The Art of Sales Evangelism: Building Quality Pipeline and with Donald Kelly

Speaker A: Hello everybody and welcome to the Enterprise Sales Development Podcast brought to you by Science Technologies. We interview outbound leaders at ah, fast growth businesses to learn their secrets and bring you actionable insights. Thanks for joining us this week.

Speaker B: Hello everybody and welcome to the Enterprise Sales Development Podcast. I'm, I'm your host, Eric Kwanstrom, the CMO at Science. Today's episode, really fun one. We got a chance to speak with Donald C. Kelly, which might be a familiar name for anyone listening because he's very prolific in the sales development space. He runs the or, he's the founder and chief sales evangelist for OR at the Sales Evangelist. Runs his own podcast by the same name. Uh, works as the VP of sales and marketing at benfocomplete, is a sales professor, um, over at uh, BYU Idaho on the side. When does this guy have any downtime? I don't know. But one of the things that's so fun is all of the stories that Donald takes the time to share with us and really provide some great perspective and some great insights. I think you guys are going to love this podcast, um, chock full of really good best practices insights and things you can take away and start doing literally today. So without further ado, let's get to it. Here's Donald Kelly. Our guest today is actually, um, someone that is as deep in the community as possible. And frankly with the title like the sales Evangelist, how could you not be? Um, so Donald Kelly, welcome.

Speaker A: Well, thank you so much for having me, man. I appreciate the fact that you invite me to come here and to be a part of your community and to share some insights.

Speaker B: You bet, you bet. Um, tell us a little bit about, you know, kind of where the. For those that have been hiding under a rock and they're not familiar with your work, um, tell us a little bit about where the sales evangelist came from and some of your kind of work in the sales development space.

Speaker A: Yeah, so as us, uh, in college I read a book, or we were assigned to read a book by Guy Kawasaki and he was the chief evangelist at Apple. But back in the early 90s and I thought that was like a really cool title. The only time I ever heard that title was like in church and like evangelist, like that sounds, it's just like a rich topic like title when you think about that, like um, a sales evangelist or a chief evangelist. So fast forward, I kept it in my mind and I had gone to a company, um, one of the second company I worked for out of college and they were getting us new business cards and I was like, you know, go put on my card. Technology evangelist. Um, and I went to this networking event and the reason why that, because we were doing manage IT service services. And when I got up, um, to give you my introduction at this networking event, everybody was saying account executive or business owner, blah, blah, blah. So I was like, my name is Donald Kelly and I was the iPad2 at that time. And I was like, my name is Donald Kelly. I'm the technology evangelist. Our company has been to the mountaintop and we got the latest technology and we're bringing it back down to evangelize on how we can help you to improve your tech. And oh my goodness, I got so many business cards afterwards, people wanted to connect. So I went back to the office. I was telling when they're doing the business cards, like, put technology evangelists on there. So I took that and ran with it for a little bit. Then I got into the software game and I was selling software and um, my started seeing some had challenges. I wasn't thriving. Um, and then, sorry about that, I wasn't thriving. Then my manager, um, a guy went through some training program and shout out to Sandler at the time and I started hockey, sticking my performance and I was like, dope, this is amazing. And I was just making money, um, doing pretty well. And I love to share insights, I love to evangelize. So one of my buddies started a show and had me come on and had me share some of the things that was making me success, successful as a seller. And he was like, you're like an evangelist, man. And I was like, well, I was the technology evangelist. My previous company. You're like a sales evangelist. And I was like, oh my goodness. And then he was like, we, he, he, uh, invited me to do. You know, he's like, you should consider doing your own show. And this was back in 2012, uh, when podcasting was just like in its infancy. And, um, I started the sales evangelist in 2013, officially started doing some stuff on YouTube earlier, um, that year. And it grew and it made into something. And essentially at the beginning, I taught and shared a wide range to everyone. As the business grew and as we gained momentum and gained footing, we started focusing a lot on B2B sellers. Um, and then we trickled down to software sales and we have a lot of people listening to our community, listen in the community. But that's the premise, that's the idea. Those are the group and that's what we focus on, um, helping that core community there to be able to improve their business skills. And one of the things that we are passionate about is building pipeline. Not just any building crappy stuff, building quality pipes. A lot of our content is around building pipe. And, um, we love getting strategies and stories of how you can make that effective, be more effective, and to shave milliseconds off, so to speak, off your time and to close faster. And I will refer to millisecond because of my track days, um, when you get to a certain point in your sales career, in your track career, you're not going to shave seconds off your time. When you get to a higher level, you're going to shave milliseconds off. Um, you know, and most of the people that were, that's listening to us, they know how to sell, they understand some of those fundamentals. But now they're looking for how can I shave off milliseconds? Essentially, how can I get the proposal better? How can I get access to decision faster? Uh, how can I, um, how can I get this, um, get past procurement easier? What else am I missing? What strategies or tricks? And that's what we try to do, is give them effective ways to be able to build pipe and to close deals faster.

Speaker B: Not to be all meta about this, but the interesting thing is, as I listen to this, one of the things that occurs to me is the power of one word. And that word being evangelist, where you saw it in social settings, you saw it and it resonated, um, deeply with what it is you were doing. Isn't that one of those ways to shave milliseconds off and get to a quality conversation is to even have something about you that's unique, differentiating, and otherwise worthwhile whenever you're talking to somebody else?

