Kevin Dieny: 00:00:00

Hello, welcome to the Close The Loop podcast.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:03

Today, we're going to be jumping into how to turn more appointments into sales, and

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:09

I've brought a really special guest today.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:11

The sales evangelist, if you've ever heard of his podcast, his name is Donald Kelly.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:16

Donald has a belief that anyone can sell if they have the desire.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:20

Early on in his career, Donald struggled with sales, but through

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:23

the proper training and coaching, he became a top performing seller.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:27

I think that's a really cool lesson to take away from that.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:29

He has since taken it upon himself to evangelize the message of effective

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:33

selling, to struggling entrepreneurs, salespeople, and anyone looking to

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:36

improve their sales hustle, Donald hosts a popular sales podcast, which

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:41

I alluded to the sales evangelist.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:44

This show has over 2.3 million all-time downloads, huge numbers,

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:49

and is heard in over 150 countries.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:52

Donald and his podcast have also been mentioned in entrepreneur

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:55

magazine, Forbes, Inc, and HubSpot as a top B2B sales podcast.

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:00

So welcome Donald, we're so happy to have you.

Donald Kelly: 00:01:02

Hey, I appreciate you.

Donald Kelly: 00:01:03

Thank you so much.

Donald Kelly: 00:01:05

I'm grateful that you guys decided, then gave me the invitation to be here.

Donald Kelly: 00:01:08

Hopefully I can bring some wisdom to your community.

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:10

Yeah, we are really excited to jump in.

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:12

I've also got my co-hosts, again with us, then that's Matt Widmyer.

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:15

Welcome Matt.

Matt Widmyer: 00:01:16

Hey guys.

Matt Widmyer: 00:01:17

Thanks for having me back, good to be here.

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:18

So today's topic of, turning more appointments into sales,

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:22

I'll ground it a little bit about what we're kind of talking about and then

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:25

I'll toss it over with a question.

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:26

So we're talking about turning more appointments in the sales

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:29

and an appointment is a lot of things to a lot of people.

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:32

It could be an in-person appointment, could be meetings, could be virtual,

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:35

it could be a lot of things.

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:37

And for a company or a business, I feel like there's a lot behind

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:42

that, that got them there.

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:43

It's we're talking about someone who's more than a lead you've spent money to

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:46

get this person you've talked to this person, or you've had something, maybe

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:49

a booking software, something, get them to a point to say, I'm okay with

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:55

either showing up or being there, or I will be available when you call, I'll

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:59

be there at my house when you knock.

Kevin Dieny: 00:02:01

That's the appointment, but how do you turn more of those

Kevin Dieny: 00:02:05

appointments into sales?

Kevin Dieny: 00:02:07

And I think some of the struggle there is these people feel like maybe

Kevin Dieny: 00:02:11

I'm not necessarily a sales person.

Kevin Dieny: 00:02:12

Maybe I'm a tech showing up at someone's house.

Kevin Dieny: 00:02:14

Maybe I am a salesperson calling people all day on the phone, but

Kevin Dieny: 00:02:17

it could also be like, hey, I'm in the doctor's office or something.

Kevin Dieny: 00:02:20

And these people are showing up for an appointment.

Kevin Dieny: 00:02:22

How do I actually get them to go through with that appointment?

Kevin Dieny: 00:02:25

And I think just generally, when we talk about how do we get more

Kevin Dieny: 00:02:29

of these appointments that we've set turned into sales, turned into

Kevin Dieny: 00:02:32

showed, turned into whatever we're doing, sales services we're offering.

Kevin Dieny: 00:02:36

That's really what we're trying to unravel a bit here.

Kevin Dieny: 00:02:39

So every business that sets appointments is dealing with this.

Kevin Dieny: 00:02:44

And so one of the things I'd like to ask Donald, is what keeps

Kevin Dieny: 00:02:48

appointments from turning into sales?

Kevin Dieny: 00:02:50

What keeps a hundred percent of appointments turning into

Kevin Dieny: 00:02:52

a hundred percent sales?

Donald Kelly: 00:02:55

People are just unpredictable sometimes...

Donald Kelly: 00:02:58

.

Donald Kelly: 00:02:59

No, I think one of the big piece that comes back down is even in our

Donald Kelly: 00:03:03

organization, I'm grateful that we have a really good rate of people

Donald Kelly: 00:03:07

showing up to their appointments.

Donald Kelly: 00:03:09

There are many different factors.

Donald Kelly: 00:03:10

Internally, some of the things that we see that prevent that from happening is

Donald Kelly: 00:03:13

that it just may not be the right timing for someone because when it comes as

Donald Kelly: 00:03:17

an inbound lead, those people, they're researching to some degree they're coming

Donald Kelly: 00:03:21

on a website and it may be, they're just preparing for next year or preparing

Donald Kelly: 00:03:25

for their calendar year or whatnot.

Donald Kelly: 00:03:27

So there's still a little bit of research when you get a lot

Donald Kelly: 00:03:29

of inbound leads to that degree.

Donald Kelly: 00:03:31

So that's one of the areas that we see.

Donald Kelly: 00:03:33

The other thing that we find is just that a person is not fully qualified

Donald Kelly: 00:03:37

or vetted for our organization because they're an inbound.

Donald Kelly: 00:03:40

They found and they thought it would be good to learn about sales

Donald Kelly: 00:03:44

coaching, or to train their teams.

Donald Kelly: 00:03:45

So they sign up on a website, but they're not qualified at that point.

Donald Kelly: 00:03:50

So those are some of the factors that we have seen internally.

Donald Kelly: 00:03:53

And then have the people who they're looking for something way inexpensive

Donald Kelly: 00:03:57

compared to what you have to offer.

Donald Kelly: 00:03:59

And I'm a big believer in that you don't bend over backwards to drop your

Donald Kelly: 00:04:03

price, just to get someone in the door.

Donald Kelly: 00:04:06

And if they're not a fit, it's okay.

Donald Kelly: 00:04:08

That's fine.

Donald Kelly: 00:04:09

We can go and find somebody else, but those are the top three things that

Donald Kelly: 00:04:12

I would see that prevent people from converting from the appointments that

Donald Kelly: 00:04:16

we have to becoming an actual sale.

Donald Kelly: 00:04:19

#1, they're just doing research, #2, they're not qualified for doing business

Donald Kelly: 00:04:23

with us, and #3, they can't afford us.

Donald Kelly: 00:04:25

So those are some of the areas, but those are just inbound.

Donald Kelly: 00:04:28

On the outbound side, it's a whole different thing.

Donald Kelly: 00:04:29

That's where our BDRs, they do the qualification.

Donald Kelly: 00:04:32

So those people who come to the table, they're a little bit more higher chance

Donald Kelly: 00:04:35

of moving forward to the next level.

Kevin Dieny: 00:04:38

Yeah, those are really good points.

Kevin Dieny: 00:04:40

Something that I feel like they all kind of fall under a little

Kevin Dieny: 00:04:43

bit there, as you mentioned is like the fit, the qualification.

Donald Kelly: 00:04:46

Mhmm.

Kevin Dieny: 00:04:47

Upfront marketing is telling them, Hey, come in for free.

Kevin Dieny: 00:04:51

But then when you'd actually did get to someone, they get in their appointment,

Kevin Dieny: 00:04:53

and they were like, oh, this is a $50 appointment, I thought that this was free.

Kevin Dieny: 00:04:56

That's like huge bait and switch problem, marketing uh oh.

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:01

And then when a BDR, when it's an appointment setting person, a scheduler

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:05

or a front office sales person, whoever's doing that qualifying, if it's passed

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:11

through them and it gets there, and then there's a miscommunication error.

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:16

And this was something that Matt had brought up as a interesting question.

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:19

And that is so Donald, how do you strike that balance between quality,

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:23

so very high qualified, right?

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:24

We only want people who we've talked to on the phone, who we've

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:28

talked to and verified every little detail, but we're going to get less.

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:31

Right.

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:31

Cause we put them through the force of making sure every little

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:34

bit, every single box is checked.

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:36

So high quality versus quantity, let's get them there, as many people as we can.

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:41

So, Matt was like, how do you figure that out?

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:43

More numbers or higher quality?

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:45

What do you think?

Donald Kelly: 00:05:46

One of the concepts we're adopting and we've adopted

Donald Kelly: 00:05:49

it, but it's when I say adopting is continual to improve on.

Donald Kelly: 00:05:52

It's the idea of account-based marketing.

