Mark Hunter believes that productivity is best defined by the incremental value you provide customers as you help them achieve outcomes. It isn’t about being busy or crossing items off of a to-do list. It is about providing value. What does that look like? How does a salesperson accomplish it? Learn more in this episode of SaleReinvented!
Mark—known as the ‘Sales Hunter’—is arguably one of the greatest minds in the world of sales. He is an accomplished speaker, consultant, and author of multiple best-selling books. With an astounding 30+ years of sales leadership experience, he repeatedly helps companies find and retain better prospects. Paul picks his brain in this episode—don’t miss it!
Mark is adamant that you cannot get hung-up on a to-do list. Instead, you must determine the desired outcome for your day and client. Once you have the outcome nailed down, you backfill the activities that will fill your day. In this way, you are more focused and not distracted by your list.
He recommends staying on task by preparing for each day the night before. He writes down exactly what he hopes to accomplish so that he doesn’t spend an hour of his morning ‘dinking around’ figuring out what his day will look like.
Mark points out that any professional athlete goes into their game with a game plan in place to win. They have a clear vision in mind. Sales professionals need to view themselves in the same way—as professionals with clear goals and outcomes in mind.
Mark states that you cannot “Allow other people to define your level of success—only YOU can define your level of success”. He often sees salespeople get discouraged because their performance doesn’t measure up to someone else’s. His message is clear: you must stop defining your success by someone else’s accomplishments. Instead, measure yourself against yourself.
If you start each day with the mindset of an optimist, you’ll start to notice the incredible amount of opportunities available to you. You just have to be ready, open, and conditioned to recognize them. Mark starts every activity with the desire to influence whoever it is he’s dealing with, create impact for each party—and exit a better person.
Instead of relying on a to-do list, Mark lives by time-blocking. Once you have your desired outcome nailed down, block time in your schedule for each activity that advances you towards that outcome. When you define your time, you stop allowing the work to expand and overtake your time. YOU compact the work into the time you’ve made available for it.
Mark is ruthless with his calendar, and other top-performers such as Richard Branson and Mark Cuban do the same.
His second sage piece of advice is to do your most difficult task first thing in the morning. In his words, “The mountains are never high as you think and the lows are never as low as you anticipated”. Whatever you may be dreading won’t ever be as bad as you anticipate!
Mark believes you must think and process in the long-term but live in the moment. Following that reasoning, he states that everyone NEEDS a 25-year goal. If you don’t set long-term goals, “You go through life reacting to things, not acting to create them”.
Mark operates by the adage that ‘tomorrow begins today’. So what are the things he recommends doing to get a head start? How do you continue being productive?
Lastly, Mark wants you to recognize that there will be times when you fail. He points out that every great baseball player strikes out more than they get to 1st base—but they’re still millionaires.
Don’t kick yourself when you don’t get something accomplished. Stay positive and remember to focus on celebrating the good that has happened—because only YOU can motivate yourself. To hear the rest of Mark’s take on productivity and what you can do to achieve better outcomes for your clients, listen to the whole episode!
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Is your definition of productivity truly working for you? Are you stuck in an endless loop of activities? If you’re treading water and seem incapable of completing the sales activities you need to, it’s time to redefine what productivity means to you. Jeff Bajorek joins Paul in this episode of Sales Reinvented to help you rethink how you view productivity.
Jeff is a sales improvement consultant specializing in the B2B space. He’s co-host of ‘The Why And The Buy’ podcast and author of ‘Rethink The Way You Sell: The Five Forgotten Fundamentals of Prospecting’. In this episode he’ll share his thoughts on productivity, his top 3 do’s and don’ts, and what you should do to become more productive.
Jeff points out that productivity is getting enough stuff done—and YOU get to decide what ‘enough’ is. Once you’ve defined what productivity looks like for you, you can implement systems and structures to knock things out. It gives you the freedom to implement what systems work best for you.
According to Jeff, you must be informed, intentional, and purposeful. Define how you’re going to be productive and then commit to it to reach your sales goals. He notes that many salespeople get stuck in “analysis paralysis”. They’re so hyper-focused on what needs to be done that the ‘how’ gets lost.
Instead of getting lost in analysis paralysis, Jeff recommends deciding ahead of time what the important activities are. Avoid distractions and non-sales activities and follow the 4 steps of the sales cycle:
Whatever you do needs to lead to the advancement of those 4 activities.
According to Jeff, the #1 attribute of a sales professional NEEDS to be the ability to be disciplined. Once you’ve identified what’s important, you must have the discipline to carry through on those tasks—especially when you don’t want to. For Jeff, this meant completing sales calls reports. He hated them but believes doing them made him more effective.
You must also be open-minded. While Jeff believes many of the tech tools available have the uncanny ability to get in the way, you must be able to evaluate and embrace them if they’ll make you more efficient. You have to be able to learn new tricks as an old dog.
Lastly, Jeff points out that you must be humble. Be willing to admit you don’t know it all—and keep learning.
Jeff shares his ‘top 3 productivity do’s and top 3 don’ts’ and one concept that struck Paul was learning how to say no. To be productive you must prioritize and schedule what needs to be done. Everything else can be squeezed in around it. However, if you’re taking on too many activities and trying to fly by the seat of your pants you will struggle to hit your numbers.
Don’t give yourself too much credit—don’t take on more than you can handle. Everyone is guilty of it at one time or another. You must learn to underpromise and over-deliver. Say yes to the activities that are important and don’t be afraid to say no. Jeff embraces careful consideration when he makes decisions, citing “Every time you’re saying YES you’re saying NO to something else”.
When Jeff left a previous job, he wanted to implement some things that he had learned over his time there but were considered “risky”. He took a good hard look at his calendar and implemented a new system based on his research. He took the activities he knew moved the sales process along and got himself in front of prospects. He made sure his value proposition was clear and asked people to take the next step with him every single meeting.