Speaker A: 100%, um, one of the philosophies that I have is that in order to be successful, do the opposite of what everyone else is doing. And something that I adopted and, you know, as you share this, I'll give you a quick story how I have adopted this to my life as well. In college, um, we wanted to make some money. And as a entrepreneur and always been an entrepreneur and love hustling, right? So in college I was talking to my manager, um, for the, uh, apartment that I live in and the house I live in. And they were like, man, if somebody was really smart, there's a fourth of July parade coming up. You know, you can sell water over there. And I was like, oh, my goodness. And, uh, I took that and I was like, okay, we're going to do that. So I sold water. I got a booth in the parade, in the park. And I made like 34 bucks. And I paid for my, uh, my expenses for paying for a booth. And I was like, this is lame. The next year, I was like, think outside the box. In order to be successful. What we saw, noticed was that a lot of people were walking around, and that's what we were doing. So instead of getting a booth and being tempt, we started going bigger. And there's a bigger city that had a bigger parade. So we said, what if we just went to that parade? Um, we did two cities at the time, and, um, we didn't do a booth and just walked around, made a lot more money. And then the third year, um, we did Waterboy. So we got shirts from, like, the thrift store and wrote Waterboy on it. We found a helmet. Um, you know, I got a helmet, like, at the, the thrift store and put on this helmet and was walking around and we were doing Water Boys. And we had two of us on each side going from the end of the parade and two from the other end of the beginning of the parade coming. And we, we just stood out. You have to be different. And people would say, you know, yell at us. Gatorade is better. Or, water boys, come over here. I want some water. And it stood out and was different. And that's a philosophy that I've applied, whether it's in my book, whether it's in our training program, whether it's in, like, business development, whether it's like, on LinkedIn. How can I grab people's attention and to be. And be different than everybody else? So it's a powerful strategy, and I appreciate you noticing that.

Speaker B: So, yeah, without a doubt. And I think grabbing attention. A lot of people have coined the term attention economy. That is kind of what we live in today. And getting attention is harder than ever before. Yeah, I think that there's actually been, especially as you've defined it, for software sales, in particular sales development tactics and ways to get attention that worked in the past. Boy, oh boy, things are just not necessarily, um. And we're taping this in Q1 of 2024 for posterity's sake, whenever you're listening. But ultimately, we're seeing kind of a sea change of ways to get attention falling out of favor and new ones kind of emerging. I'd love to get your kind of, like, thoughts on that broad topic.

Speaker A: Yeah, email was a big one for a while, and I think email still reign, uh, dominance in a lot of a, uh, lot of our sales outreach, um, strategies however, we've seen companies like Google and Yahoo become stricter based on user behaviors, on how they want to be communicated with and how they want their emails to, you know, the quantity or the velocity of email, um, from people and most, most people, um, what I see that's working nowadays is to do obviously the omnichannel. And I know that's an older term now, like you know, several 45 years old, but it still works. But in particular, LinkedIn has been one of the number one sources for B2B sellers. Not in a traditional sense. When you first got on LinkedIn back in the days, you're just building a network, collecting a bunch of random folks. And then, you know, it evolved to where people are like, well now I got all these people on LinkedIn, I'm going to go p them and just send out automated services and pitch a bunch of people to buy my services. That's money coming in right there.

Speaker B: The connect and pitch routine, if you will.

Speaker A: Yeah, uh, the pitch slap is what we call it. Um, that doesn't work, you know, it can't, um, you can't do that, um, anymore. So what we found though, that made more uh, impact or have the biggest, uh, you know, impact is a combination of both of them and the way that we do it, um, and we see have great results is um, connect, share, engage, connect, share, engage, connect, share idea, Connect with id icps, um, some people again, instead of just like, you know, I'm just gonna connect with a bunch of people and collect them like Pokemon cards. Let's focus on our icp. It's good to connect with your friends from college and so forth. Excuse me? It's good to connect with your friends from college and so forth. And that's great. The challenges, if my friends from college can't pay for what I have, the services that I'm offering, it doesn't make sense to build up my network of a bunch of like cousins, uh, and friends. I need to focus on my icp. So every day I recommend to folks connect with at least your focus, focus, uh, list that you're focusing on. Or perhaps it's going to be, uh, you know, a list of like people, uh, who are your ICP that could be in the future. So five, let's say you connect with five people a day. Five times five is 25 individuals over the course of a week, over the course of a month. That's 200 individual that you're connected to and let's say 100 of them actually accept your connection request. 100 ICP connecting with me over the course of a year, you're connecting with 1200 individuals that are your ICP. Now the share ideas to share content, things that these people may be interested in. And I look at the top of the funnel. Questions that people ask me on a disco, um, or initial call, things that they bring up. Not necessarily m the price, but, you know, here's a challenge that I'm facing. How do you do this? How can you solve that? And those are the questions that you want to answer in post, like create posts or content around that. You don't need to be an influencer. One post a week. Absolutely. Great. Or go curate. Find somebody that answered that well, maybe a video and share that on LinkedIn or reshare it with your thoughts. And the third is engage, engage with people who are posting your ICPs and also engage with your um, people who are engaging on your posts. Um, so if somebody likes my posts, I'm going to send them a connection request if they're my icp. Say something to the nature of, you know, Eric, it's I saw that you engage, saw that you like my post about cold calling. M. Um, figured you're probably in the same boat I am. Permission to connect here on LinkedIn. You're probably going to say, oh, this guy actually connect back to me. But this can start a dialogue and you can start some kind of conversation. Uh, but what we're seeing works with this is the conversation HubSpot CEO, um, shared that more than 40, about 44% of uh, executives say to discover new information, discover um, new solution services via social media. Um, so if this is the case with executives, I want to be out there sharing stuff like to make sure that I'm, you know, I can put myself against everybody else. And also I want to make sure that I'm starting conversation. Because once you can start conversations or once you grab attention and the hardest part, then you could start conversations, uh, um, tension, you start engagement. Engagement leads to conversation. Conversations lead to opportunities, opportunities lead to appointments and opportunity and appointments obviously lead to business, um, and so forth. And that's, that's the idea that I've seen at work with that being said as well is how can I engage with people? The, another, the other piece that tie back to this is say you connect back with me, Eric. After engaging on my posts, I send you a Little video on LinkedIn. It was like, hey Eric, I wanted to put a face with a name natively inside of the LinkedIn app itself. So I'm not doing an attachment, not sending you anywhere else, but only on the mobile device. You can send a video inside that uh, message or you can send a voice message, um, via LinkedIn, give you that capability. But it makes me feel, it makes you feel like you know me, like I'm just this human being. We have that engagement now, Eric. Um, we talk about cold calling. I do no pitching. I don't tell you about my services. You can go look at my profile, you can see that. So I'm going to tie this all together now. But then um, and this is strategic, the things that I'm posting are going to be the things relative to maybe the things that I'm uh, that I want to help people with. So I did something on cold calling. You engage with that. And I might say Eric, out of curiosity, are you guys, it sounds like you and your team are doing cold calling. Yeah, we're um, doing a lot of cold calling now these days. Blah blah blah. We go back and forth on that and we chat about it. Um, and then um, you know, maybe you said what some of the biggest challenge we're facing is xyz. If it's appropriate then I'll say, well Eric, if you're open to it, um, here are some of the things, things that we're seeing that's working for us when it comes to cold calling. Um, or better yet, if you have five to seven minutes, I can jump on a call and share with you some of these things. You're going to be more than willing to jump on a call with me at that point. But if I go to old way of just sending you a pitch, hey, I want to give you some strategies how to improve cold calling. Even though you need help with that, you're not going to trust the email as much. And let's say you don't. Even if you, even if you don't necessarily get to the point where we have that conversation on LinkedIn, um, going back and forth about, you know, willing to take some tips. I can still email you at that point and I could refer back to this, I might say it's not a cold call but it's kind of a warm email. Um, but you're probably going to open that email and you're probably because you recognize my name because we engaged on LinkedIn and I will go refer back to that. We call it a point of reference. Hey Eric, It's Donald from LinkedIn. We connected a couple weeks, about a week ago when you were engaging on my post notice. Uh, I had A thought that I figured I would at least shoot my shot with, blah, blah, blah. So you guys were growing your team. If cold calling workshop may be something you'd be open to, whatever. But at least that point now that email has a high chance of being read because I engage with you on a previous on a platform already and I started that connection and that makes such a world of difference. So my team, they have a focus list that we usually, um, have and then on a focus list they might build that in Navigator and then they start to get that engagement or grab attention. Once they grab attention, they get the engagement and engagements lead to conversations and to appointments or the emails will help us to get to that point. Or phone call. I was rapping a bit there for a second.

