Mark Hunter's Blog, page 73

How Should You View Those You Lead?

How do you view others around you?  If you have kids like I do, then you undoubtedly view them in the context of long term and what you think they will become.  If we only focus on what our kids are today, then it negates our ability to help them become who they’re capable of becoming.

Same thing applies to everyone you lead and, for that matter, everyone with whom you come in contact.  When we view people long term and see them for what they will become, it changes significantly how we communicate with them today.   The person who is in the gatekeeper role today may in time become the VP of Sales.

People and the potential they hold are no different than a stock you might buy.  You wouldn’t buy a stock for its value today. That would be pointless.  You buy stock today in anticipation of what you feel it will be worth in the future. The relationship we create are our investments in our own success.  As those we interact with on a regular basis grow, then we should assume we will grow, too.

We can bring this home even more by looking at leads and prospects.  Your goal is that the lead or prospect will materialize into a profitable relationship for both you and the customer.

Who are the people in your life you need to start looking at differently?  Who are the people to whom you have not given enough time?   Flip this around and ask yourself who are the people who invested in you?  Aren’t you glad they invested in you?  Where would you be if they had not invested in you?

The parallels between sales and leadership are endless.  It’s why I’m passionate about sales, because I’m passionate about people.  Your goal is to view each person you meet for what they can become, not as they are 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

Prospecting Myths: Fact or Fiction

It’s time for me to let loose again regarding prospecting myths.  I find all of them to be as bizarre and funny as the myth that claims the Beatles never existed and the Cubs only won the World Series because President Obama wanted them to.

Why do people keep creating and perpetuating myths about prospecting?  It’s simple. People love to do this because they want to validate why they’re too afraid to do what has to be done and that is find new customers.  With that said, let me share with you prospecting myths I hate and believe to be totally false:

Marketing is in charge of prospecting and creating leads.

False! Salespeople buy into this so they have someone to blame when they miss their number.  Fact is everyone needs to be prospecting, regardless of your role in sales.  Nobody can be excused from developing prospects.  A sales team will never have a prospecting culture until everyone is involved.

Nobody answers the phone.

False! Who is this person they call “nobody?”  The people who say nobody answers the phone are the same people who never answer the phone themselves.  We can argue that people are less likely to answer the phone, but that doesn’t mean “nobody” answers the phone.  It might take multiple calls and multiple voicemails, but you can break through using the telephone.

Specific results will vary by industry, customer type, etc., but to throw out a blanket statement that nobody answers the phone is simply false.

Social media is the only way to prospect.

Once again, this is false!  The people who promote this myth are the social sellers who want you to buy their social selling program.   For everyone who is on social media, there is another person who is not on it. If you want to limit the number of potential prospects you can have, then go ahead and just use social media.  Social media is one tool in your prospecting tool box, but it can never be the only tool.

I can’t keep calling this person for fear I’m bugging them.

False!  All of you timid people who don’t want to be successful in sales are welcome to buy into this myth.  While you’re at it, go ahead and update your resume and find a different job.  If you truly feel you can help the person, then you owe it to them to bug them.

You owe it to them to keep reaching out until you do have a meaningful conversation.  It’s time to get over the fact you’re bugging them, because that’s exactly what you’re doing. They don’t realize yet how you can help them.  Keep going. Yes, you may very well have to adjust your timing and method, but don’t stop.  In the end, they’ll be thanking you.

Prospecting is something I do when I’ m caught up with my other work.

This is a major mistake!  False, false and still false!  This myth is believed by every salesperson who is afraid to prospect.  Their belief is their time is short and they need to spend it taking care of everything else they need to be working on.

We have such great customers we don’t need to prospect.

False!  Go ahead and buy into this one and you’ll wake up one day and find yourself without any business!   It’s awesome to have great customers and it’s awesome when these customers tell others, but we can’t count on this as our only source of new business.  Prospecting must be something that is done continually regardless of the amount of existing business.

I can’t handle any more prospects. I have too many leads I’m working with now.

