Mark Hunter's Blog, page 72

Prospecting Dilemma: The Question About Price

How quickly should the topic of price come up in a prospecting call?  I’m sure you’ve faced this issue. You’re having a first or second conversation with a prospect and the issue of price comes up, and suddenly you’re in a prospecting dilemma about what to do next.

Have you ever parked your car in a manner you would not be able to get it out?  No, you’d never do that.  Same thing applies with prospecting. You never want to go into a prospecting call not knowing how to get out of it.

Don’t view the issue of price to be a one-way conversation where the customer is in control. You have the ability to stay in control if you’ve been pro-active in asking questions that get the prospect to reveal the needs and outcomes they desire.

It’s a big mistake going into a prospecting call and not being willing to ask questions that will get the customer sharing their needs. Now, don’t think this means it’s about the specific product they want to buy. No, it’s just the opposite. It’s about why they are looking for what they feel they need to buy.

Regardless of where the prospect is in their buying journey and regardless if they came to you via an inbound lead or an outbound call, it’s still about their needs.

Asking questions focused on the why and their needs early in the prospecting process is the only way to get it out on the table.  The sooner you have this out on the table, the sooner you’ll be prepared to handle any question they bring up regarding price.

Check out this video of a situation I found myself in dealing with price early in the prospecting/selling phase.

The salesperson who fails to uncover early the reason the prospect is talking to them is setting themselves up for failure, because they won’t have a solid response if price comes up.

Don’t look at price as a cost. Look at price as an investment.  It’s an investment designed to help them achieve the outcome they desire.   The way you handle the issue of price is by linking it back to the outcome the customer wants. (You’ll get a full example of how to do this in the video.)

Remember, it’s never that your price is too high. No, it’s an issue of your value being too low.  Raise your value and you can raise your price, and it starts in the prospecting phase.

Want to learn the secrets to using email and the telephone to prospect? I am offering a FREE prospecting webinar on Monday, June 4, at 2 PM Central.

This 45-minute webinar is all about building a program quickly that will lead to results for you and your bottom line.  If you can watch it live, GREAT, as I will be giving away some extras!  But even if you can’t watch live, still register and you will get the recording.  You’ll get all the relevant tips that could make a difference in your prospecting momentum.

Sign up today at this link.

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

 

Great Prospecting and Solid Time Management Skills Go Hand-in-Hand

Want to excel at prospecting? Of course you do!

How you manage time and, more importantly, how disciplined you become in dedicating blocks of time to prospecting, will greatly impact your success.

I cover prospecting time management in my book High-Profit Prospecting.

I know that for many salespeople, prospecting is the last thing they want to do.  But trust me when I say that staying committed to a prospecting schedule will keep your sales pipeline moving toward more profitable sales.

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

What Airports Can Teach You About Leadership

Last week I had the privilege to speak in both Mumbai and Chennai, India.  A total of 7 airports and 8 flights in a period of 6 day, and yes — 4 of the flights were quite long.

During this time, I experienced a wide range of cultural norms. Some were in sync with mine, while others were not even close.

Let’s just say in India even the line for immigration is nothing more than another line to skip, cut, crowd, or even crawl if necessary to reduce your time in line.  I admit I’ve never been in a line where one moment I’ve been 10 people from the front, and in a flash, I’m suddenly 30 people back. All the while, customs officials and others were not the least bit concerned.  Hey, it’s India, and it’s just another normal day.

How does your leadership fit into the cultural norms of those you’re leading?

If I were to raise an issue about people jumping the line, I would have been viewed as an outcast.  Is it wrong to jump a line?  My norms would say “yes, it’s wrong,” but clearly to people from India, it’s not wrong.   When we place expectations on others, we have to view those expectations through the lens of their cultural norms.

The example I shared might seem unusual to you, but think of the person you’re asking to work evenings to complete a task. To you the request seems routine, but to the person who places a high value on spending time with their family in the evening, the request is out of the ordinary and creates a potential hardship.

When we are looking to achieve maximum performance from those we lead, the more we understand the cultural norms of those people, the more success we’ll achieve.

Remember, the goal of leadership is not just in accomplishing a task, but in lifting up those around you to be empowered to accomplish an even greater outcome.  We will achieve both the more we understand, appreciate and value the cultural norms of others.

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

3 Rules on the Right Way to Make Prospecting Calls

Recently I was on a call with sales managers discussing prospecting calls and the right way to make them.  The universal response I heard was how their salespeople almost always lead with what they do and the services they can provide.

I asked how many of the calls lead to a next call. The numbers were abysmal! But I’m not surprised.

Your prospects didn’t wake up this morning expecting you to call, and they certainly don’t care about who you are and what you do.  What they do care about are their issues, their challenges, and their problems.

We MUST start the call framing it with a question about issues they have, not solutions we offer.

Here are my 3 rules on the right way to make prospecting calls:

1. Engage immediately with a question or statement that links to a need they have.

You’re wasting your time when you lead with your title, the name of your company or, even worse, a really stupid question like, “How’s the weather where you are?”

