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

Pauline “Muffin” Grayson is a graphic designer who believes we shouldn’t let anything get in the way of our passion, and she has a single message for us: Don’t ration your passion. Pauline has a degree in fine arts. After school, she stumbled into freelancing and surface pattern design; the design for gift wrap and greeting cards. You may know her from her designs on  petitelemon.com and Shutterfly.com. PURSUE YOUR PASSION Pauline describes passion as doing something you absolutely love without letting anything else get in the way. For Pauline, that is design. She says she is just not happy unless she is doing it. It is who she is as an individual. Yet sometimes, societal expectations seem to limit us from pursuing our passions. I remember telling people that I was in sales and getting the distinct impression from them that they assumed it was only because I couldn’t find anything better to do. I wasn’t living up to their expectations despite that I was doing what I truly loved to do. Pauline can relate.  As

Today we’re talking about how to Plan, Prepare and Refuse to Give Up with podcast host, branding expert, and author Henry Kaminski, Jr. Henry is the founder of Unique Designz, a full-service design, branding and digital marketing agency dedicated to helping authority brands; coaches, consultants, influencers, speakers and authors to scale their expertise and personal brands into profitable business models. Henry started twelve years ago as a freelance graphic designer, eventually growing his business into a mature, boutique brand development agency.  His average client is typically worth $50-100K over a calendar year. But Henry remembers not so long ago when he was working for Fiverr. As sales reps, we know how it feels to want to get to the top as quickly as possible. We think it will be easy but then it is not long before we hit the hiccups. PLAN AND PREPARE Henry says it all comes down to preparation. He credits himself with once being the worst salesman on the planet. These days, Henry follows a ve

Is it possible to have a “perfect day” in sales? Phone calls from prospects just as soon as you walk into the office … demonstrations are set … proposal reviews are awesome; everything is smooth sailing. What would it take to have that perfect day in sales? Do we have control over any of the elements?  I think so. In this episode of The Sales Evangelist, I will share something valuable that I learned over the weekend that can help us all accomplish the perfect day in sales. [0:00] Perfection doesn’t happen by accident There was an awesome older lady in our congregation who recently passed away. During the eulogy, her daughter shared a story about her mom who was, apparently, quite a perfectionist. She always looked great. Everything was always on point. One day when the daughter was leaving for school, the mother noticed that the daughter had only ironed the front side of her skirt. As the daughter explains, she didn’t see any reason to iron the back of the skirt because she was going to be sitting down at sc

In today’s episode of The Sales Evangelist, we discuss the immediate steps you can take to begin growing your influence.  Whether you are in sales or not, everyone, at one time or another, needs to increase their influence. I’m reminded of a coworker of mine who really knew how to connect with people. Tom had that ability to influence others. He just understood people and prospects and he knew how to speak to them. He could point out potential problems before they became problems. As such, when he spoke, his clients listened. He was respected. My guest today, Stacey Hanke, is here to talk about how we, like Tom, can grow our influence. [00:01] Stacey is the author of two books, a Certified Speaking Professional, and CEO of StaceyHanke, Inc. Stacey and her team work with directors, to C-Suite, and with sales professionals to make them more aware of the level of influence they really have versus they level of influence they believe they have. They accomplish this with keynotes, with mentoring, and through works

Sometimes small problems grow into much bigger problems, and without emotional intelligence to help you address misunderstandings, these problems can affect your relationships with prospects and clients.  Have you ever met up with a friend who suddenly became upset but, to you, the thing they were upset about wasn’t a huge problem? When you react, it becomes something bigger, and before you know it - you are arguing with each other without really knowing what you are even arguing about?! You can have similar situations with a prospect. The client loses interest, or maybe, becomes so upset they no longer want to do business with you ever again. [0:00] What happened? Why does it go wrong? The answer: Emotional intelligence. These situations affect both sellers and buyers, so our TSE Certified Sales Training Program will help you identify these problems before they escalate.  The TSE Certified Sales Training Program is designed to help sellers at every level, from new sellers to seasoned professionals. The cours

