Join host Mark Cox and sales expert Mark Hunter as they dive deep into the future of selling in 2025! This dynamic episode explores how to create business, build trust, and leverage AI for stronger customer relationships. Hunter emphasizes the importance of outbound prospecting, deepening the discovery process, and becoming a trusted advisor to your clients. He shares actionable strategies to de-educate customers, uncover their true needs, and ultimately help them achieve what they didn't think was possible. Plus, discover why AI is a powerful tool for salespeople and how continuous learning is crucial for staying ahead in the ever-evolving world of sales.
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The Future Of Selling Is Human (Even In 2025) With Mark Hunter
Team, we've got a great show for you. My guest is Mark Hunter. He's also known as The Sales Hunter. Mark's the author of three books. The last time we had him on, we were talking about A Mind for Sales. He's also the author of High-Profit Selling and High-Profit Prospecting. Clearly, he's a deep thought leader in our space. In fact, so much so, he'll be on the stage at the Outbound Conference the week after we actually recorded this episode where he's doing a keynote along with his teammates there. Anthony Iannarino, Jeb Blount, Brynne Tillman, a lot of great thought leaders who've been on the show because they know this space. In this conversation, we cover a lot of things, but almost anything that comes out of Mark's mouth about B2B sales is something that you can take and apply.
The way he explains things is very simply so that they resonate. Clearly, somebody who's been doing this a while and has a good way of communicating something clearly because he understands it so well. We have a fun chat about why we're both so excited for B2B sales and how the fundamentals don't change about successful salespeople are always trying to level up or improve themselves even by a little bit by reading a show like this one because they're always looking for that ongoing, lifelong learning.
The ballots of our conversations about how do we engage in effective discovery, get an authentic conversation going with a prospect where we've earned the right for them to share what's going on with their business. We talked about building that trust and credibility, as is the case with every one of these podcasts. I learned something from Mark. You will, too. If you like this episode, please like and subscribe to the show. Thanks for doing so. When you do that, by the way, that's what enables us to get these great guests like Mark. Here's Mark Hunter, The Sales Hunter.
Mark, welcome back to the show. It's great to see you again.
It is great to be back on with you because we're going to talk sales. We're going to talk that thing that we love to do.
The Importance Of Outbound Sales
I was going to talk about hockey, but if you'd like to talk about sales, let's go with sales. The name of the show is The Selling Well. I'm sure hockey's going to find its way in here somehow, Mark, but let's start with sales. It's an exciting couple of weeks for you. You've got Outbound with you. A couple of other great guests of our show, by the way, run Outbound. Maybe you can tell the audience a little bit about that. By the time they read this, Outbound will be over. It's a pretty exciting event.
It is a pretty exciting event. Outbound is just that. Outbound selling, you can do that. It's prospecting, pipeline and productivity. If you think about it, so many salespeople sit around and wait for the phone to ring, wait for the email to, “I got business.” We're all about how do you create business. Why be a rain barrel when you can be a rainmaker? That's what Outbound is all about. Nice. You talk about putting 400 or 500 people into a room who are excited, the energy is over the top because everybody's focused on outbound selling. That's what selling is all about. If you're just dealing with inbound, that'd be the customer service show. This is the selling show.
If you were to believe some of the internet platitudes, folks saying outbound is dead, it's just so completely wrong. This is part of the challenge, I think, in professional sales nowadays. There's a lot of these platitudes, or catchphrase on various different parts of social media. Those of us who have dedicated a good portion of our career to this or turned around multiple different sales organizations, this is what you have to do to grow pipeline. You've got to reach out into the universe and create demand. Whether it's you, Jeb, Anthony Iannorino, or all of the folks at Outbound, pretty much everybody's been on our show, and you all believe the same thing. I'm right there with you.
What Keeps Mark Motivated After Many Years In The Field
Even when we just start this, I always get the energy and enthusiasm talking to you, Mark. Also, reading your books. Briefly, what initially drew you into the excitement of professional B2B sales and after this tenure, you and I have kind of the same tenure here, how do you keep that energy and enthusiasm going forward?
