Mark Hunter's Blog, page 74

Are You Authentic and Transparent? It’s a Leadership Requirement.

What do others say about you?  I’m not saying this as if we’re on an ego trip. I’m saying this because we’re all fed up with fake people.

The number of people who live an alternate life on social media is depressing.  The number of people who walk around saying one thing and doing another is repulsive.  The question is, “Are you authentic and transparent 24/7?”

As leaders, we have an obligation to be authentic.  If we’re not authentic, how do we think we will be able to influence and impact others? Why would anyone value what we have to say if what we say doesn’t match who we are?

The internet, and the level of information and sharing it creates, is making authenticity and transparency even more important.

This isn’t the wild west where if you wanted to hide something all you had to do was ride your horse to a new town and poof, you could start a new life. Those days are long gone.  The past is not in the past. All we have to do is think #MeToo movement.

Approach each day with the goal to live a life of authenticity and transparency, and I think you’ll live a life of less stress and have greater influence and impact with 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

Prospecting: Your Goal is a First Date

If we want to be successful with our prospecting, we have to keep it simple. Prospecting is merely getting a contact established and creating engagement.

Unless what you sell is low cost and has a high frequency of purchase, then any prospect you initially engage is going to require a second step.

Your goal is to merely be successful in getting a first date. Too many times I see salespeople going ape over what they see as poor results, because they’re not getting that first date and turning enough prospects into customers. Yes, that’s important, but it’s time to cool your jets and realize things take time, just like they did when you were in high school and prom seemed like it would never arrive.

It’s all about one step a time.

I’m not advocating putting in more steps than necessary. Leave that for your middle school square dance. Requiring two or three steps is not going to overburden you.

It comes down to two simple things on the initial call, and let me share a bit from my book, High-Profit Prospecting, as it says it best:

Your Goal Is a First Date

At the most basic level, you want to make contact with a lead, preferably with a phone call, and do two things:

1. Find out one piece of information about the company and/or person with whom you’re talking.

2. Secure a next step: Either an in-person meeting or another phone call at a designated time.

The first call is not the time to overcomplicate things. Too many salespeople make the mistake of trying to do a huge information dump on the first call, and it winds up going nowhere. (If what you’re selling is a quick sale with a short sales cycle, then you certainly should be speeding the process along, but it still does not give you the right to do a full data dump on the prospect.) Your first call should create a level of confidence and gain leverage to have a second call.

During your second call, dig deeper and truly qualify the prospect to ensure they’re really a prospect and not a suspect. Use the criteria outlined in Chapter 8. Attempting to complete all of that on the first call is rarely doable, and too many times if you try to do it all, the end result will be nothing.

For more specific prospecting strategies, be sure to grab a copy of my book High-Profit Prospecting!

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: Motivation and the Power of One

What are you allowing to get in the way of what you can accomplish? I suspect you are distracted and going in too many directions.

Embrace instead the power of one. The power of you connecting with one person at a time can be revolutionary to your sales motivation.

Check out this video to see what I mean:

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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 Mind Limiting Your Thinking?

Over the last four weeks I’ve logged trips to South America, Asia and a host of cities throughout the United States.  We like to think we can handle it all. I say “we,” because I suspect you’re just like me.

Problem is we can’t handle it all. Our mind can only deal with so much before the brain begins to twitch, the scalp begins to itch and the burning sensation in the left leg returns.  Ok, so I embellish a little. Work with me… remember my mind is limiting my thinking!

When we get to overload, our mind out of self-protection begins to limit itself.  Ask me what medical research I base this on, and my response is my own personal medical experience.  Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve found myself misreading emails, missing a family member’s birthday (not the first time) and ignoring Kramer.  Let’s just say Kramer is a resident of our home who believes it’s our job to feed him,  keep his bed made, keep his water dish full and let him go outside every three hours.

Sure, I remembered the big stuff, but it frustrated me how I couldn’t handle everything.  Worst part of all of this is how quickly I rushed to conclusions on things when the best approach would have been to be more open minded and think through a better solution.

