Integrity First Selling: Breaking Through in a Noisy World

We're going to have a very candid fireside conversation with just me and you, the audience, and I'm going to be sharing with you some of the insights from my new book, Integrity First Selling, that just came out. But, hey, here's the whole thing. Can we call out the elephant in the room? I mean, I mean, seriously, I want to call out the elephant in the room because the sales playbook we've all been using needs a major overhaul. Okay? Now, I'm not throwing anybody under the bus. Well, I am. Hold on. Hang with me for a bit. It's not because of the tools and systems. That's why we need to overhaul things. It's because there's so many resources that are being placed against the salesperson. And I really say against the salesperson. It's either to help them be more efficient or to replace them completely. And this has a lot of salespeople absolutely stressed. Now, I'm not saying this is bad. This is good. Because if we can install tools that allow our salespeople to be more efficient, like we've seen this morning, has been absolutely terrific. If we can create sales tools that allow people to see the future, absolutely spot on. This is what AI is used for. But the challenge we have is this, is that this, I strongly believe, is that this is causing salespeople, unfortunately, willingly or unwillingly, to disconnect. And as a result, there is a breakdown of integrity and trust. Now, that's on the salesperson side. Now, think about this from a customer standpoint. Customers are more skeptical than ever. Why should they not be more skeptical? Because, again, there's so much being thrown at them, okay? Because we see AI, and of course, we've been talking this morning on AI demo day here today of really internal tools, I think, tools that help us as salespeople be more efficient. But there's a whole slew of tools, external AI tools in terms of messaging and so forth, and. And all good, all good when used properly. But it can cause a tremendous amount of skepticism on the part of the customer. Now, what does this do? This means that they are less resistant than ever. We've seen the data, We've seen the results. It's 67% of customers, thereabouts. I've seen some studies, 64, as high as 68 or so, where customers don't want to engage with a salesperson. So people are saying, well, because my sales process is broken, I just need to implement more tools because I'm not getting the ROI sales leader. I'm talking to you right now, we're not getting the ROI out of our salesforce. So if we automate things, it's going to be that much more efficient. And now I can have a controlled cost. Here's the situation, though, on both sides. Everybody is exhausted. Everybody is exhausted. The customer, the last thing they want to do is be sitting through another demo. The last thing they want to do is be sitting through another boring presentation. And the last thing a salesperson wants to do is to be delivering a boring demo. Delivering something boring. What we want is we want to create engagement. We want to create community. Now, let's slow this bus down here a little bit, because there's something we learned during. Can I use the word Covid? Okay, I'll use the word Covid here for just a second. Here's situation. During COVID we learned how much human interaction is such a key asset, is such a key part of anything and everything. Now we've learned. We've learned to really do things by way of the screen, just as I'm doing here. I'm in Dallas, Texas. Today, we've got people in 66 countries around the world. That's great, but it still requires that we have to have this. This connection, this community where people feel that they can connect. And what I say is this. With the advent of AI, I'm calling that the ying and the yang of AI. The yang is integrity. You see, it's the authentic relationship because the customer is more skeptical than ever. You see, here's the situation. Technology and all the tools that we have. And again, I love them. I use them in my own world. Gearhart was asking me this morning, did you use AI to help write the book Integrity for Selling? Yeah, we used it to help write some of it and to help guide my thinking and so forth. You see, 8i is a great tool when used properly, but AI can also help us amplify bad behavior. And this is a real challenge we have to look at. And this is why we have to be measuring every piece of AI that we're using. In other words, here's the whole thing. Just because I can send out a thousand emails doesn't mean I should. Because if I've got a bad email that I wrote to one person, but now AI can help me send it to a thousand people. Yeah, it's a really bad email. You see, what I'm seeing and what you're seeing, we're all seeing is that AI. There's so many tools out there that it is allowing us to go faster here's the example I love to use. I love to use the example of a Lamborghini. Hey boy, I only wish I could drive a Lamborghini. Now we'll just say that I've got this Lamborghini sitting in my driveway and I'm a 16 year old kid, just got my driver's license, just got it last week and oh, there's a Lamborghini. I want to drive that car and I want to drive that car. But here's the thing. It's way too much car for me. It's way too much car for me. I'm going to get into trouble. That is exactly what is happening here. That is exactly what I see. Just because we can get a Lamborghini doesn't mean we should because again, do we know how to drive it? Here's what I think has happened. Many salespeople are still trained and being trained to win deals rather than serving customers. Whoa, this is old school. Yeah, it is old school because at the end of the day customers can buy anything they want on the Internet. Salesperson not included. Right. I mean, let's not get ourselves look at the industries that have been wiped out and look down the road and you could probably see some more industries in terms of sales organizations that may get very much impacted because of AI. Now I'm not negative. I strongly believe that the role of the salesperson is going to be very much needed going forward. If we