Donald Kelly: 00:05:55

So that ABM tactic where we're putting our marketing folks in alignment with

Donald Kelly: 00:06:00

our sales folks and we're following them on that same level because

Donald Kelly: 00:06:03

that marketing qualified lead, it could fall under that bracket where

Donald Kelly: 00:06:06

marketing is like, Hey, this person signed up for something on the website.

Donald Kelly: 00:06:09

Sales, go take care of this person, reach out to them.

Donald Kelly: 00:06:12

And I would, by all means, send my BDRs to go and do that

Donald Kelly: 00:06:15

because I want them to improve.

Donald Kelly: 00:06:16

It gives them good practice, they get a chance to become better, but what

Donald Kelly: 00:06:20

we've seen to be even more effectiveness is to have that named account.

Donald Kelly: 00:06:23

So we might say, for instance, as an organization, this is our dream 100

Donald Kelly: 00:06:27

list that we're going to be going for.

Donald Kelly: 00:06:28

Marketing, here's your plays that you're going to run.

Donald Kelly: 00:06:31

Sales here are your plays that you're going to run.

Donald Kelly: 00:06:32

We work together on how we can tackle those accounts.

Donald Kelly: 00:06:35

And that way, when that lead comes over, we have vetted it already that

Donald Kelly: 00:06:38

your company is a good quality fit.

Donald Kelly: 00:06:39

So whether you come from a webinar, then they can see the team, look at it

Donald Kelly: 00:06:43

together and say, Hey guys, here are all the people came from the webinar.

Donald Kelly: 00:06:45

How many of these people were on our dream list?

Donald Kelly: 00:06:47

Boom, we have Matt and Kevin, they came from this.

Donald Kelly: 00:06:50

Sales, this is your opportunity, why don't you follow up on that

Donald Kelly: 00:06:52

and hit them up and so forth, but it's that it's a unified sense.

Donald Kelly: 00:06:54

It takes work.

Donald Kelly: 00:06:56

But that makes it such a big difference as opposed to just spray and pray,

Donald Kelly: 00:07:00

throw it to everybody out there.

Donald Kelly: 00:07:01

And again, we, fortunately with a podcast like ours, we can get, people

Donald Kelly: 00:07:05

come back to the website, we get people who come to our webinars and so forth.

Donald Kelly: 00:07:09

And again, a percentage of those people are still going to be people who may not

Donald Kelly: 00:07:13

be on the dream list of folks that we're focusing on right now, but they could

Donald Kelly: 00:07:16

be an MQL, marketing qualified lead.

Donald Kelly: 00:07:18

They downloaded a piece of content.

Donald Kelly: 00:07:20

They're interested in to some degree in sales coaching or one of our mindset

Donald Kelly: 00:07:24

program or a business development program.

Donald Kelly: 00:07:26

They were on that page.

Donald Kelly: 00:07:28

They came to a webinar.

Donald Kelly: 00:07:29

They can still be followed up on, as well, but the best way to fix

Donald Kelly: 00:07:33

it is to you take control by having that ABM account-based marketing

Donald Kelly: 00:07:37

strategy with sales and marketing.

Kevin Dieny: 00:07:40

So one of the really cool things that you've brought up there is

Kevin Dieny: 00:07:42

having some pretty well-oiled alignment, especially between marketing and sales.

Kevin Dieny: 00:07:47

So that's like a huge topic for all us.

Kevin Dieny: 00:07:51

Yeah, them not working super well in unison.

Kevin Dieny: 00:07:53

The simplest way to put it would be like, okay, when marketing

Kevin Dieny: 00:07:55

gets a lead, all they're asking is their name and their email.

Kevin Dieny: 00:07:57

And then when we throw it over the fence, they're like, okay, who is this?

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:01

Who are we talking to?

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:02

What are they interested in?

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:03

You didn't collect any of that.

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:04

And then when the sales side or the SDR side or the appointment, or the

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:07

outbound team is like, man, we're having to ask like 10, 12 questions.

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:10

Marketing's only asking just two basic demographic things.

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:13

That's like, okay, let's try to get more aligned.

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:15

Let's try to get it, to a point where both teams aren't sacrificing a lot, because

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:19

every time you add a field on a marketing form, we know this, it lowers the amount

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:24

of people who going to fill it out.

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:25

It obviously increases the quality.

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:27

That's like how marketing interprets it too.

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:28

How many fields can I get away with putting on the form?

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:30

How much important information is really going to be relevant?

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:34

Do we really care?

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:35

For certain details, but yeah, go ahead Donald, yeah?

Donald Kelly: 00:08:39

We have been using a text messaging platform

Donald Kelly: 00:08:42

for businesses and for teams.

Donald Kelly: 00:08:44

So what happens now, we do this in an automated way.

Donald Kelly: 00:08:48

But we also can do it in a manual.

Donald Kelly: 00:08:50

We could text message and provide a little bit more of that personal connection.

Donald Kelly: 00:08:53

So somebody fills out a form on our website, set up appointment, via Calendly.

Donald Kelly: 00:08:57

We have their text message, their phone number, and then what we can

Donald Kelly: 00:09:00

start doing if they fill that out, is start to do the qualification.

Donald Kelly: 00:09:03

So we ask them, Hey, what is it that brought you in today?

Donald Kelly: 00:09:06

They start answering some of those questions that marketing could take

Donald Kelly: 00:09:08

care of and might say, well, this person may not be good for that

Donald Kelly: 00:09:11

appointment for sales but maybe we can provide them some more intel.

Donald Kelly: 00:09:15

So find out what industry they're a part of, find out what brought them

Donald Kelly: 00:09:18

in, or just some of those basic things.

Donald Kelly: 00:09:20

And you could say, in order to prep for our appointment, want to just get a couple

Donald Kelly: 00:09:23

of things in advance and it's personal because it's a text message, literally

Donald Kelly: 00:09:26

is a text message that come through.

Donald Kelly: 00:09:28

Actually got one that came in for appointment that somebody confirmed

Donald Kelly: 00:09:31

19 minutes ago, they look forward to chatting, but it was an automated message

Donald Kelly: 00:09:34

that I send out, but it comes from my phone number and it comes on my phone.

Donald Kelly: 00:09:38

But again, that personalization make it even more effective to qualify

Donald Kelly: 00:09:42

and people willing to answer that rather than responding to the email.

Donald Kelly: 00:09:45

If that makes sense.

Kevin Dieny: 00:09:46

On the marketing side we use tools that will help us do what's called

Kevin Dieny: 00:09:48

like progressive profiling let's put a little bit less upfront, but then we're

Kevin Dieny: 00:09:53

going to check and gate along the way before we throw it over to Matt's team.

Kevin Dieny: 00:09:55

Matt's the place where we send all our leads.

Kevin Dieny: 00:09:57

So in our company, that's how it works.

Kevin Dieny: 00:09:59

Marketing shoots them all over to Matt's team.

Donald Kelly: 00:10:01

Take care of these Matt .

Matt Widmyer: 00:10:04

We get to sift through them.

Kevin Dieny: 00:10:07

Yeah.

Kevin Dieny: 00:10:07

He's the one who will come back to me and be like, okay, quality, not good.

Kevin Dieny: 00:10:11

Quality too good, or quantity not good, you know, and we work together

Kevin Dieny: 00:10:15

and try to figure that out with some alignment, going on there.

Kevin Dieny: 00:10:18

So Matt, a question for you then.

Kevin Dieny: 00:10:20

So one of the things that's come up from this is when your team is

Kevin Dieny: 00:10:24

talking to someone and you've got them in person on the phone real

Kevin Dieny: 00:10:27

time, you're having a conversation.

Kevin Dieny: 00:10:28

You're not seeing them.

Kevin Dieny: 00:10:29

You're not in front of them in person, but you're on the phone.

Kevin Dieny: 00:10:32

So how do you set better expectations and firmer appointments?

Kevin Dieny: 00:10:35

And we call it a firmer appointment here where it's not just a

Kevin Dieny: 00:10:39

date, but it's also a time.

Kevin Dieny: 00:10:40

So that's how we describe a firm appointment versus a soft like, oh

Kevin Dieny: 00:10:44

yeah, I'm a I'm available on that day.

Kevin Dieny: 00:10:45

And then they check off a firmer one meaning like I'm

Kevin Dieny: 00:10:48

ready at this day at this time.

Kevin Dieny: 00:10:49

Matt how do you set better expectations and set more firmer appointments?

