S3E56 - How to build a better pipeline for 2023 with Donald Kelly

Hey everybody. Welcome back to another fun episode of surf and sales. We're back. It's November 30th. Scott and I just got back from about 10 days in Costa Rica. Scott, how was the surf and sales experience this year? 2022, November, two sessions back to back.

Fantastic. It's always a good time getting together. 30 brand new people. 30 plus brand new people actually. And I mean, I can't wait to go back. I'm still surprised that we don't run into any jerks or have just like a, a total whiff. Yeah, a dead group. It's bound to happen one of these days.

No, it's not. Stop putting that out there, you Buffalo Bills fan. Like, what are you doing?

The western New Yorker in me?

Dude, I totally get it. What's one thing you learned? Like what you walked out of there like, what's one thing that you were like? Oh, that was super cool that you learned from somebody else. Not even from me or Jeff, but you know, an attendee.

You know, there was a really good session on, on product and how to communicate with product from a sales standpoint, how sales and product can, can work better together. Yeah, that was a, the first time that we'd gotten into that topic, I believe at, at a surf and sales. And I'll give you a bonus one. You know, this new competition that we, that we dreamt up and implemented, implemented on the fly.

Yeah.

Was a lot of fun as well.

Yeah, we did a, we did a shark tank thing where we basically people created half million dollar businesses in 30 to 45 minutes and then they had to pitch it to us. And, and it was crazy because, you know, Scott has this amazing statement of like, the key to success is reducing the distance between ideation and execution. Right. What is, how do I reduce that delta in time? And so we really help people realize that you can build a business, a side hustle or even a core business quickly if you just take 20 minutes and think about it and start to put together your first step. Not all of them.

So yeah, it was amazing and the ideas were fantastic. So I'm looking forward to doing it again in, in May.

Yeah, looking forward to it. So yes, May 2023 is up. SurfingSales.com Go in, put down your deposit. There's only four private rooms left after a couple of people signed up. So if you are the type who wants to have a private room versus sharing with one person, better go do it now because they'll be gone. They will be gone. Super excited. Thank you to all of our sponsors of Vidyard Outreach, IO.

Sendoso, Scratch Pad, and med rep meeting for sponsoring the podcast, as well as the events over the last year. We, we always appreciate them and encourage folks to check out our spons since they're here to support you. So we'll be back in just a minute and introduce you to our next guest. We look forward to it. All right, everybody, thank you. Thank you. Welcome back. We are super excited. I didn't even ask this of how they want to be introduced, so I'm just going to introduce him by name. His name is Donald Kelly. Donald, we got to know you in the last year because we were all named part of the, you know, Salesforce influencer people to follow list. Right. And I, I kind of knew of you, but I didn't know you. And we got to know each other over the years, so I'm super excited to spend a little more time with you. But, Donald, how should we introduce you? How should you. What do you want people know about you? Tell them what you do. Give them some context for who Donald Kelly is.

Yeah, man, Donald Kelly run the sales evangelist podcast. Sales evangelist. Sales training organization. A lot of our folks are new folks getting into. Into sales, into tech sales, and they're trying to learn how to build pipe. Or maybe they've been, you know, been around for a minute, but they're converting from that BDR to that AE position, trying to become more effective at building pipe. I would say our superpower is all around building pipe and would love for them to check out our podcast and follow me on LinkedIn. Could be friends there.

Nice, nice, nice. All right, Sales evangelist, self proclaimed. Scott. He says he's a sales evangelist.

Yeah, well, he's living up. He's living up to his title so far.

So what is.

And I don't mean this from an ego perspective. Right? Like, talk about that. Like, where in your history, experience were you? Like, man, there's not enough of this out there to help people because I, I know you well enough to know your altruistic side, right?

Yeah, man.

What, like, and by the way, maybe the better question is, before you started being the sales evangelist, were you a rep? What did you do? Give us some context for your. Your path a little bit.

Sure. So when I started, so growing up in Jamaica as a kid, everybody's selling. And I'm sure you guys visit South America, you probably see that same notion, right? So in my mind, I didn't know what a salesperson was. I just knew what a businessman gotta be an entrepreneur. You have to make money. So my. From my dad, Scott just wants to.

Know how, how good was the green leafy stuff you were selling?

No man, no man.

That run type of sealed out in a man.

That's the after hours. That's the after hours podcast.

Anyway, go ahead.

