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[EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a replay of the Webinar hosted by Fred Diamond, Host of the Sales Game Changers Podcast, on April 17, 2020.]
EPISODE 226: IES Creativity in Sales Webcast: Mark “The Sales” Hunter Presents Daily Habits and Practical Strategies to Succeed During COVID-19
Watch the webinar here. Purchase Mark’s new book, “A Mind for Sales.”
MAJOR TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: “There’s still three levels of sales. Repeat, Get and Create. Repeat are your existing customers that come back and buy from you time and time again or maybe a referral. This is business that’s coming to you because you’ve done something with somebody before. Focus now on the Repeat. You’ve got to double down your efforts here.”
Fred Diamond: Mark, you and I have spoken so many times about mindset and you came out with the book ironically before the COVID hit, we actually did a Sales Game Changers podcast interview two weeks before everything came down. Today’s going to be even more pertinent as we talk about some of your ideas not just on mindset but on how you can succeed today and how you can thrive and what you should be doing so we’re thrilled to have you here, I’m excited to have you, let’s get started.
Mark Hunter: Thank you for having me on today, I very much appreciate it. When I wrote the book A Mind for Sales, I didn’t realize when I wrote it a year ago what would be going on today but tell you what, isn’t it so important to have that mind for sales? I’m going to dig down deep, we’re going to run through a few slides here like what Fred has always done in the past, when I get done with a slide we’re going to say, “Hey, what are some questions?” Keep your questions coming, Fred will be the host for it.
Let’s go and jump, I want to talk about the three levels of sales here for a second because we could be in the middle of the pandemic, we could be in the middle of anything but there’s still three levels of sales and I want you to stop and ask yourself this question. There’s this level of Repeat, there’s this level of Get and there’s this level of Create. What do we mean by that? Let me break that down for you. The Repeat: These are your existing customers that come back and buy from you time and time again or maybe a referral, this is business that’s coming to you because you’ve done something with somebody before. Then there’s a level of business called Get, this is the manna from heaven, this just pops down in front of you and it’s great, you love it, and then there’s the Create.
Now, how does all this happen in a COVID world? This is what I’m telling clients. Focus first on the Repeat, you’ve got to double down your efforts here. Here’s the whole thing, a few weeks ago everybody was talking about toilet paper and now the conversation is hair colors and hair clippers. Isn’t it interesting? If you stop to think about this, why do I share toilet paper, hair color and hair clippers? Because needs change and you may have had a customer who buys from you, who does business with you regularly and then, “We don’t need you right now, come back after COVID” but then things change. Just as the survey that Fred put out, the 53%, we’re now getting into a routine. People are figuring out how to do business so don’t think for a moment that that customer who you weren’t touching base with who said, “No, we’re not going to buy”, you need to be in touch with them.
One of the pieces – and I got to move quickly because I’ve got so much content I want to share with you – is that you need to be prepared for everybody’s backstory. What do I mean by the backstory? How did they wind up where they’re at right now in this COVID world? Everybody has a personal backstory and a professional and you better be prepared to listen to both but I’ll tell you what, what it’s doing is it’s allowing us to create deeper relationships. I’ll get to more of that in a second, let’s talk about Get. Are there businesses just falling in your lap? Yes there is, there is business, don’t think for a moment that you can take an inbound lead and blow it off, it’s incredible. Again, I’m going to talk more about that later, the Create is what I want to talk about right now. Don’t think for a moment that you can’t create business in this environment. There’s a lot of industries that are doing very well and there’s a lot of industries that should be down for the count. I was on the phone two hours ago with a gentleman who’s with a company whose 100% of their business is in the travel industry and I got on the phone with him expecting to hear a downer phone call. The guy was up, the guy was as positive as can be because he says, “You know what we’re doing? We’re now taking this time to create new opportunities, to create new solutions, to create new things. I said, “Are you out there?” and he says, “You bet we’re out there selling and we’re having people who are very much interested.” Now, you may not be able to create to close the sale now but you can create to close the sale post-Coronavirus. You see, PC does not stand for Politically Correct, PC stands for Post-Coronavirus. Let me stop right there, have any questions popped up?
Fred Diamond: Someone asks here, “What should I be talking about to my customers when I know that they’re in a non-buying mode?” What should we be talking about?
