In the latest episode of Mastering Modern Selling, our hosts sat down with the renowned sales expert Mark Hunter, offering a deep dive into the world of sales and its evolving dynamics.
Here are some key takeaways from this episode:
1. The Power of Association:
Mark emphasized the significance of who you associate with in the sales domain. Your circle greatly influences your professional demeanor and prospects, underscoring the old adage, "You're the average of the five people you spend the most time with."
2. Consistency is Key
Mark highlighted the importance of consistency in establishing trust and credibility in sales. Whether it's how you present yourself online or your follow-through on commitments, consistency helps build a solid reputation, ensuring your potential clients know what to expect from you.
3. Understanding the Buyer's Journey
The conversation delved into the necessity of aligning with the buyer's journey rather than enforcing a seller-centric approach. Understanding and supporting the buyer's needs and process fosters a more meaningful and effective sales interaction.
4. Credibility Through Value
Mark stressed the need for sales professionals to focus on delivering value, not just pitching products. By truly understanding and addressing the customer's needs, a salesperson transitions from being a mere vendor to a trusted advisor.
5. Reflection and Learning
The episode was a reflective journey, with Mark sharing his own experiences and transformations in the sales world. His initial challenges and subsequent learnings serve as a testament to the dynamic nature of sales and the continuous need for personal and professional growth.
The episode with Mark Hunter was a treasure trove of insights, emphasizing the essence of relationships, consistency, and genuine value in the sales process.
It's a call to action for sales professionals to introspect, adapt, and continually evolve to meet the changing landscapes of modern selling.
Welcome to Mastering Modern Selling relationships social and AI in the buyer-centric age. Join host Brandon Lee, founder of Fistbump, alongside Microsoft's number one social seller, carson V Heddy and Tom Burton, author of the Revenue Zone and co-founder of LeadSmart, as we explore the strategies and stories behind successful executives and sales professionals. Dive into business growth, personal development and the pursuit of excellence with industry leaders. Whether you're a seasoned executive or an aspiring leader, this podcast is your backstage pass to today's business landscape. This is Mastering Modern Selling, brought to you by Fistbump.
Speaker 2:Gentlemen, welcome to episode number 80. I can't believe that Modern selling, I know.
Speaker 3:I don't think I realized it.
Speaker 2:We were just at 50, just 30 episodes ago.
Speaker 3:It's just kind of like my age. I was just at 35 and now I'm not.
Speaker 4:It happens, fast it does.
Speaker 2:So it's good to have everybody back together. I think this is the. We haven't had all three of us here in like I don't know how many weeks.
Speaker 3:So, brandon Carson, great to have you back, and we have a really, really awesome guest today, mark hunter. Mark mark brought it out of all of us.
Speaker 2:Mark was here, so we all got here. That's right. That's right. We all made it happen carson's got the swag I.
Speaker 3:I drove home from dollywood breaking all the speed limits so I could get in on time we're glad to have you.
Speaker 5:You mean you gave up Dollywood just for me?
Speaker 3:I was all day Dollywood yesterday, over eight miles on my feet. I had it on my watch. I told Zoe, anything she wanted to do, we'd do it. We went on those soaking wet water rides like six times.
Speaker 2:Well, good job on getting back.
Speaker 3:It was a good day. Yeah, let's get to this. This is going to be fun. I don't want to take away from Mark.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, and if you're online, hey, dave, welcome from Indy. If you're online, let us know you're here. Say hello to Mark, let us know you have his book. But, Mark, let's talk a little bit about your background and then we're going to get into sales, sales, credibility, which I don't know why credibility should be an issue in sales. But we'll sort that out today.
Speaker 3:Can we start this out this way, carson? We have a sales legend in the house with us. We've got to at least acknowledge that right.
Speaker 4:I mean it's amazing how I've probably followed Mark for well over a decade and you know what most about Mark is like. He still puts out so much to the community, you know, with regular content and just thought provoking statements, and he's so at the pulse of the sales community, so I couldn't agree more.
Speaker 5:I got to put food on the table, man. That's why I keep putting out content, you know.
Speaker 3:You know what Mark did too. He took a really big risk and had me as a guest on his show a couple months ago yeah, pretty generous with him that's okay.
Speaker 5:I've had carson on my show too, see I, but I had to say I expect that that was a bigger risk.
Speaker 4:Bill mccormick.
Speaker 5:Hey buddy, hey in the house we Bill, we love Bill. Yeah, great guy Love it. Upstate New York.
Speaker 3:That's it All. Sales are social Bill.
Speaker 5:That's right.
Speaker 2:Mark, for those that don't know, you tell us a little bit about your background and kind of how that ties into what we're going to talk about today, about credibility and sales.
Speaker 5:Yeah, well, you know what I am known as the sales hunter, and people always ask me what was your name before you changed it? No, I owe this to my dad. I mean, what a cool name. I tell you what, whenever we go out to dinner and they want to know your name, I always just say Hunter, because it's always Hunter, hunter, party of two. It's really cool.
Speaker 5:Anyway, okay, I got into sales purely by accident. If you read my book A Mind for Sales, which Carson's got a copy of it there I detail the story in the first couple of chapters because I did not want to go into sales sales, I was going to go into marketing. Actually, I wanted to be a disc jockey in college. You know I was a disc jockey in college, but that's a separate. That's a separate story. And the only reason I got into sales was because I got three speeding tickets the last two months of college and I could not afford car insurance. I had bought a brand new car. That was the reason for my speeding tickets. See, I can blame the car, it wasn't me. I had apartment rent and I now had car insurance I couldn't afford, so I literally had to get a job that supplied me with a car. That is how I wound up in sales.
Speaker 5:Now to say I was an overnight success. I got fired from that first sales job. That means I gave up the Buick. I got a second sales job, second Buick. You know what? I got fired from that sale.
Speaker 5:It wasn't until my third sales job that I finally began to realize what sales was, because I treating sales as if as if you, you are my customer, you are a bowling pin. My job was just to knock you down and take your money. And it wasn't till my third boss sat me down and really instilled me. You don't really know what's going on with your customers, you haven't taken the time to figure out what your customers want. And it wasn't like it was an overnight. You know, you know, boom, suddenly I'm brilliant.
