The Sales Evangelist Donald Kelly

Salespeople and leaders alike have access to great tech to simplify and streamline their processes. Tech, however, isn’t everything – if a seller isn’t spending much time selling, they’re still not going to hit quotas. In this episode, your host Donald Kelly talks with Tiffani Bova about shaping the employee experience to drive success.
The Connection Between Employees and Growth
Employees drive revenue. 
Even though powerful tech is out there to help you sell, a salesperson only spends 28% of their time selling and 54% of salespeople miss quotas.
If sales reps don’t have the right tools and spend all their time doing administrative work, they’re not providing an excellent customer experience.
Salespeople aren’t in control of the pitfalls in their tech, but they can help sales leaders understand what isn’t working.
The Employee Journey
A lot of energy is often put into improving the buyer’s journey. But the salesperson’s journey needs to match.
The more back-end work the employee has to do per each step of the buyer’s journey, the lower their job satisfaction will be.
Identify the steps in the seller’s process, and ask if things can be automated, streamlined, or eliminated.
Getting Promoted vs. Showing Leadership
The higher up you get promoted, the more long-term you should be setting your sights. The C-suite should not be focusing on the day-to-day.
Great sellers get promoted, but selling and managing are two different skills.
Engage with employees about what their struggles and needs are. Try to offer solutions, and if you can’t, at least you’re aware of the situation.
“We do not have a technology problem. We have a people and process problem.” – Tiffani Bova
Resources
The Experience Mindset by Tiffani Bova on Amazon
https://www.tiffanibova.com/experiencemindset/
Tiffani Bova on LinkedIn
@tiffanibova on Instagram
Sponsorship Offers
1. This episode is brought to you in part by TSE Sales Foundation.
I think we can all agree that sales should be fun. However, many times, we find ourselves in a quagmire where we’re not progressing and deals are not going the way that they should. This is why we created TSE Sales Foundation. It’s a program designed to help sales professionals just like you master the fundamentals of sales so they can radically improve their sales pipeline and close more deals. To find out more about TSE Sales Foundation and our next start date, simply go to thesalesevangelist.com/foundation.
Credits
As one of our podcast listeners, we value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We’d love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify. Audio provided by Free SFX, Soundstripe, and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

Whether you’re tired of receiving the same “pitches” all over LinkedIn or you’re a self-professed introvert like our guest Ben Lai, you know there’s a way to use LinkedIn to sell without selling out. Today on the Sales Evangelist podcast, Ben and host Donald Kelly tackle bringing humanity back to social media.
Connection Requests: Being Other-Centric
Your messaging should communicate that you care more about the person than the sale. Be courteous and authentic. Don’t use the same lines as everyone else – show others who you are. Identify a commonality that builds trust. People will then check out your profile, so if your message and profile are incongruent, you’ll lose that trust. If you have a limited market, personalize each connection request or meeting request, depending on what makes sense for you. Meeting Requests: Personal AND Commercial
Before you reach out, give them a little bit of breathing room (about 1 week) after getting your connection request gets accepted. Find a conversational thing to ask them about, or find something of value to give to the person without them having to do business with you. Letting the meeting come about naturally makes your target more likely to respond. Follow Up:
People are busy and don’t always respond right away. Some people you reach out to will want to reward your perseverance. If you don’t follow up, you seem like you don’t care. “If you’re out there to genuinely help people, you’re going to come across that way in the wording and in all of your mannerisms, whereas someone who is annoyingly persistent is predominantly self-centric. They’re only thinking about closing the sale.” – Ben Lai
Resources
SalesEthos.au - individual or team sales coaching
Sponsorship Offers
This episode is brought to you in part by LinkedIn.
Are you struggling to close deals? Cold outreach wastes the buyer and seller's time at every stage, especially when sellers are using shallow and outdated data.