False! This is as bad as thinking the weather will never change.  The weather might be perfect today, sunny and low-humidity, but tomorrow could bring monsoon rains.  You have to keep prospecting, regardless of how full your pipeline might be.  Your focus needs to be on how to improve your process to allow you to move prospects through faster and not on slowing down the process.

Prospecting myths busted! I admit I feel better now getting these off my chest.  The arguments I hear about prospecting drive me crazy.  In the end, it comes down to one thing — you deciding what needs to be done and going out and doing it.

Sales is simply too good of a profession.  I love it more and more each year.  I look at what we do as helping the economy.

Our economy is driven by business. Business is driven by sales. Sales is driven by prospecting.

If we want to stop the economy, then all we have to do is stop prospecting.  I make it my mission to do everything possible to help the economy by never having a day I’m not prospecting.

If you haven’t already, be sure to snag a copy of my book High-Profit Prospecting. In it I cover the essential prospecting strategies that set apart exceptional salespeople from average ones.

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

Do You Have Prospects or Only Suspects?

Do you have prospects or are they only suspects?  I cover this in-depth in my book High-Profit Prospecting. You can be more efficient and successful at prospecting.

I’m always amazed at how many times a person’s pipeline can become filled with nothing but suspects who have zero potential to become prospects and ultimately 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

Sales Motivation Video: Using News Links to Stay Engaged with Customers

Do you know one of the best ways to stay in contact with people? Send them something of value in the form of a news link.

I regularly send prospects and clients news links to articles I think they will find beneficial.

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

Is Your Leadership Built for the Long Game? Lessons from the Starbucks Drive-Through.

Are you playing for the short or the long game?  We live in a world of instant gratification.  If there’s something we want, boom —  we can have it with the touch of an app, a swipe or heaven forbid the slow way, making a phone call.

This morning while waiting in the drive-through at Starbucks, my app failed. Go ahead and say it. “User error.”  I was low on funds on the app and I couldn’t get a cell signal to connect and reload. In a flash I found myself in the dark ages. That would be BA — “before app” — not BA as in dark roast, although I do prefer that over Pike Place Roast.  (Sorry, just a little coffee detour.)

In a moment, I was thrust back in time to having to pay cash for my coffee. I couldn’t believe how much longer it took to complete the transaction! It had to be at least 12 seconds!  That’s 12 seconds I will never get back. My life has been cut short.

Do you see the irony in my situation?

I’ve come to expect not just simplification, but instantaneous simplification, because in that moment, life was all about the short game and making it happen now.   Is your leadership geared that way?  I hope not. Sure there are moments when we have to lead in the here and now, but we shouldn’t allow that to drive our thinking.

The comments we make to other people we work with and the comments we make to customers — are they short or long-term focused?  A big problem I see with far too many salespeople is they make each customer conversation about the here and now.  This is a big contributor to unhappy customers.

The salesperson who pushes the boundaries too far on what the customer will receive when they make the decision to buy is all shaped in the short term.  The long-term answer is to be clear in the expectations, knowing this sale will lead to the next one.

When we cloak our conversation to fit the short term, we might think we’re doing the right thing, when in reality there is never a decision that is made or a comment shared that does not in turn lead to another decision or comment.  Life and business is a continuum. It’s not a short game. And it’s not just a long game.  It’s a very long game.

We need to approach each day with an attitude that what we do and say today will help us weeks, months and years ahead.   To that end, it means I shouldn’t be  worried about losing 12 seconds in the drive-through.  I should instead be more focused on helping the barista serving me feel good about the job they do and the impact they have on 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

10 Ways to Succeed When Starting a Sales Career

It’s that time of year when thousands of new graduates enter the job market and begin their first job in sales, and with that comes a host of dreams, aspirations and goals.

Within a few months or even a few weeks, reality will set in and some bubbles will burst. A few goals might be changed and some salespeople will have deep conversations about what’s next.

As one who started his sales career purely by accident many years ago, I want to share with you my list of things I think you need to do.  I don’t say these lightly. I list these as serious things for you to jump into as quickly as possible.

I’m sure I would have avoided some big early mistakes if I had the advantage of reading a list like this when I began.

