Speaker 1: 0:00

The Surviving Outside Sales podcast, hosted by Mike O'Kelly, presented by Sales Builder Academy, the goal is to survive and thrive all phases of outside sales, whether you're getting in, dominating or getting out. Surviving Outside Sales. Now on with the show. Welcome to the Surviving Outside Sales podcast. I'm your host, mike O'Kelly.

Speaker 1: 0:32

Today's topic is going to be territory building, so this is something that I am extremely passionate about, and I believe that people are getting it all wrong, and I believe they're getting it all wrong because they're focusing on the wrong things. Okay, it's not so much that what people are saying or what people's activity is or what they're doing, but it's how they're actually thinking about it, processing it and building the business. It is very reactive. It is not proactive. It is using old school tactics from 30 plus years ago that don't work anymore, because this is a wild, brave new world that we're living in.

Speaker 1: 1:16

In sales, the buyers are smarter than ever, and when I mean smarter, I'm not talking about intelligence per se. What I'm talking about is the minute they hear about your product, they hear about your service, they are reaching out, they are looking on YouTube, they are looking in social media, they're looking for ways to consume and get information without having to speak to you. Do you know why? Because so many sales professionals before us sales reps did such a shitty job that they don't want to deal with sales professionals. They would rather find out enough information just to get close enough to make a decision. And that is the point that they reach out. Gone are the days where somebody just sees something and says, wow, that's interesting, I'm going to reach out immediately to that company or that sales rep. That doesn't happen anymore. They do research. The internet is loaded with it. There's tons of stuff out there, and if you're not out there and there's no proof of you, I'm sorry.

Speaker 1: 2:17

Nobody is going to take you seriously. Side note if you have a LinkedIn profile and you don't have any type of banner and your profile, you've got 300 connections. Nobody is going to take you serious. This is not a beauty contest in the LinkedIn world, but it's all about impressions. You go to my page. I'm still 40% to where I need to be and where I want my page to be. Okay, 40%. Go look at my page and tell me that yours stacks up to mine. Is mine perfect? No, I literally just told you it's 40%. But if your page doesn't even sniff what mine looks like. Nobody's going to take you serious. Nobody is, because if you're a professional, your LinkedIn is your professional backdrop.

Speaker 1: 3:10

Okay, I'm not talking about other social media, everything else on the other social media, it's not as professional. That's more social. That's social selling. Linkedin is professional selling. It's an image, it's your brand. You need to take that serious. That's step number one and that's one of the reasons. That's one of the things that people are doing completely wrong. They're not focusing on LinkedIn.

Speaker 1: 3:36

Okay, if you follow me on LinkedIn, you know that I post a lot, I engage a lot and you think well, mike, you sit behind a keyboard all day and a computer all day. You can do that. You can do that as well. There's plenty of space between your activities during the day. You can be on LinkedIn. Okay, you just choose not to be. You choose not to engage. You have the time.

Speaker 1: 4:03

You're not going to BS me. I was in the field for almost 20 years. Okay, you can't slip that one by me. That's not a fastball I'm going to miss. I'm hitting that one over the fence.

Speaker 1: 4:18

Okay, stop bullshitting yourself into believing you are doing better than you really are. Stop bullshitting yourself. You don't have time. Yes, you do. Stop bullshitting yourself that your business is going perfect If you are not growing, if you are not constantly hitting quota. If you've ever missed quota, well, I won't say ever, but if you miss quota and you're fearing you miss quota, it's time to take some massive action. Okay, period, full stop.

Speaker 1: 5:00

There are layoffs galore happening on LinkedIn right now. Do you want to be one of them? Sometimes you can't control it. Sometimes it's just a structural reorg Okay, you can't control that, but what have you done to prepare? It kills me. Every time I see one of these stories on LinkedIn where somebody says oh man, I've only got like one month's left to rent. I've only got X, y and Z. Okay, what are you going to do about it? You have 275 connections or followers on LinkedIn. You don't have a professional banner. You don't have any of your skills, anything down there. There's nothing. You haven't created a website. You haven't shot personalized video explaining yourself, talking about your philosophies.

Speaker 1: 5:51

Folks, if you're listening to my voice right now, that is one of the reasons why I wanted to do a podcast. I wanted to be able to verbalize my sales philosophies, my sales teachings, things I've learned over the years, things I've done over the years, the success that I've had, the failures that I've had, what people can learn from what I'm saying? This is my resume. That's the reason why I don't need a resume. I don't even know where a copy of my old resumes are because I don't need one Corporate clients to reach out. Listen to my podcast, follow me on LinkedIn. That's all you're going to need to know about me. Go to my website. After that, let's talk. If you're still interested, let's talk.

Speaker 1: 6:36

I don't need to do 800,000 discovery calls with people. I don't have time. I turned down some of the meetings with people because they're just not going through the process, they're not taking the step further, they're not taking action into their own hands. I meet with people that say, hey, listen to your podcast and I'm thinking about X, y and Z based on this episode. In this context, you've gone one step further than most people.