Speaker 5:No, but I began to realize that sales was really about serving the customer. And when you serve, when you listen to the customer and serve the customer, it's amazing at what happens. So I was in, I was in corporate roles for about 17 years and, um, then, uh, 25 years ago, I bailed, I went out on my own. I've been doing this for 25 years ago, I bailed, I went out on my own. I've been doing this for 25 years. Really scary, so please send me a big check, would you? I got people to feed. I love it.
Speaker 4:I love the journey, mark. You know it's funny because when you think about great prolific sales, content creators, authors, legends like yourself, you don't see those missteps per se. And it's funny because I often reference the same things, like I made it very far on hard work and adrenaline, but I started in that pound the phone, one call, close environment. You know, brandon, we've talked about that before and I thought that was what sales was and it's not. And I didn't really even realize more until, honestly, like my 30s and 40s, than I've ever realized in my 20s about sales. And it's ironic how we have those experiences and that you can have what is perceived to be a lack of success only to have that be part of your success journey. What have been the biggest things that have changed but also stayed the same, that you've learned over the years in sales?
Speaker 5:Well, some of the biggest things and this was a lesson. I move again. I did everything wrong initially. I didn't realize you really needed to have a peer group. I didn't realize you really needed to surround yourself with successful people, with other people who you can learn from. I thought I could be this maverick, this kid, because I was in my 20s and you know. I just thought I knew it all and so I had to learn. I had to learn that you've got to surround yourself with people. The other thing is this is that you know it's amazing you can't fake your way to success. You know, you just can't. You've got to live it. You have got to live it. And it comes. It comes through.
Speaker 5:Customers pick up on it, and I think that was my problem early on. I didn't want to be in sales. I was. This was the last thing I I, so I was going through the motions just doing the least possible work to try to get the most amount of money and go on and survive for the next day and until I really began to take a step back and realize this is a people business, this is people. That is why I say sales is not a job, sales is not a profession. Sales is a lifestyle, and it's a lifestyle of just helping people. I mean initially people would ask me which I would not say I was in sales. I was embarrassed to use the term sales and it took me a number of years to overcome that, but now I'm proud of it.
Speaker 3:Do you mind me asking sorry to interrupt, why? Because I think there's like. I know I got one daughter who is studying sales as part of her business degree and then she also will tell me but I don't want to go into sales, and I know it's, it's because the perception for you when you didn't want to go into sales. Why was that?
Speaker 5:Well, why was that? Because my view was used car salespeople, the slimy stuff, all that type of stuff and I felt I was just trying to rip people off Because, again, I didn't understand what sales was. Yesterday I happened to be with a class of seniors, university of Texas, dallas, and I was talking to them and one of them shared with me. He said you know how do I go about this whole deal? When I'm trying to close a deal, I feel like I'm just begging them for money and I go take a step back and look at it this way If you believe that you can help someone, you owe it to them to reach out to them. That's why we prospect. That's why I firmly believe that we prospect.
Speaker 5:Two, if you believe in your solution, that your solution can help them, you're not asking them to buy, you're asking them to come alongside you so you can help them, and it's an investment and collectively, we're going to help you achieve this outcome, because my definition of sales is to help you see and achieve what you did not think was possible. Now, stop and think about that for a moment. That's the definition of a good salesperson and that's the definition of a great leader, because really, a great leader is a great salesperson. The great salesperson is a great leader. Now, I'm not talking about the one-time wonders. I'm talking about the people who are on the top of the hill, year in, year out, consistently. They absolutely believe in the outcome. They're going to help them and they would never ask their customer to buy something if they did not firmly believe that it was going to help them, if it was not going to help them achieve the outcome that they wanted. That's why I say I don't ask people to buy, I ask people to invest.
Speaker 5:You know, you just hit a.
Speaker 2:you hit a really, I think, important point about prospecting is you know you're saying prospecting right, is you're? Basically if you have the viewpoint or the mindset that, hey, I'm here to help you right, or I'm to me if somebody and Mark, I'd be interested to see how you help people kind of switch to that mindset, but if they really believe that prospecting actually becomes, I would think, fairly easy. To the degree that you don't believe it, I think prospecting gets harder and harder and harder and more and more difficult.
Speaker 5:You are so spot on there because if all you're focused on is the product, you are going to get sick of it very quickly. This is going to turn your stomach. But again, if you're focused on how you can help people, I tell people there's two exercises I want you to go through. I want you to take a piece of paper, draw a line down the middle, on one side, write down names of 10 customers and on the other column, write down the outcomes that you helped them achieve, not what you sold them the outcomes. And then you give yourself a big hug and you go I love myself. And then you give yourself a big hug, I love myself. And then you ask yourself who are those people? And you want to be called the same type of people. And here's the way I look at it.
Speaker 5:If I have a problem, trust me, my kids would tell you I have plenty of problems and you could help me. I would want you to reach out to me. I would be upset if I found out later that you could have helped me and you didn't See. That's the level of. That's what prospecting is all about. Prospecting is about helping people. Now here's the deal. Tom will say you're the one calling me and you can help me. I don't know, you know. I will say I don't know who Tom is. So you're right, I'm going to blow you off. Initially, no-transcript, I don't want to. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So what? I think I hear you're saying is that's credibility yeah.
Speaker 4:I have that mindset as well, you know. I think so much of this is to your point, mark. It's about what value can you bring to the prospect, and it's not always about your products and solutions. Sometimes it's about what you as the person can do.
Speaker 4:Often the biggest value that I can bring a prospect is that I can demystify the giant behemoth that I work for and the value, the relationships, the resources, the investments all that stuff I get paid to get that on behalf of my client and that's the value that I can bring. And sometimes I'll even steer them toward the competition if that's the right thing to do. But it's all in this ever-loving pursuit of going out and becoming the trusted advisor, earning the right to be the trusted advisor and heads up sales leaders, you set the tone, you set the culture. You've got to make sure that you establish a culture that has a prospecting mindset and that is about value, not trying to go toe to toe with your competition based on their strengths, because you're not going to win that way. You've got to go out, be outcome driven, but understand your clients.
