MMS #106 - Lead with Your Brand: Mark Hunter’s Guide to Sales and Leadership Success with Mark Hunter

[00:00:01] [SPEAKER_00]: 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 Heady 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.

[00:00:24] [SPEAKER_00]: 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.

[00:00:46] [SPEAKER_01]: We're back. Episode number 106, Mastering Modern Selling. I was gone last week, Carson's gone this week, but Brandon, you're keeping the ship moving. So thank you.

[00:00:59] [SPEAKER_02]: You know, it's a highlight of my week. I have to be here. I feel awkward without it.

[00:01:05] [SPEAKER_01]: I really missed it last week, but then I noticed that we had like more downloads than ever and I was kind of nervous about that. I was like, okay, what's happening here?

[00:01:15] [SPEAKER_02]: We had a lot of downloads last week. I was wondering if you were going to notice that and if there was going to be a correlation or felt correlation.

[00:01:22] [SPEAKER_01]: Carson wanted some stats. I didn't want to talk to about that, that's that. So anyway.

[00:01:28] [SPEAKER_01]: So, hey, Mark, welcome back.

[00:01:31] [SPEAKER_01]: Hey, thank you for having me back.

[00:01:33] [SPEAKER_01]: Your second time or third? Second time on the show?

[00:01:36] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know. I don't know.

[00:01:38] [SPEAKER_02]: This is third. Mark's like our, yeah, he's like our Alec Baldwin of Saturday Night Live. He's been, this is the most guest appearances we've had.

[00:01:48] [SPEAKER_01]: Okay. Okay. Well, welcome back again.

[00:01:51] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. So if I'm Alec Baldwin, do I have to do an impersonation of somebody?

[00:01:56] [SPEAKER_04]: Please.

[00:01:57] [SPEAKER_02]: I wouldn't, I wouldn't touch it. I mean, you know, the whole Alec Baldwin is kind of spiraled into so many different things lately that even as I said that I'm like, yeah, maybe this isn't the best one to say.

[00:02:08] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. Thank you. I really appreciate it.

[00:02:11] [SPEAKER_02]: How about Steve Martin? The Steve Martin of Saturday Night Live.

[00:02:14] [SPEAKER_04]: Yes. King Tut. King Tut.

[00:02:17] [SPEAKER_04]: King Tut. That's right.

[00:02:19] [SPEAKER_04]: And anybody under the age of 50 has no idea what we're talking about.

[00:02:23] [SPEAKER_04]: So.

[00:02:23] [SPEAKER_04]: I know.

[00:02:23] [SPEAKER_04]: Yes.

[00:02:25] [SPEAKER_04]: Yes.

[00:02:26] [SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.

[00:02:27] [SPEAKER_02]: Well, Mark, welcome.

[00:02:28] [SPEAKER_02]: Go ahead, Tom.

[00:02:29] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:02:29] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I wanted to let everybody know and welcome Doug.

[00:02:32] [SPEAKER_01]: If you're online and listening, please let us know you're here.

[00:02:35] [SPEAKER_01]: We had some technical difficulties in a sense that at 3.30 in the morning Eastern time, our phones were going off saying it was time to be on the show.

[00:02:44] [SPEAKER_01]: Somehow LinkedIn reversed it for 12 hours.

[00:02:47] [SPEAKER_01]: So anyway, good to see that people are here.

[00:02:50] [SPEAKER_01]: And also, Brandon wanted to thank Fistbump again for sponsoring this and all the production work.

[00:02:57] [SPEAKER_01]: And you have a webinar coming up with Mr. Hunter coming up here soon.

[00:03:01] [SPEAKER_02]: We do.

[00:03:02] [SPEAKER_02]: We do.

[00:03:03] [SPEAKER_02]: Mark and I have a webinar coming up together and we're going to talk about personal branding and leveraging LinkedIn for prospecting.

[00:03:10] [SPEAKER_02]: So it's kind of, it'll be a little bit of the best of what I do and mostly the best of what Mark does because he's Mark Hunter and I'm not.

[00:03:19] [SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[00:03:20] [SPEAKER_02]: All right.

[00:03:20] [SPEAKER_02]: No.

[00:03:22] [SPEAKER_01]: All right.

[00:03:23] [SPEAKER_01]: Welcome, Kim.

[00:03:24] [SPEAKER_01]: Good.

[00:03:24] [SPEAKER_01]: So people are here.

[00:03:25] [SPEAKER_01]: This is good.

[00:03:26] [SPEAKER_01]: So.

[00:03:26] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:03:27] [SPEAKER_01]: Hey, Kim.

[00:03:27] [SPEAKER_01]: Our Canadian friend.

[00:03:29] [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe we should try 3.30 in the morning one time.

[00:03:31] [SPEAKER_01]: See what happens.

[00:03:34] [SPEAKER_04]: You get a big Asia audience.

[00:03:35] [SPEAKER_01]: We might tap into Europe.

[00:03:36] [SPEAKER_02]: We might make a new audience from.

[00:03:38] [SPEAKER_02]: That's right.

[00:03:39] [SPEAKER_02]: From Europe.

[00:03:40] [SPEAKER_01]: That's right.

[00:03:40] [SPEAKER_01]: Who knows?

[00:03:41] [SPEAKER_01]: So Mark, I know this is your third time, but if you don't mind, take a couple minutes, just explain, you know, your background, what you do.

[00:03:48] [SPEAKER_01]: And then I know we have a lot we want to cover today.

[00:03:51] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[00:03:51] [SPEAKER_04]: My background is I am known as the sales hunter.

[00:03:55] [SPEAKER_04]: People ask me, what was your name before you changed it?

[00:03:57] [SPEAKER_04]: No, that was the name I was born with.

[00:03:59] [SPEAKER_04]: I owe that to my father.

[00:04:01] [SPEAKER_04]: So when you get the last name Hunter, I guess you got to use it.

[00:04:03] [SPEAKER_04]: Right.

[00:04:04] [SPEAKER_04]: So anyway.

[00:04:04] [SPEAKER_04]: Hey, but I was not a born salesperson.

[00:04:07] [SPEAKER_04]: Didn't want to be in sales.

[00:04:08] [SPEAKER_04]: Only got into sales.

[00:04:09] [SPEAKER_04]: I talk about it in my book, A Mind for Sales.

[00:04:13] [SPEAKER_04]: I go through the whole story.

[00:04:14] [SPEAKER_04]: I'll just abbreviate it here.

[00:04:16] [SPEAKER_04]: Basically, what happened was I messed up my car insurance and I could not afford car insurance because my speeding habits.

[00:04:22] [SPEAKER_04]: I got out of college and I couldn't afford rent, my car payment and insurance.

[00:04:28] [SPEAKER_04]: So I wound up having to get a job that supplied me with a car.

[00:04:32] [SPEAKER_04]: That was sales.

[00:04:33] [SPEAKER_04]: I got a sales job to say I was a success.

[00:04:37] [SPEAKER_04]: Wrong.

[00:04:37] [SPEAKER_04]: I got fired from that job.

[00:04:39] [SPEAKER_04]: Got a second sales job.

[00:04:41] [SPEAKER_04]: Second company car.

[00:04:42] [SPEAKER_03]: Hmm.

[00:04:43] [SPEAKER_04]: Didn't learn anything.

[00:04:44] [SPEAKER_04]: Got fired from that job, too.

[00:04:45] [SPEAKER_04]: Was on my third sales job.

[00:04:47] [SPEAKER_04]: Third company car.

[00:04:48] [SPEAKER_04]: When my boss finally sat me down and said, hold it.

[00:04:52] [SPEAKER_04]: Basically, he said, you know, you're doing sales to people.

[00:04:55] [SPEAKER_04]: We don't do sales to people.

[00:04:57] [SPEAKER_04]: We do sales for people.

[00:04:59] [SPEAKER_04]: And because I was really just treating customers as if they were bowling pins to be knocked down, take their money and run.

[00:05:05] [SPEAKER_04]: I wasn't taking the time to really develop a relationship, understand them, really serve them, help them.

[00:05:13] [SPEAKER_04]: That began this long journey I've been on 20 some years ago.

[00:05:18] [SPEAKER_04]: I walked out of my corporate job.

[00:05:19] [SPEAKER_04]: Great corporate job.

[00:05:21] [SPEAKER_04]: But I began doing this.

[00:05:22] [SPEAKER_04]: And so I get to travel all over the world, speaking at a lot of conferences and helping sales teams sell more efficiently.

[00:05:32] [SPEAKER_04]: I blog.

[00:05:33] [SPEAKER_04]: I do a lot of videos.

[00:05:34] [SPEAKER_04]: I have a couple of podcasts.

[00:05:36] [SPEAKER_04]: I'm out there.

[00:05:37] [SPEAKER_04]: And it's all branded around the sales hunter.

[00:05:41] [SPEAKER_01]: Wow.

[00:05:42] [SPEAKER_01]: I love the three cars.

[00:05:43] [SPEAKER_01]: So which was the best of the three cars?

[00:05:45] [SPEAKER_04]: You know what?

[00:05:46] [SPEAKER_04]: They were all Buicks.

[00:05:47] [SPEAKER_04]: OK.

[00:05:48] [SPEAKER_04]: Does that date me?

[00:05:49] [SPEAKER_04]: Yes.

[00:05:49] [SPEAKER_04]: Yes.

[00:05:49] [SPEAKER_04]: They were all Buicks.

[00:05:51] [SPEAKER_04]: Because back in those days, that's what every company used as their company car was.

[00:05:55] [SPEAKER_04]: Buicks.

[00:05:56] [SPEAKER_04]: Shoot.

[00:05:58] [SPEAKER_04]: One was white.

[00:05:59] [SPEAKER_04]: One was red.

[00:06:00] [SPEAKER_04]: And one was kind of a deep maroon.

[00:06:03] [SPEAKER_04]: OK.

[00:06:05] [SPEAKER_01]: Do they even make Buicks anymore?

[00:06:07] [SPEAKER_01]: What?

[00:06:07] [SPEAKER_01]: Do Buicks exist anymore?

[00:06:10] [SPEAKER_01]: They do.

[00:06:11] [SPEAKER_01]: They have a Buick, too.

[00:06:13] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[00:06:15] [SPEAKER_04]: Actually, they've kind of had a renaissance.

[00:06:16] [SPEAKER_04]: They've kind of come back because they've got a couple of the crossovers that are selling fairly well.

[00:06:23] [SPEAKER_04]: Mine was the four-door sedan.

[00:06:26] [SPEAKER_04]: Very nice.

[00:06:28] [SPEAKER_02]: So they got rid of Oldsmobile went away, but Buick stayed on, right?

[00:06:33] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:06:33] [SPEAKER_02]: There's still Buicks, but no Oldsmobile.

[00:06:36] [SPEAKER_04]: No Oldsmobile.

[00:06:37] [SPEAKER_04]: Quite a few.

[00:06:38] [SPEAKER_04]: No other.

[00:06:38] [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it had old in the name.

[00:06:40] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:06:41] [SPEAKER_01]: That's right.

[00:06:41] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:06:43] [SPEAKER_01]: All right.

[00:06:44] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, Mark, I know we wanted to start today a little bit.

[00:06:47] [SPEAKER_01]: And hey, welcome.

[00:06:48] [SPEAKER_01]: Bob is here.

[00:06:50] [SPEAKER_01]: Always good to see Bob.

