How to Bounce Back After Blowing It in Sales

What Happens When You Blow It

Everyone makes mistakes. It’s inevitable in sales and in life. The real test comes after the mistake. What happens next? How you respond sets the tone for your reputation, your relationships, and ultimately your career.

When things go wrong, it might feel easier to keep quiet and move on. But there’s always a cost.

“If you allow yourself to be compromised once, you will be compromised again and again.”

The Cost of Taking the Easy Way

Think back to that moment when a deal lands that seems a little too good to be true. Questions pop up, and if you ignore them, you gamble with your integrity.

Taking a shortcut might bring in immediate applause, a big commission, or even a promotion. But eventually, the fallout always finds its way back. Damaged relationships. Damaged reputation. Someone else cleaning up the mess you left behind.

Short-term wins never justify long-term harm.

Why Integrity Isn’t Optional

Every environment tests your values. Some companies make it harder than others. High pressure, bigger perks, bigger opportunities―and suddenly it’s tempting to justify letting things slide.

You have to anchor yourself. Without that, the erosion begins. A little slip here, a little compromise there, and soon you’re deep in trouble, questioning your own decisions.

“If I nick myself 1,000 times, I bleed to death. And that’s exactly what was happening… allowing my ethics, my integrity to slide just a little bit more each day, each week.”

When Things Go Sideways: Own Up Fast

Mistakes happen. The longer you wait to address them, the more chaos you create. Trying to cover up only digs the hole deeper. The best move? Own the mistake, apologize, and do what it takes to fix it.

People respect candor. They respect authenticity. It’s uncomfortable in the short term, but in the long run, you sleep better and preserve trust.

“When you are being challenged, you have to stand up and be firm right away… things are going to work out better for you in the long run.”

Integrity Is a Muscle—Exercise Yours

Selling with integrity isn’t a one-time event. It’s a habit, a muscle built with every decision. Stay anchored. Resist the temptation to cut corners, even if everyone else seems to be doing it.

Don’t let selling your soul become a habit. Let your values guide you. That’s how you make decisions you can stand behind years later.

Start Practicing Today

Make a commitment to act with integrity the next time things get tough. It might seem like a hit in the moment, but in the end, it’s always worth it.

Sales leaders who hold themselves to a higher standard inspire trust, build lasting relationships, and create opportunities that stand the test of time.

That’s the foundation for success—in sales, and in everything else.

Stay anchored. Lead with integrity. You’ll sleep better and sell stronger.

Mark Hunter :
You’re listening to the Sales Hunter Podcast. My name’s Mark Hunter, The Sales Hunter. And hey, I blew it. I knew it. Now, what do I do? Hey, my customer wants to know. Hey, how many times have you done something that you really should not have done? That’s what the topic is. Because again, my new book, Integrity First Selling, is out. But I need to let you know that I haven’t always done everything with integrity.

Mark Hunter :
I’ll explain why. The show begins right now. You’re listening to the Sales Hunter Podcast with Mark Hunter, where the focus is to help you as a sales leader sell with confidence and integrity. And now, here’s your host. Yes, I’ve blown it. Yes, I knew it. And what did I do about it? Hey, in my book, Integrity First Selling, tell the story of an account I was calling on early in my sales career. Walked in, had a great deal, great deal on an item.

Mark Hunter :
It was amazing price, amazing offer. And the buyer looked at me, ran some numbers on his calculator, and gave me an order that was absolutely huge. It was massive. It was probably 20, 30 times what they normally would order, but the price was good. I thought as he gave me the order, “Hmm, that’s too much.” But no, I took the order. Driving back to the office, I’m thinking to myself, “Should I have said something? I probably should have said something. I should have probably have made the amount quite a bit less. I should call him up.

Mark Hunter :
I should go back. I should make changes.” But no, I didn’t. In fact, when I walked into the office and shared with others the size the order. It was amazing how everybody congratulated me. And suddenly all of this, this concern I had about an order being too small was, hey, it was being leaped onto me of just unbelievable adulation of my selling job, of being able to sell this quantity to this customer. Wow. So I felt good. So I passed.

Mark Hunter :
I passed. In other words, we processed the order, we shipped it, and everything was good. Knowing, knowing it was probably too much. Not more than a couple months later, I got promoted, transferred to another area of the country, and I totally forgot all about the customer. Well, I did, but I didn’t forget about the customer. I knew what I had done. I knew that I had put way too much quantity into their warehouse. But I didn’t do anything about it.