Mark Hunter: A couple weeks ago it was all talking about COVID but I think we’re getting a little COVID fatigue. What I want to do is I want to bring my customers solutions and ideas for down the road. Here’s what I’m seeing, here’s what some other industries are doing. I am sharing insights, I am sharing things that are seen or things that you see are relevant. For instance, I work with a client and I haven’t worked with him for about 4-5 months, I’d like to do some more work with him. In one of my calls with him, it happened to be via BlueJeans. BlueJeans is a little bit like Citrix, it’s a little bit like Zoom. It was fine, no big deal and suddenly I saw yesterday that Verizon bought BlueJeans.
I immediately texted the gentleman, I said, “I see Verizon just bought BlueJeans, are you still using that?” and two seconds later he texted me back, “Yeah, we are. Hey, we haven’t talked in a while, let’s connect” and 15 minutes later we were on the phone. What were we on the phone about? He calls me and says, “What are you seeing happening out there?” It wasn’t that much about his business but he wanted to know what’s going on out there in the industry. You can create conversations, you want to create conversations but I’m saying I’m a little bit COVID fatigued. I’m going to listen if somebody wants to talk about their backstory but I’m more gearing people to what’s happening down the road. Did that answer the question?
Fred Diamond: It does. We have another question that came in here and we have a number of people on today’s webcast who are relatively early in their sales career. If we were talking to you and the pandemic had never happened, one of the topics we’d be talking about is if you’re relatively new, first 5 years in your sales career you’re still learning about your customers’ challenges. How do you get better at learning about your customer challenges? Let’s say I’m in the first 5 years of my sales career, what might be some conversations that I could be having right now with, let’s say, somebody who’s double my age? I’m trying to get to the C-suite or director level, how can I present myself as somebody of value to them besides, “I just want to chat”?
Mark Hunter: I love new salespeople right now because let me tell you something, you are getting your MBA on selling skills during this period because we are all sharpening our selling skills and here’s what it is, it’s about having the conversation. There’s two things you have to do with any conversation and that is you have to have a conversation that creates trust and a conversation that creates empathy. What does that mean? That means listening. I want you to listen to the other person’s opinion and value it more than ever. Again, these are concepts that I wrote about in both my books, there’s nothing new about this but nobody ever did it because we were too busy selling, now it’s about listening. What you want to do is you want to create that relationship because when you create that relationship here’s what happens, when I can be seen as being authentic – I create authenticity by being empathetic and trustworthy because then people are going to see me as being authentic, because they don’t want to deal with a fake, a fake doesn’t create trust.
When I’m seen as authentic then they’re going to open up, they’re going to share with me more. This is a great time, the conversations you can have are no different than anything else, no different than any other time. I’m just taking more time to value you, the individual person. Great, we’re going to jump onto the next slide because Fred, did you ever notice that I get a little excited when I talk about sales? Yeah, I get into it.
Fred Diamond: Mark, what does unlock your day mean?
Mark Hunter: Unlock your day. I want you to unlock your day, what do I mean by this? We’re all in this WFH – Work from Home – and that means we are also SFH – Selling from Home – and on the other end they are BFH – Buying from Home. Here’s the whole thing, it’s so easy for us to ease into the day, it feels like Groundhog Day #38, doesn’t it? And tomorrow’s going to be Groundhog Day #39 and we just ease in. What I want you to do is I want you to set up your time, I do this and I’m going to share with you how I do this. I get up every morning at about 4:30 in the morning and by 5:15, 5:30 I’m working and here’s what I do, my first 15 minutes of the day I am geared up and I set it by by 5:30 I am working at my desk. That’s just the time I choose to start.
You may say, “I’m not doing 5:30”, I don’t care, whatever time you do. Again, my first 15 minutes of the day what I’m doing is I’m sending out, I’m crafting, I’m writing the most important email I’m going to send of the day. There may be one client I’ve got to respond to, there may be something but I’ve got to make sure I get that out first thing and I’m doing that first thing. The second 15 minute window I’m just scanning emails, I’m not trying to dig down deep because email can be a big giant time suck but I’m running through email. Is there anything really important that I got to deal with? I use Slack for my team and for my several clients so I check Slack real quick, is there anything pertinent? Again, I’m only allowing 15 minutes so in other words, within the first 30 minutes I’ve taken care of high crises and I’ve taken care of my most important thing. Then I take the next 30 minutes or an hour, depending on the activity, and that’s when I do my deep thinking as to the project I’ve got happening.