[00:06:51] [SPEAKER_01]: Mark, tell us a little bit about, I know you want to talk a little bit about mindset, right?

[00:06:56] [SPEAKER_01]: If you're going to be prospecting for high-profit, high-quality clients, what's the right mindset?

[00:07:04] [SPEAKER_01]: Where do you start?

[00:07:05] [SPEAKER_01]: And it sounds like that's what happened right in your career is you kind of had a mindset shift along the way.

[00:07:10] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[00:07:11] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it is.

[00:07:12] [SPEAKER_04]: Because I'll tell you what, as your mind goes, so goes your selling process.

[00:07:16] [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, very simply this, my attitude, my mindset going into a sales call predetermines the results I get coming out of it.

[00:07:24] [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, all the time in my own life, and this happens with everybody.

[00:07:29] [SPEAKER_04]: I can be working with a call center, and there can be two salespeople sitting working off basically the same list.

[00:07:36] [SPEAKER_04]: One has a great attitude, one doesn't.

[00:07:38] [SPEAKER_04]: They'll both make calls.

[00:07:39] [SPEAKER_04]: They'll both make the same number of dials.

[00:07:42] [SPEAKER_04]: But you know what?

[00:07:42] [SPEAKER_04]: The one who has a great attitude is going to wind up with far more opportunities to pursue, far more opportunities, because they listen better.

[00:07:49] [SPEAKER_04]: They ask better questions.

[00:07:51] [SPEAKER_04]: They engage more.

[00:07:52] [SPEAKER_04]: Whereas the other person is just, they're not hearing anything.

[00:07:56] [SPEAKER_04]: Your mindset absolutely impacts.

[00:07:59] [SPEAKER_04]: One of the easiest ways to get more for what you sell, in other words, how do you, and I know we'll talk about this later, how do you avoid the discount?

[00:08:07] [SPEAKER_04]: How do you not have to get there?

[00:08:09] [SPEAKER_04]: It's really by having a better mindset.

[00:08:11] [SPEAKER_04]: Because, again, when you shape your mindset, it's amazing how it transcends into the customer's mind.

[00:08:17] [SPEAKER_04]: And it's amazing at what happens.

[00:08:21] [SPEAKER_02]: So, Mark, what makes a good sales mindset?

[00:08:26] [SPEAKER_04]: Well, a good sales mindset is not being focused on your product.

[00:08:30] [SPEAKER_04]: This is the issue.

[00:08:31] [SPEAKER_04]: I run into this all the time.

[00:08:33] [SPEAKER_04]: Well, I know I could do better if we had better products.

[00:08:36] [SPEAKER_04]: It's not about your products.

[00:08:38] [SPEAKER_04]: Screw the products.

[00:08:39] [SPEAKER_04]: If I can be blunt.

[00:08:40] [SPEAKER_04]: It's about the people you serve.

[00:08:42] [SPEAKER_04]: It's the people you serve.

[00:08:43] [SPEAKER_04]: This is what's so key.

[00:08:45] [SPEAKER_04]: Because here's the whole thing.

[00:08:47] [SPEAKER_04]: Customers don't want to buy anything.

[00:08:49] [SPEAKER_04]: We always say, oh, they don't want to be sold.

[00:08:51] [SPEAKER_04]: Well, but they want to buy.

[00:08:52] [SPEAKER_04]: No, they don't want to buy.

[00:08:54] [SPEAKER_04]: What they want is they want a solution.

[00:08:55] [SPEAKER_04]: They want a solution.

[00:08:57] [SPEAKER_04]: My objective is this.

[00:08:59] [SPEAKER_04]: To be able to understand you, Brandon, so well, so well that I can begin to, hmm, know what your needs are.

[00:09:09] [SPEAKER_04]: And I can craft a better solution.

[00:09:11] [SPEAKER_04]: My product will be part of that.

[00:09:13] [SPEAKER_04]: Or I'm going to wind up referring you to somebody else.

[00:09:16] [SPEAKER_04]: That's fine.

[00:09:17] [SPEAKER_04]: And, oh, you know what?

[00:09:18] [SPEAKER_04]: Don't run away from it if you have to refer you to somebody else.

[00:09:21] [SPEAKER_04]: Here's why.

[00:09:23] [SPEAKER_04]: If I refer you to somebody else, well, gee, I've lost a sale.

[00:09:26] [SPEAKER_04]: No, I haven't.

[00:09:27] [SPEAKER_04]: I've actually made two sales.

[00:09:29] [SPEAKER_04]: Why?

[00:09:29] [SPEAKER_04]: Because the customer who I referred somebody to is going to appreciate me because, wow, you helped me.

[00:09:38] [SPEAKER_04]: And, oh, by the way, the person I referred is going to love me too.

[00:09:41] [SPEAKER_04]: Guess what?

[00:09:42] [SPEAKER_04]: I made two sales there.

[00:09:43] [SPEAKER_04]: Long term, I'm going to really grow my business.

[00:09:46] [SPEAKER_04]: So it is absolutely incumbent that I stay in the game to understand what the need is of the customer.

[00:09:53] [SPEAKER_04]: And I understand, is it my solution or is it somebody else's solution?

[00:09:59] [SPEAKER_01]: So is it safe to say as the sales hunter that the right mindset is to go in hunting for information from the prospect and continuing to hunt for information so you know them as much as?

[00:10:12] [SPEAKER_01]: Is that really the premise of this?

[00:10:14] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, you know what?

[00:10:15] [SPEAKER_04]: I've never heard it expressed that way.

[00:10:17] [SPEAKER_04]: So, yeah, hey, stop by the gift shop on the way out and pick up a prize, pick it out especially for you.

[00:10:23] [SPEAKER_04]: That's really good because, you know, if you stop and think about it, one of the challenges salespeople have is they go into any presentation, any sales call, whether this be on the phone, whether it be on Zoom, Teams, whether it be in person with this information they want to share.

[00:10:37] [SPEAKER_04]: They've got this presentation they want to share.

[00:10:40] [SPEAKER_04]: Forget the presentation.

[00:10:42] [SPEAKER_04]: The best presentation ever made is the presentation never given.

[00:10:48] [SPEAKER_04]: Stop and think about what I just said.

[00:10:50] [SPEAKER_04]: The best presentation ever made is the presentation never given.

[00:10:53] [SPEAKER_04]: Now, you know your product.

[00:10:55] [SPEAKER_04]: You know your service.

[00:10:55] [SPEAKER_04]: You know what your company can do.

[00:10:57] [SPEAKER_04]: You know everything so well.

[00:10:59] [SPEAKER_04]: But you don't need a presentation because you can just have a conversation.

[00:11:03] [SPEAKER_04]: My feeling is this.

[00:11:04] [SPEAKER_04]: We would do a much better job in high profit prospecting if we just stopped and asked better questions.

[00:11:12] [SPEAKER_04]: Just ask better questions.

[00:11:14] [SPEAKER_04]: If we put as much time into the questions we want to ask as we do into developing the presentation,

[00:11:20] [SPEAKER_04]: we'd be a lot more successful.

[00:11:23] [SPEAKER_02]: Hey, Mark, what's one or two like gold nugget little tactics that somebody could implement to help them do that?

[00:11:34] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[00:11:34] [SPEAKER_04]: Here's the situation.

[00:11:36] [SPEAKER_04]: Anything the customer says, anything, you stop and ask them a follow-up question on it.

[00:11:44] [SPEAKER_04]: I might ask you, hey, Brandon, how is your company dealing with the shortage of labor right now?

[00:11:50] [SPEAKER_04]: And regardless of what it is that you say, I'm going to come back and I'm going to ask you, hey, help me understand that a little more.

[00:11:56] [SPEAKER_04]: Can you give me an example?

[00:11:59] [SPEAKER_04]: I just ask you a question because here's what happens.

[00:12:02] [SPEAKER_04]: When I ask you a question and you share and I race on to the next question, you, the customer goes, huh, typical salesperson.

[00:12:12] [SPEAKER_04]: But if I ask you a follow-up question on that, then guess what?

[00:12:17] [SPEAKER_04]: You're like, wow, this person's different.

[00:12:20] [SPEAKER_04]: And you begin sharing with me more information.

[00:12:23] [SPEAKER_04]: See, I got to treat you like an onion.

[00:12:25] [SPEAKER_04]: I know, I know, Brandon, you're an onion, right?

[00:12:27] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, yeah.

[00:12:28] [SPEAKER_04]: But here's what it's all about.

[00:12:31] [SPEAKER_04]: If I can see you as an onion, I'm peeling layers.

[00:12:37] [SPEAKER_04]: I'm peeling layers.

[00:12:39] [SPEAKER_04]: Now, see, Tom, I didn't refer to you as an onion.

[00:12:41] [SPEAKER_04]: Okay.

[00:12:41] [SPEAKER_04]: So I'm being nice to you.

[00:12:44] [SPEAKER_02]: I'm the one that makes people cry.

[00:12:47] [SPEAKER_04]: It's all about Brandon, yeah.

[00:12:49] [SPEAKER_04]: But my whole objective is to peel the onion.

[00:12:52] [SPEAKER_04]: And I start doing that on that initial call, that initial call.

[00:12:58] [SPEAKER_04]: Because if I don't, A, I'm not going to be able to stay engaged with you.

[00:13:04] [SPEAKER_04]: And two, if I did stay engaged with you, I'm not going to know the critical information I need to know.

[00:13:09] [SPEAKER_04]: Because I get the best information early on in the sale.

[00:13:13] [SPEAKER_04]: Early on in the sale.

[00:13:15] [SPEAKER_04]: Ask tough questions early on.

[00:13:16] [SPEAKER_04]: Because I'm doing two things.

[00:13:17] [SPEAKER_04]: One, I'm gathering better intel from you.

[00:13:20] [SPEAKER_04]: And I'm really determining, hmm, do I want to keep you in my pipeline?

[00:13:25] [SPEAKER_04]: Are you worth it?

[00:13:27] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:13:28] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's interesting.

[00:13:31] [SPEAKER_01]: So one of the things I've been doing is recording sales calls.

[00:13:35] [SPEAKER_01]: And then using AI to try and listen to sort of what are the key points.

[00:13:42] [SPEAKER_01]: And it's interesting.

[00:13:43] [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, you talk about peeling the onion.

[00:13:45] [SPEAKER_01]: What I'm finding by doing that is, and I think I'm a pretty decent listener.

[00:13:50] [SPEAKER_01]: Right?

[00:13:50] [SPEAKER_01]: I think I'm above average in terms of listening.

[00:13:53] [SPEAKER_01]: But when I go back and re-listen to the call, I always pick up things that are almost like trends.

[00:14:00] [SPEAKER_01]: Right?

[00:14:00] [SPEAKER_01]: They don't come right out and say it, but they bring it up indirectly or directly four or five, six times in the call.

[00:14:06] [SPEAKER_01]: And then you can start to say, oh, they didn't really directly say this, but you can tell there's a real problem or a situation in that area.

[00:14:14] [SPEAKER_01]: And I think, Mark, the key is however you do it, finding those nuggets, if you will, that maybe are not obvious.

[00:14:23] [SPEAKER_01]: Right?

[00:14:23] [SPEAKER_01]: Because not everybody just obviously peels the onion and dumps out, you know, as an open book.

[00:14:28] [SPEAKER_01]: Right?

[00:14:29] [SPEAKER_01]: And so it would think it takes some work to kind of find those nuggets.

[00:14:33] [SPEAKER_01]: Am I looking at that right?