Matt Widmyer: 00:10:53

Right.

Matt Widmyer: 00:10:54

Uh, that's what I'm here to learn right from Donald.

Matt Widmyer: 00:10:56

No, I'm kidding.

Donald Kelly: 00:10:57

Matt Widmyer: 00:10:59

No, I think it's all about building that value

Matt Widmyer: 00:11:01

on that first phone call.

Matt Widmyer: 00:11:02

Give them a reason to show up.

Matt Widmyer: 00:11:04

I think that the main idea of what we're trying to do here is we're trying to

Matt Widmyer: 00:11:06

loosen the status quo a little bit, right?

Matt Widmyer: 00:11:09

The people that we're reaching out to from an outbound perspective, they may or

Matt Widmyer: 00:11:14

may not have issues within their business that we might be able to solve for them.

Matt Widmyer: 00:11:18

My two secret weapons are, respect their time.

Matt Widmyer: 00:11:20

Obviously, if you're getting out of the blue, I'm not looking to

Matt Widmyer: 00:11:23

get into everything right now.

Matt Widmyer: 00:11:24

I'm looking to set up a call for later on, next week or whatever.

Matt Widmyer: 00:11:27

So the first thing is just be very, very respectful of their time.

Matt Widmyer: 00:11:30

And then second one is the indifference.

Matt Widmyer: 00:11:32

It's not for everybody and they should know that going into it.

Matt Widmyer: 00:11:35

So the indifference and setting expectations, and let them know what

Matt Widmyer: 00:11:39

they're getting themselves into.

Matt Widmyer: 00:11:40

Don't say it's going to be a quick five minute phone call.

Matt Widmyer: 00:11:43

If somebody is going to call them at the scheduled time and want to

Matt Widmyer: 00:11:46

talk to them for 30, 45 minutes, it's going to drive them nuts and

Matt Widmyer: 00:11:50

it's going to make it look like it's all a bait and switch from our side.

Matt Widmyer: 00:11:53

I see Donald smiling over there because he's probably

Matt Widmyer: 00:11:55

experienced this a million times.

Matt Widmyer: 00:11:57

So I think really just setting expectations, being very clear

Matt Widmyer: 00:12:00

about what kind of value we can potentially bring to the table.

Matt Widmyer: 00:12:04

Not assuming their business is completely broken and we're going to fix everything,

Matt Widmyer: 00:12:09

but just going, Hey, it looks like based on your situation, there may

Matt Widmyer: 00:12:14

be an opportunity to work together.

Matt Widmyer: 00:12:15

Do you have some time next week?

Matt Widmyer: 00:12:16

And then, if we can connect cool.

Matt Widmyer: 00:12:19

If not, no sweat, when's a better time.

Matt Widmyer: 00:12:21

I think queuing it up, pre-appointment like that, it

Matt Widmyer: 00:12:25

would make a stronger appointment.

Donald Kelly: 00:12:28

You know what I love about that is we've done the

Donald Kelly: 00:12:31

short appointment thing before.

Donald Kelly: 00:12:33

One of my big things, especially when I connect with somebody on LinkedIn,

Donald Kelly: 00:12:35

tell them five to seven minutes.

Donald Kelly: 00:12:37

And if you tell them that though, you need to make sure you stick to

Donald Kelly: 00:12:40

it because it's nothing like your integrity going out the window.

Donald Kelly: 00:12:42

So when it hits that seven minute mark and be like, Hey, our appointment.

Donald Kelly: 00:12:45

I told you five to seven minutes.

Donald Kelly: 00:12:46

I want to make sure, that you know, we're going to end the call here,

Donald Kelly: 00:12:49

but if they say, no, no, keep going.

Donald Kelly: 00:12:50

Then at least they gave you the authorization to do that, but you are

Donald Kelly: 00:12:54

respecting and staying to your guns on it.

Donald Kelly: 00:12:56

And I've been a part of those things where it's like, yeah,

Donald Kelly: 00:12:58

let's chat for a couple of minutes.

Donald Kelly: 00:12:59

And it's like, why is this going for 30 minutes?

Donald Kelly: 00:13:02

What kind of 'couple' is this man come on.

Matt Widmyer: 00:13:04

Yeah , if this is a couple of minutes.

Matt Widmyer: 00:13:07

I'd love to see what an hour looks like, right?

Matt Widmyer: 00:13:11

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:11

You know, I've heard a pretty cool tactical tip here, and

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:17

obviously I haven't been able to apply it.

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:19

I'm not on your team, Matt, and I'm not doing the sales here, but, I read

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:22

- Donald Kelly: Uh oh I think somebody is

Matt Widmyer: 00:13:25

Hehe .

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:26

Breaking the third wall here.

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:28

So the, the tip I heard for this was okay.

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:32

If someone's very interested, very anxious to get going there, they are gung ho,

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:37

you try to put those on an appointment for a team, for an account executive,

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:42

a sales person, as soon as possible.

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:44

You try to get them booked as soon as possible.

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:45

And someone who's, let's say, more on the fence, less

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:49

interested, maybe less gung ho.

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:51

They don't mention anything that gives you that impression of,

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:53

I'm not ready to go just yet.

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:54

I'm really exploring, and in the discovery phase here.

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:57

To put those meetings, in a later part of the week or further down.

Kevin Dieny: 00:14:00

Reserve on people's calendars, only those appointments, in the immediate

Kevin Dieny: 00:14:05

quick, obviously we want to just get every appointment in front of

Kevin Dieny: 00:14:07

a sales person as soon as possible.

Kevin Dieny: 00:14:08

There's that feeling.

Kevin Dieny: 00:14:09

But I thought it was interesting that they were like, look we only reserve

Kevin Dieny: 00:14:13

those fast, quick appointments, like in the next day or so for

Kevin Dieny: 00:14:17

those people who are ready to go.

Kevin Dieny: 00:14:19

And then after that, the two days down the road, or three days down appointments

Kevin Dieny: 00:14:23

booked in there are kind of telling the sales person, okay, this person is

Kevin Dieny: 00:14:27

sort of in the fence, figuring it out.

Kevin Dieny: 00:14:28

And obviously that's something I think that's really hard to get a nuance of.

Kevin Dieny: 00:14:31

And you have to figure out where someone is.

Kevin Dieny: 00:14:35

You know, their buying process, but I thought that was an interesting

Kevin Dieny: 00:14:37

concept of, for the firm appointment.

Kevin Dieny: 00:14:40

You're actually dictating, you're giving them a range of when they can set that

Kevin Dieny: 00:14:44

appointment, but you're choosing that range based on their engagement upfront.

Matt Widmyer: 00:14:47

Do you have do you guys have, a propensity to

Matt Widmyer: 00:14:50

buy, like ready to go right now?

Matt Widmyer: 00:14:51

Do you guys treat those or I guess how would somebody, that's fielding

Matt Widmyer: 00:14:55

that be able to, treat that with a little more urgency versus something

Matt Widmyer: 00:14:59

that's just checking things out on the website or whatever, you know?

Donald Kelly: 00:15:03

Yeah, for me internally, the way that we do it we use

Donald Kelly: 00:15:06

Calendly to schedule appointments.

Donald Kelly: 00:15:08

So if somebody comes in, if we want to get our point with somebody on

Donald Kelly: 00:15:12

LinkedIn, it's a 15 minute appointment.

Donald Kelly: 00:15:14

We know what those are.

Donald Kelly: 00:15:16

And then we have certain time period block on our day.

Donald Kelly: 00:15:18

So those are people who are not quite firm for a specific thing.

Donald Kelly: 00:15:22

I get so many people who come and want to follow or connect with me.

Donald Kelly: 00:15:25

And we have someone that works my LinkedIn inbox.

Donald Kelly: 00:15:29

So here you go.

Donald Kelly: 00:15:30

You've seen behind now the Oz, why I can keep up with my LinkedIn

Donald Kelly: 00:15:32

inbox and then what they do is they try to categorize them.

Donald Kelly: 00:15:36

A person could be a potential, community connection or potential sale, or potential

Donald Kelly: 00:15:41

business development opportunity there.

Donald Kelly: 00:15:43

So they have different things and it will send them to different

Donald Kelly: 00:15:45

Calendly links based on that.

Donald Kelly: 00:15:46

And a similar thing with our business development team.

Donald Kelly: 00:15:48

If it's someone that we know is coming in from the website or somebody that's

Donald Kelly: 00:15:52

really interested, they're going to schedule that, that time, that learn more

Donald Kelly: 00:15:56

time and they'll give them that link.

