MBA2108 Must Read: Sell It Like a Mango by Donald Kelly

Let me tell you about Intuit QuickBooks. When I was starting out my business, I remember sitting at my desk late at night not working on my business but cleaning up numbers, tracking and reconciling payments and wondering how this became my life. But once I automated the admin side of things of my finances, those nights had disappeared and I felt a whole lot better. Outdo it with intuit QuickBooks QuickBooks is the trusted end to end solution that businesses rely on for getting paid, managing finances, paying employees, finding new customers, and more. QuickBooks provides a team of AI agents and trusted experts, so doing it yourself no longer means doing it alone. Their payment agent gets you paid faster, their customer agent finds leads, follows up and secures more sales, and the accounting agent automates and categorizes transactions. Get your critical business jobs done with QuickBooks on the Intuit platform. Ready to Save on New Tech? It's time for Dell Tech Day's annual sales event celebrating our customers with fantastic deals and benefits. Perks include Dell Rewards, free shipping, premium Support and more. PCs like the Dell 14 with Intel Core Ultra processors will help you do more faster and with a premium suite of monitors and accessories, you can upgrade your whole setup with amazing savings. Visit Dell.com deals.

Foreign. Welcome to the $100 MBA Show Business Insights you can count on every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started with my co founder back in 2014 and today's episode is a must read episode. On our Must Read Episodes, I share with you a book that I've read that has influenced me as an entrepreneur. I share with you its takeaways, its insights and why you should read it too. Today's must read is Sell It Like a Mango by Donald Kelly. Today's Must Read author Donald Kelly is a friend of mine and also a fellow podcaster, the host of the Sales Evangelist podcast and I've been following his work for some time. So when I knew that he published a new book on sales, I knew it was going to be great because Donald's been in sales for all his life pretty much and he talks about his story growing up in Jamaica, walking home from school, seeing all the different fruit vendors on the streets of Jamaica, some of them selling the same product. One car will sell mangoes and another one will sell mangoes. What would make one car more successful than the other? They're selling the same mangoes. And that's what he gets into in this book. How to Sell, how to educate, how to know when to sell, how to find your ideal audience, how to find your sales style and how to have that resilience that to be able to keep on selling. Sales is one of those topics that a lot of people don't want to talk about when it comes to entrepreneurship. But at the end of the day, you have to sell. You have to sell your products or service whether it's on your website or on video or on a podcast or with your content. Knowing how to sell is going to make your life so much easier as an entrepreneur. And this book is going to guide you to craft your salesmanship, your sales style, even if you're not a salesperson right now or know nothing about sales. In today's must Read I'm going to share with you my favorite chat the things that I love the most about this book. What are the areas that are going to help you the most as an entrepreneur, as a business builder? Let's get into it. Let's get down to business.

Hey Fidelity, what's it cost to invest with the Fidelity app? Start with as little as $1 with no account fees or trade commissions on U.S. stocks and ETFs.

Hmm.

That's music to my ears. I can only talk.

Investing involves risk, including risk of loss. 0 account fees applied to retail brokerage accounts only sell order assessment fee not include a limited number of ETFs are subject to a transaction based service fee of $100. See full list@fidelity.com commissions Fidelity Brokerage Services LLC Member NYSE SIPC.

