Speaker 1 00:00:05 Hey there, thoughtful listener. Are you looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers and clients? Well, I've had private conversations with over 2000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from. I've got a free video you can watch with no opt in required, where I'll share the exact steps necessary to be 100% inbound in your industry over the next 6 to 8 months, with no spam, no ads, and no sales. What I teach has worked for me for over 15 years and has helped me create eight figures in revenue for my own companies. Just head to up my influence comm and watch my free class on how to create endless high ticket sales appointments. Also, don't forget the thoughtful entrepreneur is always looking for great guests. Go to up my influence. Com and click on podcast. I'd love to have you. With us right now it's Kayvon Kay. Kayvon, you are a business growth consultant. You are the founder and CEO of The Sales Connection. And your website is the sales connection.com Kayvon Kay, thank you so much for joining us.

Speaker 2 00:01:22 Thanks so much for having me.

Speaker 1 00:01:23 Well Kayvon, tell us a little bit about the sales connection, who you serve and what your impact is in the world.

Speaker 2 00:01:29 Yeah. So with the sales connection, we help coaches, consultant business owners, optimize, manage and have their sales teams thrive. So whether it's us coming in and building out the entire sales department to sometimes we work with the business owner themselves and remove them from the phone so they can get their time back to managing a full sales team. So whatever the business needs, we like to call ourselves more of a boutique agency. We come and learn the problems, learn this, learn what's working, what's not. We'll come in. We'll offer the solution and help fix them.

Speaker 1 00:02:01 Yeah, well, all right, Kavon, how do we get from point A to point B? Because I think that there are likely a lot of folks that are listening. Their founder led company. Yeah, probably still way involved in sales, which is good. It's great.

Speaker 1 00:02:14 I mean, you know, founders have a lot of founder magic, but I think most people in that situation probably see or have a vision or a goal for a day for them when they have to do less of that.

Speaker 2 00:02:25 Yeah. So number one is like I see so many founders think, hey, if I just bring in a sales person, my problems will go away. That's actually not true. You're going to cause more problems if you do it the wrong way. Yeah. So we'll come in and we again we have to first do what we do is an audit. We assess the business, see where the business is at, what's the business capable of and then understand okay, what's the sales process. There's a huge difference between a sales process and a sales person. Right. And the sales process needs to support the sales person. So what we'll do is we'll come in and we'll do an audit. We'll look at the business, we'll see what's going on. Well, you know, go underneath the hood and then we'll come up with a plan.

Speaker 2 00:02:59 And usually what's going to happen is we're going to have to either build out or optimize their CRM. if we go even a step before the CRM, all that we talk about hiring, onboarding, training, acquiring, recruiting the right salespeople. So we have an eight step profile that we put them through. needless to say, 97.8% efficacy. Meaning if they get through my, my, eight step profiler, by the end of it, there's a 98.7% chance that they will be successful if the business has all those things set up again, the onboarding is done properly. So we teach or we'll build the onboarding process. Then they then they have to obviously the CRM what's going on in the CRM, the reporting, the tracking, all of those things in order for our sales department to work, you know, properly the challenges a lot of business owners we see is they don't know what they you know, we don't know what we don't know. We think it's good. It's usually not that great. And then we bring in some hotshot salesperson.

Speaker 2 00:03:56 We say, here's the script, here's a recording, and go. And then they wonder why they fail. And then what happens is the business owner gets into fear thinking, oh, I can't find a sales person. They get stuck on the calls themselves and they didn't get the business to be on the sales calls. They got in the business to actually make the impact and work on the business, not in it. So we'll come in and we've done this now with over 150 different businesses. We've closed $375 million in sales in the last five years. Yeah.

Speaker 1 00:04:23 Wow. Yeah. Well, yeah. Kavon what are some of the biggest errors that founders make when they say, all right, I'm going to hire myself a sales person and they're going to be able to I'm just going to be able to pass the baton to them. They're going to come in and build, you know, you know, because it's interesting when we think about how founders typically sell and it may not be super structured, but yet, yeah, you can't expect someone to come in without that structure.

Speaker 1 00:04:54 Otherwise you're setting them up to fail. So I could see where this would be a major, unforced error that that founders do because they're just not being realistic about, you know, what it takes to hand the baton to someone that that.

Speaker 2 00:05:10 Well, that's you just said that, right? Founders think that sales were going to sell like them. And again, that's just not the case. but one of the biggest mistakes I see, founders make when it comes to sales departments especially, is one of the biggest ones that actually is they try to get a sales person to fix a marketing problem, which is a massive issue in itself. Another one is they literally try to get a sales person. They think, hey, just they give them the the baton. We talked about that and they expect them to fix everything and like that they're going to thrive. And salespeople are a unique breed. And they they need structure. They need a platform. They need onboard. And they need a system to actually thrive in.

Speaker 2 00:05:51 And what most founders think is their system and their CRM and or onboarding isn't actually the right onboarding for a, you know, for the right salesperson. Another one that we see and I'll just leave it here. Is hiring the wrong salesperson just because you have a hotshot salesperson and he's done well over here, she's done well over there, doesn't mean they're going to do well over here. Right? So it's also hiring. Again, we know about hiring on culture, but it's also hiring the right salesperson for the right job that they're going to do for the people they're going to speak to and the product they're going to represent.

