Why should you stop selling and start evangelizing? Donald Kelly, a once struggling salesperson and now a top-performing seller. Donald hosts a popular sales podcast called “The Sales Evangelist”. The show has over 2.3 million all-time downloads and is heard in over 150 countries. Donald and his podcast have also been mentioned in Entrepreneur Magazine, Forbes, Inc, and HubSpot as a top B2B sales podcast. In this episode, Donald discusses how becoming a sales evangelist allowed him to incorporate sales as part of his identity, which gave him no option for failure. He goes over how he engages his message recipient’s senses when making contact, creating affirmations in order to do more than you ever thought possible (proven), and how to show your best self on LinkedIn in order to create word of mouth and infinite referral value. Visit Donald’s Blog to hear more about his unique evangelization of sales or inquire with Donald on how he can help you generate more revenue consistently with his Sales Training.

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Introduction

George: Welcome to this week’s edition of the Conquer Local podcast. You are going to love this next guest. You may have even come across his podcast, with over 2.3 million all-time downloads, 150 different countries, it’s called The Sales Evangelist. When you search for the name Donald Kelly online, you’re gonna find just an incredible array of content, from his podcast, to blogs, to LinkedIn content, to a ton of videos, and Donald, hopefully we can get him to open up with some of the secrets as to how he’s built this brand over the last little while, how long he has been podcasting, and some of his key tenants and methodologies that he thinks we need to bring to sales and the modern sales processes that we have today. Donald Kelly, The Sales Evangelist, coming up next on the Conquer Local podcast. Podcaster to podcaster today on the Conquer Local podcast. Donald Kelly, the Founder and Chief of Sales at The Sales Evangelist, and amazing podcaster in his own right. Donald, welcome to the show.

Donald: George, thank you so much for having me. I am humbled to be here and I’m grateful to be able to connect with all of your wonderful listeners. As a podcaster, you said podcaster to podcaster, you don’t just bring anyone on your show. So, the fact that I made that cut, I felt pretty good. I actually wrote home and told my mom about it.

George: Oh, well, that’s nice. I appreciate that. Hey, I got to ask, these are some impressive stats. We kind of covered them off a little bit in the intro, but you know, 2.3 million downloads all time. How long did it take you to get to that milestone? That’s a heck of a number.

Donald: Yeah, I’m gonna get the team to update it. Actually, 3.4 right now, 3.4 mil. And we have done that, we started in December, 2013 to now, so really, really 2014, but we got that first few couple hundred in December and we felt like amazingness. But since, yeah, I’m an overnight success eight years in the making. Isn’t that always the way?

George: And congratulations by being named on that very prestigious list that HubSpot puts out every once in a while of the top sales podcasts out there. We’re happy to be on that list with you. I consider myself to be in great company to be on that list with the great Donald Kelly and The Sales Evangelist podcast.

Donald: Well, thank you, thank you. And congratulations to you, as well. It is definitely an honor that they consider us, though. It’s fun to be seen on those lists.

How Did You Create A 2.3million All-time Download Podcast?

George: You know, eight years ago, or even if we go back 10 years ago, there wasn’t that many sales podcasts out there. Podcasting is super hot right now, but it’s definitely not new. What was the antithesis for you to create the podcast? I’d really love to understand that.