Donald Kelly: 00:15:58

But if it's somebody that is not fully qualified, not fully vetted,

Donald Kelly: 00:16:01

put them in for that small slot.

Donald Kelly: 00:16:03

We have several of those on a calendar so they can do it that way.

Donald Kelly: 00:16:05

So that's how we tier them, so to speak.

Donald Kelly: 00:16:08

The hot, ready to learn more and potentially go, Hey, I'm just

Donald Kelly: 00:16:12

kicking tires, looking around and I want to chat with you guys, see

Donald Kelly: 00:16:15

what you get, what you really do.

Donald Kelly: 00:16:17

And that makes it, those are totally different types of appointments, but yeah.

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:21

Here's the next pivot question toward process.

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:23

How does tracking the sales process, how could tracking the sales

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:26

process Donald, lead to more sales?

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:29

How does tracking it, knowing what's going on in there...

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:31

lead to more sales?

Donald Kelly: 00:16:33

Ahh...

Donald Kelly: 00:16:36

Ooh...

Donald Kelly: 00:16:37

getting me all excited, man.

Donald Kelly: 00:16:38

Ooh, about the jump out, then go scream.

Donald Kelly: 00:16:41

Because...

Donald Kelly: 00:16:43

I know with a lot of small business owners, the way that

Donald Kelly: 00:16:46

they do it is winging it.

Donald Kelly: 00:16:46

I spoke to a business owner recently.

Donald Kelly: 00:16:48

They said that the way they keep track of their opportunities is guess what?

Donald Kelly: 00:16:52

Through Excel.

Donald Kelly: 00:16:53

And I'm like, you have got to be kidding me.

Donald Kelly: 00:16:55

Your business is doing all right, but you're going through excel.

Donald Kelly: 00:16:58

As a small business owner, you need something to keep track of that.

Donald Kelly: 00:17:02

Where is the formality?

Donald Kelly: 00:17:03

Where is the function?

Donald Kelly: 00:17:04

Where do we see the percentage, where are we at having issues?

Donald Kelly: 00:17:07

For instance, a sales process where we have the initial conversation, then maybe

Donald Kelly: 00:17:10

have a deeper discussion and maybe you have a demo and then maybe you have close.

Donald Kelly: 00:17:14

I'm just making this up super simple.

Donald Kelly: 00:17:16

If I am keeping track of that on Excel.

Donald Kelly: 00:17:18

And I'm trying to track it myself personally, without having a CRM.

Donald Kelly: 00:17:22

How am I knowing what my performance is like?

Donald Kelly: 00:17:24

Yeah, we get like 10 appointments per week.

Donald Kelly: 00:17:26

That's going into the initial conversation and, five of those

Donald Kelly: 00:17:29

convert over to deeper discussions.

Donald Kelly: 00:17:31

Imagine trying to track all of that by data.

Donald Kelly: 00:17:33

Imagine if your team could see, and you could look at a distance, say,

Donald Kelly: 00:17:35

man, we're getting a high percentage of people doing demos, but we're

Donald Kelly: 00:17:38

not getting anyone to do a sale.

Donald Kelly: 00:17:40

What is happening there?

Donald Kelly: 00:17:41

And it's an easy way for you to be able to isolate and say, well, something's

Donald Kelly: 00:17:44

going wrong with our demonstration.

Donald Kelly: 00:17:45

What are we doing?

Donald Kelly: 00:17:46

Are these people even qualified for a demo?

Donald Kelly: 00:17:48

Is there something else that we should be doing?

Donald Kelly: 00:17:49

And then maybe we're saying we're skipping over the deeper discussion because we're

Donald Kelly: 00:17:52

not getting the right people on board.

Donald Kelly: 00:17:54

We're not getting the, the right pain points before we

Donald Kelly: 00:17:56

give them a demonstration.

Donald Kelly: 00:17:57

Because we need to do better at that.

Donald Kelly: 00:17:59

And let's role play some of those practices.

Donald Kelly: 00:18:01

And then the other part to that too, once not only the idea of understanding

Donald Kelly: 00:18:03

your metrics, the other thing is that it makes your process go by quicker.

Donald Kelly: 00:18:07

Now that you have one formal process, as opposed to, well, this person's

Donald Kelly: 00:18:11

coming in, maybe I'll go this way with them, or maybe I'll do this with them.

Donald Kelly: 00:18:14

Follow the process.

Donald Kelly: 00:18:15

We know it works.

Donald Kelly: 00:18:16

Keep them all in the loop and keep them guide them throughout the process.

Donald Kelly: 00:18:19

And what happens with business owners and sales professionals is when we start

Donald Kelly: 00:18:22

skipping steps, is we start messing up and I can tell you I've done it.

Donald Kelly: 00:18:26

So I'm just, I'm speaking from experience.

Donald Kelly: 00:18:28

I can't point fingers.

Donald Kelly: 00:18:29

Anyone.

Donald Kelly: 00:18:29

I can point at this guy because I've been there where I was like, oh

Donald Kelly: 00:18:32

man, I don't need to worry about it.

Donald Kelly: 00:18:33

So I'm just going to go in.

Donald Kelly: 00:18:34

I'm just jumping to this conversation.

Donald Kelly: 00:18:36

No preparation, didn't get the right information.

Donald Kelly: 00:18:38

Didn't do the research because I skipped that step because I thought I knew more.

Donald Kelly: 00:18:41

And when I got into that conversation, it was a crappy conversation and it was

Donald Kelly: 00:18:44

almost a waste of their 30 minutes or 45 minutes and a waste of time for me.

Donald Kelly: 00:18:48

And that didn't progress towards anything because I was skipping steps

Donald Kelly: 00:18:51

and I may have lost out, a lot of times on those deals, but I came to realize,

Donald Kelly: 00:18:56

follow it, follow it, follow it.

Donald Kelly: 00:18:57

Have a religious process, pretty much with your sales process, that everyone

Donald Kelly: 00:19:00

can understand, everyone follows.

Donald Kelly: 00:19:02

And now when you bring somebody on, a new team member; they're not saying, well,

Donald Kelly: 00:19:05

Matt does it this way, and, David does it this way, and Amber does it this way.

Donald Kelly: 00:19:08

They know this is what we do.

Donald Kelly: 00:19:10

We can always optimize it.

Donald Kelly: 00:19:11

If somebody finds a better idea, a better way to do a demo or a better place

Donald Kelly: 00:19:14

to do a deeper discussion or whatnot.

Donald Kelly: 00:19:17

If we can fine tune those things, we will include that in the process, test it.

Donald Kelly: 00:19:20

But you want to test and improve rather than just winging it.

Donald Kelly: 00:19:23

You can't wing it.

Donald Kelly: 00:19:24

If you're going to really scale your business.

Donald Kelly: 00:19:25

And that's one of the harsh reality that we just need to

Donald Kelly: 00:19:27

let small business owners know.

Donald Kelly: 00:19:29

No way, no way that you're going to really get to that high growth part, if

Donald Kelly: 00:19:33

you're just going to keep winging it.

Kevin Dieny: 00:19:35

And Matt, I think you could give us a pretty good

Kevin Dieny: 00:19:38

background and history of how we've gone from notepad, walking

Kevin Dieny: 00:19:41

around sales, to what we are today.

Kevin Dieny: 00:19:46

Do you want to catch up on how you manage your team with metrics, how it evolved?

Matt Widmyer: 00:19:50

Oh, man.

Matt Widmyer: 00:19:51

I've never understood the, excel thing.

Matt Widmyer: 00:19:53

It's like, what do you guys do?

Matt Widmyer: 00:19:54

Just send to everyone at the company, your spreadsheet at

Matt Widmyer: 00:19:57

the end of the week or what?

Matt Widmyer: 00:20:00

We have a very clearly defined sales process and it still cracks me up.

Matt Widmyer: 00:20:04

But every once in a while you'll still get someone who's like, oh,

Matt Widmyer: 00:20:06

I don't use Salesforce like that.

Matt Widmyer: 00:20:08

What do you mean you don't use it like that.

Matt Widmyer: 00:20:11

I use it, this is how I use Salesforce or something like that.

Matt Widmyer: 00:20:15

Oh, you're using it wrong.

Matt Widmyer: 00:20:19

Not nearly as much of that though, as we as before, but we do have

Matt Widmyer: 00:20:22

a clearly defined sales process.

