Episodio 68 - OutBound 2024 y por qué es clave un ICP ajustado al máximo. Entrevista a Mark Hunter, "The Sales Hunter"

[Music] Very, very welcome. Once again, let's talk about perfection. Today we have a really luxury episode and a special episode because for the first time we're going to have a conversation in English. And you'll be wondering why, why in English, who comes here? Well, one of the greatest gods of the sale comes from one of the people, which I think is a great part of what I know, one of the people with whom I have formed in their programs, with their books, it has three spectacular books, "High Profit Selling", "High Profit Prospecting", "A Mind for Sales", you can investigate it. Maybe with what I already said, some of you already know who I'm talking about. I'm talking about the great Mark Hunter, a speaker, author, consultant, salesman, already with many years of experience. The truth is that it is really an eminence in this. Mark Hunter, the sales hunter, is here with us and I'm going to be sharing with him in Outbound Conference now in November in San Antonio, in Texas. And well, obviously we're going to focus a lot on that, but here we have to take advantage of this instance because Mark is surely going to transmit a lot of value beyond talking about the conference. [Speaking Spanish] Hello, Mark, how are you today? I am doing great, anxious to talk selling, anxious to talk with you because sales, it's a fun job, isn't it? We have fun. Very fun, very funny. It's our passion, you know? That's great. Well, Mark, first to start, maybe from the beginning, Outbound Conference, which is the story Mark Hunter, Outbound Conference. But because I know that since from the beginning, you were very, very, very present there. So tell us, what is the match between Mark Hunter, sorry, and Outbound Conference? Well, it comes down to very simply this. Too many salespeople never reach their potential because they're not making outbound calls. They want to think that sales is like a rain barrel. Well, a rain barrel only captures rain that falls from overhead. I want to be a rainmaker. And you know, if you stop and think about this, people are afraid to make outbound calls, but I want people to look at sales in this light. If you have the ability to help someone, you know, you see a customer over here, and you know, I think I can help them. You owe it to them to reach out to them. If you don't reach out to them, you are doing them a disservice. You see, outbound is really a blessing to our customers because we're helping them. We're helping them see and achieve what they didn't think was possible. That's what excites me about not only outbound selling, but the Outbound Conference, because that's what the Outbound Conference is about. How do we shape that mindset to know that we're doing, we're doing people a favor when we call them, you know, and that's what we're going to focus in on the conference. That's the whole premise of my work. I mean, with the last name of Hunter, and no, I did not change it to do this job. That was my name. A lot of people asked me that. I was just asked that on a phone call about two hours ago with a company in Europe. They said, "What was your last name before you changed it?" I said, "I've always been a Hunter." So natural that I do what I do. You were born for sales. I was born for sales, that's right. Awesome, awesome. And well, in Outbound, you will be talking a lot about targeting, qualifying, and also maybe of a topic that I think is one of your, it's something very characteristic of you, the ICP, the ideal customer profile. Why you will be talking about this. What is the importance of these three topics for a sales professional right now on considering, especially nowadays? Yes, let's define what ICP is. This is your ideal customer profile. Here's the thing. Outbound selling is tough. It's hard. You know, it's not like people wake up in the morning and say, "Man, I hope a salesperson reaches out to me today." They just don't. And I said earlier that my whole premise, my whole belief in Outbound is because if I know I can help someone, I owe it to them. So I only want to be reaching out to those people who I know I can help. So what I tell salespeople is I want you to define what is that, who is that perfect person, that perfect company that you know you can help. Because you know their industry. You know them. You know little things about the business that they're in. Maybe it's a consumer. Maybe you know a different... You know the geography, the city that they live in. You know the type of family they have those times. So the idea of being is that you get very focused. And here's what I found. The more focused I can be, the better off I will be. Because here's the whole thing. There's millions. Last I looked, there's a few billion people on the face of the earth. Okay? So that means there's a lot of opportunities. But the tighter I make it, what happens is now when I reach out, if I'm going to be reaching out to you and you're in my perfect ICP, my ideal customer profile, you're going to be really impressed that I know the challenges that you're facing. The issues