Ross Pomerantz (aka Corporate Bro)
So it was a way for me to separate it mentally from like my own self worth.

Pouyan Salehi
Did you come up with a separate name for this persona too?

Ross
No I created a persona called Corporate Bro at some point. And that was everything I wanted to be and wanted to try. That way if I failed, it was Corporate Bro's fault and not Ross's fault.

Pouyan
What does Corporate Bro do I haven't heard of it?

Ross
He's just a... He's a marketer.

Pouyan
Well, we're back. I'm Pouyan from Scratchpad.  We've got Corp. Excited to have Donald with us.

Donald Kelly
Excited to be here.

Ross
Do people call you DK? Because I'm going to do that.

Donald
You know, only like friends call me DK. So the fact that you knew

Ross
So I shouldn't do that.

Donald
You can come into that circle now. So you know, some people call me DK.

Pouyan
I'm just gonna sneak in right behind Ross on that. But first, I've got a question for you as a sales trainer. Why is it that in sales training, repetition, is required more than any other training?

Donald
Oh, dude, 100%? How much time do I have?

Pouyan
Let's go with this. I mean, even even with the basics, right? Like  ask a question. Get curious.

Donald
Yeah. So I I'm a firm believer, our foundational principles that we teach are all built on just mastering fundamental concepts of sales. Most training that I've been through, and a lot of them that you've probably sat through, is like, you know, you come in, and they do like a couple of days or do like a week-long thing and it's beautiful. But the studies show that retention of that is like 17%. So it's kind of stupid money that you're putting money into and it's going right out the door. What we discovered, and it's just from my stupid experience, like mistakes that I've made and learned was... and we stumbled on this. I mean, I'm not saying I'm a genius, but when I was first started creating one of our courses, they said, If you don't have content for your course, yet, don't worry about it, don't build it all just build week by week. And I was like, shoot, let me do that. So I started building my course. And our program just like each week. Because that's doing a lot of coaching and analysis, like, this one on one, I need to do one too many. So we started doing a training program and I told the folks, hey sign up for the program, we're going to have the first stuff this week and the next week, and then so forth. But what we saw was that people were actually getting stuff done each week. And then after the course got done, we started going back. Because the way are training is designed, you come in you watch the modules. And then at the end of the week, or sometime during the week, we have a group training session where we roleplay and practice and stuff. And now you're building on it. But again, this was all by accident. Because what started to happen, people started to really love those group sessions to really start to have the accountability. They were sending their emails, they were saying check this out, they were sharing the recordings of their calls. And we started to really dissect and they started really having better improvements. So we're like, holy crap, we just found out something great. Let's build all of our programs like this. And what we saw was that repetition was important because it was now instead of over the course of two days, we're going to teach you how to do cold outreach and use LinkedIn navigator as well. It's like now this week, let's focus on this part of LinkedIn, let's focus on this part of navigator. Now let's focus on the writing of the email. And then let's focus on using a phone. So then over a course of like, five, six weeks, they build the habits, they're practicing the stuff, they have accountability in the group, because nobody wants to show up the next week and sound like an idiot, because they didn't do the stuff where the email looked like garbage. So that repetition was critical. And the important part is like there's so much in sales that you just can't - it's like any other sports or any other like talents that you have. You got to keep doing it over and over and over and over and over again. And I've seen and you all have seen it too where you have folks who are veteran sellers, who have been selling for a while. It's like they have one year of sales experience over 30 years. Because they didn't do anything else to add on to it. They didn't build that reputation, and they almost became lethargic with their muscles, quote unquote, sales muscles, because they don't, they're not practicing their questions. They're asking dumb questions. And they're not being more than not being proactive in their efforts. So I went on there for a minute.

Pouyan
So is there is there the equivalent of a batting cage for asking questions?

Donald
Oh, bro, there is, I think the biggest -

Pouyan
Where is it and how can I get access to it?

Donald
I feel one of the best things you can do is just get into some groups.  Like there are different groups that you can take advantage of on LinkedIn, or even on Facebook and just go there. But the easiest thing that I did, I just found somebody else in my company and I just asked them and that was really helpful for me. So for anyone - and I think the problem that we find is that if we give salespeople this opportunity to go and find this group per se, as that option. It's going to delay their  opportunities. They're going to make excuses. But if you just find somebody in your company and toss a couple emails at them, toss a couple questions at them, and ask them what they think about this. That idea of doing that alone will help to increase their performance because you got to have that accountability. You have somebody else on the outside. Join our Facebook group for goodness sakes. The Sales Evangelizers or LinkedIn group and you can do the same idea. And we're also building an app and a community where we have people doing that stuff, but you don't necessarily need to do that. You could just find a couple of people in your company and just do that with them.

