Ep 14: A Conversation with The Sales Hunter - Mark Hunter

In this episode of the Best Sellers Podcast, host Doug Dvorak sits down with Mark Hunter, famously known as the Sales Hunter. The discussion centers around the essential metrics and strategies for successful sales, particularly focusing on the importance of having five meaningful conversations a day. Mark emphasizes the significant changes in sales over recent years, particularly with the rise of AI and the necessity of developing authentic relationships with customers. He shares insights on value-based selling, maintaining motivation amid rejection, and the critical role of mindset. Mark also stresses the importance of leadership in cultivating a high-performing and ethical sales culture. Practical advice on sales training, accountability, and adopting repetitive, disciplined habits for success are key takeaways from the conversation.

00:00 The Key Metric for Sales Success
00:51 Introduction to the Best Sellers Podcast
01:42 Mark Hunter's Journey in Sales
03:15 Prospecting with Integrity and Closing with Confidence
05:00 Maintaining Motivation in Sales
10:47 The Importance of Repetition and Discipline
13:20 Value-Based Selling Explained
15:16 Balancing Assertiveness and Empathy
16:55 Initiating Impactful Sales Conversations
19:27 Common Mistakes Salespeople Make
21:06 A CEO Lunch and Listening Strategy
21:47 The Role of Leadership in Sales Culture
27:04 Creating Accountability in Sales Teams
30:02 Assessing Sales Training Effectiveness
33:03 Top Habits for High-Performing Sales Teams
36:05 Mindset and Sales Success
37:27 Future Trends in Sales Training

Transcript

0:00

The number one metric that I measure from a sales standpoint is five conversations a day. I know that if I have five conversations a day with people who can either buy for me, refer me, or are buying for me, life's going to be good. That's the one metric. Now to get to that five, conversations. I've got to be having X number of emails going out. I got to be on X number of podcasts like yours. I got to be doing videos. I got to be doing stuff, but, but I know that, that I can create five conversations. This is the other thing about salespeople. Don't get caught up trying to measure everything just because it's easy to measure. It doesn't mean it should be. Know what your number one metric is and hone in on it. Mark, what do you think has changed the most in sales over the past two or three years and how should Salespeople adapt to these changes. You know, what's interesting is you are listening to the best sellers podcast presented by Doug Dvorak, where the focus is elevating your sales boom, the best sellers podcast, your ultimate destination for winning sales strategies. Hi, this is Doug Dvorak, your video navigator and host for the best sellers podcast, where we feature thought leaders that are really impacting the lives of organizations. Sales professionals and sales leaders. Our guest today is Mark Hunter, known as the Sales Hunter. And Mark is one of the busiest keynote speakers, consultants, coaches in the U. S. today. Mark, such a high honor and privilege to have you on the Best Sellers Podcast. Hey, I'm glad we could fit this in. I'm, I'm glad we could make this happen. I'm excited. We're gonna have, we're gonna have a great conversation talking about sales. Sales, you love selling. I love selling. And as I learned early on, sales is the highest paying hard work and the lowest paying easy work. And you've really, as the sales hunter, made it your life's mission and professionally. to work with organizations, individuals, really because sales was your life, is your life, and helping others achieve their full potential is your mission. Can you unpack that a little bit for us? Yeah, what it simply means is that sales is not something we do to people. This is what so many people think. Sales is something we do to people. No, sales is what we do for people. I believe that sales is not a job. It's not a profession. Sales is a lifestyle. Because you get to help people. I didn't always have that belief. No, I did not always had that belief. I got that belief only because I wound up in sales because I couldn't afford a car. I could not afford a car, so I had to find a job that supplied me with a car. That's how I wound up in sales. Got fired from my first two sales jobs. It was my third sales job, third Buick, where my boss sat me down and said, Hey, you're not connecting with your customers. It just wasn't in my DNA. It just wasn't there. And he said, you gotta take the time to listen to the customers. And when you take the time to listen to the customer and put them first, it's amazing what will happen. And you know what? Things worked out pretty well. Unbelievable. So you're, you've got three books out there, high profit prospecting, a mind for sales and high profit selling. So one of your lanes or niches is about prospecting with integrity, closing with confidence. What are you teaching your students, organizations, and sales leaders? specifically as it relates to prospecting with integrity and closing with confidence. Yeah, here's the whole thing. If we prospect with integrity, we attract better customers. We attract better customers. And when you attract better customers, it's much easier to sell because you're also demonstrating real value early on. You're not trying to sell them. You're trying to help them. Now, you help them by selling them. What you have to do first is you have to develop that