Transcript

Hiring Top Sales Talent - Kayvon Kay

From The Proven Podcast · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 40 min · 8,777 words · 96 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "Hiring Top Sales Talent - Kayvon Kay", an episode of The Proven Podcast published August 8, 2025 (40 min, about 8,777 words). It mentions 34 people, works and ideas, including Operation, sales manager, general aptitude, sales director, sales trainer.

Who speaks in this episode?

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 5:00: sales manager, sales trainer, eight-step profiling system, sales coach
  2. – 10:00: general aptitude, sales assessment, consultive selling, DISC assessment
  3. – 15:00: general aptitude, Operation, sales director, sales manager
  4. – 20:00: consulting, Operation, Tarzan
  5. – 25:00: Operation, Amanda Holmes, Chad Holmes
  6. – 30:00: consultive selling, Operation, playbook
  7. – 35:00: Go High Level
  8. – 39:41: Operation

Notable quotes from "Hiring Top Sales Talent - Kayvon Kay"

  • Does not matter what you think, only what you can prove. Kaven K is a sales expert who has built an eight-step profiling system that's processed over 4 million salespeople with…
    about eight-step profiling system · at
  • Rep, but you just said it, they actually might need a sales leader or a sales director or a sales manager or a sales coach or a sales trainer. And those are all very different…
    about sales manager · at
  • More one-on-one, right? Is getting them past their own limitations, we have Coach Terry. go see Coach Terry. Right.
    about Coach Terry · at
  • Tests, right? Another one for us is location. most of all of our clients are North America. We got a couple in Europe that we specifically hire for then. But like I can't have someone in Australia time working on American time.
    about North America · at
  • Know how many times they started, stop, start. All of that is what I call is we're we're looking for aptitude. I'm actually looking to see what type of salesperson this is. And do they have the ability to have consultive selling?
    about general aptitude · at
  • There's a criteria if they hit it they move on to the final assessment which is the this was is called inner metrics and this is something we look at this looks at their disk.…
    about Inner Metrics · at
  • Amazing sales situation and you're Yeah, but that's not your problem. The problem's operations. We got to go fix systems.
    about Operation · at
  • With the one company that I was talking about they hired us to come and consult and in consulting we look at it all like it's training me coming in training the sales team we…
    about consulting · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Kaven K — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Welcome to the Proven Podcast, where it does not matter what you think, only what you can prove. Kaven K is a sales expert who has built an eight-step profiling system that's…
  • Coach Terry — Person · 1 mention · first at
  • Chad Holmes — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Better than you. One of the things and we talked about this before, Chad Holmes and Amanda Holmes. they wrote a book called Ultimate Sales Machine.
  • Amanda Holmes — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Better than you. One of the things and we talked about this before, Chad Holmes and Amanda Holmes. they wrote a book called Ultimate Sales Machine.

Books & papers

Companies & orgs

  • Proven Podcast — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Welcome to the Proven Podcast, where it does not matter what you think, only what you can prove. Kaven K is a sales expert who has built an eight-step profiling system that's processed over 4.
  • The Sales Connection — Company · 1 mention

Products & tech

  • eight-step profiling system — Product · 2 mentions · first at
  • sales assessment — Product · 2 mentions · first at
    Conversation with this person? Step two, which is one of our secret sauces, is we've have created a self a sales assessment that looks at 62 different characteristic traits of a salesperson, of a sales manager, of a sales director.
  • Inner Metrics — Product · 1 mention · first at
  • DISC assessment — Product · 1 mention · first at
    This is something we look at this looks at their disk. So, if you're familiar with the DISC assessment, but it also looks at their values and then it looks at their inner…
  • playbook — Product · 1 mention · first at
    Like do you like I'll say do you have a do you have a playbook and they'll go we like an SOP? No I'm talking about a sales specific playbook. I'm talking about a playbook that tells sales people that one place.
  • Go High Level — Product · 1 mention · first at
    Anything else? Oh, yeah. We got this thing called Go High Level everyone's talking about Oh, so you're on GoHigh Level, Confusionoft, and HubSpot.
  • Infusionsoft — Product · 1 mention
  • Loom — Product · 1 mention

Concepts & topics

  • Operation — Concept · 6 mentions · first at
  • sales manager — Concept · 5 mentions · first at
  • general aptitude — Concept · 5 mentions · first at
  • sales director — Concept · 4 mentions · first at
    Talked about this off camera that there's the huge difference between a sales director and a sales rep. We're going to talk a little bit here about how you hire those…
  • sales trainer — Concept · 3 mentions · first at
    Might need a sales leader or a sales director or a sales manager or a sales coach or a sales trainer. And those are all very different types of roles in an sales organization.…
  • sales rep — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
    Talked about this off camera that there's the huge difference between a sales director and a sales rep. We're going to talk a little bit here about how you hire those…
  • sales coach — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
    Rep, but you just said it, they actually might need a sales leader or a sales director or a sales manager or a sales coach or a sales trainer. And those are all very different…
  • consultive selling — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
    Actually looking to see what type of salesperson this is. And do they have the ability to have consultive selling?
  • Tuca Club awards — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    All right, welcome back to the show. I am ecstatic to be with this person. This person has multiple Tuca Club awards.
  • Scaling — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Knowing which one you are is important because I'm a systems guy. I'm a scaling guy. I'm an ops guy. You asked me to sell anything. I could not sell ice to people in the desert. I'm horrible. So, that's why I bring someone else in. So,.
  • consulting — Concept · 1 mention · first at
  • Tarzan — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Ego. It's laziness. It's whatever is going on. if you built it, I always give the example of Tarzan.
  • CRM — Concept · 1 mention
  • HR company — Concept · 1 mention
  • MQL — Concept · 1 mention
  • SOPs — Concept · 1 mention
  • SQL — Concept · 1 mention
  • UX — Concept · 1 mention

