A (0:00)

You're listening to the Sales Hunter podcast. My name's Mark Hunter. And what are we talking about today? Talking about, do you have a Sales Hunter mindset? It's a very special episode because it's just me going in long form and we're going to talk about the Sales Hunter mindset. The show begins right now. You're listening to the Sales Hunter podcast with Mark Hunter where the focus is to help you as a salesman sell with confidence and integrity. And now here's your host, foreign. So the question is, do you have a Sales Hunter mindset? Now, I'm not talking about the Sales Hunter me. I'm talking about do you have a Sales Hunter mindset that's going to allow you to succeed in sales? Let's start walking through. I'm going to share with you a series of questions that I want you to ask yourself. And do yourself a favor, do yourself a deep analysis because I'll tell you what, how you answer them is very quickly going to tell where you are in the sales mindset. First one, are you deliberate with how you start the day? Top performers are incredibly deliberate with how they start the day. They start the day each and every day the exact same way. They have a very set routine. And that routine not only carries them through and how they start the day, but carries them through the entire day because they're extremely routine focused. Number two, do you know specifically before you start the day what your key objectives are for the day? In other words, you've taken the time to map out what your plans are. You don't allow the day to control you, rather you control the day. If you don't know specifically before you start the day what your key objectives are for the day, how are you going to start the day? In a routine manner. Number three, do you end each day ensuring your CRM system is up to date and you've planned your activities for the following day? You know, I talk a lot about how tomorrow begins today. I never end the day without knowing exactly what the next day is going to bring. And what is this all set up? It sets up that you're deliberate with how you start the day. This morning I was at a breakfast and the breakfast didn't start till 7:30. And I ran into several. Oh man, I was running late. I didn't get up until like 6:30. Hold it, hold it. Don't call yourself a top performer. That's. You don't call yourself. You see, top performers never start the day stressed and rushed because again, they've prepared for the day. Next one on the list. What's the key metric you need to achieve each day to ensure you stay on plan? In other words, there's a series of activities that you do, but there's one key metric, one key metric that every top performer I work with has and they know exactly what that is. I'm going to challenge you. What's that metric? Do you know what it is? For me, it's five conversations a day. I know that if I have five conversations a day with either customers, people who can buy from me, you know, prospects, or people who can refer me, I know it's a good day. And my definition of a conversation is a zoom call, a teams call, a maybe face to face. It may be a very active interchange on text messaging or email. In other words, we're pinging back and forth three, four, five times in the course of five minutes on text message or an email. That's my con. That's how I measure five conversations a day. Yeah. Next one. Are you up to date with what you have in your pipeline and the numbers you need to have in your pipeline to make your quota? It is amazing the number of salespeople who don't really know how much they need to have in their pipeline. Sales managers are good on this. They, they are very good at in understanding this. But when it trickles down to the salesperson, they don't understand because they don't understand their close ratio. They don't know what their close ratio is. And my challenge is this. I want to measure my close ratio, but my close ratio actually backs up further in terms of really understanding how big does my pipeline have to be. Most pipelines tend to be about a 3.5 to 4.0x. In other words, 4x what you need to turn in that quarter to make your number or whatever it might be. Sometimes it's three and a half. For really good salespeople, it might be as low as 3, maybe a 2.75, but it's not going to drop down below that. If you're having to say it's it's six or seven, then you got a problem in terms of getting the right leads, getting the right prospects. Yeah. Next one. Is your CRM system open and are you updating each day? Now, I talked about this earlier, but this is actually a standalone because it's amazing the number of salespeople who I talk to and I say, hey, is your CRM system open? And they, they don't know. No. They babble through. No, it's not open. You see, your CRM system needs to be open at all times. Why? Because you're constantly working from it. Hey, CRM systems are not a gotcha tool. They're a helpful tool. Top performers know this and they've all harness their CRM system to work for them. Next one on the list, number seven. What does your follow up process look like? And are you focused on following through a lot of salespeople, they'll sit there and