Adam Torres and Kayvon Kay discuss scaling sales teams.
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Show Notes:
What are some key strategies or techniques that contribute to effective sales? In this episode, Adam Torres and Kayvon Kay, Founder & CEO at The Sales Connection, explore what it takes to successfully scale a sales team.
About Kayvon Kay
As a professional speaker and business strategist, Kayvon Kay show service professionals, entrepreneurs, coaches, and consultants how to develop the skills and tools necessary to close High-Paying clients by teaching them that sales is a simple transference of energy and connection.
About The Sales Connection
The Sales Conection is a high demand evolving company in the online High Ticket Sales niche. Providing ample opportunity and growth for new and experienced Sales Professionals. Driving, multi-million-dollar sales revenue while serving entrepreneurs, authority experts and thought leaders.
As a leading Sales Expert with over 20 years of sales and training experience, their organization works with Influencers, Consultants, Service Professionals to build out their sales team and show them how to connect to their audiences to foster an ethical, honest and transformational relationship. I teach them how to close their “High Ticket” offers without wasting time and without using the traditional sales method that doesn’t work.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres. And if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on, be our guest to apply. All right. So today I have on the show, Kayvon Kay, and he’s a founder and CEO over at the sales connection.
Kayvon, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate you. All right, man. So a lot, a lot of business owners, a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of executives listen to this show and some of our most popular episodes are sales. Why? Because we need sales to keep these doors open, right?
We need to keep it to get our businesses going and otherwise. I guess just to get us kicked off in the conversation, , where did your career in sales start? Like what? some stories. I always said , my career in sales actually started when I was 6 years old when when they written me off the school system.
So I was in the, , the bottom half made the top half. Perfect. Truly. said I wouldn’t even get out of elementary school. I grew up in a small, like a small industrial racist community. So I remember I can put myself back there at six years old. And I remember it was always trying to sell myself, right?
Sell them, sell them sell my, my idea over there. They’re wrong, negative, thoughts towards me. really do believe sales kind of for me started there and then I was known kind of had that charisma, everyone kind of had, they, , I was kind of a unique child, let’s say, so I kind of lived off that and I breathed off that and I, it’s fueled me.
And then I got my real first gig watching my uncle actually had a furniture store, he owned his own little furniture store in a small town. And on Saturdays, my mom would drop me off and I’d watch him kick ass, like, I’d watch him, like, everyone walked in half for him. Yeah, it was cool, I, he was kind of like a hero at that point, like, you know, you think about it now, but It was like a little kid to see all these people coming in and wanted to work with him.
And he was always just signing the deals. Like , it was, I was like, I want to do that kind of thing. You were literally watching the goat , in the furniture store. You’re there. You’re a little guy. What age was this? Roughly, just roughly, this is, this is like nine, 10, 11, 12. You actually understand what’s going on too.
So you’re like looking at these contracts, like this is magic. Yeah, I would, I would love it. still have the vision of this one lady coming in with a smile like, oh, and his name was Jeff and like, he’s way in the other part of the store and, you know, the whole store kind of stops and look and he smiled.
He walked over, he’s showing her around, right? And then he’s walking her again to the back to get the paperwork and sign the deal and he’s, you know, shakes the hand and in comes the next one. It was kind of like a. I loved it. I just loved seeing it and I loved the I loved why I loved it back then. I didn’t know, but now I know today what I know of sales is sales is just a transference of energy and connection.
The amount of energy and connections he was creating was, , it was contagious. It was awesome to see. So I was kind of destined for that type of role in my life, whether it was sales, whatever it might’ve been sales, just so happened to be my thing. And so people say, you know, it’s sales, are you born with it?
Where are you, or can you learn it? I always say both, but if you’re someone like me, who I think I got lucky to be born in it, and then I was lucky to be nurtured in it, , and I naturally am , it was kind of. Built for it, it gives me a little bit of an advantage, I would say, right? Or someone who, who maybe never had that, but nearest say I got into my retail, , then I got into retail myself and then I got into hard goods, soft goods where I was in the ski industry, like skiing, snowboard industry.