Mark Hunter :
I just let it go. It was several years later that I’m at a sales kickoff meeting that I run into the account manager who took over that account after I left, after I got promoted, promoted and transferred to another area of the country. He shared with me the problem they had with that inventory. All of the chaos it created, all of the eventual write-down of inventory that that customer had to go through, and how my name, needless to say, wasn’t exactly high on their hit parade list. In other words, I had not demonstrated integrity. I knew it. I blew it, and I didn’t do anything about it. Stop and ask yourself this question: I took the short path, got the sale.

Mark Hunter :
Maybe that helped me get promoted. I probably did not, probably did not. But more importantly, I damaged the reputation of our company and the salesperson who took over the account after me. Clearly, I was not demonstrating integrity. That was a lesson that stuck with me for years and years. And it was interesting, but years later, I’m working at another company. I have a job that I absolutely love. I absolutely love the company.

Mark Hunter :
I, well, excuse me, I love my job. I love the people I had working for me. I clearly had the best job in the company, but the company was challenged. The company was ethically challenged. Integrity was not high on the list at the company. And I struggled with it. I had pains, but boy, the job was good. It was, life was good.

Mark Hunter :
Everything, I couldn’t complain. And one time I remember we had an award ceremony and one of my departments was charged with coming up with who receives the awards. And it was based off of a whole set of criteria. And department gave me the numbers. And so this was now my responsibility. We announced the recipients of these awards, and one of the people was not the right person. Not the right person. I’m feeling bad.

Mark Hunter :
I’m feeling like, oh, this is just disaster. This is absolute disaster. One of my departments didn’t handle this right. I have to own up to it. And I remember walking in to the president’s office saying, we need to change this. And I was fully willing to take full responsibility. I was, I was, and my feeling was we send out an apology note. I get on the phone, I call people, we absolutely express apology.

Mark Hunter :
And all that, I mean, again, and I was prepared that if I lost my job, I lost my job. I was going to own it. Sitting there, president’s office. He begins to come up with this cockamamie reason, excuse as to why, oh, this award was given to the person. Comes up with this whole thing as to basically what he’s doing is he’s covering up. He’s coming up with a note that is total CYA. He is totally trying to cover me up and cover up other people. And he says, I don’t want to see you get hurt.

Mark Hunter :
No, no, no. And what’s funny is he’s He’s doing this to try to protect me. He’s to save face. He doesn’t, he doesn’t want to lose face. And, and whoa. And yet I had walked in saying, hey, put me, put me on the front line. I’m willing to be the fall person for this because it was my mistake. It was my department’s mistake.

Mark Hunter :
We own it. We own it. But no, no, he sends out this note. And what was absolutely crazy was I’m sitting here watching ethics being challenged, integrity being challenged, and I’m not doing anything about it. I’m raising some stink, but okay, if he wants to cover me, I’m gonna— I’ll let him cover me. The no goes out and it creates even more chaos than before. It just— it just— I mean, you talk about the rumor, you talk about all kinds of things happening. And what was— what was happening here? Very simply, integrity was not being practiced It was interesting, but a couple years later, I quit that company.

Mark Hunter :
And here’s the lesson, here’s the lesson. I had a great job. I loved the people who worked for me. I literally, without a doubt, loved it. But I was in a challenged environment, and I was allowing myself to be compromised. This is the slippery slope with which we go down when we put ourselves around people who are ethically challenged. You have got to be absolutely careful. What’s interesting is I had seen this handwriting on the wall.

Mark Hunter :
Tim Marvel, thanks for jumping in this morning. You’re right. Thanks for sharing so much truth. Lead with integrity and you sleep better. You certainly do. Thank you, Tim. Here’s the situation. I knew the company.

Mark Hunter :
It was challenged. I knew it. But because of my position in the company, because of all the perks that came with it, because of all the stock options, everything that came with it, I was willing to forego that. You see, I was selling my soul. But in the end, it did more damage, more harm to me. You see, here’s what you have to be careful of. And so I talk about in my book, Integrity First Selling. You have got to be spot on in terms of always staying anchored.