There’s a single characteristic that distinguishes effective sellers from the others, and it’s grit. It separates those who work hard and effectively from those who don’t. It distinguishes those who go above and beyond the call of duty from those who do not. GRIT Those of us in sales need to have grit. Grit is courage. It is resolve. It is a strength of character. To have grit is to have rock solid mental toughness. If you can be rock solid, right now – at the beginning of the year – you will be so much more effective and efficient. [01:39] Consider the new hire whose resume looked fantastic, but who shows up with no drive or passion for the work. Sometimes we pass by individuals with higher levels of grit simply because their GPA wasn’t as high or their resume was lacking. [02:34] I have a problem with that. I know some very smart people who lack the level of grit needed to take advantage of their intelligence. They end up in mediocre jobs. It seems like a waste of talent. On the other hand, we see folks wit

In our work with sales reps, sales teams, and sales managers, we encounter many people who believe that sales coaching doesn’t work, but many of them fail to realize that there are 5 common mistakes sales managers make when coaching. Steve Richard, founder of ExecVision, shares how to avoid those mistakes, and he suggests you start by recognizing that there’s a difference between coaching and training. COACHING Training is teaching someone to do something new that the person doesn’t know how to do. Coaching is helping someone do something that they do know to the point of mastery. If we expect a rep to embrace a certain behavior, we have to train him. If we don’t, that failure is on us. [04:37] Then, after we’ve trained him, we have to overcome the “forgetting curve” which is a function of our brain’s tendency to purge information. Coaching is the act of training iteratively, focusing on the person, and repeating that behavior until it becomes second nature, like tying a shoe. Consider whether your organizati

Many leaders avoid adequately training their team members because of a single looming question: What if I train them and they leave? They structure their businesses so that multiple people work on a single project while other projects sit undone. It costs them money and productivity. If you're one of those managers, I'll offer you a different consideration: what if you don't train them and they stay? We're devoting the month of January to the topic of mental toughness, and today's topic is directed at business and sales leaders as well as sellers. Leaders When team members aren't trained well, they won't be effective at their jobs. When team members aren't effective at their jobs, the manager will have to help them do their jobs in addition to doing his own. Leaders who fear employee departure often choose not to provide the necessary training, but the reality is that many of those untrained employees end up staying in their jobs. [3:37] What if they stay with you and they don't know what they are doing? Fina

We all have some kind of fear, but when we discover what causes fear and how to overcome it, we can discover new opportunities and success. Fear can prevent us from experiencing amazing things in life, or pursuing new business opportunities. We suffer through anxiety and difficulty when dealing with these fears. But no more! James Moffat, CEO and Founder of Visibility Impact guides new entrepreneurs and people wanting to start businesses by providing them with the tools and information they need to grow their business with proper exposure. He accomplishes this through a number of programs to drive results. His clients achieve bigger goals in a shorter amount of time and gain visibility. [02:00] Self-limiting I used to have a fear of talking to important people. I felt like I wasn’t worthy of their time or attention. It was a fear I quickly had to learn how to overcome in order to succeed in sales. When I finally understood that I was speaking with other human beings, people who were maybe just as nervous abou

It's The Sales Evangelist 1000th episode and Stephen A. Hart from the Trailblazers.FM Podcast is conducting the interview while Donald Kelly answers the questions. This podcast started five years ago after Donald attended sales training to try to improve his performance. He started seeing some gains, and he figured the very least he could do was tell other people what was working for him. He realized along the way that he would get to interview great guests like Jeffrey Gitomer who would share a wealth of information and he was hooked. Donald wanted to share sales content that would help himself and others at the same time. Blessings and opportunities The greatest benefit to a podcast like this is the relationships you build. There's a camaraderie and people want to help each other. [05:50] Perhaps it's because the medium is so new, but a lot of podcasters are connecting with each other to share experiences. People have become like family, and many business opportunities have emerged from it. There's a whole