So I was repping there. And by the time I was done, my sales, like your superpower, like being able to go generate capital, like have no fear, like not, you know what I mean? Like this was your superpower. Sales is my superpower. Yeah. Even if I want to run away from it, it’s my superpower. Actually a great interest story.
Sorry about that. I was going to say, so I ended my career as the number one pharmaceutical sales rep for the largest company in the world. And then and then I got into the entrepreneurship. I got in the online business world. And a year later, trying to be a marketer, I was failing and I met a mentor and the mentor basically said, dude, you’re not a marketer, man.
You’re a salesperson. Go be a salesperson. As if I lost my way. Needless to say 18, , I went from being 3 days from being bankrupt. Being a marketer, 25 days later, I was earning 30, 40 grand a month being a sales guy all over again. Right? And then what we ended up doing, we ended up teaching that skill.
And we ended up growing a business from 38 million to in 18 months. So zero to 38 million, 18 months teaching sales. And then that’s when kind of the sales connection was born after that. And you know, I’ve made my life commitment to all things sales and that’s what we do. Yeah, what do you think about like sometimes people feel that sales is just a transition or a job or and then also like the idea of marketer like this concept of marketer is this other thing to where it’s to aspire to me personally.
I’m going to sales guys job like that’s what I like doing. That’s what I’ve always done. I mean, and that’s right now. I view myself when I’m doing a show like this is selling the audience on why I can be entertaining enough for them to give me their attention to stay and continue listening.
Like, so that’s just how I view the world. Like that’s just my lenses. Like So now you’re an entrepreneur. Now , you had , your bout with whatever labels you want is marketing. And , now you’re back to , your bread and your butter. What are your views on sales as a career?
Like, and people taking that mindset of like, this is a career. Well, that’s, it’s funny. You say that mindset is that’s exactly what it is. That’s why I tell people is that if you want to be a professional salesperson, a professional expert, you want to make, here’s the greatest thing.
You salespeople make more money than doctors and lawyers. They make more money than the average, obviously , American or whatever in the world. Sales to me is a phenomenal career, but yeah, it has its ups and downs. And the problem is it has a negative connotation to it. So a lot of people are scared about it.
And if you’re a sales profession, you’re not scared to be a sales professional. Where does that come from? Where do you think the negative connotation? Cause you made a study of this throughout your whole life. Where does this work? I’m not claiming I’m a professional like you in this game. I try, but like, where do you think that comes from?
Well, , I know where it comes from. It comes from I just put it this way back in the 1960s, they did a test, they did a study and it came out 70%. 70 percent of the population trusted salespeople today. That same study, it’s less than 10%. What was even more scarier? What was scarier?
Salespeople don’t even trust salespeople. Salespeople don’t even trust their own kind. And in fact, even worse than that, Yahoo find their own kind. I love their own species. Go ahead. Go ahead, man. Yes. We all know in time. Oh, salespeople are their own species. True salespeople are emotional creatures. That’s for sure.
But Yahoo Finance, here’s the worst part too, Yahoo Finance did they did a study and they topped 20 least respected professions in America. Only four ranked worse than sales. Number one, paparazzi. Number two, corporate executives. Number three, parking enforcement officers. And then number four, online reviewers.
And then number five salespeople. So it is abundantly clear salespeople are disliked. They’re just not to be trusted. I mean, if you think about it, how many people listening on the call right now, how many have had a bad experience or know someone who’s had a negative experience with a salesperson?
And you ask, well, well, why? Well, I think it’s because 80 sales, the typical 80 salesperson, right? We like sales, what, what, sales to me was advising and helping and getting people to go to their dreams and coaching and leading, and then somewhere along the way, it turned into manipulation. turned into bribery.