Your organization can overcome these challenges with technology that translates comprehensive, high-quality buyer data into real-time
insights. These deeper insights empower sales reps and teams to adopt the habits of top performers, which leads to better outcomes - like more pipelines, higher win rates, and larger deals. We call this Deep Sales. And we’ve built the first deep sales platform with the next generation of LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Try LinkedIn Sales Navigator and get a sixty-day free trial at linkedin.com/tse.
This episode is brought to you in part by TSE Sales Foundation.
I think we can all agree that sales should be fun. However, many times, we find ourselves in a quagmire where we’re not progressing and deals are not going the way that they should. This is why we created TSE Sales Foundation. It’s a program designed to help sales professionals just like you master the fundamentals of sales so they can radically improve their sales pipeline and close more deals. To find out more about TSE Sales Foundation and our next start date, simply go to thesalesevangelist.com/foundation.
Credits
As one of our podcast listeners, we value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We’d love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify. Audio provided by Free SFX, Soundstripe, and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

Social selling can be successful IF you know where to start. Many sellers waste time chasing celebrity status thinking that’s the only way to generate leads, not knowing there are options that can consistently get them to their sales targets. In today’s episode of the Sales Evangelist podcast, Donald Kelly talks with Tony Restell, the founder of Social-Hire, one of the leading social media marketing agencies in the UK. They discuss how to reach out to your target audience and convert that audience into opportunities.
Two Roads to Success for B2B Social Sellers
You become a celebrity in your field and receive inquiries based on your name/presence. For every “celebrity,” there are a lot of people who are trying to do that and failing. You grow your account by putting in consistent work and focusing your attention on a target market. This is the less risky way to generate leads. Writing Effective Connection Requests
Think about how you would open up a conversation with someone at a trade show or a conference. Don’t say anything you wouldn’t say in person. Drop a good question in the first conversation to get communication going. You have a 300-character limit. Use it to demonstrate your value as a connection, not to sell. How to Convert Your Audience into Opportunities
Find ways to build trust and reach out without pitching. People on LinkedIn get pitched to all the time – you’ll be ignored. Restell’s strategy is doing short (5-10 minute) video calls with business owners on LinkedIn. They can use these short videos as content for themselves. Find ways to let your opportunities approach you. Asking for short interviews to gain information invites businesses to look into who you are and what you typically offer. “What we like to focus on is much more predictable and scalable [than attempting to be a LinkedIn celebrity], and it comes down to the consistency of effort. I guess that comes from my door-to-door sales background many years ago, where it was drilled into us that it’s all about the numbers and it’s all about improving your conversion rates between the numbers. If you do enough of the right things and you improve over time, you’re going to get a known outcome from that. And LinkedIn is no different for sales professionals.” – Tony Restell
Resources
Social-Hire.com – book a consultation call!
Tony Restell on LinkedIn
Sponsorship Offers
This episode is brought to you in part by TSE Sales Foundation.
I think we can all agree that sales should be fun. However, many times, we find ourselves in a quagmire where we’re not progressing and deals are not going the way that they should. This is why we created TSE Sales Foundation. It’s a program designed to help sales professionals just like you master the fundamentals of sales so they can radically improve their sales pipeline and close more deals. To find out more about TSE Sales Foundation and our next start date, simply go to thesalesevangelist.com/foundation.
Credits
As one of our podcast listeners, we value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We’d love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify. Audio provided by Free SFX, Soundstripe, and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

When faced with new challenges, your ability to adapt will determine whether you succeed. In the past 12-18 months, the market has undergone a massive shift. In today’s episode, you’re going to get the facts you need to respond. Your host Donald Kelly sits down with Kate Ahlering (CRO at Calendly) to talk about how automation can save you time and energy so you can apply your focus to the moments that matter.
Challenges In the Current Market
The game has changed from placing importance on “growth at all costs” (2020–2021) to “path to profitability” (2022-present). 
There is a lot more scrutiny from buyers on all types of investment. The path to profitability needs to be clear at the outset.
The silver lining: sales organizations get to hone their craft, become more focused, and improve beyond what they’ve been able to offer in the past.