Your morning routine has the power to start the day off right, which makes it crucial for you to make sure yours is effective. Whether you’re listening to music, educating yourself with podcasts, exercising, or engaging in spiritual activity, you’ll find that you accomplish more when you engage in a regular routine. BRAINPOWER Scientific research suggests that our brains work best in late morning. If we lay in bed scrolling through social media, we’re missing crucial time in our day. [04:29] We should take advantage of that time to engage in productive activity.   Even if you don’t consider yourself a morning person, make sure that when you do get out of bed, you win the morning. #DailyRoutine CLICK TO TWEET   TAKE CHARGE Instead of starting your day focused on the negatives in the day, take charge of your perspective. Because you know what will happen in the first hour of the day, you’re in charge of your day. [05:23] By acting instead of being acted upon, you’re taking charge. If you get an email from you

Failures can be crippling if we allow them to be, but when we have the proper guidance, we can learn how to turn failure into success. Airica Kraehmer of Gracious Care Recovery shares her own story here and reminds us that we can turn our weaknesses into our strengths. MENTAL TOUGHNESS Airica’s story doesn’t directly involve sales, but it does involve difficulty and mental toughness. She started working as a model in the fashion industry and she had a dream to succeed there. She realized that the fashion industry demands that you be your own product and that you bring your A-game all the time. She called it cut-throat. As a result, there’s room for exploitation. Airica found herself the victim of human trafficking because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. She wrote down her story, and when she finished her book, she looked for outlets that would help her share it. She figured telling her story would help her move beyond the struggle. She became an international best-selling author, and it taught h

Where there is no vision the people perish, and that’s especially true in sales. Because we aren’t constructing physical structures like houses or sidewalks, the game of sales is largely mental, and it requires a visionary mindset. The book Think & Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, now available as a free download,  addresses the importance of vision and what can happen when you don’t have an eye on the future. VISION FOR SALESPEOPLE Vision demands that we look beyond the work that we’re doing today. It demands that we look into the future, perhaps to the end of the quarter or the end of the year. In some cases, we’ll look to the end of five or 10 years. Without vision, you won’t progress and you won’t grow. We may imagine the worst-case scenario, and then we find ourselves in a loop, playing it over and over in our heads. Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps shared his strategy of playing a “tape” of a perfect race in his head. His coach encouraged him to imagine how it would feel to win, the accomplishment he

Behind the scenes at The Sales Evangelist, we're working to increase organic engagement and interact with our audience, and we've discovered a powerful way to develop new leads through Instagram. According to Jaeden Schafer, Instagram typically accounts for about 10 percent more organic engagement than Facebook, so it's a great place to gain a new audience and develop new leads. Who can benefit? [Tweet "Every business, whether it's B2B or B2C, can benefit from Instagram as long as they know how to use it. #Prospecting"] When Instagram initially launched, its goal was to share nice looking pictures. If you're following that original idea, your company will likely benefit from it. [02:16] But what if you're a refrigeration repair company? How do you post compelling pictures of refrigerators? Posting photos of refrigerators all day won't really prompt much growth. So if, for example, you own a refrigeration company in Miami, post pictures of the area you serve with information about the services you provide. Tar

Strategic planning isn’t only for entrepreneurs: Shane Spiers says sales reps must know where they are headed and what the team’s common purpose is. Strategic planning helps sales reps work better as part of a team and achieve more. Originally from New Zealand, Shane now calls the UK home. It is where his career has grown to what it is today. His record is dominated by leading and scaling 7, 8 and 9-figure rapid growth companies, mostly in real estate, construction, and service-based businesses. Shane created Summit Leader to help 7-figure entrepreneurs scale with an 8-figure growth model. His focus is helping businesses scale from entrepreneurial to managed growth. [00:29] Approximately 96% of businesses earn less than $1 million in revenue. Of the 4% that make it past a million, only 10% make it to $10 million. With only .4% of businesses reaching the $10 million mark, Shane hopes to have an impact by producing more 8-figure businesses. [01:20] A COMMON GOAL As a business moves from entrepreneurial to manag