Speaker 5:I love what you're saying there, because you focus on the outcome and we don't know what the outcome is that the customer is looking for till we just stop and listen, listen. But we want to get into this, this pitch mode, so quickly. And how many sales leaders? Well, you're not moving. You're not moving them along fast enough. You're not moving them. Hold it, hold it. I always contend that we will close the deal faster by going slower initially.
Speaker 3:I love it.
Speaker 5:Go slow to move fast, right, you go slow. During that discovery, there's this race to the demo, right, race to the demo. And then what happens is the demo becomes this vomit show where you're showing the customer all kinds of stuff that they're not interested in, and then they go. You know what? I don't think this is the right solution. Or I think we need to go. Look, I think we need to go, and boom, the thing falls apart. But because sales leaders are challenging their salespeople, get to the demo, get to the demo. You know, for some reason, that's this mark. Boom, get to the demo and big mistake.
Speaker 3:It's part of the sales journey. It's a checkbox. You got to get there.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So, mark, let me ask you a question. And, Brandon, I'm definitely interested, brandon, and all of us, we talk a lot about now the importance of following the buyer journey and supporting the buyer journey rather than forcing the seller journey right. The demo you're talking about is forcing the seller journey on the customer. Come on, come on, we got to get the demo because that's what I need in my seller journey. That's there. Do you, as far as you know, do you spend time? And it sounds like it? Right, because there's really no way you could provide that level of help, support, credibility, expertise unless you truly understand a little bit about that buyer journey and are working to influence it rather than to change it and to move it into your seller journey. Are we looking at that right?
Speaker 5:Yeah, here's a couple of things. You know it's interesting. The customer's never going to share with us enough information until they have a little level of trust with us. You know, when they finally trust us there's that level of confidence, that credibility we've established. Then the customer begins opening up. But again, what happens is too many times when we're on the seller's journey we race, we race past that first step and we don't establish that. And then we wonder why we're not getting the real information from the customer. Slow it down, establish the relationship, let them get to know you and you get to know them. And then there's a level of credibility that begins to percolate up. And the more it comes up, guess what? The more open the customer is going to be.
Speaker 5:The other day I was on the phone with a VP of sales of a company and I was amazed at the information, the confidential information, that was being shared with them. And I've done very little work with this company. I spoke at a sales meeting for them that was the extent of what I've done for them and this VP of sales was just opening up and it's like, wow, I must have very quickly between getting ready for the SKO for them and doing it and post after that established a real level of credibility to be able to have this person share with me that level of information. But what does that do? That puts me in a better position to help them, because now I can begin to say here's some things that you might want to look at, here's some solutions, here's some ideas. What does that do? Creates value for the customer.
Speaker 4:What are some simple steps Mark today that sellers should be leveraging, should be putting story. You know you built a body of work that didn't start out as you wanted it to or as you envisioned it to, and I think that's true of a lot of sellers. You know, if you start out in your career, if you look back on a career at like our ages, it didn't go the way I envisioned, but it went very well, based on a lot of sequential steps. What should sellers be prioritizing today to build the credibility that they seek?
Speaker 5:Well, there's two things. One is who are you associating with? This is so key. You've got to be associating with the right people for two reasons. One you become the sum of the five people you spend the most time with I believe Jim Rohn said that line initially and what happens is you begin to pick up their nuances, you begin to pick up their language, but as those people in their circle see them, they will in turn see you. Second is this you have to establish a level of consistency.
Speaker 5:Carson, you made the comment that I've been out there, consistently, out there on social media for years, years and years. Yeah, you're right. Now, consistency doesn't necessarily mean it has to be daily or hourly. It can be weekly, it can be, it can be whatever. But you got to demonstrate consistency because in this era of fakeness that we have in our world, people are looking for authenticity, and authenticity takes on different forms. Totally get that, but one of them is this level of consistency, because nobody wants to do business with a salesperson they can't count on. Nobody wants to do business with a salesperson that they don't know if they're going to show up for this meeting and they're going to be there for that. It's going to happen. So you actually I always say your reputation arrives before you do One of the big things. This has never happened before.
Speaker 5:I was at a networking event last night. Sat down at a dinner, gentleman next to me, oh, you're Mark Hunter. I just read the first two chapters of your book. Okay, now that is literally the first time that has ever happened, but it was amazing. We had a great conversation. I said, hey, would you hurry up and read chapter 3 through 18 or whatever it is, and then tell me what you think of the book? But it was very interesting because you know, this was a networking dinner Again, nobody really knew anybody and it could have been an awkward conversation.
Speaker 5:But this guy made me. See you're mark hunter, I, I recognize your picture from the book. I've just read a couple chapters your book. So what does that do? That means my reputation arrived before I did. Now, it wasn't about me in the book. I wanted to find out hey, tell me, tell me about what you're doing, what brings you here, what data, data, data it's. We have to flip the script as rapidly as possible to be able to have 100 percent of conversation about the customer. It's not about us. We may use our reputation to bring them in, but then immediately flip it and ask questions about them.
Speaker 3:Mark. So I had timing wise. Today I had, and I'll say, the company's open text. They're in their SKO and one of their sales leaders has become a friend of mine over the last several months and I guess they were having a conversation around personal brand, around LinkedIn, and I had like six or seven people send me connection requests this morning. I said what are you guys doing? What's going on? They're like, oh, we're talking about reputation. And I said, oh well, perfect, mark Hunter is going to be on our show. You need to come listen to it. And I said, oh well, perfect, mark Hunter is going to be on our show. You need to come listen to it. For them, them all listening I love what you're saying there is. You've got to turn it around and be about them. What are some of the suggestions you have for sales producers to be able to use the activities they can actually control to even make it about their customers from the very beginning?