authentic relationship. You know, we live in this AI world. Woo. Information knowledge is becoming table stakes. So what do we have to do? We have to authentically connect with the customer. There's a, um, phrase that I'm using more and more. We have to create emotional experiences for our customers. Now that's not a negative. That's not a, that's not a woo. No, no. Emotional experience means because you're emotionally connecting with me and there's an experience because you're remembering me. And when I'm able to do that with somebody, they're going to come back and have another conversation with me. They're going to be able to come back. They're going to, and ultimately they're going to buy from me because they want to experience more of me. And what does that lead to? That leads to the next sale. Because here's the other thing. Sales is not about closing a deal. I hate that term, closing a deal. I want to open a relationship. Mmm. When I open a relationship, what does that do? It creates opportunities for the next opportunity. That's excellent. You're not interested in a one time transaction, but a long term business relationship or Sales relationship for a mutual exchange of value. I love that. You know, you're known for emphasizing the importance of prospecting in sales. You're the prospecting guru. How can salespeople maintain motivation when facing rejection or burnout in the prospecting phase? Sure. First of all, rejection, burnout, burnout doesn't need to happen. Rejection is, is going to happen. That just goes with the nature, but here's the whole thing. I see so many salespeople. They go, Oh, I can't call that person. I've called them three times. They're not interested. And I go, hold it. Have you ever seen a headline? Have you ever seen a, uh, a news site that says salesperson was maimed, lost an arm, shot, um, stabbed because of a sales call. It just has not happened. It's okay. Here's the deal. We prospect for one very simple reason because if I Have the ability to help you. I owe it to you to reach out to you Well, let me frame this up if I have a problem. Trust me. I have problems you can ask my kids They will tell you dad has a lot of problems if I knew that you could help me I would want you to reach out to me now if I found out later on that you could have helped me and you didn't reach out to me, I'd be upset. You see, prospecting is doing the customer a favor. Prospecting is not randomly calling. We know who we can help. We know because we've identified our ideal customer profile. We've done some homework to know that the outcomes we create, it's not what we sell. It's not what we sell. It's the outcomes we create. I mean, the outcomes we create. Ooh, that I need to reach out to that person because I know I can help them. That's what motivates you. Now here's the whole deal. Rejection, burnout. It comes because what we do is we look at the scoreboard. I'm not making quota. I'm not making quota. I'm not making quota. Hold it. You only make quota because of the activities that you do. It's kind of like a football game. There's points on the scoreboard. But the points on the scoreboard only occur because of the plays that are run on the field. The plays that we run on the field are the phone calls we're making, the emails we're sending. We've got to do enough of them. This is a repetition game. In a football game, you don't score with one single play. It takes a series of plays. Same thing with creating a customer. It takes a series of context. But you're doing this because you know you can help them. You know you can help them. And if we sit there and make a couple calls, well, they haven't responded, so they must not be interested. No, it just means you haven't had a conversation. I don't know if they're not interested until I've had a conversation with them. I've got to have a conversation with them. So, this whole thing, we have to stay in the game. Prospecting, I hate to say it, it is a numbers game. But measuring the right numbers, here's a situation in my own business, my own business, I have four people who work for me, but I'm pretty much the face of the company. And my whole belief is this, my, my number one metric, the number one metric that I measure from a prospecting standpoint, from a sales standpoint is five conversations a day. I know that if I have five conversations a day with people who buy from me, refer me or are buying from me, life's going to be good. That's the one metric. Now to get to that five conversations. I've got to be having X number of emails going out I got to be on X number of podcasts like yours. I got to be doing videos I got to be doing stuff, but but I know that that I can create five conversations You see this is the other thing about salespeople Don't get caught up trying to measure everything just because it's easy to measure doesn't mean it should be measured Know what your number one metric is and hone in on that hone in on that That's, you know, for me, five conversations a day, five conversations, period. And it happened. And it keeps my calendar full. Good for you. So, Mark, what do you think has changed the most in sales over the past two or three years, and how should salespeople adapt to these changes? You know, what's interesting is we've seen this thing called AI come on the scene. You know, just a couple years ago, nobody had heard of AI, and now it's, it's, it's in the forefront of everything. And people are looking to try to automate and automate and get a bot