Here’s what’s nice, what I may do is I may say, “I’m going to work on this project for 30 minutes and I’m going to work on this project for 30 minutes” but it’s all time driven. In other words, in the first 90 minutes I’ve already had a very productive day. See, I’ve unlocked my day and when I unlock my day it’s amazing how then the rest of the day just stays just as productive because at the end of the day when I close up the office I’m preparing for tomorrow. In other words, I’m figuring out what’s going to be that first email, what are going to be my objectives and I’m also evaluating the day. How did I do? We’re all busy but busy is not productive, productive is, “What did I do to help a customer?” I’ll stop right there. Any more questions popped in?
Fred Diamond: Some questions are flying in. Quick question here, I want to go back to something you mentioned on the previous slide, sorry to shift you back but you said something very powerful and on the Sales Game Changers podcast we’ve done over 240 episodes. When I ask the sales leaders what they’re really good at, one of the big answers is listening so it’s very powerful that you just went back to spend your time listening. If you could give us a little bit of advice on how do the people watching today’s webinar, how can you become a better listener? What are some active skills that you train people to do? You obviously train for conversations, but how do you get to become a better listener?
Mark Hunter: There’s three things. First of all, when you’re working from home that means you’re on the phone or you’re on Zoom or you’re on Webex, whatever it is and you may have your email, open. Guess what? You’re distracted. We do not multitask well, get over it, be in the moment listening to the customer and be an active note taker. I’ll share with you I happen to use a microphone here on my desk and it’s funny but the other day – I just wish Amazon would hurry up and deliver it – I spent $29 dollars to buy a boom thing here because here’s my problem, I can’t take notes as well on my computer when I’m talking to you on Zoom or something.
Here’s the whole thing, you want to be an active note taker, I have a yellow pad over here and I have my computer. Again, active note taking has you listing better. Two, when they get done talking just wait. I was on the phone this morning with a gentleman and he answered a question and I’d just wait and he talked more, it was amazing. I talked very little he must have talked 80%, I got incredible insight and here’s the payoff I’m listing. You’re taking something that they share with you and you play it back in the next phone call. When I shared with you the example about BlueJeans, that was because this client had shared that with me several months earlier and I made a note of that, make notes of everything and it gives you the perfect reason. If I hadn’t known that they used BlueJeans I would not have known to follow up with them. What did it do? Created a conversation.
Fred Diamond: Mark, do you find that senior level decision makers are open to Zoom calls for an initial conversation?
Mark Hunter: Yes. The barriers on Zoom have dropped completely, everybody is on Zoom 24/7. Remember, you only have to dress from the waist up but just don’t stand up, we’ll just lead with that. Now, I think there’s also a little bit of Zoom fatigue. Zoom was this initial piece and now we got this one down so yes, they’re comfortable with Zoom but don’t hesitate to do a phone call and then say, “Let’s go and pop over to Zoom, have you got time?” or you set up Zoom for the second call.
Fred Diamond: A quick comment you just made there before is I’ve always said that a great sales call is one where you do 5% of the talking and you just hit on that, and definitely take notes. John Asher who’s spoken at the Institute before, he always recommends one of the first things you say is, “Can I take notes?” and then the answer is going to be yes as compared to, “Do you mind if I take notes?” where the answer is, “No, I do not mind if you take notes.” Always ask, “Can I take notes?” Mark, let’s move to your next slide. Once again, if you have any questions for Mark Hunter, The Sales Hunter, submit them via the panel like some of you are doing and also, once again, take a screenshot, email it to me at fdiamond@i4esbd.org.
Mark Hunter: I don’t want to spend too much time here but I want to share with you a very simple concept and that is we are moving at the speed of light during this pandemic, I really feel that we have taken 40 to 50 years of societal change and jammed it into literally a 3 or 4 month period. What does this mean? Inbound has depreciating value, what are we talking about here? Here’s the whole thing, if you get an inbound lead it depreciates quickly because that person, that company may have liked this idea right now but two days from now they may not. I’ll give an example. I’m working right now with a client and they’re doing a rotating furlough – this is weird, but okay, that’s how the company has chosen to do it, that’s fine – 25% of their employees are furloughed each week.