Ross
Are there dumb questions? I have a theory.

Donald
Well, I think there's a... I think it -

Ross
The answers yes!

Donald
I was gonna try to get political here for you.

Ross
I have many questions about sales training, but I feel like maybe we should work chronologically, and start with the mangoes.

Donald
So it's all start once upon a time and a man me a ree is pon is the mango field a Jamaica. And den me daddy say you have to go sell some mango en a wan if you want to eat dinner. So it started with this. In Jamaica, you ever been outside the country to like South America or any of those other countries? They have like little tiendas -

Ross
I've actually been to Jamaica.

Donald
Everyone has like these little convenient - not everyone. Every community has like a little like a convenience store. But it's really a shop. On somebody's house. And they sell like the staple products like rice and like, you know, beans and whatever, meat, simple things. And there was a group across the street from our house and they were bigger, and their shop they had like actual toys and stuff. So don't tell my family just but I'll go over there and go look at their toys and play with their stuff. So their competitors, and they had this like Ninja on this bike. And I was like, dang, that is cool. I want that. And I needed money. So a little bit before this, my cousins had told me to climb the mango tree because I'm the skinniest and the youngest kid and it was a skinny smaller tree to go get mangoes. So I've got these mangoes and I'm like if people want the mangoes, like my family, maybe I could sell mangoes. So I climbed a tree and I picked some mangoes and I put these mangoes on this flower stand that my aunt had and put it out right there next to the front gate. And I was like, bro, I'm going to sell some mangoes and I'm going to make some money and I'm going to buy this ninja bike and it's going to be the best thing. And absolutely no one bought anything from me. So I went bigger and said I'm gonna get cookies as well. So I had cookies, I put them in baggies, cookies and mangoes, who's going to refuse that? Bro I ate more cookies than anyone bought. So I think I sold probably like two bags and those people just had pity on me. The point is, I started doing that and I realized that there's a lot of things that I wasn't doing correctly. Long story short, I never got the ninja bike. So if you want to buy me a ninja on a bike, that'd be cool. I would love that now.

Ross
I'll add that to my Google cookies search. So I start getting those ads.

Donald
Thank you. You're gonna get it through [Sendoso] and they're gonna be a "ninja bike." So but the idea though, I learned a lot from it. Because there are certain people selling in Jamaica, mangoes, and all the mangoes that they were selling weren't different from the mangoes coming from my yard. I mean, all the trees are like, pretty much all come from the island. The fruits all come from the same island. What made one person more successful than the other? But it did teach me a lot. One of the biggest mistakes I made is that I was inside the gate when I was selling my products. I didn't open the gate. Kind of a novel idea, right? I thought people could see me, it was like those metal gates. And I didn't go out and talk to anyone I just sat back and waited. And as you saw what people were doing like in a market that were actually killing it, professionals at selling, street cart vendors, they were doing all those things that I wasn't doing. And later on in my life, I came to the U.S. and I wised up. I started selling candy, I went to Albertson's, I was that kid with a backpack full of like candy and then one textbook. And I was making good money doing that. And then I went to high school and I started creating my own little business and selling things so the mangoes started to evolve, right? And then I went to college and my buddies were like bro, you should consider doing sales so I started doing DISH Network and did decent with that. Then I went to timeshare started selling people through timeshare presentations. And eventually door to door security and did some IT training classes. And when I got into the b2b world, it was really like that's when I saw the Holy Grail because you're selling these bigger items and larger prices. And it was like this is cool. And you know Nelly right? Nelly has a song that says "I'm like Folgers I'm young, black and rich." So my buddies in college they're like, "bro, you're making all this money. Like in college. You're Folgers." So my nickname in college was Folgers young, black and rich.

Pouyan
But it seems like you learned an important lesson. That I think a lot of first time founders after having raised millions and now tens of millions learn which is, if you build it, they may not come.

Donald
No.