to do this, get an agent to do that, even more so than, than we saw over the last five or six years. And you know what that's doing? That's the yang. I want to be the yang. You know, yin yang. The yang is authentic relationships. I'm finding the telephone working really better. Really better than ever. Yeah, people, people laugh at me. People laugh at me. Oh, the phone doesn't work. The people who say that are the people who are afraid to pick up the phone and have a conversation. Hey, but I go back to this whole thing. If I know I can help you, I have an obligation to reach out to you. So that's one thing that's changed. Another thing that has changed is, is mindset. And again, we went through a period of, of COVID where there were a number of industries that were just on fire. Just incredible. In fact, I was just on the phone with a sales manager and he was, he was sharing with me. He said, man, the last two years have been tough. He says, but you know what? We got pretty lucky during COVID because our business was through the roof. You see, what happened was there were some industries that got really kind of lazy. Lazy. They forgot how to sell and he made the comment. He said, now my people are really learning how to sell. They haven't had to sell for four or five years. In fact, he says, I've got salespeople who I hired going into COVID didn't realize I was hiring them going to COVID that are really experiencing sales for the first time because they went through a couple of years of just playing customer service, taking orders. Sales is about creating incremental opportunities. That's what sales. Excellent. Mark, in your experience, what is the single most important trait a successful salesperson must have and how can others develop this trait? Repetition. Repetition. It's very, very simple. It's, it's, you know, what's amazing is the greatest words in sales is found in everybody's bathroom on your bottle of shampoo, where it says rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. Stop and think about what that means. The rinse does not mean that you put the same shampoo back in your hair. It's, it's. Clean shampoo. It's different shampoo, but you repeat the process. This is the same thing with messaging. It's every message is different. Every message, you know, I may be trying to reach out to you, and I want to get you as a customer. Um, I can't send you the same message ten times. No, every message has to be different. But it's repetition, because the sale is made in the follow up. Now, to get to repetition, we have to be disciplined. We have to be disciplined with our time. We have to own our time. Too many salespeople, they're busy, but they're not productive. Because they're not focused on the right activity, but I, I will argue that, and it's funny, I, I, I get to coach a lot of top performing salespeople. And these are people who are just seven figures salaries and they're, they're, they're just seven figures in commissions year in, year out. And, and they routinely say how their life is really boring. Their life is really boring because every day they're doing the exact same activity. They have the exact same activity, exact same activity, exact same activity. Average salespeople don't do that. Low performers don't. They're squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, shiny object. They're chasing all kinds of things. The top performers stay absolutely focused and disciplined doing repetitive activities. That yield results. That yield, that yield results, right. Because they know that, they've identified who is their ideal customer profile. Who is their, they're just not spitting into the wind. They know who their ideal customer profile is and they're down to that. I'll give you an example. I recently closed a huge, huge deal. It took me a year, almost a year, to get to the point where I finally knew who to reach. Once I knew who to reach, it took me 46 touches. 46 touches over the course of about 18 months. Add that up, that's about two and a half years. But it was so significant a deal. And trust me, during those 46 touches, I wasn't hearing anything. It was crickets, crickets, crickets, crickets. But I was staying in the game because I knew I could help them. Ultimately, we did make contact. She did engage with me. And, great relationship. And boom, we're off to the races. Mmm. Stop and think about that. Yeah. Gotta stay in the game. I love it. I love it. Mark, you talk a lot about value based selling. Can you break down what that really means and how it differs from traditional selling techniques or strategies? Yeah. Value based is not what we think it is. What we think, totally irrelevant. It's what the customer believes. That's absolutely true. Value based selling. is really being able to put your price aside. Your price is totally irrelevant. It's the outcome that the customer is going to receive. Let me give you a very quick example. And we'll tie this into price. We'll look at a flight. We'll say a flight between New York and L. A. The flight between New York and L. A. There's an elderly couple on that flight. And they've got some grandkids out in California that they're looking to go see. And, uh, they're retired. They really don't care if they fly on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday, they don't care. They're just looking for the cheapest flight. So they find a cheap flight. We'll say it's three, four hundred bucks a person. And they're like, oh, that's value to them. Up