Bonus Fireside Chat With Mark Hunter

Yes, good afternoon. I. I am here. How's that. How's that sound?

Mark, we were just gushing about you. You're absolutely. It's just wonderful that you're here with us today.

Well, thank you for having me. I apologize. I was using AirPods to try to get bit better audio quality. But you know what? Sometimes you just got to go with the computer microphone.

Right, Exactly.

With a beautiful voice like that, it doesn't matter. I'll. I'll put that in there.

Mark, what city are you?

Well, thank you so much.

What. What city.

I happen to be in? I was going to say I happen to be right now in Houston. Houston, Texas. Just got back last night from Italy. Jumped on a plane this morning here at Houston for a client event tonight.

What, what is the scuttlebud about Italy and sales leadership? What can you tell us?

Well, I'll tell you what, the scuttlebutt is that sales is without a doubt a global activity. I mean, there's no ifs, ands, or buts about it. I had a chance to speak to about 800 people there on sales. And you know what's absolutely fascinating is the same issues that we have in the United States, wherever you are, maybe you're in Boise, maybe you're in Portland, Maine, maybe you're in Tallahassee, Florida. It's the same as what people have the world over, because sales is about connecting with people. It's about human to human, and that's what makes it special.

And when you spoke to those 800 leaders in Italy, can you share which part of your presentation was focusing on the human connection?

Well, I tell you what, that's what I want to share with the audience right now about, because there's three things that I'm seeing very clearly. You know, we've been talking for a long time about icp, ideal customer profile. And, you know, you think about AI, what does it do? It delivers a tremendous amount of insights and so forth. But there's two other pieces that if you only focus on icp, you may have a lot of people that, wow, okay, hey, I can, I can connect with them. But are they really willing to buy? And that is you got to get to bi buyer intent and then mod the moment of decision. And those are two very distinctly different things. Things we talk about when we talk about the buyer intent. It's. There are signals that they're sending out. There's a lot of AI tools out there that help us deliver buyer intent signals. But let's not kid ourselves. Jumping out to a website or participating in a webinar, that isn't necessarily a strong buyer intent. Buyer intent signals are. Many times they start with something like that, but they have to be cultivated. And Tricia, you know this very well. It's about the network of the relationship. Because then what happens is now I can have the conversation and I really begin to understand the buyer intent as to whether or not there is a need that needs to be solved. Because a lot of people have problems. A lot of people, I got a lot of problems, but I'm not in a position right now to. To solve them. And it takes that connection, that one to one conversation to be able to have that.

So how do. How do you see sales conversations evolve in a way where salespeople become indispensable to the buyer?

Oh, I think that's huge. Because again, we have to ask ourselves, the customer can get all the information they want without us. They can get so much information without us, it's unbelievable. What we have to do is we have to be seen as delivering them the right information. In fact, this is kind of a. Almost heresy. What I'm saying is that we have to de Educate. Yeah, you heard that right. De Educate the customer. Because many times the customer's got all this insight, all this information, but it's not the right insights, it's not the right information. So we have to de. Educate them in de Educating them. That only can take place when we've been able to create a level of trust. And think about this for a moment. And again, this is where I think AI really opens up the door for us. It's not that AI is creating trust for us. AI is pointing the need to us that we need to have trust. And that is fundamental. And can I share with you the four ways that we can develop trust with our customers? Great. Number one is reciprocity. Think about this. I do something for you, and I'm just doing it to help you. It. I'm not expecting anything in return. But what happens is you naturally say, wow, this person just did something for me. This is great. I, in turn, am going to reach, probably back out and help that person. When we practice reciprocity, it is amazing at how that customer we're talking to begins to trust us more. Second piece is honoring time commitment. Honoring time commandments. That means showing up on time, being there. Earlier today, I was sitting in a hotel. Excuse me, I was sitting in the airport before coming over here to my hotel room, and I had a client call coming up and it was on teams. And I don't know if you're like me, but teams doesn't always play well with me, and I have to allow a couple extra minutes. Fortunately, I did, and I was able to make sure that I was on that call ahead of time. But it's amazing. You want to generate trust. All you have to do is be on time for things. And if the customer says, you got 30 minutes, you got 30 minutes. Third way we do it is by providing the customer with insights and information, providing them with value added. It's not about, hey, are you ready to buy? Hey, just checking in. That's what I did in the hotel downstairs earlier today. That's not what I'm doing now. It's delivering insights. And the fourth way that we really create trust is by honoring the commitments of the customer. What does that mean? That means when you make a comment that you're going to say, hey, I'm going to get something back to you by tomorrow. It isn't at 11:59pm that you send it to them, but rather you actually send it to them first thing in the morning or even the day before. You see, trust is seen not in how we feel. Trust is in the actions that customers feel from us. Now what happens then is that they begin to open up to us. Now we can begin to really create buyer intent. Because without buyer intent, ICP is meaningless. Without buyer intent, I'm not going to know what the moment of decision is because, oh, by the way. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm getting on a rant here. I'm getting on a rant here. Gearhart, I hope you don't mind. The moment of decision is many times the customer saying, I'm not going to make a decision. I'm not going to make a decision. You know, we all know that our number one competitor is not our competitor, but it's the customer choosing not to make a decision because we haven't done enough good. We haven't done enough of a job creating buyer intent. And, and by.