[00:14:35] [SPEAKER_04]: Yes, it does take time.

[00:14:36] [SPEAKER_04]: But once you find the nuggets, it's amazing how you can run and run and run.

[00:14:40] [SPEAKER_04]: I'll give you an example.

[00:14:41] [SPEAKER_04]: Just about an hour ago, I made a follow-up prospecting call to a gentleman I met.

[00:14:46] [SPEAKER_04]: He was sitting in a presentation I was doing about a year ago.

[00:14:50] [SPEAKER_04]: And I learned that he was on the West Coast and went to Washington State University.

[00:14:56] [SPEAKER_04]: And if you follow Wazoo, they were a member of the Pac-12, and then they became the Pac-2.

[00:15:01] [SPEAKER_04]: And I called him up today, and I got his voicemail, and I said, hey, congratulations to the Cougars.

[00:15:07] [SPEAKER_04]: Not only did you beat the Huskies in the Apple Cup, that's a separate piece, but I said, congratulations that you now got eight schools in the Pac-12 with Gonzaga joining Pac-12.

[00:15:17] [SPEAKER_04]: And, hey, by the way, give me a shout back.

[00:15:20] [SPEAKER_04]: I'd love to chat more about that.

[00:15:21] [SPEAKER_04]: And I've got some new things that I'd love to talk to you about.

[00:15:24] [SPEAKER_04]: So what did I do?

[00:15:26] [SPEAKER_04]: I ran with the nugget that I had learned about him, played with it.

[00:15:29] [SPEAKER_04]: That was probably 80% of the phone call.

[00:15:32] [SPEAKER_04]: And then I shared, hey, I do have some stuff that I'd like to share with you regarding some programs I'm doing.

[00:15:37] [SPEAKER_04]: That would be very, you know.

[00:15:38] [SPEAKER_04]: I know he's going to call me back because he is such a crazy fan and supporter of Washington State University.

[00:15:50] [SPEAKER_04]: Boom.

[00:15:51] [SPEAKER_04]: Now, if I had just called and said, hey, I got this, this, I doubt if he would have called me.

[00:15:57] [SPEAKER_04]: I doubt if he would call me back.

[00:15:59] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:16:01] [SPEAKER_02]: So that keys, keys, tease that up for our go slow to move fast.

[00:16:06] [SPEAKER_02]: Yes.

[00:16:08] [SPEAKER_02]: Take the time.

[00:16:09] [SPEAKER_02]: Like I just take the time to learn a little bit about someone, their company or their history in order to reference it.

[00:16:20] [SPEAKER_02]: Now, here's, here's the caveat that I'm, I'm seeing right now, Mark, and I'd love your, your point on this and Tom to jump in as well.

[00:16:27] [SPEAKER_02]: Because of AI, I think we got to go deeper.

[00:16:31] [SPEAKER_02]: Because of AI and some automations.

[00:16:33] [SPEAKER_02]: If you just said, oh, I see that you went to Washington State, go Cougars, and then da, da, da.

[00:16:38] [SPEAKER_02]: It may have felt AI-ish.

[00:16:41] [SPEAKER_02]: But the fact that you referenced the Pac-12 to the Pac-2, I had, I didn't hear yet that Gonzaga was joining the Pac-12.

[00:16:49] [SPEAKER_02]: That's awesome for basketball, weird for football, but that's a whole other story.

[00:16:54] [SPEAKER_02]: But the fact that you added that, that extra information, I think is what made you stand out.

[00:17:01] [SPEAKER_02]: And that the go slow, do the research.

[00:17:04] [SPEAKER_02]: What happens is you get more responses.

[00:17:07] [SPEAKER_04]: That's what's absolutely key.

[00:17:08] [SPEAKER_04]: There was another prospecting follow-up call I did about an hour and a half ago to another gentleman, VP of sales of, of a company.

[00:17:15] [SPEAKER_04]: And in one of our conversations, probably about eight or nine months ago, he mentioned that he was running.

[00:17:20] [SPEAKER_04]: And he was hoping to run a marathon in, in the next year.

[00:17:24] [SPEAKER_04]: Well, I'm a runner too.

[00:17:26] [SPEAKER_04]: And I got his voicemail.

[00:17:27] [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, hey, curious, how's your running doing?

[00:17:30] [SPEAKER_04]: I've run into some problems.

[00:17:31] [SPEAKER_04]: I had to shut it down for a few weeks because of some knee problems getting back up.

[00:17:35] [SPEAKER_04]: But that's how I start.

[00:17:36] [SPEAKER_04]: That's how I started the call.

[00:17:38] [SPEAKER_04]: And then I said, by the way, we need to follow up regarding what we've been talking about a couple months ago.

[00:17:44] [SPEAKER_04]: And I guarantee it, he will minimally text me back with kind of an update on his running because he was really getting into running.

[00:17:53] [SPEAKER_04]: And it's going to allow me to keep the conversation going.

[00:17:56] [SPEAKER_04]: But you do.

[00:17:56] [SPEAKER_04]: You have to go deeper than just what you can learn from a LinkedIn profile or what AI will tell you.

[00:18:02] [SPEAKER_04]: You got to go deep because when you do, you really stand out.

[00:18:06] [SPEAKER_04]: But you're right.

[00:18:07] [SPEAKER_04]: You're going slow.

[00:18:08] [SPEAKER_04]: It took me a couple minutes of prep because, again, I got to go back, look at the notes, look at everything.

[00:18:14] [SPEAKER_04]: What's the piece I'm going to lead in?

[00:18:15] [SPEAKER_04]: I got a thing.

[00:18:16] [SPEAKER_04]: So, you know, it isn't just dialing, dialing, dialing, dialing.

[00:18:20] [SPEAKER_04]: I got something.

[00:18:20] [SPEAKER_04]: But so I'm making fewer calls, but they're breaking through.

[00:18:27] [SPEAKER_04]: They're genuine calls, and they absolutely work.

[00:18:31] [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, the same thing happened with a lead that came in by way of text messaging.

[00:18:36] [SPEAKER_04]: Now, this was an inbound.

[00:18:37] [SPEAKER_04]: I generate a lot of alpha, and this happened to be an inbound.

[00:18:41] [SPEAKER_04]: And within an exchange of two text messages, we were on the phone.

[00:18:48] [SPEAKER_04]: And one follow-up phone call, two days later, closed the deal because we found commonality.

[00:18:58] [SPEAKER_04]: We happened to find commonality of similar high schools we had gone to.

[00:19:03] [SPEAKER_04]: Wow.

[00:19:04] [SPEAKER_04]: What's the probability of that?

[00:19:06] [SPEAKER_04]: But again, it's taken the time to understand.

[00:19:10] [SPEAKER_04]: But see what it is?

[00:19:10] [SPEAKER_04]: It's also just being human.

[00:19:12] [SPEAKER_04]: Just being human.

[00:19:13] [SPEAKER_04]: Just be human and understand and listen.

[00:19:18] [SPEAKER_04]: You'll find amazing things out.

[00:19:22] [SPEAKER_01]: So I want to hit on a couple things.

[00:19:23] [SPEAKER_01]: First of all, there was a question from a LinkedIn user.

[00:19:26] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't see a name here.

[00:19:27] [SPEAKER_01]: It says, which AI tool do you use for your calls?

[00:19:30] [SPEAKER_01]: I use Fathom.

[00:19:32] [SPEAKER_01]: Probably most of you have used Zoom.

[00:19:33] [SPEAKER_01]: You see Fathom on there, which is a note-taker call.

[00:19:38] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know the last time I actually really made a phone call.

[00:19:42] [SPEAKER_01]: It's typically Zoom meetings and things like that.

[00:19:46] [SPEAKER_01]: And Fathom does a good job of recording it.

[00:19:48] [SPEAKER_01]: And you can analyze it and so forth.

[00:19:51] [SPEAKER_01]: And I know there's a bunch of other ones that are out there as well.

[00:19:54] [SPEAKER_01]: But I also wanted to hit Bob's comment here.

[00:19:56] [SPEAKER_01]: And Brandon, then kind of tie this into some things around LinkedIn.

[00:20:01] [SPEAKER_01]: But Bob says, if a company uses deal velocity as a core metric, sales leaders will push sellers to move quickly.

[00:20:09] [SPEAKER_01]: We just can't change the sellers.

[00:20:11] [SPEAKER_01]: We also need to change the system.

[00:20:12] [SPEAKER_01]: This also goes back to your go slow to move fast along the way.

[00:20:19] [SPEAKER_01]: I guess a lot of bad habits occur when you start to really try and go way too fast.

[00:20:25] [SPEAKER_04]: Huge conflict.

[00:20:26] [SPEAKER_04]: And I totally agree with that because that's the modus operandi.

[00:20:30] [SPEAKER_04]: A lot of investment firms will take over companies.

[00:20:32] [SPEAKER_04]: And these are the metrics you've got to follow, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:20:35] [SPEAKER_04]: And they want to measure everything.

[00:20:36] [SPEAKER_04]: First of all, just because you can measure it doesn't mean it should be measured.

[00:20:39] [SPEAKER_04]: Second, I can send out 1,000 emails.

[00:20:42] [SPEAKER_04]: I can knock out 1,000 emails faster than anybody.

[00:20:44] [SPEAKER_04]: I can send a very crappy email to one person that's crappy.

[00:20:47] [SPEAKER_04]: I can send it to 1,000 people and it's suicide.

[00:20:49] [SPEAKER_04]: And that's what a lot of people are doing.

[00:20:53] [SPEAKER_04]: We do have to re-educate the business community and in particular the investment community.

[00:20:57] [SPEAKER_04]: And really sales leaders because sales leaders are notorious.

[00:21:01] [SPEAKER_04]: Oh, you've got to put more in your pipeline.

[00:21:03] [SPEAKER_04]: You've got to put more in your...

[00:21:04] [SPEAKER_04]: Hey, come on.

[00:21:05] [SPEAKER_04]: Charge me as guilty of keeping stuff in my pipeline just to keep my boss off my back.

[00:21:12] [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, man, quick story.

[00:21:15] [SPEAKER_04]: I'll still never forget this.

[00:21:17] [SPEAKER_04]: I won't say the name because he's still alive, but I remember we were on the same sales team.

[00:21:23] [SPEAKER_04]: And every Friday during the...

[00:21:24] [SPEAKER_04]: Every Friday, we had to go into our boss's office and kind of share our numbers, share our numbers.

[00:21:29] [SPEAKER_04]: And early on in the quarter, we were about week three or week four in the quarter.

[00:21:34] [SPEAKER_04]: It was going to be...

[00:21:35] [SPEAKER_04]: It was obvious that the five or six of us on the team, we were going to miss our number.

[00:21:40] [SPEAKER_04]: And this one gentleman, he'd go into the office.

[00:21:43] [SPEAKER_04]: He'd go in and meet with Bob.

[00:21:47] [SPEAKER_04]: And it's fine.

[00:21:48] [SPEAKER_04]: It's fine.

[00:21:49] [SPEAKER_04]: It's great.

[00:21:49] [SPEAKER_04]: No problem.

[00:21:50] [SPEAKER_04]: We all would walk in and say, oh, we're going to miss our number.

[00:21:52] [SPEAKER_04]: And Bob would beat us up, beat us up, beat us up.

[00:21:55] [SPEAKER_04]: And we finally get...

[00:21:56] [SPEAKER_04]: Six or seven or so, we asked this guy.