Speaker B: No, I love it. And I think that there's nothing better from a cold call opener standpoint than actually saying, oh, yeah, we're connected on LinkedIn. Yeah, right. As a great way to get into that call. Um, what I like most about the Connect, Share, Engage model is that it's actually kind of never ending. It's evergreen. No?

Speaker A: Yeah, always, like, you can get people. Like, it's you, you need to always fill that funnel. Like, you need to have, like, uh, people connecting with you who are more than likely, um, going to be interested in buying from you. If you get to the point where Your profile is, 50% of those people are people who could purchase from you and, you know, then the rest are like your acquaintances and strategic partners and friends and cousins and college roommates, then awesome, fantastic. But 50% of the people you're connecting with at least could potentially buy from you. That's money in a bank all day. And it's a continual process because most people, I can tell you that most people get on LinkedIn and it's like a dog chasing a car. Like, what do you do when you actually catch the car? You're going to try to bury this thing. So you got these people all over, they're like, yeah, I see all these prospects, Ah, I want to go get them all on LinkedIn. And then they go around doing dumb stuff. Um, they pitch slap or they don't post anything, or they just, you know, try to, try to send, uh, automate messages. Buy from me, buy from me. And none of that works. But being strategic and everything I taught there could take literally, literally just like 40 minutes to a day. Like, and if you do 40 minutes, break your time instead. 40 minutes in the morning, I'm going to spend on LinkedIn. I'm going to connect with some ICP. That's probably going to be 10 minutes there. I'm going to share a piece of content, find something and just queue it up. You can schedule posts out on LinkedIn and I'm going to engage. I'm going to see who engaged on my post last week, uh, from yesterday, the past couple of days, and then you can take all, if you do have navigator, take those people and put them on a navigator list. These are people who engage on my post. And, um, you know, you can still build up that thing when they make up, when they make a post, you can engage on that. When they have a birth, excuse me, um, a job change, you'll be notified of that. Like, those are your people, Those are your ICPs. ICPs engaging on my stuff. Keep them on a list and magic starts happening over time. But if you're desperate and you're just trying to get a win today, you're trying to get a, you know, a deal closed today, this process is not going to work for you, not going to sound attractive at all. Um, but you still do your regular outreach phone calls and send your emails. In addition, adopt this mentality, this LinkedIn approach, and I tell you, your pipeline will change.

Speaker B: It definitely will. You know, I think one of the. I'd love to go deep dive or peel the onion, whatever. Yeah, uh, favorite metaphor is because I think where especially a lot of sales development reps or business development reps, whatever title we want to use, where they struggle the most is with the content piece, whether it's content creating, content curating, but ultimately having something to say, attaching it to them, their company or their individual brand on LinkedIn and then using that, even though that's not the start place, you know, connect is, but share is really where that content kind of takes shape. What kind of guidance and really frameworks or mentality do you like to provide people with for 0 to 1 starting on that journey?