Speaker 5:Ask questions, ask questions, ask for people's opinions. I do this oftentimes and I don't do it enough. This is shame on me. I'll make a comment and say you know what are your thoughts on this, or you know what do you think of that? You know, I want to engage people in a conversation as rapidly as possible, and one of the ways we do this is I say I'll take an online connection and turn it into an offline conversation. Okay, it used to be a landline, okay Now. Now we just call that a student call or a team's team's call for Carson, okay, okay, we'll keep, we'll keep this in the family, yeah, but but again, it's it's. How do I, how do I create more of of a conversation, more relationship, in fact? It's. How do I create more of a conversation, more of a relationship? In fact, it's funny.
Speaker 5:This morning I was out on LinkedIn and I was looking at who's looked at my profile over the last several weeks and, man, wow, you know I probably should be doing this more often, but are there common threads or are there things that are seen? Are there people? Hey, you know what they've looked at. I need to reach out to them, not to sell them. I don't. I don't want to sell them, I just want to get to know them. You know, what's interesting is, we can all look at at at journeys in our sales career, where there's been strings of business that have come together because of a person we met years ago. Right, there's somebody that we met. I mean I was sharing this with my wife the other day. I said, man, I'll never forget, there was a dinner I sat down to probably 10 years ago, met an individual and that has just one connection to it and I didn't. I didn't know that individual and that has just one connection to it and I didn't. I didn't know that.
Speaker 5:But again, it's nurturing everything you come in contact with, being a person that people want to be able or feel comfortable associating with. You know, I always say my goal is not to be the better part of each person's day. I want to save that for your spouse, your significant other, your kids, whatever. I just want to be one of the better parts of your day. If I can be one of the better parts of your day, then you know what You're probably going to remember me. I don't mean that egotistically, but I mean that you know that hopefully then I've earned the right, the honor and the respect to be able to come back and meet with you again. Wow, that's how. That's how we keep things going. I mean, carson, I have a feeling in the business you're in, a lot of your deals, a lot of situations are these are connections that you've made over the years, right?
Speaker 4:Without a doubt, and the biggest value that you find that you bring. Like when you were talking about that Mark, that resonated deeply with me because I started thinking about years ago these symbiotic, mutually beneficial relationships that I would create with these other vendors and other partners, and sometimes even with my competition, to basically say, hey, I can't help this customer, but I know you can and I know you don't do this, but I do. Let's establish a relationship and these paid so many dividends. You don't always realize it at the time, but going out and thinking about these ways where I can help you and I'm willing to make those investments, like sometimes you'll make a lot of deposits and maybe that vendor, that person doesn't ever reciprocate, but often they do, and sometimes in mysterious and unexpected ways. It's amazing what happens if you show up to serve.
Speaker 5:You know what's something about showing up and serving you feel good. You know when I could make a recommendation for somebody hey, go talk to this person, go see that person or connect to people. You know there's nothing in it for me, but you know what I feel good and when I feel good it's amazing. I'll share with you a very quick story and anybody can Google this. Bob Eckert is the retired CEO of Mattel Toys.
Speaker 5:Years ago I was doing some consulting work for Mattel Toys shortly after Bob had been there and Bob was replacing a CEO by the name of Jill Berard and again, you can go ahead and Google that. She was a very difficult lady and these two are total polar opposites and Bob's staff was very taken back by Bob's style. And I asked Bob at a meeting. I said Bob, for a CEO, you're incredibly gracious, you're incredibly nice, you really show an interest in people. He made the comment to me First of all. He said ah, shucks, don't worry. I said no, bob, get up. He said here's the deal I do show an interest in people. I want people to succeed. Because I had seen it the night before and we had been out to dinner and the waitstaff.
Speaker 5:He was incredibly courteous to the waitstaff you know, it's the guy's CEO Mattel Corporation, incredibly gracious, and then, and then he goes on to say he says you know, he says when I'm nice to other people, I make better decisions. Drop the mic on that one. And if you followed Bob's career through Mattel and he was also on the board of directors of McDonald's Corporation and several other corporations he went through some very difficult times, very difficult times, but he always weathered the storm and somehow made the right decision. This is when I'm nice and gracious and take interest in people, I make better decisions. That's huge.
Speaker 3:That's huge, you know. It reminds me we've used the quote from Maya Angelou a few times that people don't remember what you say, but they remember how you made them feel. And in so many circles in sales that's like the antithesis, like it's totally illogical, and yet I believe it's the most logical. The most valuable thing we can do in sales is remember that how we, how we help make people feel, and then what you're tagging onto that is, and then we feel better and we actually make better decisions overall. And we we got touchy feely in sales today. I love it.
Speaker 5:Whoa, this is going down a wonky weird road.
Speaker 2:So I have a question or a comment, mark, and then I want to get Hugh's question here as well, and I know you touched on this earlier, but maybe it's just you know I'm a little slow to the game. I'm getting over COVID. So, as Brandon says, I'm not thinking as quickly as I usually do, thinking as quickly as I usually do. If you're talking to somebody new graduating from college, coming into business, it seems like if you can start and work in sales and build that, I guess, that mindset and the way that you handle yourself and the way that you do things, you're really creating a huge foundation for you to move up executive level and really move up in an organization over time. I just can't. I can see a no-lose situation by building that right mindset right from the beginning and then using it in a sales, because what better way to really hone your craft, if you will, than out there dealing with you know selling?
Speaker 5:Yeah, and I'm going to add to that. You know it's funny, but we're also selling as much internal as we are external. I mean I, I look at it, I mean any salesperson for a company. Uh, when I was leading a sales team, I always used to crack up. I used to say, every quarter, every salesperson has to fight 50 battles and they got to win at least 30 of them. And some of them choose to fight them with customers. Others choose to fight them internally to get their quota changed. But it's like you know, would you please focus externally? But? But I mean it is, but it we're. We're always dealing, we're always selling at every level.
Speaker 5:And I'll tell you what the greatest salespeople today are the ones that create a team of people who want to help them. I talk about a person in my book, a Mind for Sales, who was my greatest leader, john Canavan, and he was just. I mean I'll tell you what everybody wanted to walk through a wall for the guy, because as a salesperson he was amazing in front of customers, but he lifted everybody else. He lifted everybody up around him, the customer and himself. So you know, he walked into a room and he put energy into the room. He did not take it out and it was not self-centered. It was literally creating this aura that anything is possible, and it was just amazing as I got to work with him for a couple of years the results we were able to achieve against some incredible odds.