The enthusiasm is very easy because I don't sell. I help people. Selling is just the medium I’ve chosen to help people. That's what enthuses me every day. I love closing the sale. In fact, no, I don't like closing the sale because I'd rather open the relationship, but that's a separate deal. Here's the situation. Selling is purely about helping people. If that doesn't excite you when you wake up in the morning, you need to go find a different job or maybe go find a different planet because, again, my definition of sales is the same definition I have for leadership. It's helping others see and achieve what they didn't think was possible. Think about that. That's what it is. We just help others see and achieve what they didn't think was possible. That's pretty cool.
It’s such an important mindset. I think, for so long, that mindset of getting away from pitching or trying to cajole or all of that silliness and just helping somebody achieve this desired business outcome, this tends to be the nature of sales. We had Daniel Pink on the show a little while back, and at the end I said, “What do you see happening with sales?” He said, “Mark, your audience know this, but today, B2B sales is management consulting. For 30 or 40 years, management consultants have walked into offices to talk to the most senior executives at the largest companies in the world. They have no product to pitch. Have conversations about the outcomes that those organizations want, and then they figure out how to get those outcomes and how to take them to that better future.”
Maintaining A Resilient Mindset In Sales
What a great definition you've got. When we think about this mindset shift, I know you do a lot of work in this space, this very competitive nature of B2B sales for all of us now, it is competitive. How do you recommend that salespeople maintain that resilient mindset? We've been through a few things here over the last few years, but what is some of the suggestions you make when you're working with all of the teams that you work with, Mark, about maintaining that competitive resilient mindset?
I want to pick up on what Daniel Pink shared in terms of what we are in B2B because I firmly believe in that. My goal in B2B sales, and actually in B2C, is to be in the customer's R&D department. What do you mean about R&D? Research and development department. In other words, it's my duty; it's my job to bring to you ideas that you had not been thinking about and that weren't even on your radar screen. To allow me to do that, I’ve got to understand who your customers are.
All we have to do is help our customers create a solution for a problem they may not even know existed.
One of the challenges in B2B sales is that we have to understand the upstream and the downstream. The upstream. What are all those supply chain issues that are impacting and supply chain issues? It might be just employee retention. It might be just keeping employees there. It could be all those things that maybe you provide. Why? It’s because the customer ultimately has another customer. They're going downstream.
Who are their customers? When I can understand their customers as well or better than they understand their customers, wow. Here's the whole thing. I picked this up on a podcast I was listening to. I can't remember what it was, but it says, “Create a solution, you create profit.” Think about that for a moment. All we have to do is help our customers create a solution for a problem that they may not even know existed. It goes back to my definition of sales.
When you think of so clear and so powerful, create a solution, you create profit. I’ve always thought, Mark, that when you win deals, the sales team or the organization that wins the deals, I think it's when the client believe they understand that sales team understands them better than somebody else. All of us need to be heard and understood and all of those good things, but there's almost no limit on the level of customer intimacy that we can all try and get to that we want to get to.
Timeless Challenges In B2B Sales
The more we understand that individual we're reaching out to, the issues, the challenges, the goals, the objectives, their professional needs and wants, their personal needs and wants, the better off we're going to be. Even saying that aloud, a lot of that came a long time ago when I had a beautiful long head of hair with Miller Hyman in the late ‘80s. Thinking of the personal professional needs, consensus buying, all of that kind of stuff, it was so very good. If I think back to 1990, why is it that we're still talking about these same things in professional B2B sales? Every once in a while, I have this thing that says, “Why is it taking us so long to get it??
I think it’s taking us so long to get it because we get confused by the shiny object. The shiny object right now is AI. AI can do everything for us. My feeling is this. AI is the ying. We have to be the yang. It's the yin yang thing. Everybody's so focused on what can AI do and can AI expedite this part of the process and do this and this. I think in so doing, it's craving the need for that intimate relationship that you mentioned earlier.
This is what's so valuable. People want to be heard, so they want to be understood. The problem is AI throws all this stuff at you. Great. Nothing wrong with it. By the way, nobody will be replaced by AI. They will be replaced by somebody who is using AI. We get all this AI stuff, but we don't know how to do it. The role of the salesperson is not only is it that consultant, as Daniel Pink was talking about, but I think we are becoming the de person. We have to educate the customer.
Stop and think about what this means. What this means is very simply is the customer is engaging the salesperson further and further downstream in terms of where they are in the sales process. Every study has shown that. That's nothing new. What's happening is the customer is developing all these opinions, they're developing all these views, and as a result, feel that they know what their issue is. The problem is they don't really know. We, the salesperson, has to come in and de-educate the customer. That's not telling them they're stupid, but that's allowing them to see a different light, a different perspective, a different view. We don't do this by breaching at them. We don't do this by developing a presentation and showing it to them. We get it by asking them questions.
