We were lucky to catch up with Donald Kelly recently and have shared our conversation below.

Donald, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

The story behind the mission is simple, I’m dedicated to becoming the number one B2B sales education organization in the world offering sellers free and paid content so that every seller who desires can have the tools they need to earn six figures and be able to create generational wealth.

When I was about 16-17, my family experienced some financial struggles. We eventually got evicted from our apartment. My Mom, brother, and baby sister went to live with one of our cousins; but because I was going to a magnet school and had to take the bus, I lived with another cousin in a one-bedroom apartment.

I had a bunk bed to sleep on in their laundry room. Now I am absolutely grateful that he was willing to take me in, and I stayed there for about a week or so, but it was just too challenging. One of my best friends found out what was going on, told his parents and they invited me to live with them until my mom got back on her feet.

Being homeless wasn’t fun, and I never want my family to be in a situation like that. Sales became a means for me to help my family financially. It has the capacity to help individuals create wealth in a relatively short period of time. However, the problem is that many salespeople don’t succeed in sales. Many don’t get the proper training, become discouraged, and end up quitting or worse yet, getting fired. Needless to say, the turn overrate is high.When I started in sales as a college student, I didn’t have the proper training or proper guidance. The companies I worked for were like, “you got this. Just go figure it out and make it happen”. But how can someone go and figure it out if they don’t know what to do?

I was frustrated. It was like hitting my head against the wall again and again. I needed to make money to assist my family but didn’t know how to make it happen. There was no one to guide me. Most of the paid training programs were way too expensive, and yet still didn’t offer the true guidance I needed.

Finally, I was hired by a company that did invest in me, putting my colleagues and me through a robust training program. In no time I started to thrive, becoming one of the top-performing sellers for the organization. They probably spent about seven grand on each of us, but made 20-30 times that because of the business I was able to bring in for them. The point here is that the training guided me to success. I was able to help my family back then. Today because of those sales skills, I’m able to provide for my wife and my son who don’t have to worry about being homeless.

But imagine if there was a program out there, an organization that was dedicated to helping individual sellers get the blueprint to also thrive as I did? That’s what we are doing at TSE.

We do that through our free content (podcasts, blogs, webinars) as well as our paid training programs. Every piece of content is actionable and assists sellers:

Build a healthy sales pipeline of qualified opportunities
Know how to convert a high percentage of those deals in their sales pipeline into paying customers
We’re on a mission to ensure that sales professionals across the globe have a clear, direct path to success. So that they can thrive, so there is no more excuse, so that we can lower sales turnover rate, and so that we can help individuals create generational wealth.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

My name is Donald C. Kelly; I run The Sales Evangelist, a sales training firm out of West Palm Beach, Florida. We also have a popular sales podcast for B2B sales professionals called The Sales Evangelist.

I got into this discipline because I grew up as a kid in Jamaica and moved to the United States when I was nine. While I was in Jamaica, one of the things that I learned was to be an entrepreneur “business mon” as we would say. The economy isn’t excellent, so individual families and individuals have to figure out ways to thrive. Most people become entrepreneurs. 

I saw family members that had a little store next to our house, where people could come and purchase basic necessities, such as rice, shampoo, and things of that nature. I had responsibilities to work in the shop; whether it was selling things, helping with stocking, or assisting when we had a rush. 

My aunt Ivy used to also come to the United States and buy products to take back to Jamaica to sell. My dad was an entrepreneur, as well. He was a little bit better off, in the upper middle class. He had a blueprinting company, a restaurant, and a cesspool company.

With all of these entrepreneurship ideas around me, it became fused in my mind that that’s how you generate income. I remember as a 7-year-old getting inspired to “create my own little shop”. I thought of selling mangoes. Let’s just say it was an educational experience lol. 

However,  when I came to the United States at 9 and wanted to make money I went back to what I knew. I used to buy candy in bulk, then sell it to kids at school. Fast forward to college, when this mentality still permeated my life, one my friend said, “you should consider sales as a professional seller.”

I explored opportunities and started doing things such as Dish Network over the phone, getting people to go to timeshare presentations, I became a server at a popular local restaurant, I sold IT training classes, and even door to door security before graduating. All of these things led me to the B2B sales profession, so when I finally graduated, I had four years of professional selling under my belt, and I started selling mobile x-ray services to nursing homes in south Florida.

Then I went into IT Services, where we handled IT for different companies. After that, I finally went into software sales, which I loved, and that led me to start sharing with people what was working for me over the years. 

That launched a podcast, which eventually flourished, and I started to coach individual sales professionals and entrepreneurs. These led to speaking opportunities, which eventually pushed me to create training opportunities for different organizations and training our own training curriculums.

Right now, we work with B2B sales teams with 5+ sales professionals to master their prospecting skills and increase their closing rates. Many of the companies we serve are in the upper SMB to mid-market size companies.

Typically the problems we solve for clients include: 

1. They don’t know how to prospect using cold outreach via the phone or email. 
2. They don’t know how to use LinkedIn to get in touch with potential clients. 
3. They have a poor closing rate. 

We solve that problem for them and help their business development representatives and account representatives learn how to set appointments consistently. Our promise is that we train salespeople that they should start booking at least three appointments per week consistently through our curriculum. 