embrace serving customers and that's the challenge, we can't be trained to win. We have to be trained to serve. So let's stop and think about this for a moment. Trust is the currency of business. That's right. Trust is the currency of business. Think about any purchase that you make. You, you don't make it until you have a level of trust with the customer or you know, with the salesperson. Same thing with any, with, with any AI tool that you buy. You, you're looking for some sort of element. Every sale is about value, but the value is rooted in trust. But here's the whole situation. It's what the customer perceives. It's what the customer perceives. Now trust and that we can throw that term around quite a bit. That's pretty easy term to throw around. And we can even have AI tools. I can show you half a dozen AI tools that I can use. Okay, this is going to show you how to use AI and literally embed it into the sales process. But here's situation, it has to be authentic trust. And the question I'm going to Ask you right now is when is trust put into the sales process? Now, trust being put into the sales process is not a step. Okay, I'm in step number 32 and I need to inject trust. No, trust has to be put in at the start of the sales process. But wait, there's more. You see, trust begins even before you arrive. I firmly believe that your reputation arrives before you do. Bryn Tillman shared yesterday and I love her strategies around LinkedIn because again, what is it doing? It's helping you create your reputation before the customer. Harvey McKay 40 years ago wrote the book dig the well before you need the water. The whole premise was that you create relationships before you need them. This is what LinkedIn does. Absolutely cool. And in this AI charged world, it's more important because here's the whole thing. I can't throw trust on the table in, in the context of a, of a slick benefit. No, no, no, no. Trust is built in the emotions of how I connect. I love Pat's presentation this morning when he shared numbers regarding top performing salespeople and the number of questions they have that they ask and top performing salespeople and the less amount of time they are speaking versus average. You see, trust is built from the start and trust is built by allowing the customer to drive the presentation. Whoa. Now let's back up on this because where does this whole integrity thing begin to come into play? If I demonstrate integrity and I'm serving the customer first, I'm not trying to close the sale. I'm trying to serve the customer first. Oh, I'll be able to close the sale. I know I'll be able to close the sale because I'm serving them. I'm allowing them to become more comfortable with me. Trust is a two way street. It's me feeling trusted with you, the prospect, the customer I'm dealing with, and you being feeling trust of me. That's exactly what this is all about. That's huge. This is what integrity is all about. So now let's walk through some things because again, I've been throwing a lot of things out, but let's get down and let's get to some really good stuff because what is integrity actually in sales? And let's just get beyond politics, okay? Integrity, it means being transparent about your intent. This is where I say many opening sentences. How's your week going? How's this going? Come on, let's not kid ourselves. The person you're reaching out to, they know you're a salesperson. Be upfront with them. You Know, you have to be clear upfront with them. It's about telling the truth even when it costs you. And I'm going to give you a couple examples here in just a few minutes. Yeah, because here's the situation. Integrity selling is about playing the long game. If you want to play the short game, I mean, you can do anything you want, but you'll only have a one off transaction. And oh, by the way, you'll do incredible damage for yourself because again, the marketplace talks. You see, it's about doing what is right for the customer, not just what closes the deal. One of the measurements that I love to ask organizations and I love to go in when I'm working with, with, with companies or I'm speaking to them, I'll ask them, I want to see what is the anticipated profit of the transaction when it's first made and what is the final result is what I call margin slippage. It's margin slippage. And especially this happens in week 12 and 13 because the salesperson goes out and makes claims, makes, you know, delivers expectations to close the sale. What happens is the customer now says, oh well, I guess they can do this, they can do this, they can do this. The deal closes, you're expecting to make X margin. But then during the onboarding stage, during the implementation stage, things come up and guess what? The company has to make adjustments to satisfy the customer. I look at that margin slippage as a critical measurement of the level of integrity that the organization is doing. And if you want to take this further in your organization and if you have enough transactions to statistically measure this, look at this in terms of your transactions during week 12 and 13 of every quarter and over the course of a quarter. And if you see a difference there you are sitting on a major, major issue. You see, that's called doing what's right. It's also about playing the long game, it's not playing the short game. You see this, this, this is what we're doing here. We are playing the long game because there are going to be transaction, there are going to be deals that just may simply not come closed. And we're going to unpack this more later on. But what it comes down to is am I being nice or am I being principled? Am I being ethical or am I being effective? Now let me tell you something. You can be nice and not be principled because I can be nice in the short term, but I'm not principled in terms of my long term behavior. I can be ethical in terms of, I'M going to tell you what you want to hear, but I'm not effective in terms of really managing the business. And we'll unpack both those. You see, we can measure integrity in an organization. I already shared with you one measurement. What's