Places & events

Full transcript with timestamps

Welcome to the Proven Podcast, where it does not matter what you think, only what you can prove. Kaven K is a sales expert who has built an eight-step profiling system that's processed over 4 million salespeople with a 97.6% efficacy rate for successful hires. He's proven that the right hiring process can save companies the $500,000 to $600,000 cost of a bad sales hire. The show starts now.

All right, welcome back to the show. I am ecstatic to be with this person. This person has multiple Tuca Club awards. He's going to show us some things that and teach us some things that I'm just going to be blown away with. Thank you so much for joining the show, man.

Thanks so much for having me. Appreciate it. So, you've done some stuff that most people haven't and you've done it for clients for a really long time and we've talked about this off camera that there's the huge difference between a sales director and a sales rep. We're going to talk a little bit here about how you hire those individuals effectively because so many of us screw up on the hires and it cost us a fortune. So, what are some of the things as you're walking into scale that you do?

Yeah. So, that's a a loaded question there, but I love it. Is I at first I always tell people know what you're actually hiring for. So, people uh I I'll meet a lot of businesses and for instance, they think they need a sales rep, but you just said it, they actually might need a sales leader or a sales director or a sales manager or a sales coach or a sales trainer. And those are all very different types of roles in an sales organization. Now, you could say, well, can can one person be all of those? You find that unicorn, let's let's bring them in. Let's do some studies on them. Let's test that person and let's figure out how we can multiple them. The reality is you can't, right?

Uh the biggest three as in the leadership role when it comes to a sales team is you got your sales, you got your sales manager, you got a sales coach, and you got a sales trainer. Now, there are some unicorns out there that are all three. I myself I know very quickly which one I'm I am and I am a really really good sales trainer and I'm a good sales coach. I'm a horrible salesman and I and I tell people that I I'm just it's not my thing because a sales manager you're hurt in the crowd, right? You're doing the day-to-day management of the sales team. That's not be that doesn't mean that you're a great sales person.

You can actually be a really bad salesperson and be a phenomenal sales manager. And I have one of those in my company. And she is my number one sales manager. Why? Because I'm the sales trainer. So if we have issues with sales training, right, we need training of sales, I'll come in or one of my trainers will come in. If we need uh sales coaching, which is coaching is more one-on-one, right? Is getting them past their own limitations, we have Coach Terry. go see Coach Terry. Right. So, we've set up our organization for the right butts in the right seats. Uh in terms of well, how do how do you find them? That that's a that's a loaded question. We've actually over the last uh three years, last year alone, we've had over 5,000 sales reps, managers, you know, apply to work for our company. And we've done that. And what we've we we've built was actually an eight-step profiling system. So, what does that

actually mean? We've taken traditional HR and I've kind of flipped it upside down. I said, I'm not I don't need to build out a bunch of uh administrators in an HR department who are going to have interviews all day with a bunch of people who should we shouldn't even have interviews with. What a waste of time for everybody. Truly, what a waste of time for everybody, not just my my team, but even the people that are that are going through that interview. So the first thing we've done is we actually put a stop block kind of an assessment uh in the first thing that someone does.

Someone wants to apply for me they got to fill out an application like most places but my application is set up in a certain way. It tells us right away if we want to work with them or not. I.e. some of the questions we ask. How many years in sales have you been? We're looking for a certain number there. Like in some organizations like I have one organization where it doesn't matter if you're a brand new salesperson they have so many leads it's a c create creates a place for growth awesome others where you're paying $500 a book call I can't wait I can't do that to my client right so we need to ask these questions I need to ask how many hours are they willing to work you'd be surprised even as a salesperson even if you're only willing to work 10 hours a week why would you lie like why aren't you lying and at least saying 40 you know what I mean Like you think anyone's going to hire you to work 10 hours a

week? So we these are like dummy proof tests, right? Another one for us is location. Uh most of all of our clients are North America. We got a couple in Europe that we specifically hire for then. But like I can't have someone in Australia time working on American time. Even though even though they say they can, even though they they will they're willing to wake up. Well, I've done that. You know what? that only happen that only works for so long. They burn out. It's not healthy for them and it's and it's just culturally it just it's not there. It's it doesn't work. Right?