Speaker A: Yeah, I say do not complicate it. Um, let's give an example. Um, let's say I sell, um, I sell a CRM, right? Um, and there are probably some intuitive questions that people have or maybe some of the, you know, the reasons why some of the initial pain before I even consider CRM. Um, so I might say, um, I don't need a CRM. Excel M is great. Um, I could keep track of my business. I don't need a CRM M. I can do everything I need in Excel. Um, um, maybe such as, like, um, I don't need a CRM. M. I keep track of my follow ups on my Google calendar. Um, then you know, CRMs are, they're all um, they're all the same and they're just overpriced. Um, or maybe CRMs are too. Um, last one CRMs, um, they never integrate with anything that I with my other solution. So I just have four weeks of content right there.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And all of these things are thing are answers that the salesperson know the answer to already. So we don't have to complicate it because here's the thing, those are the people that I'm trying to get. Maybe it's SMBs that are not using a CRM. Or perhaps um, maybe somebody that's already using a CRM. Um, I can do a content on that. But the idea is go back and look at your initial calls. What are some of the questions that those people ask? What are some of them before you even did an initial call, what are the biggest problems that your clients said that they faced before they decided to get a CRM? All of those things are the post content. And it's not that you need to do any research at this point. You know the answers to all of these as well. My friend taught me something. You've all learned, we've all learned this probably way back in the days feel felt found um concept and he said to use that with posts and I was like what? And then I did it and I'm like it's a freaking genius. So let's go back to the CRM content. I'm a BDR and I don't need a CRM feel. So most of my um, I would put all caps at the top of my post on LinkedIn so that when this is in the feed then it'll just be that it'll be a click baity topic that's going to really grab people's attention and then they're going to say see more and then you click on those three dots to see the full post. Like I would see it on LinkedIn. So it'd be like um, uh, CRMs are a waste of money or Excel is way better than a CRM. Um, and anybody who is anyone in the you know that's probably like that's they agree with it. They'll look at the post or people who are in that space, they're going to look at that post and then when they click on it I'm going to say most of my clients feel um, um, most people I know most SMBs. So the ICPS now I'm going to call you out. Most of the um, entrepreneurs, small, uh, business entrepreneurs I know feel the same exact way. So then they probably thinking I'm still agreeing with them. Yeah, yeah, the CRMs are waste of money. Um, many of my clients felt. This is where the felt comes in. Felt the same exact way, um, dot, dot, dot. And then go into the pain. Um, CRMs were a little bit more um, their, their CRM was uh, they didn't, they had Excel, they could easily keep track of their stuff. They didn't have to pay for anything. Google Drive is out there and there's a bunch of templates that they can find. So I'm still, probably still. Yeah, that's still true. I like this guy. And then this is where they found. What they found however was that they were losing money because they were missing things that Excel, that Excel couldn't provide from a typical CRM. One, they missing dates and keeping up with information, critical deals. Um, two, they didn't have a Excel couldn't maintain or um, user ability, um, to keep track of everything that they had. And three, they um, you know, they uh, they couldn't easily search and to find stuff. Um, the best tip that I give to anyone is, is yes, everyone doesn't need a CRM. But if your business is actually growing and you're trying to thrive in your organization, you should look for, you should make sure um, you have an effective way of following up with every single deal and making sure that you have blah, blah, blah, blah, blah or whatever. I'm making this up at this point, but the point is now I'm given education and then I might ask at the end, um, out of curiosity, um, any uh, any of these challenges sound familiar? Um, and I'm looking for a yes or no engagement on that. That post would get some attention, but it's the feel felt found. Most people I know, most small, ah, business owner feel the same way. Most of my clients felt the same exact way. And they talk about the pain. Just like list out some of those pain. What they found however was that it was a waste of time, um, to do Excel because they were missing out on money and here's a story or whatnot. Give a quick example. Out of curiosity. How many of you ever felt that same way? How many of you experienced something like this but before and people might raise their hands, um, or how many of you um, do you. Are you still, are you still in the Excel camp, spreadsheet camp and you know, but now you can at least get Some engagement. And you can see some of those folks and maybe some of them have a CRM already, but they may be open to upgrading to your, um, HubSpot CRM. But that's how you might do something like that. And the question at the end of that post, it's a quick yes or no question, not like, tell me about your experience with the CRM. Nobody's going to respond to that, but you might say, is something like this mattered? Um, have you ever experienced something like this? Yes or no? Um, are you a Camp Excel or a camp crl? CRM? Um, they can respond easily to that point. And all we're trying to do is again grab attention, which our post did, hopefully get them to engage and that's what we want. The second thing, the second type of post that I would share is then a poll. LinkedIn is still one of their darlings. It's like one of their new things that they have out there. So do poll. Can I do a poll question? Um, and that can grab attention. Simpler, easier to better. So I might say, are you in camp CRM or camp Spreadsheet? And then two answers. Spreadsheet CRM. If anybody did that one, I promise you, you're going to get a lot of engagement on that post. Um, and then everyone that engage on a post, you can see who voted for what. So you might say all the CRM voters like, um, you know, it's yay, Camp CRM. I might say, Eric saw that you've, um, started engage on my post. Uh, see that you're also in camp CRM. Permission to connect here. Um, and now you're going to accept my connection request and we're going to start a conversation. Out of curiosity, what CRM are you using? Uh, we're using blah, blah, blah. We did look at HubSpot a while back, but we just didn't do it. Out of curiosity, what happened there when you might start a conversation with me? But at least I just got a cold prospect that voted on a poll that now is engaging with me. That could have been. I probably couldn't get. Couldn't have gotten on a cold call as easily. So anyways, those are the two ways that I would tell people I did it a lot there.

Speaker B: Well, I think the, the meta theme that I'm pulling out of that is, is a marination on the problem space. The problem space of what it is you're, you're selling and really the areas of promise for your product, service or solution that would get people attracted without you having to mention the brand name yet, because that has to come later, um, in the natural sequencing of events.