that you're dealing with. Probably some of the things that you're looking to do those types of things. You're going to be much more benefit... You're going to be much more willing to have a conversation with me. See, that's the whole key thing. My goal, my goal in sales is not to have 10,000 leads. I want to have just 25 prospects that I can spend more time with. Because when I can spend more time with fewer people, I create more value. And when I create more value, guess what? The customer's happier and I'm happier. And oh, this is what's interesting. The more value I create, actually the more money I make, because the more money the customer will pay, because they see more value. Very interesting. And what can you say to those people who always said, when I talk about this, to spending more time with fewer prospects, as you also say always. And you have a lot of episodes in your podcast sales, hunter podcast, talking about that. But so many times I have customers or people in sales areas that tells me or said to me. But my business has a massive target. A massive market. This is a solution, maybe not so high ticket. And I need to reach out to many, many, a lot of prospects. I don't have time to establish a very tight ICB. What can you say to them? Yes, here's the thing. You don't have time not to. Because this fits for anybody and everybody. Because this, wow, I can have this help in anybody. I can help this help a lot of people. The challenge is you're going to spend a lot of time reaching all those people. And the challenge is making one phone call, one email, one message isn't going to convert a customer. You have to reach them multiple times. So what I want to do is I want to narrow my list. I want to be very, very tight. And I'm going to help them achieve the outcome that they're looking for. For instance, we'll say that you sell tools. We'll say that it's just hand tools. Okay, these are like hammers and screwdrivers. That's what you sell. Well, in theory, anybody could buy that, right? But if I can really demonstrate to the plumber or the home repair person why my hammers, why my screwdrivers are better, why they just do a better job. Am I going to be worth more? Yes, I am. Now, how am I going to do that? Because I'm going to help that. We'll say it's a home repairman. I'm going to share with that home repair person ideas, techniques as to how they can go into a home, make that repair faster, make that repair better and be able to get out and really have a happy customer. Now, if I do that enough with that person, they're going to say, I really want your screwdrivers. I really want your hammers. This is a hammer that I could sell to anybody and everybody. But oh, by the way, did I tell you that the hammer is exactly a certain weight and the hammer has a certain size of handle on it that is really fits the repairman who is using a hammer all day long. Because the last thing you want to do is get blisters. Get your hand cut up. This handle is that good. Oh, and also this hammer you're going to be able to use because how many times have you used a hammer that you nail something and the end of it flies off. The end of it gets weakened. This doesn't happen. So you don't have to replace the hammers. I see what I'm doing is I'm taking something very, very, anybody, anybody and everybody can use a hammer. But I'm getting it very, very tight, very, very specific. And when I do that, it creates more value. That's why I want to say I always want to narrow my list. Very, very clear. So the first thing someone has to do to establish his ICP, which is what is the first thing that you need to look? Yes. Look at your existing customers. Take a piece of paper and draw a line right down the middle on one side, right down the names of your customers. On the other side, don't write down what you sold them. Write down the outcome that they achieved. In other words, we'll go back to hammers. Okay. So you write down Pablo repair. Great. The outcome is that he was able to do his jobs 15 minutes faster. That's the outcome. That's the outcome. So what I'm doing is I'm making this list and I'm saying, oh, where is the commonality? Where is the common? Okay. So it's this size of contractor. I'll give you an example. I was working with an insurance company. And this insurance company had a great line of insurance for just that home repair people, plumbers, those types of things. What they did was they narrowed it down even more that they narrowed it down to home repair people that always used a ladder. Always used a ladder. Why? Because there's more risk involved. That means they're probably outdoors. That means they're, and it allowed them to become experts in helping those people buy the right ladder. But really, they sell insurance. I know they sell insurance, but by buying the right ladder, hopefully you're not going to fall off the ladder, right? If you don't fall off the ladder, you're going to keep working. And oh, by the way, that ladder is probably going to have to be strapped to the top of their truck, right? Let me show you how to strap that ladder to the top of your truck because the last thing you want is to be