Sell Like a Mangle by Donald Kelly Today's Must Read is a really powerful book to get your head around sales, to really rewire yourself when it comes to this concept, especially if you're sales averse. This book is not a huge read. It's not going to take you days to get through. It's something that you can get in, learn and implement. I picked up this book on Audible because Donald himself does the actual narration. And Donald is actually a speech master. He's actually a toastmaster and has won several contests and awards. So it's an absolute joy to hear him narrate the book. One of my favorite chapters in this book is actually chapter one, the Truth About Selling. And I'm sure you heard about this concept before, but he really drills a home that we're always selling when we're convincing somebody to go to eat our favorite restaurant. That's a form of sales when we're trying to convince our family to go to somewhere new on vacation, that's a form of sales. And when you break it down, it's really a sense of understanding who you're speaking to, the needs of the other person and educating them how your idea, your solution is best for them. And this is what I love about Donald's approach. Sales is really about education. It's not about pushing your product on everybody with a pulse. With this understanding, you agree to the fact that, hey, your thing is probably not right for some people. I mean, sometimes in the conversation, in the sales conversation, you might get to a point where, like, you know what, I don't know if we're a good fit for you. Hopefully that won't happen too often because you want to pre qualify your leads. And Donald gets into that in chapter five when he talks about identifying and attracting the right prospects. So much of the beginning of the book talks about this mindset of sales. Another mindset shift that I thought was really powerful was in chapter two when he talks about why do what you do. You need an external motivation to sales. It's not enough for free to say, I want to make money, but what does that money mean to you? I know many of us might be hungry to make more money because maybe you want to grow your business or maybe you just came from a situation that was horrible, like you didn't make enough money and it put you in a bind and it's a very uncomfortable situation. So making money is attractive to you, but go beyond that. Why do you want to make money? What is that money going to do for you? Is that going to help you feel secure? Is that going to make your family feel like they have what they need? Is it going to put a smile on their faces? Is it going to buy you adventure? Meaning you get to travel the world. Your money is going to buy you security. Think about the end result of what money's going to get you and that's going to help you make more sales. It's going to motivate you to get out of your comfort zone and ask for that sale. I mentioned that sometimes people are not going to need what you have to offer. And Donald touches on this in chapter three when he says, I just don't want your mango right now. He talks about how he would walk home from school and the vendors of those mango carts would offer him mango. And most days they would just ignore them and walk by and they wouldn't buy. But some days they were hungry and then they would buy, but they only would buy if they were there, if they offered. And this is a really good point, sometimes we give up, sometimes we say, hey, I reached out to that client. They said it's not a good fit for them right now. And you just ignore them, right? No, go back, circle back three months later, circle back in six months after that, find out, how about now, is this a good fit? Now they might say no. Again, the point here is that you got to keep on offering. You got to keep asking for the sale because eventually they're going to need your services if you have something that they possibly will need at some point. They may not be hungry now, but they could be hungry later. And you want to be top of mind and, and be in their inbox or on their phone call or scheduling meetings so that you can close that sale. This is particularly important if you run a business that needs to have a call, needs to have a demo. And this could be different types of offerings. You might be running an event and you might want to reach out to sponsors. Maybe this time they don't want to be a sponsor, but next time they will be. You might be selling software and saying, hey, my product is self serve. But many of the softwares, I know the software as a service, companies that I know that started out, did a lot of calls, reached out to clients they wanted to bring on, even if it just means they're going to make $300 a year on this sale. It's not the point. It's the exercise of getting the right people into your ecosystem, into your, into your business. Sometimes the right name and the right profile will bring in more customers for you and it's worth for you to get on a call and ask for that sale. This is what I learned in my career in business, in sales, in marketing, and what Donald echoes in the book. If you want to get good at this, you got to build some thick skin. You got to be okay with no's. In my opinion, sales is a numbers game. Donald talks about this in the book where, hey, let's say you close 1 out of 10 customers you talk to. So and you need, let's say five customers this month. That means you need to speak to 50 people. But guess what, as you get better your numbers, your averages will get better. Meaning maybe you only need to speak to eight people to close a sale. That means you'll close most sales if you call 50 PEOPLE or speak to 50 PEOPLE via email or whatever it is. The point here is, is that you can't be afraid of rejection. And in fact you have to go after rejection in the beginning so you can prove to yourself you're not going to die, you're going to survive. You'll be okay. One of my favorite chapters in the book is Define your message. You have to understand very clearly what you're selling, who you're selling it to, and you got to know it like you know your own name. What makes you better than the competition? What are the advantages of going and doing business with you? You can't even hesitate when you are getting these answers down. Answer these questions before you actually have to speak about them in a call. Write them down. Know them like the back of your hand. This makes you confident. This makes the messaging and the conversation with your client easier. They clearly understand why they should do business with you. There's no waffling. There's no going back and forth. There's no umming and ahhing. If you're like me, you notice when you have a very good salesperson with you on a call or in a demo and they know what to say in every situation. They've said it before, they've decided on what to say beforehand. It's clear, it's concise, and the ball's always getting thrown back at you so that you can make the decision to buy. There's a few more great insights I want to share with you this book. Of course, I'm going to leave some for you to check out yourself. Some of them are about understanding, commitment and your clients and the never ending pursuit to keep on learning.