[00:21:59] [SPEAKER_04]: I said, hold it.

[00:22:00] [SPEAKER_04]: You know you're going to miss your number.

[00:22:02] [SPEAKER_04]: Why are you walking?

[00:22:03] [SPEAKER_04]: He says, yeah, but here's the deal.

[00:22:05] [SPEAKER_04]: Every week when you walk in, you get your head handed to you.

[00:22:09] [SPEAKER_04]: I'm just choosing to not tell him I'm going to miss the number until week 13.

[00:22:14] [SPEAKER_04]: Then I'll only get my head handed to me once.

[00:22:18] [SPEAKER_04]: Stop and think about that for a moment.

[00:22:20] [SPEAKER_04]: That's a sad state of affairs.

[00:22:23] [SPEAKER_04]: But let me tell you something.

[00:22:25] [SPEAKER_04]: That's going on all the time with salespeople because they keep crap in their pipeline.

[00:22:32] [SPEAKER_04]: And that's why it turns into a sewer pipe.

[00:22:34] [SPEAKER_04]: It turns into a sewer line.

[00:22:35] [SPEAKER_04]: It's not going anywhere.

[00:22:38] [SPEAKER_01]: I like that.

[00:22:40] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's really good.

[00:22:45] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I've got all these.

[00:22:46] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, my brain's going a bunch of different directions about the analogies of pipelines and

[00:22:50] [SPEAKER_02]: sewers.

[00:22:50] [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for that.

[00:22:52] [SPEAKER_02]: You know, it reminds me too, Mark, on the podcast, The Brutal Truth of Sales.

[00:22:57] [SPEAKER_02]: And this was years ago.

[00:22:59] [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, this had to be four or five years ago.

[00:23:00] [SPEAKER_02]: But he had a young woman who was friends with his daughter who was in her first role at Adobe.

[00:23:08] [SPEAKER_02]: And she got called into the office from her supervisor and said, you know, here is the list of all the outbound calls.

[00:23:22] [SPEAKER_02]: And she said, you know, here's the person who makes the most outbound calls made this week.

[00:23:47] [SPEAKER_02]: Fewer, but better.

[00:23:50] [SPEAKER_02]: And it paid off.

[00:23:51] [SPEAKER_04]: I very much appreciate that because my whole goal with all my leads that come in and outbound leads I get, I want to disqualify you.

[00:24:01] [SPEAKER_04]: I want to disqualify you quickly because my goal is to spend more time with fewer prospects.

[00:24:08] [SPEAKER_04]: If I can spend more time with fewer prospects, and that's what this lady was doing.

[00:24:12] [SPEAKER_04]: She was doing it very well.

[00:24:13] [SPEAKER_04]: She was spending less time with fewer prospects than as a real role.

[00:24:16] [SPEAKER_04]: She was crushing.

[00:24:17] [SPEAKER_04]: She was closing deals.

[00:24:21] [SPEAKER_02]: By the way, Bob Britton wants to make sure that everyone knows that he's not the Bob that Mark was referencing in his story.

[00:24:28] [SPEAKER_04]: Ah, Bob Britton, yes.

[00:24:30] [SPEAKER_04]: Hey, Bob, how are you, man?

[00:24:32] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, you're not.

[00:24:33] [SPEAKER_04]: Bob, the other Bob I'm talking about, a little bit older.

[00:24:36] [SPEAKER_04]: Okay, just saying.

[00:24:39] [SPEAKER_02]: Perfect.

[00:24:40] [SPEAKER_02]: Hey, Mark, as we were talking about prospecting and doing quality prospecting and your example of referencing Washington State in the Pac-12, where do you think, where does this LinkedIn personal branding, content creation, where does that play into?

[00:25:01] [SPEAKER_04]: Huge.

[00:25:02] [SPEAKER_04]: It's huge because nobody takes a phone call from anybody without first Googling them.

[00:25:09] [SPEAKER_04]: And let's not kid ourselves.

[00:25:12] [SPEAKER_04]: What's the first thing that comes up in Google?

[00:25:14] [SPEAKER_04]: Probably LinkedIn.

[00:25:17] [SPEAKER_04]: You can't stress this enough.

[00:25:20] [SPEAKER_04]: And I know people say, well, gee, my industry isn't really in LinkedIn.

[00:25:25] [SPEAKER_04]: My industry is not on social media.

[00:25:27] [SPEAKER_04]: Or my company has a website.

[00:25:30] [SPEAKER_04]: Forget it.

[00:25:31] [SPEAKER_04]: Sorry.

[00:25:32] [SPEAKER_04]: It's got to be you, the brand.

[00:25:34] [SPEAKER_04]: Because here's the whole deal.

[00:25:35] [SPEAKER_04]: Post-COVID, we have become very authentic.

[00:25:39] [SPEAKER_04]: And it's become very difficult because it's a very fake world.

[00:25:41] [SPEAKER_04]: Because of AI, because of all the automation tools, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:25:44] [SPEAKER_04]: So we have to be absolutely laser focused in developing a brand.

[00:25:51] [SPEAKER_04]: The number of leads that I get from my business that come in by way of LinkedIn is mind-blowing.

[00:25:59] [SPEAKER_04]: Every day, not every day.

[00:26:00] [SPEAKER_04]: I bet probably three days a week, three times a week, I get a very qualified lead that comes in to me by way of LinkedIn.

[00:26:08] [SPEAKER_04]: Now, it may not come in directly from LinkedIn.

[00:26:10] [SPEAKER_04]: In other words, I just had this situation.

[00:26:12] [SPEAKER_04]: I had somebody call me just about an hour ago.

[00:26:17] [SPEAKER_04]: And I haven't had a chance to call back, which I feel bad, but I just haven't.

[00:26:22] [SPEAKER_04]: And I know they found out about me by way of LinkedIn.

[00:26:26] [SPEAKER_04]: So it's, and this whole thing, your brand has to be on message.

[00:26:32] [SPEAKER_04]: Has to be on message.

[00:26:34] [SPEAKER_04]: And this is what's key.

[00:26:36] [SPEAKER_04]: You can't shotgun around.

[00:26:39] [SPEAKER_04]: Now, I'm probably guilty of being too focused.

[00:26:42] [SPEAKER_04]: My LinkedIn profile, my LinkedIn is all business, business, business.

[00:26:46] [SPEAKER_04]: I suppose I could put some personal stuff in there.

[00:26:48] [SPEAKER_04]: I just, I just haven't.

[00:26:50] [SPEAKER_04]: But I'm all in on LinkedIn.

[00:26:52] [SPEAKER_04]: And that's my platform.

[00:26:56] [SPEAKER_04]: In other words, for my business, because I'm also a speaker, it's LinkedIn and YouTube.

[00:27:01] [SPEAKER_04]: Facebook is way down on the page.

[00:27:03] [SPEAKER_04]: Instagram's way down on the page.

[00:27:05] [SPEAKER_04]: TikTok.

[00:27:06] [SPEAKER_04]: My staff tells me I have a TikTok channel.

[00:27:09] [SPEAKER_04]: I've never seen it.

[00:27:10] [SPEAKER_04]: But, you know, they say, well, the stuff we put on LinkedIn, we put out there on TikTok.

[00:27:14] [SPEAKER_04]: But yeah, I mean, personal brand, absolutely key.

[00:27:17] [SPEAKER_04]: Because think about it.

[00:27:18] [SPEAKER_04]: This is your ability to communicate your opinion.

[00:27:24] [SPEAKER_04]: Now, I share information about sales, but I share my opinion about sales.

[00:27:30] [SPEAKER_04]: And that's what's absolutely, that's what I love about what LinkedIn does.

[00:27:34] [SPEAKER_04]: And I can engage with people.

[00:27:36] [SPEAKER_04]: That's the other key piece.

[00:27:37] [SPEAKER_04]: Don't post and ghost.

[00:27:39] [SPEAKER_04]: If you post and ghost, why are you even posting?

[00:27:43] [SPEAKER_04]: Post and engage.

[00:27:44] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it doesn't take more than 10.

[00:27:46] [SPEAKER_04]: If I spend 10 minutes a day on LinkedIn, I'd be amazed.

[00:27:54] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[00:27:55] [SPEAKER_04]: And I've got over 300,000 followers on LinkedIn.

[00:27:59] [SPEAKER_04]: I have 80 some thousand people just in my LinkedIn newsletter, which is separate from my followers.

[00:28:06] [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, probably there's a lot more.

[00:28:07] [SPEAKER_04]: I don't know.

[00:28:08] [SPEAKER_04]: But I mean, and I spend maybe 10, maybe 15 minutes a day on LinkedIn.

[00:28:13] [SPEAKER_04]: That's it.

[00:28:14] [SPEAKER_04]: But the amount of money it generates for my company, how could I not spend 15 minutes on it?

[00:28:20] [SPEAKER_04]: Hmm.

[00:28:22] [SPEAKER_02]: And Mark, what I want for other people listening, look, it's easy for some of us to look and go, yeah, but you're Mark Hunter.

[00:28:31] [SPEAKER_02]: Like everybody knows you.

[00:28:33] [SPEAKER_02]: You've been on stage and all this.

[00:28:34] [SPEAKER_02]: But for all of us, we have this platform that when we show up, much like going to a networking event, we show up, we talk, we post, we listen, we comment, and we show up week after week after week.

[00:28:51] [SPEAKER_02]: Like what happens is people will, and we hear this a lot.

[00:28:55] [SPEAKER_02]: They go, oh, I see you everywhere because they see us all over LinkedIn commenting on other people's posts, our posts.

[00:29:03] [SPEAKER_02]: And even, oh, I feel like I already know you because of LinkedIn.

[00:29:07] [SPEAKER_02]: And what happens is when you make calls, I know like Chris Dunn, one of our clients has this great story, he sent an email to one of his prospects.

[00:29:14] [SPEAKER_02]: And the guy responded like, heck yeah, Chris, let's meet.

[00:29:17] [SPEAKER_02]: I feel like I already know you because of everything you post on LinkedIn.

[00:29:21] [SPEAKER_02]: Like that differentiator is huge value.

[00:29:26] [SPEAKER_04]: It is absolutely huge because they do.

[00:29:28] [SPEAKER_04]: They, I think we shorten the sales process when we actually do engage.

[00:29:33] [SPEAKER_04]: And more importantly, people will sit there and say, yeah, you're right.

[00:29:36] [SPEAKER_04]: Oh, Mark, you've been, you speak all over the world.

[00:29:39] [SPEAKER_04]: Hey, here's the thing.

[00:29:40] [SPEAKER_04]: I was talking to somebody who I had met on LinkedIn and CEO of a company.

[00:29:46] [SPEAKER_04]: And I thought the company had 20 or 30 employees at least.

[00:29:49] [SPEAKER_04]: I was just thinking, you know, person said they had one employee besides themselves.

[00:29:57] [SPEAKER_04]: Whoa.

[00:29:58] [SPEAKER_04]: But the image they were casting and the content and it just, just everything.

[00:30:03] [SPEAKER_04]: It was like, I mean, I just figured that the business model that they had, there had to be 20 or 30 employees.

[00:30:08] [SPEAKER_04]: And there was one other person besides the CEO.

[00:30:11] [SPEAKER_04]: You see now, is that faking?

[00:30:13] [SPEAKER_04]: No, it's not faking.

[00:30:14] [SPEAKER_04]: It's just that this person had been able to cast such a vision, such an image that it was absolutely cool.