driving down the road and your ladder flies off, right? Or your ladder gets stolen, right? Your ladder gets stolen. And so what does this do? This allowed this insurance company because they were now focusing with just repair people who used a ladder. Oh, you know what it also allowed them to do? It also allowed them to take to their insurance company better customers. What did they do? They got a better rate. They got a better rate because they filed fewer claims. See, so they could have been excellent. Excellent. Anybody, but they got very tight. This is what's absolutely key. Get very, very tight. Excellent, excellent. One good way or maybe more ways to qualify very well your customer or your prospect in a first meeting. Questions I need to ask for that. Yeah, one of the questions I love to ask is ask their opinion. So for instance, we'll say I'm that's insurance company calling on people. What are some of the challenges that you have when you're working with ladders on job sites? Love to get your opinion. And it's amazing. People will always share their opinion. You ask anybody what their opinion is, people will share. And the idea being is I just want to get them talking and they're going to probably ask you, why are you asking? Well, that's good because I'm an insurance company. Oh, I have insurance. Oh, great. I'm glad you do have insurance. But you know what's interesting? We specialize on people with people like you who deal with ladders because it's a different business. Right? I mean, how many times have you had this problem or that problem? Oh, yeah. Oh, I have that. See, what am I doing? I'm now I'm now got you talking with me. I've got you sharing with me. Hey, how many times have you ever had or have you ever had a ladder stolen from? Oh, yes, I get I get ladders stolen from from my from my trucks all the time. Oh, yeah. What that has got to just mess up your day. Oh, it does. It does. We were not able to work the rest of the day because our lighter got stolen. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. See, so what do I do? I get them talking about their problems. Now, I'm not talking about insurance, but you see what I'm doing? They're beginning to realize that this person really knows my business. So then I can. It's like the question of spin selling, you know, remember, you remember me that. Neil Rackham. Exactly. This is what I'm doing. And because people don't want to be sold. People do not want to be sold. In fact, people, the last thing they want to do is even buy. They don't want to buy, but they will invest. They will invest. And that's what you're doing. Regardless of what it is that you sell, you invest. I met a person this morning and I was going to meet them at a coffee shop. I went in and I bought a cup of coffee. Now, I had already had a lot of coffee before I left the house, but I bought a cup of coffee because I was investing in a cup of coffee because I wanted to have a great meeting with this person I was meeting with. Regardless of what it is, we invest and we want to return on our investment. Perfect. Excellent. And Mark, so many people also ask a lot. They say to me, I have a very good meeting. It looks like it looked like a perfect customer for me. But after the meeting, no more responses. The prospect disappears. How can we correctly manage that? There are some techniques that you can use. Or maybe those are signals that your customer is not so qualified after the meeting. How can you say about that? What can you say about that? Yes, there's several things. First of all, I never end a meeting without booking another meeting. In other words, I call it, you know, in English, we call it BAMFAM. Book a meeting from a meeting. I was just before this, I was on a call with a potential customer. In fact, they were trying to sell me and I was waiting for them. Okay, we're going to book the next meeting because I'm interested. I'm interested. And it's so important. So I book a meeting. Okay, now that doesn't solve everything because again, some people will go and book a meeting and then not show up. Here's the thing. Customers today are only solving their most critical issues. In other words, you may have a great solution. I have a lot of things that I would like to buy. And you as a salesperson could talk to me about it. Yeah, I'd like to buy it. I'm not going to buy it because it's not one of my top one or two priorities. So how do I get them? I have to be able to stay in the game with you by delivering you messages and insights that are relative to you. The easiest way is this. We have a first meeting. You share with me some information. Great. Terrific. We book another meeting. But then you don't show up. What I'm going to do is I'm going to send you back an email or I'm going to send you a voicemail. I'm going to send you a message in some way. I'm going to say, when we met last time, you said this and I say exactly back what it is. And I would like to get some more insights because I've got some ideas on that. Now, what did that do? That told you the customer. Wow. This salesperson actually listened. That's unusual because salespeople don't listen, right? Two, the