Matt Widmyer: 00:20:24

And like you said, I totally am on the same page.

Matt Widmyer: 00:20:27

And me and Kevin here, we both very much drink the Kool-Aid when it

Matt Widmyer: 00:20:31

comes to analytics and CRM reporting and stuff like that, because that

Matt Widmyer: 00:20:36

is the lifeline of our business.

Matt Widmyer: 00:20:37

I do think that by having those clearly defined stages, I think that we are

Matt Widmyer: 00:20:42

able to go in and pinpoint out rather than just say like, okay, here's our

Matt Widmyer: 00:20:46

generic training this week or whatever.

Matt Widmyer: 00:20:48

It's like now we're able to isolate out and see, where are they

Matt Widmyer: 00:20:51

falling short in the sales process.

Matt Widmyer: 00:20:53

Are you sending out a bunch of contracts and not getting many back?

Matt Widmyer: 00:20:56

Well, maybe you need to get a little bit more of a firmer commitment before

Matt Widmyer: 00:21:00

you send that thing out to start with.

Matt Widmyer: 00:21:02

Everywhere from the initial agreeing to being on an appointment to the demo,

Matt Widmyer: 00:21:07

to the price quote, to the contract.

Matt Widmyer: 00:21:10

I mean, there's something to learn but I do think that, through our

Matt Widmyer: 00:21:13

evolution, I think that one of the main things is just getting a next

Matt Widmyer: 00:21:17

step, on every single phone call.

Matt Widmyer: 00:21:19

Because if you leave it to somebody else's devices to dictate your

Matt Widmyer: 00:21:23

success, then you're doing it wrong.

Donald Kelly: 00:21:26

You know, and one of the things I think is important with that.

Donald Kelly: 00:21:28

When I work with BDRs, a lot of time, a lot of them, they're not as confident,

Donald Kelly: 00:21:32

and they're trying to discover who they are in the first place.

Donald Kelly: 00:21:35

So they will, they just, they, they get pushed around.

Donald Kelly: 00:21:39

And what I mean by this is like, if you think about it, the prospect.

Donald Kelly: 00:21:43

How often does the product, let me just ask you guys, how

Donald Kelly: 00:21:45

often does your prospects or your clients buy your solution?

Matt Widmyer: 00:21:50

It's a monthly service.

Donald Kelly: 00:21:52

And if you think about that too, when it comes towards your

Donald Kelly: 00:21:54

prospects, when they are not buying the thing every single day, they don't

Donald Kelly: 00:21:59

know they are not the expert at it.

Donald Kelly: 00:22:02

You are the expert.

Donald Kelly: 00:22:04

I am the expert.

Donald Kelly: 00:22:04

When it comes towards sales training, you're not buying sales training.

Donald Kelly: 00:22:07

This is when we get done with the initial conversation, just to

Donald Kelly: 00:22:10

give you a guidance, you may have some questions about some ideas.

Donald Kelly: 00:22:12

What the next step is.

Donald Kelly: 00:22:14

What we've seen to be the best step for folks who really want to get their sales

Donald Kelly: 00:22:17

team going, they would want to see this.

Donald Kelly: 00:22:19

So when can we set up a time that we can go and do this together?

Donald Kelly: 00:22:22

Would you like to see this?

Donald Kelly: 00:22:23

Would you like to go to the next step and go see a demonstration or see some

Donald Kelly: 00:22:26

of the services that we have to offer?

Donald Kelly: 00:22:27

Oh yeah, great.

Donald Kelly: 00:22:28

Because they don't know.

Donald Kelly: 00:22:29

It's kind of like me going to Kenya.

Donald Kelly: 00:22:31

And then I'm going to dictate, well, you know what?

Donald Kelly: 00:22:33

I want to go see this and I'm going to see, I've never been to Kenya.

Donald Kelly: 00:22:35

Well, you're my guide.

Donald Kelly: 00:22:37

Tell me where I need to go.

Donald Kelly: 00:22:38

What's the next thing I should be looking for?

Donald Kelly: 00:22:40

How should I do this?

Donald Kelly: 00:22:41

I have a idea.

Donald Kelly: 00:22:42

I know I want to see some of these things and go on a safari ride, but I don't

Donald Kelly: 00:22:45

know where to go freaking find a safari.

Donald Kelly: 00:22:46

How do I get there?

Donald Kelly: 00:22:47

What do I need to do?

Donald Kelly: 00:22:48

Should I not wear red or white?

Donald Kelly: 00:22:49

I mean, what, what is it?

Donald Kelly: 00:22:50

You know what I mean?

Donald Kelly: 00:22:51

And that's where I see the business development reps are like, okay, well,

Donald Kelly: 00:22:55

yeah, thanks for being here in Kenya.

Donald Kelly: 00:22:57

Yeah.

Donald Kelly: 00:22:57

Go for a safari ride.

Donald Kelly: 00:22:58

Let me know when you're ready.

Donald Kelly: 00:22:59

Like no, here we go.

Donald Kelly: 00:23:00

These are the times that we're going to do safari.

Donald Kelly: 00:23:01

Right?

Donald Kelly: 00:23:01

We leave at 8, 12 and 4, which are these work best for you next week or tomorrow?

Donald Kelly: 00:23:07

Great.

Donald Kelly: 00:23:08

I'll take, I'll take 4 o'clock there you go.

Donald Kelly: 00:23:10

So anyways.

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:12

Yeah.

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:12

So that is a really interesting point.

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:15

And brings me to a question for you, Donald.

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:18

So there is a point where someone is just not going to buy and when we talk about

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:24

it together, we're like, okay, when do we have to close loss an opportunity?

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:28

When do we have to let something go?

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:29

Like, we put a lot into this.

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:32

We're not necessarily saying, look, we're never going to talk to you again.

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:34

We're never going to email again, never going to market.

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:35

You again, we're just like, look, we're taking this off our serious pipeline

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:39

and putting you into a different place.

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:41

And then when you're ready, let's move forward.

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:42

So how do you figure out when to give up on something, it's

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:47

just not going to get there.

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:48

Because before it's like, okay we need to get these guys to be a little

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:51

more firm, a little more objective, a little bit more this is how

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:54

things need to work as the guide.

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:55

But when is the guide supposed to say, okay, look, you're just, this is a safari.

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:59

If you're not here for that.

Kevin Dieny: 00:24:00

There's another place for you.

Kevin Dieny: 00:24:01

You know what I mean?

Kevin Dieny: 00:24:02

How does that go?

Donald Kelly: 00:24:04

Yeah.

Donald Kelly: 00:24:05

And I think it goes back down to your qualifications, the things that your

Donald Kelly: 00:24:08

metrics that you want to look at.

Donald Kelly: 00:24:09

If someone misses an appointment twice, or maybe it's three times we reschedule

Donald Kelly: 00:24:15

and they missed it, we reach out to them reschedule and missed it, well reach out.

Donald Kelly: 00:24:18

Well, clearly they're not either they're super busy and maybe somebody else in

Donald Kelly: 00:24:22

the company should be the one doing this, or perhaps they're just not interested.

Donald Kelly: 00:24:26

That would be the first thing that I look at personally.

Donald Kelly: 00:24:29

Let's find somebody else that could be the best fit in the organization.

Donald Kelly: 00:24:33

Number two, if I know they're not qualified for what we're doing.

Donald Kelly: 00:24:37

Or even if they're not ready for one of our programs right now we have these

Donald Kelly: 00:24:40

programs and these things, and I've had people who, you know, they can't do it.

Donald Kelly: 00:24:43

So we, we downshift, right.

Donald Kelly: 00:24:44

We give them lower offerings and if they can't take any of those offerings, we

Donald Kelly: 00:24:49

put them on some kind of drip campaign or a maintain relationship, put them

Donald Kelly: 00:24:52

in an educational campaign or whatnot.

Donald Kelly: 00:24:54

And those people may be six months or a year later raised their hands and now

Donald Kelly: 00:24:57

they're fully qualified and are capable.

Donald Kelly: 00:25:00

But I want to see first if they, #1, if they can't fulfill any

Donald Kelly: 00:25:03

of those qualifications step, if they're not looking for training.

Donald Kelly: 00:25:07

They don't have the budget.

Donald Kelly: 00:25:09

They're not the right contact.

Donald Kelly: 00:25:10

And I'm going to find somebody else in the organization.

Donald Kelly: 00:25:12

If they're the main decision-maker and they're just, they don't click those.

