Most salespeople think the sale starts when the paperwork comes out. That’s the wrong approach. Success begins long before there’s a signature or a deposit. The real win happens earlier.
Reframe How You Think About Closing
Stop thinking about “the close.” The job isn’t to push for the finish line or force an outcome. The real objective is to open a relationship, not just close a deal.
Too much energy gets funneled into closing tactics when the most important conversations happen upfront.
“The sale is made way before you ever think it is.”
Spot the Signals. Don’t Blow Through Them
Salespeople get in trouble when they plow through the process, missing the signals. Imagine racing down a road so fast you don’t notice the light has turned red. The sale is lost in these moments.
Every interaction provides clues. Missing them means you don’t truly understand the customer, or their needs.
Trust First, Everything Else Second
Trust is everything. Without it, nothing moves. With it, everything unlocks.
Build trust early and often. This isn’t a box to check, it’s the foundation.
“My first objective when I meet you as a customer, when I begin conversations, is to establish trust.”
Trust turns surface-level answers into real conversations. Trust lets the customer open up—and when customers open up, that’s when real value is discovered.
Let the Customer Define Value
Don’t tell prospects what’s valuable. Let them define it for you. Get curious. Ask the questions that guide the customer to articulate their goals, pain points, and obstacles.
Sales success isn’t about sharing more information. It’s about mastering questions that help the customer see what they really need.
“Sales success is not in the information we share. Sales success is in the questions that we ask.”
Define Value, and the Obstacles Fade Away
Once value is clear, objections start falling away. Budget and timing hesitations lose their grip when solving the problem is more urgent than the price tag.
People don’t buy what’s merely interesting. They buy what’s essential. Make your solution essential by drilling down on value defined by the customer’s own words.
Don’t Oversell…Or Risk Losing the Deal
There’s a danger in doing too much. Sell past the point of value, and you risk “unselling” the deal.
Keep the focus on solving what matters. Don’t introduce features or details that don’t apply. If the customer is ready, make it easy for them to buy. Don’t complicate things. Don’t give them new reasons to say no.
Start Simple, Build the Relationship
Get in the door with that first sale. Make it easy. Make it frictionless.
Once the relationship is there, there’s room to grow. But if you hang around, going through unnecessary motions, you might talk yourself—and the sale—right out the door.
Lead with Trust, Win on Value
Serve first. Understand deeply. Act with integrity. Focus on what the customer truly needs and help them see what’s possible.
That’s how deals are really won. That’s how relationships are built. And that’s how sales careers thrive.
Mark Hunter :
You close the deal, you get the sale long before you actually close the deal. Hey, too many salespeople are thinking the sale is made when the. The signature gets on the line or the money gets. No, no, no, no. The sale is made long before that. And the problem is you and too many salespeople are driving through the signals. Why am I talking. Let’s get the show going.
Mark Hunter :
Right now you’re listening to the Sales Hunter podcast with Mark Hunter, where the focus as a salesman sell with confidence and integrity. And now here’s your host. Hey, the sale is made way before you ever think it is. You know, too much effort. I’ve been talking about this for several weeks. Too much effort is placed on the close. And of course, I hate the term close, because if I don’t want to close anything, I want to open a relationship. But what I’m saying is that we, the sales community, tend to drive through the signals.
Mark Hunter :
We’re not seeing what’s really happening out there. We’re not really listening. You see, it’s like we’re driving the car down the street and we’re driving so fast that we don’t see that the light has turned red. And we drive right through the red light. We miss the signals. You see, here’s the deal. I’ve got to look for the signals that the customer is giving us long before we actually close. I’m going to share with you a story for my own sales career.
Mark Hunter :
Happened very early on. It was a pain, painful lesson that I learned, but it taught me something. You see, what happens is we go into sales calls with a process, and these are the steps we’re going to go through. And, you know, I want to share this, I want to share that. I want to do that. Hold it, hold it. My first objective when I meet you as a customer, when I begin conversations, is to establish trust. You knew I was going to say that because again, I’m so high on talking about trust.
