Category Archives for Jared Easley

TSE 1000: The Sales Evangelist 1000th Episode with Donald C. Kelly

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 crew of people in the background who help create the content, and it’s blessing people along the way.

After Donald jumped ship from his full-time job in 2015, this lifestyle business allowed him to travel and speak in different parts of the country, and it all stemmed from the training and consulting that has developed.

10,000 hours

The podcast is officially five years old, which amounts to about 10,000 work hours. According to Malcolm Gladwell’s theory that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert, Donald is officially an expert podcaster now.

The story started when Donald was working at a software company in Boca. His plan was that at the three-year mark, he wanted to go back to grad school for an MBA. [10:11]

The other alternative was that he would launch a startup.

TSE started as a hobby because Donald had done B2C in high school and college. Now, he transitioned to B2B, but he didn’t know how to talk to people or set up business opportunities.

His company provided training and he discovered a love of teaching and an excitement about the content he had learned.

He paired his love of teaching and his desire to be the center of attention, and it was a perfect marriage. Edutainment allowed him to educate and entertain at the same time.

Birth of a podcast

Jared Easley introduced Donald to the world of podcasting despite the fact that Donald knew nothing about it.

He started by listening to Seth Godin’s Startup School, a podcast that featured Seth guiding 30 entrepreneurs through the process of launching a dream business. [11:46]

He was still debating startup or college, and he realized that a startup didn’t have to mean developing a product. Donald didn’t see how the podcast was going to make money, but he launched it as a hobby.

The platform existed six months before the podcast did, but Donald recalls that he had to get over the worry and just pull the trigger. He had to stop worrying about how it would sound and what people would say about it.

He eventually decided that he had something valuable and he needed to share it. When he got out of his own way, the money started coming in.

When Donald started producing content that benefited the people around him, people started to raise their hands and seek his help.

Lessons learned

Donald calls episode 1 cringe-worthy. He says he was nervous and afraid throughout it. He was self-conscious about his voice, and he didn’t own his personality. [15:29]

Donald also wishes he had done video much sooner. He was afraid of the comments people would make and that fear kept him from producing video.

Donald also wishes he had known that people don’t know what you have to offer until they know what you have to offer. He was afraid of sounding pushy, so he was apprehensive about sharing what he knew.

Take more action. Get out of your comfort zone. Get out of your own way.

Despite the late start to the video world, TSE is getting into video now, so it’s better late than never.

Rejection

Donald points to the burned-ship theory that dates to sailors who were either going to burn the ships and win the battle or die on the seashore. There was no escape.

If you’ve burned the ship, there’s no alternative, so you have to make it work. Those men are the master of their own destiny.

Although Donald could still be employable in the sales realm if necessary, he doesn’t want to use that as a parachute. [19:27]

The “no’s” can’t hinder him. He either has to conquer or die.

He realizes that the “no’s” aren’t personally directed at him.

Your “why”

Donald’s desire to provide for his family drives his passion and his motivation. He wants to make things happen so that his family never has to be in the predicament of being homeless again. [21:50]

Those dark moments such as the first lull in listenership can plague podcasters.

Although numbers are great for measuring, Donald got too focused on the numbers. He started to compare too much and he neglected his own community.

When the website was down for a prolonged period in 2016, he started to feel tremendous stress. For 1-2 months there was no new content.

He worried about losing listeners and the huge setback that might come. He wasn’t sure he would be able to continue because there were so many technical problems.

Valley

You can’t succeed in a silo. Name any company and you can almost guarantee that they had help from some outside forces. [29:17]

The term entrepreneur is deceptive because there’s really no single person who creates a business. Donald avoided asking for help because he was embarrassed and he thought he was supposed to know how to solve the problem.

Advice and discussion help people share their burdens and to recognize that they can benefit from other people’s input.

Top takeaways

People who succeed do so because they partnered with others for good. There are people who are willing to partner strategically to make things work. [31:57]

All of his guests who have had success did so because they found synergy in the people they worked with.

