being very serious when I say I want you to watch the video and/or reach out to me. You can’t delay. I’ve been where you are and I know the pain, and there’s no reason for you to be going through it.
You will never have enough deals to close if you don’t spend enough time prospecting and — more importantly — prospecting effectively. Sales quotas are not made with closed deals. They’re made with great prospects.
Want to do something about building a prospecting process that works? I am offering you an opportunity to do exactly that, but you have to get in on it before July 26 at midnight. You can find out all about it at this link or by clicking on the below image.
Copyright 2018, 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
July 24, 2018
Amazing Opportunity to Build Your Prospecting Skills. But It’s Going Fast.
I receive countless calls from people wanting to know the specific skills to build a sustainable and successful prospecting process.
I knew it was time to offer you the insights that I regularly am teaching to sales teams at large corporations. If you want in on the bonuses, you’ll want to make sure you sign up by Midnight, July 26.
Click on this link or the below image to find out all about it. This is an amazing opportunity to invest in yourself and your sales success!
Copyright 2018, 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
July 23, 2018
Sales Motivation Video: Who is the Most Important Person?
What is your level of attention when talking with someone?
Your sales motivation depends greatly on how well you listen and what you do to make the person with whom you are talking feel like the most important person. Be in the moment!
Check out the video to see what I mean:
A coach can help you excel in your sales career! Invest in yourself by checking out my coaching program today!
Copyright 2018, 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
July 20, 2018
Sales Leadership: Who is Your Role Model?
When I’m delivering a training session on this subject of sales leadership, I always ask people to think of who in their life exemplifies sales leadership. My goal is to get the participants to have in their mind a first-hand memory of a sales leader.
This simple activity allows people to begin seeing behavior they should exhibit.
Who in your life would you say is a role model for sales leadership? What makes them a great role model? What is it about them that you like and how can you take those same actions and apply them to your life?
Leadership is a series of activities, and I know as I look at sales leaders who have influenced me the most, I see traits I can mirror. Your objective is to write down the names of no fewer than 3 sales leaders you hold in high regard. Next to their names, write the traits you’ve seen them live out. This simple process will give you a roadmap by which you can build your leadership skills.
With the list of names and traits in hand, your goal is to then take one trait at a time and work on it. Don’t attempt to work on all the traits at once. Doing so will overwhelm you, and you’ll wind up not doing anything. Focusing on one trait at a time will allow you to focus your efforts. When you feel you are exhibiting the trait near to the level of the person’s name you wrote down, then move to the next one.
The process is not hard. It merely takes focus and a willingness to self-analyze your actions. Carry out the process, and you’ll find your name being the one others around you write down as a sales leader from whom they can learn.
A coach can help you excel in your sales career! Invest in yourself by checking out my coaching program today!
Copyright 2018, 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
July 18, 2018
Which is More Effective: Your Prospecting Plan or Going to a Casino?
What’s your answer? Be honest with yourself when you answer. I hate to say it, but I suspect going to a casino may very well be more productive. At least by going to the casino, you may have some fun if you enjoy gambling.
Look at the results you achieve with your prospecting, and I bet the odds are worse than you’d find playing roulette. For some of you, your results may even be worse than slot machines. We need to be honest with ourselves and realize that’s a crazy way to make a living. If our odds are worse than a casino, there’s little chance we’ll be in sales for very long. Maybe this helps to explain the high turnover that exists in the profession.
Below are a few questions you need to ask yourself:
Is my process built on activity or achieving results? We can’t rely on numbers to tell the story. It’s the story behind the numbers that counts.
What is the role of time in my process? We have to look at this from two sides — our side and how we use our time and the prospect’s side and the level of time we’re expecting from them.
Do we even know who our perfect customer is? If we can’t identify our perfect customer, then we’ll never be able to describe our perfect prospect.
Can I identify and put a value on the top 5 outcomes I help customers achieve? It’s not what we sell that matters; it’s why we sell that counts. And if we don’t know the value of the outcomes we provide, we will never be anything other than a desperate salesperson.
Where does prospecting fall in my list of responsibilities? Nothing contributes to sales frustration more than being torn between too many priorities. Solution lies not in having too many priorities. It lies in how you structure your time.
Join me July 19 for a special FREE webinar where I dig into the issue of your pipeline:
Rebuilding Your Prospecting Process
Thursday, July 19
11 am Central Time
REGISTER TODAY!
And don’t forget that a coach can help you excel in your sales career! Invest in yourself by checking out my coaching program today!
Copyright 2018, 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
July 16, 2018
Sales Motivation Video: Focus on Your Customer’s Outcome
Are you focused on your customer’s outcome? This is absolutely crucial if you want to experience phenomenal success as a salesperson.