Sorry. So like. But you know, just being around my family, we had a shop on our house, man, and we, you know, it was like a local convenience store. So coming to the US as a kid, I mean the first thing I tried to sell was like mangoes. Just climbing trees, picking mangoes and trying to hustle and sell them myself because I saw people and that's where my book came from.

You moved to the. How old were you?

I moved to US when I was nine.

So age of nine, you're climbing trees, pulling mangoes, trying to sell them.

Yep, that was it.

You got to. And then I became the candyman in middle school selling candy. So all this stuff led to where eventually I got into, I got into college. My buddies were like man, you should go into sales. And I'm like, what is that? And sales for me was just like being a businessman, entrepreneur. So I started working out, working with some companies where I did Dish Network over the phone, I did timeshare presentations. Then I started making some decent money doing selling IT training classes like the mcsc, the NET plus the C C and all of these different courses. Then finally got into. I did door to door security one time as well to make some money for a non paid internship. So that was my college experience. A lot of it were more on a B2B side, B2C side. And then when I got into the IT training classes, I got into the B2B world a little bit, fell in love with that, then went into Manage IT services. And for Manage it I also came back to Florida and did some stuff in the, in the home health, in the senior care community where we sold to some of the large facilities throughout the state and then got into sas the the playing software and that was fun. And that's where I camped out. So that's where my journey came from. The accident happened back in college where I was. I read the Art of a Start by Guy and Guy Kawasaki. In his title he described himself as Apple's chief evangelist. And I was like. The only time I ever heard evangelist was like at church. But the concept stuck with me. So one of the companies I worked at, I had him switch out on my name tag when I was IT in the IT Manage IT services, I had him switch out of my name tag from being a. What do you call it? The. A sales account executive, to change it to the. It to technology evangelist. And because I went to this networking event and just everybody was saying the same crap. So I said, I need to stand out. And that's the philosophy I live by in order to be successful, do the opposite of what everyone else is doing. So I literally had them change that title. And I just was like, you know, our company and just use that evangelist mentality like, we want to help you, and was just super passionate for what we were doing. Long story short, so my buddy, we were trying to figure out for some podcasts now. And this podcast that just came on a scene, Jeb Blunt was like one of the only shows and there was like two other podcasts out there, the Advanced sales Podcaster and. And a couple others. But anyways, I, My buddy was like, you should do a podcast focused on rookies and helping folks out who are starting off, you know, you had your struggles. And I was like, sure. But then rookie sales just didn't sound right. And then I was like, well, what about that? We started names, dropping some ideas. And I was like, well, as a technology evangelist, he's like, you're always talking about sales. You're like a sales evangelist, like a preacher for sales. So. And essentially that's where that came from and that's how that was coined. Like evangelize, what's working, what's been helping us out in sales. And that's how TSC was born.

Jesus, man, he's done. He's done more in like five years than I've done in my life, Scott.

Well, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna disagree with you.

So many places.

Go ahead, let me ask a question or, or two. Richard, let me participate in this, in this conversation.

You started off by, you started off by saying, you know, you're all about building pipeline, right?

What are a couple pipeline building tips and tricks that, you know, have evolved, let's say this year, that people need to pick up and start implementing. Everybody's suffering, everybody's struggling. Less than 50 of people hit their. Their targets right now, like giving people a couple actionable tips that they can take into the new year.

Yeah, I remember when you, you came on my show last year. One of the things. Yeah, I think it was last year. Time flew. It was last year, earlier this year. But we are talking a lot about like, you know, abm, Account based strategy and account based marketing. And, you know, that's like, you know, if people are not doing that, then you know, they should, whatever, they should figure that out, stuff out. But one of the things that I've learned that's been very helpful for me is going back to like the hyper focus. Not necessarily like personalization, but selling based on that intent. And we know Intense has been out there for a minute, right. You know, but as far as like really like going back in, one tool that I've been privy to be able to experiment with is like say like, you know, with LinkedIn's sales navigator utilizing.

When is this episode going out?

Monday or so call it, call it.

Call it mid December.