Donald: Great, great question. My buddy of mine, I just called him before I came in this. We’re gonna go to a football game together. Jared Easley, he is a co-founder of Podcast Movement, one of the world’s largest conferences for podcasts, or is the world’s largest. But Jared and I worked together. He went to New Media Expo, and we were always talking about startup ideas. He met Cliff Ravencraft and John Lee Dumas and some of these hierarchy of Mount Rushmore of podcast. And he was like, dude, podcasting, that’s where it’s at. I’m like pod what? And it was. He introduced me, and he said, you should consider doing it. I went on his podcast and did a couple of segments and he encouraged me to do my own. And when I researched it, the thing that I loved was sales and he kind of saw that and it was a niche. And there was Jeb Blunt podcast that was out there. There was this other lady that has a show. Like, three other podcasts. And I was like, man, there’s no room for another sales podcast. Maybe The Rookie Sales podcast. And I thought about it and contemplated it, and I didn’t like that. And then one of the companies I worked for was a technology evangelist, and Jared was like, man, you’re like the sales evangelist. Why don’t you kind of put that together? And that’s what it came to be. And so, from Jared telling me, the passion side of it was I wanted, I really started to break through, George, in my sales career at that point. And I started to see really good result. And I was like, crap, sales is not as difficult as I made it out to be. There are a lot of people who were in those same shoes that I was, can I tell ’em about that? And the podcast became that means of amplifying that message. And then the other parts to that too, was there was a little bit of cheating too, because podcasting allowed me to sit down with Jeffrey Gitomer for 30 minutes, when I didn’t have to pay $2,500 to sit down with him before that. And I just kept doing it. It so happened that other people wanted to hear what Jeffrey had to say, as well, and that continued to grow it. So, it was two-sided. One, a friend encouraged me to check it out and consider it. I loved the idea and the medium of communication through voice; it’s something I’m excited about. And then, two, the idea of being able to get some free coaching and being able to pass that message that I was receiving, that was helping me, to help other sellers.

George: So, when did your career as a salesperson start?

Donald: I come from Jamaica, man, George. So, everybody’s a salesperson at Jamaica, man. Everybody sell at Jamaica, everybody. My dad was in business. So, the term is like, you’re a business-mon. That’s how I saw, if you want to get extra money, if you want to make a little bit of change, go figure out a way to sell something. So I would pick mangoes from the front yard, from the tree and put them in a front yard and try to sell ’em. And I was horrible at that. And that’s actually a part of my book. We call it, “Sell It Like a Mango,” it’s coming out later this year. But the point though, I started early on in my career to do selling, and then when I came to the States, formally it was post high school, in college, when my buddies were like, you should consider going into sales because you have that personality for it. Luckily, I mean, I didn’t realize that you don’t need a personality for sales because that’s all just a farce. Anyone can sell it they follow the basic fundamentals and have a desire for it. So anyways, I really started to come into my own, the real career side of it in college. And I went and I did a job where I got people to go to timeshare presentation. And then after that, I did a job where we sold Dish Network over the phone. And little by little, I just continued to go down that path. And once you get a taste of that commission, you can’t let it go.

George: No, it is addictive, isn’t it?

Donald: It is.

Giving Away Content For Free: Why Gatekeeping is Hurting You

George: It’s really hard. What do you mean? I’m just gonna get paid the same amount every month? Come on! You know, in doing the prep for the episode, and the team did a great job in reviewing backgrounds and getting information, and meeting with you ahead of time. But the one thing that I’ve noticed is sales thought leaders like yourself, when they distill down what success looks like, it’s simple. You’re a big believer in that very simple process, and then just follow it.

Donald: 100%, 100%. Because that’s the big thing that we get. I mean, if you want to make money, you just tell people that something is complicated and they need to hire you and you need to fix it. And I feel there’s a lot of other people out there in the world, who does that already, who complicate the heck out of something that doesn’t need to be complicated. But with our stuff, I think I give away probably about 90%. Probably around 90% of the stuff that we have, we give away in the form of education and content. Because we really feel that it can help change lives. I mean, George, I was able to help my mom purchase a car because of sales. I was able to help my family come out of different difficult challenges because of sales. It’s helped my kids right now and for where we are to help kind of build that generational wealth. That’s how we’re building it, through sales. And if that’s an opportunity to help other people, yes. So why not break it down so people can understand it’s not that complex. And for me, when I look at sales, it’s all about the idea of helping someone to persuade themself to make a decision that’s in their best interest, for which they will compensate me. And most people think that sales is like me figuring out some kind of crazy tricky way to convince you to buy. It’s not about convincing you to buy. It’s helping you to convince yourself. And that comes through the simple process of being able to, the number-one piece I want sellers to always, always to walk away, is be curious. The more curious you can be, the more successful you’ll be in sales. I will put money on that. Number two is the ability because of your curiosity to ask effective questions. Once you can ask those effective questions and help people to think, they can persuade themself. And once you can do those two things well, master those two, it makes sense if you can help people problem solve now. Because you’re asking the right question, helping them to recognize it, and you’re using some logics and some psychology there, and the person convinced themself that this is the best thing for them to do. And that’s simple selling when it’s all said and done. Oz is not big and mighty as we thought he is or she is. It’s just a simple idea that you can follow. And this is why our belief is that anyone can sell if they have a desire and if they get trained on the process, boom.