Speaker 1: 7:09

If I was just looking for people to book up my calendar, I could put my calendar link on LinkedIn, and I don't do that because I don't want people just to fill up my calendar for no reason. That's number one LinkedIn. You need to engage. You need to start putting content out there. Once you start to do that, then you created a platform that you can engage with your buyer Instead of walking in with a sales piece marketing mumbo jumbo from your company. You can hand content that you have created, curated, put together. There are ways to do that. You can get landing pages. You can get a link tree. You can get a website. You can buy a domain for $12 a year. That's right, $12 a year will get you a website. How many of you have looked into getting your own name as a website?

Speaker 1: 8:15

For the longest time, mycokellicom was not available. There was another MyCoKelli out there. I know there's not many of us that had MyCoKellicom. I believe it was in 2021 or 2022. Last year it was available for the first time in a while because the guy I know who the guy was, because I'd look it up, mycokellicom, and I put in the search bar and it would pop up it's a guy in Atlanta, georgia. It's MyCoKelli, atlanta Georgia. He changed it to O'Kelly Consulting instead of MyCoKelli. Thank you, mike, for allowing this. Mike to get MyCoKellicom. I am never letting that go. I'm never letting that go.

Speaker 1: 8:56

Only you can answer this question what are you doing in your business process with your business plan that you are creating an environment, you're building a process where you are going to stand out from your crowd. What are you doing? Linkedin is the easiest. It's literally free. You don't have to sign up for all the sales navigator, all that stuff if you don't want to, it's literally free. You can create a link tree for free. Linktree is a landing page where you can curate certain information and have people reach out to you, so all you do is you just have them go straight to your link tree. In fact, your LinkedIn can connect to your link tree.

Speaker 1: 9:42

There are so many ways for you to grab attention from your market, but yet so many people have their head in the sand and they think that, well, you know, I just don't know what to do. Great, hire somebody like myself to do it. Hire somebody like me to help you with the process. Well, I just I don't know. I'm just not sure if I have the money. If you don't have the money now, you're not going to have the money in the future. I hate to tell you. If you don't have the money, that's the perfect time to get help. People that have millions of dollars and opportunities galore are not desperate. Sometimes, when you're desperate, when you're down to the last couple of months, when you don't know what you're going to do, that is the time for you to invest in somebody else that's going to get you to where you need to go.

Speaker 1: 10:39

When I built Sales Builder Blueprint, I was really thinking about helping people along the way, but now I just realize it's just. People need to throw a torch to their business plan and start over from scratch. Torch it, start over from scratch. Sales Builder Blueprint is builds from the ground up. Instead of renovating a home, as I've mentioned before, bulldoze it, get rid of it, bulldoze your plan and start over from scratch. I can help you start over from scratch and I can help you build it in less than 90 days, but you have to be willing to take that step. If you're not willing to take that step and you're willing to just do business as usual, you're going to get the same results. Don't go with me. Go with me. Find somebody, do something, take action, build a network. Those are the people that are the movers and shakers in this world, the people that take action, not sit on the sideline and not worry about things that don't matter.

Speaker 1: 11:51

Thank you for everybody who's listening. If you want to reach out to me, dm me on LinkedIn. That's probably the best avenue. That's where most people I get between 15 to 20 people a week DM me. People a week DM me on LinkedIn asking me various questions, wanting to do, wanting to know more about my courses. So there's a lot in flux right now.

Speaker 1: 12:13

So, real quick, I'm going to let you know sales builder Academy is all of my different programs. I have sales entry plan for anybody who's listening, who's trying to get into the industry, who's brand new to sales and wants to be part of a community, a group, not one on one, but group environment. There is the sales entry plan. That's 999 a month. Details are on the website. Then, for the people who want to build their territory, torch it, bulldoze it, start over from scratch and you want to build something that will scale quickly that is sales builder blueprint.

Speaker 1: 12:53

I offer one on one coaching along with the online course. You can take the online course. I recommend you do coaching plus the online course because the online course is two dimensional it's static, it's passive. You're watching me run you through it and then you're doing the exercises yourself, but having me to bounce ideas off of and to give you pointers in real time. That is the value. That's the microwave. One of the packages is for three months and one of the packages can be up to 12 months, but actually it's probably going to be six months. I'm going to condense it to six months. 12 months might be a little bit too long.

Speaker 1: 13:32

Then, if you're at the tail end of your career, there's sales escape plan. Sales escape plan are for sales professionals, who they need to know what their next step is. They need to prepare for the next step and they need somebody there while they're going through the process of doing the next step. That's where I come in. So, if you want to elevate your game, you need to do something different. You need to get coached differently. Your behaviors need to be different, not more, not just double down on what you're doing. You have to change. Okay, I hate to change, but guess what? When things aren't working, that's what I have to do. Reach out to me on LinkedIn, you can shoot me a DM and please share this with somebody you believe needs to hear this. Okay, if you care about your friends and your friends are struggling, send them this episode, connect us and let us have a conversation. Thank you so much. I really do appreciate it and we'll see you tomorrow Surviving outside sales. Bye-bye.