in the front of the plane is, is a person who needs to fly to L. A. to get a major contract signed, have dinner with a new customer, and get right back immediately to New York for the next deal. And they're paying three, four thousand. But that contract that they're signing is worth twenty million. Three, four thousand, value. Because it's on the time that they need, when it's going to go, and boom, boom. You see, value is what the customer believes it to be, perceives it to be, thinks it is, accepts it to be, because of the outcome that they're looking for. Value based selling starts with understanding the outcome that the customer has, and then backing into it. It's not sitting there thinking, Oh, this is my, uh, my solution. You don't know what your solution is until the customer's told you. What the problem is, what the challenges that they have. Excellent. Mark, when working with clients, how do you balance being assertive with being empathetic? Can you share a story where this balance made all the difference? Yeah, here's the whole thing. We have to be assertive in terms of we want to move the customer forward. But empathy means that you're allowing the customer to drive. Whoa! What did he just say? Yeah, allowing the customer to drive. What that means is that I'm willing to go down a different rabbit trail if the customer wants to go down. That's fine. That's fine. Empathy is listening to the customer. It's asking them follow up questions on what they have to say. It's, Really putting what they say at the forefront of what it is that you're thinking about, what you're talking about. It's not having your precise list of questions that you want to go through or your, your PowerPoint deck that you want to share. No, come on. Empathy is truly putting the customer first. And when you do that, you know, what's interesting? You're actually being assertive because you're letting the customer drive, but you can still put your hands on the wheel if you need to. You can still brake the car or accelerate the car if you need to. If you had to get, if you had to do it, you would. Because you just want to keep them going. But you don't care if, if they, if they veer left or right. It's okay. It's okay. So it, it, it's a combination. The two work best hand in hand. Excellent. Mark, I love what you said on the front end of our discussion or conversation. What you're really only meaningful KPI that you hold yourself accountable for is five meaningful conversations each and every day. Some salespeople often focus on closing the deal, but you emphasize the importance of the right start to a sales conversation. Can you share your approach to initiating impactful sales conversations? Yeah, here's the thing. The close should come very natural. Like, like, like I said, you know, when you're a prospect with integrity, you close with confidence. Closing is, is almost an afterthought. And remember, we don't close, we open a relationship. But that's just a given. Opening the conversation, beginning the sales call, it's about engaging you. It's about engaging you, the prospect. One of the magical words that I found is getting them to share their opinions. It's amazing. When you ask somebody their opinion, they'll share it. They'll share it. And I'm going to take, I'm going to ask you a question regarding your industry, regarding something, and I'm going to just ask you your opinion. Whatever it is that you say, I'm going to come back and I'm going to ask a follow up question on that. Hey, fascinating. Can you share more? Could you give me another example? How's that fit in your company? I'm going to get them to unpack that even more. Now, what you've done is this. You've demonstrated to the customer, the prospect, that you value their opinion. You've demonstrated to them that you listen. And by coming back and asking them a follow up question, you've slowly but surely begun to unpeel the onion. And if you think about it, you know, an onion, you've got to peel layers off the onion before you get to the part that you really want to use. That's what you're doing. And I've got to, I've got to peel five, six, seven layers off the onion. The conversation with you. And that, no, how do I really demonstrate empathy? How do I really understand that I'm listening? After I get done with the call. And remember, anytime I have a meeting with you, I'm doing BAMFAM, book a meeting from a meeting. In other words, I'm not ending this meeting until we have another meeting booked. But I do BAMFAM, and then when I get done, I'm going to take and I'm going to play back to you, you know, in an email, in a voicemail, something that you've shared with me. Hey, you said this. I'd love to get some more input on that. Now, what does that do? That means that recap note that you send out, that, that phone call, thanking them for the meeting, reinforcing again how, Well, you listen then when you start the next meeting the next conversation, what are you doing? You're starting off by saying hey last time we were together. You said this I I really want to understand more about that Wow you talk about having them trust you Oh, they're gonna trust you now because you are allowing their words to resonate with you Excellent. I've never heard BAMFAM. Book a meeting from a meeting. That's a takeaway for me. Yeah. Excellent. Mark, what are some of the common mistakes you see salespeople make that prevent them from being truly engaged and enjoying their job? Yeah, first of all, failing to