Speed of Sales Cycle
When balancing personalization with automation, some steps in the process require a more personalized approach than others. Find the parts you can automate.
If a customer is already on your website, they’re ready to talk to you at that moment – most don’t want to send a lot of e-mails back and forth.
Calendly Routing allows customers to easily book meetings with you from your website, cutting down the amount of time they spend in your pipeline.
Getting the Right Meetings Booked
Team selling is becoming increasingly common. Streamlining the booking process for collaborative meetings helps your customer get scheduled painlessly.
Standardizing the process to whatever extent you can helps give your customers a consistent experience, and makes your process more scalable.
Expansion Using Automation
There’s nothing wrong with doubling down on your base, but must also demonstrate your value to that base or offer more value.
Use analytic suites to become more educated on what works and improve conversion based on data.
HackerOne, a global cybersecurity company, implemented Calendly and scheduled 114% more meetings while streamlining their process by 600 hours.
“If you haven’t already, take a look at your customer life cycle map. What are the points in time that you really want to engage your customer? What are those high value conversations? What are those inflection points that are so critical? And [ensure] that you have the right amount and the right blend of personalization and automation to ensure that those moments happen.” – Kate Ahlering
Resources
https://calendly.com/ – Get started with a FREE trial
Connect with Kate Ahlering on LinkedIn
The Brevet Group: 21 Mind-blowing Sales Stats - check out this website for helpful stats Ahlering refers to
How CI Assante Wealth Management Achieved 323% ROI with Calendly - Case Study
HackerOne Realizes 169% ROI by Powering Customer Success with Calendly - Case Study
Sponsorship Offers
1. This episode is brought to you in part by LinkedIn.
Are you struggling to close deals? Cold outreach wastes the buyer and seller's time at every stage, especially when sellers are using shallow and outdated data.
Your organization can overcome these challenges with technology that translates comprehensive, high-quality buyer data into real-time
insights.
These deeper insights empower sales reps and teams to adopt the habits of top performers, which leads to better outcomes - like more pipelines, higher win rates, and larger deals.
We call this Deep Sales. And we’ve built the first deep sales platform with the next generation of LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
Try LinkedIn Sales Navigator and get a sixty-day free trial at linkedin.com/tse.
2. This episode is brought to you in part by TSE Sales Foundation.
I think we can all agree that sales should be fun. However, many times, we find ourselves in a quagmire where we’re not progressing and deals are not going the way that they should. This is why we created TSE Sales Foundation. It’s a program desig

By now, someone has already told you that sales is about building relationships. If you’ve ever been lured into the trap of trying to be your prospect’s best friend only to find out they weren’t interested, you’re not alone. As you’ll hear in this episode, JC Pollard isn’t afraid to ask tough questions, and that’s how he became a top seller at Gong, hitting 190% of his quota in his first year. Listen in as he and Donald Kelly discuss “soft closing” to get the facts about where your deals are at.
Setting Expectations and Being Proactive
As a rep, you are (or should be) experienced with your sales process. Take a leadership role in outlining the next steps in the process for your buyer.
Give the buyer options so they know you can either close the deal quickly or take more time to evaluate, depending on what they want.
Position the outcomes on every call and keep inviting your buyer to tell YOU where they stand.
Soft Closing
Many reps don’t know how certain their deals are. Instead of keeping yourself in the dark, set your buyers up with an opportunity to close at every step of the process. 
If they say yes, this saves you a lot of time and effort. But if they say no, you have an opportunity to do discovery.
Wrapping Deals Before the Trial Ends
Never launch a trial or pilot without knowing what your customer’s success criteria are. 
If you believe your product has checked all the boxes before the pilot is done, check in with them and see if they’re ready to buy yet. If they say no, don’t be afraid to ask, “Why not?”