So it’s a Friday and there’s a person who I’ve got to reach out to because if I don’t connect with her today she’s on furlough next week and a whole week is going to go by. I’ve got to jump, speed is more important than ever. Let’s flip this around and look at outbound, what do we mean by outbound? Outbound has appreciating value, much of your outbound work that you do right now may not pay out until we get PC – Post-Coronavirus – but that’s okay. What I want you to do is I want you to treat your prospects as if they were customers. Here’s a risk, just because somebody says, “We’ll do business with you as soon as we’re out of this situation”, that is not code word for, “I don’t need to follow up with you again until that.”
No, you better stay in touch with them because you don’t know what can happen if this thing drags on, they may come to that point and they go, “You know what? I really forget, why were we going to work with them? What were the real reasons? Let’s just start all over again” so I’ve got to be constantly working.
Fred Diamond: A couple questions come in. Again, your new book is A Mind for Sales and it’s available wherever people buy books, it’s a great book, I encourage people to read it but again, you’re also one of the world-renowned experts on prospecting. I have a couple questions about prospecting that have come through here and again, if you have a question submit it via the questions panel. I’m going to rephrase this question here but 98% of people are working from home unless you work in a hospital or an essential factory or something on those lines or construction, but most people are home. Is it okay to call people after hours and on weekends? We know where they are, so what are some of your thoughts on that today? I know one of your strategies is your early weekend email, that 6:00 o’clock email. How are you shifting this during COVID-19?
Mark Hunter: I’m not going to hesitate to email somebody on the weekend, I’m probably not going to call them on the weekend. It could depend on what you sell, if you’re in a B to C then I probably will go and call but if I’m in a B to B environment or B to G, Business to Government, I am not going to call them on the weekend, I’m going to go ahead and respect their boundaries. I do open up the window a little bit more in terms of I don’t hesitate to call a little bit earlier in the day or call a little bit later in the evening. Many times what I’m finding is people who are working from home, what they’re doing is they’re starting their work day at 6 because then their kids get up at 7, 7:30 and they’ve got to spend some time getting them set up for school and then they get back to work and so forth. Some of those days are a little broken but I’m still a very strong advocate of the Saturday morning email to senior people, I love doing that and I don’t hesitate to send out Sunday afternoon emails to mid-level people.
Fred Diamond: I’ve got another question.
Mark Hunter: That’s okay, jump in.
Fred Diamond: Before we get to the next slide here, again we have a couple questions coming in. If you have a question for Mark, submit it via the panel. Next Friday at 11:00 o’clock Eastern Time we’re bringing one of your friends, Bill Cates, to talk. We’re very excited to bring Bill and he’s known as The Referral Coach. Is now a good time to ask for referrals? How does that fit in with your prospecting expertise?
Mark Hunter: Yes, ask for referrals. Let’s jump over to the next slide there because that really sets this up well. If you have the ability to help somebody, its’ your responsibility to get in touch with them so don’t think for a moment that this isn’t a good time to prospect. In fact, it’s funny, I was just on the phone a couple hours ago with another gentleman who asked the same question because they get a lot of referrals and I said, “By all means.” Here’s two things that happen. One, you get to have the ability to have a conversation with them. I’m sure Bill Cates is going to go down deep into this subject next week so I won’t do a deep dive, but that’s a great reason for you to reach back out to them. Then they’re either going to recommend or they’re not and that’s quite alright, they may say, “Yeah, but don’t reach out to them right now, they’re having some tough times” but they may say, “Go right ahead” and that’s a perfect time.
I know one guy right now who is doing referrals by way of Zoom calls. In other words, what he’s saying is, “Why don’t we set up a Zoom call for the three of us?” He’s having very good luck with that because now suddenly two friends get on Zoom, he’s in that Zoom call and he’s now one of their friends and it’s a great strategy, use referrals. This comes back to this whole thing, not all leads are created equal so you’ve got to still be very careful as to how you allocate your time. Don’t ever forget you have to abide by what I call ICP, your Ideal Customer Profile. How many of you – no, you don’t need to raise your hand because all of you have – have received countless emails on hand sanitizer and masks and everything else that everybody wants to sell you?
They’re just spraying and praying putting those messages out there. See? Not all leads are created equal. I only want to be spending time still with my best prospects, with my best customers. As a matter of fact, I just did a blog on this and I just did a video on this, – jump out to my website – on your three most important assets, your time, your mind and your network, and your time is so critical especially right now. Don’t think for a moment this is a perfect time to kick back and relax, this is a perfect time to bolt ahead because you want your competition to kick back and relax. I want all my competitors to sit there and say, “Yeah, there’s no business out there” because then I’m going to take it all from them.