1. Don’t take a job that is straight commission.

As tempting as the lure of big money can be, taking a job like this can mess you up for life. The company that tempts you with straight commission and little or no base pay is not invested in you.  The fact they’re paying you commission means you are a 100% variable cost.

If you don’t perform, they don’t pay anything. What this also means is they don’t have any investment in you, and as such, will not invest in helping you develop your selling skills.   The higher the base pay is as a % of total compensation, the more the company has invested in you, which means the more they are willing to spend to train you.

2. Find mentors who can guide you.

No sense in having to learn everything the hard way. Reach out quickly and find mentors who have been in sales for years and are willing to help guide you.  The insights you’ll gain will shave months and years off your development curve.

3. Develop a mastermind group.

Find a few other hard-charging salespeople like you who will help hold you accountable, just as you’ll help hold them accountable. Sales is not a solo activity. It’s a team sport and you want to be associated with a strong team.

4. Read!

You might be out of school, but that doesn’t mean the reading stops. There are any number of great sales books you can dig into. Make reading sales books and sharing what you learn part of your mastermind group activities.

5. Park the ego!

Don’t allow your ego, regardless how big or small it might be, to make you arrogant. If you’re arrogant, it’s amazing how quickly you’ll stop listening, and when you stop listening, you’ll stop growing.  The best salespeople never stop learning, and one of the best ways to do this is by listening to others and being observant of everything.

6. Guard your time.

Time is the one resource that is finite. Protect it, guard, it, value it, and don’t let others steal it from you. Unlike in school where the clock reset itself each semester, that doesn’t happen in real life.  Sure, your quotas might reset, but the prospecting work and accounts you’ve developed all carry over.  The sooner you become a master of your own time, the sooner you’ll be spending a lot more time in front of customers

7. Eliminate the negative voices.

There are plenty of people who will love to tear you down. They do it because they’re lazy and they don’t want others to succeed. You can’t afford to spend even a minute with negative people. Banish them permanently. It doesn’t matter if they’re your frat buddy, you have to see them as toxic to your future.

8. Be disciplined. Develop great habits.

Sooner you get yourself into a schedule, the better you’ll be. It comes back to protecting your time by ensuring you’re spending it on the right activities.  The habits you create in the first year of your sales career will carry with you for many years to come.

9. Serve others.

Sales is an absolutely fantastic profession because of the people you will meet and get the privilege to help. Having an attitude of serving others will go a long ways to shaping you as a person and how others see you.

Serving others requires a delicate balance in how you manage your time.  Key is to never forget you’re playing a long game. Your career may very well span more than 40 years, and in that time, who is it you want to become?  Do you want to be seen as the servant leader or the egotistical prima donna?  It’s your decision.

10. Never stop believing in yourself and the goals you set for yourself.

Life is lived one of two ways. You can allow life to happen to you, and you merely go through the motions. Or you can be the one making the motions. Never settle for average. Be what you know you can be.  Don’t allow yourself to fall victim to seeing yourself as a victim.  You know you’re better than that. You know you have an unlimited amount of potential. Take control and make it happen.

Now you have my list of 10 things I wish I had embraced when I began my career.  Sales is without a doubt a great profession. It’s one of the few professions that offers unlimited growth opportunities and the ability to positively impact people.   Sales for me has delivered success far beyond what I could have imagined, and for you, the success you achieve starts right now.

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: What’s One New Question You Will Use Today?

I challenge you each day to come up with a new question.

What’s one new question you can ask your customer? This will change your perspective and propel your success.

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

Failing at Leadership… What’s Your Next Step?

We’ve all blown it. Anyone who says they haven’t blown it is simply not living in the real world.

Don’t worry about it. I have some news for you — the sun still came up this morning and it will again tomorrow morning.

Let’s look at reality. 99.9% of all actions are virtually meaningless 24 hours after they occur.  You may say how the poor decision you made will have a lifetime of consequences, but that simply is not the case with 99.9% of all decisions.

Leadership isn’t about one decision. Nope! Leadership is comprised of thousands of decisions and it’s time to let things go.   Whether it be the way you handled a conversation with an employee or a customer call, there will be more interactions.