salesperson actually cares about what it is I have to say. And three, for me as a salesperson, chances are you're going to respond to me. So I always link every meeting back to the next meeting. Now, we'll say they still don't respond. That's fine. I'm going to share with you. Based on our first meeting, I found some more information that's really important that some others are using. Call me. I'll share that with you. I'm sharing with them. I'm giving them insight. You have to keep delivering value. Here's the situation. If it takes me five or six or seven times to get you to engage with me, that's not bad. That's not all bad. Why? Because you're demonstrating that you care about them each step along the way. You're actually creating trust. You're actually creating a relationship. What you don't want to do is, "Hi, you haven't responded to me. Call me." Or, "Let me send this email to you again." Or, "I'm just checking in to see if you're ready." When people send me a message, I'm just checking in. I'm not a hotel. I didn't know I was hotel. I didn't know I was to give you a room. I mean, no. So always bring value. It's the same as the follow-up. Yes. Yes. Yes. And what I'm doing is I'm creating trust. I'll give you an example. I just closed a large deal with a very large company. 46 attempts over 18 months. It's in my CRM system. Be happy to show it to anybody. 46 attempts over about an 18-month period. But every message was a different message. Maybe in a different tunnel. Right. Right. Exactly. So it was a voice mail. Sometimes it was a voicemail. Sometimes it was a social media. But every time it was a -- I shared a different insight. I shared something new. I shared something of interest to them. I congratulate. But every time. And I finally got through to them. And what was interesting was once I got through to them, because the lady said, "I know you've been trying to reach out to me." We were able to get the contract written in about a two, two-and-a-half-week period. Fast. And this was a large, large account. Think about that. Because I had done -- along the way, I created all this trust. By the time, she finally agreed to have a meeting with me. She knew all about me and my company. And how I could help them. She was -- I mean, yeah. Awesome. At the same time you're having this conversation, I'm learning a lot, as always, from you. So thank you very much. Mark, well, having you here is awesome. Maybe this -- that motivates me to ask you a lot, a lot of things. But we have to respect your time. So let's talk about another topic that in outbound conference will be one of the main topics, too. That is AI. Today, sales professionals are -- some of them are a little bit scary with this AI. Phenomenon, you know? And they don't know how to manage -- what is the real challenge of this? It's a menace for them. What do you think will be happening with this new AI edge, as Jeff and Anthony says in their new book? What is the real -- the real way that we as sales professionals have to challenge with this or manage AI and use AI in our favor to have better results? Don't run from AI. We will not be replaced by AI. We will be replaced by somebody who uses AI. Now, for instance, I have a call later on today with a company in my ICP, but they happen to be located in a different country. And it's a country I'm not as familiar with. So I'm using AI right now, and I'm asking AI, what are the business challenges going on in this country? What is the outlook for business? What is the currency? How is their currency fluctuating between countries? I'm asking AI, because what is AI doing? AI is educating me as I get ready for this phone call. This is one of the easiest ways for us to use AI is to help educate us, because we can sit there and say, who is this company -- and this is what I do with any company. I always ask AI, AI. And you can use chat GPT, you can use co-pilot, you can use any number, but you're going to ask them, who is this company's main competitors? Just find out. What are the biggest challenges they're facing? What is their outlook on business? How is their industry? Who are their customers? There's all these questions. So what does it allow us to do? It allows us to go in and be much more intelligent. Now, there's a lot of people say, oh, I can use AI to write my email. Don't. I'll use it to help write, but I'm not going to send it just like that. AI in that regard is a starting tool. It's not a finishing tool. In other words, I might use it to help me kind of craft, but it's going to be a finishing tool. I'm going to say in your podcast, this is the drop the mic moment. Yes, this is the drop the mic moment. Because if you just sit there and I get them, I'm sure you get them too. Emails that you can clearly tell were written by AI and they're just, they're just not that good. They're just not that good. And it's also very clear that AI is behind that. And that is that is one thing that I always think a risk that maybe sales professional will have to challenge with is not being lazy in sales. Right. Right. An automation has done a lot of good things, but it also has provoked some damage to sales