Reflecting on my last few weeks, I can’t help but connect what I’ve experienced to a typical sales call.   Remember the last time you were rushing to a sales call?  Don’t lie. You’re just as guilty as me.  Remember the last stress-filled quarter-end?   Don’t lie again. I know you’ve had more than a few. We all have. Challenge is during these crunch periods, it’s amazing what our mind does — or I should say, does not do.

Last week I wrote about the need to do deep thinking, and I shared my experience about being on several 14-hour flights.    The post generated a tremendous amount of feedback.  All of the feedback was around the value we gain when we do deep thinking.  Let’s just say that today’s post is the counter balance to last week’s post.

When we fail to create space in what we do, we are setting ourselves up for sub-optimal results.  Space is not the size of your office or the lack of space you’ve squeezed your car into.  Space is the amount of time we allow each day to keep our mind from shutting down. Doing so is not a sign of weakness. I’ll contend it’s a sign of strength.  Results are not measured in our activity, but rather are measured in the outcomes we create.

Starting tomorrow and everyday going forward, let’s both create a 15-minute window of time to merely think through the day and most of all provide our brain with a chance to breathe.

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 Sales a Solo Activity or a Team Sport?

Are you the lone wolf at your company or are you the first one to sign up to help organize the 3-legged sack race at the company picnic?

Sales is emotional and don’t say it’s not.

We all have found ourselves screaming loudly after closing a big sale and gnashing our teeth when the “stupid customer” doesn’t agree to the sale.  It’s the same reason why when we close a big sale, so often another big sale follows suit.  Makes you wonder if success loves company?  I’ll tell you the answer.

Success DOES love company and that’s why I believe sales is a team sport!

Early in my career, my territory consisted of 1/3 of the state of Oregon.  To make it worse, the 1/3 I had also didn’t have any people.  The size of the territory was bigger than territory in 4 other states I covered driving my company-supplied Buick.

That Buick was a fine tuned machine, tuned so well that when you stepped on the gas the air-conditioning shut off.  Obviously, this was lousy! Sure, it created more power to the engine, but simultaneously I became drenched in sweat.

Don’t feel bad for me driving my Buick, because I was never alone in the car.  I had an amazing friend with me. You know the “friend” I’m talking about — it’s called the windshield.   During my long drives between calls, I would have amazing conversations with my windshield.

If I had been smart enough, I would have realized the windshield would have counted as a second occupant to allow me to drive in the carpool lanes.  Oh, I forgot — carpool lanes would require minimally a second lane, and that simply didn’t exist in all of Eastern Oregon.

During my time counting cattle in Eastern Oregon on my drives, I came to the conclusion I don’t play well alone.  It’s boring!  Worse yet is when I’m alone too long, I can come up with conspiracy theories about sales that would rival anything heard on AM talk radio today.

Sales is a team sport. We need each other, we need feedback, we need encouragement, and we need the brother and sisterhood of other salespeople.  Who do you connect with and feed off of?   As you feed off others, you’re also feeding them.  Sales is not a solo activity.

Over the years, I’ve seen in my sales career and as a sales consultant and speaker that my best results always happen when I’m playing a team game.

Who’s on your team?  I can’t stress enough for you to find other salespeople with whom you can connect, share and help each other.

A big reason I’m sharing this today is because TODAY is the day 600 salespeople, including a number of you who are reading this, are gathering in Atlanta for the OutBound Conference.  A key reason I’m one of the four people putting on OutBound is to help create a team — an amazing sales team.  We all sell different things to different markets, but we’re all on the same team — the sales team.

Your goal this week is to start getting others on your sales team.  Sales is NOT a solo activity!

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: My Goal When Meeting Others

Want to change your perspective for the better and boost your sales motivation?  A great way to do this is in your approach when meeting others.

Each time you meet with someone, do you earn the right, privilege, honor and respect to meet with them again?  I hope so!  That’s what my video talks about today.

Check out the Monday Motivation video 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

Leadership Lessons from 36,000 Feet Over the Pacific Ocean

You’re thinking I’m about to tell you what I experienced on a flight. Well, you’re half right.

It’s not what I experienced going on in the plane; it’s about what I experienced going on in my mind.

When you’re disconnected from our connected world for 12+ hours, it’s amazing what you can accomplish — or if you choose — not accomplish.