All right, so anyways, one of the things though, so one of the pieces that I'm passionate for and that has been working for us is just going back to this notion of selling based on insights and triggers. So let me give you for instance for insights example. And this is not necessarily anything that's like revolutionary, but the concept I see that works tremendously well is generally most salespeople, when they create their sequences, whether it's in loft or outreach or whatnot, it is very market centric, a blanketed message that's going sent out. We tend our take our time to really, really hyper focus to say if I'm reaching out to a sales executive we know for our business, that's great. If somebody is really new into their role, that's a trigger item that we like to utilize. The other thing that we take advantage of when it comes to like selling based on insights, for instance, it's just like the, you know, try to look at metrics that's talking about the company is growing or if right now, if they're, you know, what are some of the industry related challenges that they're facing? And we use those things to help us. Everyone in, everyone will say, you know, the basic stuff like we're going to help you save money, we're going to help you reduce expenses or whatnot. But when you come with something concrete like Scott, I see that you're, you know, recognize that obviously the industry, your industry is declining in the manufacturing space and specifically in Michigan where you guys are. We noticed that this is some of the things that you guys are doing in your company. I have an idea that I feel could help. But we're coming back with stuff that they're doing. I mean it's, it's just like really targeted to their organization and using that. And I, I can't really like go.

There's a tool called LinkedIn Deep Sales which you guys will probably will more people probably hear more about. But that's one avenue that's been helping us out. And obviously people use zoom info as well to take advantage of that. But insight based selling is the way that help us. The other thing is this omnichannel. I mean, I can't really go back to tell you like here's a silver bullet that's worked. But for our team specifically, when we do outreach, we will send a personalized email like that is focused on an insight. We utilize text messages as well in that campaign. And I know a lot of people are apprehensive about taking advantage of text message and we take advantage of the phone in those in that campaign as well. So it's more, it's, it's really heavy on getting them on whatever platform works for them. Video has always been a part of our tool belt and we take advantage of it and based on your interaction. So if I send Scott, you an email and you're not necessarily responding, but you're engaging with our stuff, I go back in and we use snail mail at that point to supplement that. But we're going from every angle and really focusing on those insights. And I mean, basic things that people already know, like multiple people in the platform, in the organizations, but all of those different organizations, individuals and organizations, they're going to have different needs. So like for us, if it's sales enablement, if it's a VP of sales, and then if we're reaching out to a director or sales, like all of them have different things that they might want to focus on. So we're not sending the one campaign to each of those individuals, but using omnichannel towards all of that. I don't know if that makes sense.

Let's dig into the, the text messaging thing.

Yeah.

Talk about exactly how you use that when in the process, what's the message, what's the response and reaction people should expect? And then if you get a positive or negative response, like what do you do with it?

Yeah, so the way that we do it, it's not like a blast, you know, some. And I want to clarify that this is not like, you know, load of, you know, 150 phone numbers and then just like blast them out. We just, in our sequence, we use Apollo internally for our cadence. But let's say if I do a phone call, what I use on a voice message, on a phone call, I will advertise my email that I am sending as well. And then on the email that I send, I mean, and then when I Call you. I will. On the SO voice message, advertise the email. And then I will also send a text message to advertise that I left the voicemail as well. So it may sound something like this. Scott, this is Donald. I'm the one who called a little bit earlier. If it's easier to respond here, go ahead and do so. It's about blank. Whatever that insight that we're focusing on, whether it's like, you know, the, you know, helping the team build Piper or whatnot.

But actually, I want to. I want to. I want to stop you here for one second, because the thing that was really smart with that, it was the. The line where he said, if it's easier for you to respond here, because now you're. You're doing two things. You're opening up that either way is okay, and you're empowering that person to pick which way works best for them, which I think is really, really critical. So I just wanted to articulate that part. Keep going.

Yeah. It allows our team to then pivot because we have, instead of. I do have a couple of BDRs that, you know, one of them is just like LinkedIn genius. Like, just absolutely would love LinkedIn. Another one, he's like, he could sit on text message, but he's not afraid of making a phone call. But we try to go by the platinum rule. Like, the golden rule is treat others the way that you would like to be treated. A platinum rule, treat others way that they would like to be treated. So by you telling us that, then we pivot, obviously, to say, well, move most of our communication to communicating with text with Scott or vice versa, but figure out where they camp out.

How do you. Will you cold text somebody?

Oh, yeah. Like, well, cold text in a. Let me. Our sequence, our cold outreach sequence consists of LinkedIn first. So we're going to kick that off. All of our campaigns kick off with that. So for the three days beforehand, we'll send out a personalized connection request. So it's not going to be like, hey, Scott, I see that you're in my network. It'll be great to connect. Like, hey, Scott, I see that you're in Southern California, and I might find something that might be relevant to Southern California. I mean, surfing one, probably give it away because you, you know, you, like, you just failed. Scott, he's in Austin, Texas.