[00:30:23] [SPEAKER_04]: That's why you can't, you can't live.

[00:30:27] [SPEAKER_04]: You know, you, you know, you, you know, you put your seat.

[00:30:31] [SPEAKER_04]: Okay.

[00:30:31] [SPEAKER_04]: Everybody puts their seatbelts on now.

[00:30:33] [SPEAKER_04]: But there was a time when people didn't wear seatbelts.

[00:30:36] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, we had a Buick.

[00:30:37] [SPEAKER_01]: Back when we had Buicks.

[00:30:38] [SPEAKER_04]: We never knew.

[00:30:39] [SPEAKER_04]: Back when you had Buicks.

[00:30:40] [SPEAKER_04]: Oh, wow.

[00:30:40] [SPEAKER_04]: There you go.

[00:30:41] [SPEAKER_04]: There you go.

[00:30:41] [SPEAKER_04]: Or maybe, maybe an Oldsmobile.

[00:30:43] [SPEAKER_04]: An Oldsmobile.

[00:30:44] [SPEAKER_04]: And, and so you didn't put your seatbelt.

[00:30:46] [SPEAKER_04]: And, and, and, and I think we're, we're quickly crossing this threshold with LinkedIn.

[00:30:51] [SPEAKER_04]: You have to have a LinkedIn presence.

[00:30:55] [SPEAKER_04]: And, and it doesn't have to be you.

[00:30:57] [SPEAKER_04]: This is what I love about what fist bump is all about.

[00:31:00] [SPEAKER_04]: It's got to be your voice.

[00:31:01] [SPEAKER_04]: It's got to be authentic.

[00:31:02] [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, full disclosure.

[00:31:04] [SPEAKER_04]: I don't put my own posts out there.

[00:31:06] [SPEAKER_04]: I have a person who does that for me, but it's all my voice.

[00:31:09] [SPEAKER_04]: All my voice.

[00:31:10] [SPEAKER_04]: It's all genuine to me.

[00:31:12] [SPEAKER_04]: But she actually put, she puts them out there.

[00:31:15] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[00:31:16] [SPEAKER_01]: So I want to connect, connect the dots on a few points here.

[00:31:20] [SPEAKER_01]: And, and tell me if I'm, am I hearing this right?

[00:31:23] [SPEAKER_01]: I think overall, right.

[00:31:25] [SPEAKER_01]: If your goal is quality over quantity.

[00:31:28] [SPEAKER_01]: And I know we were going to talk about high quality prospects here in just a minute.

[00:31:32] [SPEAKER_01]: If you, if you could know, Hey, and I'm going through this exercise in my company right now is identifying our top 1000 prospects that we would like to be involved with.

[00:31:43] [SPEAKER_01]: So if we understand those, and then we start taking the time to understand them and do the things we, you know, hunt through and find out about them, learn about them.

[00:31:52] [SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't matter that we have 300,000 LinkedIn followers.

[00:31:55] [SPEAKER_01]: What it matters is ideally we have a thousand or a thousand LinkedIn followers from those thousand companies that are there.

[00:32:02] [SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[00:32:02] [SPEAKER_01]: So it goes back.

[00:32:03] [SPEAKER_01]: So I think a lot of times where it's like, Oh crap.

[00:32:05] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I don't have 300,000 followers or 10,000 followers or whatever.

[00:32:09] [SPEAKER_01]: LinkedIn is not going to work.

[00:32:11] [SPEAKER_01]: No, it's first of all, knowing who you want to be connected with on LinkedIn.

[00:32:15] [SPEAKER_01]: And again, going back to that quality aspect of it and then putting it there.

[00:32:20] [SPEAKER_01]: And then I liked what you said.

[00:32:22] [SPEAKER_01]: I made a note here about opinions, right?

[00:32:26] [SPEAKER_01]: If you really understand that thousand or whatever your sizes of your market, those opinions are going to have way more impact than if you're trying to spray and pray with an opinion to anybody and everybody.

[00:32:39] [SPEAKER_01]: Is that, did I connect the dots there?

[00:32:42] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[00:32:43] [SPEAKER_04]: You connected the dots and I'm even going to push back on the thousand.

[00:32:47] [SPEAKER_04]: I have a company that I do work with and they identified 1800, about 1850 or something like that meeting planners and key people in my spot that I could be speaking to.

[00:33:00] [SPEAKER_04]: These are companies that I could be speaking to associations.

[00:33:02] [SPEAKER_04]: About 1850.

[00:33:07] [SPEAKER_04]: I haven't even looked at the list.

[00:33:10] [SPEAKER_04]: Because I'm too busy focused in on maybe five or 10 at a time.

[00:33:15] [SPEAKER_04]: That's it.

[00:33:15] [SPEAKER_04]: That's it.

[00:33:16] [SPEAKER_04]: That's it.

[00:33:16] [SPEAKER_04]: You're really micro.

[00:33:18] [SPEAKER_04]: I am micromanaging.

[00:33:20] [SPEAKER_04]: But what this does is this allows me that any of these people who I call, I know I can help them.

[00:33:26] [SPEAKER_04]: I know.

[00:33:27] [SPEAKER_04]: I know I can help them.

[00:33:29] [SPEAKER_04]: There is no ifs, ands or buts about it.

[00:33:32] [SPEAKER_04]: I know I can help them.

[00:33:34] [SPEAKER_04]: And that's prospecting to me.

[00:33:38] [SPEAKER_04]: What I do is really understand this.

[00:33:42] [SPEAKER_04]: If I have the ability to help someone, if I have the ability to help you, Tom, or you, Brandon, I owe it to either or both of you to reach out to you.

[00:33:50] [SPEAKER_04]: And if I did not, I'm doing myself.

[00:33:52] [SPEAKER_04]: I'm not.

[00:33:53] [SPEAKER_04]: No, I'm not doing myself.

[00:33:54] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I'm doing myself a disservice.

[00:33:55] [SPEAKER_04]: But I'm doing you a real disservice.

[00:33:57] [SPEAKER_04]: So I owe it to them.

[00:33:58] [SPEAKER_04]: So, yeah, I have 1,850.

[00:34:01] [SPEAKER_04]: But I couldn't put all of those into my funnel.

[00:34:06] [SPEAKER_04]: There's no way.

[00:34:08] [SPEAKER_04]: They are probably connected with me on LinkedIn.

[00:34:12] [SPEAKER_04]: Great.

[00:34:13] [SPEAKER_04]: Love it.

[00:34:14] [SPEAKER_04]: Love it.

[00:34:14] [SPEAKER_04]: So they're hopefully gaining content from me.

[00:34:19] [SPEAKER_04]: Some of them may be on my email list.

[00:34:22] [SPEAKER_04]: I don't know.

[00:34:23] [SPEAKER_01]: I think that's great, right?

[00:34:26] [SPEAKER_01]: Because I really like this micro-nitching, if you want to call it that, whether it's 10 or whatever.

[00:34:32] [SPEAKER_01]: Who do I want to work with in the next 90 days?

[00:34:35] [SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[00:34:36] [SPEAKER_01]: And then in the next 90 days, you might have another 10 or the next 30 days or whatever the right cadence is.

[00:34:41] [SPEAKER_01]: But you're still really – I mean, you talk about efficiency and you talk about depth.

[00:34:49] [SPEAKER_01]: That's no matter – as soon as you go broader, you're going to lose your depth, right?

[00:34:52] [SPEAKER_01]: So you go –

[00:34:53] [SPEAKER_04]: I'm not going to be able to be in touch.

[00:34:55] [SPEAKER_04]: I'm not going to be able to stay in touch with them.

[00:34:56] [SPEAKER_04]: I'll share an example.

[00:34:59] [SPEAKER_04]: There was a rather large opportunity because this is something else that we have to keep in mind when it comes to prospects.

[00:35:05] [SPEAKER_04]: What's the size of the opportunity?

[00:35:08] [SPEAKER_04]: And there's a number of different ways to measure.

[00:35:10] [SPEAKER_04]: You know, what's the business you can get from them?

[00:35:12] [SPEAKER_04]: What's the upsell?

[00:35:14] [SPEAKER_04]: What's the cross-sell?

[00:35:15] [SPEAKER_04]: Can they refer you?

[00:35:16] [SPEAKER_04]: Are they grow – all these various things.

[00:35:17] [SPEAKER_04]: But, you know, so a smaller business – I might prospect you seven or eight times.

[00:35:26] [SPEAKER_04]: I'm not hearing anything.

[00:35:27] [SPEAKER_04]: I'm not saying – fine, fine.

[00:35:29] [SPEAKER_04]: Move on.

[00:35:29] [SPEAKER_04]: There was a large company that I knew I wanted to do business with.

[00:35:34] [SPEAKER_04]: It was 46 touches over 18 months.

[00:35:37] [SPEAKER_04]: 46 touches over 18 months.

[00:35:39] [SPEAKER_04]: Now, what's interesting is it was actually more than 46 touches because I know that person was looking at my LinkedIn profile on more than a few occasions.

[00:35:51] [SPEAKER_04]: But it took me 46 times a voicemail, email, some social media touches, plus a whole sundry of ones where I knew they were snooping around because either this person or other people in their company were looking at my profile, looking at my stuff.

[00:36:07] [SPEAKER_04]: Very interesting.

[00:36:08] [SPEAKER_02]: You know, I think one of the things with LinkedIn too, and then I want to move on on LinkedIn a bit.

[00:36:15] [SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, I had a call a few weeks ago.

[00:36:19] [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know, three weeks, six weeks, something.

[00:36:23] [SPEAKER_02]: I actually started with a direct message on LinkedIn.

[00:36:26] [SPEAKER_02]: And when it moved to a call, what she said was, oh, I've been watching your show for the last several months.

[00:36:34] [SPEAKER_02]: I had no idea.

[00:36:36] [SPEAKER_02]: But it was watching your show for the last several months.

[00:36:38] [SPEAKER_02]: And now I want to talk about this.

[00:36:40] [SPEAKER_02]: When she was ready, but my – she said, you know, I've been listening to your show.

[00:36:46] [SPEAKER_02]: I looked at the content that you publish.

[00:36:49] [SPEAKER_02]: And now I want to talk.

[00:36:51] [SPEAKER_02]: And I think that speaks to what you're saying as well is that when they're not ready, they may not be responding to our calls.

[00:36:57] [SPEAKER_02]: They may not be responding to our emails.

[00:36:59] [SPEAKER_02]: But when you have this content system going on, they're always kind of consuming.

[00:37:04] [SPEAKER_02]: And as you said, you can always kind of see, at least if they don't turn on their privacy, you could see, like, oh, they came back.

[00:37:12] [SPEAKER_02]: They came back and looked at my profile.

[00:37:14] [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, they came back and looked at my profile again.

[00:37:15] [SPEAKER_02]: Like, win for me.

[00:37:17] [SPEAKER_04]: Right.

[00:37:17] [SPEAKER_04]: You know, it's funny because this one was 46 touches.

[00:37:20] [SPEAKER_04]: When I did finally get in touch with them, when I did finally have some conversations, we closed the deal in about three weeks.

[00:37:26] [SPEAKER_04]: About three weeks, we closed the deal.

[00:37:29] [SPEAKER_04]: Significant, significant, significant opportunity.

[00:37:32] [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, it's absolutely.

[00:37:34] [SPEAKER_04]: I had a situation where there was a gentleman who I went to college with years ago.