Turned into something that’s not authentic. And I think that’s where along the way it turned into sinful, like being dishonest, almost predatory. Unethical. You can’t trust salespeople. In fact, when we talk about trust, Daniel Pink had a book called To Sell as Human. Nine out of ten people view salespeople negatively.
Nine out of ten view salespeople negatively. So why would you be proud to be a salesperson? I don’t blame salespeople for not being proud, but what I do know and what I teach my sales teams and my people is sales, like when you put on that cape, we call it the cape, when I put that cape on, you don’t take that cape off on Friday afternoon.
Hang in there and go meet someone else on the weekend and then expect to put it back on Monday and be a good salesperson. See for me sales is something when I put that cape on, I put it on for the rest of my life. I’ve never taken it off, and that’s different.
I gotta tell, I gotta tell you a funny story. When you said Cape instantly, I had this picture come in my head that I swear I haven’t seen in 20 years, just this picture just came out of my subconscious. My very first, when I first graduated college, I had a job selling mortgages and my first month on the floor after I was chained, I won this award and it was the Captain Caveman sales award.
They put this big old picture of Captain Caveman above your desk, hanging from the like rafters. Yeah. And I still remember that ’cause of the Cape Man. He used to wear a cape and I loved it. I loved it. . That’s it, right? We all, we all have these capes, right? Doctor has a cape, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, professionals, we have our cape, we, you know, lawyers have their cape, their lawyers are their suits, right?
So, , for me it’s just honoring it and knowing it. So for me, dedicated to change the narrative of sales. Yeah, my, my goal in this lifetime is to show people that like salespeople are trusted and how they trusted. Well, it’s not by using sleazy tactics. It’s not by bribery.
It’s not by slimy, cheesy one liners. It’s about authentic human centric selling. I call it human centric selling. about connecting. about actually asking the right questions and understanding and being able to guide the prospect through a journey. So they actually want to sell. I tell my guys this because we sell high ticket.
If you have to ask for the sale, you’re not doing your job. I shouldn’t have to ask for the sale. My prospect should be begging me for the sale because I’ve done my job properly. I think that’s a great transition to let’s go further into sales connection and how you’re doing that that job properly.
So I know one of your niches scaling and managing premier sales teams for online business. So, so talk to me a little bit more about that. Yeah, so with the sales connection, people hire us and we basically come in and we will build, we’ll manage, we’ll recruit, we’ll train systems operations, sales operations sales department.
So some businesses will hire us and we’ll run the entire sales team. Other businesses will come and ask us to come in and consult with them. And then others will ask us to hire AA players. So depending on the business needs, we’ll come in, but we are a full service sales agency where we help people create and build world class sales teams.
And did this like, I’m guessing that you’re working with like what funded startups or other things or people that maybe don’t like give us a feel for like the niches and the people that you’re helping. Yeah, yeah. So we work, we, we, we focus, we, we do focus sometimes on funded stuff, funded startups.
That’s keyword is funded. We also work with thriving business. So we worked with eight figure business to turn to a nine figure businesses. Usually the business we are working is there. If they’re not in SAS, they’re in more business services. Business coaching type thing. So we don’t do products. We don’t sell products, like physical products.
But we will sell services, business services mindset, coaching, training, whatever that might be online. E learning the e learning space is where we kind of live the online internet marketing world. And are your sales people located worldwide? A feel for that part of it.
Yeah. So we have everything we do is virtual. It’s a great thing about the, what we do. So all of our sales people are worldwide and we will hire, you know recruit and trained just depending on location. So we have, we have some places we have clients where they want their sales people in house.
Okay. We will do that. Other clients. We need them on the Pacific time zone or Eastern time zone or European time to whatever it might be we will hire and adjust accordingly. Hmm. And now according to the website, I mean, you’ve, trained over 15, 000 sales professionals over a hundred.
Oh, wow. Over a hundred countries, like , what do you attribute some of the success to? Yeah, that was so when I remember I alluded back, we, we did a 38 million in in less than 18 months. That was because we had a sales training program that we were training online.