George: I love the term evangelist, but also I’ve noticed that you’re big on mindset.

Donald: 100%

Stop Selling, Start Evangelizing: Becoming The Sales Evangelist

George: You know, Jason Forest was on our show here a few times in the past year, he talks about sales being a mental game. And I’d love to get your take on that component, the mindset. And it’s something that we really need to be aware of as sellers.

Donald: Yeah. Here’s the thing when it comes towards the mindset piece. I’ve coached enough salespeople to recognize this, where I would tell someone what to do, we guide them, we coach them, they can take the principles and they can go and apply it. A lot of times when we tell them to go and apply it, they don’t do it, and the reason being because they don’t do it because it’s not that they don’t know what to do, it’s a simple idea that it’s just a little challenging for them to be able to accept it mentally, to go out and to do it. So, when you can overcome the blocks that hold you back, like, I mean, prospecting, it’s not that difficult. Pick up the darn phone, make a phone call, reach out to people; that’s not challenging. But what is challenging is the mindset piece, where the lies we tell ourselves. Well, if I call George, George is not gonna be happy. Well, it’s too early to call George. You know, I called last time at this time and it doesn’t work, and he got mad at me and I got upset when I called earlier, you know? So, I won’t do that. Let me just send George an email. I mean, this is all mental when it’s all said and done. It’s not like, you know, even in sports where like, a game like football, where it’s a lot of it’s physical, it’s still mental, but these people invest millions of dollars in building up sales, excuse me, their players to have the mental capacity to perform at that level. So, Jason is right. Sales is so much more a mental game. What’s the physical piece? Picking up the phone, sending emails, logging Salesforce. It’s not that, you’re not gonna get physically worn out from doing sales per se, but mentally you might get worn out. So I’m a big believer, if we can help someone with the right mindset, help them establish the belief system that they need to succeed. And then also helping them to understand how they can overcome those blocks or those challenges or those difficulties or those lies or the head trash, quote/unquote, that Sandler calls it, that we put in our own way. George won’t answer the phone. Why do I have that belief? Why do I let myself fall down these paths? How do I help to fortify myself against negativity or against difficult moments or rejection? If we can have sales be, sales reps be resilient mentally, then they can kill it physically. They will be able to make those phone calls and to do it and to break through the monotony. And this is where you get those affirmations and the right type of affirmations and goal settings and helping people to build you up, I mean, getting pumped up. If I can pump somebody up mentally, I have no, no, no worries about that person performing physically.

George: You know, I had an awful day the other day. It was horrible. And usually I’ll phone my wife on the way home just to figure out if I need to pick anything up. And I texted her and I said, I won’t be calling you on the way home, ’cause I’m cranking ACDC up to 10 on the drive.

Donald: Amen.

George: And you know, we live in a small community, so the commute home is like 20 minutes at the end of the day and two songs in the morning. But just to take “Back In Black” and crank it up for three and a half minutes and remove that negative, you know, ’cause it wasn’t the better day that I’ve had. And what I wanted to do is make sure when I got home that I wasn’t bringing that negativity. You know, she has to listen to me enough about what’s going on at work. I tried to remove that from it. But it is the thing that is forgotten. Number one, this isn’t easy. There’s nothing easy about it. There’s no other job on Earth where you get punched in the face all day long, and the end of the day one person says, yes, and you’re like, this is a great job! But having that mental toughness is such an important piece. And I don’t think people talk about it or coach around it enough, so I’m glad that you’re carrying that forward. I know that you’re a huge believer in video. And we are in the process of moving our podcast to video here in the latter part of the year. I was watching your videos in prep for this and you’ve got a ton of them, so congratulations.