Speaker 2:Let's hit Hugh's comment here or question uh, mark, you know he's asking. When you failed originally the first three times, was it because of your leader and uh who inspired you the fourth have?
Speaker 5:I only failed three times. I think I failed about 3,000 times. You know I yeah, I think the first couple of times it wasn't the leader, it was my lack of willingness to learn from my leader. And actually I failed twice initially. Third time I almost failed, but he was able to catch me the first two times. I look at those leaders and one was not a good leader, I admit that, but I still could have learned. I still could have learned. The second one was a great leader. I just chose not to learn.
Speaker 5:I thought I was so arrogant, so cocky. I thought I knew what I needed to do and remember I didn't want to be in sales. See, so you're not going to tell me these sales things because I don't want to do them anyway, I'm going to do it my own way. And it wasn't until my third one that I think I now became paranoid that I could be without a car you know I may not have a car to drive that I finally began to realize what sales is all about. You know, sometimes in order for us to change, you got to go to the edge of the cliff. You know, you really have to be at that point where you sit there and say, because otherwise you just keep trudging along, trudging along, and I think if I had not gone through those experiences early on, I would have just been trudging along.
Speaker 5:So I mean, this is where don't nobody and I told this to the students I was with yesterday getting fired. There's nothing wrong with that. Now, as long as you're not fired for an ethical reason you know an ethical or a moral reason there's nothing wrong with being fired because you learn from it and it's okay. You're going to come back from it. You're going to be better than ever. It's no different than in sales. I mean, we lose deals, we don't win all. Well, okay, I hate the term win, I never want to win a deal. I earn a deal, I earn a deal, but there's a lot that I don't get, it's okay. What can I learn from it? I establish relationships.
Speaker 4:I'm going to keep nurturing this long. It's going to keep coming. It's going to keep coming. It's going to keep coming. I think it's very critical to find the people that are better, that are doing something that maybe you're not performing in, who's performing well in this solution or this bucket. Go ahead and find these people, learn from them, share ideas, brainstorm with them, assimilate what they do into your arsenal. It doesn't take food off the table for you to do what they're doing, or vice versa. In fact, it makes everybody better. It elevates the game.
Speaker 4:The other thing, that epiphany that I think a lot of great sellers have, going from arrogance to selflessness. Hopefully we've all gone through that right Like I was like that in my twenties. I had a lot of success. I thought I was, I didn't need anybody to help me be better, and boy was I wrong. And I think when we finally have that epiphany, that's what is honestly the gateway to improvement going from lone wolf to being the consummate team player.
Speaker 4:Mark, you're the author also of high profit selling and high profit prospecting, and when I think about high profit, I think about what we're missing out on in the total addressable market. Sometimes I think we are very short-sighted. As salespeople, we look at hey, I need to go out and sell this, I need to go out and sell that, or I'm going to talk to the people that are easy to get meetings with, or I'm going to just talk to the people that I inherit relationships with or get introduced to. Prospecting's hard. You've got to figure out what is your message. You got to figure out what is going to resonate with the people that you're reaching out to.
Speaker 4:But I always think about from sellers today there's two big areas you hit on one. It's being outcome driven. The other is being bold and going out and really understanding the total addressable market, the TAM, and what it's going to take to go out and actually achieve it. It's relationships with your customers at a high level, with the right influencers, which isn't always easy to get, development of a C-level acumen, et cetera. But also how to sell internally, how to know who I need inside that I'm going to go to to really unlock the coffers so that I can bring to bear the most resources for my customer. How do you believe that sellers today should be approaching that total addressable market in a different way that will make them more successful?
Speaker 5:Well, first of all, we have to get outside of our own bubble. We all live, everybody lives in a bubble and I challenge you know, somebody always asks me what's the best sales book to read, and I go it's Atomic Habits by James Clare. That's not a sales book. That is not a sales book. But boy, I'll tell you what it's a great. We have to be able to be willing to expand our horizons. Why? Because it allows us to see things differently, one of the things that I always say.
Speaker 5:Top performers, top performers will go into any meeting, any conversation, any activity and say there's something to be learned here, there is something I'm going to learn here. Average people will go into something and say there's nothing to learn, there's not, this is this, is this is this is a waste of time. That right, there is a mindset difference. If I go into things saying thinking I'm going to learn something, we're going to end this show and I'm going to challenge myself what did I learn from the three of you? What did I learn? Because again, every day, we have to ask yourself and what this does is this? Then helps us begin looking at this total, addressable market in a different way, because otherwise what happens is we get blinders on. Now there's something to be said for blinders, because success in sales is staying focused no ifs, ands or buts about it. But at the same time, we got to be aware of what else is going on out there, because if we can be aware of what else is going on, guess what? We're in a better position to help our customers help their customers. You what? We're in a better position to help our customers help their customers.
Speaker 5:You know one of the things that salespeople and I'll ask this of companies I'm working with and salespeople I say tell me about your customers. Okay, tell me about your customers' customers. And they don't have a clue. They don't have a clue. You got to go downstream, we got to go upstream, we got to understand the entire supply chain, and that's not the right term. But what I'm saying is this whole thing from raw materials, whatever it might be, all the way through to customer outcomes, and I don't care what it is that you sell, and I don't care what it is that you sell, it's going to somebody else. Because I want to be in a position where I know more about my customers' customers than my customers know about them, because if I can bring insights to my customers about their customers, they're going to look at me differently. They're going to go oh wow, that's to me. That's operating at a completely different level. And you know what? Now I'm really starting to understand the buyer's journey. Hmm, interesting.
Speaker 2:You know, mark, my head's spinning, so, um, maybe a little of both, I don't know. But yeah, the conversation is definitely building there. You know what I heard you say here about knowing your customer's customer to me. You know we talk a lot about building your online presence and your LinkedIn presence and whatever. What I hear you saying is that now opens up the door to a whole bunch of other connections. If I'm thinking about my customers and then my customers' customers and building connections and healthy connections and relationships with them, oh my God, what value am I going to then provide? It's like I've just hockey stick my value on the others.