Speaker A: Yeah. And the other part with that, we have a LinkedIn prospecting course. So one of the things that we do, the very first thing, and this is a boring part, people just don't like. I'm like, you need to optimize your LinkedIn. You need to make your LinkedIn focus. Um, where can you put keywords, where can you put critical things that people are going to actually, like, want to, um, engage with you on? Like, those are, like, they might search for it. And if I go, I need my profile to sell when I'm not even around. So if I can make my profile, my banner, um, and the subject, the, uh, header all describe what I can do for someone, the problems that I help people with, essentially, then it's going to make it so much more easier for them to see me as credible. And that's another way with that profile, can I make it credibility. So when they do click on my poll and then they do look at my profile after I send them that connection request message, they can say, well, this person looks like they post good stuff, looks like they're credible. They work with XYZ company. All right, cool.

Speaker B: Um, anyways, that's a huge one, uh, for me as, as a marketer, especially because Most people on LinkedIn are trained. The heuristic is online resumes. And that's what we expect when we go to. Right. Like, that's what we expect when we go to somebody's LinkedIn page. But if I did a subtle, slight shift of what you're recommending and said, no, no, no, think about your profile as a landing page. Think about, like the natural heuristic attached to anytime you send a connection request, what's somebody going to do? They're going to check out, well, who is this person? They're going to come right back. So no different than an ad would send somebody to a landing page or a referral link would send somebody to a landing page. Ultimately, what would you want on that landing page? For them to take kind of the right actions, think the right thoughts, and maybe double bonus score because they're expecting a resume but don't get it, you actually have a better shot at kind of like really implanting key marketing messages for the people that are visiting.

Speaker A: Yeah. And, you know, we've learned that people do business with those they know like, and trust. Right. Um, one of the things that I did with my LinkedIn and I, I don't have any conclusive evidence, uh, to share anything about it right now. Um, but I feel that it does make a difference. I've had people engage with me and start talk about it is um, LinkedIn gives you opportunity to add a link underneath your um, your header and you know, up by your, in the top part of your profile and you can put like a link, go back to your website link to book a meeting or whatnot. So I literally tried something different. I put who is this guy? And I link back to a post about me. Like not just the salesperson, not the entrepreneur, not the podcaster. It says Donald, um, and you get a chance to know me because oftentimes we see somebody on LinkedIn and we're like ching, ching. That person is an ICP and they have this much that, you know, they can buy this particular service from us. But if we can look at it, if we can see people as a human being, it makes a big difference. So instead of just seeing me as a sales guy and most of you can go look at my profile right now, go to Donald C. Kelly. Just search Donald c. Kelly on LinkedIn and you'll see it. Who is this guy? And it will take you to a picture of my family and I a um, post that I did. Like, you know, I'm more than a sales guy and here who I am and it's nothing about my services or whatnot, but it allows for people to be able to just get a chance to, to know me. Um, and that leads to that, that may help um, before the conversation happens. But at least they know that I'm not just like a silly seller just trying to you know, pitch slap a. This is a real dude. Um, but I'm trying to show that humanistic side if that makes sense.

Speaker B: It totally does. And I think that um, it'd be interesting to note what kind of data you've found of people that have clicked that link and then re referenced it in any sales cycle that you've been.

Speaker A: Yeah. So it's still out there. We're still trying to figure out uh, um, the data on that but um, keep you posted.

Speaker B: Well, I mean it's tying it back to your earlier comments. This is omnichannel, right? Like this is what they mean when they say. Or you mean when you say Omnichannel works because you're taking people from one channel and moving them to another for very specific reasons and purpose.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's, yeah. Makes it makes a huge difference.

Speaker B: So. Yeah. And I think one of the things that we've Kind of gotten away from in sales development is truly understanding why we operate on any channel to begin with. Right. And how those channels should kind of like fit or work together for greatest harmony and to achieve the goals that we're aspiring to. Um, curious your reaction and thoughts on that?

Speaker A: Yeah, I think, um, because it became like, I just shared. It's almost like, where else can I go? I need to get my quota. Um, so cold calling, you know, was tough. So emailing was around. Let's do a lot more emailing. Emailing became uninundated and cold call. You know, we burned a bridge with that. So it's like, well, let's do some use mobile phone. It's post pandemic, so we use mobile phone. And then people, the buyers get, you know, frustrated with that. So then now we're like, all right, let's go ahead and now let's go to LinkedIn and we can, um, you know, just get the leads. And I think the problem, like, you go back to what you're saying. Like, we go on there just for our purpose. Um, I've learned a platinum rule, um, and the versus the golden rule. The golden rule says treat others the way that you would like to be treated. So I don't know what kind of ice cream you like, Eric. Maybe you don't even like ice cream. But I favor a nice little vanilla, um, rich, creamy vanilla ice cream, whole milk and the one that's really bad for you. But it's just like so creamy and rich. Like, give me that. I'll take it.

Speaker B: Life is short and you know, you know, right?

Speaker A: Enjoy. Um, I could sit down and enjoy that. But let's say you're a big fan of pistachio ice cream and you feel that everybody should have pistachio ice cream. I would accept pistachio ice cream from you. I would not enjoy pistachio ice cream because I don't like it and I probably give it away. But if you came and said, donald, I know you love vanilla, I know what you like, I'm going to give you a rich Ben and Jerry vanilla ice cream. I'm going to be like, oh, my goodness, this guy, he knows me. He cares about me. So we go back to this idea. The question that you have. It's the platinum rule, like, we need to apply, especially when it comes to, you know, go remember why we're on a platform. We're going on a platform to be able to help people solve problems that they have. Not necessarily going on there. Just because I need a lead, 44% of executives are on social media and they're discovering new offerings per HubSpot and they have some pretty good data. If that's the case, most buyers, then they're willing to learn. Most salespeople, they're looking to sell and that doesn't work. Why don't we become the teachers? If they're willing to learn, let's teach and that becomes this better symbiotic relationship. So when we go on a platform, yes, I can go on there and I can get leads and I can tell you that strategy. But you also saw how I go on there to educate. Because when I educate, people tend to be more open to listen to me and that leads to better opportunities. It makes my emails get opened now. So when it comes back to it, yeah, I feel that we lose sight of why we're on the platform and we need to go back to that renaissance or to why we're doing this. It's not about us, it's not about pistachio, it's about vanilla. And I want to give them vanilla.