Pouyan
If you get the mangoes and you put them on a box, they may still not come to buy them.

Donald
There's just so much more to it than that. And I think it's one of the principles I talked about in my recent book is that it's not about the product. So many people will talk about the race car versus the driver. And I think so much of it has to do with the driver in the sense that it's the sales reps versus the product. Anyone could probably sell the software or the products that we have but can somebody really thrive? What makes the top performers? And that fascinates me and we've studied some of those folks, and we've had them on a podcast. And we saw what they have done and what they consistently do, and it aligns with the principles of really good mangoes sellers, right? They're creative, they have a process, they stick to that process, they master fundamentals. They've honed their pitch, they've practiced and [sales] becomes a part of them. And when we went back to Jamaica in 2017, we saw this lady and she was selling trinkets at one of the tourist shops. And bro, it was like everything that she did was in line with like what a b2b seller would do. Obviously, this is shorter process. But it helped me to realize that I could learn so much from the street card vendors that I could apply to my sales efforts. And it all comes back down to not just a product, it's the individual.

Ross
I think that's very real. The performative aspect of sales. That's what it always was for me. I think a lot of people feel like it has to be themselves. I think a lot of introverts who thrive in sales have their selling voice. They have a specific way that's not the same at home necessarily. And they go and they execute that thing. And I think for me, it personally helped separate failures that I had, where it's like, oh, the performance didn't hit as well. Here, let me adjust this performance. This isn't a Ross issue. This is a Ross's performance issue.

Donald
Yeah.

Ross
And so it was a way for me to separate it mentally from my own self worth.

Pouyan
Did you come up with a separate name for this persona too? You're like, this was Roger's failure, not Ross.

Ross
I know some people who did do that. No, I created a persona called Corporate Bro at some point. And that was everything I wanted to be and wanted to try. That way if I failed, it was Corporate Bro's fault and not Ross's fault.

Pouyan
What does Corporate Bro do? I haven't heard of it.

Ross
He's just a... He's a marketer. He's a b2b marketer, you know? I hear he's really good looking but otherwise mostly a marketer.

Pouyan
If you have to come up with a different persona, a different name, whatever it is, but I think that aspect of having a go into performative mode is so, so real. And it's so key. And honestly, I think it helps with all of the rejection that you face, so that you don't take it personally. Because there's a lot of that that comes that way as well.

Donald
Yeah, the first training program I went through was Sandler and they had that concept that they taught, and I was like, bro, this is so genius. It made it feel like water running off a duck's back at this point. I was like, they're not mad at Donald. Man. They don't know me. Like, they don't know what a Donald Kelly! If they a know me, they wouldn't do that to the man! Jah!

Ross
Which Donald Kelly is here right now? Which one?

Donald
Is it DK or is it Donald? There you go. That's the difference Ross.

Pouyan
So when did you get into launching your own training program and content?

Donald 
Yeah. Accident. So during college, you know, I'm selling and so forth and did pretty well. At one of the companies I was one of their top performers and I was a college student. But it's my friend's family's company and I just worked with them when I got into the b2b side of selling IT training classes like MCSE, Net+, A+. And I would come home from breaks and I would work here and then I would do stuff remotely from there, too. And I just did well with it. So when I graduated back when they first started doing EHR electronic health records, I got into the medical space and started trying to sell those, TRYING to sell those. It was interesting, but it was good. And then I got into managing IT services and then eventually got into the SAAS software. And I was doing pretty decent of it. And then the podcast started and just started sharing stuff with it. And then I remember when the first person that reached out to me was Jose Diaz. And he asked me if I could coach him. I'm like, bro, the only people I coach people are on my flag football team. And I was like $300 a month. I'll meet with you four times a month. And he was like, this idiot. He's like, Yeah, that's great. So I started helping him and then they started seeing results. So they were happy with that. And then Destiny was the next one. She actually searched the podcast and found me. She was out in Fort Lauderdale. She was working with Caesars Palace and started coaching her she did well as well. And then, these are all my first people that I'm talking about, Katie Henderson. She was up in Alabama found the podcast reached out. She was doing IT sales and she said you have some tech stuff, can you give me some tips and ideas? And I coached her for a little bit and she did well. So it was like there's something here. So it just kept going, the podcasts kept going, and then did the coaching stuff. And then it wasn't until probably like in 2015, my wife and I, we were talking because my goal was to either go back for like an MBA we're looking at like Wharton, visited Northwestern. And like some of these Ivy League schools, like, you know, can we really try to go for that or do a startup? And TSE just started making money. And then we got sponsors. Prezi was the first sponsor that came through and said we want to sponsor the podcast. And I was talking to my wife, and she was like, Okay, let's, let's see if you can bring in X amount of dollars every single week, every single month consistently, that would mean this is viable. Let's continue down that path. I was like, Okay, let's do that. So we did that and we started making money with it. So it's like, alright, and we're doing pretty well. So we paid off debt, we paid off cars, we got married, paid off the wedding, all that stuff. So I was like, this is cool.