He got close.

He's only going to respond if you say something about surfing and tequila, if you just say surfing, it's not enough effort if, you know, the tequila Then you're.

If I say Tequila. All right, great. Tequila.

Let's connect.

Yeah, I mean, even better would be if you just send me a bottle of tequila. He was talking about utilizing snail mail. Might as well just send me one.

So I. You got. I. I gotta get. I. If I send out that to everybody, you know, I'll break. Go broke real quick. But I want to see if you're gonna, you know, you're gonna earn it. You're gonna open up my email.

So I want to come back to.

I wanna.

I do want to come back to. So you've sent the LinkedIn message first. Somehow you got your cell phone number. Do you get pushback around? Do you only send cell phone message? And then we lost Scott or if you just turned off his camera. We only send the link, the text message. If they respond to LinkedIn or they accept the connection. Or is it like, nope, just go to town and go.

Yeah, we do it all because we don't know where they're going to preference. So the. The way that we. The way that. Let me give you an example of what worked with that LinkedIn message, and you'll see how this all ties back. I was reaching out to a team, the sales leader and one of their team members from Atlanta. And I know, obviously, Atlanta, been to some of the restaurants there. So my outreach message wasn't like, hey, I see that you're in, you know, new to your position. Buy our services. It was. I needed local expert advice. Out of curiosity, do you feel that Varsity Burger is really up for the hype or blah. And Varsity Burger, everyone in Atlanta knows that. So that led to the pretty good. He didn't reply right away. So then I sent a, you know, he accepted my connection request and didn't reply. So I just said, hey, what's up? Do you really think so? And then he was like, yeah, only if there's a. You have access to a bathroom. Not all of them going to fall in that situation. But because we made such a personal connection, Right. About Varsity Burgers, my email now went back to. As you kicked off that sequence, you go back and change. Your subject line was like, you know, varsity Burger, maybe I won't try Varsity Burger. But now that email goes into it, and then, you know, if he doesn't reply there, I can send a text message. Hey, It's Donald from LinkedIn. Talked about varsity.

Just out of curiosity that. Yeah, just out of curiosity. And I'm not. I don't mind it. You know, we're not here to to plug it. But when you take this personalized omnichannel approach and to a certain extent, getting multi threaded early with this person, do you find that you can set that first meeting in five or six touches versus the standard 13?

Oh, for sure. By far with this one. That process I told you about, it was like literally after the email went out, and then it was through the. And I sent a text message, and then we got the meeting booked for it. And the reason is I. You can. You could. You could. You could get it on, you know, go through LinkedIn to take advantage of that as well, um, to that communication. Um, and it actually was for. He. He positioned us to get connected with his supervisor and his supervisors who we got the text message conversation with through that. But what's the best.

What's the best way for people to. What's the best way for people to acquire textable phone numbers right now that you're finding there.

No dogging them? I just heard from the great vibe. Well, let's. What I use is Apollo, and Apollo, I have that. The plan which allows for us to get the direct dial. And I would say probably 90% of the time, that direct dial is a cell phone number. I got one today when I was doing some outreaches, and it was a. It was with. It was a direct line with the extension. But most of the times it's a cell phone number for that individual you can use. Zoom Info has their capabilities as well that you can take advantage of. And then seamless AI, they're big on that idea of getting the personal information again in that personal direct val. Now, one thing that was asked, Richard asked about, it was like, what are people pushback. I was really afraid, Scott, because I grew up a millennial. Growing up in that era where cell phone is like, precious. You don't. You don't touch that cell phone, man. You call. Call it a business line. And we were apprehensive against about it. And it took us a while before we started using Directile, but I'm like, screw that. We're paying for it. Let's do it. And as we started reaching out, I have never, and I'm being totally honest with you, Boy scout here never had a blowback with somebody saying, why are you reaching out to me on my cell phone? Because I think that came right after the pandemic heal where so many cell phones became intertwined with their business communication and people working from home. So we've never seen an issue. So thank you, Covid, for that.

How.

What. What we talked a little bit about Omni Channel and some of the different.

You know, ways you're going about building pipeline. What, what is your philosophy and what are you teaching right now in terms of, in terms of community and utilizing peer to peers and kind of selling together. Co selling for example. How are you thinking about that and how are you advising people in that, in that arena?