He changed the focus of his days and made sure every activity he completed was worth doing (and measurable). What he found was that he was able to cut down time spent working to ⅓ of what it was previously—but he tripled his sales activities. He had a 9x return on results to activity. It changed his productivity and his personal life. According to his wife, he became less stressed and more like himself.
He points out that you must always ask yourself: “Are you spending enough time, doing enough of the right things, to get enough done?”. To hear the full conversation, be sure to listen to the whole episode!
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If you learn to define and prioritize high-value activities you will become a more productive sales professional. If you know what activities hold the highest value and act on those over lower-value activities you set yourself up for success. We have finite reserves—you get to choose where you invest your time, energy, motivation and discipline.
Amy Franko joins Paul in this episode of Sales Reinvented to chat about how she prioritizes her time to be successful in sales. Amy specializes in working with B2B organizations on sales effectiveness. She is a trainer and consultant, keynote speaker, and author of The Modern Seller.
Amy points out that salespeople often have a huge list of sales activities to tackle. They’re often given the added burden of administrative tasks that they don’t need on their plates. This automatically lowers your ability to focus on high-value tasks. You must define what activity only you can do so you can delegate—or drop altogether—what isn’t a priority. Where are you going to devote your resources? What can you say no to?
A good sales professional knows the difference between just staying busy versus being productive. They are decisive about where they spend their time. Amy says you need to learn to focus on the big picture. Look at your week and set 3 goals—the high-value activities that will bring you forward progress.
Likewise, she does the same thing daily: she prioritizes 3 things to get accomplished. If you start with a list of 10+ activities, you will never get anything done. But if you narrow your focus and knock out the most important things, it can leave room to knock out whatever’s left.
They time-block what’s important to stay organized. She recommends using a timer for each activity. It frees up your mind to focus on the task-at-hand instead of watching the clock. When the alarm goes off, you can re-evaluate where you’re at and either devote more time or move on to the next task.
Amy also loves using agendas to stay on track with meetings. Lastly, she likes to keep it old-school and use a paper list to track what she’s focusing on in a particular day.
What are some things you should—or shouldn’t—do to enhance productivity?
These are just a few of the things that Amy has found are imperative to her success that is easy for anyone to implement.
Writing a book is a huge undertaking. You aren’t just writing—you’re creating content, dealing with publishing, as well as marketing. Complex projects have a lot of moving parts, and Amy learned some valuable things that she wanted to share:
Amy is full of useful tips and tricks that she’s learned throughout the years. Take advantage of this opportunity to learn from one of the best and listen to the whole episode of Sales Reinvented!
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Revenue = frequency x competency is one way that Chad Burmeister measures productivity. You have to be able to do more in a shorter period of time—you must increase your frequency. Over time, as you gain experience and focus on frequency, your competency will grow. This increases productivity and therefore increase revenue. Chad and Paul discuss this topic in-depth in this episode of Sales Reinvented.
Chad is the founder and CEO of ScaleX.ai—ScaleX leverages artificial intelligence and sales automation to automate up to 75% of sales reps tasks so that they can focus on higher-value work. He is the author of multiple Sales Hack books and a recently published book about AI for sales. Chad is passionate about helping sales professionals crush their quotas and increase revenue.
The prevailing statistic is that approximately 50% of sales professionals are hitting their quotas. Chad believes this isn’t accurate. He points out that finance departments are usually the ones setting the quotas for sales professionals to reach. Have they set the bar too high? Are they setting unrealistic expectations?
Chad points out that it takes ⅔ the amount of people to drive 1 billion in revenue compared to 5 years ago. They are actually ⅓ more productive! There are technologies in place that helps salespeople become more efficient and effective. In the long run, he doesn’t think sales pros are less productive—he thinks unrealistic quotas are manipulating the numbers.
While Chad believes the bar is being set too high for quotas, there is always room for improving the productivity of a salesperson. He states that the average seller executes 50-60 sales activities per day—but that baseline can be improved.
There is a lot of noise in selling. So much so that in the last two years alone, it now takes 10x more sales touches to book a meeting. To increase revenue, you need frequent meetings to make a sale. How can that be done?
Chad points out that email marketing is proving to be ineffective, with an average response rate of 0.5-3%. Social selling fares much better, with an 8-12% engagement rate. Ultimately, he believes phone calls are having a resurgence and is still one of the most effective ways to connect with your prospect.
Getting on the phone with your prospect is the hardest part. This is where Chad recommends agent-assisted dialing. You initiate the dial, and a combination of software and human intervention navigates you to the person you need to connect with. Keep listening to find out why Chad believes this helps increase productivity.
According to Chad, a high-achieving salesperson has to perform at a better level than anyone else. He shares a story about an athlete who made Presidents Club three years in a row. He was a football player used to being pushed to do better and be better than the competition. He took that mindset into his sales position and blew his sales team out of the park.
He did so by learning tricks and tactics that set him apart from the competition—and didn’t share them with anyone else. One of the tools he used was agent-assisted dialing. He would come to the office early and initiate calls on the East Coast and drive 1,000 calls to someone else's 100.
Chad points out a simple tip to live by: know the metrics of your team and focus on increasing your frequency. Statistically speaking, more phone calls equals more conversations. And as you increase your conversations, your competency soars. Your revenue should increase. But it all starts with a willingness to do more than everyone else.
Chad is a firm believer that you must embrace the technology available to you and leverage it in a way that benefits you. It’s a given that everyone should have a good CRM. But what else does he think you need?
Chad is passionate about what he does. To get the most out of his expertise and hear in detail how he operates, listen to the whole episode!
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