Pouyan
So now I got a question about one of the, I would say, the harshest audience on Earth might be a group of salespeople who don't want training -

Donald
Bro!

Ross
And you walk into that shit. And they're just like, BOOO this f'ing SUCKS!

Donald
Can I pull up the email right now? Can I send you the recording of the last two weeks?

Ross
I mean, how do you do it man? Like that is a hostile environment of a bunch of whiny, little soft millennials and Gen Z's who just don't want an all day training. And I was one of those people, I'm not gonna lie.

Donald 
Yeah. And I think we've all done it, right? Because you realize you know stuff and you can do [sales]. The biggest thing that's worked for me, and I'll tell you about one of the teams that we're doing right now, but just to answer that question real quick, the biggest thing that's worked for me is to just let them know that you're not trying not to be an outsider as much as possible. So what I try to do is try to connect with them as much as possible beforehand. Get me introduced to the team, get connected with them on LinkedIn, start having some conversations or chatting and you're going to start seeing the pack start separating. You're going to have your lone wolves, you're gonna have the people who have the "I know what I'm doing" attitude and then once you start doing stuff with them, like I prove to them [my skills]. One of the teams we're working with right now. They're talking all the crap and what can you teach me, etc. And I'm 37, but I don't know if it's the Jamaican water [because] I look like I'm 14. So sometimes they're like, you know, what can you offer me? But when I jump on a call with them, or I call into their own prospect, and show them the recordings or play that for them, they're like, oh, okay, well maybe you know something. So that quickly can show them that I'm just not talking crap. It's stuff that I actually do myself right now. And that I've done already. And then the other piece of that is just the credibility helps tremendously now with some of the companies that we've partnered with and work with. So you know, it's still, Hey, we're gonna have this guy come in and do some training. But then when I drop the pedigree, some of the stuff we've done, like, alright, well, maybe there's something here. And then when you can actually show them that you can do I think that gives you a lot of respect. It's kind of like, not that I've been to prison. But you know, if you go into prison, you got to have your street cred.

Ross
You gotta beat someone's ass right off the bat.

Donald
Cmon bro! What?! What?

Ross
Yeah gotta send a message as soon as you get in there. So you go in, you beat a sales rep's ass and you say, Let me teach you how to sell.

Donald
Yeah man he all right, he cool. *Sniffles*

Pouyan
What's the equivalent of that though? Like, are you dragging the like the worst performer across the stage? Or are you showing a call that was just like, Listen, this was a disaster by every single measure that exists.

Donald
You know, one of the best examples like we had a training with  two teams. One of the teams right now, one of [their] guys had been selling for a while, he didn't feel that he needed anything. So I told her and their executive team like I'm willing to show them that I can do this. So give me some of - I don't even sell your product, but give me some of your your leads. I do calls and I actually prospect myself for my business. So I'll call some of your accounts. And I was able to do that with them. And it definitely did help to kind of show credibility with them. And then the other team this one was really, they're still challenging. So but here's the issue with them. They're trying to turn some people that were almost like sales ops into sales reps and -

Ross
They're in sales ops for a reason. They can't get saved. You can't save that. Stop trying to be a hero.

Donald
They ain't going to heaven.

Ross
No they're not.

Donald
They're not going to sales heaven. So that was kind of like one of the issues with them. So we just revamped the program so I was like, you know, we can't complete this program because that is definitely a hostile environment. I almost went home crying.

Pouyan
I was gonna ask you if you've ever walked into a situation where you're like this is not salvageable?