So that's step one. We're not even you know what I mean? That that just tells us do we even want to have a conversation with this person? Step two, which is one of our secret sauces, is we've have created a a self a sales assessment that looks at 62 different characteristic traits of a salesperson, of a sales manager, of a sales director. They fill the assessment out and we will know exa I will know exactly what they are as a salesperson, how they think, what they what their what their strengths are, what their weaknesses are. I will know if they're comfortable discussing money. I will know if they have the will to sell, if they're committed. I will know if they lie to me on the test and try to fake it. I will know how many times they started, stop, start. All of that is what I call is we're we're looking for aptitude. I'm actually looking to see what type of salesperson this is. And do they have

the ability to have consultive selling? Do they have a sales process? Are they committed to the win? Do they have a mindset issue? All of that. If they pass that, they then go to step three, which step three for us, that's where your typical most people start. Send me a loom. Again, what a loom. If you don't know what a loom is, send me a video. You know, one of those a video. Hey, here I am. Kon, we do it. I'm do it on purpose where I don't tell them exactly what I want them to say. I just say, "Tell me about yourself." Because I want to see how they create. I want to see how they think. When I'm watching those videos, when they get sent to me, I don't even look I I I I make sure I close my eyes because we can make judgment on the way people look. So, the first thing I'm looking for is I'm listening to their tone and I'm listening to their conviction of their voice. And if if if I if I'm not

convinced when I open up my eyes, I'm not h can't have it. Their phone sales team doesn't matter. You know what I mean? That's why looks again the looks don't matter. Now the second thing I'll do is I will look at their uh you know at the loom but I'm not looking at them. I'm looking at what's behind them. Were they smart enough to do it in a clean place? Were they smart enough to do it to not give away exactly who they are? Like we have kids I call them kids. They're not. They're 25 30y old guys that are doing their looms with the beer cans be beside their bed beside their controller. You know what I mean? So, it's like even though they did really well in a sales assessment, is that the type of person that I want to put on with my clients?

There are some clients that that might work, not really. But there's others that for sure it's not. So, we look at that. So, then what happens is now, if you can imagine, I qualified them their time. I qualified how many hours they want to work. I qualified if they're even the right kind of the culture for for us. Then I looked at their aptitude to actually see do they have what it takes to actually be a salesperson. This this assessment we've had over four million pe four million salespeople take it.

Okay. And we know this I tell you this we have a 97.6% efficacy. Meaning if someone comes through our system and that assessment and it re it comes as recommended if I put them into your company and you have the right systems and tools in place there's a 97.8% chance that they'll be successful. Now why Kavon is that important most of you because we just jumped into this and we didn't really talk about what the the importance of hiring the right uh salesperson

because the cost of one mishhire in sales could be five to 6x their annual salary

and you effect rate. That's wild that you've got it to that to that point. And how long did it take when you go through that process? How long did it take you to be able to get to the point where you could test it and you're like got to tweak it here and there and the times where it does fail? What are the things that you're running into? What are the things like this?

So, so we have another assessment we do. We're not that was just we're not even there yet but

there's more. Yeah. So, because I want before I answer that, right? So, they look at that assessment and that's more the aptitude assessment. Then we do the video. Then we then we at that point we have what I call human intervention. up until this point, up until the steps one to three, there's no human intervention. The system's all set up automatically. It is now when they send me the loom and they send me and we have their their their assessment. We have we have we've trained our you know we trained our our our people to look at it to see what we need and then if they feel like they hit there's a criteria if they hit it they move on to the final assessment which is the this was is called inner metrics and this is something we we look at this looks at their disk. So, if you're familiar with the DISC assessment, but it also looks at their values and then it looks at their inner balance and it

looks at um what you know what their the greatest uh their values are and uh it's called the inner balance. So, kind of their empathy are they are they canesthetic whatever that might be. So now we have two assessments and the reason I love that is is they should they should match in a certain way and if they're if they're those are off then you kind of go okay there's something here or we know and if we like them we go when we go into interviewing think of the arsenal we have now like think of the questions we can ask the information we can ask do you think I can ask effective questions that are not your typical HR questions which do not help you in sales at all. Like none of that.

Tell me a time when any good salesperson with their with for their, you know, worth their assault can do a good interview. Like I mean, and that's where a lot of businesses go wrong. They get a great interview. They get a good salesperson who can talk the stuff. Oh, and then they think, "Okay, boom. Let's get them in. Let's get them in. Let's get them in." And they fail and they wonder why. You didn't assess them properly. You didn't I guarantee you're not onboarding them properly. You're not training them properly. And most of the businesses we work with are hiring a salesperson to fix a different problem they have in their business. They don't realize that. So that's a little deeper.

We can go down that a little different story there. I was I was about to jump in on that one. So there's all these assessments and and we're getting there. I wanted to just bring up one point that you brought up on a previous call. There's a huge difference between someone who's a sales guy and someone who's a systems guy. There's a huge that they're completely different. And when you go in and you work with clients, you you were telling me one that you work with this client and they're amazing. They've got this amazing sales situation and you're like, "Yeah, but that's not your problem. The problem's operations. We got to go fix systems."