Donald: Thank you so much.

Why Aren’t You Producing Video Content?

George: Salespeople, though, are really reluctant to put themselves on camera, it seems. What’s your advice for them to get over that and adopt it?

Donald: To the competitors, I say, don’t do it. It is absolutely awful. It’s the worst thing in the world, don’t do it. People who are not competing, hey, check it out. It makes you money. Video is really fascinating, and it’s not just with salespeople, it’s with like just human beings as general. Because no one wants to be looked at as the idiot. And no one, and I think it goes back to our primal nature or just like the group, the herd mentality or the village, nobody wants to be cast out of the community, or to be looked at in a small community, so quote/unquote, a family setting, as the person that messed up or did something wrong. So, in that sense, we try to protect ourself and it goes back to the mental side of things, right? But in actuality, why do we have that block? Why do we have fear? So, when it comes to videos, people don’t want to put themselves out there because the lies they tell themself: I don’t look good on video. I have a video podcast, I have a podcast now and we started doing videos. Our podcasts, we have 2.4 million downloads. Our video side is still very weak and you want me to tell you why? Because we just started that like a year and a half ago. And the reason is, George, it was probably two years, the reason is, George, I was afraid. I told myself for a long time that video doesn’t, I don’t look good on video. And it was all a lie, when I look back on the mental piece of it. I don’t like the way I sound. I mean, you know, we say that as podcasters at the beginning, but we get over that. But video is one of those hard ones. So, people have a hard time getting past the simple idea that they can’t look good or that they can’t be as effective. So they tell themselves these things that hold them back. And then a few people will actually, who don’t care about what they look like or what people think about them, they will actually go out and do it. When it comes to videos, there’s several things. We as human beings, when we communicate, we have our five senses. When you do audio or email, email, when you send an email, it’s just the email and you leave so much to imagination to be able to figure out. When you do an audio, you can hear. And if you have audio and text, they can hear and see. But when they see a video they’re using more of their senses to communicate with you and you’re using that. So, right now you’re seeing me. When we’re recording, you see my expression and this crazy eye is popping out and just getting all excited because I’m so animated. I get so excited with the stuff, so you can see that energy. You can hear it, and then even if it was a transcript, you can see, you can read that. So when I use video, it helps me to convey more and communicate better to help that person to persuade themself. So, that’s why I’m a big believer in it. When I send a video, I’ll give you a quick example. There was a prospect that we have, and I reached out to her and I sent a message on LinkedIn or some other nature and nothing. I sent her a video and I left a voicemail and she didn’t respond to the voicemail. But the video said, left a voicemail, and in a video saying: Hey, Kim left a voicemail for you. I wanted to introduce myself, blah-blah-blah. She opened that darn thing and we use BombBomb, big shout out to BombBomb. So, we were able to see she’d looked at it. She watched it, 100%, then 90%, then somebody else watched it ’cause she was sharing it amongst the organization. Then an email came through. I mean, at that point I jumped on email and saying, hey, Kim, I wanted to follow up on the video introduction. She was like, yes, let’s schedule an appointment. She brought in her, one of her team members, and then we had a conversation. They were able to sign an agreement with us and we did a partnership, and now we’re looking at doing a bigger partnership for 2022, all because I sent a video that breaks through the monotony. And she said, the reason why, because we are seeing it right now, where we can’t break through it with email. Thank you so much for showing us this way essentially. Showed ’em a simpler, easier way through video. And it just allows them to stand out. When people have a hard time getting over their mental block, and if you can get past that, man, video could kill it for you. Not the only thing, but it’s in addition, it can help you.

George: We’ve had guests in the last couple of months tell us that they’re even, you know, taking proof of performance reports for a monthly business review, and rather than, oh, I can’t get the person on the phone to have the meeting, they do it all virtual on video with Loom or something like that, and they send it through, and it’s making it even more efficient. So I think that video isn’t just, you know, an attraction or top-of-funnel type motion. It’s throughout the entire customer journey it helps the efficiency. Todd Hartley, one guy that I like to follow online, he just did a great gig for Tony Robbins around remote selling mastery here, he had this post on LinkedIn; you may follow him. He said something about the virtual backgrounds where you’re on a beach or things like that. And he says he doesn’t like them because it leads to, you know, no trust. It’s like, what the heck? You’re not on a beach, so why do that? How do you feel about that? Because I know you do a lot of video.

