A Mind for Sales: Daily Habits and Practical Strategies for Sales Success

By Mark Hunter, CSP

For salespeople feeling stressed and disappointed that their customers don’t want to hear from them, this guide is the key to developing the mindset and habits required to reach a new level of sales success.

The world of sales can be tough, so it’s easy to get discouraged when the rejections start piling up and your customers stop answering the phone. This allows the wrong thought patterns to start developing, soon you aren’t making quotas and then you begin looking at job listings waiting for your next downfall.

Sales expert Mark Hunter can relate as his start to sales was discouraging. The lessons he’s learned throughout his career are revealed in A Mind for Sales. He discovered that sales can be incredibly rewarding, such as customers calling you for advice, thanking you for improving their business, and referring you to colleagues. The difference is simply developing mindset and momentum habits.

In A Mind for Sales, you’ll learn how to:

• Feel energized by renewed purpose and success in your sales role by following the success cycle approach.
• Receive practical strategies on how to change your mindset and succeed in sales.
• Learn the daily habits needed to maximize productivity and make hitting the ground running strategy #1.
• Gain real-world insights from Hunter’s vast experience as a successful sales professional and sales coach.

Let this book inspire and prepare you to form the new habits you need to succeed and to realize the incredible rewards that a successful life in sales makes possible.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thomas Nelson
• Release date: Mar 31, 2020
• ISBN: 9781400215768

Mark Hunter, CSP

Mark Hunter, known as, "The Sales Hunter," is globally recognized for his expertise in sales leadership. He specializes in business development and guiding organizations to find and retain high-quality prospects without discounting their fee. His ability to inspire sales teams to create self motivating and integrity driven cultures, makes Mark Hunter a highly sought after keynote speaker, consultant and coach. Mark has taken his vision for sales leadership to more than 25 countries and 5 continents where he leads and consults with companies ranging from small startups to global giants.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

Book preview

FOREWORD

THE MOST VALUABLE real estate you will ever own is the six inches between your ears. The truth for most people is that those six inches containing the crinkly, pinkish-gray matter oftentimes owns them. Over time, your mind picks up all kinds of infections, like negative beliefs and disempowering ideas, all the while rationalizing a set of excuses that prevents you from becoming your best-ever self. When you work in a role that requires that you do hard things and where you are greeted with a no more frequently than any other role in business, your mindset is the critical factor to your success. Your mindset is also, potentially, your greatest asset.

In my first book, I wrote a math equation for success in sales. Here is the equation I scribbled: Mindset + Skill Sets + Tool Kits = sales success. A reader tweeted me that my math was bad. He suggested that the real equation is (Skill Sets + Tool Kits) x Mindset = sales success. The reader was right; mindset isn’t additive. Your mindset is a multiplier. A Mind for Sales is also a multiplier, providing you with a set of recipes for creating and sustaining an indomitable mindset, the kind necessary if you are going to succeed in sales.

Here is why you should read this book and take action. Over the last decade and a half, the chattering class in sales development have placed too much of an emphasis on increasing sales by using the new sales tools. While you need tools (it is part of the equation above), they provide efficiency—not effectiveness. No single tool in your sales stack is going to motivate you to do good work, nor will it create a client preference to work with you instead of your competitor. In the world we now occupy, you are the value proposition and the compelling, differentiated value your dream client is deciding to add to their team, and no technology can substitute for who you are.

During the same period that technology has attracted a lot of attention and captured a lot of salespeople’s time and attention, there have also been experts who have suggested that relationships are no longer important in sales, an idea I can’t imagine being possible outside of transactional sales. In a human endeavor in which you help people make changes and leave their current state for a better future state, how can sales not be about people? Sales is an other-oriented endeavor, not the smarmy, selfish selling of fifty years ago. Hunter (those of us who know and love him call him Hunter) opposes this idea, believing it misses the point of what the best salespeople do: they are not only known, liked, and trusted, but they also create real value for their clients.

Throughout this book that you hold in your hands, you will find another foundational set of beliefs that lead to greater success in sales. Those beliefs are about who you are and less about what you do. Selling effectively requires integrity, and those who don’t possess it don’t last long. You are going to be encouraged to build your approach on helping your clients achieve better results—including results they didn’t know were possible for them.

If you want a sales stack for greater effectiveness, you can’t do any better than a foundation of powerful beliefs, beliefs Hunter provides—along with strong direction as to how to act on them.