the post sale margin slippage? Here's another way. Ask yourself and ask your company what percent of your business is coming to you by way of referral or repeat business. You see, the marketplace talks. If this is not trending upward year over year. Now, again, it may not be a perfectly straight lineup, but over a period of time it's not trending up. There is something wrong with either your product or how you're going to market. And I'd venture to say it's more about how you're going to market because the product has a fit if you're dealing in the right market. Because here's the whole thing. Customers talk, customers talk. And if you're not getting those referrals that repeat, something's wrong. Second, and really built on this is what are your customers saying about you? Whether it be an industry event, whether it be a chat board, whether it be online, what are they saying about you? Again, if you're not measuring this and paying attention to this, you are losing out. Now many, if you're in the SaaS world, there are many online tools that you can use to measure that because again, we've got trust, radius, et cetera, et cetera. Out there. All great, but just the marketplace in general. Let me share with you a story about not selling with integrity. And it comes from my own world. Early on in my sales career, early on in my sales career, I'm sitting across the desk from a buyer and I'm selling a consumable at this time and I present to the buyer an item that we had a great price. We had a great price on this item. Unbelievable. And I can tell that the buyer's enthused. Oh yeah, buyer really looking. Yeah, yeah, I'm going to stock up inventory. This is great. He runs some numbers, cranks out some numbers and gives me a quantity. Gives me a quantity. He says, yeah, this is what I want to order. And it's huge. It's absolutely mind blowing. The amount. And I'm listening to this and I'm sitting there saying, oh, ouch, this is a lot. This is probably way more than this company can use. Way more than this company can use. But it's a great price. I'm going to go ahead and. Because that's what the customer wants. That's what the customer wants. And let's listen to the customer. So I'm torn. Do I listen to customer take the order or do I raise my voice and say it's too much? I didn't do a thing. I left there. Later that day, I was back in the office and I was telling people about the size of the order and suddenly I was like super, super salesperson. I was, I was like the super salesperson of the year. It was unbelievable how many accolades I was getting from everybody in the building. It was incredible. And oh yeah, the commission check, it was very good. It was great. I'm feeling really good about myself. Hmm. Wonder how the customer was thinking about themselves. Well, it's very interesting, but a couple months later, I got promoted. Maybe I got promoted because of the size of that deal. I'm not sure, but I got promoted to another part of the country. Totally lost track, totally forgot. And of course there was somebody else who came in. And as the account executive for that, for that large customer was managing that large customer. About two years later, I'm at a sales kickoff meeting and this gentleman comes up to me and he goes, hey, you're Mark Hunter. Oh, yeah. And he says, did you used to. I said, yeah. Says, they hate you. They absolutely hate you. In fact, I hate you too. It was interesting. He shared the challenge that this customer had with all this inventory. The amount of money they had tied up, the amount of resources they had tied up, and the total bad, bad, odd that it left in them. And he said, mark, I came in as the salesperson following you, and I had a. I had, I struggled, I struggled, I struggled because of the chaos you had left. Now stop and think about that. I was not selling with integrity. And the end result is this. I may have gotten that initial sale. I made the commission. I made the commission. But whoa, Think about how much business did the total company lose as a result of a short term gain for a long term loss? Think about that. You see, it's interesting, but we can measure ourselves by the recommendations that customers are giving us, the comments that they share. And clearly in this case, wasn't good. Here's one more way that you can measure integrity with a customer and whether or not you're connecting with the customer. Again, it's about the relationship. Are they sharing with you proprietary information? Are they connecting you with others in the company? Are they demonstrating an interest in you? You see, here's what I find. When we are truly selling with integrity, it's amazing how customers connect with us. And they trust us. And this whole piece of them sharing with you proprietary information. What is proprietary information? That's information that's not known publicly. They're not going to do that unless they absolutely trust you. Yeah, yeah. So what's the cost of selling without integrity? What's the cost if we embrace AI and all the tools and everything with it, but we take out the human element, which is so key. Here's the situation. We're going to have more churn. We are going to have customer churn. I've worked with many customers over the years that have experienced just that. And how do we, how do we come back? We got to change that. They wind up with bad referrals. In other words, they tell other customers, don't, don't work with them. There's a reputation damage and there's burnout and there's leadership mistrust. I see this time and time again. You know, it's interesting, companies that prioritize numbers over integrity do pay a price. I'll call one out. Wells Fargo Bank. Wells Fargo bank had a tremendous issue regarding lack of integrity and they paid the price for years. The short term gain that they had clearly offset in the loss. You see, selling with integrity and embracing AI is about playing the long game. You see, I firmly believe that selling with integrity allows you to attract better customers. Because here's something. Customers who have integrity are attracted to those who have integrity. And oh, by the