Donald: Yeah, so when it comes towards those, physically you’re in my office, my studio right now. And we got vinyl on the walls. So, this vinyl is TSC studios for our production studio. In my office we have the TSC logo. And some people say, man, nice back, you know, I have a green screen. I was like, no, that’s the wall, baby. Like, it’s me and it’s authentic. And then the other piece to that too, sometimes when I do a video, I’m just sending a message to someone, I’m at my desk, and I just think it gives that authentic nature. And here’s one of the things people were pointing out recently, too. Somebody did a post on this. When you’re doing those video calls, like say, like we’re doing with a non-podcast call, keeping it without the headset because I come into this thing and it can get people intimidated sometimes. Like, holy crap, look at Donald, with all that set up. But I don’t want my client to feel like that. But sometimes I will just go on my computer with my Raycon, my little headset here, and they can’t see that, but it’s just me chatting with them and we have a conversation. But it’s authentic, it’s not fake production. It’s not like that beach or I’m in space. I ain’t gonna be talking to you if I’m in space. I’m enjoying space, if that’s the case, you know?

George: When you go for the ride with Sir Richard Branson. Right, you’ll actually be there.

Donald: Yeah, I’m trying to get Elon to get me on it. So we’ll see if he does that. If anyone knows anyone at SpaceX, we’re trying to get them to come on our show, one of their sales. So, please go ahead and introduce us. 

George: Well, good. Maybe, I’m not sure if Elon is a Conquer Local listener, but he should be.

Donald: He should be. Come on, man.

George: How do you set yourself apart on LinkedIn? I know you do a lot of B2B business. I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn, not just because they’ve been a sponsor of our podcast. We don’t tie those two things together, that LinkedIn had an ad and okay, it’s not paid. But I know that you’re on there and it’s an important conduit for you. I love to ask this question because I’m always looking to learn new ways that we can leverage that platform.

Donald: LinkedIn is the money pit for… Not money pit, I guess a money mountain in that case, ’cause you just go up that mountain all the time and get money off of it. It’s a money tree. And the reason why, obviously, I mean, it’s the biggest social media platform for professionals. And in my case, the way I use it, I do three things: I connect, share, and engage. Connect, what I do with that part is we, just go back to the stat again, the idea of, just to give a quick synopsis of this. LinkedIn has 700 and I think 50 or 790 million members. On average, only 3 million, so 790 to three, 3 million people post on LinkedIn weekly. 3 million off all that. And they have each week, I think like 50 billion impressions or it’s week or month, it’s this crazy amount. So, that small group of people are taking all of those impressions. What that impression is, is that your content is being seen by somebody else’s eyeball. Most people on LinkedIn are on the sidelines like this at the school dance, like a middle school dance, just on the sidelines and making fun of the people that’s actually dancing. The people like us, we’re posting. And the reason is, LinkedIn, just understand these folks’ algorithm and hijack it. LinkedIn’s idea is that they’re trying to be more engaging, like Facebook. They saw what Facebook did, so they took away that feature they had for like forever, where only the influencers had major engagement. Anyone can have engagement on LinkedIn. So, if you post content, congratulations, you’re gonna stand out way more than most of the people in your field. And the way that I encourage people is connect. I connect with people who are my ideal customer. We build a list, we go out and we connect to those people. I use Navigator. You don’t have to use Navigator, you can use basic stuff. But I use Nav, and we build a list of people who are ideal customers. Reach out to those people, send them a personalized message, something to the nature of: George, always looking to connect with sales leaders in our industry like yourself, permission to connect here on LinkedIn. And I ask that question at the end, trigger that response, and people usually respond back, connect with me. And then we start, you know, just build a relationship. They start seeing my content because I post on LinkedIn at least three, maybe four or five times a week, content that’s gonna be relevant to those ideal customers who are VPs of sales and sales leaders. And then now, because not a lot of the people that they’re connected with are posting stuff, I’m in their feed every single time. So then now when I do I… So I connect, I share, and then I engage. When I do those engagement, people who are second and third degree connections, I send them a personal message: Reconnect with me. I start a conversation with them because more than likely they’re sales folks who might like the content. Maybe I put: Cold calling is dead, as my blog, my post. And then I write: Cold calling is dead, is something that I hear from many of the people. I don’t feel that’s the case because of this and this and this. I would love to hear your feedback. What do you think? It’s a micro blog, but it stimulates conversation. You put some hashtags in there because LinkedIn has encouraged you to use hashtags. So then now that post is going, getting a lot of steam. I get over a thousand people to view it. And after that, I might have 10, 15 people who actually commented or liked it, and those people who are second and third degree connection, I reach a personal connection to them and we start a dialogue. And I ask them something to the nature of like, George, thanks so much for connecting to my post. You know, how you guys doing on cold calling now? Do you still believe it’s dead? No, I don’t believe it’s dead. What’s a big challenge you’re facing with cold calling? This is our challenge. Well, cool, I’m more than willing to share with you something that’s working for us, open to a five to seven-minute call. They jump on a call and usually those calls will lead to me giving a tip, not a trick, just giving tips. And then usually at the end of that, Donald, this stuff is great. Can you help our team with that? Well, funny you should ask, yes. And that’s how we get appointments. So, I just gave you my whole playbook there. And when it comes towards LinkedIn, you connect, you share, you engage, and then you do personal communication, not spam people, but have personal communication. And that leads to other appointments.