Look at Henry Ford and the number of companies that spawned from his invention. Tire companies, radio companies, and other companies developed because of it.

You can’t be a lone wolf and you must be willing to admit that other people might be able to do things better than you can.

TSE is writing for HubSpot now and has been mentioned in Entrepreneur and Inc. Magazine because Donald was willing to reach out.

Don’t be afraid to sell yourself. People in post-recording conversations advised Donald that he was charging too little.

Customers aren’t paying for one hour of guidance or coaching. They are paying for 15 years of experience. [35:23]

Be aware of your worth. If you undervalue yourself, no one will willingly pay you more. Ask for more than you’re comfortable asking for.

Always push yourself for bigger and better things.

Once you push outside of your comfort zone, you’ll evolve. You’ll find yourself doing things that once scared you.

Emotional rollercoaster

Preparation helps us avoid the emotional rollercoaster of sales. October Donald should be helping December Donald. Salespeople must plan much further out than they can comfortably do. [38:50]

If you know you need 5 deals, you should put 7 or 8 in your pipeline. Never ease up off the gas. Have a systematic approach.

When Donald coaches people, he helps them see beyond the now. He helps them develop a system that prevents lulls.

Healthy competition

Donald remembers wanting to be included on a list of top sales podcasts. [44:01]

He refers to the power of “coopertition,” where people become allies.

As a track athlete, he learned that when you’re turning back to see where other people are, you aren’t aerodynamic anymore. You lose your focus and you slow down.

Instead of looking to see where other people are, look toward the finish line. Compete against your own yesterday instead of competing against others.

Future of TSE

The Sales Podcast Network will continue to grow and offer a community of salespeople who will encourage one another. [50:57]

If TSE ever gets boring, maybe the day would come when it would be “sunset.”

TSE will continue to grow. The goal on sponsorship side will eventually separate so that the training organization will separate from the media company side.

TSE will seek to double its revenue, and ultimately the platform will be bigger than just a podcast.

TSE has been a huge influence in the podcasting space by encouraging those people who are in the community.

The Sales Evangelist 1000th Episode resources

Connect with Stephen A. Hart and check out his  Trailblazer.FM Podcast.

This episode is brought to you in part by prospect.io, a powerful sales automation platform that allows you to build highly personalized, cold email campaigns. To learn more, go to prospect.io/tse. It will help you with your outbound to expand your outreach. It allows you to set it and forget it. Your prospecting will never ever be the same.

Previously known as TSE Hustler’s League, our TSE Certified Sales Program offers modules that you can engage on your own schedule as well as opportunities to engage with other sellers in other industries.

This episode is brought to you in part by mailtag.io, a Chrome browser extension for Gmail that allows you to track and schedule your emails. It’s super easy, it’s helpful, and I recommend that you try it out.

You’ll receive real-time alerts anyone opens an email or clicks a link.

I hope you enjoyed the show today as much as I did. If so, please consider leaving us a rating on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or wherever you consume this content and share it with someone else who might benefit from our message. It helps others find our message and improves our visibility.

If you haven’t already done so, subscribe to the podcast so you won’t miss a single episode, and share with your friends!

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TSE 828: How To Use Twitter To Grab Prospects Attention

Depending on how you’re using it and what you’re trying to accomplish, Twitter is alive and well. In fact, Jared Easley, known as a “noticer,” believes  Twitter is full of people who are starving for true connection, and he believes you can use it to grab prospects’ attention.

Today on The Sales Evangelist, we’ll discuss techniques for using Twitter to build connections and create an army for yourself.

Genuine connections

If you reach out to someone and express interest in what they’re doing, it will almost always be received well. When you’re willing to have a dialogue, people respond.

On the other hand, think about your own reaction when someone tries to cram something down your throat. 

Connections that only involve an attempt to sell or self-promote will almost always be ignored.