Speaker B: Well, you know, it's funny, when I think about prospecting at a very high level, 20,000 foot view and above, one of the things that I think is just a natural best practice that we as a buyer, I see this every stinking day. People forget that they put their needs before the people that they're trying to persuade or convince anything. And it's like, of course the platinum rule makes a ton of sense because it's treat others the way that they wish to be treated, not the way you wish to be treated, but the which you know. And so I think that's a really great point because I think that too often emails, phone calls, LinkedIn approach lead with my I, our right and then it goes right into kind of like what makes them great, different, better, special or just generic feature benefit crap like that. Ultimately, you know, like wait, why, why me? Why now? Why should I care?

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: And it all goes, you know, into the kind of like circular file in our minds which is ignore, delete, don't engage, um, on the buy side. And yet sellers persist.

Speaker A: Yeah, you know I, I had a um, I had a call in the fact that you brought up this uh, this idea and it triggered this memory from this morning about focusing um, on them rather than you. Um, there I was on a coaching call with a client and he is doing, they're in a web development space and we're, he's going through one of our programs and we had a um, One a coaching session today to follow up with them. And I said, let's call one of your prospects. So I had to put my money where my mouth is, right? So I taught him a principles and then we literally called one of his cold prospects. Um, and um, what we noticed was from LinkedIn, you know LinkedIn, we showed him how you can engage this company. They were growing and they were looking for new hires. So instead of me going on the call and saying, hey, we want to tell you about our services and how we can help with web development and we can do all of these things at an expensive rate, we focused on his thing and shared about. Well first I used I like permission based, um, selling. So I would, I told him, hey, um, if I could, you know, you. We connected and said, I know I'm interrupting, which I am. Um, and there's nothing wrong with interrupting. Um, if my house is on fire and somebody interrupt me, I am grateful for them to interrupt me and tell me it's on fire. So it's okay to interrupt. Don't feel it's a negative thing to. I'm interrupting. And I, um, I wanted to, if you have seven seconds, I could share with you an idea. And he was like, yeah, I'm open to it. And he listened and we, I told him about what we were doing. Um, saw that, sorry not to back it up. I told him that I noticed there. We noticed that they were hiring, um, and their team's growing and so forth. And we started talking about them and about what they were trying to do. And um, then obviously the value prop is that we have an idea of how we can help you with that particular challenge that you have. Because literally this guy was a part of the team and he reposted the job description, uh, for um, a tech role, um, which my client's company can fulfill. So anyways, um, we were able to focus on them and about the challenge they were facing. And then naturally we didn't go in detail about our services. We just gave a quick overview of how we can help. And he was like, all right, let's get the information. Um, he wasn't the main person, but he was like, I can get you in contact with the right, um, individual and we could go from there. But the fact is he answered and he listened because tie back to a pain or a post that he just shared, um, recently. So it was about him, not about us.

Speaker B: Yeah, I love that methodology, um, as well, because, you know, one of the most powerful things that you can have going in any Sales conversation is an understanding of what the current status quo is with that particular prospect at that company in that industry for them right now. So that ultimately you've got a little bit of history and a little bit of like, frankly the ability to kind of like move from there to where, wherever you want to take, you know them. Because at the end of the day, and I, I teach and train this all the time. Every sale is a change management exercise. Whether we want to acknowledge that or not. No change.

Speaker A: Amen.

Speaker B: Now I'm the evangelist.

Speaker A: Come on, let's go.

Speaker B: But the point is, if it is a change management exercise, how do you get people ready for change? How do you get them to kind of prepare? And what I've observed too about the world that we live in is that especially in the B2B environment, nobody makes an independent, sole, autocratic decision anymore about anything like ever in any company, regardless of title, regardless of how much power or how much of a decision maker they are. Um, it's still consensus based and it's still usually over a period of time. Right. So no one's going to be convinced and you know, essentially get married on the first date, so to speak. Right. Right after meeting.

Speaker A: Uh, yeah.

Speaker B: And so if you think about it that way, then naturally the, the next thought in your mind would be, well then how do we sequence this properly? How do we kind of like get into an environment? Which is one of the reasons I, I kind of love the model of, you know, connect, share, engage. Because it's very congruent with how people naturally come to any conclusion or any kind of like interesting thing. Especially when it pertains to them. Yeah. Like, like they have to go through those sequences on their own regardless of how you as a seller would want them to.

Speaker A: 100% agreed with, um, with that. It's, it is, um, and it kind of could go back and tie back to what you were mentioning from, you know, the whole idea of what do we share on social. Um, it's all about me focusing on the prospect. I know it sounds crazy there for me, but it's this individual seller focusing prospect, putting them first and putting, uh, how can I best assist in our role? The way that I see it is like sales is an avenue of helping people to convince themselves, persuade themselves for something that it's in their best interest.

Speaker B: Um. Yep.