George: I want to tie back to something you said earlier in the show, and that was that 90-some-odd percent of the content that you create, you give away. And I think people need to understand that, that the ask to get five to seven minutes came after an enormous amount of value was delivered. And you know, one thing that I’m really pushing this year, Donald, is this idea of what I call the trust matrix. Any interaction with a prospect there’s fear and there’s trust. And our job is to layer in enough trust to get a conversation.

Donald: Yeah.

George: And a lot of people are like, yeah, I’m not really getting the connections that I need and everything else. And I go in and say, how much content are you giving away? Oh, we don’t give away; everything’s gated; everything is done this way. We do the odd blog once a week. And I’m like, wow, things have changed.

Donald: Yeah.

George: We need to be delivering. And you know, product-led growth is something because we’re in the SAS software business that we talk a lot about, but I believe that what your methodology is, is product-led growth. You want them to adopt your product or service at some point in time. And you’ve figured out that if I give away a lot of value way before that, actually your deal size is probably bigger at the end of the day when you do get that ICP on the phone.

Emotion Sells And You Absolutely Have The Time To Reach Out

Donald: Fascinating, you’re pealing behind our onion here and looking at it. And you’re 100% right, it does. And the other piece to that too, is that you don’t have to worry about competitors too much. I rarely get people say, well, I want to look at what the competitor is doing because they see me as that authority leader for so long. And I go back to what you’re sharing. We call it, you deposit a lot in a bank so you can get a withdrawal. And I’ll give you a quick example. People connect with people on LinkedIn, and they collect them like Pokemon cards. And I’m like, what are you doing collecting with Pokemon cards? It’s like, got to catch ’em all or what? So, they have all these connections, but how much of those people you engage with? And that’s where the engagement part comes back in this whole formula that I teach. But the idea here is people’s birthday, somebody has a birthday, LinkedIn tells you. LinkedIn has the voicemail feature. So, I’ll say something like: George, happy, happy birthday from all of us to you, we wish you happy birthday, wish we could party, too. Or something like that. Hope you’re having a good day, George. Something whimsical and fun, but it’s Donald, right? Just have a good thing, happy birthday, man. Hope you’re doing well. That voicemail feature on LinkedIn allows for that happen and it stands out. And here’s the other piece to that. The people that I have connection with, I’ll hit ’em up every once in a while. After I’ve deposited and deposited, Gary Vaynerchuk called it jab, jab, right hook. But if I give out a deposit, deposit, deposit, I do this and I’ll reach out to someone and say, hey, George, I don’t know if you know this because we do, we have this program that does X, Y, Z, blah, blah, blah. Is that something you and your team would be interested in? They don’t see that as spam because they’re like, this is Donald, of course. And he actually sent me a message? Cool, let me talk. Yeah, Donald, I would. And that’s how a lot of the times the sales leaders that I connect with, they will, we will, you know, maybe several months I do something like that, and it gets an appointment and leads to engagement and leads to opportunity, the voicemail feature.

