The Sales Evangelist: Sales Training|Speaking|Business Marketing|Donald Kelly

How Do I Stand Out From The Competition?   Are there still ways salespeople can stand out from the competition? This is an age-old question that was posed by a recent college graduate. If so, how?  In this episode, Donald will share four ways he’s learned, through his personal and professional experience, to stand out from your competition:    Be persistent Personalize Use your CRM and bring value Have energy and drive   Be persistent Studies have shown that many sales reps give up making contact after one or two attempts. In reality, it takes 8 - 12 points of contact before a potential prospect may respond. If you want to stand out from your competition, be consistent and persistent. Of course, this doesn’t mean sitting and calling eight times in a row within a day. You have to ensure you have an organizational flow process. This is the process that moves through the buyer’s journey to get to the interest and awareness phase within the organization.    Use an omni channel approach when strategically making

How To Leverage LinkedIn For Better Networking   LinkedIn is an important social platform for people looking to broaden their network. In this episode, Bobbie Foedisch will be talking about how to leverage LinkedIn for better networking.    Bobbie Foedisch is the founding partner and Chief Social Selling Officer at All About Leverage. The company develops social selling, lead generation, and networking processes. Bobbie has been in the business development space for most of her career. She’s seen the power of leveraging social media and now, along with her team, they have cultivated a lead-generation process that they offer to their clients as a voluntary benefit business.   LinkedIn now has over 413 million users and they are growing daily. This makes LinkedIn a perfect platform for you and your business. You can use it to leverage your online and offline marketing presence.    Use LinkedIn Strategies available One of the best ways to start your LinkedIn experience is by using a picture of yourself as your p

How To Overcome Your Fear of Selling During Challenging Times   Fear can be common for salespeople regardless of where you are in your career. The fear of rejection can paralyze us and impact our performance. In the current climate of a pandemic, one fear that salespeople are dealing with is that customers won’t be interested in what we have to offer.  In this episode, we’ll talk about how to overcome fear of selling during challenging times.    Nina Cooke works with entrepreneurs, their coaches, consultants, and sales specialists. Her task is to help them overcome their fear in order to get them to move toward sales conversations. Nina helps salespeople overcome their negative thoughts and the lies people tell themselves. Nina’s goal is for her clients to see how powerful and magnificent they can be as they run their business.    The origin of fear The origin of a lot of our fears occur in childhood. We were all born with a blank slate and then picked up the programming of other people over time. From a very

What I Wish I Knew Before Going Into Sales   To benefit the many new graduates and new sellers entering the sales arena, I’ve spent time thinking about the things I wish I knew before going into sales. This episode goes out to my buddy Isaac, who is just entering sales, as well as the other new graduates and new sellers. Many sellers have initial experiences that leave them wondering if they made the right career choice. This month on The Sales Evangelist, we’re focusing on the class of 2020, but our messages will resonate with those who are entering the sales world for the first time as well as veterans who have been selling for a while.  Believe in yourself and starve your doubts Mindset is incredibly important, but I didn’t understand that initially. I remember watching movies like Boiler Room that portrayed a charismatic sales rep who would sweet-talk buyers and say anything necessary to land a sale. I figured sales was entirely about skillset. When I came into sales, though, I realized that mindset is pr

Why Giving Your Prospects An Out Upfront Will Help You Win In The End Sometimes we need to lose a customer before they become a client. In the current climate of a pandemic it’s important that we give a client an out in order to be sensitive to their struggles but we still want them to know we’re open for business, right?  How are these two needs served in the way we communicate?   Jeff Kosser is the CEO and the founder of Zebrafi. The company is often known for its top-selling book, Selling Zebra, seeing the Zebra as the perfect prospect. The company’s philosophy is pretty straightforward. When people see Zebras, regardless of where that might be, they always know what it is. The simplicity and the purity of this fact  is the philosophy behind what keeps their business running.    Jeff Koser has also built a software business based on software-guided selling. It’s a tool that guides B2B salespeople through the best practices of how to communicate and collaborate with the prospects and customers to ensure bot