I never cease to be amazed by the number of salespeople I meet who are more focused on their product’s benefits than they are on the customer’s greatest need.
Check out the video to see what I mean:
A coach can help you excel in your sales career! Invest in yourself by checking out my coaching program today!
Copyright 2018, 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
July 13, 2018
Sales Leadership Really is a Team Sport
I describe sales as not a solo activity, but as a team sport. A person asked me if I felt the same way about sales leadership being a team sport, and the answer is yes. It certainly is!
Leadership in any form is about influencing and raising up others. This applies significantly to the essence of what sales leadership is about. Sales leadership is about influencing customers and others, and it’s about raising them up to allow them to see and achieve opportunities they would never see on their own.
Read the last sentence again and ask yourself what it means to you. To me it means creating incremental opportunities.
If all we do is focus on base business and opportunities everyone else sees, then where is our leadership? Yes, leadership is needed in everything, but what I want you to aspire to be is someone who doesn’t just see opportunities, but also creates opportunities from which others can benefit.
Last week a client asked me to dig deep into a particular department of their business and assess why the output from the department isn’t what it should be. It didn’t take long for me to see it was a lack of leadership in the team in being able to create focus toward achieving the objectives. Each person was working, and in the end it was activity, but not the kind that was producing great results.
Think about this with regard to your customers and your sales process. Are you doing nothing more than going through the motions and taking care of the basics? This is what far too many salespeople and, for that matter, employees in general, are doing each day — simply going through the motions. You can’t afford to be one of those people. Not only is it not satisfying, but it also isn’t going to get you anywhere in your career or your income.
Sales leadership is a team sport. Make it your objective to engage others, bring them along, and help them see what they didn’t think was possible. When you do this, you’ll find yourself having a totally different perspective on your job and your life.
You know I believe sales is fun. I hope you do, too! What’s even more fun is sales leadership!
A coach can help you excel in your sales career! Invest in yourself by checking out my coaching program today!
Copyright 2018, 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
July 11, 2018
Prospecting Does Not Have to be the Activity You Hate
We’ll never get anything out of our pipeline if we don’t put anything into it. More importantly, the quality of what we put into it is going to determine the quality we get out of it.
Look at how you prospect and be very serious about asking yourself if what you have is a process or just some activity you go through. The percentage of salespeople that has a solid prospecting process is small. I’ve never seen a formal study on this issue, but from my own experience in working with salespeople, I would put it at less than 10 percent.
The reasons are both simple and complex as to why so few have solid plan they can believe in and execute routinely.
Below are some questions you need to ask yourself about how you prospect:
Where does prospecting fall in my daily list of priorities?
How many highly-qualified prospects am I working with at any one time?
Is the length of time it takes for me to close a prospect decreasing over time?
What is the percentage of deals I have to discount to get the prospect to buy?
What is my lifetime value of a new customer?
What is the most effective part of my prospecting process and what part am I currently working on to improve?
Do I see prospecting as an activity or a lifestyle?
Check out this 14-second video regarding prospecting being an activity vs. it being a lifestyle:
Unless you have some element of superhuman control over your mind, making the flip to viewing prospecting as a lifestyle takes time. But you must take the first step.
First thing you can do is block your time to give you dedicated windows of time on a regular basis to prospect. This time needs to be sacred prospecting time. It’s not time you skip over and it’s not time you allow other things to encroach on. You must focus the time 100% on only prospecting.
You know this issue of prospecting is my focus. It’s why I wrote the book, “High-Profit Prospecting,” and it’s why I need you to join me for a FREE special webinar, July 19:
Rebuilding Your Prospecting Process
Thursday, July 19
11 am Central Time
REGISTER TODAY!
And don’t forget that a coach can help you excel in your sales career! Invest in yourself by checking out my coaching program today!
Copyright 2018, 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
July 10, 2018
Prospecting: Making Excuses or Making the Call?
Too many salespeople simply avoid making prospecting calls. They make excuses instead. But this doesn’t have to be your reality.
In my book, “High-Profit Prospecting,” I give you specific tools on overcoming your hesitancy and fear of making prospecting calls.
With this book , you can move to the next level of success — the level that top sales leaders around the world are mastering every day.
A coach can help you excel in your sales career! Invest in yourself by checking out my coaching program today!
Copyright 2018, 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
July 9, 2018
Top Sales Leaders to Follow on LinkedIn
I am humbled to be included in LinkedIn’s list of the top 50 B2B Sales Experts to follow.
You can find the complete list at this link.
This is an easy way you can pick up phenomenal insights. If you have followed my blog for awhile, you know I am a huge fan of continually learning and sharpening your skills.
Here’s the link again! Check it out today!
A coach can help you excel in your sales career! Invest in yourself by checking out my coaching program today!
Copyright 2018, 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
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