Speaker 5:You have hockey sticked it, because it also makes it that much easier for your customers to now give you referrals. Think about it Exactly Because you know that you know it makes it so much easier for them to refer you and it makes it easier for you to refer others them, Because I mean the whole thing about referrals. I just got to clarify this for a second. It's not a game about getting referrals, it's a game about giving referrals, and if you're focused on giving referrals, stuff will come back to you. Focus on giving, Don't worry about the getting.
Speaker 3:Bob, you're going to be proud of us, right?
Speaker 4:powerful there, Mark, is when you think about the customer's customer. A lot of us work in an organization where our organization whether it's us or somebody else, most likely somebody else supports that customer's customer right? You know, like I work in an organization where we have a lot of managed accounts and in fact I've worked in different verticals where customers that I supported in the past became the customer's customer of somebody that I support today. When you start to think outside the box and this is why I loved your answer, one of many reasons why I loved your answer about total addressable market Sometimes we fail to think bigger picture.
Speaker 4:And beyond that bubble, beyond that box, If I'm able to take a relationship that I made three to five years ago in an organization that I supported, where I was a trusted advisor because I understood their business model so well and I was so entrenched, and I'm able to take a relationship from here and bring it to present day and put these folks together and then get heck out of the way and let them make magic happen, guess what happens there?
Speaker 4:Your credibility goes up a notch and all you really did was you were the orchestrator of a beautiful relationship, and I think that's why, when you think about the referrals that you can give and you even think outside the box on ways that you can prospect. That is when I prospect today, outside the box, on ways that you can prospect. That is when I prospect today, which I send, sometimes thousands of prospecting messages, and when I do that, it is never about a product, it's never about a solution. It is always about ideas that I have for ways that my company and I can uniquely enhance the relationship with this organization because of the people that they serve that we often also serve. Think about that.
Speaker 5:It's giving the customer value. And you know what? Don't worry about the business. I love to do the same thing. I have an expression I say 10 lists. I create 10 lists. In fact, every week I create a 10 list and it's 10 things that companies can use to help them do their business better, 10 things that a sales leader can do to help them do their business better. And I've got probably hundreds of these now and I'll put one together and then I email it out and it's a huge prospecting tool for me. And it's also a reinforcement tool with customers who I'm already doing business with and they just love it. They just love this stuff. And it's amazing. And I'm not selling, I'm not standing up saying, hey, bring me in for your sales kickoff meeting, bring me in for this. No, I'm just sharing with them and it creates conversations and it creates credibility, it creates reputation, it creates a tremendous amount of opportunities that you just keep building on and building on and building on and building on.
Speaker 3:I really appreciate our conversation. It's so often sales conversations are about what we do like what we do for the customer and how do we get their attention and how do you move them to the next stage and what do you do when they have objections, and I think there's a place for some of that. I think we got somebody here we got to kind of remove from chat and I like it. What we're talking about is it's the things that we can control, but doing it from a place of giving and trusting and believing and knowing that when we do that, it works out and we actually gain in response to it.
Speaker 5:You know, let's talk about that for a bit here, because the whole thing about is I want to go into this habit of just giving, giving, giving, and you know one of the of the things. In fact, this is an interesting prospecting situation and I'm sure all of you have seen this. You're prospecting with somebody, you think you've got this prospect, you're gonna, they're gonna turn into a customer and then they go radio silence. They go radio silent right. Or you've had this great conversation and they go side and I would say the sales made the follow up and there's multiple ways we can follow up, but I just keep coming in, coming in, coming in with more and more ideas that can help them. More and more ways. Just stay in the touch. I mean I've got multiple. There was a client that I finally landed and it took me over three years, three years of just touching, touching, touching.
Speaker 5:Now some people might say, mark, you're a lousy salesperson because it took you three years. It just it, just. You know. But when you get things systematized and you can do things, it's amazing at what you can do. But you've got to be willing to stay in the game and the, the ways that you stay in the game is again is you surround yourself with key people Because you know what. Everybody's gone through this situation. I'm sure all of us here have had major screw-ups in sales, major.
Speaker 4:More than I can count.
Speaker 5:Yeah, yeah. And yet you know what. You keep coming back. And yet it would have been easy for us to stay down for the count. No, but again you begin to realize that others are going through the same problem, etc. Etc. And life works out. But it all starts with your own headset. If, if your head is not screwed on right, nothing's going to happen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah so I I made a of notes here and I'm still back on the prospecting thing and the TAM conversation we were just having here.
Speaker 2:You know, and Brandon, we get people all the time right oh, my TAM or my prospects are too small, or there's not enough people in my world that are on LinkedIn or that are on social or whatever. If you just sat down and you kind of took your customer and then basically from there kind of built the ecosystem right which surrounds that customer, their customer, their partners, whatever the case may be, all of a sudden your TAM quote unquote TAM gets way way more massive. Your relationship or your ecosystem gets way more massive. And you know, brandon, I think that eliminates a lot of this where we hear people well, my customer is not on linkedin or they're not on social, but yeah, their partners may be, their customers may be, and you may be able to connect them and and then end up having them on linkedin or on social or whatever, yeah, and I think I think a lot of times when it's oh, my people aren't on LinkedIn.
Speaker 3:What they're really saying is the small percent of my TAM who are currently in market aren't responding to my outreach messages where I'm asking them for a demo. I mean, that's really what they're saying, right? But it comes to well, my people aren't on LinkedIn because it's easier to blame the tool or blame the prospects than to actually take responsibility for our behavior, which is stop spamming people messages, asking them for a demo, when you don't know anything about them. You don't know if they're even in market, you haven't earned any sort of credibility, you haven't asked the questions, you haven't shown up giving information, You've done everything else wrong. But you just get to that stage and say it doesn't work because they're not responding. Because when I show up and I tell everybody, hey, I can give you a demo, everybody should start running and show up and be ready for my demo, right? I mean, is that kind of what you were talking about too, Tom?
Speaker 2:scarcity of opportunity. And when you really start to look at the ecosystem and you look at how you can leverage that ecosystem with the value, the scarcity aspect kind of just goes away and it just gives you a lot more freedom. Is what I see.