say, oh, I got a follow up process, but then they never actually do it. They never actually follow through. What good is a follow up process if you don't follow through? You see, this is why you got to have your CRM system open on it and don't say where. Well, my, my follow up process is totally automated. It's totally automated. That's garbage. That's garbage. That's a marketing function. That's not a sales function. Because if it's totally automated and just happening, you know what's going on. You're not personalizing, you're not really getting in touch. You're not truly understanding and listening to the customer. You see, your follow up process really has to involve you touching it, you getting involved. Next one on the list, number eight. Do you have an accurate count of the number of leads that turn into customers? In other words, what's your percentage of leads that ultimately turn into customers? Because this is going to help you and if you have a marketing team really understand how many leads it's going to take. I see too many salespeople. What they do is they sit there and say, I don't have enough deals to close. Well, you don't have enough deals to close because going upstream you didn't really identify enough prospects. Well, you didn't identify enough prospects because you didn't have enough leads. You weren't, you weren't doing the work that it needed to do. You have got to understand, you've got to understand what's the number of leads you need to have. If you're only if only 5%, and many times it is. If only 5% of your leads close in any given quarter, that means if you need to close 20 deals a quarter, 20 deals a quarter, you need to have 2505%. That means you gotta times that by 20, you have to have 400 leads a quarter. 400 leads that at least measure up to your ICP. Think about that for a moment. See, many salespeople are doomed to never being successful because they don't have enough leads. Yeah, the sales hunter Mindset understands what that number is. Number nine, do you track the number of touches it takes to move a qualified prospect to a customer? Let me break this down a little bit for you. Do you have a really good number of touches? In other words, you've got a qualified prospect. Okay, so this is no longer a lead. You know, lead is kind of, okay, somebody that kind of lines up to your icp, but now, now you qualify them, you have qualified them and how many touches. Because again, this is going to tell you how many qualified prospects you have to have and whether or not you have enough time with which to close them too many times. What I see happening is that salespeople have a number where it may say it takes eight to ten touches of a qualified prospect to be able to convert them into a customer. In other words, the qualified prospect I've had a couple conversations with, but it still takes eight to 10 conversations, et cetera, et cetera. And those take place over the course of a couple months. Well, guess what? That means if I need to achieve my quarterly number now, the qualified prospects I'm dropping in four, five, six weeks before the end of the quarter aren't going to help me. They're going to help me in the outcome. You see, understanding the number of touches and the time frame is going to help you dramatically in terms of understanding what your sales process looks like. You see, it's not just going through the motions of your sales process, but going through the right motions in the right sequence of time. And this is all understanding what you're doing. Sales Hunter mindset is all about. Next one on the list, number 10, do you have a referral process you had heard that you adhere to, and it's more than just asking the customer for a lead after they buy something from you. In other words, you have a referral process that truly is a process. You have a referral process that you actively and it's part of your DNA that you're actively asking them for referrals and immediately after they buy from you, but also at other points along the way. And it's not just after they buy from you. It may be 2 months, 3 months, 6 months, 10, but you have a process in place. I've got a number of courses out in the sales center university that talks about this. But a referral process, because referrals are the easiest way other than repeat business. It's the easiest way with which to grow your business. Why are we passing up that opportunity if we're not really going after referrals? Number 11, how many referrals do you give a week or a month? Do you even have a goal? You see, what's very interesting is so many salespeople, they want referrals. They want referrals. Oh, I want referrals. I want referrals. I want referrals. Great. Great. We all want referrals. But are you giving referrals? Now? I'm not saying it's a quid pro quo. In other words, I give you one, you give me one. No, I'm just saying it. Are you putting them out there in the universe? You may have somebody come to you and they say, hey, I'm looking for some help with this. Hey, you know what? I got somebody who I can refer to you. Great. Or maybe somebody comes to you and they want to buy from you, but they don't quite