Yeah, you know, I'm a big believer in that. We have, we use our, we. Our community is based on Circle. Circle IO. I had LinkedIn and Facebook groups. But Zuckerberg kind of limits what I can do. But with Circle, we have our sales community and definitely we always, in all of our cohorts, we encourage the idea. Let's network, figure out who's, who's in what organization. Because most of us are swimming to the same pond, not selling the same product mostly, but you're selling the same industries. Can we help each other out? And by far you could definitely do that. A big Navigator fan and one of the easiest ways you can do so as well with the not necessarily co selling. On this standpoint, I recommend all salespeople and I know some people push back on this. I say pull up your, put your accounts in Navigator. Like put your. Make a, make a list of your accounts. So if you want to just. So let's say for instance, get a list. If you're using Salesforce, you can connect it. But if not, just find your customers, put them on a list in Navigator and then over that 90 day, look at who's changed jobs over the 90 day period. And those are some key people that you could take advantage of to be, not take advantage.

Why would people be resistant to that?

I. Dude, I don't know. Some companies have the policies. What you can't extrapolate information from our CRM or you don't want to. This is why.

I see, I see. Yeah, you can't take data out of our CRM. We own it. Yes, it's amazing that some of these archaic philosophies still exist.

Yeah, right. Just like curiosity. How.

How often is that hearing are people hearing that? And theoretically you're not taking the data out. If the data just says it's this company and then you go find that company. Right. Unless I'm misunderstanding how you're, what you're suggesting you're not actually data out.

Yeah, it's just the integration of that data. Right?

Oh, you mean connecting the two like if you connect your CRM. Oh yeah. See, I'm so old I'm thinking manually. That I have to manually go type that in. Scott.

So if you're not using Salesforce as something that can integrate with Navigator, yeah, you're going to definitely do it manually. But what I find, but you know, it just, sometimes people just have their weird reasons. I mean, I remember for instance once when I was working one of my, one of my sales leaders didn't want to want us, this is way back, didn't want us to go on LinkedIn because they thought if you went on LinkedIn that you're trying to find better jobs. And I'm like, first off, now I am, I'm trying to make money.

As soon as you tell me that, yes, I'm looking for a better job.

Now I'm gonna look at.

It's just so wild to me that this type of thinking, you know, still exists and hopefully people learn somewhere the right types of questions to ask before going to an organization. These would be great questions to ask, by the way, if I was in the interview process, right? Like how do you think about data in the CRM and me going about this, you know, to use LinkedIn in this particular way and that type of stuff. I mean, I can imagine people don't ask that, get into a role, find out they can't do certain things, feel like their hands are tied and are frustrated and struggle to close deals and ultimately wash out. That's a lose, lose for both parties.

Oh, do you feel that, do you feel that people actually.

Wait to get permission for that though, Scott? Like, or is it like the technical connection part you're asking?

I, frankly, I think people don't ask.

But do they, do they need to? Like if I'm a salesperson, I, of.

Course you need to ask. Why would you not ask that? Look, what can happen if you don't ask. If you just assume like, like I did and do sometimes, like, duh, doesn't anybody know that? If we just assume that.

Then a.

Lot of people are ending up in roles where they can't do certain things and they're.

Yeah. And it's. Especially if you're in a sensitive type of.

Well, here's one of the other ones that I've gotten from sales people. I'm like, if you're going to get hacked or in from leaders, if you're going to get hacked, you're going to get hacked no matter, you know what. But I can't behave my life on this idea that I put the 1% chance that I might get hacked or my LinkedIn account may get hacked. But there you know, it's like this protective idea that if I don't want to put my customers on there because if, what if somebody gets in there and see my customers, I'm like, that's the stupidest thing in the world. Like, or I don't want to connect with my customers on just my regular LinkedIn profile because I, you know, people go in there and try to find that. Like bro, people could find your customers no matter what. Without that we can use dark data or dark funnel capabilities to be able to get some more information. So it's, it, it doesn't really matter on that front. So yeah, there's all kinds of excuses and I think what it comes down to is like, you know, people have fear. What, you know, fears of what could go wrong. Like what? Look at what's the possibilities. What could go right if my sales people, all of them in their, in their territory, know when their customers are switching roles or know, you know, who's living what. Companies like those are low hanging fruit. That's like money that we can get because they're more than likely going to be happy with us and want to take us to the new firm.