Knowing which one you are is important because I'm a systems guy. I'm a scaling guy. I'm an ops guy. You asked me to sell anything. I could not sell ice to people in the desert. I'm horrible. So, that's why I bring someone else in. So, I wouldn't pass any of these exams. So, when people are doing this, a lot of the people are going to be watching this. They're trying to scale. They're operators.

Just because you're an operator and you've decided to put on every hat on the planet, doesn't mean you're a sales guy. Be honest with yourself. Hire someone. Outsource your weaknesses on that one.

Okay. 100%. Yeah. I would say yeah. If you're talking about uh now business owners who are operators trying to sell like

oh god you Yeah. I don't even words like you got me speechless. Just the thought of it gets me speechless. So I I'll tell you this. I'll tell you this matrix because and and you know we're going to give this to your people too but I got this matrix I think is really important. Right. So at the end of the day we we we look at it and we say okay if they have the values they have the behavior they have the culture meaning they are culturally in line with your culture right and by the way for those of you that don't have culture that is your culture like

yes very important to know that uh you have the right incentives you have aptitude you have a you have what we call equals successful hire you're missing values you get conflict you're missing behavior you get frustration you're missing culture, you get chaos. You're missing the incentives. You'll get resistance. You get resistance all around. They'll get internal resistance with themselves, external resistance with customers, and not good. And if you're missing aptitude, you just get time wasted because we have trained it. We have timed it to actually acquire a salesperson. Meaning, I'm going to go out to the marketplace and I'm going to recruit. I'm going to hunt. Then I'm going to put them through our system.

Then I'm going to onboard them. Then I'm going to train them. And then I'm going to get them into the sales position where they got to start understanding the sales process, the the language of the industry, the nuance of the industry, get the confidence, and then they start to ramp up is over 300 hours. And you've wasted 300 hours. your sales director, your sales manager, most likely you as the business owner doing all that work on top of what we said at the beginning of the call here with five to 6x for a mishhire. That's $500 to $600,000 you're leaving on the table.

And I I think so many business owners, especially when you're an operator, will then try not to scale. They're like, "Well, no one can do it as good as I did." Well, you didn't build all your infrastructure. You didn't build a foundation, you schmuck. You got to put all these things in line first and then go out because if you don't have all those things in line, you know, we talked about this before. If I come into a company and say, "Congratulations, I just got you a million sales." And your fulfillment center can't fulfill it.

Then what are what are we doing? What why are we here? It has to be the entire ecosystem.

Yeah. It has to be the entire ecosystem. And I get now we're going now we're going to some really good stuff here.

You cannot expect to hire a salesperson to fix your marketing problem. And just like you can't expect a marketing person to fix the sales problem, those are very two different things. And that's why there's always this marketing and sales. They're always against each other. And I'm like, they should never be against each other. They should be working with each other. If I if I ever I always said this, I will never because I'm not interested in this. But if I ever had an actual office, in-person office where everyone was coming in the same place, I would make sure marketing and sales were sitting right next to each other.

Same. Because they work with each other. They don't work against each other. They must work with each other. Right? And then it's very important as a business owner or as the person who's running the operator, understanding the entire sales process, the difference between an MQL and an SQL, the MQL, marketing qualified lead. Someone who's actually just kind of raised their hand versus someone who's raised their hand. They're problem aware. They know you are the solution. They're looking at you as a solution, which is what we call as a salesqualified lead. Those are very different things. If you're feeding all your salespeople just NQLs and expecting a great result or thinking your sales team sucks, that's a marketing problem.

It's a marketing problem. If if your main objection is I don't have the money. Okay. Well, that's a sales problem, right? So depending on and most people can't understand the difference in the outputs because they don't actually map it out. They don't actually look at the constraints of where it's breaking the actual sales process. So when we were talking you you mentioned with the one company that I was talking about they hired us to come and consult and in consulting we look at it all like it's training me coming in training the sales team we we we always do assessment on your sales team to make sure they're properly culturally aligned all the things that we talked about and we look at the process we look at the tools we look at the we look at everything the systems we look at the the data we look at the reporting we look at the KPIs we look at the entire process and we come in and I told you they they were all

wanting me to help them like, oh, this sales training is going to make a world of difference. I came in, I looked at the scripts, a minor tweak here or there, listening to the calls, I was thoroughly impressed and I and then next thing you know, my team comes in operations, they're like, "Oh my god, it's a mess." Most business owners don't realize that what what their mess is. I just had a call today with someone um which was very interesting call because uh I know them very well and they're telling me in one hand they want to bring me in to help them. They need they need a salesperson. And then I'm telling them on the other hand, no you don't right now. You need to you need to fix the marketing ensure that if I gave you a salesperson, they have a place to actually be onboarding and stay and want to stay, right? And she and and and they shouldn't say she or him and they were like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, but like I

don't want to be on the call or I don't want to be the one building it." And I'm like, that's your problem right there is you're expecting someone else to do all that work for you. You got to go do the work or hire someone to do that work for you. Set up marketing. And then I even said, and if you really want the honest truth with owners don't want to hear this, depending on the owner, I want to be very clear on this depending on the type of owner. uh you need to take the first couple calls because if you on average on average I know there's the on average though if you can't sell it how can you ever expect a salesp person to sell because nobody's going to sell the product better than you and you don't even need to be good at sales you have all the authority they want to work with you you're the face of the company and that's different please keep in mind in my world right internet

different industries different niches different industries and everything right so I want to be you know put that out there and so I'm telling her this and like No, I can't be stuck on the calls. I I never said you were stuck on the calls.