fit who you're looking for, so you refer them. You may even refer them to a competitor. Fine. What I found is this. It is amazing how when I give a referral that works out, it is amazing how much better I feel. And see, the sales center mindset knows that there's more than one way I motivate myself. And if I can help another customer, if I can help a prospect, if I can help somebody else be successful, it's going to work out for me in the long run. Yeah. Next one here on the list. What's the percent of your leads that line up to your icp, and what's the process you have for verifying if they match? Okay, we got to break this one down because this one's a delicate one. In other words, you get leads that come in, but do they really line up to your icp? Do they really line up? In my own company, we have 10 questions. We have 10, 10 criteria. And I don't put this lead into my prospecting, into my, hey, we're gonna. We're gonna. We're gonna follow up on them. Unless I know that they line up with at least seven out of those 10, maybe six occasionally. But I'm not going to chase a horse that only lines up with 2 out of the 10. 3 out of the 10, 4 out of 10. I'm going to take those and either pass them off completely to somebody else, or I. I'm just going to ignore them. You see, I don't have time to spend time with people who I know are not going to be capable of buying from me. So ask yourself this question. What's the percent of your leads that line up? Because what this is going to tell you is maybe your lead generation process isn't right. Maybe marketing, if marketing is generating your leads, maybe they need to change them because again, their criteria might be just, hey, getting enough leads, you know, their goal is 200 leads or 300 leads, 400 leads. You want qualified leads. And there's a big difference between MQL and SQL. Mql, marketing qualified and sales qualified. You've got to understand, as leads come in, what's your criteria? And your criteria might have to be, it's an initial phone call. It might be an initial phone call. But if after your initial phone call with that lead, initial conversation, whatever it might be, if they don't score on your ICP checklist, at least we'll say seven of the 10. I don't want to waste time on that because again, we said earlier the number of contacts, number of touches it takes to convert a qualified prospect to a customer is a lot. If I'm sitting here spending time chasing people that I don't have the opportunity with because they don't measure up, why am I doing that? Yeah. Next one. Regardless of how good your inbound process might be, are you committed to outbound and prospecting on a regular basis? Too many salespeople I run into and you cannot have a, you cannot have a sales mindset unless you're outbound prospecting. Here's why. If you are not outbound prospecting, you're not challenging yourself because you may have an organization that you get a lot of inbound leads, you may get a lot, most of your business from repeat customers. That's customer service. If you are strictly relying on inbound, that's fine. But what happens if that stops working? You're toast. You see, prospecting is a muscle. It is a muscle and you've got to be exercising it on a regular basis. This is why I say regardless of where you are in an organization, in terms of the percent of business that you get from repeat customers, you get from referrals or you get from marketing bringing yourself, you have to have an outbound plan. You have to have an outbound plan of you generating leads. Here's two things it does. One, it exercises your muscle. In other words, you understand how to prospect and it's going to help you if one of those other inbound business generating sources for you dries up. Two, it's going to keep you in tune with the needs of the customer. There's something magical about having conversations. As you're going through this lead qualification, you're going through this ICP qualification process. There's something magical that you learn by having those conversations, and it's going to make you a far more competent salesperson. Don't think for a moment, don't think for a moment that you can sit back and say, oh, it's not. I don't need a prospect. Because I have seen this in my own business. Early on in my business, I was very fortunate. We had a tremendous amount of inbound. Tremendous amount of inbound. And repeat, very qualified. And I wasn't prospecting. And then what happened was a couple of those wheels broke. Yeah, a couple of wheels broke. A couple of the. The business companies I was getting all this repeat business from, they got bought out and couple of my inbound sources dried up and I had to kind of recreate my prospecting process. This is one of the most effective means of insurance you can have as a salesperson is by making sure that you're staying in touch with outbound. Yes. Yeah. Question number 14. How much of your business comes via existing customers? Now, this isn't counter to what I just said. No, no. How much your business comes from existing customers. This is very key because what this does is this allows you to begin to understand how much business