So yeah, it's interesting, Scott, aren't you surprised that I'm like, just go for it. And I'm not being like the legal minded, pessimistic, scary guy because usually it's me. This is a total role reversal. Rich is like, what do you mean? Why would I ask? I'm just going to go do it.

And Scott's like, no, well maybe we misunderstood each other. I'm not saying ask for permission. I would also just go do it. I'm saying before I ever took the job. Yeah, I would be curious to ask that question.

So how do you. So let's, let's pause for a second. People listening, who are a lot of people, you know, it's, people are trying to interview all that kind of things. How do you ask that question?

How do you, let's ask Donald. How would you ask that question in the interview process?

Donald, my job is to make money. Are you going to handcuff me?

I love that.

What do you mean by handcuff?

Yeah, you know, so you know, obviously certain companies have different policies when it comes towards utilizing social media or util integrating with different solutions. Are you, are you. Has, are it progressive enough where they would allow me to be able to utilize LinkedIn to its full capacity to be able to integrate to get my customers in the on a list or is that going to be like Red tape approval from the board type of situation.

It's a great question. I also love the fact that if you ask a question that way, there's not many CROs or VPs of sales. We even understand what you're asking.

Just do what you need to do.

Right? Yeah. So now that being said, when you use that word integration, they may not necessarily understand that there's this back end API integration piece and they may not know the right answer. So it could be you have to give more specific details. But I do like you asking that question and I appreciate you sharing how to ask that.

Sure, man.

So let's say. So let's, let's flip it, Tom. Let's say I'm currently at a job right now. Right. It's almost December 1, 2022. I'm hanging on for dear life to make sure I don't get laid off. Right. And.

I want to start doing this. Do I now go ask my VP of sales, do I just go do it? Do I not use the integration piece? And then I have another question around this. But. Or do I just have to do the manual piece? Like what's your advice at this stage? Because if you kind of go ask for permission now, you might be raising a red flag that you're going to do something they may not want you to do.

Yeah.

So what are you talking. What advice do you give those people currently in their role?

Yeah, I mean I'm, I'm about survival in a situation like that. Right. Like I, I can't just sit around and wait for something. I need to make something happen. Right. So if your company is in a situation where it's like a dire, straight. Yeah. Manually look them up. You don't need to put every last customer on there. But let's look at the accounts that are the most ideal and ones that maybe you know who'd be a good fit. Like maybe some of the criteria. Run a run, run a search right now in, in your salesforce and maybe do some of the certain criteria. Who's going to be what accounts may have, you know, in a certain industry that you're focusing on and maybe the industry that looks has a calendar year of January 1st or whatnot. Are there certain deals or companies that I can put into this, into my LinkedIn list or a certain particular contacts and I can track those individuals and see. But I think your company will be more happy with you generating money if in the long run, even if it's breaking off the policy.

I have another question.

CROs will. Yeah. They'll find a way around stuff if they. If their numbers look good.

That's true, too. Your CRO should back you up. Right?

Is it.

And I don't know. Right to do this integration piece that we're talking about? We spent a lot of time on it.

I know, right?

Is it. Is it hard to, like, is. Is this one of those things where it's like, hey, Richard, you know, take Salesforce, use Zap, connect it to LinkedIn. Can I do that as an individual? Or does it really need to go through a company process? Like, you know, I'm a solopreneur, so for me to do this, I'm like, oh, that'd be fairly easy. Right. But is it. Does it really take some technical skill to get it done?

Yeah, it doesn't take much technical skills. I mean, it's just like any other integration. Like most people I don't think even need. You don't even do Zap because they have the direct integration to Salesforce. So it's just. Unless your company, Salesforce, has a lot of different permissions. So if your company has certain permissions on there, then you're. That's going to cause you to have the. The challenge and you need to get people's attention. But for the most part, you should just be able to do a straight integration and maybe they're not paying attention to it already and they don't have a policy on that, so maybe they don't have an integration criteria on that.

So cool. All right, well, we're going to pause for a second. We want to thank outreach, Vidyard, Sandoso, Scratchpad, Med Rep, meeting all of our sponsors who always help us support the podcast and even our event. Next events coming up in May 2023. Go check it out. Surfing sales.com at minimum, go put your deposit down. Invest in yourself. That's the key piece. If you're not going to invest in yourself, why should someone else? So please check us out. Flip it over to you, though, Donald. What questions you have for us. What can we do to help you? You've been so gracious with your time and wisdom and knowledge.