Speaker 5:You know what? And that's another difference between the average performer and the top performer, because the average performer looks at things from a scarcity mindset and the top performer there's, there's abundance, there's abundance, there are, there are more opportunities out there today than ever, and they're actually easier reach. Oh, nobody answers the phone, nobody responds. Hold it. Do you think it was ever easy? No, it wasn't okay. Excuse me, you know so. I mean again, it's, we have more ways to reach people, but it comes down to are you going to blame your tool, or is it.
Speaker 4:You. Your outcome is going to come down to how you understand the total addressable market, what you're willing to do to go out there and create relationships. And, mark, you said something really important again earlier about it's not it's not winning a deal. You know, I believe that relationships great relationships beget deals. I also I don't believe I'm a great salesperson. I'm very resourceful and I'm willing to do whatever it takes to take big swings and go out and make bold asks and do everything I can to understand how to create relationships that I don't have.
Speaker 4:What relationships am I going to need in order to get done what I want to get done?
Speaker 4:Where are these folks? How do I go out and get a meeting with them? What do I need to say to get that meeting? We're always thinking five steps ahead or we're trying to categorize it into I need this demo. That's not true. You just need a conversation and I wouldn't want to pigeonhole my first conversation into hey, I want to talk about this one product, I don't.
Speaker 4:Maybe that's what I want to sell, but you're not going to get a conversation by trying to talk about the one product that you want to sell. You're going to get a conversation by showing up, talking about or trying to talk about what matters to your customer. And sometimes, if you think about it, it's going to be how can I, or how can my company, create a better relationship with this company that I want to talk to and the companies that they want to talk to? And if I can go out and make that relationship better, that's what's going to earn you that seat in the room. And then, once you get in there, it comes down to the good old fundamentals of relationship building and sales.
Speaker 4:But the tools and the landscape looks different now than ever before. We're in a position of power and I think one of the things, mark, too, that I respect so much about you, like you've worked with so many high caliber, you know name brand organizations. You've created this credibility and brand that anybody would kill for. It didn't necessarily like start out like that. You've built this body of work, but I think the key thing is is we're all sellers sitting here today. What have been the biggest learnings that you've had along the way that we should be having our eyes on?
Speaker 5:Yeah, here's one. It's consistency and stay in the game. You and I have had this conversation, carson, that top performers lead a very boring life because, again, it's such a routine, such a routine. I love routine. Right, and I'll tell you what I mean. I start my day the exact same way every day. I mean I go through certain steps of things and I do not deviate from that and I know that it's consistency. It's day in and day out, and I realize that I'm playing a long game. It's when I begin thinking it's a short game. This is again.
Speaker 5:This is the difference between average performers and top performers. Average performers are focused on just this quarter, this quarter, this quarter, this quarter, long long. You know, top performers are focused at least six months out, six, nine, 12 months out. They're looking down the road, they're saying and they manage their pipeline accordingly, and this is so key. And they also realize that you know what, if this doesn't happen right now, at this moment, it's okay, it's okay, it's going to come, there's another swing at the ball and you keep staying in the game and you also have to realize that much of what you do is going to fail. That's okay. I mean, look at it. Hey, in Major League Baseball, if you're batting 300, you're commanded a pretty fat paycheck. You just have to stay in the game. Uh it, it, you just have to stay in the game.
Speaker 5:But here's, here's the piece. You've got to be willing to work at it. You know, I'm I'm going to use Tom Brie. Tom Brie, I think, without a doubt, greatest NFL quarterback has ever played the game. He doesn't just show up for games. The level oh, we got a Joe Montana in the house. I know that's right, you're a 49er man, okay, okay. Anyway, brady's great, don't get me wrong. Brady's great, I don't care, we can put Joe Montana in there too, but both of them.
Speaker 5:You think about the number of hours that they spend on the practice field. You spend about the number of hours they spend in the film room. They are constant, and this again is the difference between average people and great people. Great people are continuously working at their craft. They never accept anything but not perfection, the next level. You know it's interesting.
Speaker 5:We've gotten in the habit of saying best practices. We should throw that out. It's these are our best right now. We're going to come up with even better practices. We're going to come up with better ones.
Speaker 5:I mean, I had a call the other day where I just caught myself and I used a line and I go, wow, that was great, that was man. I mean I'm using that line again and all it was was this subtle piece that I was in a conversation with a senior level person talking about an upcoming sales meeting, talking about some other stuff that they want me to do for them, and they lay this out and I just said you know, what do you think we should do to address this issue? What should we do? I could have sent over a proposal, but I want to hear from them what do you think we should do? And the person said you know, yeah, I'm really eager to see what you could provide us. So what did that do? That? That suddenly gave me the entree. But now it wasn't me telling them I'm going to send you over a proposal, it was them saying, hey, send me a proposal, send me a plan. It's powerful.
Speaker 5:And it's just a shift of one word.
Speaker 4:Yeah, be a student. Yeah, I always like to say monotony is better than misery. Embrace discipline and then you know being consistent and being resilient. Like again, I'm not a great salesperson but I'm like rocky and rocky one. I may be fighting the heavyweight champion of the world, but I will keep getting up in the 14th round, even when my trainer tells me to stay on the mat like you can't. You know will not keep me in a box and if you have that mentality, you can achieve whatever. You know will not keep me in a box and if you have that mentality, you can achieve whatever you want to achieve in sales. But you know what?
Speaker 5:That takes that inner strength. You know it takes a. You're surrounding yourself, you have a belief, you have a personal faith, you understand, you're solid in who you are and that is absolutely key, right? I mean, we get kicked down all the time.
Speaker 3:I always crack up when Carson says I'm not a great salesperson. Then he lists off like the six things he does every day. And you know, I just do this and I just do that and I just do this, but I'm not very good.
Speaker 4:It's all about process and focus and other people, and it's reality.