Speaker 1 00:06:23 Yeah. and so Kavon, do you I guess I would imagine you have some pretty great stories of founders that were probably working their tail off. And obviously, you know, there's a transition phase. There's a building phase, there's a planning phase, strategy phase, and then there's a transition phase or, you know, again, acquiring some talent. And, you know, this process is not going to happen overnight.

Speaker 1 00:06:50 Do you mind maybe sharing a little bit about the lifecycle, what this typically looks like? I was just kind of spitballing. Yeah. You know what I would imagine is involved.

Speaker 2 00:06:57 It's it's absolutely you're right. So it all depends on where the business is at. that so we're talking about a solopreneur. Let's call that 2 or 3 people on their team. They're stuck on the phones. Using that process would take about 90 days. We actually have a 90 day intensive that we actually offer. Well, we'll come in for 90 days, work with the founder, set the system up, set the the recruit, help recruit, train the sales person so that in 90 days they actually remove themselves from the phone. So that's actually one of our offers is that, we've also again, we've worked with bigger companies doing the tens and 15, you know, even $100 million where they actually currently have a sales team. They have 4 or 5 guys on there already. But it's they have no tracking, they have no reporting, they have no optimization.

Speaker 2 00:07:40 They have no leadership, they have no sales director, they don't have sales coaches over there. And they're wanting to scale, but they don't have the confidence to scale because they know if they scale more bookings, it doesn't mean more sales. So that's when they'll bring us in. And really that's when we come in, when we come in with the whole the monte I call it, where we say, okay, let's go really underneath the hood here and let's look at the entire marketing product, like the marketing system. Let's look at the entire operation system and then let's talk about what it is, what it's going to be to take you from 4 to 10 salespeople. And then when you have that, you also have to have managers in there. You have to have sales leaders in there. So that will come in and we actually manage and do that all for you. So ideally we end up being a sales director for companies so that the business owner doesn't even have to think about it. So we have we have one client in the financial publishing right now.

Speaker 2 00:08:26 We just did $1 million last month on the phones for them. and he he loves us and he's happy because he has one head to ring out, which is mine, if you know what I mean. And we are taking the responsibility of everything else in the sales department. We have other ones that we work with where now there's only like 3 or 4 salespeople doing about $500,000. Replace this, replace the, you know, the solopreneur, the business owner. And now they don't even go near the phones. They don't have to worry about it. They don't have to think about it. The whole thing's managed for us. Wow.

Speaker 1 00:08:52 They can they can just go do SEO stuff and you see evangelist stuff go well, go, go, go change the.

Speaker 3 00:08:59 World. Yeah.

Speaker 2 00:09:01 Go make the impact you actually really wanted to make, right? Because the no one got in the business to be salespeople. But we get stuck there because that's where the money is, especially when growing. And then we get tied to that money because we know how hard it is to build a business sometimes.

Speaker 2 00:09:13 Right? So right when we get it going, we get so attached to not screwing it up that we put this fear that nobody I always hear this. No one could sell it like I can. No, you don't get it, Kavon. I just love talking to my clients. No you don't. You have the fear that you don't think a sales rep or a, you know, onboarding specialist has the ability to actually have the same conversation you're having, maybe even a different conversation, maybe even a better conversation because you tried it once and in a failed or you heard a horror stories, but you haven't hearing the other stories of when it works. Because when it works, it works great. And when you have the right system, it works. But there's a process. It's a it's a, it's a it's it's not. And like you said, it's not overnight. If it was overnight, everyone would do it.

Speaker 1 00:09:59 just out of curiosity, kavon, on, when we, you know, again, thinking of the founders that's listening, that are listening to us right now and we think about, like, what it costs to hire a sales professional.

Speaker 1 00:10:10 And, you know, and I think in the, in the early days, like, I don't hear this too much anymore, but, you know, I would hear founders go, I've got a great opportunity. I'll tell you what, if you sell something, then we'll just rev split and and you're just getting a commission only sales person. That feels risky to me. It seems like. Well, we'll.

Speaker 2 00:10:29 Be honest with you. We do commission only sales reps. That's what our, our bread and butter is. Commission sales reps. Now we work with like so I have one of my biggest clients. They do a salary and great we work with them salary. And then we actually like like you like if you have a sales person and they're not on commission, you don't have a sales person, you have an order taker.

Speaker 1 00:10:46 There's no I'm not saying only write only.

Speaker 2 00:10:49 Yeah, yeah, yeah, I hear that. So, I think but the first question I want to answer is, you said, what's the cost of I'll tell you the cost of one bad hire.