When I read this book, it wasn’t what I expected. But after I finished it, A Mind for Sales is exactly the book I should have expected from my friend, Mark Hunter. As I reflected back on the many times we have spoken on the same platform, I realized I have never seen him speak to an audience without a focus on mindset. As he writes here, Sales is leadership and leadership is sales. The statement is not only true, it’s also a good jumping off point here, as your mindset is a matter of your personal leadership. Here you will find the practical and tactical strategies necessary to build a mind for sales.

I can’t possibly end my thoughts on the importance of this book without mentioning Mondays. A good portion of the first part of this book is about being productive by planning, starting your Monday on Sunday, and preparing to get early wins at the start of the week. Starting your week with this kind of mindset will transform you—and it will transform your results.

—Anthony Iannarino

Author of Eat Their Lunch: Winning Customers Away from Your Competition

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

If not for the contributions of many, there is little chance this book would have ever come together. Writing a book is like going on an uncharted journey to a destination you want to reach but are unsure of how to get there. Each day on the journey, there are unexpected encounters, unplanned delays, and yes, amazing experiences. This sums up what writing a book is like: you have a message you want to share and a goal you want to reach, but each paragraph written is a new experience to be explored and examined closely.

The number of people who have helped me with this book is overwhelming and I want to start by calling out the team at HarperCollins Leadership. It is an honor to work with each of you and in particular, Tim Burgard. From our first meeting in your NYC office to the countless number of emails we’ve exchanged, I cannot say thank you enough for your guidance and support.

The second person I want to thank is Ann Stritt. Ann joined my team and within weeks was thrust into the daunting task of helping gather information, edit and re-edit this book. Along the way, she still managed to juggle every other business task and take care of her kids at home. Thank you, Ann, for your hard work and dedication to this project.

We become like those who we spend time with, and the number of sales experts I get to interact with is, without a doubt, a huge benefit. Years ago, I began sharing sales and business ideas with three individuals. Trust me when I say the sharing of ideas never ends. Anthony Iannarino, Mike Weinberg, and Jeb Blount, you three are brilliant, and it is a pleasure to dance with each of you.

To my agent, Charlotte Raybourn, you have helped me immensely. Thank you for your calm and patient demeanor. You keep me out of trouble more often than you realize. Your ability to create a plan and execute it is what makes you the best in the industry. Sam Richter, thank you for your patience as a business partner. You keep bringing creative ideas to life and your tenacity for never stopping is contagious. Maybe now that this book is written, I can spend more time with you and the business.

Sales is a lifestyle I enjoy, and yes, you can say I am passionate about it. Sales allows me to spend each day influencing people. I cannot say thank you enough to the thousands of people reading my online content, watching my videos, and sitting in the audience of my presentations. I am blessed to have so many people who value my ideas. It is humbling, to say the least. I hope I do not just meet your expectations but exceed them. If you know me, you know my faith is very important to me. My prayer each day is for the Lord to give me the strength, wisdom, and patience to do what I do. Without my faith, there is little doubt I would be able to achieve everything I have, including writing this book.

Finally, a very special thanks to my family. Many years ago, a woman I loved agreed to be my wife. Thank you, Ann Marie. I love you more today than when we were first married. Your support, not only in the business but in raising our kids and keeping things calm, is far more than I could have ever asked for. To our children, Chris and Michelle, and to their spouses and even to their kids, thanks for putting up with me.

INTRODUCTION

I Should Not Be Here

WHEN YOU HEAR about somebody known as The Sales Hunter and realize they have gone as far as trademarking the name, you are likely thinking two things: First, this guy really loves to sell and, second, I wonder what his last name was before he changed it to Hunter? I hate to pop your bubble, but Hunter is my real last name. Thank you, Mom and Dad! And now you are thinking, the name Hunter is the reason why I am in sales. Clearly, I must love to prospect and hunt for customers. Nope! A career in sales was not the profession I wanted to go into. My dream job was advertising, actually. I went to college and took every course I could in advertising and marketing. Upon graduating, I intended to set out on my mission to make Madison Avenue my home.

How close did I get to achieving my dream job? Best I can say is, I had the dream but was never successful with the job. My career plans changed toward the end of my senior year in college. It was not my grades and it was not some amazing internship that altered my path. The change was due to my connection with the Seattle Police Department. These pieces do fit together—let me explain. You see, the Seattle Police Department had a habit of collecting my signature on these small forms. And while signing these papers, we would have conversations. You guessed it, I got my share of tickets (four in total) over the course of about eight weeks. No need to worry, I promise nobody was harmed. It was simply my habit of ignoring speed limits and other regulations that I did not think applied to me.