I said, "Take three or four calls. Take three or four calls. Prove the process."

And And again, no, I need a salesperson to do that. Well, then I can't help you because I know the type of sales people I'm going to bring you unless you're going to pay them to do that. Wholelly different story. They're not going to do that for free because you're being lazy. Hire for

It's interesting when it comes into for owners and we talked about this before. The biggest problem whenever we come into it, nine times out of ten it's the owner. It's it it nine times out of ten the owner just it's in the way. It's ego. It's laziness. It's whatever is going on. You know, if if you built it, I always give the example of Tarzan.

If you're swinging through the vines and you're holding on to one vine and then you grab another vine, you got to let go of the other one. If not, the momentum immediately stops. And so many owners sitting there like, "Hey, I'm a great systems guy or I'm a great marketing guy or I'm a great sales guy. I'm a goal." You're probably not all of those. You're probably one or the other. So do me a favor and get the out of my way. Let me use you when I need you so I can fire you to get you to the goal you really want, which is residual income. That's what you really want me to do. You want me to scale you? And most people their ego is in the way. Their ego ego. Um I was just talking to someone the other day. There's four of them, but I there was ego, greed, fear, and I forget there's one more is all the reasons why partnerships uh break up. Uh businesses fail. Um uh and I'll just summarize what you said

because I I mean I've been through it myself personally, you know, I'm putting the mirror in myself is you are a direct reflection of the results you get.

You are direct reflection of your business. 100%. Like especially if you're a leader, you got to take 100, you know, 100% responsibility and realize the business failed because of you. Facts. Facts.

Absolutely. And you know, there there's a there's a quote about, hey, there's my people. I need to go find out where to go, where they're going so I can go lead them. That's not leadership. You need to jump in there, take the the phone calls, do the three or four phone calls, go into operations, go and do those things. We have a a shopping plaza down here, a company, it's called Publix, and they do there are supermarkets. Everyone they hire is forced to work every level of it from bad boys to cashiers to you've got to be able to do that. And when I work with owners, and I'm sure you do as well, as you just said, you got to do the sales calls.

Go in there and listen to the sales calls once a month. you're doing the sales calls with me. That or you're going to accept a huge profit loss, which is fine. Get out of my way and I'll build you your team and we'll do it. And it sounds like what most people when they come to you, they're like, "Hey, you've got all this expertise. You're brilliant with sales. You're brilliant with marketing." But they're not expecting to say, "Yeah, well, you're also hurting on ops. You're also hurting on fulfillment."

You're you're right. And you know, I always say to our detriment, uh, because we could come in and just build the system and and kind of and then move away, but like we don't we we always kind of use the, you know, the camping terminology, leave it better than you last than you found it, right? And that's what we kind of that and that's kind of the philosophy we live, right? So when we see that, we go, okay, well, it's kind of three parts, you know, it's it's, you know, lead generation, marketing, it's sales, it's fulfillment, and then operations in between all of that, right? And if if any of those things are broken, the company's going to break. If if you have the best salespeople, you said it, but your fulfillment is broken, you're going to get refunds, you're going to get unhappy customers, your sales team's going to leave.

It's it's just it it's like not good, right? If if you have uh uh you have the best sales team, you have the best fulfillment ready to go, you wouldn't even know if it's the best, right, at this point, but your marketing leads are off, I you're again can't help. It's it's and it's about moving all those and that's why business isn't easy as you know but it's it's we look at the whole we like to look at the whole ecosystem for sure just to ensure that we can give the best value because we know a lot of people a lot of our you know competitors will just say here's the system go and then they wonder why the system doesn't work or it works for a little bit but then it breaks down. It's it's it's it it has to all integrate together and you know that and any business owner really knows that it needs to all work together and it's not easy and that's why you do get experts to come in and help you and

help you achieve the the goal. You we talk about like key questions or kind of leading indicators that when someone asks certain things you're like or you ask questions on the interviews. For me it's always when someone comes and say what is the one strategy that's going to make me a million dollars? I'm like okay we're done talking goodbye now. Because if you're just ask me a single strategy we're not you're not in it. you're it's not it doesn't work like that. You have no business experience. So when you're hiring,

what are the questions that when you do and that you've got they've gone through the test, they've gone through all of this. What are some of the questions that you normally go, you know what, I need to ask this of this individual. Let me what I mean obviously why did you put beer cans behind you, you goober's not going to get

Yeah. Some of the questions will come more kind of like from uh their results. So in some cases uh like commitment, right? Like so commitment is one of the biggest ones we look at is that that means commitment to see the sale through. So that means that like they'll they'll do the followup they like as soon as the prospect gives a little resistance they they they quit right. So we we'll ask questions around that in in terms of of that commitment and we'll you know ask them well what happens if like so say you're talking to a prospect been in the you know in the pipeline for for two months. uh you finally get them on the call, you have a great conversations. They say to you, "Yeah, send me the the uh uh sorry the the proposal." You send the proposal, they say, "Yeah, send me send me the final agreement." And then it gets to the agreement and all of a sudden they're not signing it. What do you do?