I think we're losing your audience.

Critical. How do we see this? This is because this is now a. Are you back there with that? Am I back?

Yes.

Thank you. I, I, I absolutely apologize. I will back up. I'll tell you what it is. I'm actually on a. The, the WI fi in this hotel is down, and I'm actually using my phone and I'm amazed. The connections fully well at my phone, right? Somebody try, somebody trying to buy something from me or sell me something, and so, anyway, let me back up here on it, because this whole buyer intent, this is absolutely critical. Got to ask yourself, how important is it for the customer to actually have the solution that you're talking about? If we can't paint a picture of how our solution fits into your next two or three steps, it's not important if we can't paint a picture as to how our solution is critical to you being able to achieve the outcome that you're looking for. If we can't paint a picture that the outcome we're creating is going to allow you to keep the customers, you have the. If we can't create a picture to where what we have is going to prevent risk, a major potential problem, then we haven't done a good enough job of having buyer intent, and we can go into the mod, the moment of decision, and the customer will decide not to buy from us. Yeah, I love to get your thoughts on that, Gearhart.

Well, what comes to mind is that the term trusted advisor and the real question behind all those questions about establishing trust is at what point does the customer see you as the trusted advisor?

Oh, that's. You know what? Here's the signal. This is the signal. I'm glad you asked that question, Garrett. The signal that you hear, the signal that you're going to find is when the customer shares with you a piece of proprietary information. Now, what is that? That's information that's not known publicly. Just think about this. If. If I was selling to. Selling to you, Gearhard, and you're treating me like a salesperson. Oh, no. A salesperson. No, no, no. And then. And then you share with me a piece of information about your business that's not known publicly. You would only do that if you trusted me. This is what I say and what I tell salespeople. You have achieved a level of trust. And don't think for a moment that you can move forward into any kind of a closing. Oh, I hate the term closing. That's a whole separate issue. Any type of a deal to. To get the deal until you establish trust. Because without trust, low price is everything, you know? You know, Right. I mean, you know, you stop and think about that, you're not going to buy anything, anything, unless you trust it.

Right?

Unless it's really, really cheap. Yeah.

So I think that.

We.

In any relationship, there is sort of a. A mutual regulation mechanism that is at work that I recognized a long time ago that I need to give the customer a chance to trust me. And the way to establish trust is not with Confidence or competence, but it's more about vulnerability, where you put yourself strategically in a position where the customer can take advantage of you and not do anything for you. So, for example, you know, I, I need a proposal, and I need all those details. And I have four other vendors that I'm considering. So you know that the odds of getting the sale is one is 25% maybe the chance. So now you work four hours on that. So you put yourself in a position of vulnerability, and the customer recognizes that because it's not going to be boilerplate. You're going to give it your 100% for 25 chance of closing. And what you said earlier about I am here to help. You know, my mission is to help. And, and this is your mindset. Do you have a very generous mindset? You, you called me out of the blue, unprompted, three weeks ago, and you said, you have an AI conference coming up. What can I do to help you promote it? And it blew me away. I thought, that is a generous gesture. So I think that generosity and vulnerability are two components that trigger that trust reflex in the customer.