Talking to them.
This goes back what Daniel Pink was talking about, the consultants. I remember when I was in Corporate America, there were two consulting groups that we worked with a lot. They would come in and all they did was come in with questions. It seems like every time they left my office, they left my office with another seven-digit deal. Amazing. We have to become better at asking questions to de-educate the customer and to allow them to be open and receptive to new questions we're going to ask that are going to get them believing and perceiving. Here's the whole thing. It doesn't matter what we believe is right for the customer. Totally irrelevant. It's what the customer perceives. Remember, I didn't say believe it's what they perceive because I may believe something, but I don't perceive it. I just can't see how this actually happens. That's where we have to get to with customers.
On the first point, de-educate, I'm a good example of this. I think people can be more informed, but that doesn't mean they're better informed. I'm a good example of this with my health. Something will happen to me, get a little spot on my face, I’ll go on the internet. I'm more informed. I’ve got lots of pages telling me that spot on my face is disaster coming. Until I get in, have a conversation with my doctor who says, “That's called basal cancer.” I said, “Cancer.” He said, “It's meaningless, it's nothing. You'll just take it off with a small scalpel.”
This difference, I think a lot of stuff online scared a lot of people easy, one everybody can relate to medical information. You're more informed, but you're not better informed because you need somebody with experience and expertise to take all that data and say, how does it actually apply to you?
Asking The Right Questions In Sales
This de-educate, I love. The questions to get there, I absolutely love as well. I think that's this critical opportunity for all of us out there in terms of those of us in professional sales, just continually, almost relentlessly figuring out how we help the folks we're working with. It all comes down to questions. When you're working with sales teams, by the way, how do you help them craft those questions? I know you do lots of sales training and you've worked with thousands of salespeople. How is it you help them craft, let's call it those discovery questions that have most impact?
Here's the whole thing, and I'm glad you brought up the term discovery because so many salespeople, what they do is they want to race through the discovery part of sales call to get to the close. I go, “Slow down.” If we would deepen and lengthen the discovery process, we would shorten the close. You know the reason so many salespeople can't close deals. It’s because they didn't do a good enough job in discovery phase.
The discovery phase, what I love doing is this, and this works in B2B. I'm going to first begin with a question relative to the industry. I'm not going to come in and try to get very specific, hone in on them. I want to talk about the industry. Why? It’s because I'm doing two things. One, I want them to feel and understand that I know something about their industry. This isn't my first rodeo.
Two, by getting them talking about the industry, it begins to get them a little more comfortable and a little more relaxed. If I were to come to you and say, “Your baby's ugly,” you're going to get pretty defensive. If I come to you first and start talking about babies in general, then I can begin to get you to realize I'm not saying your baby's ugly, but you get the point. What I'm doing is I'm starting off with the industry. Here's the key thing, and this is where the magic begins to happen. This is where so many discovery processes, discovery meetings break down. People come in with this predetermined list of questions that they want to get through 1 through 12. “We're going to get through all twelve. When we have all twelve answered, we're done.”
I go, “Forget it.” I couldn't care less. I never want to leave a meeting with all my questions answered. What did the salesperson just say? The salesperson just said, “I never want to leave a meeting with all my questions answered.” Why? I want to get to that first 1 or 2 questions and we wind up spending our entire time right there because there's a whole thing. This is what makes a discovery call worthwhile. I ask you a question, and you share a response with me, and I just ask you a follow-up question on that.
Here's something you can take to the bank. Short questions will get you long answers, long questions will get you short answers. How many times have you been talking to somebody and they drone on and on, and somewhere in the middle, there's a question that they're asking, but you have no clue what they were really asking.
Short questions will get you long answers. Long questions will get you short answers.
If I ask you a question, you shared me something and I say, “Can you explain more? Could you give me an example?” That's a short question that gets you a long answer. What I'm doing is this. I'm getting you to believe that I'm listening. That's something unique for salespeople. If I can listen, then I'm hearing things and I'm hearing things. Two, I'm asking you a question, so I'm inviting you to go deeper. When you go deeper, this is when you really begin to uncover. There's a simple number. It's the number seven. Remember the seven degrees of separation? It has gone away because the internet is now one degree of separation. I believe if I can go seven layers deep, it's amazing how much I'm going to know about your business because you're just going to share it with me.