Speaker A: And for which that I'm an expert in. Now if it's not me convincing you, it's you convincing yourself. And if I could provide you the education and help you to be able to make that decision, to make that income informed decision, then you know, then uh, we're, we're more successful. But if I can't help you to make that decision, if I'm forcing you to make that decision and using all my trickeries to convince you, then you're not, you don't have a bunch buying in that. But focus on a person, focus on how you can help them and help them make a decision.

Speaker B: Do you think we lose sight of that? This basic principle that I don't think anyone listening to this would ever argue with, um, especially the way you just laid it out. But do you think that we get like distracted and confused because of either all the tools that we use, all the rejection we see, the noise that's in the market space in general, um, to where we just kind of like forget.

Speaker A: Yeah, like, um, I, I, I, I think it is, um, because there's a lot, there's a lot of pressure on sellers. I mean I'm, we all have it like we have pressure to hit our numbers, we have pressures to grow the company. And we need to get to the point where, and I get it, we need to get to a higher loss, so to speak, where we get to the point where we really are putting the buyer's interest even if we mean we're not going to hit quota like do. It really doesn't really make sense for me to sell you something that you're not going to need. And if we can get to the point where I can tell, I would much rather somebody that's like they have the proper form than somebody that does it improper. And I'll give you a quick story. I worked with a guy, uh, his name was Mike. Um, but Mike had Mike. Um, he, the first he came into the company and he was killing it on day like the first week he was making like we were making average in probably about 50 activities a day. Um, when you know, going downhill with the wind behind our back. Regular dialing, no auto dial. Mike was hitting like a buck fifty, like a hundred activities and we're like, what in the world is going on? And the managers loved it. Um, um, but after two weeks they started realizing stuff and they start paying attention more to Mike. Mike would make a phone call. A voice will hang up, phone call, hang up, phone call, hang up. His emails were not like anything great. It was just like sending out these garbage emails. But he was focusing on the activity because he saw what management wanted it. So if he can give management what they want then he would look successful. So it's kind of like a seed seedling that shot up without any roots. Um, it's going to their way. Um, but we were doing some organic growing, so to speak, and we're hitting that, you know, to 40 activities, 50 activities a day. And we were having more opportunities, we're having conversations, we're developing business, um, and we were actually closing stuff. And that's uh, one of those examples. So what management deems as important, the sellers will figure out a way to get rewarded that way. That makes sense. So if the management says, well, we want to focus on activities, we need to be successful, we need to get money, sellers are going to focus on doing that. Yeah, but if management focus on, hey, I want to see you do the proper form, I want to see the results. But I, I know that if you can do the proper form, if you're having the right conversations, if you're doing the um, you know, the right, uh, getting, getting right outreach, you're going to get the right proposals you're going to need and if that means you miss one deal and don't hit your quota this month, and I know that you're doing it right, um, but I would much rather that than to have a client that comes on board that cancels and it's ah, they have a bad experience and then they have a negative view about the company. Um, let's do it right. And if we get managers on that point, I think it's going to make a difference for the way that the sellers now approach the game with the less they need pressure, but less of the, you know, expectation just to bring whatever else, whatever in.

Speaker B: Um, so anyways, that's a really interesting point. And I've always referred to most of the sales departments that I've worked with alongside of whatever you want to frame it as, as being the most economically rational people in the company. Right. It's like water finding its level. Yeah. Whatever the incentives are, I go in the direction of, I mean, I hate to put it that bluntly, but that's kind of like, it's just a truism. Especially because who's even attracted to sales as a career, um, tend to be those types of individuals. And so that's not a bad thing. It's just a thing, you know, like it's different than say an engineering mindset or a financial mindset or even a marketing mindset, um, for that matter. And so I think that that's something to just be aware of as, um, as we calibrate comp plans and Calibrate on activity levels and expectations and quotas, um, for any of the sellers that, you know, we have underneath us.

Speaker A: Yeah, I love it. I love it.

Speaker B: So fun. Um, where I'd love to end up. Today's conversation is kind of like, with a bit of a summary. Now you get to talk to a wide variety of voices, just like I do on the podcast from kind of our space. And I'm curious what you're hearing lately, um, that you find most interesting and frankly remarkable, um, in any of the guests or leaders that you get a chance to speak with.

Speaker A: Yeah, um, the thing that I probably say I find the most, uh, engaging right now, um, one is video. Um, and people are using that a little bit more again, specifically with LinkedIn. That's one that, that's been on a plate a lot. Um, we kind of talked a lot about LinkedIn already. Um, two is this renaissance, um, of the, um, full cycle seller, which is interesting. Um, and the concept behind a full cycle seller now is like, instead of me doing a bunch of handoff, the BDR STR does a handoff. Go back to what we were talking about relationships. Like, people want to get back to being like, working that cycle with someone or to have that relationship or in that connection with an individual. And that's one that's coming up. Um, uh, which is fascinating. And another cool concept is an old concept repackaged for today in this age. And Scott Lacy is a big proponent of this. But it's the near bound concept. Near bound, Simply going back to the whole referral, the way you asked for referrals back in the day is like, you see who does Eric know that I know that can, that could benefit from our services. Um, but there are people that we already are connected to. So it's kind of like me going to, um, I'm walking five miles away from my house to get water when I'm passing, you know, stores that are selling water as well. And it's like, uh, or people that, you know, maybe streams that have water. But I feel like I need to go five miles away. And a lot of times we're doing that as sellers where we're going out and we're making focus calls on to all of these businesses and going five miles away when we have somebody near to us who probably could introduce us to those prospects and get a much easier way of getting an introduction to it. So the near bound concept is real. Um, so Those are the three things I'll probably say. Using videos on LinkedIn, your private messages to stand out, making sure that you're testing out and adopting this idea of how can we maintain relationship and whether it's the full cycle or just doing a little better job of that. That. And then finally near bounding. How can I use more near bound efforts in my sales outreach?