Oh, there's so much that we can add to that, because here's what happens. A. When you create a level of trust between two parties, it's amazing at how you hear better. You. You absolutely hear and understand better. And there's something else that happens now. If, if I have a level, well, we'll say I'm selling to you gear hard and you have a level of. Trust me. I am much more comfortable at asking you difficult questions. And, and what's my definition of a difficult question? It's one that you don't have the answer to, and I don't have the answer to. But I'm willing to ask that because it's going to create a conversation. And when I can create the conversation, I undoubtedly create a better outcome. Now, here's another spin that I love on a spin. Okay, that's a. That's a. That's a bad word to use in this. But what I'm saying is it's. It's a great gift because when I create trusted customers, in other words, customers who trust me, what do they do? They tell others about me. I've had in the last 24 hours, two different people reach out to me because of other people that have said, hey, you got to call Mark. You got to call Mark. Mark can probably help you with. Help you with this. And it's very interesting, but both those calls came from people who, yeah, you know what? There's a high level of trust there. I, I, I, I was. And I'm thankful that I've been able to build it. So when salespeople take the short game, the short game and go to close the sale. And that's why I hate the term closing the sale, because I don't want to close the sale. I want to open a relationship. When I, when I take the approach that I want to open a relationship now, I'm putting you, the customer, on equal footing with me. And I really desire to have that level to where I'm now serving you. And when I'm serving you again, that's, to me, leadership at the ultimate level, which is what sales is. Sales is not serving. But let's bring this back to this whole buyer intent and moment of decision, because here's what I found. The moment of decision. There's three things that can happen in the moment of decision when the customer can choose not to buy. And that really is an indictment on us as salespeople that we haven't done a good enough job in the buyer intent. In that bi phase, we just haven't uncovered. Because now maybe, maybe there was really no intention of the customer to buy to begin with. They were just talking to us to really get insights, information for something down the road. Failure on our part. We should have known that we didn't do a good enough job. But two, what happens in the moment of decision is that the customer says, you know what? In order for me to bring you in, I got to kick somebody else out, and I've got a contract with them for two, three years, so there's no point in us talking. So that's another complete failure where the moment of decision is a timeline much different than what you need. Because let's not kid ourselves. As salespeople, we all need to make our numbers. Okay? And the third thing that happens is just what you brought up earlier. There's four other. There's three other competitors. You're one of four people having a conversation. Yeah. What does that do? That really sets the table that I've got to be in a competitive mate. But again, if I'm not doing my homework in the bi, I will never get through the moment of decision. Because here's the worst case scenario and moment of decision. This is where so many salespeople fall. Now, that's when the negotiations begin, in the moment of decision. Whoa, hold it. Stop. Stop right there, folks. Because again, if I've done a good enough job in the bi, there's nothing to negotiate. Well, let's put it this way. There. There's things to negotiate, but it's not over price. It's over. How much more are we going to add? It is. How much. How much more are we going to offer? How much more we. How much more are we going to do? What. What else are we going to bring to the table? You know, because again, we get into the negotiation. If we get into negotiation and we don't have all the facts, we lose. We absolutely lose. I'll share a very quick, quick story. I was working with a customer back here a number of years ago, and we developed a great plan. And. Unbelievable. And we had found out that the reason they wanted to bring me in was because they had a couple competitors that were coming into their marketplace. The following year, VP of Sales signed off of the deal. He said, I just got to send it to Legal. Legal saw the price tag on it. Yeah, Mark Hunter was expensive. And they sent it to the CEO. CEO called me up and said, mark, how much will you reduce your price by? Because it's way too high. And I said, I'm not going to change the value. By the way, how much business do you expect to lose from the two new competitors coming into your marketplace? That's the moment of decision. That's the mod. But because we had done the bi, the buyer intent, we knew, and. And there's a long pause. Felt like two hours. My heart is going. And. And suddenly the CEO says, that was good. You're hired.

Wow.

Now stop and think about that. If I had not known that buyer intent, don't you think I probably would have lowered my price? Yeah. And that would have done a disservice to the customer because really, at the end of the day, what we were charging them wasn't nearly enough compared to the volume, the amount of business that was at risk from these two new competitors coming in. See, this is why BI is so critical. But we got that information because we had established a high level of trust with the VP of Sales. And he conveyed to us. He shared with us the pain, the problems, the issues that he and his company were going to have. Wow. Wow. And that enabled us to handle the model Mods fail if we don't do our homework in the bi.

Awesome. Those are all very, very good insights. There's one more issue with technology, which is ethics. Guardrails, Integrity, Authenticity, human values. Because machines have no value system that's embedded. And you can train large language models. You can train it on anything. And it is it. It has no conscience in no guardrails. So what is the role of the leader? To keep this sales organization on track by giving them rules and guidelines so they stay within the boundaries of common sense and ethics.