[00:37:39] [SPEAKER_04]: Maybe I should blame him for those speeding tickets I got.

[00:37:41] [SPEAKER_04]: But he's the CEO of a company.

[00:37:44] [SPEAKER_04]: I didn't know that.

[00:37:45] [SPEAKER_04]: I totally lost touch with him.

[00:37:46] [SPEAKER_04]: Totally lost touch.

[00:37:47] [SPEAKER_04]: He reached out to me about a year and a half ago and hired me for a fair amount of work.

[00:37:55] [SPEAKER_04]: And because he had been following me that entire time on LinkedIn.

[00:38:00] [SPEAKER_04]: For years.

[00:38:01] [SPEAKER_04]: Wow.

[00:38:03] [SPEAKER_04]: Not bad.

[00:38:06] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:38:06] [SPEAKER_02]: That's good stuff.

[00:38:09] [SPEAKER_02]: Tom, we've got, there's a lot of questions in here.

[00:38:11] [SPEAKER_02]: I think one, I want to say hi to Becky.

[00:38:13] [SPEAKER_02]: Becky Brown.

[00:38:14] [SPEAKER_02]: Hopefully she's still there.

[00:38:15] [SPEAKER_02]: She said hi from Durham.

[00:38:16] [SPEAKER_02]: She and I have been in class together the last two days.

[00:38:19] [SPEAKER_02]: Plus, we've become friends on LinkedIn.

[00:38:21] [SPEAKER_02]: And yesterday was the first time that we were able to give each other a hug.

[00:38:25] [SPEAKER_02]: We gave each other a live fist bump.

[00:38:26] [SPEAKER_02]: And then we sat next to each other in our class the last two days at the Dale Carnegie event we're at.

[00:38:33] [SPEAKER_02]: So hi to Becky.

[00:38:35] [SPEAKER_02]: And then there's a couple of questions in there.

[00:38:38] [SPEAKER_02]: One, Mark, was how do you overcome shyness or reservation of creating a personal brand?

[00:38:45] [SPEAKER_02]: You see that one there, Tom?

[00:38:46] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:38:47] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[00:38:47] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[00:38:48] [SPEAKER_04]: That's a great question.

[00:38:50] [SPEAKER_04]: Here's the whole thing.

[00:38:50] [SPEAKER_04]: You just start putting out content, maybe articles or content about your industry.

[00:38:57] [SPEAKER_04]: And you just add a sentence or two.

[00:38:59] [SPEAKER_04]: You just add a little bit.

[00:39:02] [SPEAKER_04]: You know, I don't think people really know that much about me from my LinkedIn profile.

[00:39:08] [SPEAKER_04]: They don't know I'm married.

[00:39:10] [SPEAKER_04]: I've got kids.

[00:39:11] [SPEAKER_04]: I've got grandkids.

[00:39:13] [SPEAKER_04]: I suppose it shows where I live, Dallas, Texas, but it doesn't really say a whole lot else.

[00:39:18] [SPEAKER_04]: So, I mean, you know, you don't have to reveal tremendous amounts.

[00:39:23] [SPEAKER_04]: Here's the deal.

[00:39:24] [SPEAKER_04]: What you're doing is you're revealing three things.

[00:39:28] [SPEAKER_04]: One, you're revealing a level of expertise.

[00:39:32] [SPEAKER_04]: Two, you're revealing your desire to exchange ideas, engage.

[00:39:41] [SPEAKER_04]: And three, you're demonstrating that you care about other people.

[00:39:46] [SPEAKER_04]: Because that's why you're doing the first two.

[00:39:49] [SPEAKER_04]: And that's what your goal is of social media.

[00:39:53] [SPEAKER_04]: At least that's really, you know, because I view every time I post something, hopefully this is going to benefit somebody.

[00:40:00] [SPEAKER_04]: Hopefully this is going to benefit.

[00:40:01] [SPEAKER_04]: And it's going to create a conversation.

[00:40:03] [SPEAKER_04]: Whether or not it gets business out of it, don't know.

[00:40:06] [SPEAKER_04]: Don't know.

[00:40:08] [SPEAKER_04]: But I know if I do this or not, it will.

[00:40:12] [SPEAKER_02]: Was it a Zig Ziglar message of people don't care what you know until they know that you care for someone else?

[00:40:19] [SPEAKER_02]: But that's what I heard.

[00:40:21] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[00:40:21] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[00:40:22] [SPEAKER_04]: I think it is.

[00:40:22] [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, Zig passed away 10 or 12 years ago now.

[00:40:27] [SPEAKER_04]: But his content, his ideas still resonate 100% today.

[00:40:32] [SPEAKER_04]: You've got to care about the other person.

[00:40:34] [SPEAKER_04]: This comes back to what sales.

[00:40:35] [SPEAKER_04]: This Bob, not Bob Britton, but this other Bob who sat me down and said,

[00:40:41] [SPEAKER_04]: you've got to put people first.

[00:40:44] [SPEAKER_04]: Sales is what we do for people, not to people.

[00:40:48] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[00:40:49] [SPEAKER_01]: So Brandon, what was the next question that you wanted to get here before?

[00:40:52] [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, you know, actually, I think, I mean, he, Doug was asking about speaking to having someone post and share your content in the sales center voice or in your voice.

[00:41:03] [SPEAKER_02]: And then I do, before we run out of time, I want to get to closing and closing at that with value and closing at full price.

[00:41:09] [SPEAKER_02]: Because Mark's really good at that.

[00:41:11] [SPEAKER_02]: And I think we got to get that out to people.

[00:41:13] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[00:41:14] [SPEAKER_04]: Let me answer Doug's questions.

[00:41:18] [SPEAKER_04]: Every piece of content is my voice, my content.

[00:41:22] [SPEAKER_04]: I do not allow somebody else to respond to make comments.

[00:41:27] [SPEAKER_04]: I actually do that.

[00:41:28] [SPEAKER_04]: That's my authentic, that's my authentic nature.

[00:41:31] [SPEAKER_04]: People say, you know, you can get some.

[00:41:33] [SPEAKER_04]: No, that's just my human nature.

[00:41:35] [SPEAKER_04]: I care.

[00:41:36] [SPEAKER_04]: If somebody cares about posting something, that's why a lot of times in my comments or posts, there was somebody who posted the other day.

[00:41:45] [SPEAKER_04]: Or I posted and they commented and I said, by the way, we haven't talked in ages.

[00:41:51] [SPEAKER_04]: We got to connect.

[00:41:53] [SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, we got a phone call.

[00:41:54] [SPEAKER_04]: There was another person who said, man, we need to connect for breakfast or coffee.

[00:41:58] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, we do.

[00:41:59] [SPEAKER_04]: So, I mean, I, again, I, and you know what I love about this is I may get 10 or 20 comments on a LinkedIn post.

[00:42:07] [SPEAKER_04]: And there may be one in there where I say, hey, wow, why do you have to talk to the ages?

[00:42:10] [SPEAKER_04]: And we need to get caught up.

[00:42:13] [SPEAKER_04]: Let's grab time for breakfast.

[00:42:14] [SPEAKER_04]: You know what's interesting?

[00:42:15] [SPEAKER_04]: Other people probably see that and say, wow, this Mark guy is pretty personable.

[00:42:20] [SPEAKER_04]: Well, that person just happens to be in Dallas, happens to be a person I know and a lot of people from all over the world.

[00:42:26] [SPEAKER_04]: But it's a little bit of the way that I allow connectivity to happen.

[00:42:34] [SPEAKER_04]: And it's also with kind of how my signature is.

[00:42:37] [SPEAKER_04]: I don't do it all the time.

[00:42:38] [SPEAKER_04]: But I always write thanks at the end of every post, every comment.

[00:42:42] [SPEAKER_04]: So I'm sure thanks.

[00:42:43] [SPEAKER_04]: And then I'll go, thanks.

[00:42:45] [SPEAKER_04]: And most of all, dot, dot, dot, great selling.

[00:42:47] [SPEAKER_04]: And that's just kind of my tag line.

[00:42:50] [SPEAKER_04]: That's just kind of my tag line.

[00:42:53] [SPEAKER_01]: And it just works.

[00:42:57] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:43:00] [SPEAKER_01]: All right, Brandon.

[00:43:01] [SPEAKER_01]: So with the time we have left, do we want to dig into, you know, kind of using, you know, how do you use some of these techniques as we get farther down the sales cycle?

[00:43:11] [SPEAKER_01]: How do we avoid discounting?

[00:43:12] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, how do we use this to get deals over there?

[00:43:15] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think I do because I think I know Mark is so good at this and so much of his content is around that.

[00:43:24] [SPEAKER_02]: You know, Mark, we talked about in our agenda, like what are some of the strategies to ensure or to support that you don't have to discount at close?

[00:43:33] [SPEAKER_02]: And I think right now, because everything's so competitive, a lot of sellers, like they're so quick to go to discount to get the deal.

[00:43:40] [SPEAKER_02]: And you often say like, no, you don't you don't have to do that if you start early and continue with the value proposition and the value conversations.

[00:43:52] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, don't there's no need to discount.

[00:43:54] [SPEAKER_04]: Here's the deal.

[00:43:56] [SPEAKER_04]: I'm going to share with you a couple of very quick strategies.

[00:43:59] [SPEAKER_04]: Each one evolves around this.

[00:44:01] [SPEAKER_04]: You never put a price across the table without legs attached.

[00:44:04] [SPEAKER_04]: People who sit there and send email the proposal.

[00:44:07] [SPEAKER_04]: No, no, no, no.

[00:44:08] [SPEAKER_04]: They say, hey, would you just email?

[00:44:09] [SPEAKER_04]: OK, but then, you know what?

[00:44:11] [SPEAKER_04]: Hey, I got I got the proposal ready, but I got a couple of questions.

[00:44:15] [SPEAKER_04]: Can we get on the phone for a minute before I send you the proposal?

[00:44:18] [SPEAKER_04]: See, the idea is I want to give you the proposal looking at you.

[00:44:21] [SPEAKER_04]: I want to go eyeball and eyeball because I'm going to get feedback.

[00:44:24] [SPEAKER_04]: I'm going to get conversation.

[00:44:26] [SPEAKER_01]: Strategy number two is this.

[00:44:28] [SPEAKER_01]: Hey, quickly, Mark, before you leave that one.

[00:44:30] [SPEAKER_01]: When you do that, do you then go through the proposal?

[00:44:33] [SPEAKER_01]: You ask them the questions and then go through the proposal on that call?

[00:44:36] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I'm going to send them the PDF just like 30 seconds before the call.

[00:44:42] [SPEAKER_04]: OK, I know.

[00:44:42] [SPEAKER_04]: Hey, I know I'm sending this to you right now.

[00:44:45] [SPEAKER_04]: We're not going to try to go through this.

[00:44:47] [SPEAKER_04]: Let's cover the high spots.

[00:44:49] [SPEAKER_04]: First of all, let's talk about the issues.

[00:44:51] [SPEAKER_04]: Let's talk about why why we're here.

[00:44:53] [SPEAKER_04]: And I always come back and I talk about the problem, the pain, the issues that they have,

[00:44:59] [SPEAKER_04]: because I got to get them really understanding that's an issue.

[00:45:02] [SPEAKER_04]: Best example of this is there was a company that was getting ready to do business with.

[00:45:08] [SPEAKER_04]: It was absolutely a perfect fit, matched everything.

[00:45:12] [SPEAKER_04]: VP of sales was ready to have me come in, speak to them, do some other work with them.