The Sales Manager's Guide To Greatness!    You may have been a top salesperson, and still continue to be, but that doesn’t always qualify you to be a top sales manager. Both have very different skill sets and require mastery in very different skills.    Kevin F. Davis is the author of the book The Sales Manager’s Guide to Greatness: Ten Essential Strategies for Leading your Team to the Top. Kevin started his career in sales at an entry level position and worked hard to become a general manager. His new role gave him the opportunity to train and coach 250 sales people and directly manage the sales team and sales managers.    He also founded TopLine Leadership, Inc. where they have offered sales coaching and leadership workshops to corporate clients and groups of sales managers for the last 27 years. Other books Kevin has written include Getting into your Customer’s Head and Slow Down, Sell Faster.   On writing the book  There aren’t a lot of books written about how to effectively manage sales people so Kevi

Why Every Seller Needs To Create An Ideal Sales Profile    It is imperative for all businesses, no matter the size, to be able to describe their target customer. It is equally important for businesses to create an ideal sales profile. This will help you identify the right hire for your sales team. In this episode, Donald will talk about the  importance of defining the ideal sales profile in detail.    Oftentimes, as salespeople, we start our days with a list of things we want to accomplish in our day. By the end of the day, however, we realize we didn’t get to do what we set out to do. As a result, you come up with excuses for why you didn't get your tasks completed. You can avoid that by creating the ideal sales profile. This is about the picture you’ve set in your mind about how you will conduct yourself in each activity throughout the day, long before they happen.   Visualize your success The greatest swimmer of all time, Michael Phelps’ was taught by his coach about playing tapes to watch his performance.

We all experience pain and grief and in these seasons, we can feel depths of emotion that are hard to resolve.  How does unresolved grief affect your sales potential? Let’s learn about dealing with unresolved grief today with Herdyne Mercier.    Herdyne Mercier is the Chief Grief Crusader and host of  Redefining Grief Podcast with Herdyne Mercier. Her job is to create safe spaces so that broken hearts can be seen, heard, and validated. The process helps you get unstuck from your unresolved grief and get you to a place of purposeful living.    Redefining grief  Herdyne defines grief as experiencing any kind of loss. This isn’t limited to losing a loved one to death. Grief can also be felt when you move to a new place, experience job loss, go through divorce, or when filing for bankruptcy. Herdyne had the exact feeling when along with her husband, they filed for bankruptcy back in 2007/2008. The real estate market crashed and they couldn’t sell their home. Her husband, James Mercier, could not find a job with a

Why Your Brain Lies To You: Cash Is NOT The Best Motivator   Although money is one of the indicators of growth and success, it’s not necessarily the best motivator when it comes to incentivizing a sales team.   Tim Houlihan and Dr. Kurt Nelson are consultants who have spent more than 20 years working with companies to design incentives that will increase productivity within sales teams.  Just a few years ago, they started a podcast that provides practical applications in the real world. One of their topics, motivation through incentivizing, is especially helpful for sales managers.    People tend to make decisions based on an emotional gut response, even though we mistakenly think these choices are made based on rational thought. Emotion and motivation come from the same root making it difficult to distinguish one from the other. Money has less of an emotional connection than we realize and because motivation is tied to our emotions, money can be a poor incentive for a sales team.    Human beings as emotional

Building A Successful SDR Team From The Ground Up    The sales team is the backbone of a business. It’s composed of both SDRs and BDRs, both working to make sure the business is thriving through a steady flow of consumers. For this episode, we’ll discuss SDRs and how you can build a successful SDR team.    Kyle Coleman started his career in B2B tech in 2012 at an advertising agency in San Francisco. He supported clients such as Dell, VMWare and other large companies; however, Kyle eventually realized that advertising wasn’t where he wanted to continue his career.  In a timely move, he was able to pursue an exciting new position in sales and marketing with a start-up called Looker, a data analytics company based in Santa Cruz. Kyle was recruited and became a member of the Looker team in 2013. He stayed with Looker for six years and was able to experience firsthand the growth of the company from six people to roughly eight-hundred sales reps and 100,000 ARR to over 100 million in ARR.    In 2019, Kyle made the