Life's busy. Don't let banking slow you down. Whether you're paying bills, setting savings goals or just splitting the check, Atlantic Union bank makes managing your money easier. With helpful people and user friendly tools, we make sure banking with us fits you Call, visit us online or drop into an Atlantic Union bank branch today. Atlantic Union Bank Any way you bank.

Chapter 9 in Sell It Like a Mango by Donald Kelly is one of my favorite chapters and it's titled Nothing happens until you help people commit to change. And this is so so on point because this is when a sale actually happens. Whether you're selling a course or coaching or a product or software or whatever it is, the only time things move forward when the sale actually happens is when people are convinced that they need to commit to change. They have to change their situation. You need to help people to see that that's your job as a salesperson, as a business owner is to see that you need to commit to changing your situation right now, whatever you're doing is getting you a certain result that is probably making you unhappy or not getting you where you need to go. That's why we're speaking today. And your solution, your product or service is what's going to help them change. And they need to see that. And once they see that, then you got to help them commit to changing. Hey, it's not enough for you to say, yeah, let's buy, let's commit to changing and getting to that after picture and seeing that change happen in your business, in your life, in your whatever. This is really a mindset shift you need to go through to understand you're really helping people make a commitment. And this is what I teach as well. When I teach how to sell on a webinar, when you're teaching somebody something on a webinar, when you're showing them something and saying, hey, I have a product for you that's going to help you implement what I just taught, you're basically saying to them, hey, buying this is a commitment to changing your situation. Putting your money where your mouth is is going to help you move forward and it's actually going to help you get you there. Because that's what I built the product for. And this is what your product will do. This is important because you're empowering your customer. You're showing them that they can change their situation with your help. Chapter 10 in Sell It Like a Mango is all about learning. And it's titled Never Stop Learning. And it's so true because the mediums change. The way we offer our products and services will change over time, the tools out there will change, but also we need to change. We need to improve. We need to get better at the areas we feel shaky at. And this is why I picked up this book, is because I used to do a whole lot more sales earlier in my entrepreneurial career because I was just rolling up my sleeves and getting one client after the other. But I want to get back into that, but at scale. And understanding these techniques is important to. And understanding how to sell one on one is different from selling at scale. So Donald really drills home that, hey, this is just the beginning. I showed you the path. I showed you some really good insights and techniques and mindset shifts that are going to help you embrace sales. But the journey keeps going. Guys, I highly recommend you check out Sell It Like a Mango by Donald Kelly. He's done a fantastic job with this book. I would say this book is especially important for you to read if you kind of cringe at sales. If you kind of like avoid it, this is going to allow you to embrace it a little bit and accept it for what it is and really change the way you think about it. You'll be for the better and so will your business. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 NBA show. If you love what you hear, share it. Share the show on social media right now. Send them a link. Tell them head on over to100mba.net so they can click on one of our buttons to subscribe on their favorite podcast app. We're on every single one Apple Podcast, Spotify, Stitch or Radio Over Castro on every single app. Subscribe Follow so you don't miss a beat. Before I go, I want to leave you with this they say if you know how to sell, you'll never go hungry. It's hard for me to disagree because selling is actually helping. It's helping other people. And if you're helping other people, you're adding value to other people's lives. And anytime you add value to the world, you're going to get value back. That's just how the marketplace works. That's how the world works. So if you have a little fear of sales, face that fear. Go after that fear and before you know it, you're going to remember. Wow. Remember when I didn't like to do sales? I actually enjoy it. It's actually pretty cool. I'm really good at it. You'll be there in no time. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care. Of foreign.

What's it cost to invest with the Fidelity app? Start with as little as $1 with no account fees or trade commissions on U.S. stocks and ETFs.

Hmm.

That's music to my ears. I can only talk.

Investing Involved risk, including risk of loss. Zero Account fees apply to retail brokerage accounts only. Sell order assessment fee not included. A limited number of ETFs are subject to a transaction based service fee of $100. See full list of Fidelity.com commissions Fidelity Brokerage Services member NYSE SIPC.