Mark Hunter :
So I wrote the book integrity first selling is. I’ve got to build trust as early in the process as possible. Because here’s the whole thing. I can’t move the sale forward at all unless there’s an element of trust. You see, now what happens is when trust is developed, now what I’m beginning to hear from the customer is absolute truth. And my whole objective is to now define value. Now, I don’t define value by telling you what the value is. I define value by asking you, what is it that you’re looking for? What do you consider success? What do you see as the challenges you need to get past? What are the issues that you’re looking to solve and the reason we’re talking here today? What are other options? You’ve looked at all these various questions that you can be asking, but the idea is this.
Mark Hunter :
I don’t define value for the customer. I let the customer define the value. This is why I say sales success is not in the information we share. Sales success is in the questions that we ask. So my questions very much early on are all centered around getting you to define your problem. Now, you may not know what your problem is. That’s okay, that’s fine. And I’m going to ask questions from my level of expertise because, you know, I’ve got knowledge.
Mark Hunter :
That’s why I’m talking with you. You that I can maybe probe a little deeper. I can poke a lot deeper. I can find out more. Fine, great. Go for it. Everything there that I’m doing is designed to get you realizing that this is the issue that you need to solve. See, what happens is this, as soon as we’ve defined value, we, the customer and myself, have defined value, the sale is made.
Mark Hunter :
The sale is made. From that point on, all we’re trying to do is ascertain budget and do I have a timeline and am I talking to the right person? That’s it. That’s it. Now you sit there and say, mark, those are big gaps. Yeah, they are big gaps. I, I realize that. But if you define the problem well enough, or I should say the customers to find the problem well enough, they’re going to take you to the promised land in terms of the budget, the timing and so forth. And oh, by the way, the timing falls off the table because of the size of the value you’ve created.
Mark Hunter :
You see, if you haven’t created value, there’s no timing. If you’ve created value, then they realize that they’ve got to get this problem solved. Now. Spot on. Absolutely. You see, that falls off the table. Oh, they don’t have budget. You’re right.
Mark Hunter :
They don’t have budget. But when they see that the issue is so big, so massive that they can’t afford not to invest with you. Notice I didn’t say buy, I said invest, that they can’t afford not to invest with you. Budget falls off the table. Now we’re down to just one piece left, and that’s. That’s the decision maker. That’s the person who’s actually going to put their signature on the line. And again, if I’ve defined Value, Right.
Mark Hunter :
And remember, value is what are the, the key initiatives that the company and the people I’m talking to have to address this year? Oh, that’s part of value. You see, when I define that, then the decision maker says, you’re right, this is going to help me solve my, I, I incur this all, I, I have this all the time in my own business. I come in and I, I keynote speak. I, I, I do work for a company. And yeah, the person who’s going to sign the check, person who’s going to say, yes, says, yes, there’s value here. You see, what’s very interesting is when we define value properly, those three issues just come off the table and now I am able to close. You see, everything I do after that either reinforces the sale or takes away from the sale. Whoa, what do I mean by that? Yeah, you see, everything after that I can either add to the sale.
Mark Hunter :
In other words, now what I’m doing is I’m trying to create a continuum. I’m trying to, I’m trying not to just make this sale sale, but I’m going to help you do X, Y and Z. I’m going to take you further down the road. Wonderful. Absolutely fantastic. It’s great. But what I risk is also unselling the deal I shared at the beginning that I was going to share with you a story, painful story of my own selling career. Early on in my selling career, I had a very defined process that my company was adamant that I go through.
Mark Hunter :
And I’m meeting with a customer, customer. We got a great solution for them. Absolutely fantastic. It fits, it works. And I’ve gone through what I’ve done and, and the customer is, is literally, we happen to be face to face and the customer is leaning forward. The body language says, yeah, I’m ready to buy. And you see, value’s been determined. They’ve got the budget, they’ve got the urgency.
Mark Hunter :
I happen to be sitting with the decision maker. Everything is in place, but I keep selling. Now, was I selling to create more? No, I wasn’t. That was my problem. I was selling to make sure that they understood everything and, oh, I got to do the demo. I got to do the demo. So I walked them through the demo and in so doing, the customer sees some things that they don’t like and I literally unsold the sale. Whoa, you’re going to say, mark, hold it.
Mark Hunter :
You talk about integrity. Maybe you just showed them what they should have known up front. No, no, not at all. I, my problem was I was showing them things that didn’t even pertain to them, that it was totally irrelevant to them. Totally irrelevant to them. What they were looking for, they were looking for a solution. And what I had was going to solve them. But see, what I began showing them was, was things other.