[00:45:17] [SPEAKER_04]: This was going to be great.

[00:45:20] [SPEAKER_04]: And he said, perfect, fine, great.

[00:45:22] [SPEAKER_04]: Because they had two competitors that were coming into their marketplace shortly.

[00:45:27] [SPEAKER_04]: Two competitors that were going to take away a lot of their business

[00:45:29] [SPEAKER_04]: and potentially take away a lot of their salespeople and everyone else.

[00:45:33] [SPEAKER_04]: He said, this is great.

[00:45:34] [SPEAKER_04]: He sends the contract to legal.

[00:45:35] [SPEAKER_04]: Legal gets all upset, takes it to the CEO.

[00:45:38] [SPEAKER_04]: CEO calls me.

[00:45:39] [SPEAKER_04]: I've never talked to the CEO.

[00:45:41] [SPEAKER_04]: Funny thing of this, you can't make this stuff up.

[00:45:45] [SPEAKER_04]: I had literally just gotten off a red eye flight from Sao Paulo, Brazil,

[00:45:50] [SPEAKER_04]: where I'd literally gone down and spent literally one day down there doing a keynote and flying back.

[00:45:55] [SPEAKER_04]: So I did a red eye going down, spoke, red eye coming back.

[00:45:58] [SPEAKER_04]: I literally just got off the plane, just got back to my office.

[00:46:02] [SPEAKER_04]: And boom, this guy calls.

[00:46:04] [SPEAKER_04]: CEO calls.

[00:46:04] [SPEAKER_04]: And he goes, Mark, I see this contract here.

[00:46:07] [SPEAKER_04]: And your fee is way too high.

[00:46:09] [SPEAKER_04]: You're going to have to reduce it.

[00:46:10] [SPEAKER_04]: How much will you reduce it by?

[00:46:13] [SPEAKER_04]: That's, hey, thank you.

[00:46:14] [SPEAKER_04]: Can we say hi, how's the weather?

[00:46:16] [SPEAKER_04]: No, no, no, no.

[00:46:16] [SPEAKER_04]: He jumped.

[00:46:18] [SPEAKER_04]: And I go, and I still remember this to this day.

[00:46:21] [SPEAKER_04]: Because I'm like, oh, crap.

[00:46:23] [SPEAKER_04]: You got about to scramble.

[00:46:24] [SPEAKER_04]: I said, I can't change the value.

[00:46:28] [SPEAKER_04]: All I can change is the answer.

[00:46:32] [SPEAKER_04]: I can't change the price.

[00:46:34] [SPEAKER_04]: All I can do is change the value of what you're going to get out of it.

[00:46:37] [SPEAKER_04]: How much business do you expect to lose from the two new competitors coming into your marketplace next year?

[00:46:44] [SPEAKER_04]: Silence.

[00:46:45] [SPEAKER_04]: Silence.

[00:46:46] [SPEAKER_04]: And I was silent for what seemed like an hour.

[00:46:49] [SPEAKER_04]: Probably fell asleep.

[00:46:51] [SPEAKER_04]: After about five or ten seconds, he comes back and goes, that was good.

[00:46:56] [SPEAKER_04]: You're hired.

[00:46:58] [SPEAKER_04]: Now think about that for a moment.

[00:47:01] [SPEAKER_04]: He was asking me, and I could easily have said, oh, okay, I'll cut this, cut this.

[00:47:05] [SPEAKER_04]: No, I didn't.

[00:47:06] [SPEAKER_04]: I held firm because I knew what the problem was.

[00:47:08] [SPEAKER_04]: They had two new competitors coming in, and the amount of money they were going to spend on me was chump change compared to what they could lose.

[00:47:15] [SPEAKER_04]: He goes on to say, he says, Mark, you know what's interesting?

[00:47:19] [SPEAKER_04]: We got a couple of proposals from a couple of others, and they were considerably less than you, but I'm hiring you.

[00:47:26] [SPEAKER_04]: And I said, oh, really?

[00:47:27] [SPEAKER_01]: That's because they discounted when you asked them.

[00:47:31] [SPEAKER_04]: Well, who knows?

[00:47:32] [SPEAKER_04]: But he said, because you understand their problem, and our problem is so big that paying you is a small piece.

[00:47:40] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[00:47:40] [SPEAKER_02]: And what I like about that, Mark, is that you demonstrated that you knew the problem.

[00:47:46] Yes.

[00:47:46] [SPEAKER_02]: By asking a quality question, you didn't get defensive.

[00:47:54] [SPEAKER_02]: You didn't try to justify.

[00:47:57] [SPEAKER_02]: You calmly thought through and went, what do I know about them?

[00:48:00] [SPEAKER_02]: I'm assuming.

[00:48:01] [SPEAKER_02]: What do I know about them?

[00:48:02] [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, they got these two big competitors.

[00:48:04] [SPEAKER_02]: In my early conversations, due diligence, they said, this is the amount of money they're scared that they're going to lose because of the competitors.

[00:48:12] [SPEAKER_03]: Right.

[00:48:13] [SPEAKER_02]: And you just went back and said, this isn't an expense issue.

[00:48:18] [SPEAKER_02]: This is a value issue.

[00:48:20] [SPEAKER_02]: So let's talk about value.

[00:48:22] [SPEAKER_04]: Right.

[00:48:22] [SPEAKER_04]: Because, again, what they were going to pay me and the potential revenue that they could lose in profit and salespeople was huge.

[00:48:29] [SPEAKER_04]: Now, here's the whole strategy that you put around it.

[00:48:33] [SPEAKER_04]: You never develop one proposal.

[00:48:36] [SPEAKER_04]: You develop two proposals.

[00:48:38] [SPEAKER_04]: You always develop two proposals.

[00:48:39] [SPEAKER_04]: I did this the other day.

[00:48:43] [SPEAKER_04]: A company called and we had some negotiation.

[00:48:46] [SPEAKER_04]: We were talking and so forth and get to a plan.

[00:48:49] [SPEAKER_04]: And I put a plan on the table.

[00:48:50] [SPEAKER_04]: And it's a pretty expensive plan.

[00:48:52] [SPEAKER_04]: But it had a lot of things in it.

[00:48:55] [SPEAKER_04]: Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

[00:48:57] [SPEAKER_04]: And I was prepared for them to push back.

[00:49:00] [SPEAKER_04]: I was prepared.

[00:49:01] [SPEAKER_04]: Because if they had pushed back and said, your price is too high.

[00:49:06] [SPEAKER_04]: I was ready, if need be, to go with plan B.

[00:49:11] [SPEAKER_04]: And plan B was a lower price without all these other things in there.

[00:49:16] [SPEAKER_04]: And you know what's interesting?

[00:49:17] [SPEAKER_04]: The lower price thing without all those things in there is more the normal price of what I would charge for that type of engagement.

[00:49:24] [SPEAKER_04]: But here's the deal.

[00:49:25] [SPEAKER_04]: If I just put that across the table to them, they'd say, hey, can you cut your price?

[00:49:31] [SPEAKER_04]: You know, they'd be looking for something.

[00:49:33] [SPEAKER_04]: But because I started off with this higher priced option with everything in there, then when it comes time, if I need you to show this normal one, contrast.

[00:49:45] [SPEAKER_04]: Contrast takes hold.

[00:49:46] [SPEAKER_04]: Now, what's interesting, in this particular situation, this person said, yeah, but could we change this and could you do this?

[00:49:56] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[00:49:57] [SPEAKER_04]: Well, they wound up taking the full price option.

[00:50:01] [SPEAKER_04]: You see, we as salespeople leave far too much on the table.

[00:50:05] [SPEAKER_04]: We leave a lot on the table.

[00:50:06] [SPEAKER_04]: I do a lot of work with software companies and technology companies.

[00:50:11] [SPEAKER_04]: And I go, you know, you've got to make sure that you've got the tech upgrade plan, all the install plans, all the service, all the other things in there in that proposal.

[00:50:23] [SPEAKER_04]: Now, charge them for it.

[00:50:25] [SPEAKER_04]: And let them push back on you.

[00:50:28] [SPEAKER_04]: Let them push back on you.

[00:50:29] [SPEAKER_04]: Do not lower your price and not take anything out.

[00:50:34] [SPEAKER_04]: Because when you lower your price and not take something out, you do two things.

[00:50:38] [SPEAKER_04]: One, you destroy brand value with the customer and you destroy brand value in your own mind.

[00:50:44] [SPEAKER_04]: Because you've now told yourself you don't believe your price.

[00:50:47] [SPEAKER_04]: Whoa.

[00:50:50] [SPEAKER_02]: Go back to mindset.

[00:50:53] [SPEAKER_04]: It's all mindset.

[00:50:55] [SPEAKER_04]: Right, right.

[00:50:56] [SPEAKER_04]: And I'll give you one more strategy.

[00:50:58] [SPEAKER_04]: People are struggling with price.

[00:51:00] [SPEAKER_04]: Take what it is that you sell.

[00:51:02] [SPEAKER_04]: Write the prices down.

[00:51:06] [SPEAKER_04]: Scratch them out and increase them by 50%.

[00:51:09] [SPEAKER_04]: Increase them by 50%.

[00:51:11] [SPEAKER_04]: And put that piece of paper, that document on your mirror in your bathroom, on your desk next to your computer, in your car.

[00:51:20] [SPEAKER_04]: You just focus in on that new higher price that's 50% higher.

[00:51:25] [SPEAKER_04]: And you know what's going to happen?

[00:51:27] [SPEAKER_04]: Very soon you're going to start believing that 50% higher price is the right price.

[00:51:31] [SPEAKER_04]: So when you state your normal price, it's going to seem like a bar.

[00:51:36] [SPEAKER_04]: It's going to seem so cheap.

[00:51:37] [SPEAKER_01]: I also think though you talk about, I think if you create both proposals like you were talking about, and you do that every time, right?

[00:51:45] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:51:46] [SPEAKER_01]: You, even within yourself, you start to understand the value that you are providing and the difference between those, right?

[00:51:54] [SPEAKER_01]: Rather than just giving your, quote, standard proposal, right?

[00:51:57] [SPEAKER_01]: Create a A proposal and a B proposal and understand the difference of the value.

[00:52:03] [SPEAKER_01]: And then basically what you're saying is you don't discount price, you discount value.

[00:52:08] [SPEAKER_01]: So, or reduce value.

[00:52:10] [SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[00:52:10] [SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[00:52:11] [SPEAKER_04]: And see, when you do this higher price option, I find about 25%, 30% of the time, they take the higher price option.

[00:52:17] [SPEAKER_04]: That's great.

[00:52:18] [SPEAKER_04]: Thank you.

[00:52:20] [SPEAKER_04]: And I don't feel bad about it because I'm giving you more work.

[00:52:23] [SPEAKER_04]: I'm giving you more stuff.

[00:52:25] [SPEAKER_04]: But believe me, the value you're going to get is going to be that much higher, that much greater.

[00:52:30] [SPEAKER_02]: Man, for everybody listening, podcast, life show, I mean, just pause for a second.

[00:52:35] [SPEAKER_02]: That is like the coolest mindset hack as well.

[00:52:39] [SPEAKER_02]: So, because you got within there, you've got a closing strategy, right?

[00:52:44] [SPEAKER_02]: You've got a value presentation strategy, and you have your own personal mindset hack that helps you start believing in your own value even more.

[00:52:55] [SPEAKER_02]: Like there's a, that's not just a, oh, here's a closing strategy.