follow up. Failing to follow up. That is, that is what that is. Or they follow up too infrequently. Well, I called them three months ago. Well, they're not going to remember your call today. Forget it. Forget it. It's about not putting them first. In other words, it's it's you're following up, but you're saying hey, I'm just checking in Well, excuse me, if you were to selling me and you send me a note saying I'm just checking in I'm not a hotel I'm not I and oh by the way, your room's not ready and it never will be ready So it's about not bringing value because what salespeople are doing is they're just they're making about themselves Or they're what they're doing is they're they're talking about their product They're talking about their, their features. They're talking about their company and all that sort of stuff. You know what's interesting? It doesn't matter what you sell. It does not matter what you sell. I hear more salespeople say, well, if we just had a good a product as our competitor, we could sell a lot more. No, it's no, no, wrong, wrong. It's the outcome you provide. The product is just the medium. That's all. It's the outcome. I get to work, like I said, with some really top reformers who are working for companies that don't have the best product out there. But they're crushing it. It's not a terrible product, but it's not a great product. Average at best. They're crushing it. They're killing it. Because again, they're focused on the outcome they're going to create for the customer. That's what's so key. Focus on the outcome. It's amazing. I had lunch with CEO of a company I was introduced to. I wasn't trying to sell him anything. I was just, I was just listening. Just listening. Took me on a tour of their facility and he just shared with me his history with the company and they'd gone through a merger a few years ago. They're kind of going into some more M& A pretty soon and, and I'm just listening. Just listening. I'll do a follow up. We'll keep the conversation going and I know within a few months they'll be working with me. I know they will. He's going to have a sales meeting and I know he's going to tell his VP of sales, Bring Mark Hunter in. He's going to be speaking at our sales meeting. Great strategy. I'd like to morph into some questions and getting your understanding of how sales leadership and training. Mark, what role does leadership play in creating a sales culture that's both high performing and ethical? Oh, wow. This is this is going to take us a while to unpack. Let me tell you some culture is incredibly important in sales. Sales is emotional. It's an emotional deal, man. I had I had two bosses. I hated working for Sidney. I hated him! Hated him! Or I'm going to go off in the morning and I could hit the snooze. I could hit the snooze over and over again. Because Sidney was just There was His style of leadership was whatever the company said, whatever the company provided you, whatever marketing sent you, you needed to read to the customer word for word. Painful. I hated working for him. John was another boss I had. I was excited going to bed on Sunday night. It's Monday morning. I was gonna get to go back to work. John was gonna be part of my life. John created a culture, a winning culture. He lifted people up. He was engaged. He was interested in what we as individuals were doing. He cared about us personally. And what was very interesting was he was also extremely always on time. He was, in fact, he was early. He was punctual, always punctual. You know what's interesting? That quickly became our behavior with our customers. As John was engaged with us, we were engaged with our customers. He showed up early for, you know, the weekly sales meeting. We'd show up early for customers. It was amazing. Sidney was just the opposite. He was always late. And, and it's amazing. The culture a leader creates. Begins with their own personal style. You don't preach a style. You live a style and this is Absolutely key because to your sales to your customers your salespeople is the company You know and and so if they are not a good reflection Guess what? Your company's not gonna have a good reflect. Culture and leadership is extremely critical In fact, what's interesting is my definition of sales is exactly the same as my definition of leadership It's helping others see and achieve what they did not think was possible. That's what a great leader does. That's what a great salesperson does. So think about this. Is a great leader a salesperson? Is a great salesperson a leader? Hmm. They're very much the same. So leaders have to, A, practice what they preach. They can't just preach it. Two, they gotta be there in a supportive nature. And one of the ways that a leader can support their people is this. Don't rush in there to help them close the deal. I'll go in there to help you close the deal Oh, come on. That is like I mean that that's just stealing the business from from the from the salesperson I want you as a sales leader to go in and open because you and your title can get meetings with customers that your salesperson can't. Nothing, nothing against your salesperson. It's just that you, because you probably have the title VP or something of that nature, you can get meetings that they can't. You can ask questions that, that your salesperson could ask, but they'd probably get a different answer. Wow. Think about that. Your, your job is to go in and open up doors to allow your salespeople to come in and make it happen. I