Wow. Do we have three hours to discuss this? Because you, this is so critical. You know what's interesting is a 2 watt light bulb looks pretty good bright in a dark room. And right now we're seeing a real challenge in terms of ethics all the way through business, government, everything. It's unbelievable. Unbelievable. The, the lack of integrity, lack of ethics and so forth. This is where you and I as salespeople have the ability to shine. And, and I'm going to first address this from a leader standpoint and bring it down. Something that I found very powerful. Baby boomers, the few that are left out there in the marketplace, they work for money. They work for money. Money. That's what they want. Gen Z, they're working because the company lines up with their morals and values. Thank you, Gen Z. Thank you Gen Z, for calling us out in the world. And I'll tell you what leaders, if you are not clear, if you are not articulate with your morals and your values and your ethics as you yourself, personally and your company, you will not be able to hire the talent that you want. Because Gen Z is only going to work for those companies where they see the morals, the values, the ethics lining up with where they're at. And we're seeing this across the board. I'm not in hr, but I talk to enough HR people, especially in hiring of salespeople. And I'm seeing this and I'm hearing this. Okay, so now what does this mean for you as an individual, as an individual contributor out there? You, you as an individual producer out there, first of all, don't ever allow yourself to sit there and say, well, my company sleazy, so I'm going to be sleazy. Hey, look, if your company sleazy, do yourself a favor and quit. I didn't realize this, but 27 years ago when I began doing what I'm doing, I left a company for pretty much that very reason. I didn't realize it, I did not realize it at the time, but I left a company. Very good job, unbelievable job. But I was being challenged by the CEO and the president of the company. And I knew how it wasn't going to end and it wasn't going to end well for me. What I didn't realize was I was really calling into question their integrity, their ethics, their values, their morals. And I Left. So, okay, I want to build on this for a second. Because salespeople, just because your manager isn't exhibiting a level of morals or values doesn't mean you don't. In other words, you have to stay true to who you are, whatever that is. You have to stay true to that. And here's the thing. Don't think for a moment, oh, I can't, I, I, I can't behave like this because I'm going to lose business. No, you can't behave like that because you will lose business. You may lose a quick short term deal, but you know what? You're going to sleep better at night. You are going to sleep better at night. And in the long run, you are going to wind up much further ahead. I'm calling this out in the marketplace right now. We have to demonstrate this. Where I see this happen a lot is where I see salespeople blaming, blaming everybody else for their problems. Oh, this isn't right. This isn't right. This isn't right. This isn't right. You know what I find? The top 1 percenters who, not, not just top 1 percenters for a quarter, but the top 1 percenters in terms of salespeople for, for quarter in quarter out, year in, year out, they accept full responsibility. They accept floors. You want to demonstrate your ethics? Accept full responsibility for every decision that your company makes, right or wrong. You accept it and you deal with it. In other words, if your customer's got a challenge, you own it. Don't bl. Don't pass blame. You own it. That is a very simple thing that any salesperson can do. And again, if you're struggling with that, you can't do that, then you know what? You owe it to yourself to quit. Go ahead and quit. Send me your resume. I'll help you find a different job.

There was an ad from a pharmaceutical company that I read. I wasn't here in this country, but I heard it was, it ran in the 60s. Pharmaceutical company came up with the slogan that this pill works in the secret ingredient lies in the integrity of its maker.

Stop and think about that. Stop and think about that. You know what's funny? This is the sad comment. The sad comment is the fact that you and I are taking incredible time here to discuss integrity, ethics, values. Isn't it, isn't it a shame that we even have to talk about it? We don't talk about air. We don't talk about air. Right. We don't talk about water, do we?

This, you know, I think we were talking about the mindset. And I divided into three parts, the implanted, the imprinted, and the inspired. And if it's not implanted in you, if integrity is not implanted, then which means your parents educated you well, or if it's not imprinted where you teachers and mentors imply imprinted that in you, then it's. It's not going to be a given.

Oh, without a doubt. I mean, you know what's interesting is the example I love to use when I'm talking to groups about this is, is the police. Police officer calls, pulls you over for speeding, right? And you go, oh, this is the first time I've ever been speeding. First time. And the officer sitting there saying, liar, liar, pants on fire.

I hold the record.

First time. Right, Right. I know you've been doing this. It's just amazing. Amazing. Yes. So. Well, it sounds like. Sounds like I'm getting the hook here because Trisha and you want to have some closing remarks. Trisha, great to see you.

Mark, it is so great to see you. And I've been bragging in the chat about how incredible you are and what an incredible live testimonial this is to the power of technology, of the human factor and trust and the community, because here you are, and this is just delivered, unbelievably. So. Thank you, Mark, and thank you, Gearhart. You, you live the brand every day.

Well, thank you so much. And, Trisha, I got to call you out because you are the master networker. You are the master at connecting people together. And I remember I was at one of your events just a month, month ago in Dallas. And, and it was absolutely powerful. And see, this is what we've been able to do. Sales is not a solo activity. Sales is a team sport. And thank goodness that the three of us in the entire audience listening, global audience, is part of a great sales community.