Donald Kelly: 00:25:15

Then we take them off and put them somewhere else.

Donald Kelly: 00:25:17

And then the other piece is if they're missing appointments, if they're not

Donald Kelly: 00:25:20

taking the appointment and clearly that's, to me, this is not important to them.

Donald Kelly: 00:25:24

And my time is valuable.

Donald Kelly: 00:25:25

So I want to make sure I get the people who are going to be worthy, so

Donald Kelly: 00:25:28

to speak, of me having an interaction with and vice versa that they recognize

Donald Kelly: 00:25:33

the value of their own time and want to maintain that relationship with me.

Donald Kelly: 00:25:36

I don't know if that makes sense.

Donald Kelly: 00:25:37

I don't know what you guys do internally, Matt, something to that nature?

Matt Widmyer: 00:25:40

No, it totally does.

Matt Widmyer: 00:25:41

If you're chasing somebody down to even get them on an appointment, it tells

Matt Widmyer: 00:25:44

you a little bit about what kind of client they're going to be from day one.

Matt Widmyer: 00:25:47

Right.

Matt Widmyer: 00:25:47

We want to make sure the, value is there from the beginning for absolutely.

Kevin Dieny: 00:25:51

So Matt, then here's a question for you and you can

Kevin Dieny: 00:25:54

be, let's tell it brutally honest.

Kevin Dieny: 00:25:57

Who do you blame when the sale goes wrong?

Kevin Dieny: 00:25:58

How do you figure that out?

Kevin Dieny: 00:26:01

We have to blame someone, it doesn't have to be a scapegoat for

Kevin Dieny: 00:26:03

everything, but obviously we want to learn from the ones we lose.

Kevin Dieny: 00:26:07

And we want to be able to figure out, okay, is this a pattern?

Kevin Dieny: 00:26:10

And if it's a pattern and it's caused by something that we're

Kevin Dieny: 00:26:12

doing, then we want to fix it.

Kevin Dieny: 00:26:14

Obviously, if it's something to do with the qualification on the phone, then

Kevin Dieny: 00:26:17

that's things you want to train on.

Kevin Dieny: 00:26:18

But what if it's the thing that marketing just loves to

Kevin Dieny: 00:26:22

hear, "These leads are crap."

Kevin Dieny: 00:26:24

So how you figure out who and what to blame for these things going bad?

Kevin Dieny: 00:26:28

Matt, you could be brutally honest here.

Matt Widmyer: 00:26:29

Hey, I came, I was on the marketing the team for a while too.

Matt Widmyer: 00:26:32

I got a lot of that as well.

Matt Widmyer: 00:26:33

Like, Hey, these things is a waste of my time.

Matt Widmyer: 00:26:37

These leads suck.

Matt Widmyer: 00:26:38

No, you suck.

Matt Widmyer: 00:26:38

And then that's all the whole conversation right how it goes.

Matt Widmyer: 00:26:41

But, I don't really, I don't point the finger right away to answer your question.

Matt Widmyer: 00:26:45

I don't really point the finger right away.

Matt Widmyer: 00:26:46

I look and see what's going on.

Matt Widmyer: 00:26:48

Evaluate the situation.

Matt Widmyer: 00:26:50

Everybody has their one off day, right?

Matt Widmyer: 00:26:51

Crappy leads come in.

Matt Widmyer: 00:26:52

Doesn't matter how hard you try to avoid them.

Matt Widmyer: 00:26:54

They'll come in.

Matt Widmyer: 00:26:55

Salespeople will botch things.

Matt Widmyer: 00:26:57

They won't admit it, but they'll botch things every once and again,

Matt Widmyer: 00:27:00

and think about it afterwards.

Matt Widmyer: 00:27:02

We do, we record, inbound calls.

Matt Widmyer: 00:27:04

Right?

Matt Widmyer: 00:27:04

So we are able to dive really deep into it and see.

Matt Widmyer: 00:27:08

I don't really like playing the whole, you should have done this.

Matt Widmyer: 00:27:11

You should have done that game.

Matt Widmyer: 00:27:12

It always reminds me of being in Vegas, like playing blackjack

Matt Widmyer: 00:27:15

and the dealers like, you bust.

Matt Widmyer: 00:27:16

And the dealer's like, oh, well, you should've done this.

Matt Widmyer: 00:27:18

It's like, okay.

Matt Widmyer: 00:27:19

Why didn't you say that before?

Matt Widmyer: 00:27:21

Thanks for the after the fact advice.

Matt Widmyer: 00:27:23

I think, if it was a really important one, it just really depends on the

Matt Widmyer: 00:27:26

size of it and the potential of it.

Matt Widmyer: 00:27:28

And if I think something's really awesome and it gets botched, I'll look

Matt Widmyer: 00:27:31

into the, usually the activity history and see if we missed it somewhere,

Matt Widmyer: 00:27:35

that's a training opportunity.

Matt Widmyer: 00:27:36

But I think for the most part, if you're telling me that, Kevin

Matt Widmyer: 00:27:41

specifically, you're telling me that, hey, I have an influx of tier-one 'A'

Matt Widmyer: 00:27:44

leads coming through, and then, it's somebody interested in things that

Matt Widmyer: 00:27:48

we don't do or we can't solve for it.

Matt Widmyer: 00:27:50

I'll let you know.

Matt Widmyer: 00:27:51

Yeah, absolutely.

Matt Widmyer: 00:27:52

I think the main thing is these conversations, you stay away

Matt Widmyer: 00:27:55

from the blame game, right?

Matt Widmyer: 00:27:56

Cause that can go on for hours.

Matt Widmyer: 00:27:57

You just stick to the facts.

Matt Widmyer: 00:27:58

Okay.

Matt Widmyer: 00:27:59

What's what's happening here?

Matt Widmyer: 00:28:00

What happened with this?

Matt Widmyer: 00:28:01

What happened with that?

Matt Widmyer: 00:28:02

What can we do next time?

Matt Widmyer: 00:28:03

And then it's, it's always learning, tweaking, improving.

Matt Widmyer: 00:28:06

It's a cycle.

Matt Widmyer: 00:28:06

Right?

Donald Kelly: 00:28:07

What I love about that too, Matt.

Donald Kelly: 00:28:08

What I love about what you're saying there too is like encouraging the sales team,

Donald Kelly: 00:28:12

but it's the idea of let's look at it and see did I do something wrong first.

Donald Kelly: 00:28:18

What could I have done?

Donald Kelly: 00:28:20

Cause even if something did get crappy, you took it.

Donald Kelly: 00:28:23

You had it.

Donald Kelly: 00:28:25

What was there something that you could have done better?

Donald Kelly: 00:28:27

So let's say Kevin did toss over a lead and it wasn't fully qualified.

Donald Kelly: 00:28:32

Now do I just say, well, crap, Kevin, that was a crappy lead or could I

Donald Kelly: 00:28:35

have said, well, maybe we can educate this person a little bit more.

Donald Kelly: 00:28:39

How could I help them to better understand our firm?

Donald Kelly: 00:28:42

How can I do a better job?

Donald Kelly: 00:28:44

Can I help them go a little bit further?

Donald Kelly: 00:28:46

Maybe they don't qualify for this product, could I get them to this other product?

Donald Kelly: 00:28:49

And that's where your salesmanship come in, like your capability

Donald Kelly: 00:28:52

to help identify problems and to help somebody to grow from there.

Donald Kelly: 00:28:56

I think it's better off to look at it as a team problem.

Donald Kelly: 00:28:59

I played soccer in middle school and soccer is one of those games.

Donald Kelly: 00:29:03

You can't just say, well, I did my part.

Donald Kelly: 00:29:05

I scored, but the team lost, well, you guys suck.

Donald Kelly: 00:29:10

That's not how it works.

Donald Kelly: 00:29:11

Even though you can score all the points, you can do the very, very

Donald Kelly: 00:29:13

best at your job, but we are a team so we can collectively look and

Donald Kelly: 00:29:17

see, how can we perform better?

Donald Kelly: 00:29:19

Well, could I drop back and help out a little bit more with defense?

Donald Kelly: 00:29:22

Because we were up so many points.

Donald Kelly: 00:29:24

The other team was scoring a lot as well.

Donald Kelly: 00:29:26

Could I do more to play defensively, to help prevent the guys from getting

Donald Kelly: 00:29:30

down to my goalie in the first place?