George: One of the things, and thank you for bringing up that, I did want to touch on this. What I find on the LinkedIn side, number one, the stat used to be 690, now it’s up to 790 million users. Number two, since Microsoft spent $28 billion to buy it, they must be investing another $28 billion because they have all these new features that you can utilize to reach out to people. Now, there’s gotta be a reason for that. Of course they want to monetize it. But the voicemail is one. The video thing is another. The fact that you can deliver a message when someone is actually on the platform and it just kind of sits behind the hood and deliver it. So, when I talk to a business owner or a sales rep, and they’re like, yeah, I was on LinkedIn at one point in time and I haven’t really been back there, you really should go back under the hood because they continue to innovate the ways to speak to that audience.

Donald: Yeah. You’re right. I mean, I’m pulling it up right now. You can, if I was to send a message to someone, I can do, you have a plus button there. You could send attachment, you could send a gif, you can send mentions, you can send a photo, camera. And then they also have capabilities with content creator mode. You could turn that on and I recommend you guys turn it on. But with content creator mode, it allows for you to be able to highlight some of your top pieces of content. And then the other thing with that, too, my video, I’m at my bio picture now. We’re adding a new video, so it’s not up there, but you can click on that and I can get 15 seconds. Be like, hey guys, this is Donald Kelly, The Sales Evangelist, and I help salespeople do this, this, this. It’s a pleasure to connect with you. Thanks so much for looking at my profile. Or whatever, and just, you know, just chill. This is me in South Florida, just having fun. That’s Donald. And that allows for people to get a chance to connect with you. They also have a way for you to do your name. So, if your name sounds funny, like Donald Kelly, I know it’s hard to pronounce, but you can pronounce it, put the proper pronunciation and it’s an audio file. And then also, the idea too, of just doing, of you engaging more with stories. LinkedIn has the capabilities to do that. Not a lot of people stand out with, do that, and there’s another area that you can take advantage of when it comes to stories. I mean, yeah, I love the platform. I mean, this show wasn’t necessarily to brag on LinkedIn. But hey, if it works, man, shoot, use it.

George: Well, some amazing takeaways from this episode. Donald, I’m sure we could talk a lot more. Our listeners are sales professionals, business owners, primarily in the local business space. We’ve got sales leaders. If there was one thing that you could give a seller, regardless of where they are in their career, as advice around selling in 2021, what would that be?

Donald: The one thing that I’d give a seller? I would say, get out of your own way. And the reason why that I say that is I’ve found myself in that situation before where I was, I saw what was coming on the horizon, but I was afraid of change. And oftentimes we are the ones that block ourself. And I just encourage the sales reps to get out of their own way. And one of those things, I mean, even if it’s the video idea, I mean, we’re not going back. We’re just going forward, embrace it. If it’s taking advantage of LinkedIn and social capabilities and utilizing voice, get out of your own way and go ahead and adopt a new way. And then even if it’s like, you know, taking advantage of tech tools like intent-based selling, where you can use things like Zoom Info, don’t get in your own way and say, well, this is the way that I’ve done it and this is the way that I learned, or this is the way that I was taught six months ago when I first joined. Who cares? Be willing to learn and just get out of your own way. I don’t want to be Blockbuster. I want to be Netflix. And usually the best way to do that is to figure out how can I cannibalize my own process? What can I do to break what I’m doing so that I can do something better? And usually people don’t like to do that so they keep up these blocks or block themself and stay with what’s comfortable. I like to get uncomfortable, because when I get uncomfortable I help more people and make more money.