[00:52:59] [SPEAKER_02]: That's like trying to look for the right analogy, man.

[00:53:02] [SPEAKER_02]: That's like a hot fudge sundae.

[00:53:04] [SPEAKER_02]: You don't just have ice cream.

[00:53:05] [SPEAKER_02]: You got hot fudge.

[00:53:06] [SPEAKER_02]: You got whipped cream.

[00:53:07] [SPEAKER_02]: You got peanuts on it.

[00:53:08] [SPEAKER_02]: You can get a cherry if you're into those things, which I'm not.

[00:53:11] [SPEAKER_02]: But that's, that's just rich.

[00:53:15] [SPEAKER_04]: It is.

[00:53:16] [SPEAKER_04]: It is.

[00:53:17] [SPEAKER_04]: And this is, this is the whole piece, but it starts with the mindset.

[00:53:21] [SPEAKER_04]: And this is why I say, in fact, it's funny.

[00:53:24] [SPEAKER_04]: I just did a video on this this morning.

[00:53:28] [SPEAKER_04]: I said the number one challenge we have as salespeople is controlling our time.

[00:53:32] [SPEAKER_04]: Because when we control our time, we control our mind.

[00:53:36] [SPEAKER_04]: And when we control our mind, we control the output.

[00:53:39] [SPEAKER_02]: Hmm.

[00:53:41] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, nevermind.

[00:53:42] [SPEAKER_02]: I got challenged today from Dr. Todd, the value of meditation.

[00:53:49] [SPEAKER_02]: And he said, when you meditate every day, you make better decisions.

[00:53:56] [SPEAKER_02]: Yes.

[00:53:57] [SPEAKER_02]: No other explanation.

[00:53:58] [SPEAKER_02]: Just you make better decisions.

[00:53:59] [SPEAKER_02]: I kind of left it there.

[00:54:01] [SPEAKER_02]: And I thought, man, that, that, that was just.

[00:54:06] [SPEAKER_04]: Quick story on that.

[00:54:08] [SPEAKER_04]: I was working years ago.

[00:54:10] [SPEAKER_04]: He is now retired.

[00:54:11] [SPEAKER_04]: Bob Eckert.

[00:54:12] [SPEAKER_04]: Bob Eckert was the CEO of Mattel Toys.

[00:54:15] [SPEAKER_02]: Another different broad.

[00:54:16] [SPEAKER_02]: Another broad.

[00:54:17] [SPEAKER_02]: I just want to clarify.

[00:54:18] [SPEAKER_02]: Another Bob.

[00:54:18] [SPEAKER_04]: You're right.

[00:54:19] [SPEAKER_04]: You're right.

[00:54:19] [SPEAKER_04]: This is, this is Bob.

[00:54:20] [SPEAKER_02]: Another different Bob.

[00:54:22] [SPEAKER_04]: Bob, Bob Eckert was the president, was the CEO of Mattel Toys.

[00:54:27] [SPEAKER_04]: And I remember doing some work with him.

[00:54:30] [SPEAKER_04]: Bob, and he incredibly gracious, incredibly gracious individual.

[00:54:33] [SPEAKER_04]: I remember we went out to dinner, very nice restaurant.

[00:54:36] [SPEAKER_04]: And remember, he's the gentleman who's got the corporate aircraft and security and all

[00:54:40] [SPEAKER_04]: this sort of stuff.

[00:54:41] [SPEAKER_04]: And we sit down at a very nice restaurant.

[00:54:43] [SPEAKER_04]: He is, is engaging the waitstaff.

[00:54:46] [SPEAKER_04]: Just absolutely nice.

[00:54:47] [SPEAKER_04]: We're doing this meeting in this very posh conference center.

[00:54:51] [SPEAKER_04]: And he's engaging the waitstaff.

[00:54:53] [SPEAKER_04]: He's just very, very courteous.

[00:54:54] [SPEAKER_04]: Very nice.

[00:54:55] [SPEAKER_04]: And I asked Bob, I said, Bob, it.

[00:54:58] [SPEAKER_04]: I, I taken back by really how nice, how courteous you are, you know, people.

[00:55:03] [SPEAKER_04]: And he just kind of shrugged it off.

[00:55:05] [SPEAKER_04]: He said, well, that's just, that's just what my mom told me.

[00:55:07] [SPEAKER_04]: And I said, no, Bob.

[00:55:09] [SPEAKER_04]: He said, okay, here's the deal.

[00:55:11] [SPEAKER_04]: He said, when I'm nice to other people, I make better decisions.

[00:55:18] [SPEAKER_04]: Drop the mic.

[00:55:19] [SPEAKER_04]: Drop the mic.

[00:55:20] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:55:21] [SPEAKER_04]: Now I can share this because it's all public information.

[00:55:24] [SPEAKER_04]: At that time, he was also on the board of directors of McDonald's Corporation.

[00:55:27] [SPEAKER_04]: McDonald's Corporation during a two-year period went through three CEOs.

[00:55:31] [SPEAKER_04]: Think about that as a board of directors.

[00:55:33] [SPEAKER_04]: You go, you, you, three CEOs in the course of about 18 months.

[00:55:38] [SPEAKER_04]: Two, he was CEO of Tell Toys when they're going through some extremely difficult times,

[00:55:43] [SPEAKER_04]: extremely difficult times.

[00:55:46] [SPEAKER_04]: And he served on some other board.

[00:55:48] [SPEAKER_04]: You're talking about a man who was in stress.

[00:55:51] [SPEAKER_04]: You know, you said, I, I'm always courteous because I make better decisions.

[00:55:57] [SPEAKER_01]: I think that's a good way to wrap it up.

[00:55:59] [SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[00:55:59] [SPEAKER_02]: You know what I love about our show too is there's so many times it's, it's the topic

[00:56:05] [SPEAKER_02]: we're talking about.

[00:56:06] [SPEAKER_02]: It's always good.

[00:56:07] [SPEAKER_02]: It's rich.

[00:56:08] [SPEAKER_02]: There's, there's great, you know, our guests bring stuff.

[00:56:09] [SPEAKER_02]: And then there's always this one thing that's like totally out of left, right field.

[00:56:13] [SPEAKER_02]: I guess that guy could get my baseball analogy.

[00:56:15] [SPEAKER_02]: It's totally out of right field, but so, so, so valuable.

[00:56:21] [SPEAKER_02]: Be nice to people because it helps you make better decisions.

[00:56:26] [SPEAKER_01]: There we go.

[00:56:27] [SPEAKER_01]: Love it.

[00:56:28] [SPEAKER_01]: All right.

[00:56:29] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I am going to be nice and say, thank you, Mark.

[00:56:32] [SPEAKER_01]: This was really awesome.

[00:56:33] [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for having me.

[00:56:35] [SPEAKER_01]: Appreciate you being here.

[00:56:37] [SPEAKER_02]: And Tom, before we wrap up, can I really, you know, let everybody know, remember October

[00:56:43] [SPEAKER_02]: 10th at 11 a.m.

[00:56:45] [SPEAKER_02]: Eastern, Mark and I are going to host a webinar together, which I'm very grateful for.

[00:56:51] [SPEAKER_02]: Unfortunately, we don't have the landing page created yet.

[00:56:54] [SPEAKER_02]: So if, if you're, I know it, I feel bad.

[00:56:56] [SPEAKER_02]: I feel bad doing that to Mark and joining us on the webinar, but throw it, throw it in

[00:57:02] [SPEAKER_02]: the comment or go, go to my LinkedIn profile.

[00:57:04] [SPEAKER_02]: Shoot me a DM, go post, you know, comment anywhere.

[00:57:07] [SPEAKER_02]: Just say, Hey, I'm interested.

[00:57:08] [SPEAKER_02]: As soon as we get that landing page up, I will shoot you the link.

[00:57:12] [SPEAKER_02]: I promise.

[00:57:12] [SPEAKER_02]: Or I'll just go register you for you.

[00:57:15] [SPEAKER_02]: So it doesn't take more of your time.

[00:57:17] [SPEAKER_02]: But October 10th at 11 a.m., throw it on your calendar or message me for the link.

[00:57:23] [SPEAKER_02]: And we are going to talk more.

[00:57:25] [SPEAKER_02]: We're going to go deeper into this.

[00:57:26] [SPEAKER_02]: We're going to talk about leveraging LinkedIn.

[00:57:28] [SPEAKER_02]: We're going to talk about your personal brand.

[00:57:30] [SPEAKER_02]: We're going to talk about presenting value, right?

[00:57:33] [SPEAKER_02]: Which is really, really important.

[00:57:34] [SPEAKER_02]: So you don't, you don't discount.

[00:57:36] [SPEAKER_02]: So Mark, as always, thank you so much.

[00:57:39] [SPEAKER_02]: You've, I know you get embarrassed, but you've quickly become one of my, one of my modern

[00:57:43] [SPEAKER_02]: heroes.

[00:57:44] [SPEAKER_02]: I really appreciate how much I learned from you and the time that you give me.

[00:57:48] [SPEAKER_04]: It's just fun.

[00:57:50] [SPEAKER_04]: Follow me on LinkedIn, Mark Hunter, the sales hunter, the website, the sales hunter, you

[00:57:54] [SPEAKER_04]: know, the drill people know how to reach me.

[00:57:59] [SPEAKER_04]: All right.

[00:57:59] [SPEAKER_02]: Let's just re-emphasize that for everybody.

[00:58:02] [SPEAKER_02]: Go to the saleshunter.com, subscribe to his blog, which he does a great job with.

[00:58:07] [SPEAKER_02]: You can go there and subscribe to his podcast.

[00:58:09] [SPEAKER_02]: He actually has two podcasts.

[00:58:11] [SPEAKER_02]: And then if you search Mark Hunter in LinkedIn, he pops up pretty quickly because he has so

[00:58:17] [SPEAKER_02]: many followers.

[00:58:18] [SPEAKER_02]: So you want to make sure that we get that good plug for Mark.

[00:58:22] [SPEAKER_01]: Yep.

[00:58:22] [SPEAKER_01]: And I know Mark, you have to run.

[00:58:24] [SPEAKER_01]: So again, thank you.

[00:58:26] [SPEAKER_01]: And Brandon, get me that link so I can sign up for the webinar.

[00:58:30] [SPEAKER_01]: So I'll get up early.

[00:58:31] [SPEAKER_01]: We will get it done.

[00:58:32] [SPEAKER_01]: All right.

[00:58:33] [SPEAKER_01]: All right.

[00:58:34] [SPEAKER_01]: Thanks everybody.

[00:58:34] [SPEAKER_01]: Great comments.

[00:58:35] [SPEAKER_01]: And we'll see you next week.

[00:58:37] [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for joining us today on Mastering Modern Selling.

[00:58:46] [SPEAKER_00]: If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe for more insights.

[00:58:51] [SPEAKER_00]: Connect with us on social media and leave a review to help us improve.

[00:58:54] [SPEAKER_00]: Stay tuned for our next episode where we will continue to uncover modern strategies shaping

[00:58:59] [SPEAKER_00]: today's business landscape.

[00:59:01] [SPEAKER_00]: Learn more about Fistbump in our concierge service at getfistbumps.com.

[00:59:05] [SPEAKER_00]: Mastering modern revenue creation with Fistbump, where relationships, social, and AI meet

[00:59:10] [SPEAKER_00]: in the buyer-centric age.

[00:59:12] [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.