Donald Kelly: 00:29:32

And I think that's how we look at it in this vein, like

Donald Kelly: 00:29:35

what could I have done better?

Donald Kelly: 00:29:37

What was my responsibility?

Donald Kelly: 00:29:38

And if we all take that type of aspect and there's no blame, it's the team loss.

Donald Kelly: 00:29:43

So screw it.

Donald Kelly: 00:29:44

You guys, we all suck.

Donald Kelly: 00:29:46

We all need to improve.

Donald Kelly: 00:29:47

It's not one person.

Donald Kelly: 00:29:48

And I love that approach.

Kevin Dieny: 00:29:50

So management is looking at that or trying to be like, okay,

Kevin Dieny: 00:29:53

here's what's going on with this person.

Kevin Dieny: 00:29:54

Here's what's going on with that person.

Kevin Dieny: 00:29:56

And then they're trying to either coach or mentor or train or is there something

Kevin Dieny: 00:30:00

that my team doesn't have control of that another team does that we could influence?

Kevin Dieny: 00:30:05

So putting that all out there, everything we've talked about, and that is how in

Kevin Dieny: 00:30:11

the next 90 days, let's say, what kind of advice would we give to businesses

Kevin Dieny: 00:30:16

who want to increase their appointment to sale ratio, or they're getting

Kevin Dieny: 00:30:19

more appointments turned into sales.

Kevin Dieny: 00:30:22

So Donald, any thing that stood out to you or that you'd want to make sure

Kevin Dieny: 00:30:26

that a business is thinking about so that it can turn more appointments

Kevin Dieny: 00:30:29

into sales and they want to do it urgently and in the next 90 days?

Donald Kelly: 00:30:33

The first thing, if you don't have the process,

Donald Kelly: 00:30:35

you got to have the process.

Donald Kelly: 00:30:36

It will save you.

Donald Kelly: 00:30:38

It will make such a world of difference.

Donald Kelly: 00:30:40

Let me just give you an example.

Donald Kelly: 00:30:41

90 days from now.

Donald Kelly: 00:30:42

And let's say you have a team, you have two business development rep

Donald Kelly: 00:30:45

and yourself, they set appointments for you and you close the deals.

Donald Kelly: 00:30:48

Let's just follow that.

Donald Kelly: 00:30:49

We need to make sure if they don't have this in place, they know

Donald Kelly: 00:30:52

exactly what a zebra looks like.

Donald Kelly: 00:30:54

And I'm giving a big shout at my friends over selling to zebra.

Donald Kelly: 00:30:56

They need to know a zebra is black and white stripes.

Donald Kelly: 00:30:59

You can't make any mistakes on that.

Donald Kelly: 00:31:00

This is what an ideal customer for us looks like.

Donald Kelly: 00:31:02

Great.

Donald Kelly: 00:31:03

This is what you'd need to ask to see if this person is a zebra.

Donald Kelly: 00:31:07

If they're an ideal customer for us, perfect.

Donald Kelly: 00:31:09

And then once they're on that conversation, this is a flow of

Donald Kelly: 00:31:13

what you're doing on those initial conversations to make sure it happened.

Donald Kelly: 00:31:16

Great, and then even before that, this is what you need to do to

Donald Kelly: 00:31:20

ensure that appointments come in.

Donald Kelly: 00:31:22

If it's on my team, one of the things we do is we connect

Donald Kelly: 00:31:24

with a person on LinkedIn.

Donald Kelly: 00:31:25

So we have the text messaging going on, but I might reach out to you and say,

Donald Kelly: 00:31:29

Hey, Matt, super excited to meet with you, super excited to chat with you next week.

Donald Kelly: 00:31:32

It would be an honor here to connect on LinkedIn, permission to connect.

Donald Kelly: 00:31:36

Like, oh, great.

Donald Kelly: 00:31:36

This person's reaching out to me already.

Donald Kelly: 00:31:38

And then marketing is already on top of that sending reminder messages.

Donald Kelly: 00:31:41

And then the sales person has the appointment confirmed.

Donald Kelly: 00:31:43

So we're doing those things so we can cover those bases.

Donald Kelly: 00:31:46

And then I can, continue to guide Matt.

Donald Kelly: 00:31:48

And I can engage on some of his posts or some of his content on LinkedIn.

Donald Kelly: 00:31:52

Because I'm just trying to let them know, Hey, I'm here.

Donald Kelly: 00:31:54

I'm looking forward to chatting with you in a couple of weeks.

Donald Kelly: 00:31:56

And I say, oh Matt, I love that point.

Donald Kelly: 00:31:57

You made on this blog post blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Donald Kelly: 00:31:59

But at least I am prepping.

Donald Kelly: 00:32:01

And that likelihood of Matt canceling with a friend decreases significantly.

Donald Kelly: 00:32:06

And then once they come into the meeting, we know exactly

Donald Kelly: 00:32:09

what the BDRs are going to say.

Donald Kelly: 00:32:11

Exactly the process they're going to follow.

Donald Kelly: 00:32:13

And that more than likely will help us to be able to get to a sale.

Donald Kelly: 00:32:15

And anyone could do that.

Donald Kelly: 00:32:16

You can sit down and write that stuff out today.

Donald Kelly: 00:32:19

And if you don't know it, look at, sit down with one of your BDRs tomorrow

Donald Kelly: 00:32:22

and find out what is the best one.

Donald Kelly: 00:32:24

What is it that you guys are doing to get the best appointment, to get people

Donald Kelly: 00:32:26

to show up to your appointment and to turn into opportunities and sales.

Donald Kelly: 00:32:30

Listen to what they say recorded on your phone.

Donald Kelly: 00:32:33

And it's beautiful.

Donald Kelly: 00:32:34

And now you have your process there and make sure everybody follows that.

Donald Kelly: 00:32:38

That's what I would say in the next 90 days somebody could do.

Kevin Dieny: 00:32:43

Man.

Kevin Dieny: 00:32:43

I love hearing things like that because we're like, as Matt has said before,

Kevin Dieny: 00:32:45

in the past, we are CRM, fanboys.

Kevin Dieny: 00:32:48

We're all about the data and the process.

Kevin Dieny: 00:32:51

And not everyone thinks in that way, but that's why Donald's saying you

Kevin Dieny: 00:32:54

don't have to be, you know, a NASA scientist here to figure this out.

Kevin Dieny: 00:32:58

What is simply, what has to happen to make the sale.

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:01

And then what, along that path are we able to track and what are we

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:03

not, if there's a gap there, like, okay, well, I can track up to this

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:07

point, but at this point I can't.

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:09

Maybe there's a tool or maybe there's something, what is that

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:11

worth to you to be able to.

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:13

See, what's failing there and then to be able to train and move forward with it.

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:18

We're kind of at the cusp of time though, the last little thing, if

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:22

you could talk about it quickly, Donald would be coaching, mentoring,

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:25

training your team, how do leaders get their team following it and how

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:28

they get their team excited about it?

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:30

If you have something pretty brief, you could touch on there?

Donald Kelly: 00:33:33

I call it money and fire.

Donald Kelly: 00:33:35

If you do it right, you get more money.

Donald Kelly: 00:33:37

If you don't, you get fired.

Donald Kelly: 00:33:39

No.

Donald Kelly: 00:33:40

No .

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:44

That's awesome.

Donald Kelly: 00:33:45

I might have to use that.

Donald Kelly: 00:33:46

That probably is a new book, I'm going to write now, money and fire.

Donald Kelly: 00:33:50

Haha na, but I think one of the best things you can do

Donald Kelly: 00:33:54

is never, ever, ever assume.

Donald Kelly: 00:33:56

And it sounds like you guys do a fantastic job of not assuming

Donald Kelly: 00:33:59

with looking at the data there.

Donald Kelly: 00:34:01

But when I, when I meet with my team, one of the things is to make sure the

Donald Kelly: 00:34:05

schedule times I've made the mistake before, where I assumed that the team

Donald Kelly: 00:34:09

knew exactly what they're supposed to do.

Donald Kelly: 00:34:10

There was a process in place, but they just didn't follow it and

Donald Kelly: 00:34:13

give a perfect example was me.

Donald Kelly: 00:34:14

I was working as a software sales rep and I was doing pretty decent.

Donald Kelly: 00:34:17

I was one of the top performers on the team and I met with my manager on cue

Donald Kelly: 00:34:21

every single month I met with Laurie every month for my coaching session.

Donald Kelly: 00:34:25

She knew that we were trying to save money.