Fred Diamond: I’ve got a question here, it came via text. Once again, if you have a question, submit it via the panel. If you know my cellphone number feel free to send me a text. “How does Mark stay so energized?” It’s a little bit after 10:00, you said you get up at 5:30. What are some techniques that you do –
Mark Hunter: No, I get up at 4:30.
Fred Diamond: 4:30, I’m sorry. 5:30 my time.
Mark Hunter: There you go.
Fred Diamond: Seriously, what do you do to stay so energized?
Mark Hunter: I love people, sales is about people and stop and think about this for a moment. It’s about helping people and I’m sorry, but that excites me, sales excites me and you’re right, I drink a lot of coffee and hey, aren’t those cute pictures of some of my grandkids? Yes, I’m a lot older than I look but I’m just absolutely excited because it’s not what I sell, it’s not what you sell, it’s the outcome you create. If you can help somebody, especially right now, then you need to get in touch with them. I enjoy life, I love life.
Fred Diamond: This slide or the next one?
Mark Hunter: Next one. I love this next slide, you can’t turn a Walmart shopper into a Nordstrom customer. We’ve all been to Walmart, we’ve all been to Nordstrom probably, Walmart’s open right now, Nordstrom is not but think about this. This is why your ICP is so important, your Ideal Customer Profile because it’s so easy for us to get distracted. We get distracted with this person over here because they’re responding to our emails, they’re willing to take our phone calls but they don’t line up to our ideal customer profile and that would be like Nordstrom trying to take a Walmart shopper and turn them, you can’t do it. You’ve got to stay in your lane and if you don’t stay in your line what’s going to happen is you’re going to be busy but you’re not going to be productive.
The more you stay in your lane with your ideal customer profile, the more confident you become because the more knowledgeable you become. You become incredibly knowledgeable, incredibly insightful and what does that allow you to do? That allows you to really be seen as even more important to the prospect because your prospect, your customer, they don’t want to spend time with people who don’t have solutions. It’s the reason I don’t respond to people who send me emails on hand sanitizer and masks and so forth, I’m not interested. I want to spend time with people who I know can help me.
Fred Diamond: We have a question, Mark, that came in here, this has come up a couple of times on the various webcasts that we’ve done right now. You just mentioned that Walmart is open but Nordstrom is closed. One of the members of the Institute for Excellence in Sales, I’ve had two chats earlier this week, one guy sells to state and local governments and he said his team is working around the clock because they’re now bringing them things that they hadn’t brought before. Someone says he sells to the entertainment industry and obviously movie theaters aren’t buying things and sports venues are closed. This is a hard question to ask but what would you do if my customer base is the Nordstroms of the world or hotels right now? You alluded to this, that you want to build those relations but what would your advice be to somebody who sells to a space that is inactive right now?
Mark Hunter: If I’m selling to a space that is inactive, they’re not in a position to buy. If you buy cleaning supplies to the theater industry – in fact, it’s funny because I do work with the trade association that deals with them – I’m not going to be selling to them but I am going to be communicating to them, I am going to be helping them work through different ideas and solutions. I’m still going to be in contact with them. Do not lose contact but do not go up and go, “This sucks, how much business have you lost?” They know how much money they lost but what they want to know is what are others out there in the industry, what are some techniques, what are some ideas? You mean there’s a way that I can reduce my energy usage? “But I don’t sell energy, I sell cleaning supplies” but because I talked to this other theater owner over here, they mentioned how they reduced their energy bill by even more, I’m going to call up another theater owner and say, “Here’s what I found out, here’s an idea.”
I’m still selling, I’m selling myself so I’m going to be in touch with them. I’m going to share a very quick example. I was on the phone with a client, this goes back about 6 weeks ago and I was talking to them and they were asking me for ideas and I just shared some ideas as to what I was hearing from other industries. The guy goes, “Thanks for calling, that was really good.” I got done with that phone call and I wrote it up and I emailed it out to a couple other clients and prospects responded, they said, “That was really good.”