Donald
No. Yeah, they definitely weren't. So we did a change with it. Because the company is just trying to mold these people into some of those entry level folks. And it's like, you know, you have your folks who are closing, but these ones here? That dog is never going to bite. So how can we change that? So we just we did a survey with them, what are some things you can do to improve the overall sales experience with the organization? And we just crafted a different program for.

Ross
This one's called introduction to PIPs.

Donald
Yeah.

Ross
And here's how that works. Here's how we get them out the door. That's how this works.

Pouyan
How long do you give somebody to improve? What have you seen? Like, at what point is it just not happening?

Donald
Typically companies will do the 60 to 90 day plan. Everyone's KPI is going to be different, right? But if you let's say, for instance, if it's a BDR, like, if your team is setting five appointments, and you're setting one appointment a week, like there's something wrong there. And I'm not necessarily looking at the outcomes at that point, I'm looking at the activities that lead towards that outcome. So the leading indicators, like, let's listen to some of the calls. Are you actually following routes? Are you running the right routes? Are you asking effective questions? Are you listening? Are you at least having meaningful conversations? Let's measure some of those things. And if they're measuring that, then we know the results are going to come. Do the form and then the overall performance is going to be great. But I would say if somebody is not hitting the leading indicators on the first month, then they're probably not going to really make any changes. But companies give them those 60 You know, 30 to 90 days. If you're not doing anything after 90 days, that's way too long.

Pouyan
I was gonna say on that note. DK it's awesome, having you... Ross how are we ending this again?

Donald
We need a pump up song I saw there.

Pouyan
Oh, yes!

Ross
Yes. Pump up song. So you got the biggest mango on Earth. But you got the CEO who's not sure he's into mangoes but you got the best one. What are you listening to to get you absolutely juiced so you know, you're gonna close?

Donald
You've heard "The Box," right?

Ross
Like the song called "The Box."

Donald
"The Box." Yeah. So I got that, that I listen to. And I go ham on that one. I actually broke my, what'd you call it, not my dash, but you know your glove compartment thingy between the seats. And I had just closed a deal and I was like, pumped and we're hitting some good numbers. And I was like *Smashes glove compartment thingy between the seats.* And then I was like, oh, sorry, that was really loud. And then I was like, Oh, crap. So it's  broken now so have to take it back to the dealership to get it fixed.

Ross
Okay, so on the opposite side of that. The call went horrible. The meeting went horrible. He took your mango threw it out the window and it squashed at the bottom and you got to recover. What's the recovery song?

Donald
The recovery song is probably gonna be something from Chronixx.

Ross
It's "The Box" again! Fire it back up! We're going next door!

Donald
Chronixx is a reggae singer though, you know, and Chronixx has some good chill music. But I'll just probably put on you know, I just probably go to YouTube and put Chronixx and just kind of go mellow out and chill and just kind of reflect on life.

Ross
Well, I guess one one last question we do ask is like, plug everything right now. We got the book coming out. Where can people find you? What should they Google? What we're doing?

Donald
For the book, I'm not gonna send you to Amazon yet because I want to get your email address. So go to thesalesevangelist.com/mango. And then you'll get the first chapter for no cost. That's like, $0. And then what will happen there, we'll definitely invite you to go to Amazon and get that because that'd be awesome. So that's one. Two, we're doing an event in South Florida. One day event. Most times when I go to conferences, I'm going to Atlanta, I'm going to New York going to Texas or Vegas, Chicago, and I was like screw it. I live in paradise. I'm going to do something. So we're doing a one day event here in South Florida, June 24. So if you're listening to this, that page will be live at this point. So you can go to thesalesevangelist.com/busdev. It says Bus Dev 2022 and it's all around business development. And it's a one day event. So we'd love to have you come out to that. And then the final thing that I'm pushing is, you know, I think that's just download our podcasts. So go check it out, go to thesalesevangelist.com/podcasts.

Pouyan
I'm excited to read the book. And thanks again for joining us, man. This was awesome.

Donald
It was an honor. I appreciate it. And I'm sure you guys don't need this but I'm just telling you folks who are listening, as a podcaster when you ask for it, it's like here comes Ross, here comes Pouyan asking for it, but from somebody outside, this show is like legit. So I ask you [listeners] just go share it with somebody and leave a review for them because it goes a long way.

Ross
That would be tight.

Donald
This is really good stuff and it's good. So thank you guys for all you're doing.

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