work, to sales, to sales activity. Because the same message for everyone, the same speech for everyone. Yeah. Here's the big difference regarding AI. For the lower performing salespeople, they will use AI to do their work. For the top performing salespeople, they will use AI to help them do their work. And that's the big difference. Oh, wow. Awesome. Two more questions, Mark. To respect your time. In this part of the year, many companies maybe are not reaching their sales quota. Many sales professionals maybe are not reaching their sales goals. In what things they can focus on concentrate the most on to maybe change the results in this part of the year. There are things that we can do or everything is lost right now. No, it's not lost. There's a lot of time left in the year. You may be behind. That's okay. You're not going to get caught up in one day or one week or one month, but you're going to do one call at a time. One call. One call. If you think about this is in any sport this way it is. You could have a basketball game, football, and whichever type of football you want to play US football or world football. You may be down by a goal. You may be down by a touchdown, but it's running one play at a time. You're bringing the you're bringing the ball down the pitch. What are you doing? You just setting the ball up to the right person. It's one play at a time. This is what salespeople don't because if you focus on the end, you're behind. You're going to get overwhelmed. You're going to get confused and you're not going to do a thing. Just focus on I'm going to get this done right. Then I'm going to do the next thing that I'm going to do the next thing that I'm going to do the next thing. And it's amazing at how successful you will be. Excellent. Excellent. And the last question mark, well, we have to finish with outbound outbound conference. It's coming. I'm counting the days. Maybe you all, you too. We will share there. We have a very good moments there for sure. The same as 2022 when we shared in Atlanta. And why in your vision, why sales professionals must come or must go to outbound 2024. The very simple reason is you become who you associate with the most. If you want to become a successful person, you need to spend time with great people. If you want to, if you want to be an average person, fine, go hang out with anybody. But what I find at outbound, it's the great, it's the most successful people come. And there's a magic that happens when you are with successful people. It changes your conversation. It changes your attitude. It changes your outlook. And what happens is you're going to leave with new ideas. Because again, that's what we're doing. We're sharing from the stage. What are these strategies and ideas? Now, what's interesting is many of them you may have heard before, but you're going to hear them maybe in a different light. You're going to hear them in a different way. Suddenly, it's going to realize that's what I need to do. That's the one thing I need to do. See, the one thing, the one thing. And that's why coming to outbound is so important. Because if we are not continuously improving, we're falling behind. If we say that business and everything is moving ahead, it will say 10% a year. If I'm not moving ahead by at least 10%, I'm falling behind. That means in order for me to really get ahead, I need to move ahead by 20% or 25%. And again, that's what outbound does for you. Outbound creates a very strong return on investment. I'm fast. I hear this all the time from people. They say, wow, it costs me a lot to go to outbound. Yeah. But what I learned from it, it changed how I make the phone calls. I have people come off to me every time. When I share and I walk people through about what prospecting. And it's about helping others see and achieve what they didn't think was possible. And how if you have the ability to help someone, I was with a person. In fact, it was the person I had coffee with this morning. And she shared with me. She said, when you walked me through that a month ago, when we met, that changed dramatically how I look at it. And she shared with me the success she had been having. Yeah. Because I changed her view of the call she makes. Wow. Please pay a lot of attention to what Mark has just said. The main reason to come to go to outbound 2024. The main reason that you must consider to go to outbound 2024. That's the place to be for every sales professionals. And don't relax because tickets are going fast. Also big tickets. And in one of the elite sessions, they are already sold out. So you have to hurry up. Tickets are selling fast every day. And it's very, it's very soon. So you don't have to, to relax right now. So, well, how can I say, what can I say, Mark? Thank you again. Thank you very, very much for sharing this space with me. Our, our community, our, our audience, our, the sales professionals that here, We have to put in practice everything that you just said, because that's the way to have better results and we can improve and in selling putting these things in practice right away. So thank you again, Mark. And as you say, great selling. Thank you. Great selling.