Mark Hunter :
Because if you don’t stay anchored, it’s amazing at how things change. Now, let me fast forward this about 20 years to just a situation that happened really about 6 months ago to me. You know, I do a lot of speaking all over the country and around the world. And I had an engagement on my calendar for a very large company. It was going to be their sales kickoff event. Great, terrific. Another company had reached out to me, and they wanted me to come in and meet with their leadership team and kind of do about a day and a half type of deal with them. I said, great, terrific.

Mark Hunter :
And I had both the dates written down. I feel very good. This is great, because I’m going to go from one event right to the other event. It’s going to be perfect. Everything is going to work out perfect. About 3 weeks before the events, I realized that, wait a minute, I had the wrong month, or I had the wrong dates, and they actually overlap. They actually overlap. And now I’m in a panic, and I immediately reach out and call both companies.

Mark Hunter :
Well, the company with the sales kickoff event, I had a contract with them for 6-9 months. That could not get changed. It was a big event, huge event. They couldn’t change the day of their meeting, couldn’t change the flow. So I had to call the other company and I had to just absolutely apologize. And, and I shared with them, senior leadership, I said, hey, if you’re willing to forego the event, let’s just forego it. I absolutely apologize. I blew it.

Mark Hunter :
I’m going to send you back your deposit. We’re going to take care of everything. And I absolutely apologize. And I went through several other options. They came back to me and they said, no, we appreciate your candor. We appreciate your candor. That you shared with us. Exactly.

Mark Hunter :
And what was interesting was I never had any hesitation about handling the situation like that. Never, never. Now, I think one of the reasons I never had a hesitation is because I’ve allowed myself to become anchored with this is what my level of integrity is. This is my, so to speak, my North Star. This is, this is where my direction And I can’t stress that enough. See, here’s the whole situation through these 3 stories I just shared with you. If you allow yourself to be compromised once, you will be compromised again and again. If you fail to stand up for what is right in the moment, you will be compromised.

Mark Hunter :
That first situation where I sold all that inventory in, I didn’t stand up at the moment. And I allowed myself to be compromised. In the second situation, I allowed myself to just slowly get chipped away in terms of my integrity, in terms of my ethics, in terms of my values. And I wound up being in a cesspool. In fact, it’s interesting, but it was a couple of years later that I resigned from that company and began doing what I’m doing today. Yeah, because again, it was at the point that, wait, hold up, wake up, smell the cappuccino. You’ve got to exit. You see, here’s what I want you to do, and here’s what I have to work on.

Mark Hunter :
When you are being challenged, you have to stand up and be firm right away. And short term, it can feel like a hit. Short term, it can feel like a hit. But you are definitely going to sleep better. Without a doubt, you’re going to sleep better. And more importantly, things are going to work out better for you in the long run. I have seen this time and time again. The challenge is if you’re playing commission breath, if you’re playing, I’ve got to make my numbers this month, then guess what? You’re going to run into problems.

Mark Hunter :
You are absolutely, or if you would just allow yourself to slowly but surely get nicked. You know, it’s the old expression I have that if I nick myself shaving, I lose a drop of blood. If I nick myself 1,000 times, I bleed to death. And that’s exactly what was happening to me in that second company, because I was allowing my ethics, my integrity to slide just a little bit more each day, each week. I talk about all of these things in my book, Integrity First Selling. I want you to pick it up. I want you to read it. I want you to, to really digest it because it’s going to change how you sell dramatically.

Mark Hunter :
It’s going to change. It’s going to change how you look at things. This has been a long time in coming and putting this book out. And I’m doing it for the very simple reason, now more than ever because of AI and everything else we have out there, it is important for us to be authentic. And again, this is what this book talks about, how to be authentic. The book is Integrity First Selling. I want you to grab a copy of it. My name is Mark Hunter, The Sales Hunter.

Mark Hunter :
Two episodes like this every week. One like this, short single topic, from me. Second, where we do a deep dive with a subject matter expert. Do me a favor, grab the book. Please grab the book and leave me a review. Leave me a review on Amazon or wherever you pick up the book at. And hey, subscribe to the show and leave your comments. You know, as, as you know, if you’re listening to it on Spotify or Apple Music or whatever, leave me your comments.

Mark Hunter :
Okay. Hey, I’m Mark Hunter, The Sales Hunter. Great selling.