And when we looked at our buyers, there was actually 103 different countries people bought from us. And at that time we had 15, 000 students, but that was back in 2017. So you can imagine. So we’re now actually, we trained, me personally, I’ve trained over 50, 000 sales reps. Yeah. The sales connection itself, we closed over 375 million verified sales, and we’ve taken over 200 293, 000 book calls.
Wow. , what do you attribute some of that success to? Like, where does that come from? That, I mean, working with the right partners and the right offers, for sure. Make, again, in order to, in, in business consulting or business services, I’ll tell you the, my fav, one of my famous and favorite quote is, in order to be effective, you gotta be selective.
Yep. So fine selection for us is everything there and again, yeah, I hate to be cliche, but there, , I was going to say our 10, 000 hours, but in this case, you know, our 100, 000 hours. Yeah, it’s just nonstop. It’s just, we’ve been in it. We never veered off. We never got caught up in, oh, that looks good over there.
Oh, that looks good over there. , we always knew what we were and who we are and we stayed in and we stayed in our niche and we stayed in it in time. And correct me if I’m off on this, but you said high ticket. So you’re working with people that have proven offers, right?
Like, that’s, that’s the key there, right? Yep. Keyword. Thank you for saying that. Yeah. Yeah. We, we do not work with people without proven offers because if you don’t have a proven offer it’s not a sales problem, right? It’s an offer problem. So I always, this is very important. I tell people if sales is hard, marketing didn’t do their job.
If marketing is hard, that means the product, the offer didn’t do their job, meaning it’s off. It’s not working. And you got to go upstream to figure that out. So a lot of people have a, they’ll have a bad product or , they’ll have a great product in their mind. Right. But they don’t understand that there’s something called product fit market product fit.
Right. So just because you think it’s great, doesn’t mean the market thinks it’s great. And then they think that, Oh, I just need a sales team to go fix my marketing problem. And it’s like, no, yeah. No salespeople don’t fix a marketing problem, and and marketing doesn’t fix a sales problem, right? They work together.
if this is the correct way to ask this question, I don’t know. But I think you, it’s probably based off of revenue. What’s a revenue? like, if you’re saying a proven offer, like are you basing it off of revenue, quantity of what’s the sweet spot for you, would you say for your company?
If we fought for us, if someone’s doing our sweet spots, you’re doing over a hundred thousand dollars a month. And you’re looking at scale, you’ll bring us in. Now, we’ve worked with people doing 50, 80K, because they were very close to getting there. But and the reason for that is because you, if you’re not doing that, again, you’re not ready for a full sales team because what we do is we bring in, we bring in the boat, right?
Like we bring in the Titanic. Like, we don’t just bring in a salesperson, we’re bringing in the sales operation, we’re bringing in the sales director, we’re bringing in the coaching, the recruiting, the managing, we’re bringing in the whole, like that whole department, so that you can actually set the infrastructure for scale.
Yeah, and the worst thing sometimes that somebody might do is go too, too far, too fast, and they don’t have the infrastructure for delivery of the actual product, like All of a sudden, we have that, we have that happen right now. We had that happen this week. , we had a partner called up to say, hey guys, we got to slow down ourselves.
Well, what do you mean you got to slow down ourselves? Oh you know fulfillment can’t keep up. So they’re getting a lot of refunds, right? Because they can’t keep up. And that, you know, that hurts everything, right? So it’s about the right timing. People bring in sales. The problem is people bring in sales too early.
Sometimes they bring in it too late. And there’s, there’s a sweet spot of when, when you want to bring in sales and then you can have the argument. Give me the too late part. Give me the too late part. That’s interesting. I haven’t really heard that too, too much. Like what does the too late part look like?