Speaker 2 00:10:57 The cost of one bad hire is 5 to 6 times their there's average salary. So I tell people, if you don't have a sales rep doing at least $200,000 a year in their own personal income, that's $500,000, $500,000 that you're leaving on the table every time you have to replace a salesperson. So someone goes, well, kavon, how can that be? Well, it's very simple if you think about the time it actually takes to go out to the market to find a recruit, that salesperson, then to hire them, then to onboard them, and then to train them and then for them to get the reps, because even the best sales reps are not going to be their best out of the gate. They got to learn the industry. They got to learn the knowledge, they got to learn the nuances, and they got to learn the language. So when they finally do that to and then if you have someone who has a one month or a two month or a six month cycle, think about all that time that's being wasted and money being left on the table because of one bad hire.

Speaker 2 00:11:53 It's 5 to 6 times. It's actually it's in Daniel. top grading actually the book from top grading to scientific fact that they've figured out. Now, the other question is, yeah. Now, if you go 5 to 6 times or an average salary, and now you're paying sales reps to sit there and they're not doing the job well, think of the cost to your business as well. So that's why we love commission sales reps if you know how to get them and acquire them properly. Because true sales reps want to be commission, they don't want to be capped. They want to want to eat what they kill. Right. And and they'll work hard for it.

Speaker 1 00:12:25 Yeah. So so again, I would I would say, you know, assuming that you're just going to hire someone on their own, they're going to come in day one and they're going to you got to have that system structure. And that's where the.

Speaker 2 00:12:35 System, the onboarding, the culture comes in place. Yeah. So if you're talking about, hey, come here, make a sale, send you a lead, make a sell and it's never going to work.

Speaker 2 00:12:43 It doesn't. No.

Speaker 1 00:12:44 Right.

Speaker 2 00:12:44 It's actually it's a disaster.

Speaker 1 00:12:47 Yeah, yeah. So come on, tell me a little bit more about, so your website, the sales connection. Com, what is the typical like when, when you begin engagement, what does that usually look like. And, and how do you know whether or not someone is a good fit for you and you're a good fit for them? Yeah.

Speaker 2 00:13:06 So we obviously you have initial book call. We learn a little bit more about them. And then depending on what they need, we'll offer them couple solutions. You know, one of them might be, hey, we actually we got to do an audit and that's where we'll come in and we'll, like, literally peel back the onion, spend a lot of more hours than most people have ever spent in their business to learn it upside down, everything. And then at the end of that audit, we we give them the recommendations. And then some of those recommendations are, hey, if you want, you hire us, we'll do them all for you.

Speaker 2 00:13:34 Other cases, a couple calls, we'll understand a couple of calls. And doing our due diligence, we'll understand what they need and to make sure we offer the right solution for the right people. At the end of the day, we want to make sure, depending on the size of the business, they get the solution that's tailored for them. We're not a one size fits all. We are a, again, a boutique where we we're going to understand your problems. We're going to understand what it is you're looking for. And then we're going to figure out how we get to where you want to go.

Speaker 1 00:13:57 Yeah. Okay. So your website is the sales connection. Com to a friend that's listening. what would you recommend they do? And I think you also, by the way, I think you have some really good resources here. Do you mind maybe sharing if there's any.

Speaker 2 00:14:11 Got someone free? Yeah, we got lots of free.

Speaker 1 00:14:13 Yeah. Tell me about.

Speaker 2 00:14:14 That. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 00:14:15 So on our website right now we got I mean how to hire. We got, we got we basically our eight step profiling system. We broke down step by step. So if you if you're a business owner and you want to hire a sales rep, you go to the sales connection.com and you go download the the PDF on how to hire a sales rep, you'll have a step by step process we use. If you're right now having you know the big one is no shows, people showing up to calls is a big issue in the marketplace right now. We actually have our no show free guide that you can also get that it increases the show up rate by almost 200%, depending on where you're at. And then we have, multiple multiple free PDF resources at the sales connection.com for you. And if you want there's there's opportunities there. Book a call with us. You'll be booking a call with me personally or my business partner. And we'll have conversations and make sure that we put you in the right direction.

Speaker 1 00:15:00 Yeah. All right. So the sales connection. Com Kayvon Kay you're the founder and CEO. we've known each other for many, many, many years. Has been so great having you as a guest on this podcast. Kavon. Thank you so much for joining us.

Speaker 2 00:15:14 Yeah. Thank you.

Speaker 1 00:15:21 Thanks for listening to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. If you are a thoughtful business owner or professional who would like to be on this daily program, please visit up my influence. Com and click on podcast. We believe that every person has a message that can positively impact the world. We love our community who listens and shares our program every day. Together we are empowering one another as thoughtful leaders. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this program, if you're looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, and clients, I have had private conversations with over 2000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from. I've got a free video that you can watch right now with no opt in or email required, where I'm going to share the exact steps necessary to be 100% inbound in your industry over the next 6 to 8 months, with no spam, no ads, and no sales.

Speaker 1 00:16:19 What I teach has worked for me for more than 15 years and has helped me create eight figures in revenue for my own companies. Just head to up my influence. Com and watch my free class on how to create endless high ticket sales appointments. Make sure to hit subscribe so that tomorrow morning. That's right, seven days a week you are going to be inspired and motivated to succeed. I promise to bring positivity and inspiration to you for around 15 minutes every single day. Thanks for listening and thank you for being a part of the Thoughtful Entrepreneur movement.