Yeah. I mean, obviously right now you guys see the climate and see what's going on. What are some of the things that you're getting? You have a lot of guests that come on your show and people that you're interacting with. What are some of the things that you're. You're seeing when it comes to sales? Outlook for 2023. Google owing into a tightening of the economy Situation.

It feels fairly apocalyptic on my end. That's what I hear. I mean, I, I don't. I'm not feeling that personally, but I keep hearing the. All this apocalyptic type stuff, which it feels like it's sort of conditioning everybody to believe you're gonna struggle, you're gonna fail, you might lose all this kind of thing. And so that starts to seep into everybody's mind, I think. And, you know, that makes the excuse factory doors kind of open up a little bit. So some, I mean, some of it is real. I'm not trying to dismiss entirely, but the story we tell ourselves is so important, you know, so I'm. I kind of worry about that. I see a lot of people who are desperate, frankly.

Desperate tactics to build pipeline or close deals, desperate for help and desperate for some silver bullet that maybe exists of how they can do better. And I see a lot of, A lot of panic, a lot of, A lot of kind of.

A little preemptive strike, if you will, where people are getting nervous and laying people off and making changes. And Donald's been here for three weeks and, you know, hasn't completely changed the whole org, like we got to move on from him type of thing. So unfortunately, that's what I'm hearing and seeing. Richard.

Yeah, I, I hear and I see and I feel all of this, right? Like, I see the same thing.

You know, some of it makes me angry, right? It's like, I think we've all been harping for years that the goals are high, the goals are too high. Nobody wants to believe us, whoops, better lay a bunch of people off because we're not going to hit our goal, right? It's like, well, yeah, what the did you expect?

Now the flip side of that is, hey, I'm glad people have jobs. So, yeah, over hire. I'm kind of okay with that too, because I want people to have a job and have an opportunity to make a living. Agree with Scott on the Fear factor. What I try to remind people is that everything you hear in closing your deals is a slightly more convenient excuse for the same issue you've always gotten. Trust me, a year ago, five years ago, whatever, when the economy was great. It's not like people were taking your price and not trying to negotiate. It's not like people weren't trying to hammer you down as a salesperson. It's just very comfortable to say, well, you know, it's the economy, so, you know, it's kind of that. And that's a belief system of theirs. But believe Me, if the economy were just fine, they'd still be hammering you on price when you lower price. We didn't budget for it that much. So for me, it's a little bit about reminding people of, like, this reality and teaching them that when people say that, yes, they are cutting and slashing their budgets, yes, they are trying to be mindful about cash flow. Ultimately, though, you know.

It'S the same argument always. So don't let this scare stuff scare you. I fully recognize that people have goals. They're trying to hang on to their job. They're trying to do all those things. So I agree with Scott. People are getting super desperate. I don't know that they're any more desperate than they used to be. You know, the last June, the last week of, you know, March, the last week of December, last year, like, they're still just as desperate to hit the number. It just feels better. And it's a convenient excuse. The board will finally buy an. Okay, it's the economy. Okay, I got it right.

What are those desperate tactics you're seeing? Is it just like. Is that a spray and pray mentality.

Or just like, it's everything. Pray. It's heavy. It's.

It's. It's, you know, managers putting so much pressure on their reps to call the customer five times. Right. It's November 30th. I can't imagine what it's like to be a sales rep today in an office, and you've been waiting for this deal to get closed, and your manager is just hammering you because everybody knows the economy's tanking and they're trying to get to the end of the year, and it just. The pressure feels greater. That's the desperation I see is the level of pressure that's being applied. There's always pressure. It just. For some reason, leaders think you can apply more and that, you know, the beatings will continue until morale improves. And so the beatings are just getting worse and worse right now.

Here's a perfect example.

Donald.

Sure is a message that, That I got the other day was a screenshot of something that, yes, somebody else was the recipient of. And Richard knows what I'm talking about here. It was essentially saying there's a day left in the. In the month or whatever, right? And then speaking as if they were a rep, if the rep was saying, hey, it's all good. Like, I still have December to hit my quarterly quota. Quarterly quota. The leader in this particular case was like, that's the worst possible, you know, mentality to to have and like going at them and just like hammering them to do everything that they can do to close the deal in the next two days no matter what. And you know, that's just not. That doesn't work anymore. No. If it ever did. Right. It doesn't work anymore in this kind of market with how educated buyers are now, with how many alternatives there are to your product or service.