The best way for us to learn what our next step is after failing at leadership is to watch how little children handle things.  Watch a child get mad or upset at someone or something.  All it takes is for a few minutes to pass and what happened earlier is forgotten.  Children move on. They don’t wallow in the mud.

Life is good. No, it’s not just good. It’s great! But we’ll never fully appreciate the greatness until we move beyond mistakes in the past.

Last week’s issues and last week’s mistakes may very well become our greatest opportunities.  Celebrate the greatness of what you do. Forget the past and make the most of tomorrow.  Your customer and those around you will thank you.

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

10 Best Sales Tips on What it Takes to Be a Great Salesperson

I’m asked frequently, “What does it take to become a great salesperson?”  Contrary to what most people believe, becoming a great salesperson is not as much about what you sell as it is about who you are.

To help you become a great salesperson, I’ve listed below my 10 best sales tips I feel everyone in sales needs to embrace if they want to move to the top of the food chain.

You may think you’re successful already, but is it because of your skills or what you sell? Just because you have a hot product everyone wants and you’re closing deals like crazy, don’t go thinking you’re a great salesperson.

Arrogance is a disease and the result of arrogance is a failure to see the real world.

Sales is a great profession. Each year I’m in sales, I become more passionate about it.  The reason my passion increases is I see it as being all about helping others. Sure, the financial rewards can be great, but that’s only a numeric scorecard.

The real reward is when you help others achieve something they didn’t think was possible.  Regardless of what you sell, it’s about helping others achieve something.  For me that is the sole reason I get jazzed about doing what I do.

You ask, “What does it take to become a great salesperson?”

Here’s my list of the 10 best tips you need to focus on if you want to become a great salesperson.  As you read the list, you’ll notice the word “passion” is not on the list. The reason is simple — passion is an outcome of what I believe will happen when you commit yourself to the 10 things listed.

1. Personal Discipline

This means having a plan and sticking to it. Sales is a game of consistency. You have to be able to remain focused on your objectives in both good times and bad times.

2. Repeat

One of the biggest things salespeople fail to do is follow-up and follow-through on what they say they’re going to do. This is not only key in nurturing customers, but also in staying committed during the prospecting phase.  The customer isn’t going to wait for you. It’s up to you reach them.

3. It’s about the Customer. It’s NOT about You.

Customers don’t care about you. They have their own problems and that’s what they want help handling. When we remove from our mindset our pride and shift to thinking about the customer, it’s amazing the insights we’ll develop.

4. Leverage Your Personality

Sales is a people business, and when we allow our personality to come through, it’s amazing how much better we connect with others.

5. Ask Great Questions

We’ll become far more respected based on the questions we ask rather than on the information we share.  We’re not going to find out the customer’s needs if we’re doing all the talking. It’s a simple concept, yet overlooked far too often.

6. Value Your Time

The most valuable asset we have is our time, and how we choose to use it determines our results. We will never become the best we can be if we’re spending our time focused on non-productive activities.

7. Never Stop Learning

The smart people are smart because they know they have to continually be learning. An objective I’ve had for years is to learn something new each day.

8. Have Mentors and Peers

We become a product of our environment. Successful people associate with successful people.   This might mean there are people from whom you need to disconnect, but doing so will change your environment and your thinking for the better.

9. Personal Ownership

It’s not someone else’s fault.  That’s what low performers think, and it’s even an excuse average performers use.  Customers don’t want to do business with people who blame others. They want to do business with people who take ownership and make it happen.

10. Integrity and Trust

I list this last for a reason. To me this is the most important one of the 10 and the one that must be the foundation from which the other nine are built on.  When we live a life of integrity and trust, we have no regrets. We have a sense of peace others will see.  Integrity and trust are two things everyone will say they have, yet I believe these qualities are only valid if we see them in how they live.

There you have it! My list of the 10 best sales tips to becoming a great salesperson.

I want you to study the list. Think through how you will apply the list and then go out and live the list.  When you do, I know you will achieve results far greater than you’re achieving now.

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: Did You Know Tomorrow Begins Today?

That’s right! Tomorrow does begin today.

If you don’t take this approach, you will waste a good chunk of tomorrow preparing. That’s why I want you to prepare TODAY… for tomorrow!

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