do I have to be responsible for each quarter, each month, or each quarter or each year? Let me give you an example. Your quota might be 100. You have a quota of 100, but 50 of that comes from existing customers. And. And you know it comes from existing customer. Okay. Now your focus is just on 50, so you have to back in and build your plan. So you look at that 50, and you say, okay, how many customers do I need to close? How many customers do I need to close to get 50? Okay. And then I can begin to back myself up and say, what's my close ratio and how many prospects does that mean? How many touches am I going to have to have? And then I go even further upstream to say, how many leads am I going to have to have to be able to get qualified? Oh, you see? But here's the deal. Because I can look at my number in totality and break out that existing customer, that existing business. It allows me to become much more focused and it actually allows me to breathe more comfortably. Now, here's the downside of this. What happens if one of those existing customers gets a head cold? You may get pneumonia and die. So what I always say in those situations is maybe it's a hundred, and you get 50 from existing, and you got to get 50. But you know what? It is you. You're going to plan to get 70, you're going to plan to go to 120. Why? Because you're creating insurance. You want to create insurance in case one of your customers, your existing customers falls apart. This is one of the easiest ways. So again, if you're relying on a lot of inbound business, great, tremendous. But make sure that you're outbound. The piece that you're focused in terms of getting is always going to drive you to not just do 100%, but 100/X percent to be able to give you the cushion in case your existing falls apart. Number 15 here. What's your process for staying motivated and how well are you at handling the ups and downs and sales? You know what's interesting is I don't care who the salesperson is, and I get to coach a lot of absolutely top performing salespeople. There's peaks and valleys. There's peaks and valleys because they're chasing this or they're chasing that. Something doesn't come in a line. What's your process for staying motivated and how well are you at handling the ups and downs? The top performing salespeople really understand how to smooth out the valleys and the mountaintops. Average salespeople kind of accept the valleys. Oh, it's down, nothing's happened. But then they, they jump for joy and they stay too long on the mountaintop and then they realize they're back down in the valley. You see, the top performers have that even keel, but they have a method for staying motivated. They have a method for staying motivated because of all the activities that they're doing. Yeah. Which takes me to number 16. Do you have an accountability partner or mastermind? This is absolutely key. You have to have an accountability partner. Somebody. Of all the people I coach, this is the number one thing that they always say, Mark, reason I want you is because I need to be held accountable. That's absolutely spot on. I love it. I love that approach. Because what you're trying to do is you need to remain accountable. Top performing athletes in any sport have multiple coaches, they have multiple trainers, they have multiple people who are in their face all the time. Maybe it's a mastermind group. It's one of the reasons on my other podcast, Sales Logic, we have the sales logic mastermind people belong to that group because they want a mastermind be able to come together to help them. If you want information on, on either of those, reach out to me, email me, call me, text me, and I'll walk you through some different things. Saleslogicpodcast.com for the mastermind or call me and we'll talk about coaching. Yeah. Hey, number 17, what's your process for continuous improvement in knowing your industry and sales? Top performers and those who have a Sales Hunter mindset never stop learning about their business. It's why you're listening to the podcast. It's why you're listening to the Sales Hunter podcast. Why? Because you want to get better. Yeah. I don't care how long you've been in the business, don't stop. Because the business continues to move forward, your industry continues to move forward. And there's nothing I find worse than the seasoned salesperson who has lost all relevance because they're not up to speed on what's happening in the industry. Okay. What I've done is I've walked you through 17 questions that you need to really do a deep dive to really understand. Do you have a Sales Hunter mindset? I'll be unpacking a lot more of this in coming weeks and coming months, but it's designed to do one thing. Help you see and achieve what you didn't think was possible. That's the whole value of the Sales Hunter podcast. Do me a favor. Leave me a review on your favorite podcast app. And hey, let me know what are topics that you want some assistance with. And feel free to reach out to me. Happy to talk to you about our coaching program and, of course, the Sales Hunter University, our online platform. I'm Mark Hunter, the Sales Hunter. Great Selling.