George: Ladies and gentlemen, The Sales Evangelist, Mr. Donald Kelly on the show this week. Donald, I really appreciate those insights. We gotta get the book title again. The book and when can we buy it and read it and consume it?

Donald:Yeah! It’s later this year. It’s in the final rounds of edits, but it’s called “Sell It Like a Mango, “A New Seller’s Guide to Closing More Deals.” So, very excited for that. It’s gonna be fun.

George: I can’t wait. And The Sales Evangelist podcast, available anywhere you get your podcasts?

Donald: Yeah, anywhere you get your podcasts. Some people are Apple fans. Some people are Spotify fans, Google, any of those platforms. Tune in, subscribe, I’d love to connect with you. And find me anywhere: Donald C. Kelly on LinkedIn specifically, if you want to camp out there. That’s where I hang out.\

George: We’re gonna to put all the links to how you get ahold of Donald and how you get the podcast inside the episode notes. Donald Kelly, thanks for joining us. Enjoy the rest of your day in beautiful West Palm Beach.

Donald: Thank you, George, I appreciate it. And for you guys who are listening to the show, just the last thing for you guys, please, please, please, if you haven’t done so already, go ahead and leave a review for George and for the team, because this show is amazing and we need more people listening to it. So, the more you can subscribe and leave reviews for George’s show, it goes a long way. We can conquer local and we can change the world and our own community, and amazing things can happen, but you got to let other people know about it. Thanks, man.

Conclusion

George: Thanks, Donald. And we’ll make sure that we get our Conquerors listening to The Sales Evangelist podcast as well. Well, I don’t know how to dial this thing down to just a few key takeaways, because there was so much there. And you can tell that Donald not only is a very effective communicator, but he’s very passionate. He believes that anyone could become a great salesperson. It really comes down to desire, and whether they’re willing to learn and evolve. That podcast, The Sales Evangelist, you can see that he is using that vehicle to drive his brand, but he’s also using it as part of that 90-some-odd percent of everything that he does he’s giving away. The value that he gives to the audience. And then moves himself to a conversation and then has a commercial transaction. So, it’s just interesting to hear from him how he’s used the podcast as one of the key tenants around the content, but it doesn’t stop there. We spent a lot of time talking about video. And utilizing video, especially on the LinkedIn platform, insert name of new platform later maybe if there’s something else that you should be considering, but he’s using video to break through the clutter. You heard him talk a little bit about email, and maybe we should’ve dove deeper into that. But I think where he was going was it’s just one layer of communication. Like it’s just flat, just text. Whereas, if you put some video in there and you deliver the video in email, or you deliver the video on LinkedIn, or you deliver the video in a Sales Navigator in-mail message, you know, there’s other ways to deliver the message, and just using video is a way to cut through the clutter, and that’s been very effective for Donald. The upcoming book, and you know, it’s comical. If you’ve ever been to Jamaica, you’ll realize that yes, everybody there is an amazing salesperson. That’s why I get all of those trinkets and things like that, that I bring home from Jamaica every year. But he was born in a sales environment and then started to evolve his career. And it was just great hearing from that. And I can’t wait for that book. We’re gonna give you the links on how you can connect with Donald, in the show notes. And then finally, get over yourself and get on camera. Like just such a great lesson. You know, my mom is the reason that I have such a hard time on camera because I said, you know, when I was doing radio, and I said to her one day, you know, maybe I should get in TV. And she said, “George, “you have a face that was made for radio.” And so, I’m always reluctant to be on TV, but guess what? It’s easier than ever to do video. And you can actually get to be pretty good at it without too much trouble. And if it’s authentic, it’s even better. The more polished and professional it is, people are like, oh, well what was happening in there before they polished it all up? So, that very authentic video is the stuff that’s working great. Anyways, I can keep going on with Donald for hours, ’cause he was just a brilliant guest. Why don’t you spend hours with Donald on his Sales Evangelist podcast and find out why 2.3 million all-time downloads in 150 different countries. There’s just some great stuff there. And we appreciate Donald taking time out of his day to do some teaching with us and helping us in our mission to conquer local. My name is George Leith. I’ll see you when I see you.