The issue isn’t automation, because automation can be done well. The issue is a stack of posts queued in your account that only promote a sales opportunity or a link to sign up for something.

The good news is that Twitter has become proactive in its efforts to clean up some of the mass automation and is policing that kind of behavior. Furthermore, those kinds of interactions won’t benefit you on Twitter.

What will benefit you on Twitter is a genuine connection; a willingness to concern yourself more with the other person than with yourself.

One-to-one

Some people mistakenly believe that one-to-one contact doesn’t work on Twitter. We tend to get so caught up in numbers that we miss the chance to start small and measure whether our message will resonate with just a few people.

The truth is that those who genuinely connect with other people will find that their message compounds, and ultimately they reach more people because they were willing to invest in one-to-one connections.

Jared recently put Twitter to use during a trip to Las Vegas. He started with a keyword search  and narrowed those results down to the people in Las Vegas. Then, through a campaign of @ mentions, rather than direct messages, he reached out to podcasters in the area and invited them to a free meet up.

The outreach worked because he wasn’t asking them to buy anything or come see what he was doing. He simply invited them to meet other podcasters. As a by-product, Jared had the opportunity to interview a few of them for his own podcast.

Although there’s no guarantee that any of those relationships will ever result in a sale, you will have created rapport. You used one-to-one messaging in a way that wasn’t spammy.

As a result of the positive experience you created, the prospect will be more likely to think of you in a positive way.

Grab prospects’ attention

You can also use Twitter to find targeted lists of people.

The Google Chrome extension TWLETS allows you to find a public Twitter list, download it as a CSV file or spreadsheet, and then use that data to connect with people.

You can ask relevant questions of the people on the list, such as “What inspired you to begin podcasting?” or “What microphone do you recommend for podcasters who are just starting out?” Rather than bulk messaging, you can come up with a short list of questions that you spread out among the people on the list.

If you’re operating alone, you’ll likely be ignored. The people who don’t get ignored are the ones who create an army of supporters by building genuine connections.

Once you have demonstrated your interest in what your prospects are doing, reciprocity will kick in and they’ll develop an interest in what you’re doing.

We challenge you to adopt one principle and apply it today. Look for opportunities to notice your prospects. Watch and “notice” them in order to figure it out.

Episode resources

Connect with Jared at podcastmovement.com or on Twitter @jaredeasley. Pick up a copy of Jared’s book, Podcasting Good to Great: How to Grow Your Audience Through Collaboration.

Our friends at Wiley  have provided a free excerpt of the book Stop Selling & Start Leading. Based upon research and interviews with buyers, the book provides a blueprint sales professionals. Read an excerpt of the book here.

Once you’ve applied the concepts you heard here today, message me or email me and let me know what your results were.

Check out the Video Jungle podcast, your source for marketing and selling your brand using video. Plan, create and share your way to better content and strategy.

The podcast is part of our newly-launched Sales Podcast Network, designed to provide specialized sales content for sellers of all levels and all industries. To learn more, email us at SPN for more information.

Leave us a review wherever you consume this content, and share it with someone else who might benefit from our message. If you haven’t already done so, subscribe so you won’t miss a single episode.

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TSE 800: Some of The Best Tips From Over 800 Episodes Published

Today’s podcast celebrates the very best sales tips we’ve learned in the previous 799 episodes of The Sales Evangelist podcast.

I’ve pulled together the best sales tips I’ve heard on the show, as well as some details about how I got started in sales and why it matters so much to me. We also discuss where we’re headed next and the new things you can expect from us in the coming months.

From our first 799 podcasts:

Overcome self-doubt.

In episode 001, Jared Easley, host of Starve the Doubts podcast, and Jeffrey Gitomer, author of The Little Red Book of Selling, discussed self-doubt, and the ways to overcome the self-doubt that plagues people in all industries: sales, business, even life.

Gitomer shared the impact of growing up in a family where people made their own money. Because he grew up around it, he assumed he would do the same.