Speaker B: Well said. Uh, we had Scott Lease as a, um, guest on the POD last year.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And he talked about, and I couldn't agree more because, you know, a lot of these, the underlying theme here too is something that you hit on, uh, multiple times before, which is that no like and trust factor. Guess what? That matters to building a network as much as it does to ultimately closing deals from that.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, it is and it's brilliant. Like people, I've come to realize, again, go back to this thing with LinkedIn. There are people on LinkedIn who so happens to have titles. So it's Mary and it's Joe and it's Eric and it's Jermaine and Sandra and it's, um, Levi. Like these are people first, just like you and me. They probably have to leave at 4 o' clock to go get the kid or figure out a way to pick up the kid from school. They have to figure out dinner for tonight. They probably have to figure out, you know, how retirement is going to come. They're humans. So let me go back to this idea again. Those humans are connected with other humans and they have relationships with people. If I could have a relationship with you, Eric, you're probably going to be willing to help me. And oftentimes we have so many of those connections that we have. Like, you know, we all may have over 500 connections on LinkedIn or a thousand connections, but how many of those people are we connected to? And if we were to have connection with those thousand people, imagine how many more opportunities that we can have because those people would like to help us, because they like us. Um, and take that as a food of thought.

Speaker B: So, you know, it's funny, One of the CEOs that I used to work with, um, back in the day, used to always, um, literally weekly would say, your network is your net worth. And that was his mantra.

Speaker A: I say that one all the time to my team and to clients. Like, your net worth, uh, network is your net worth. And we try to look for ways to be able to use that network appropriately. The one last way I, uh, tell people they can do this. If you don't have the birthday feature on the celebration feature on LinkedIn, you just upgrade to the next level and get that. Because LinkedIn will give you one people's birthday when they have job promotions. But one thing that's really dope is when I can go into that celebration tab and I can see all of the different things that are happening, um, with, uh, with folks, um, whether it's like the promotion or whatnot, I can drop, um, them a message and imagine sending. I'm getting you get a voice message from me, um, uh, Eric. Or a simple email saying, hey, Eric, I'm sorry. A simple voice notification, um, say, hey, Eric, it's Donald. Uh, you had me on a show, you know, several months ago. Just saw that was your birthday. I wanted to tell you happy birthday. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear Eric Happy birthday to you. Now, like, that's. You're gonna. Your. My network is staying warm. I'm not asking you for anything, but I'm just doing that. If I did that five to five people a day, that's keeping that network warm because there's going to come a day where I need a nearby help and you're probably going to say, donald, I remember you gave me that message. Um, you probably won't say it out loud, but like, yeah, Donald, of course I'm looking. I know, Mary. Um, we did some stuff with them in the past. Let me see if I can pass an intro to you. And that probably saved me two months of outreach there, by the way, that

Speaker B: birthdays are the ultimate symbol of, of platinum kind of rule, aren't they?

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Because it's not. It's. It, it's not your day when you're singing Happy Birthday like it's theirs.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's. And it's, it's different. Rather than just saying, you know, happy birthday, like, uh, just give me, take a, Send me a little voice message. Even if it's like you're walking. Like, it doesn't have to be anything like, hey, I'm walking to the car, Donald. But I thought it was your birthday today. I know sometimes this get missed. Whatever you do, enjoy it. Um, if you're closer, I would, uh, you know, we could have, you know, go get something to eat together, Happy birthday or whatever. And if it's somebody like a client, imagine if you say, hey, Donald, I'm running into the car. I know it's your birthday. We didn't get a chance to sit down for a meal, but I'm gonna drop you. Uh, here's a, you know, $20 Uber Eats. Enjoy. Um, you know, lunch on me today or whatnot. But. Or even if it's A Starbucks gift card. Here's 10. $10. You know, enjoy some Starbucks on me. Happy birthday. Um, can't wait to see you when, you know, finally meet at next year's conference or whatever it is. But that's. Well, I'll be like, dope.

Speaker B: So, anyways, well, speaking of which, I'd love if you could tell the audience kind of like more of where they might get more of the Sales evangelist goodness in various forms. Um, where should they connect with you?

Speaker A: Yeah, go to LinkedIn and, um, you know, search and just connect with, uh, search Donald C. Kelly. You can connect with me there. Send, um, the actual message and connect. You can follow. But if you click on the three little dots next to, you know, that connection request, you can, um, next to that follow button, you can actually connect with me. And it'd be great that we can message each other back and forth. It'd be awesome. Um, and, uh, tell me you heard me on Eric's podcast. Um, or you can go to the Sales evangelist dot com. Some of the things that I mentioned are in a PDF that we have on our website. Just scroll to the bottom in this footer and you can click on one of those and you can download that, uh, five ways to get responses from folks on LinkedIn. Um, try it, test it, let me know what you think. Um, and we also have a podcast. You can find all that on our website as well.

Speaker B: Love it. This has been a great conversation, Donald. Thank you.

Speaker A: I appreciate you, man. Thanks so much. And I know you probably do this all the time, but sometimes when you tell your kids something or your, Your family member, my remember my family members, like, my mom used to tell me something and I'd be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you go to the neighbor's house and you're like, oh, my goodness. Do you know that Jacob's dad just said this? If you do this, it's like, well, that's what I've been telling you for five years. So here's the thing. I'm coming on and I'm coming to your house as the neighbor, and I'm telling you, go and check out, go and rate, um, Eric's podcast. Please share it because it's very good information. And there's a co worker, you have a friend that you have that could enjoy this episode or one of these other episodes and just share it with other people. It goes a long way for Eric, and it goes a long way for the community as a whole. It's good stuff. So that's a PSA thanks, guys.

Speaker B: Thanks, Eric, and thank you. That's awesome.