Continue to engage, right? Well, you ask them, right? And you see what they do, right? And then depending on their answers.

Oh, you Oh, you ask them. Gotcha. Yeah. You ask me the question. These are these are some of the questions, you know, we ask. Absolutely. Um, one of the uh

Sorry, I immediately went in. One of the number one the question you're asking um is uh who who who mo who best do you know that can do the can do the job? That's one of our key questions. Who's best do you know that can do the job? And the only answer should be them.

Yeah. I don't know anybody that can do what I do regrettably. If they it should be them. They should say me. And if they say me, we go, we know we got someone who get like who understands it, right? Uh if they go, ah, I don't know. We just go, do you think there's someone better out there than can you introduce us to them? We'd like we'd like to we'd like to interview them.

Talk to that person. So that's a that's a key, you know, that's that that's a key question, right? Who best that can do the job better than you?

Better than you. One of the things and and we talked about this before, Chad Holmes and Amanda Holmes. Um they wrote a book called Ultimate Sales Machine. It's a great book.

Love it. Clearly stole one of the tactics, which was I would bring someone in I thought was amazing for sales

and I was like, "You know what? You're great on paper and all that, but you're just not the guy. Sorry. You're just not the guy." And watch them just I want to see if they fight back. I was like, "Let's see what you got." Every time I've used that, every time like clockwork, if I've done all the other homework in advance, if the culture and operations and fulfillment and marketing and UX and all that's working,

that's always led me in because I didn't have the resources you have. I didn't have the test and the disk and

Yeah. Yeah. No, that was that was that's a that's a sniff test for sure. It's a great sniff test and I've read it in the book and I actually highlight it in the book and it's and we and you know, in all honesty, we we'll use that too, but I I we don't use that all the time, but we'll use that when needed. And again, it all depends on the type of person, right? Um, and the type of role. So, and again, we're talking about different roles, too. Are you are you hiring a one call closer? Are you hiring a relationship builder? Are you hiring an SDR? Are you hiring someone who's a little bit more uh nurturing, consultive selling?

Do you hire someone who has a sales process? So, in our one of our assessment, it tells us how they do they have a sales process, are they closing? Right? So sometimes you'll see their closing is like 10%. And then I'll send it to the client. Client's like, "They they suck at closing. I'm not hiring them." I'm like, "No, look at the next line. Their sales process is what? 100%." What does that actually mean in our in this assessment? It means that they sell throughout the entire process properly that they don't actually need to be closers at the end. So they don't need to do hardcore selling and push people because they're selling the whole way through that people at the end of their their sales process say yes or you'll see people 100% closer 5% sales process where you're like man this person's going to be like a nightmare in the CRM they're going to be a nightmare in the follow-up. So then you ask

yourself that's okay because I know I have all the automated systems set up and I already have the people in place to offset that. Okay, great. Or I know my CRM's comp. We have one, you know, one of our clients, the CRM just the way it is. Our tech stack's so complicated that we could never like we sometimes have to say no to great closers over there because we know they're not going to be able to do the work post sale that's going to keep my client happy and thus it's not worth it. I don't care how any more sales he can make. It's not worth the headache. It's not worth the drama. is not worth all the times I'm gonna have to yell at him and he's not going to do it. You know, they the people can change. Yes, people can change, but not, you know, takes time.

You also have to have the systems. And as we talked about before, it's the entire ecosystem. It's looking at everything that comes in,

being able to to grasp all of it, being able to connect all of it, being able to walk someone through it and have some of these really ugly conversations that people aren't ready for. Business owners just aren't ready for. They're like, "Hey, just give me a salesperson that works." I'm like, "A, that's cute. We're not talking anymore. Let's get stuck. So, what are the tools and some of the resources that you found that if someone needs to rebuild and you run into them and you know maybe their sales is good or maybe their marketing is good, but what are some of the steps and the tools that you sit down with people and say, "Okay, here's how you start fixing some of the most common issues that you run into. Here's some ideas because I guarantee you anybody who's listening to this just went because they're just like, "Yeah, my whole ecosystem isn't solid."

Yeah. So, in terms of the selling uh and the eight-step process we use, uh as you know, I'm going to give you guys a a document that actually lays this out for you and if you even implement half that, you'll have success. So, you're going to get that. Now, you're are you talking now you're asking the systems we use or how do we identify the systems?

No, I'm asking so you go into companies and very similar to me, you go in, you're brought in for one thing and it's kind of it's the rope a doe. They want this, but what they really want is this. Yeah. and going through that process. What are some of the things that when you run into those situations, when you're talking to people at very high levels, you're not talking to people who are just low-end. These are very high level. These are high-end business owners that you run into on a on a regular occasion that they're like, "Oh man, we need to sit down and have this conversation. I know you hired me to do sales. I know you hired me to marketing.