Can I go seven layers deep on that first question? No, but I can go 1 or 2. I may ask another question, then I may come back. It's a little bit like peeling an onion. If I have an onion and I don't eat the whole onion, I peel off all that skin to get down to, I don't know what they call the part that you actually eat. I don't like onions. It’s that part that you actually eat. That's what we're doing. Too many salespeople don't want to peel the onion. They just want to try to get through to the close. My whole idea of you as a salesperson in preparing is you simply ask. You have 1 or 2 questions ready about the industry, and then you begin to drill down from there, “How does that pertain to you? How are you responding to that?”
They will automatically begin taking you to their individual needs and their individual organization. What I'm listening for is this. I'm listening for a key response. The key response is this: When you, the customer, begin sharing proprietary information with me, what's proprietary information? That's information not known publicly. When you begin sharing with me information that's not known publicly, you now trust me. You have a level of confidence in me. That's huge because in the discovery phase, I cannot move out of the discovery phase until I have created a level of trust and confidence with you. Otherwise, the deal is never going to close.
There are a couple of great things to unpack there. One, just on that discovery phase, when we're coaching these days on sales process, Mark, we actually have a discovery phase. The way we teach it is it's every stage of the process. I think that investigation and learning are not. “I started, and I'm done.” That type of discovery is what happens to me when I go to the dentist and the receptionist goes through a checklist to make sure I'm not allergic to penicillin. They've got a checklist and then they're done. She doesn’t know, and she doesn't care. There's no authentic curiosity. I like this alignment at the seven layers down on the onion.
A while back, we had a great guy on the show, somebody you should put on your podcast as well, a guy named Oscar Trimboli, How to Listen. In the episode, Oscar shared that we can think at 900 words a minute, but we can only speak at 125. The average person, we think at 900 words a minute and speak at 125, which almost perfectly aligns with your seven layers because we only get one seventh of the stuff in our head out. When we do something like you suggested, a multiplier question, tell me more. Can you give me an example? What else?
People have more to share. They never get it all out. If you can build that trust so that when you're in discovery asking great questions, you get authentic answers, I think you're in this beautiful position. I do think, though, and you coach a lot of these people, so do I, young people doing prospecting have difficulty building that trust. I'm willing to open up. If you called me, wanted to know what's going on with my business from an entrepreneurial perspective and ask questions, I can open the kimono and tell you everything. If somebody calls me and I can tell they're young, they're uneducated, they don't understand my business, they're kind of pitching, you've got to build that trust to get authentic answers to any form of questions, particularly discovery questions. How do you coach your students on that?
Several different things you got to realize. First of all, it's only a conversation. What happens so many times is young salespeople, not just young, we all do, way too much emphasis on every call. This has got to be the perfect call. Michael Jordan, I still believe he's the greatest NBA player. He made a comment. He said, “I lost more games than I’ve won.” Now think about that. You’ve got to put that in perspective. It's just a conversation. Dial it down. When you come across human, it is amazing at how much more receptive people are. Two, allow them to bring out their personality. Back when we were pre-COVID, that almost sounds like eighteen lifetimes ago.
It feels that way.
We always wanted to make sure that if we were going to do a call, I don't know if Zoom even existed back then, video call, we had to make sure everything was just perfect. It's amazing. I get on calls now. We don't have a dog anymore but when our dog used to bark, I used to go, “Super sales dog. He just closed another sale.” If somebody else's dog bark, totally okay. Just relax. When you relax, it's amazing how the other person begins to come across. Here's a key thing. On every call, you’ve got to remember BAMFAM.
Book A Meeting From A Meeting. With every call, I'm on the phone with you. I have to create a CTA, a call to action. Do you know what's funny? Too many salespeople don't do that. I just go, “BAMFAM.” Book A Meeting From A Meeting. You just simply book the next step. That next step is just going to be to follow up on one thing that you shared with me. That's it.
Here's where young salespeople go off the rails. Many times, it's because their compensation programs. Their compensation program is to get to the demo, and then we'll use the tech company. They're going to have the engineer. That is a big mistake because all engineers want to do is prove to everyone how smart they are. Not good.