Eric Graf, CEO of Flockgen, explains how mid-market businesses can trade relationships with one another to expand service offerings and lower customer acquisition. As sales reps, we need to make appointments and we need to make sales but often times, we don’t know how to find the best people. Typically, we develop a prospect list and a sales pitch and bring on a marketing team. It becomes the core business. Eric cites this as a common problem that negatively affects business with regard to customer acquisition. At Flockgen, clients are able to increase their bottom line because the cost of customer acquisition is spread among the partners. Expanding beyond the core Mid-market companies can expand the conversation with their customers beyond just the core aspects. When they do, they will realize that the prospect of monetizing exists in multiple areas which are often overlooked. At Flockgen, the cost of customer acquisition is spread across multiple services far beyond what mid-market companies might do in the

Josh Cunningham, founder and CEO of rokrbox,  fast-tracked his entrepreneurial career by helping to solve a recurring problem for real estate clients and learning an important lesson along the way: Don’t trick them. Josh first stumbled upon the ISA, or Inside Sales Agent, role in real estate while attending seminars with Vyral Marketing founder and CEO Frank Klesitz. Vyral Marketing works with top agents to create content and to get referrals and repeat business. THE ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT Many top professional teams buy real estates leads online, but their agents don’t always do a good job of following up on them. Like any good entrepreneur, when Josh heard a lot of people complaining about a common frustration, he decided to solve the problem. [00:39] He started rokrbox. A rocker box is a gold mining tool used in the 19th century to separate the sand and gravel from the gold. Likewise, rokrbox takes your real estate leads and separates the tire-kickers and time wasters from the motivated buyers and sellers.

Tracking your performance and setting measurable goals will help you perform better as a sales rep. We can optimize our performance if we calculate our daily output to help us fine-tune our work. Sales professionals are competitive creatures by nature, whether we're competing against others or against ourselves. When performance is measured, performance improves. When performance is measured and reported, the rate of performance accelerates.   Potential I participated in a leadership retreat in college and the speaker asked me to participate in a demonstration by jumping as far as I could. She then measured the distance and asked me to jump again to see if I could beat my original effort. Turns out I did, because I had a measurable goal. If I hadn't measured my first attempt, I wouldn't have known whether my second attempt was better. As a sales professional, you'll benefit if you measure your activity on a daily basis. [03:42] Optimization You're probably already planning some of your work: prospecting, phon

In this episode of The Sales Evangelist, we talk about how to take advantage of the power of chat when growing your business. Many organizations have struggled to capitalize on the power of chat, but Amir and Tom share the struggles they’ve had using chat and how we can overcome them. Tom Jenkins and Amir Reiter help companies scale their workforce without having to get offices, pay insurance and taxes, or worry about hiring and training. Instead, they offer technology and strategy. At CloudTask, they provide sales development reps, they manage account executives convenient and they manage the customer success/account reps responsible for renewals and upselling to existing customers. They comprise one office. If someone wants to hire five sales reps, five account executives or five support reps, they will all be in office and managed so that the customer gets what they want – representation and results.   By specializing in sales, customer success and customer support, CloudTask is the best of the breed. [00:

On today's episode of The Sales Evangelist, we talk with Kris Nelson, head of sales for CoSchedule.com, about how businesses can move from "click, try, buy" to having a full-fledged sales team. CoSchedule is a SaaS-based marketing platform that helps marketers to stay organized through a combination of content calendar, a product, project management solutions and execution via social campaigns and email campaigns. CoSchedule took the time to focus on true growth and the company has seen tremendous results. Prior to reaching that point, however, the business, which began as a "click, try and buy," didn’t even have a sales team. When "click, try, and buy" works Initially, they released the product as a straightforward "click, try and buy," product because it made sense at the time. They also designed it for small teams and individuals. The level of product and the price point didn’t really dictate a need for a dedicated sales team. [01:26] As the product progressed and became more complicated, however, it becam