What You Believe Is What You Will Achieve    It’s imperative for salespeople to maintain a positive outlook to make it through this season of unforeseen circumstances. Perception and belief is going to play a big part in how we navigate the unknown so believe that success is still achievable. Donald believes it’s possible and shares his thoughts about how to make it happen and what could potentially hold us back.   In this episode Donald will be discussing limiting beliefs. These beliefs, ideas, and philosophies can come from many influences including a boss, team members, family, and many others. Sometimes, because we’re listening to all these outside influences, we fail to see that everything we hear here doesn’t always reflect the truth. Your actions may reflect what you’ve been told but they don’t always lead to success.  We have to be careful of following so blindly that we are no longer true to ourselves.    Let’s go back to the beginning Donald started out his sales career in business development, sell

Salespeople Have a Love/Hate Relationship With CRMs   Almost everyone is using CRM in their businesses  for its efficiency in data collection. But truth be told, many salespeople have a love and hate relationship with CRM. CRMs are a great way to hold data but it doesn’t offer solutions on how to utilize this data in a way that reflects real time engagement with customers.    Kevin Knieriem is the Chief Revenue Officer at Clari, a revenue platform for companies in Toronto. He’s been with the company for 15 months and he’s had a background in enterprise software for over 25 years. He started his software sales career with Siebel System, the first enterprise CRM and from there, Kevin spent 11 years at SAP and due to an acquisition, also spent time with Oracle.    What is a CRM? CRMs are a place for account, contact, and opportunity information to be stored. These are major components  to track sales so it has been the primary  revenue solution for companies for the last 25 years. Keeping your CRM up to date is

How BDRS and SDR Should Use LinkedIn During COVID19!    The coronavirus pandemic has taken the world by storm. Many industries have been affected, even sales. How do you keep selling at this time? One of the ways is via LinkedIn. This episode will talk about how BDRs and SDRs can use the LinkedIn platform amid Covid-19.    Amanda Statton was raised in Virginia Beach and moved to Tampa about a year ago to work for BlueGrace Logistics. She started sales four years ago and she loves it. Jason Behnke is originally from Chicago and came down to Tampa to study at the University of Tampa. Right after college, he worked in sports and event sponsorship and eventually found his way to BlueGrace Logistics.    Selling in time of Covid-19 The pandemic has touched every industry.  Several manufacturing companies have shut down. People have been working from home for several weeks now but for sales and logistics, an opportunity has been created to transport products and to get help to those in need.    While Amanda and Jaso

How To  Identify, Recruit, And Train A Diverse Sales Team That Sells   Your company’s hiring process must have key steps and criteria for hiring a sales team that will consistently maximize profit.  They should be able to identify, recruit and train a diverse sales team that will push the business forward.    For the last five years Amos Schwartzfarb has been the managing director at Techstars in Austin, Texas and is now running his fifth program for Techstars. In the mid 90s, prior to his job in Austin, Amos led an early-stage sales organization and just late last year, he published a book called Sell More Faster.      Hiring the right people When hiring, Amos believes that many founders and CEOs often look for the characteristics they think a salesperson should have, even before they’re able to answer three important questions. He refers to them as W3:     Who is your customer?    This identifies the people who are actually buying your products, considering every detail. What is their title?  What type of

How To Build A Sales Engine That Will Land Massive Deals – Repeatedly   Every sales person wants to build a sales engine that will land them improve their business, earn massive deals, and generate future sales. In this episode, we’ll talk about how to move toward these goals.    Lisa Magnuson’s whole career has been in sales, specifically in sales management and sales leadership. Sales has always been Lisa’s passion and getting into Clorox, which is used in homes and businesses around the world, is where she experienced closing big deals.    The struggles in generating sales  There are several struggles companies face when trying to generate sales. During a crisis, the most difficult phase of the sales cycle is prospecting which is hard enough without added pressures.  During a time when everyone is already cautious you have to be careful about coming off as self-serving. Just conducting regular business can isolate potential clients. This is a concern that is applicable for both BDRs and SDRs. No one is exe