My whole goal is I don't want to race to the demo. Here's why. When I race to the demo, I don't know what it is that you're looking for. New salespeople don't sit there and say, “If we get to the demo, we're going to show them, then they'll be able to tell us what they want.” No. A confused buyer does not buy. You never go to the demo until you know exactly what it is their challenge is. In the demo, you only show them that small little piece that is going to help them with that problem that they have. That's it. Don't show them. You don't open up the kimono because here's the deal. My whole goal in sales is to simplify things. When I simplify it, everybody gets along a lot better.
A confused buyer does not buy.
I'm smiling ear to ear. What percentage of Excel do you think we actually use?
One percent.
Way back in MBA school, I couldn't believe what that thing can do. It's a relational database. Everybody uses somewhere between 1% and 3% of it. Imagine if we tried to demo Excel and showed Solver and all of it, people would just go, “Oh my goodness.” What do people use it for? “I want to do a personal budget. I want to do a P&L. I want to do basic math equation.” I love this idea. Just have a conversation. Be you. Be the best version of you. Don't be the grumpy and tired and hungry Mark Cox. Let's try and be the well caffeinated, well-fed Mark Cox. There you go. We've got product placement there for Starbucks. I absolutely love that idea. Take confidence that you're well prepared for a call so you know who you're reaching out to.
You know the business they're in and the industry they're in. Psychologically, I think those things give us a little more confidence, particularly when we're new to sales. We've maybe earned the right. I always like trying to add a little bit of a point of data into a question. Do I have some industry research on their industry? Do I have a couple of data points that might be helpful? Can I identify the top three trends going on in their industry so that I could say, “Are these things affecting your business or how are they impacting your business?”
At least it cut a little bit of the Cialdini. There's a little reciprocity in place because I’ve done some work for the call and they'll acknowledge it in some way. They're not going to give me a sale or guarantee the call to action, but they might give me a couple of minutes more on the call or have a more authentic call.
It’s so key what you shared there because that's what AI can do for us. I can use AI. What are the challenges the industry's facing and so forth. This is what's beautiful. The tighter our ICP, our ideal customer profile, and the tighter the lane with which we prospect, the more information we're going to know about the industry, and the better off we are going to be. That's the beauty of AI. Any salesperson who goes into a sales call unprepared nowadays is stupid. It's all right there. Just with a couple keystrokes, I can get the answers I'm looking for.
Mark, I did it, a sales call with a new executive, new CRO with an existing client of ours. I was meeting the individual for the first time, and I know the questions that I'd like to ask. I’ve written them out and then I just went through the exercise over a nice cup of coffee and had the right prompts for AI. We use a customized ChatGPT. They know us, they know the book, they know our show. The questions it spat back out in two minutes were better than mine.
Mark's Keynote Presentation At Outbound
I took it and just added to it. There were a couple of real nuggets there, and it was effortless. Everybody reading, please jump into your tools with AI. Mark, we're going to be, this will go live about three weeks after your keynote presentation at Outbound. You're one of handful of sales thought leaders in the entire world invited to participate with Jeb Blount and Anthony Iannorino. Brynne Tillman is at that one, I think, some great people. They've all been on the show. Jeb's scheduled on the show. We've had some scheduling issues. Do you want to share a little bit about the theme of what you are going to be speaking to? I guess you'll all have your own kind of specific topics and themes, any nuggets you want to share, knowing it's already out in the public domain by the time this goes out.
Yeah. Here's what I'm talking about. It resonates with anybody and everybody. First of all, if we have the ability to help someone, we owe it to them to reach out to them. That's what prospecting's all about. If I have the ability, and I love to set this up by saying, if I have problems, and trust me, ask my kids, they will tell you, “Dad has a lot of problems,” and I knew that you, Mark, could help me, I would want you to reach out to me. If I found out later that you did not reach out to me, you could have helped me, I'd be disappointed.
We have the ability to help someone. We owe it to them to reach out. That's what prospecting is all about.
What we're doing is we're doing our prospects, our lead, our customers a service by reaching out. That, to me, takes all hesitation away. It's no longer a cold call. What I'm going to be talking about is how you really determine your ICP. How do you get very tight? I have a series of nine criteria. If a lead comes into me, if they don't check off at least six of those after that first call, that first inquiry, I don't go any further with them.