When you are in college you tend to not worry about your actions, and this is the approach I took with the tickets. I paid them and forgot about them. But the problem was, my insurance company did not forget so quickly. A few months later, I received a letter in the mail, a personal invite of sorts. It was a special offer from my insurance company notifying me I would be in their high-risk pool. My new insurance premium would now be more than the value of the car I was driving.

At this point, being a smart college graduate, I knew what I had to do. I could find a better job, paying double what I was making, or I could find a job that would supply me with a car. It did not take me long to realize finding a job that paid double what I was making was not going to happen. With that option off the table, I came up with the idea of getting a job that supplied me with a car. And you guessed it, that meant a sales job.

So, there it is, how Mark Hunter got into sales—not by choice but by chance due to my driving skills and the Seattle Police Department. Ironically, the traffic tickets changed my future and in a positive way. Thanks to those tickets, far more doors opened than would have had I pursued a career writing lousy copy for local furniture stores.

To say I was an immediate success based on my last name being Hunter would be another bad assumption. My first job in sales might have met my goal of giving me four wheels, but that is about it. I lasted in that job just one year before I was fired. Looking back, I deserved to be let go, because I had zero clue what I was doing. With my newfound confidence in what it takes to succeed, and constant need for a car, I found another sales job. I felt certain this second job would work out well. Wow was that another bad assumption! I lasted a grand total of nine months. Yes, I truly was an overnight success—not in sales, just in finding jobs with cars.

My third sales job is where this sales gig finally began to click in my mind. In my first two jobs, I was focused on the free car and money I was earning. I saw customers merely as a tool to help me achieve my goals of making money. Yes, I had a strong case of commission breath long before I even knew what it was. But the third time around, I began to see sales as being about the customer. Quickly, the results followed. The more I focused on the customer, the more success I had. I look back and I think, why did it take me so long to come up with what is the most basic idea about sales? My failure early on in sales was purely due to my inability to understand what sales is all about—people. Maybe you caught on more quickly than I did?

In my first two sales jobs, I was focused on me. It was all about making money because that is what I thought I needed to do. What is interesting about that period in my life is, the more I focused on myself—the less comfortable I became. The result was zero confidence. It is what I call the inward spiral of the mind, where we allow our mind to tell us something over and over. Each time we hear it, that voice in our head becomes a little larger until it becomes the only thing we hear. This was the path I was on. Unless my mind shifted, I would soon be without a car due to my inability to keep a job.

The shift from being self-focused to customer-focused did not happen overnight. Honestly, it started out as a pretty dim night-light. In time, the light became brighter and the brighter the more success I had. Sales is not a destination. Sales is truly a journey, and I finally realized this journey was all about helping customers.

Today, sales is my life. It has gone way past being a job. I do not even see sales as a profession anymore; it is a lifestyle and one I am proud to be living. I cannot imagine doing anything else. I am so glad my Toyota Corolla SR5 hatchback encouraged me to speed the streets of Seattle. Without all those speeding tickets, I would not be writing this book. I hope the thoughts and tips that have worked for me on developing a mind for sales add value and success to your own sales journey.

SECTION I

Your Mind Drives Your Success

"It’s not about having the right opportunities.

It’s about handling the opportunities right."

—MARK HUNTER

CHAPTER 1

Mondays Are for Selling

Outstanding people have one thing in common: an absolute sense of mission.

—ZIG ZIGLAR

IT IS SUNDAY night, I cannot sleep, and 5:15 a.m. cannot come soon enough. By 6:30, I will have showered, driven forty minutes to work and be at my desk making it happen. I remember those days well. I was working in a very high-stress sales position just outside NYC and loving every minute of the day. I was several years into what was turning out to be a very successful sales career. What began as a nightmare time in sales, had now become a dream—even with multiple cross-country moves. The sales bug bit me hard. I was excited for every telephone call and for the countless sales I would make.

When you are twenty-seven years of age, waking up on your own at 5:15 a.m. is not a normal condition. In conversations with friends, I would mention my Monday morning excitement. They would look at me questioning my sanity, wondering if I either needed medication or should be taking

Reviews for A Mind for Sales

[shadowpawn · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Some quality stuff in this book this is a must for any sales person