way, when you, when you're dealing with that, you're actually going to close deals faster. Yeah, you're going to close them faster, you're going to close them at a higher margin and you're going to have far less issues. You see, the challenge of a salesperson is that I want you to reframe that. We are no longer closing deals. Rather, we're guiding the customer. We're guiding the customer and we're guiding the customer because our goal is to open a relationship. Because I never want one sale to be the only sale. What it really means is that I'm moving from a persuader to becoming a problem solver again. Go back to Pat's numbers and you're going to see that it was amazing how the top performer is absolute. Listen to what Ed shared. Listen to what, listen to what Jason was sharing when we, when we really understand how to solve problems. Because now what I'm doing is I'm moving from a pitch to a conversation. I'm moving from transactions to a relationship. And I'm moving from self interest, my self interest to the customer first thinking, what's it look like? It really, I want you to be asking yourself before you attempt to close, have you genuinely made the customer confident to make the decision they're about to make? Ask yourself that question. In other words, have you, do you feel confident that the customer is confident in the decision they're about to make or are you pushing them? And to know that, you've got to really understand what is the exact issue they're looking to solve and what's the impact if they don't solve it. If you can't answer those questions, you might as well forget about it. Yeah. Now let's spin this around. Let's talk in the closing minutes. Got about five minutes left here. Let's talk about integrity as a leadership issue. Because it's more than just a sales issue. It really stems throughout the entire organization because here's the whole thing. We can't allow AI tools to replace us as a leader. And again, I love the presentations we've had this morning because each one of those does not replace us. It supports us. And this is what's absolutely key. People, your salespeople value the relationship that they have with you. And just as we want to have a relationship, now, I'm not saying a personal relationship, I'm talking about a professional relationship with other people. We too expect our salespeople to have that with their customers. And what's fascinating is this. You show me a well run organization from the top where they, where the leadership is demonstrating integrity, and I will show you salespeople who are doing the same thing with their customers. It's a parent child relationship. That's creepy, that's weird, but it's so true. As the management goes, so too goes the rest of the organization. You see leaders, you create the environment that shapes behavior. Now you know, if you've been around me, you know that I always say that a leader can't motivate anybody. All you do is create an environment. But that's exactly what you're doing. You're, you're creating an environment that's going to shape behavior. Your comp plans, your quotas and your culture either encourage integrity or erode it. If you have all of your variable compensation around purely units sold, cases sold, tonnage, whatever it might be, there's a problem. There has to be a percent of your variable comp that is built around customer engagement and how you measure that, that might be new customers, that might be retention or something, but you have to have that. You see, if all you're doing is rewarding numbers. Integrity is going to suffer. Now, here's what it comes down to. Leaders must model integrity first. If you're not modeling it, how will your salespeople? Okay, let's talk real quick about the quarter end dilemma. It's week 13. Oh, man, week 13. This is really hard. It's easy to say you do everything with integrity, but. But it's week 13. See, have we conditioned our customers to expect a better deal, to expect a better price, more concessions? Have we conditioned our salespeople that if they just wait because they'll be able to get a better price out of you, the CRO, out of you, marketing, whatever it might be. You see, that's the risk. Okay, if you're a leader in the audience, I want you to ask yourself this question. When are you in front of customers? Are you in front of customers to close a deal at the end of the quarter? If you are, you're not demonstrating integrity because what you're doing is you're replacing your salespeople. I want you out at the beginning of the quarter. I want you out at the start. I want you out because you can have meetings, you can create conversations, you can get questions asked and answers to questions that your salespeople can't. I want you opening opportunities. Creating opportunities. You see, you're an integrity first sales leader when you're there to open doors as we close out. Let me share with you just a couple quick thoughts. When we are demonstrating integrity, and I'm not saying to get rid of AI, no, AI is very, very key. Very, very key. But AI is the Yang, and integrity, authentic relationship is the Yang. We're going to wind up with better sales, with better customers, because we're starting with putting integrity first. I firmly believe that you'll be able to retain people longer. They'll stay with you because they realize that they don't have to sell their soul to hit their numbers. Because there's value placed on filling the pipeline and because of the role you take in the marketplace, you're attracting better opportunities. You see, the future of sales does not belong to an AI bot. No, no. The future of sales belongs to those who embrace integrity in the relationship and using AI to support them. You see, when we embrace technology not to replace us, but to support us, that's how we're going to be more effective. See, I firmly believe marrying the two together, absolutely key. Hey, reach out to me. I'm known as the sales hunter. Happy to talk with any of you anytime. And I always enjoy Being able to share. Gerhard, thank you for giving me a few minutes to share some thoughts for my new book. Appreciate it.