So there's, there's a lot of that kind of stuff going on.

Yeah.

And what that also tells me, and I have one more example that Scott knows about, is that it's a clear indication of poor leadership.

Yeah.

If you're putting this on me now, where were you in March when you could have paid for me to do some training to get better at some of these things? Where were you last December when you were finalizing goals and you just took this pie in the sky approach? Right. And then you don't want to give me any resources even though the economy's fine. Right. So I see that we actually, there's a, there's a, there was someone who came to Surf and sales a couple of weeks ago. First night he gets there, literally the first night he gets a note. He showed it to me, I showed it to Scott and literally the manager had sent this to the sales team saying, hey, everybody, it's getting close. We're at the end of December or getting the end of November, end of December. Holidays are upon us. By the way, no more vacations are approved. Do you remember this, Scott? You remember seeing this text? So you're, you're on mute, buddy. First time in life.

Yeah, I just failed. Yeah, I do remember that. And it's like, I just like, can you imagine getting that, Donald?

Yeah. And.

Now I will happening. I will say that through growth, Scott has changed. Because I used to have many texts from him when I first met Scott and he was a first time sales leader.

Different arena, different 20, 20, 20 years ago. Different process.

I. Dude, I'm. I'm saying, what I'm saying is for the leaders out there, for the people who want to be leaders, just because someone is that way, you can, you can evolve. You can evolve.

Yeah.

And so I've been on those from Scott.

I had a, one of my leaders once told me, he said that you're, he said that you're going to learn a lot from your bad leaders and your good leaders. I was like, what am I going to learn from the bad leaders? It's like you're going to learn what not to do and take those things and learn what the good leaders do and apply those. And he was 100, right?

Yep. 100. So.

Yep.

And I just want to comment on what you said about the mentality again, like there's always opportunity if you go back, you know, whatever challenging time. I remember at the top of the pandemic, like, I was like, holy crap, that, that bottom just fell out from underneath us. I remember I saw like I had some deals and There's. I had 30k in revenue just like, and it was going to be reoccurring. It's like totally just evaporated. And I was like, I was like, oh my goodness. But one of the things though that I did see was that people still needed to have life function. They still needed their business to go, they still needed things going. And, and it may not be as easy. And I think the error of the order takers definitely dies off in situations like this. You got to be a deal maker where you, you know, find a way companies are going to have money. It's just that they're going to be tight on maybe the way they spent it. So can you come forward and create an opportunity, make me want to spend that money, you know what I mean?

Yeah.

Or make that investment.

So cool, man. Well, this has been good and fun and Donald, you know, I'm glad we were able to finally catch up with you and, and do this. So thank you for joining us. So if people want to get a hold of you, I'm assuming LinkedIn's the easiest way. Any other way you want to give out your cell phone number so they can text you cold, Please.

You can go ahead and text me if you're good enough. I'll respond, look at that.

You can find it anyways. And I don't know why people try to hide their stuff these days. Anyways, they're going to call me anyway, so you can hit me up on any platform. Donald C. Kelly. Hint, trade secrets here. LinkedIn is my platform for a handcam camp out the most. So you're probably gonna have run into some traffic on that, but go on to Instagram and follow me there because it's not as many as LinkedIn and you probably have an easy way to communicate with me. I gave that guy advice once and somebody reached out and made total sense. But as a seller, think about that as well. What platform your ideal customer camps out on and where they probably have less traffic.

I didn't camp out. I fucking moved into LinkedIn.

You moved into LinkedIn?

I'm squatting I'm a squad.

You're squatting there. But you can hit me up on any platform, Donald C. Kelly, and then you can find me. Hit me up on my cell ph as well. Send me a text. 561-578-1729.

There you go. See? Scott's still.

What are you talking about? 530-209-3667.

All right, blow them up, everybody.

You're gonna be the only one who doesn't.

I've been doing this for years. 415-59-6-914.

Okay, now. Now, the real winner is who gets the most. Who? Not. Well, maybe, but who's the real winner is who sends one to all three of us at the same time.

As a group. As a group Message.

That's what I'm saying.

All right, Donald, my man.

Thank you guys, for having me.

Pleasure, brother.