“Selling to the wrong people wastes time. Success starts with finding the right prospects.” — Sell It Like a Mango, Donald C. Kelly
You can have the slickest pitch and the best‑priced product on the planet, but if you’re talking to people who don’t need what you sell, you’re stuck on a treadmill: lots of effort, no forward motion. Chapter 6 of Donald C. Kelly’s Sell It Like a Mango is a masterclass in stepping off that treadmill and walking straight toward the buyers who matter most. Below is a deeper dive—complete with real‑world tactics—to turn Kelly’s ideas into a prospect‑attraction engine for your own pipeline.
Kelly’s first directive is simple: define your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)—the who behind every sales activity. An effective ICP goes beyond job title or industry:
Action step: Interview ten of your happiest customers. Extract the shared traits that made them easy to close and eager to renew. Those overlapping traits form the spine of your ICP.
Kelly warns that unqualified leads drain time, morale, and marketing dollars. Adopt a BANT‑plus framework:
Disqualifying politely is an act of respect—for both parties. “Not now” prospects often circle back when conditions change.
Generic pitches sound like spam, even when they land in the right inbox. Kelly’s antidote is pain‑first personalization:
Tip: Keep a spreadsheet of customer quotes and quantifiable wins. Swipe compelling lines into new outreach so every message feels both fresh and field‑tested.
Kelly advocates a multichannel hunt rather than a one‑channel blast:
Pro move: Track which channels create the fastest revenue cycles for each segment of your ICP. Double down on the winners; deprioritize vanity channels that only generate clicks.
Kelly’s mango anecdote is priceless: he ditched the bargain‑hunters and courted health‑conscious shoppers who appreciated organic produce. The result? Higher margins and lifetime value. Replicate that mindset:
When it’s finally time to talk contracts, you’re not a vendor—you’re a trusted advisor.
Thought for a couple of seconds
Common Prospecting Pitfalls & Quick Fixes
Spray‑and‑pray outreach: Too many reps blast the same generic email to every contact in their CRM. Flip the script by crafting each message as if it will be splashed across a billboard outside the prospect’s headquarters—personal, relevant, and impossible to ignore.
ICP drift: Over time, teams quietly veer away from their Ideal Customer Profile and start chasing any logo with a pulse. Prevent this by re‑auditing wins and losses every quarter and ruthlessly tightening your ICP to reflect the customers who actually convert and stay.
Skipping discovery: The temptation to demo first and diagnose later kills countless deals. Dedicate roughly 70 percent of your first call to uncovering pains, priorities, and decision dynamics, leaving only 30 percent for your solution overview.
Over‑qualifying: Hyper‑strict scorecards can boot good prospects before they have a chance to breathe. If a lead checks every must‑have box but misses a nice‑to‑have, keep moving forward—too much rigidity stalls momentum and starves the pipeline.
Quality beats quantity every single quarter. By sharpening your prospect lens—exactly as Donald C. Kelly prescribes—you’ll close bigger deals faster, protect your calendar from zombie leads, and build a pipeline that compounds. Stop selling mangoes to people who prefer apples; find the fruit lovers who crave exactly what you’re growing, and watch your orchard thrive.
Now ask yourself:
What will I do this week to get crystal‑clear on my ideal customer and start speaking directly to them?
Chapter 6 “Selling to the wrong people wastes time. Success starts with finding the right prospects.” — Sell It Like a Mango, Donald C. Kelly You can have the slickest pitch and the best‑priced product on the planet, but if you’re talking to people who don’t need what you sell, you’re stuck on a treadmill: […]
Chapter 5 You nailed the demo, sent a killer proposal—and then disappeared for a week. Sound familiar? In Chapter 5 of Sell It Like a Mango, Donald C. Kelly explains why that vanishing act quietly kills more deals than any pricing objection ever could. Success, he insists, goes to the professional who shows up today, […]
Chapter 4 Ask any top seller about their most humbling moments and you’ll hear a chorus of polite—and sometimes not‑so‑polite—“no thanks.” In Chapter 4 of Sell It Like a Mango, Donald C. Kelly reframes those stinging moments as stepping‑stones. Rejection, he insists, is rarely the end of a deal; more often, it’s an invitation to […]
Chapter 3 Your alarm pings at 6 a.m. You brew the coffee, open the CRM, and brace yourself for a fresh round of dials. But there’s a question humming beneath the surface of every task: Why are you doing this? In Chapter 3 of Sell It Like a Mango, Donald C. Kelly argues that purpose […]
Chapter 2 In Chapter 2 of Sell It Like a Mango, Donald C. Kelly turns the classic sales stereotype on its head. Selling, he argues, isn’t a slick game of persuasion—it’s an act of service. When you approach every conversation as a chance to solve problems and create value, quotas follow naturally. Below is a practical deep‑dive into this “service‑first” philosophy and […]
Chapter 1 How a childhood of mango hustles became a masterclass in modern selling— and how you can tap the same island‑forged mindset to land (and keep) your dream customers. A Morning in Kingston, a Lifetime of Insight Picture this: sunrise over Kingston Harbour, reggae drifting from a battered radio, and a cloud of ripe‑fruit […]