Just cause you have a unique vantage point. Like, cause there it’s like time opportunity costs, like go into that a little bit more. Yeah. Like. So too late bringing in sales too late , is you miss the market. Like, so right now we’re in a crazy AI. We’re like, right. Everything’s AI, AI, AI, this AI, that we’re in what we’re called in a, we’re in a hyper growth market right now.
People are waiting. You wait too long. AI is going to change so fast. People won’t realize like. The what you’re building right now to say that’s breaking people, you know, dreams, but like if someone’s building AI right now, it’s already going to be built and better in 3 months from now. So, you know, that’s an example of like, coming in too late.
Other businesses, maybe a great example, by the way. And I agree with you. And the interesting part about that is, is that you’re man, that’s a great example. Because they’re tinkering. This is, That if you already have a proven product and everything, man, you better get that thing scaled and get as many users as you possibly can on some reoccurring income.
Cause when this whole market shifts on you, it’s not going to be good. I’m laughing. Cause I don’t want to cry so bad for people in this happened. We’re going through a massive market shift right now in the marketplace too. And with AI and people don’t like, I mean, I, we, we, we sell AI products and I’m like, I would never build one right now only because.
, the life cycle so small, this just how quick and advanced. Just things go, you know, is getting built at. Right so if you’re if you can’t execute, yeah, you’re going to be left in the dust for sure. , another example, being too late though, is we’ve seen. Guys, you, you, they’re like, oh, I’m good.
I don’t need to, I don’t need to scale. I’m good. Mm-Hmm, . And then what happens? The market gets, the market gets saturated. So now they want scale. Late pre pandemic, late pre pandemic. That was like, I saw a lot industry pre pandemic. Then all of a sudden people started going online quickly and the people that already had that advantage thought they could take their time and wait.
And then all of a sudden they have all these competitors that didn’t exist like overnight. And they’re like over, over. They’re faster. In some cases, they’re better. In other cases, they’re not better necessarily product, but they’re faster. And so they’re still winning. Yeah. And then, and then the other ones are the amount of like, again, I mean, I can’t wait to see the stats come out.
I bet you it’s going to be like, it wasn’t a great depression. More millionaires were made in the pandemic then, it was the great depression. The people don’t realize that like in the great depression, there was more millionaires than ever in history. Made. It was the same thing with the pandemic, right?
Obviously, a lot of people went broke, and it’s unfortunate, but the ones that, you know, took advantage and can see that, took advantage, and we’re in, and I think we’re in the right map. We’re in another little cycle right now. So we’re going to see it. The world’s going to be, it’s going to be very, I’m excited to see what happens in the next couple of years with where we’re going.
Yeah. Yeah, I am too. Well, Kayvon this has been a lot of fun and I could, I could pick your brain forever on this. stuff because it’s it’s interesting. And you just, you’ve been at the front lines of sales for a long time, whether it was from the, or the early days at the furniture shop, watching the family get, get it done, the original goat that taught you some things or or now the, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars of sales.
Sales of, of track sales that your company’s been responsible for and assisted other companies with. I think it’s absolutely amazing. If somebody’s listening or watching this and they want more information on the sales connection or to connect with your team how do they continue the conversation?
Mm-Hmm, they can easy. Just go to the go to ww dot the sales connection.com. That’s ww dot the sales connection.com and from there they can see all of our services and book with us. No problem. Awesome. And for everybody listening, just so you know, we’ll put the links , to the website and all that other good stuff in the show notes so that you can just click on the links and head right on over.
And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with mission matters and you haven’t done it yet, here goes my sales job. Hit that subscribe or that follow button. This is a daily show each and every day. We’re putting out new content. We’re bringing you new thought leaders, new insights, and hopefully we’re giving you new inspiration so that you can continue in your journey.
That’s what this is all about. It’s growth for us all. Again, hit that subscribe or that follow button and Kayvon man, thank you so much for coming on and wishing you much more continued success with the sales connection. I’m definitely rooting for you guys. Awesome. I appreciate you. Thank you so much.