That's adorable. Let's have a real conversation." What are some of the common things that you run because I know what I run into all the time. What are the common things you

like the common things that we'll well I'll run into is their their their CRM is not set up properly 100%. We've never ever found somewhere where the CRM is set up so so great that it's efficient. Other ones big ones reporting they think they have the numbers that they have but they're you know they're they're not the real number. Um and then another key one outside of the like the hiring and actual like say sales training is what what does your onboarding look like? Like do you like I'll say do you have a do you have a playbook and they'll go we like an SOP? No

no I'm talking about a sales specific playbook. I'm talking about a playbook that tells sales people that one place for sales people to go which is like I I used to call it the Bible. My partner didn't like that so he changed it back to the he play. He thought it was a little controversial but it was it's like it's literally the sales bible. As a saleserson I I want one click of a button. I know I'm a sales person, so everything I do is always around how sales people think, right? And I know as a salesperson, I just want one click of a button that takes me to everywhere.

Everything I need to know. Everything. Do you have that built out? Oh, kind of. Where is it on a Word doc? Uh, it's in 20 different places. No, no,

it's in my So, you know, we ask these questions to identify, okay, you know, even the tech stack. We'll ask questions like, oh, what tech stack are you on? So someone goes, "Oh, I'm on Salesforce." Oh, wow. So you you you got integrators then. Like you got some dev devs on your team. No, no, you're using Salesforce without devs. That doesn't I've I'm not the Salesforce master, but I know that Hey, you know, oneplus 1 doesn't equal two there, you know. Oh, I'm on I'm on HubSpot. Okay, great. Are you on on HubSpot? Okay. Are you on marketing, too? and and and the uh customer service or you just just the sales? Oh, just the sales. Oh, okay. Well, interesting. What else you on? Oh, Confusion Soft. Oh, so you're on Confusion Soft and HubSpot.

Anything else? Oh, yeah. We we got this thing called Go High Level everyone's talking about Oh, so you're on GoHigh Level, Confusionoft, and HubSpot. Is there a reason for it? So in other words, you sat on Instagram for too long and you listened to your friends and you started buying Again, this this goes to the ecosystem being cohesive and putting the sales people and the marketing people together and the having the conversations. I remember, you know, you bring a UX person in as well because you have to have the design. You have all this if they're not in bed with sales and marketing.

Yeah. Well, 100 like the developers are Yeah. Exactly. Or or you have again the the the person who knows how to speak to developers because that's a whole different That's why I'm going there. That's a whole different world there, you know, to understand how to speak code and know that so they actually build you the right thing. But I was going to say overall it comes down when you know speaking to these people and it's just like speaking to your clients and speaking to get sales and speaking to get contracts and speaking to build your business under millions of dollars. It all comes down to the questions you ask.

The questions you ask are direct reflection of the answers you get. So, if you're not getting the answers you like, it means you're not asking the right questions.

And when you do answer these questions and you ask this, I'm curious because you got sales background. How do you lead uh because these are most of the people again you're working with, these are these are big players.

Yeah. How do you lead them without going, hey, I'm going to force your my truth on you. How do you lead them into the environment they're like, oh god, we need to work on all of it.

I I love it. Now you're talking sales stuff, which is which I love. Right. So I I'm going to give you a fundamental some fundamentals that I have. When you say something, it means something. When they say something, it means everything. So if I say to them, this you asked, how do I lead? So if I say to them, man, your your your sales your sales process is a dog is, you know, a pile of dog poo, right? It's it's a dog's breakfast. That means something. But if I can get them to say to me, "Oh man, it is this is actually pretty bad." It means everything. So, how do I lead them? I lead them by asking, again, it's it's about leading the right questions, right? So, what does it look like? You, you know, what does it look like? Tell me about what's going on. Okay. How long has it been going on? Have you looked at any other resources? Do you know, do you like what's going on? uh you know what what is one of the biggest questions I

always love is like well what's success look like if you know magic ball like you know what what what does success look like I usually say that because if you if you're talking to a high level business person you're like magic one you know draw a line between that they they they know that they're not idiots so simple question what does success look like if we can come in and help you what does that look like okay what's stopping you from going there why why us Yeah.

Right. And you can use that as an identity hole. So people don't understand this all the time when people say, "Hey, um, I'm going to eat healthy." It's very different than, "I'm a healthy person."

Because if someone says, "I'm a healthy person." And then they say, "Let's go to McDonald's." I'm like,

"Huh, do you think that's a healthy option?" Again, open-ended questions, right? Yeah. Yeah. Always open.

Openended. Uh, it's always open-ended questions. Curious. I'm curious. Love, you know, cushion statements. I'm curious uh questions. And it's not it's it's a lot of sales people here. The less you talk, the more you sell. I'll just say it that way. The less you talk, the more you sell. So you lead them,

right? And then you can also lead them. One way of leading people is great through testimonials. Hey, you actually, you're in a situation. Uh you you kind of remind me of so and so we worked with uh they were kind of in the exact same situation. Here's what they did. Da da da. Here's what we did when we came in. We did this. We saw that. Uh, do you believe that that'd be something that would be beneficial for you in your business?