You can pass the time by watching movies “edited for airline viewing” or spend hours thinking you’ll finally master Candy Crush. Long flights are a time for me to skip the movies and stupid games and do some deep thinking.

You’re right — maybe “deep” isn’t the word I should be using when 36,000 feet above terra firma.

Here’s what I’ve found. When I take a step back from what’s happening and truly look at the big picture and the long-game, it’s amazing what I see. When I then take those initial ideas and really start to drill down, I’m blown away by what my mind comes up with.

For me the long flights are an amazing experience. Yes, you can say I’m weird, but the long flight is time to think.

Recently, I’ve had multiple long flights with trips to both South America and Asia, and I think I’ve reached a new level of notes taken on my iPad. What’s powerful is when I look at what I come up with on the long flights and what I come up with during a normal “hectic” week, it’s amazing what I discover.

This leaves me to now wonder if one of my bigger challenges is not having regular time to do deep thinking.

I’ve always used Saturday mornings as a time to decompress and review, and I do love that time, but I’m thinking that’s not enough. Somehow, I’ve got to carve out more time on a regular basis to take the ideas floating in my brain and truly build them out.

My suspicion is some of you are thinking the same thing while others are mumbling, “I don’t even have time to breathe, let alone think.”

It doesn’t matter how you feel now, the question is what do you want to feel in one month? How about one year? How about 5 years?

We will never — and yes, I’m including myself when I say “we”  — achieve what is possible until we stop to truly think through our ideas today.

What’s your next step to be spending more time thinking? I’m committing myself to create that block of time when I can disconnect and truly think.

Hopefully, I don’t have to resign myself to flying across the Pacific Ocean on a monthly basis to do 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

It’s Time to Put the “Process” into Your Sales Process

What good is having a sales process if you don’t use it?   Not using your sales process is just as bad as not having a sales process at all.

How can we expect to be successful as sales professionals if we don’t have a process we follow and believe in?

Could you imagine getting on a plane and the pilot saying he or she does not have a plan to fly the plane?  How about going into surgery and the last words you hear is the surgeon saying they’ve never done this before?

There’s no way you’d get on that plane or allow that surgery, yet that’s what our prospects are subjected to when we don’t have a sales process.

The last several years I’ve been doing a lot of work in this area of helping salespeople build a process that works.  The key is first knowing the outcome or benefit derived from what you sell and the type of customer who needs it. This sounds simple, but it’s one of the big pieces salespeople miss.

The ability to qualify a prospect quickly is essential to avoid having valuable time wasted on someone who doesn’t line up with what you provide.

Second issue is time management and the art of the follow-up.  You all have perfect prospects who want to hear from you.  Don’t kid yourself in thinking they’re not out there.  If you can define your outcomes, then you can find your prospects.  Challenge is following up with them to allow you to break through the noise and get them to focus on how you can help them.

An example I like to use when talking with salespeople is to never forget the one word found on every bottle of shampoo. You’ve seen it time and time again. The word is “repeat.”  Again, pretty simple, yet it’s lost on most salespeople.

Sales is not hard. Yes, I said that correctly. Sales is not hard.  It’s not hard when it’s done with the right plan.   The plan does not need to be complex. I’ll argue far too many salespeople overcomplicate things.  It doesn’t have to be complicated.  Too many salespeople over complicate things out of a desire to have something to blame when they fall short of their goals.

Next week at OutBound I’ll be sharing the key components that make up a successful sales plan.   If you’re attending, you’ll get the specifics, as this will be the first time I’ve ever shared this information.

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

Success Does Not Use a Timeline

At 34,000 feet over the Pacific, on my way to Hong Kong, I did something I rarely do — I watched a movie. I found myself immersed in the movie “Darkest Hour,” the story of Winston Churchill during World War II.  The movie shows truly a dark period of time for the United Kingdom.  The […]

How Effective is Your Prospecting? 10+ Questions to Ask Yourself.

The number of salespeople and companies that share with me how they do not feel their prospecting plan works always amazes me.  Then again, I have to admit I am continually assessing my own prospecting plan to determine its effectiveness, too. If we’re not prospecting effectively, then how do we expect to be able to […]