saw that very much in play one time. I was calling on a brand new customer. And my manager's manager was with me. We walked in and, and I didn't realize how effective this was gonna play out. And, and, and Tom was his name. He began asking the customer who we were trying to sell to for the, some questions. And, and it very became very obvious very quickly that I was just a fly on the wall. But that's okay. It's okay because Tom and this customer are having this great conversation and, and, and it's interesting. But suddenly I saw, I saw Tom actually get up and, and. Move his chair around so he could see the customer's computer screen a little better. The customer's cool with that. The customer's cool. Hey, you see this? How do you like this? It's really cool. And it's amazing the door that was open because of what happened there. That's why I became sold on this whole idea of managers, leaders. That's why I tell companies, senior leaders of companies, the top two individuals in any company, say the CEO. You're gonna be externally focused and the CO is gonna be internally focused or, you know, maybe it's the, the COO and the president. I don't care what it's, but I, but I'm gonna have one person that's very much externally focused with customers and one person that's internally running the business. And it's amazing the doors you'll open and how you'll grow your sales and you'll make your salespeople look really good. Really good. Excellent. Mark, many salespeople struggle with accountability. How can sales leaders create a culture where accountability is built into the sales process rather than imposed from the top down? You have to create an environment where you inspect what you expect. What you do is you want all of your salespeople teamed up with somebody else. You want to create like little mini mastermind. You may have eight or 10 salespeople that report to you. So what you're going to do is you're going to take these two or three and they're going to kind of hang out together. These two or three are going to hang out together. And the idea is that every Monday morning, the three of them just get on the phone for 15 minutes and just, Hey, what are your goals for the week? What are your challenges for the week? And then, and then they're going to come back midweek Wednesday or Thursday and see how they're doing. So in other words, you create this accountability. Internally with the team themselves. I don't have to do it as a manager. Now I'm going to do it as a manager also. I'll get, I'll get to that in just a second. But I, I want to foster an environment where there's 24 7 accountability happening. And you know what's interesting is, this little team of three, somebody's having a challenge with a customer and the others are going to lift them up and hey, here's what you do. And so what's going to happen is, is, as they're kind of coaching their peers, they're learning. Ooh, wow. What does it do? It creates an environment. where people are learning from one another. Now, you as a manager, what I'm going to tell you as a manager, you're a frontline manager, what I want you doing is, every Monday morning, I want you sending out an email. Hey, here are my objectives. Here are my objectives for the week. Here's what I'm working on. Oh, you see this? You're practicing what you preach. Yes. Yes. You want to see the same thing from your people. But here's the whole thing. So many times what happens is, we just forget about it. We never come back. I want you to come back and I want you to reach back out to your sales people on Thursday morning. Thursday morning. Hey, how are we doing on this? Here's how I'm doing on this. So in other words, they're sending out kind of a status update as to where they're at on their objectives. And they're doing, and you're doing the same thing as for your people. Now the reason Thursday morning, there's still two days left in the week. There's still two days left in the week. Hello. I have time to make this stuff happen. And at the end of the week, I've got to hold myself and others accountable. Now whether I do that Friday afternoon or do that the following day, Monday as I send out, you know, Again, you get into this rhythm, but you have to be practicing what you preach and don't expect numbers or Objectives or goals or anything from people. If you are not in a position to follow up with them, you inspect what you expect. Because otherwise what'll happen is very quickly they'll realize that You never follow up, so they'll just send you garbage. I had a bot, Sidney was like that, Ooh, that was interesting. Sidney was like, Ooh, gotta have this number in. And, and, very quickly I began to realize that Sidney never looked at it, he never cared. So, man, I just sent him garbage. period. I didn't like working for him anyway. Interesting. Mark, when it comes to sales training or sales coaching, how should managers assess the effectiveness of the programs they implement? And what results should they look for? Well, first of all, I could care less how Oh, did you like the training today? Oh, I could care less. I'm going to measure results by what I'm seeing happen in the field. Three to six months after the fact that that's what I want to see. I really don't care. The big reason training breaks down is because we throw the kitchen sink at people. Just throw at them one simple concept, one simple concept. Let them run with it. And I want to measure results three to six months later. You know, one of the