Donald Kelly: 00:34:27

She knew we wanted to do some travel and buy a house, all this stuff.

Donald Kelly: 00:34:30

So she knew what we were doing.

Donald Kelly: 00:34:32

She understood my personal goal and then how I could accomplish that.

Donald Kelly: 00:34:35

And for me, just vocalizing that to someone.

Donald Kelly: 00:34:37

And someone that was like a mentor that I looked up to and respected.

Donald Kelly: 00:34:40

And then someone that was able to give me feedback and guidance, it helped.

Donald Kelly: 00:34:44

And I was able to go out and apply.

Donald Kelly: 00:34:45

But Laurie, she was a selling manager.

Donald Kelly: 00:34:47

And then what started happening, we started to do pretty

Donald Kelly: 00:34:50

decent as an organization.

Donald Kelly: 00:34:51

So she felt that we didn't need to do those coaching and the executive team.

Donald Kelly: 00:34:54

So we stopped doing the coaching.

Donald Kelly: 00:34:56

But gradually what started happening with the sales team?

Donald Kelly: 00:34:58

It's not that we're all a bunch of crap, idiots.

Donald Kelly: 00:35:01

It's just that, because we won't have that consistent accountability and that

Donald Kelly: 00:35:04

coaching, our performance just decreased a little bit and it wasn't until they,

Donald Kelly: 00:35:07

the executive team recognized that.

Donald Kelly: 00:35:09

And I mentioned it to her.

Donald Kelly: 00:35:10

I was like, I liked our coaching session.

Donald Kelly: 00:35:12

We started to see an uptake again, because the team had that

Donald Kelly: 00:35:15

one-on-one with their leader.

Donald Kelly: 00:35:17

It's like a parent.

Donald Kelly: 00:35:18

You give them a roof over their head and you give them food.

Donald Kelly: 00:35:20

I mean, technically yes, you're a parent, but if you were to sit down

Donald Kelly: 00:35:24

with your kid and just have some time, tell me about school today.

Donald Kelly: 00:35:26

How was your, how was your classes?

Donald Kelly: 00:35:28

Let me read you some stories.

Donald Kelly: 00:35:29

Let me find out how your homework's doing and let's review it together.

Donald Kelly: 00:35:32

That's much better parenting than just like saying, eat go school and good luck.

Donald Kelly: 00:35:38

You're out at 18.

Donald Kelly: 00:35:39

It's like, no, I want to be that better parent.

Donald Kelly: 00:35:43

And it's the same idea with coaching a team?

Donald Kelly: 00:35:45

Is it perfect?

Donald Kelly: 00:35:46

Absolutely not.

Donald Kelly: 00:35:47

Am I always on there doing everything every single moment?

Donald Kelly: 00:35:50

No, you mess up and you miss times and the meetings need to be changed for

Donald Kelly: 00:35:55

coaching sessions and I've missed months.

Donald Kelly: 00:35:57

But the point is you just, you keep it consistent and you do it as much as

Donald Kelly: 00:36:01

you can to be consistent and be there.

Donald Kelly: 00:36:02

I I've also seen like being in those weekly team meetings and being a part

Donald Kelly: 00:36:06

of that huddle and, and getting them to practice with you and seeing you, I

Donald Kelly: 00:36:11

mean, I'd make phone calls too with them.

Donald Kelly: 00:36:12

And when I do that, it's amazing.

Donald Kelly: 00:36:14

So what happened with that performance?

Donald Kelly: 00:36:16

Not that they're incompetent.

Donald Kelly: 00:36:17

It's just the fact that you're there.

Donald Kelly: 00:36:19

It's being that pep rally.

Donald Kelly: 00:36:20

And the one last thing I remember my mom, she worked and, she had

Donald Kelly: 00:36:23

her schedule changed at one point.

Donald Kelly: 00:36:25

So she was home when we got home.

Donald Kelly: 00:36:26

And it was cool.

Donald Kelly: 00:36:27

And sometimes she was there and the fact that she was

Donald Kelly: 00:36:30

just home, I was like excited.

Donald Kelly: 00:36:32

And I could go and do my thing and play outside or whatever.

Donald Kelly: 00:36:34

And she's like, how was your day?

Donald Kelly: 00:36:35

It was good.

Donald Kelly: 00:36:36

Blah, blah, blah.

Donald Kelly: 00:36:36

I want to go watch TV now.

Donald Kelly: 00:36:37

But when the days when I came home and she wasn't home, I was like where's

Donald Kelly: 00:36:40

mom, where's mom, where's she at?

Donald Kelly: 00:36:43

So I don't know if that makes sense, but your presence just makes it

Donald Kelly: 00:36:46

a whole big difference for your sales team, it inspires them.

Kevin Dieny: 00:36:49

Sounds like a lot of the things that you're doing over there, Matt.

Matt Widmyer: 00:36:51

Yeah.

Matt Widmyer: 00:36:52

Yeah.

Matt Widmyer: 00:36:52

I like the best Kings, grab their swords and go into battle with their Knights too.

Matt Widmyer: 00:36:56

Right.

Matt Widmyer: 00:36:56

I love that.

Donald Kelly: 00:36:58

Yes, unless you're trying to get rid of all of them.

Donald Kelly: 00:36:59

Just send them out there on the front lines.

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:05

well, so thank you so much Donald for coming on.

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:09

We've really narrowed down a lot of good ideas about turning more appointments into

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:14

sales, focusing on the process, focusing on the coaching tracking what's going on,

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:18

having a good idea of where things are at.

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:21

The right amount of time on things, knowing when to let things go and

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:25

then coaching and mentoring and, and constantly improving along the way.

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:28

All those tools are pretty essential for management or for a sales

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:31

person or for someone who's helping appointments turn into sales.

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:36

The alignment there with marketing we were mentioning and other departments, support,

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:38

whatever it is, IT, operations any kind of company could probably benefit from all

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:42

of the things we've talked about today.

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:45

So thank you Donald for coming in.

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:46

And is there any way that you'd like to share, that people can get to know

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:50

more about you, about your company?

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:51

Anything that you do or follow up with you?

Donald Kelly: 00:37:54

Yeah.

Donald Kelly: 00:37:54

If you find that you're in a position where, you do your

Donald Kelly: 00:37:57

very best to set appointments.

Donald Kelly: 00:37:59

You're having conversations, you're sending proposals, you're doing

Donald Kelly: 00:38:03

everything that you thought that you need to do with your prospect.

Donald Kelly: 00:38:06

And you're still not getting those deals closed.

Donald Kelly: 00:38:09

We can help with that.

Donald Kelly: 00:38:10

That's where my team and I come in, we have different programs.

Donald Kelly: 00:38:12

We have one-on-one coaching.

Donald Kelly: 00:38:14

We work with individuals, we work with group coaching, working with teams, and

Donald Kelly: 00:38:18

we also do consulting where one of me or one of our consultants work with an

Donald Kelly: 00:38:22

organization, develop their playbooks and their processes and guide them.

Donald Kelly: 00:38:25

And we also have cohorts where we do a business development training.

Donald Kelly: 00:38:28

Every other month we have different programs, mindset is a really popular one.

Donald Kelly: 00:38:31

We have people join that we partner with Pacific Institute and it's

Donald Kelly: 00:38:34

built all around science, so people know what to do, but helping them to

Donald Kelly: 00:38:38

maximize how to do it every single day.

Donald Kelly: 00:38:40

So from our training programs, one-on-one coaching to group coaching, masterminds,

Donald Kelly: 00:38:44

so consulting, they can find all of that by going to thesalesevangelist.com.

Donald Kelly: 00:38:48

And if you just want to connect with me and, chat, you can also connect

Donald Kelly: 00:38:52

with me on LinkedIn or any platform.

Donald Kelly: 00:38:53

Donald C.

Donald Kelly: 00:38:54

Kelly.

Kevin Dieny: 00:38:55

He's also got a great podcast called the sales evangelist

Kevin Dieny: 00:38:57

podcast, I would check it out.

Donald Kelly: 00:38:59

Check it out!

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:01

Yeah all right, so thank you guys.

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:02

Thank you so much for coming on and our listeners, we really

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:04

appreciate you listening and hope you got a lot out of this.

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:07

Thanks Matt.

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:08

Thanks Donald.

Matt Widmyer: 00:39:09

Thanks guys.

Matt Widmyer: 00:39:10

Thanks Donald.

Matt Widmyer: 00:39:10

Good having you, man.