2. Introduce what you do only after prompting from the prospect.

Remember it’s about them, not about you. As you share what you do, frame it with words they can connect with such as, “We work with other companies just like yours that are having similar types of issues.”

3. Do not look for the customer to have a “eureka moment” and immediately buy from you.

Your goal is to learn a new piece of information and secure a next step. Prospecting is about securing a next step. Don’t over inflate your expectations, and you will be amazed at how you will be able to stay focused and motivated.

Prospecting is not the big bad ugly, creepy, scary activity so many people make it out to be.  When you’re focused on helping the prospect by truly listening, it’s amazing the results you will have.

I have a short video for you to watch as I share exactly what I mean. You can find it at this link.   I share how a company that was starting their calls by saying their company name was getting rejected and by adjusting that approach slightly to start with an outcome improved results quickly.

I can’t stress enough the importance of prospecting.  When salespeople say they’re missing their quota, I always come back and ask them how much time they’re spending prospecting.  There’s a direct correlation between the amount of prospecting you do this quarter and the number of deals you’ll close next.

It’s why I’m passionate about your need to read High-Profit Prospecting.  I wrote this book for one reason, and that is to help you close more sales by being able to prospect better.

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

Telephone is Still a Prime Tool for Sales Prospecting

Sadly, too many salespeople think the phone is an outdated method of prospecting. Guess again! It’s a great tool for prospecting, and you should definitely have it in your tool bag if you want to be successful.

I cover telephone prospecting extensively in my book High-Profit Prospecting.

I even give you scripts, specific tips and proven techniques when dealing with gatekeepers, CEOs and more!

Be sure to snag your copy of the book 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

Sales Motivation Video: Morning Exercise Can Make All the Difference

What is your morning exercise? This isn’t necessarily about having an elaborate exercise routine.  But you do need to do something to get your blood pumping.

Engage yourself and get moving!

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

Leadership Must Be Self-Serving

You’re wondering if I’ve lost my mind by this headline.  Don’t ask my kids if I’ve lost my mind, because they’ll be happy to share with you their opinion.  My only hope is as they get older that their opinion becomes more favorable.

Self-serving leadership is not an oxymoron.  I find far too many situations where people are forcing their “leadership” on others while ignoring themselves.  This is no different than the habit too many people have where they say they love change, but in the end they want everyone else to change so they don’t have to.

Leadership is far more than barking out orders and pushing your agenda on others.  Leadership is done through modeling behavior, and this means doing what is expected of others.

Ask anyone who they respect as a leader, and I’m sure they’ll say somebody who they feel not only leads others, but leads themselves by practicing what they preach.

It’s time we take a self-assessment and review what it is we expect of others and assess if we are displaying the same expectations.   The leader you respect didn’t reach that point by accident. The leader you respect the most got there because of the deliberate focus of self-serving leadership.

By focusing first on ourselves, we will then be in a position to serve others.

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

Are You Planning for High-Profit Customers?

I often meet salespeople who say they want the most profitable customers possible. But they don’t prospect for that type of customer.

Want to plan for high-profit customers? I suggest you dig deep into the specific tips I cover in my book High-Profit Prospecting.

The truth is that we won’t have the most profitable customers until we become effective and efficient at finding those customers.

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

Should Sales or Marketing Own the Prospecting Process?

If you’re in Sales and you get your leads from Marketing, quit trying to kid anyone. You like it that way.  Let’s come clean on the reason — you hate having to prospect.

It’s time to grow up, put on your big boy or big girl sales pants and accept responsibility.  As much as you don’t like having to prospect, by having Marketing gather your leads it gives you an easy out when you miss your number.

You can admit it quietly. Nobody will hear you. But by having Marketing gather your leads, they become an easy scapegoat when you fall short on your sales quota.

I’m tired of this nonsense between Sales and Marketing.

It’s time for Sales to take control and own the entire prospecting process, including all lead generation. Don’t go whining over your quarterly spreadsheet about this, but rather own up to it.

If those of us in Sales are going to be responsible for quarterly numbers, then we need to own the entire process from start to finish.

We in Sales are the best ones to identify who is a good prospect and even who is a good lead to check out.  We’re the best ones, because we know who makes the best customer.

Once we in sales make the move and assume control, we can’t then create an even bigger problem by making lead generation be the responsibility of the newest person on the sales team.   This is a recipe for failure. Why would anyone put the person who knows the least be the one who determines what goes into the top of the funnel?  This logic doesn’t make sense.

Solution to all of this is every member of the sales team, regardless of their tenure or size of accounts they handle, needs to be have a prospecting quota objective.  High-performing salespeople know what a perfect customer looks like. They know this because they’re selling to them regularly. Because they know who a perfect customer is, it only makes sense for them to be able to identify who a perfect prospect is.

It’s time we in Sales own the entire prospecting process and allow Marketing to do what they do best, and that is to build awareness and educate the marketplace.

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

Sales Motivation Video: Why Settle for Average?

Are you settling for average? I challenge you to push yourself in ways others are not willing to do.

Be an outlier.  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