Mark Hunter :
And for some reason he had an issue. And I’ll never forget, I unsold the product. You see, what happened was I was going through the steps of trying to close the deal and I thought the sale was going to be made when I said, are you ready to buy? The sale is going to be made when I. When I said this is the amount. When I said these are the terms. But no, the sale was made earlier on and I proceeded to unsell them. Now, where are we going with this? I want to share with you a couple things that I want you to take. Hold on this one.
Mark Hunter :
Remember that when we define value clearly, in other words, the customer has defined value for us. It is amazing at how issues come off the table. They come off the table. We think that there’s an issue regarding budget, we think that there’s an issue regarding time, and we think there’s. They come off the table when we sell that. Your whole premise of why you’re in front of the customer is remember to help them see and achieve what they did not think was possible. It’s not to do something else. It’s not to create world peace unless that’s what you’re selling.
Mark Hunter :
But that’s not what you’re selling. Your objective is to help get this software into them or get this product into them. Get this, whatever it might be. All of your focus once you develop trust is on creating the value proposition. That’s it. Nothing else. Now remember I said trust comes first. Because that’s absolutely adamant.
Mark Hunter :
Because if you try to create the value proposition without first creating trust, you’re in a heap of trouble. Because the customer will lie to you. The customer will tell you anything that they want to hear. But when you create a level of trust between both parties and it’s not just you being trustworthy, it’s them thinking you’re trustworthy and you’re thinking them trustworthy. And what is this about? It’s about you being authentic. It’s about you demonstrating integrity. It’s about you putting them first and understanding them. Remember, sales is about serving.
Mark Hunter :
And when I begin serving you, you’re going to begin to see the trust that’s going to come. And as a result, now I can create the value proposition. Hey, do me a favor. Right now, if you will. If you’re liking this show, leave me a review on your favorite podcast app. Would it be Spotify, Apple, whatever it might be, hey, do that. But anyway, here’s the thing. Focus more on the value.
Mark Hunter :
Your objective is to accentuate the value. We accentuate the value because of the gain that the customer is going to get. Now remember, the gain that the customer is going to get is more likely to alleviate a pain. Customers will always pay more to alleviate a pain versus to grow something. But I still call that a gain. I still call it because, remember, I’m an optimist. I call that a gain for one very simple reason. Because you’re eliminating the pain.
Mark Hunter :
My whole objective is to just focus right there on that and to be asking you questions. It’s not about me sharing with you what my product is. Is because once you begin to understand the size of the pain that you have and you understand me as a person, you’re gonna. You’re gonna respect what I ultimately put on the table for you. But again, after I’ve created that level of value, in other words, you’ve created that level of value. Anything I do beyond that is either to create a continuous sale or I risk unselling. That’s a strategic question that you need to ask. This is why I say the best thing you can do with a customer is to make it simple for them to buy from you.
Mark Hunter :
Make it simple, get in the door, and build from there. So my whole objective, and I hope your comp plan isn’t set up to where you only get comp on the first sale. Then you’re right. Then you got to. Oh, that’s a whole separate issue, man. Don’t get me going on that one. Wow. But what I want you to do is I want you to secure the first sale.
Mark Hunter :
Because when I secure the first sale, then I can begin to move you to the next one. But don’t sit there and stay in the game for so long that you wind up on selling. Hey, you get the deal long before you get the deal. It’s all about reframing how we close. If I can close on the value proposition I’ve got right now, and I’ve got. And I’ve been able to take those three things off the table that I talked about earlier in terms of money, timing and who close the sale, open the relationship, and you’ll be able to stick around for the next sale. Hey, do me a favor. Leave me a review on your favorite podcast app.
Mark Hunter :
Would you please do that? And hey, if you haven’t picked up the book Integrity First Selling, grab it. I’m really loving the comments I’m hearing from so many people all over the world. I’m Mark Hunter, the Sales hunter. You’ve been listening to the Sales Hunter podcast. Two episodes a week, one like this, where I just unpack a single issue. Second, I do a deep dive with the subject matter expert. It’s all here for one thing, to help you see and achieve what you didn’t think was possible. My name is Mark Hunter, the Sales center, and I’d love to speak at your upcoming sales meeting.
Mark Hunter :
Great selling.