big challenges that, that training, sales training has is that the managers never go through it themselves. And the sales people know that. Sales people go, Oh, well, our manager isn't going through that. So, but if their managers going through the training or delivering the training. Owning the training. Holding them. Ooh, now I begin to take. This is where I say that every training that you do, sales manager has to have a set of, of follow up questions, a set of follow up reinforcements that they're going through every week for the next um, six, eight weeks. You know, that's assuming you're doing the structured training. Uh, you know, half day or full, full day or whatever, or say you've had a sales, you know, you've had this two day sales meeting. This happens a lot. I get companies. I'll say, Hey Mark, would you come in and speak at our sales kickoff? Great. Great. And what I always do then I always say, Hey, I'm going to provide your, your managers with a couple of checklists and tools that they can use after the fact. And Oh, by the way, you know what we're going to do? We're going to schedule. I'm going to schedule a followup call with all your sales people. We'll do a team's call, zoom call, whatever. For 30 minutes two weeks after I speak to reinforce Reinforcement is so critical because again nobody learns behavior by only hearing once again It's repetitive leaders You have to understand that it's repetitive and you've got to be able to reinforce that and then practice it You you got to practice it and do it yourself. Yeah, whoa play. Oh, wow, that's creepy But you know, what's interesting AI is created. I mean, there's so many AI tools out there that allow you, I, I've got one I, I offer for my clients that allows them to role play, role play themselves. And, and, because people hate role playing because it's in front of their peers and all that sort of stuff. But if you can role play one on one with this bot, oh wow, that becomes pretty effective. Excellent. What's the name of that tool? Um, it, it, it's part of my sales logic mastermind group. It, it's a proprietary tool, so. Okay. I don't even know the company that we had built. But the point is there are some great AI. There are terrific tools out there. Yes, yes. And they're going to become more and more common. You know, in the weeks and months to come. Mark, you've worked with many sales organizations. What are the top three habits or practices you believe every sales team should adopt to perform at their best level? First of all, be very clear on uniformity in terms of what the objectives are. Everybody. These are the clear objectives that as an organization this is what we're chasing. Two, there is a clear receptivity of people sharing ideas. Everybody's got to share an idea. And the easiest way is, somebody had a success last week, okay? Great. Congratulate the success. How did you do it? Unpack that. And three, every organization has to have a little time each week where you're throwing a problem out. Throwing a problem out on the table. Let's unpack that. Let's solve that. Now, let's unpack this some more because individually, I firmly believe this. You've got to start the day in a very uniform manner. What I find is top performers are very routine oriented, including how they start the day. They start the day on the exact same way. Every day they do the exact same things. You want to become a top performer. Start your day at a uniform time. Have a uniform process. And there's a little secret in here. It's what I call the 10 a. m. rule. You take your smartphone, you set an alarm for 10 a. m. It's not the time to get up. Hopefully you're up before that. But what you're doing is you want to accomplish something significant before 10 a. m. Here's why. You accomplish something significant before 10 a. m. and you feel really good. You really do. It chases you. But here's where it really comes to play. We'll say your day falls apart shortly after that. You know, your day just goes apart. If you haven't accomplished something significant, i. e. your prospecting calls or something like that, you're going to get to the middle of the afternoon, you're going to get to the end of the afternoon, you're going to go, ah, screw it, I don't have time to get to calls. I'll just get to them tomorrow. Tomorrow never comes. Because tomorrow rolls around, you're going to say the same thing. I'll get to them tomorrow. You'll, you'll never do it. So if you're going to accomplish, and this is something that I find, top performers are always accomplishing something significant before 10 a. m. I love that. Third piece. Third piece. Top performers never settle for what the number is. They never settle for it. They may settle for the number, but they're going to settle for it in a shorter timeline. In other words, here might be the annual number. Here's, here's your annual number you got to hit. Okay. My objective is to hit that nine months or ten months or maybe it's here's my number. Here's my quarterly number Yeah, my number is gonna be that number plus 20 percent something of that nature You have to push push push and that's what top performers do. Excellent. I love that 10 a. m. rule. That's the, I wrote that down. I'm going to, I'm going to harvest that, not steal it. I'm going to harvest it. That's fine. Go for it. Go for it. Hey. I will, will attribute to you. Mark, what's the best piece of sales advice you ever received and how did it impact your career? Know that your mindset