In fact, I typically look for 7 or 8. Some of the things are, are they in an industry that I'm familiar with? Are they in an industry that I work with? Do they appear to have challenges that I’ve helped people with before? In other words, they may be in an industry, but they're coming to me with an HR problem. I don't do HR. Three, is the level of person that is talking to me, are they very similar in nature to other people I have talked to and have completed deals with? There are nine criteria that I go through. What's very interesting is I'm a strange duck. I'm a little bit weird in that I’ll still take the phone call, I’ll still set up a phone call with you even if I think you may only get to 4 or 5.
What I'm doing is I'm doing it for one reason. I'm going to refer you to somebody else. This is the beautiful thing. When I refer you to somebody else, I’ve made two sales because you, the customer, you, the lead didn't work out, so I referred you to somebody else. I still made you happy. Guess what? My whole goal is to help people. Impact and influence people. I was able to influence you. Two, the person I referred loves me. I’ve now got two people that are singing my praises out there. Not a bad gig. That's great. Don't scare away from those. Take it, but refer it. By the way, the more people you refer, the more referrals you're going to wind up getting yourself.
It's a good approach. You're true to your values. Your values are, “I'm in this because I want to have impact and help people.” We would've had a conversation like that years ago with the business, and then it would come back. Suddenly, somebody comes back to you and now they're running something material. Now they are your ICP. First of all, I think it's just good karma out there, but I think it's just a great idea.
Staying Current And Informed In Sales
When we're running a show like this, of course, we're going to point to all the resources. Mark, for you, High-Profit Selling, High-Profit Prospecting, A Mind For Sales. That's what we talked about in our last episode. We just read the book. Where does The Sales Hunter go for thought leadership, insight, knowledge? Obviously, you stay current with everything going on out there. You run your own podcast, you listen to other podcasts. For people out there that have that growth orientation, outside of reading your books and all that kind of good stuff, how do you stay current with what's going on? How do you keep that level of business acumen knowledge for our discipline up to snuff? What do you do?
First of all, sales is not a solo activity. Sales is a team sport. I want to surround myself with as many brilliant people. We become the sum of the five people we associate with. That line first was said years ago, but it absolutely applies. Here's the deal. I am a voracious reader currently. I just happen to have this book. I listen to podcasts. I spend time on LinkedIn. I follow the thought leaders on LinkedIn. I'm just constantly curating ideas in my head. Here's something magical. Top performers. Top performers never go into any situation without a sense of, “I'm going to learn something here.” When you go into any conversation, podcast, anything that you listen to, anything that you part with the attitude, “I'm going to learn something,” it is amazing what you learn. I'm binging on a podcast called Acquired.
Selling: Sales is not a solo activity. It's a team sport, so I want to surround myself with as many brilliant people as possible because we become the sum of the five people we associate with.
It's by two tech guys, one out of Seattle, one out of San Francisco, and they do 3, 4, 5-hour podcasts on various companies. Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, venture capitalists, PE firms. It's mind blowing. I love it because it just challenges my thinking. Some of them are pretty deep, very deep thinking, but I love that. I go into it with the idea that I'm going to learn something. Same thing with books. Average people will sit there and say, “I don't want to read this book. I don't want to do this because there's nothing to learn here.” That's why they're average people.
I got to tell one short story. He has since passed away. Charlie Munger. Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffet's sidekick. He just passed away at the age of 99. Years ago, I was watching an interview of him, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates by Becky Quick. Becky Quick of CNBC was asking the three of them, “What books are you reading right now?” I couldn't remember what Warren Buffett and Bill Gates said, but Charlie Munger, probably at the age of 90 or 91 at the time, made a comment and says, “I'm reading a couple of books on electrical engineering.”
Becky Quick stopped and said, “Excuse me?” He said, “Yes, electrical engineering.” She said, “Why?” He says, “I don't feel I’ve ever learned enough about electrical engineering, so I figured I'd better learn now.” This is a gentleman who's 91 years of age and worth billions. He'd have every reason to say, “Screw it, I'm done reading.” That was a wake-up call.
When I caught that interview years ago, it was a wake-up call. That was something I learned. Everything you participate in, if you're a top performer, you will learn something. It’s like this show. You read The Selling Well podcast, you come away with it. What's the idea? It may not be a direct idea. It may be an indirect idea. In other words, something you say, something you say or one of your guests says, and you go, “I'm going to apply that this way.” The yin and yang.