I'm Afraid of Losing My Sales Job    Everywhere you look, people are affected by circumstances that could not have been foreseen just a couple of months ago. Due to this upheaval, some people are losing their jobs. Is the fear of losing your sales position an added concern for you as well? In this episode, Donald offers some encouragement.    Everyone agrees it’s a hard time. This quarantine is unprecedented in most of our lifetimes and The Sales Evangelist is here for you and Donald has been getting a number of questions about what to do in the event of job loss.  Sales reps from all over the world are concerned and are afraid of losing their jobs. The harsh reality is that in this season, many will lose their positions while companies rally to stay afloat.    Donald has been there.  He had just graduated from college and was working for a small company when everyone was called to the conference room by the CEO and the executive team. Once gathered, they were told that the company was closing its doors that

How To Evaluate The Efficacy of SaaS Programs That Your Sales Team Subscribes To   Is your SaaS program effective?  Is it making you money or costing you more than your return?   Ankesh Kumar is with a company called Let’s Chat and the company focuses on personalization outreach to make sure your dollars are being spent well.    Let’s Chat helps a conversation run smoother. It does this by providing a co-extension that identifies LinkedIn topics that are of interest to your clients, it gives suggestions about how to break the ice, and generally makes it easier for sales reps to speak with their prospects in a more personal way.    Let’s Chat also looks into social platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, and others to identify the person or client sales reps are going to talk to. It’s important for first meetings to be friendly, without crossing the line. Let’s Chat also uses its AI capabilities to prioritize the data based on the time spent on a particular topic, the frequency looking at topics and the topics a

How To Build Rapport By Asking Directed, Relevant Questions    For many salespeople, building rapport is a skill that needs to be learned. It’s not always easy for sales reps to build relationships with potential or existing clients.  Asking direct and relevant questions is a great launch fine-tuning the art of building rapport. In this episode we learn more about how to do this well.    Andrew Sletter has been in the same company, the Window and Door Store for 10 years. Their company sells windows and doors with a focus on in-home sales.  They work directly with the consumer and are with their customers for every step of the process, including installation.  The company’s office is located in Bismarck, North Dakota and they handle the North Dakota and Western Minnesota market.    The salesman’s profile Andrew doesn’t see himself as a true salesman. He believes that many salespeople are doing themselves a disservice by trying to fit into a particular profile. Andrew isn’t an influencer or a promoter.  Based o

I'm Succeeding As An SDR But I Don't Think I Will When I Become An AE A change in work setting is a challenging thing since one has to adjust with the new operations and work process. Did you just move from an SDR position to an AE position and you’re feeling lost? Don’t worry. You’ve come to the right podcast episode.    This heading is a question Donald saw posted on Reddit by a sales rep who is worried about his change in roles. The idea of becoming an AE scared him because he wasn't confident that he had the skills to become successful and build value.    Making the transition  This individual has been in the SDR industry for nine months and is concerned that his success isn't because of his sales skills but because of his ability to think outside the box. He thinks he’s terrible on the phone and feels that he lacks the ability to connect with clients. He finds it hard to drive business solutions and when he makes the transition to becoming an AE, he’s concerned his lack of experience and skill will get h

How To Get More Proposals Signed Faster With Pandadoc   Have you heard about PandaDoc and how it can help you get more proposals signed faster? If you definitely want to learn more from this podcast. This episode will talk about PandaDoc and how you can use it to improve your sales journey.   Nate Gilmore is the chief revenue officer at PandaDoc and his job is to grow the company. It is    their goal to help small businesses increase their sales and revenues. He has spent almost 20 years in the small business industry and most of those years were in software.    The idea of proposals  Salespeople can send out proposals and not get a reply for days or even weeks. This  experience is a common challenge for many sales reps. Salespeople need to understand that the entire workflow of the business depends on how well they’ve gotten to know the customer. Having insight into how their organization works, their timeline, and what their needs are will improve the content of what you send and get the right data to send