Yep. And using that ability and one of the things to to take that even higher, I've always just handed the phone over. I'm like, "Hey, you were you remind me of Tim and he was running the same situation. Give me a second. Do you have a second?" And I'll call Tim. I'm like, "Hey, Tim, what are you up to?" And Tim, like, "Hey, what's going on?" I'm like, "Hey, I'm sitting here with John and John is running the same situation. I'm going to hand him the phone. I got to go pee. You guys talk about it." And you hand the phone over and you walk out the door. I used to do this all the time with

that's high level in person selling. I love that like and I would always have that relationship. So I would sit down because again when I was doing this these are very expensive things. I would unlock my phone and like call anybody that says client in front of it. If you call the one that says mom or dad, it'll be a completely different conversation. But call anyone that says client and then the name. Go nuts. Call whatever you want. Ask them whatever you want. And so it gives you that. And this is why one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you is you come into environment.

It's the camping idea. You always want to leave it better than you found it because then you have the ability to do these type of testimonials. You have the ability to have these honest conversations because there's so many people as you already know that are like, "Oh, you want to take off and make a million dollars? Here's my magic funnel. It will work for you. Oh, your operations. That's not important. You don't have fulfillment. That's not important."

You got to have the entire ecosystem. And there's rare people who, again, in your world, they actually come in and they want to help out because my hallucination is you run into environments you're like, you know what? I I'm not your guy. I'm not I'm I'm not your I appreciate it. Thank you so much for wanting to work with us.

I'm not your guy. I can tell you every time I've done that, it comes back tfold. Yeah. But even just the time you and I have spoken, I'm like, authenticity has to rule on this one.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, it it it really does. Um and and again, even for the business to to to work, right? Uh when we first started off our business, you know, we're new, we're we're desperate. We were saying yes to really bad bad clients. Then we were saying yes to money, which I call money, right? You're just taking the money just because you can. Um, and and we realized like like it in order to be effective, you got to be selective. In order to be effective, you got to be selective. And it's a very hard thing to do and you don't get it right all the time, but you you try your best. So you know who you want to work with, who you don't want to work with. So that's why one of the things when people want to engage with us depending on the level of the the engagement, we only start off with an audit because if you're not willing to spend even money on an audit, you're not going to be willing to invest into what

we have going on anyways. And the audit is actually it it's it's it's not for us just to look at what's going on in their company. It's also for us to see how we all work together. Do I want to go into bed with these people? Because if we decide we do want to go in bed, meaning we we do want to actually build something of significance, it takes time. you know, some some of the projects we're working on two, three years, some two, three, four months. I'll tell you, it's not 30 days what we do. So, we want to make sure that we're doing that properly. Now, we've only ever gotten the audit maybe hundreds of clients. We have maybe two or three by the end of time we got through it. We're like, you know, this isn't it, but here's what we're willing to do, right?

And here, and we go through and all the recommendations. So, then we'll give them the recommendations and we'll say, hey, we have this partner, these people that would be willing to help you. here's what we think you should really do and leave it up to you and you know and come to us when these are when these things are met

and I most people aren't doing that especially in the sales space that you live in most of it is is money they're just trying to there and it's so unbelievably toxic

so if people are going through this and they're trying to connect and they're trying to learn more about what you do and to interact with authentic people in a sales environment which might be the biggest oxymoron I've ever said in my life other than government intelligence how do people track you How do they connect with you? I know you're going to give us these resources. We're going to create the lab report. How do people find you? How do they get on your your radar?

Very, very simple. Just go to the sales the salesconnection.com. If you go to ww.thesalesconnection.com, you'll see all of our services. All of our free downloads are on there for you to help you and you'll know if it's the right fit.

And and then if they want to reach out to you directly, is it just there or should they do social media or is that the best place? Yeah, if you want to reach out to me on my socials, it's Kavon K. K A Y V O N K A Y Kon K. Uh all my socials, you can reach out to me. DM me,

man. I really appreciate you coming on and I love what you're going to give us for the lab report. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Stop chasing the latest sales hack or magic bullet strategy. Caven just showed us that real growth comes from building systematic processes that actually

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "Hiring Top Sales Talent - Kayvon Kay"?

Unknown (Host of The Proven Podcast) (Host), Kayvon Kay (Guest), Coach Terry (Guest).

What is discussed in "Hiring Top Sales Talent - Kayvon Kay"?

In order: 0:00 sales manager, sales trainer, eight-step profiling system, sales coach; 5:00 general aptitude, sales assessment, consultive selling, DISC assessment; 10:00 general aptitude, Operation, sales director, sales manager; 15:00 consulting, Operation, Tarzan; 20:00 Operation, Amanda Holmes, Chad Holmes; 25:00 consultive selling, Operation, playbook; 30:00 Go High Level; 35:00 Operation.

What is mentioned in this The Proven Podcast episode?

34 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Operation, sales manager, general aptitude, sales director, sales trainer, eight-step profiling system. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Hiring Top Sales Talent - Kayvon Kay"?

The episode runs 40 min; the transcript is about 8,777 words in 96 timestamped sections.

More from The Proven Podcast

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated November 19, 2025.