Everything you participate in as if you're a top performer, you will learn something.
I’ve never run one of these where I didn't learn something. The truth of it is the joy of this show, you know this, is you and I book time. I know we've got to do this. I’ve got to read what you've written. Now I got this time limit, I got to get through it. I’ll be honest with you, years ago, I remember the first few guests. I'd read some books and I was a little judgmental of books. I had a little bit of that sort of attitude about me to a certain extent. I talked to this person on an episode and go, “They have so much wisdom to share.” That judgment dissipated. Now I love reading everyone's book because there's something in there for everyone.
If you want to find the learning, there's amazing learning. There are textbooks. Frank Cespedes from Harvard's written nine of them, Aligning Strategy and Sales. That's a textbook and it's dynamite. There are other ones that are much simpler. Very short books, but have great nuggets of insight and knowledge in there. By the way, if you're a professional athlete or something, you're always trying to glean that 1%, that 0.5%. How do I shoot slightly different? How do I tape my stick? Okay, what am I going to do when the guy comes around the neck? All of these things. Just this 1%, it does compound.
We knew we would get to hockey night in Canada somehow.
We had to.
Probably the best sales book, Atomic Habits by James Clear. Isn't Atomic Habits by James Clear so awesome? It's about that 1%. It's about those little things that you just repeat. It's amazing at how success comes from doing the little things repeatedly.
James Clear, Atomic Habits. British racing team had never won a Tour de France, never even placed, and they go in and say nine different things. “We're going to just try and improve literally 0.5%.” The cleanliness of the bike, the hygiene of the riders while they're training. Tiny things. It doesn't mean you have to work out five times as much. Suddenly, they start to get world champions. James Clear, if you're reading, you're one of a handful of people I couldn't get on this show. Almost everybody else has said yes. James Clear, we've named your book. Please, do us a favor, join the show.
Before you go on The Selling Well Podcast, you got to come on The Sales Hunter Podcast because I brought your name up first.
It's a team effort here. We're sending them right over, Mark. Team, we've talked about some great things. We have links to Mark's fantastic books, which I’ve read. Mind for Sales, High-Profit Selling, High-Profit Prospecting, on which Mark is an expert. Those of you who are joining them at Outbound, have a fantastic time. Those of you aren't, Mark, how do folks get in touch with you to learn more about you?
The best way is TheSalesHunter.com. That's where the website is. Everything starts there. People always ask me, “You’re known as The Sales Hunter. What was your name before you changed it?” That's my last name my entire life. There's a podcast by the same name. I'm out there on LinkedIn, just type in Mark Hunter, The Sales Hunter. I have another podcast called Sales Logic. If you can't find me, something's wrong. I'm out there.
If you can't find him, you shouldn't be in sales. You can find him. He is everywhere. We'd like to thank Mark. Mark, thank you so much for joining. Team, we'd like to thank you for reading. We run this show to kind of be the mini MBA for B2B professional sales. We think if we can help improve the performance and professionalism of B2B sales, we can actually improve the lives of professional salespeople. That's what we want to do.
If you enjoyed this episode, please like and subscribe to it because that's how we get great guests like Mark. Also, please know we love constructive criticism. We know we can get better at doing this and make it even more valuable to you. If you have an idea or two, please send it to MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com. That's my personal email that I check and we respond to every idea we get. We love constructive criticism. Thanks for sending your advice. We'd like to wish everybody a great couple of weeks and we're going to see you next time.
Important Links
Anthony Iannarino – Past Episode
Brynne Tillman – Past Episode
Daniel Pink – Past Episode
How to Listen – Past Episode
LinkedIn – Mark Hunter
About Mark Hunter
With over 30 years of sales leadership experience, Mark is passionate about helping companies and salespeople find and retain better prospects they can close at full price.
Mark delivers engaging keynote speeches, training workshops, and consulting services, based on his three best-selling books: A Mind for Sales, High-Profit Prospecting, and High-Profit Selling. He challenges sales myths and empowers sales teams to adopt new strategies and practices that increase their top-line sales and bottom-line profits.
Mark is recognized as a Top 50 Most Influential Sales and Marketing Leader, and travels globally almost 230 days a year, working with diverse industries and clients. His mission is to inspire salespeople to see and achieve what they didn't think was possible.