You're most welcome. That was amazing. Outstanding. The comments from the audience, they're all wonderful and positive. And can Sultan is asking, can integrity realistically scale in high pressure, performance driven sales cultures or does it require a different leadership model?

It can definitely scale, but it starts with the leadership model. It starts, in fact, there's several companies I'm working on with right now because you have to put integrity in at the top and it bleeds itself down. That's the only way you can scale it. That's the only way you have individual, but it's got to start at the top and it's how the leader impacts the people who they lead and it flows down from there.

Yeah. And I think the Wells Fargo example was very appropriate. What, what bugs me most about AI solutions that are really point solutions and shiny objects is that you buy a subscription and, and when you find out that that tool doesn't work for you, you have to spend 45 minutes just to figure out how to cancel it.

Nothing screams louder in terms of demonstrating integrity when you have an organization, when you have a product that a person cannot unsubscribe to, you know, you think you're retaining cash flow. I'm holding on to customers. But you're telling your organization, you're telling every person who works there that it's all about the money. It's not about serving the customer. You do yourself incredible harm when you make it hard for a customer to exit.

Yvette is asking, has anyone dealt with the renewal invoice increase with no prior notice or discussion? What's the best way to handle that?

Well, here's the whole thing on renewal. And again, there's a number of laws out there in place that you've got to give the customer 30 day notice of the renewal taking place. Here's the situation. If the only time you are communicating with your customer is during a period of renewal or price increase, something's wrong. Something is seriously wrong. You have to ask yourself, what can I be doing to create value along the way? Because remember, every current customer is a great salesperson for you. They are a great salesperson for you. I want to delight that customer so that they in turn will share with other customers and also so they stay with you longer. Hello, this is not rocket science, but for some reason we've lost sight of what it means to really serve the customer.

Amanda dropped a link to Amazon.com so anybody who is interested, get the new book Integrity Integrity. First selling. I think, Mark, you're really the number one trusted advisor in the sales consulting community and I commend you for that. And thank you for always being so generous and contributing your time to co create our conferences. And you're a wonderful collaborator. I can't thank you enough.

Well, Gerhard, I want to thank you because sales is not a solo activity. Sales is a team sport. And we're all on the same team. We learn from each other. I love these events because I come away learning so much. Not only information, but additional relationships. And that's great.