Now every week I’m putting out a briefing paper of new things that I’m seeing. Is it making me money? No. Is it creating relationships? You bet it is. I’m doing this to allow myself to have a reason to get back in touch with people whose industries – yes, I do work in the hotel industry and believe me, they’re concerned about how they’re going to make the debt payment. I’m sending this out to them and it’s giving them some ideas and so forth. What I’m doing is I’m selling myself now, I’m creating. In fact, go ahead and jump to the next slide because this is the perfect setup for this, I’m creating trust. I am creating trust that now these people will do business with me post-Coronavirus. Let me flip this around because there are a lot of industries that are buying, this was fascinating to me. I was doing a webinar for a company Tuesday of this week and it’s an industry that’s in business but they’re having some tough times. What was fascinating was there were about 9 salespeople on the call and one of them said, “This was amazing, I got an unbelievable order from a customer that reached back out to me on a proposal I’d sent to them 6 months ago. I had written them off but the guy responded” and she made the comment, “Because he’s now working from home, he finally had time to dig through a lot of his old emails.”
Even though this business was flat, she scored a nice piece of business so don’t ever count yourself out. I’ve got to run right here with this, trust is currency because this is more important than ever. Here’s a simple concept if you think about this: the lower the level of trust, the longer it’s going to take for the sale to go through. The lower the level of trust, the more negotiation that’s going to take place. The lower the level of trust, the more difficulty there’s going to be in creating customer satisfaction. The higher the degree of trust, the faster the process is going to go, all things being equal. For instance, Fred, you called me up and you said, “Mark, I’d love to have you do this” and there was no selling you had to do, I trust Fred, let’s do it now. There was no hesitation about negotiating because I trust Fred, I absolutely trust him. We have to, right now, be doing everything possible to create as much trust as possible. How do we do this? This means I’m not going to hesitate. Remember this briefing thing I sent out? That doesn’t really pertain to anything I do but I’m sending it out and people are saying, “If Mark is willing to share with me this type of information, that’s really cool.” I’m creating trust and I know that as we come out of this, people that I’ve been talking to are going to say, “Mark, I want you in front of my sales, I want you right there right now.”
If you think about this for a moment, this is a reason why I love this pandemic – wow, what did he just say? Yes, this reason I love this pandemic because it’s shaking out the fraud in sales, the fake salespeople can’t stand it now because you’ve got to be personal and if you can’t be personal, you can’t make it. That’s why I go back to that question you said about some of the newer salespeople, this is a great time. Mark Cuban was on CNBC about a week ago, maybe two weeks ago and I buy into it 100%, he said, “We are creating so many unbelievable new businesses right now.” I had a person share with me the list of businesses that were created back in the last recession – I hate to use that term, recession – it’s amazing. I love this, when we sell with integrity we will get customers who have integrity.
Fred Diamond: We’re going to go for about 45 minutes after the hour. If you have a question, submit it via the panel. One of the cores of sales is that you need to bring value, at the very baseline you need to bring value to your customers. What would be some of your recommendations right now – besides buying your book, reading your book and rewatching this webinar once it goes live up on the IES and the Sales Game Changers site? You mentioned before that there are some of your competitors who are sitting on the sidelines waiting for the pandemic to end to start again. We’ve got a nice list of people here who are spending their Friday mornings with myself and with you. What would be three ultimate things that you would tell them they need to be doing right now? Of course, we’re talking about prospecting, talking conversations but three things that they should absolutely have on a note next to their desk that they need to be doing every day to be more impactful right now?
Mark Hunter: Focus on the outcomes that the customer is going to receive from working with you. It’s not what you sell, it’s the outcome and what I want to do is I want to quantify what is the value of that outcome because right now, especially in the speed of what’s happening this is going to be so critical. This is what I’m telling salespeople and this is what I’m telling business owners and everybody I have a chance to talk to. If you as a salesperson, as a business, wait until you see things change before you respond, you will be too late. I live in Nebraska, coming to you from Omaha, Nebraska with about 7 inches of snow on the ground. A farmer does not go into the field in September to harvest for the first time, they go into the field in March and April to prepare the field and you prepare the field to reap the harvest you’re going to get in August, September, October. This is what we’re doing right now, this is what we have to be doing.