determines everything. It is your mindset. Uh, it's the reason I wrote the book, A Mind for Sales. Your mindset going into a sales call predetermines the results you get coming out. You can't afford to allow yourself to hear negative voices. You can't allow yourself to be inundated with, uh, garbage. Top performers are optimists. They're optimists. They can go through dark periods. They can go through dark periods. But they know the sun's still gonna come up in the morning. And every day, every day, like, for instance, today, I had exactly what I was gonna get done on my calendar. And then, boom, I got an email that just lit my day up. Because it was a A deal that I was hoping to get that I thought, well, this is going to happen because he's on vacation. It's not going to happen until after the first of the year. Boom. Sent me back an email. Oh, here's what, here's what I need. Boom, boom, boom. I want to do this option, do, do, do. I was like, wow, that's great. That's great. Again, top performers are not lucky. So people would say, oh, Mark, that was just lucky you got that deal. No, it isn't. You go through the motions to put yourself into opportunities that they in turn, Seem like luck, but no, it's a manifestation of the work you've done. Love it. Two last questions. Then we go into the quick fire, rapid round looking ahead. What do you think is the next big trend in sales training and development that salespeople should be preferring for gamification is absolutely here. Uh, here that's really allowing us to be in a 24 seven training mode because it's small, portable, concise. On our phone. I'm, I'm getting more and more requests from companies. Hey, can you just do that in a two minute video? Can you just do that in a two minute video? Can you put some fun behind it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that, that's a real trend. That's a real trend I see happening. Great. Last question before we go into the quick fire round. What advice would you give to someone starting a career in sales today, given the rapidly changing landscape of business and sales technology? Read the book Atomic Habits by James Clear. It's not a sales book, but it's a book about life and atomic habits. It's doing the little things every day, every day, every day, every day, every day. And it's amazing how that book will change your life. So you took my first question from the quick fire round. What's the one book every salesperson should read? Atomic habits. Thank you. Okay, here we go. Quick fire round. What's the most common misconception about salespeople that you'd like to debunk? That all they're out there to do is to take your money and and run. The good salespeople really care about people and they want to make a difference. They want to impact and influence people in a positive manner. Great. If you could offer only one piece of sales advice in 30 seconds or less, what would it be? Stay in the game. Be repetitive. Don't think it's about 10, 000 leads. It's about 10 leads that you can follow up with. Your objective? Spend more time with fewer people. Last question in the rapid fire round. What's one daily sales habit that you use that contributes to your sales and business success? Five conversations a day. Five conversations a day. I love that. And I, as the last question, as a wrap up, if there's one thing you'd like our listeners to take from our conversation, is it have five meaningful conversations each day or anything else you'd like to add? It's really about enjoying the ride. Enjoying the ride. Sales is absolutely fantastic. Sales, there is no other profession where you get to impact and influence people from such a broad spectrum. Think about it. We're on the same playing field as doctors, medical professionals. We get to help people see and achieve what they didn't think was possible. That doesn't jazz ya. That doesn't excite ya. Something's wrong. Absolutely. Mark, it has been a high honor and privilege to have you as a guest on the Best Sellers Podcast. I certainly have grown, and I've been selling quite a while, I love five meaningful conversations each day. BAMFAM, book a meeting from a meeting, the 10 a. m. rule, such great pearls of sales wisdom and advice. Mark, if somebody wants to get a hold of you and find out more about what you and the sales hunter can do or about your three books, high profit prospecting, a mind for sales, or high profit selling, how can they get a hold of you? Well, all you have to do is Google, Google, uh, the sales hunter in quotes, Mark Hunter, sales center. I'm going to come up. I'm all over LinkedIn. The website is the sales hunter. com. I've got two podcasts. One is called the sales hunter. Gee, kind of catching a common theme there, aren't you? And the other one is sales logic. I've got a YouTube channel. It's just the books. My whole goal is to contribute to the sales community the way the sales community has contributed to me. We lift each other by sharing knowledge with one another. Excellent. Our guest has been Mark Hunter, known as the sales hunter, author, coach, trainer, sales keynote. Mark, thanks very much your time. It's been a high honor and privilege and good selling. If you made it all the way here, thank you for listening to the best sellers podcast, your ultimate destination for winning sales strategy. We hope you loved this episode. Be sure to subscribe to us on YouTube. And follow us on your favorite podcast platform to never miss an episode. See you on the next one.