Speaker 3:It's strategies and systems right. Like John Maxwell says, motivation gets you going, and I think that's where a lot of salespeople start or stop right. Motivation gets you going, but discipline keeps you going. As John Maxwell says it and I think so often we talk to people in sales they got that initial motivation I'm going to go make money, I'm going to go do this and they don't have the systems in place to keep them going and they get haphazard. And then what do we do? We blame the tool, we blame the platform, we blame the customer, we blame something else.
Speaker 4:And what does Mike Tyson say? It's all fun and games until you get punched in the mouth.
Speaker 1:What do you do after you get your face kicked in?
Speaker 4:that's going to determine your success, or lack thereof, in sales or in life.
Speaker 5:That's why the book Atomic Habits by James Clare a non-sales book is such a critical sales book. Yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:That's like, you know Cups, michael Cups, who's been on our show and he's part of our coaching group. He's got a book called Time Bandits that we refer to a lot and it's the same thing. It's like, hey, what you got to identify, know what's stealing your time and how are you owning it and protecting it, and I think it's the same with Atomic Habits. So, everybody, real quick, I got Tom before you, before you go that everybody, cause most of our audience is on LinkedIn and we we got there was a first time this ever happened on on X. That was somebody kind of bombarded us and called us all a few different names and things left Mark alone, which was really nice. So when we were a little bit, we were laughing and kind of all over the place. That's what was going on. So, josh, thanks for your LinkedIn comment here. We should throw that up there at least. You know, get back to some sort of normalcy with our show.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I thought it was kind of fun. You know it's good, it's signs of success right.
Speaker 4:We're getting all of that. You know what that's right? It means somebody of success, right.
Speaker 5:You know what that's right? It means somebody's watching you know, yeah.
Speaker 2:Tomatoes are good. That's right. So well, I think that we have got. We need to take this episode, put it through chat, gpt, because I think we got a book that came out of this episode alone on some of the really. I mean, I have like three pages of notes here, amazing.
Speaker 4:Mark, thank you. I'm going to read Tom GPT's version?
Speaker 5:I'd love to see it. Shouldn't you put this through Copilot no?
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, I'm sorry. You're right, mark.
Speaker 4:I appreciate you. Our stock goes up during this episode.
Speaker 3:I can't afford.
Speaker 5:Copilot, so I just don't use GPT it's fine, you can't afford not to have co-pilot.
Speaker 4:There's Mark coming up with the sales lesson.
Speaker 2:I'm going to get you in a sales kickoff. Mark Carson, can you send me a proposal for co-pilot? He's convinced me, I got to do it.
Speaker 3:Carson's going to say Tom, how are we going to solve this problem? That's, that's what I learned from Mark.
Speaker 4:That's right. I'd rather help you meet your customers better, Tom, than sell you anything.
Speaker 2:So I think we're going to get a book out of this, because there's some really good and the prospecting stuff and whatever was just really really gold. And I think Brandon ties into all of this stuff. We keep talking about LinkedIn and the new modern selling strategies and so forth. So thank you, Mark Real quick too.
Speaker 3:What I loved about it is like this is more and more top of mind, I think, with sellers, like I got a message from someone today.
Speaker 3:Again, there's a bunch of sellers with open techs that are in their SKO events and one of them said he said look, I'm naturally an introvert.
Speaker 3:I've avoided this social selling thing, I've avoided LinkedIn as long as I possibly could, but I'm in a place now where I have to take my personal brand serious and that's why he reached out. And today's topic of building our credibility at all, I think, looking at LinkedIn, if it, if it's coming down to credibility, it comes down to how we serve our TAM, how we show up and, mark, you said it earlier, our reputation comes before us, it precedes us. We have this really cool 24 seven, you know virtual conference, if you will, this really cool 24-7 virtual conference, if you will, that everybody's on it in some way, shape or form and you can actually influence your own reputation by what you produce, where you comment, how you show up, how consistent you show up, and therefore influence that reputation that you have in order to start opening up more conversations with customers. I just think it's so timely right now is that I think more salespeople are coming to that awareness of I've got to do something different. I got to look at LinkedIn and take it a bit more serious.
Speaker 5:I think that is so spot on because, again, social media is a great tool. Linkedin is such a if you're in the B2B space such a powerful tool, but you got to use it and you can't just post and ghost. To quote our friend Bryn Tillman, don't do not post and ghost, right.
Speaker 2:But I didn't come up with that.
Speaker 5:Another thing or at least that's who I heard it from but you got to interact. It's a conversational platform and it doesn't mean you have to be out there hours every day. You know I'm on LinkedIn maybe 10 minutes a day, that's it. That's it. But you use your time wisely, efficiently, and you know you go. But it's consistency. It's not being out there once and then not showing up again for six months. You know you, but it's consistency.
Speaker 5:It's not being out there once and then not showing up again for six months. You do have to be out there every week. I mean, I think we're at the point that you've got to be out there every week, at least 10 or 15 weeks, sorry.
Speaker 2:I think we can say consistency equals credibility.
Speaker 5:It's the show about credibility. I like that. That's a tweetable moment, a little portable. There it is, I love it.
Speaker 3:There we go. We're going to stay off Twitter though. Yeah, we'll stay off Twitter.
Speaker 4:We need to get on.
Speaker 5:Reddit, then we can really start. Hey, they just did the. Ipo, that's right.
Speaker 3:That's it All right?
Speaker 2:Well, thanks again everybody. Thanks for the comments. Great comments, mark. We'll get you a copy of the book when it comes out. Great comments, Mark. We'll get you a copy of the book when it comes out. We'll have you do the forward here and Brandon Carson. Thank you, carson, do you want to wrap?
Speaker 3:this up, mark. I'll see you in a few weeks, yeah.
Speaker 4:Beautiful Mark. Thank you for joining us. Tom Brandon, great as always. Audience. Thank most of you Maybe all them won and until next time, happy, modern selling.
Speaker 3:Bye everybody.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining us today on Mastering Modern Selling. If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe for more insights, connect with us on social media and leave a review to help us improve. Stay tuned for our next episode, where we will continue to uncover modern strategies shaping today's business landscape. Learn more about Fistbump and our concierge service at GetFistbumpscom. Mastering modern revenue creation with Fistbump, where relationships, social and AI meet in the buyer-centric age.
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