We are creating, we are planting the seeds. Some if it we’re going to harvest, there’s the California strawberries that come in early, there’s the early crops that come in, but the big stuff doesn’t come in until the second half of the summer. What does this tell you? Here’s the whole thing, if the farmer goes out and plants the wrong seed, they’re going to reap the wrong harvest. How do they know what seed? They know what seed because they’re listening to the industry, they’re watching what’s happening and they’re listening to the experts. I’ve got to be paying attention to what’s happening out there and this is going to really upset some of you. This is not the time to say, “I’m just going to spend all day on social media.” Let me tell you something, you can’t take clicks and likes to the bank. I have been in social media moratorium since Sunday because I just needed to get other stuff done. I’ll get back on social media this evening for the weekend but I just took about a five day break.
Here’s one thing, what I want to focus on is how do I create value? My whole focus this week has been creating value for my clients and my prospects and I’m going to do that by doing deep reading. I’ve really spent a lot of time this week doing some deep reading in some journals and publications and books and so forth. I think it allows me to sell with more integrity because I can create more value. When I get done with this call, I’m going to be an invited guest to a Board of Directors meeting of a pretty significant company, would they have invited me to be a participant in this board meeting if I was seen as some schlocky? No, but clearly they see my insights as being worth something.
Again, when you sell with integrity you will get customers who have integrity. This is the most beautiful business for us to be in, I’m excited, I’m stoked, I love it. I’m sorry, Fred, I could talk for hours.
Fred Diamond: I could listen to you for hours, too and what’s quite exciting is that very few of the people who originally joined us on today’s webcast have left.
Mark Hunter: I’ve been watching them [Laughs].
Fred Diamond: We got a question here. Could you just summarize the three things? What were the three things to focus on right now? One was focus on customer outcomes and quantifying the outcome. Just remind us of #2 and #3 again.
Mark Hunter: #2 and #3 is protecting your time, set your calendar for the first two hours of the day, hour and a half of the day, that’s going to make your day and the third thing is, we didn’t really talk about it, but grow your mind. Again, you’ve got to be very careful because it’s pretty easy to fill you mind with all that negative stuff out there so what I say is I want to grow my mind. Every day I want to learn something new about my industry, about my customers and then I’m going to ask myself, “How can I share it with them tomorrow?”
Fred Diamond: You’ve given us a lot of ideas. Again, the book came out, A Mind for Sales and once again for everybody listening to today’s webcast, we actually interviewed Mark on A Mind for Sales before the pandemic and we’re going to replay that at some point. Again, we’re going to replay this as a Sales Game Changers podcast and as a replay of the webinar as well. Would you mind giving us, again just focus on A Mind for Sales, just give us the one minute overview on a little more about the book and what you talked about. We do have one or two more questions that came in and then we’ll wrap up.
Mark Hunter: A little bit about A Mind for Sales, what is it about? It’s about having the right mindset because I see too many people who have the right skill set, the right everything else but they don’t have the right mindset. The mindset is being passionate as you’ve seen me here today. I’m passionate about helping people. When you are passionate about helping people your goal is to help them see and achieve what they didn’t think was possible so what I do is I share in the book all kinds of different things as to how you go about that, how you set up Sunday night, how you set up Monday, how you set up every day of the week, how you create a mastermind, how you create a network. I go through that, how you set up your goals, it really is about realizing that the most powerful app you have, the most powerful tool you have is not some CRM system, it’s this right here, it’s your mind, use it.
Fred Diamond: You said mastermind, for people who don’t know what that means, what is a mastermind and how do I start one or how do I join one?
Mark Hunter: Get three or four peers, three or four people who are positive thinkers like yourself and you say, “I’m going to be on a mastermind call this afternoon”, I have a 90 minute mastermind call with my masterminds. What we do is we get together, we get together now twice a week to share ideas, to help stimulate each other, to help build each other, to help each other. It’s a rising tide lifts all boats. You become the sum of the five people who you spend the most time with. I didn’t come up with that, Jim Rohn did. You become the sum of the five people you hang out with the most, I want to hang out with really cool people.
Fred Diamond: Once again, Mark Hunter, The Sale Hunter, best-selling author, big fan of the Institute for Excellence in Sales, thank you so much for the great insights you provided today. Once again for everybody listening, we’re going to transcribe this into a Sales Game Changers podcast, we’re going to post the replay up on YouTube and the I4ESBD.com site. Mark, thank you so much. Stay safe, have a great weekend and thanks for all the value you just provided.
Mark Hunter: Thank you, I appreciate it.
Transcribed by Mariana Badillo
Produced by Rosario Suarez