This is one of the things that set us apart. Many organizations have training courses, but we think that one of the things that set us apart is the promise that we can help you to get to the point where you have three appointments per week, as well as we feel that we thrive on the fundamentals. We teach individuals how to thrive and succeed by mastering the fundamentals of selling.

This comes from our core learning model, which includes:

1. On-demand content.
2. A private online community where they have accountability and get to interact with other salespeople.
3. Weekly 90-minute cohort training with other sales professionals from different companies for either a four-week program or a seven-week program.
4. Action plan where they’re required to put into action the things that they’ve learned each week.

Those four things establish our core learning model. Instead of doing a one-time data dump, where individuals are encouraged to just watch videos and learn it in one day, we break down our content over the course of either four or seven weeks, depending on the program, so that the individuals can truly master it. 

With this process of watching the required on-demand content each week; taking part in our online community where they can get updates and get motivation; asking questions and learning from other sellers and their facilitators; taking part in a live group training call which goes over the content they studied for that week; and then finally accountability to implement what they’ve learned in that week, sales leaders and business owners are happy because their sales professionals truly master content, and start to see action. That coupled with the fundamental training helps to separate us from our competitors.

One of the things I’m most proud of is our podcast being mentioned in Forbes as a top sales podcast, Inc magazine as a top sales podcast, Entrepreneur magazine as a top sales podcast, and a full feature in Success magazine on myself and our sales training firm.

Those are some big accomplishments for us as an organization, and to be seen as a LinkedIn Top Sales Influencer, as well as the Salesforce class of 2022 and 2023 Top Sales Influencer. Being able to work with these large, established firms and receive this recognition has helped our firm to stand out, as well as helped to crystallize my success in the sales arena.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

The most effective strategy for growing our clientele, by far, has been our podcast and LinkedIn. Over the years of running a sales podcast, from day one, we started to see people gravitate towards it because they were interested in improving their sales. So I remember the first post that I did on social media, on Facebook. I had an acquaintance of mine who had a small company in south Florida reach out to me to help him with his sales. 

I was able to meet with them once a week as they were developing their marketing and sales. This indicated there was an opportunity to help others just like them. As the podcast grew, folks outside of my inner circle started to learn about it. I remember one of the first people was a lady named Destiny, who was down in Fort Lauderdale; she found the podcast and knew nothing about me but was fascinated by the podcast and needed help with sales. 

I was able to help her. Another person, Katie, found our podcast; Martin, as well as Chuck were some of my early clients. Folks across the country who found the podcast reached out for help, and I was able to coach them and help them develop their sales training skills.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

The second means that it’s been very effective for us in growing our business and our clientele has been through LinkedIn. Sharing relevant content to our ideal customers by answering questions they have on a day-to-day basis around sales, in the form of text content as well as video content. Being able to build a network by connecting with possible customers on LinkedIn and engaging in meaningful conversations with them has been helpful for us. That, and cold calling or warm calling them, also helps because of the relationship we’ve built on LinkedIn. So a podcast and LinkedIn, those two means have been the greatest sources for us to get new clientele for our organization.

Many organizations can take advantage of LinkedIn as well, especially if they’re B2B companies to grow. The challenge is that only 2% of active LinkedIn users post content regularly on the platform. Let’s say 2 to 2.5% out of the 850 million users that LinkedIn about half of those are active monthly. Imagine only 2 to 2.5% of those people posting content – there are a lot of opportunities. 

When you post content, one of the best strategies that we found is going back and engaging with those individuals. So if somebody likes our post, we start a conversation with them in the DM. Reply to their comment, of course, but also send them a personal message. Those conversations lead to questions being asked by the prospect, and those questions then lead to opportunities for you to be able to set up an appointment to elaborate upon your answers to them.

So again share relevant content, then engage with people who comment or interact with your post. Here is an example, “Hey Mary, I appreciate that awesome comment and interaction on my post. Thank you so much. Out of curiosity (say my post was about cold calling), what is your best tip for improving cold calling?”

Now we start a conversation. Perhaps then I can share a tip with Mary, and then that could lead to us having a conversation, which then I can set up a time for me and Mary to continue to talk and share more strategies. I can offer that in that DM: “Mary, obviously, I see that you know cold calling can help. If you’re open to it, we can jump on a call for 5-7 minutes, and I can elaborate on how this point has helped us out a little bit more.” Now Mary will more than likely say, “Of course, let’s set up a time,” and that way, you can have a conversation.

Your goal is to give value, not to go and pitch, but give value. Once we’ve given value to Mary, Mary will usually say, “Hey, so tell me a little bit more about what you do.” That leads to the opportunity to talk about your services, as well as potentially to get a new client through Mary through her engagement in your service.

Again, the critical part is that you share relevant content, engage with people who posted and have conversations. Those conversations lead to you solving problems through those conversations and then finally an appointment to purchase or be engaged in your services.

Those are the things that we’ve seen to be truly helpful for us. We love sales. We love helping people. Our main focus right now in our organization is to help people build pipelines; find new potential business opportunities and then teach them how to close that pipeline, converting those potential opportunities into actual paying customers. Go out and do big things!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://thesalesevangelist.com/
• Linkedin: donaldckelly
• TikTok: donaldckelly
• Instagram: donaldckelly