“The best salespeople are ones that are friendly, liked, create rapport, and can really drop the hammer when they need to... That’s what I try to be. I get close with my prospects. I truly care about making friends with them – I keep in touch with people I sold Gong to a year ago. But when they say something throughout the cycle where I’m like, ‘You’re not thinking about that the right way,’ I’m not afraid to also call that out and be like, ‘Hey, can I challenge you on that?’ If you can marry the two, I think that’s where you start to see some success.” – JC Pollard
Resources
Gong website
Reach out to JC Pollard on LinkedIn
JC’s post calling out Donald Kelly on LinkedIn!
Sponsorship Offers
1. This episode is brought to you in part by TSE Sales Foundation.
I think we can all agree that sales should be fun. However, many times, we find ourselves in a quagmire where we’re not progressing and deals are not going the way that they should. This is why we created TSE Sales Foundation. It’s a program designed to help sales professionals just like you master the fundamentals of sales so they can radically improve their sales pipeline and close more deals. To find out more about TSE Sales Foundation and our next start date, simply go to thesalesevangelist.com/foundation.
Credits
As one of our podcast listeners, we value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We’d love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify. Audio provided by Free SFX, Soundstripe, and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

Why do all presentations look and feel the same? Why does it feel like you have to leave your true self at the door and switch into ‘pitch mode’? Why isn’t there more storytelling? These are the big questions our guest Ravi Rajani sought to answer, and he packed this episode with so much of what he has learned. In this episode, your host Donald Kelly and Ravi Rajani get pumped about the art of telling exciting stories in a sales environment – and the energy is contagious!
Understanding “STORY” in a Sales Context
S: Simplify story-selling: A simple, but powerful story can get attention, tug at emotions, and build trust. T: Tactically create your story bank: Include the right kinds of stories in your arsenal. O: Obtain delivery mastery: It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it. R: Ramp up your MVP story: Practice and fine-tune your story in low-stakes environments. Y: Yield long-term success: Over time, build up more stories to become second nature and conversational. Write Great Sales Stories With The ACORNS Checklist
A: Attention-grabbing: Be unpredictable to interrupt your buyer’s pattern of thinking. C: Contain a relatable person: A listener should be able to see themselves as your main character. O: Organically unfold: Keep story arcs simple and easy to follow. R: Reveal a villain: Stories with a “villain” have more tension, which gets your listener’s attention. N: Nurture trust: The story should be a larger part of building a business relationship over time. S: Should add business value: Stories should lead right into your hook, prospect impact, and CTA (call to action).  Using Stories to Incite Emotion
Bring someone into the room. Rather than narrating, “This happened, then that happened…” Include dialogue. Rajani uses highly descriptive, sensory-focused language to pull listeners in. “What is a story? Let’s take it back to my guy Ralph Emerson. He once said, ‘The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.’ I actually believe that the creation of a thousand relationships is in one story.” – Ravi Rajani
Resources
DM Ravi Rajani on LinkedIn with the word “Donald” so he knows you heard about him here!
https://www.theravirajani.com/yourelevatorstory - FREE script for your Elevator Story
Sponsorship Offers
This episode is brought to you in part by LinkedIn.
Are you struggling to close deals? Cold outreach wastes the buyer and seller's time at every stage, especially when sellers are using shallow and outdated data.
Your organization can overcome these challenges with technology that translates comprehensive, high-quality buyer data into real-time
insights. These deeper insights empower sales reps and teams to adopt the habits of top performers, which leads to better outcomes - like more pipelines, higher win rates, and larger deals. We call this Deep Sale. And we’ve built the first deep sales platform with the next generation of LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Try LinkedIn Sales Navigator and get a sixty-day free trial at linkedin.com/tse.
This episode is brought to you in part by TSE Sales Foundation.
I think we can all agree that sales should be fun. However, many times, we find ourselves in a quagmire where we’re not progressing and deals are not going the way that they should. This is why we created TSE Sales Foundation. It’s a program designed to help sales professionals just like you master the fundamentals of sales so they can radically improve their sales pipeline and close more deals. To find out more about TSE Sales Foundation and our next start date, simply go to thesalesevangelist.com/foundation.