The people around him were successful, so he assumed he would be successful as well. He never doubted himself, even when he went broke.

From that, Gitomer explained the importance of surrounding yourself with people who are achieving great things. Spend time around top performers and see what you can learn.

Take action.

Serial entrepreneur Ralph Quintero challenged us to do the things we know we need to do as sales professionals that will bring us success and happiness.

We should begin by looking at numbers, because they don’t lie. If we make 10 phone calls but convert only 2 of them, those numbers don’t lie.

Perhaps we’re allowing our fear of rejection to keep us in the office instead of getting in front of prospects. Maybe we’re staying out of the office to avoid working the phone.

If you are’t constantly hustling, you may be the reason you aren’t achieving the success you desire.

Understand buyers.

Many of us mistakenly believe that buyers make decisions based upon products, services, brand, pricing, or other variables.

Jill Konrath challenges that notion with research that indicates buyers make decisions based upon their experience with their sales person.

The more information you have about your buyers, his priorities and plans, his obstacles and challenges, his processes, and his finances, the better equipped you’ll be to bring insights and information that can help him meet his objectives.

Be human.

Jon Buchan shares his genius copywriting experiences with salespeople who are engaging in cold contacts.

He takes advantage of the fact that his prospects don’t know his name and he uses it to inject humor and honesty into his cold emails.

My name is Jon. You don’t know me because I got your name from a list, but at least that means you’re list-worthy, right?

Because his emails begin with such brutal, unexpected honesty, he has credibility in the eye of the prospect. Additionally, he has made them smile and he has piqued their curiosity.

Be human. You’ll stand out from the others.

Prioritize presentation.

Patricia Fripp came to the U.S. with $500 and made a name for herself as a woman specializing in men’s hairstyling.

She started her own business when she was 30, and she invested time and resources in several speaking courses at the urging of her mentors.

When she was 39, she sold her hairstyling business and started a business as a keynote speaker, which led her to work with sales professionals who seek to improve their sales presentations.

Her clients realized that they were in danger of losing large deals, not because of price or offering, but because of presentations. As a result, Fripp teaches sales reps to sound more professional, more personable, more persuasive, and to connect better with clients.

Join our community.

Each of us has our own niche in sales, and we often get into our silos and focus on our own industry. Other professionals are selling successfully in other industries like cars or advertising.

If those people are doing something that might benefit you, wouldn’t you want to try it?

The The Sales Evangelist Hustler’s League is an online group coaching program that brings together sellers from all over the world to share training, exchange sales tips and grows in their careers.

Moving forward, time limitations will restrict the number of one-on-one coaching commitments we can accept because we always want to focus on quality. F

We’ll be adding a second podcast in April and we’ll work with companies later this year to generate leads, create opt-ins, and develop business.

We hope you’ll join our Facebook group The Sales Evangelizers. 

We also hope you’ll share this podcast with others who can benefit from it, and that you’ll leave us a review wherever you consume this content. If you haven’t already, subscribe to this podcast so you’ll benefit from all the things we have learned and will continue to learn.

Episode Resources

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TSE 23: What’s The Power Of Klout? with Terry Brock (@TerryBrock & @jaredeasley)

• Higher Klout score will mean that you will get more business
• The power of Klout comes from an individual’s ability to genuinely connect with others
• To succeed on Klout, you must share your own created content as well as others
• When you do create your own content, make sure the information is accurate because it will separate you from many others
•  As a salesperson, with a quality Klout score you will be able to be seen as more valuable in the eyes of your clients and prospects
• Pour more TME (Time Money and Energy) into something that you like and will be relevant to others. If you do so, you will be happy and help others to be happy as well

If you are curious about my Klout score, send me a tweet me at @Donaldckelly and hashtag #KloutScore. I will be more than happy to share it with you. Enjoy the episode.

Check out Terry and Gina’s book (Affiliate link to Amazon):

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