Surviving Outside Sales: Igniting a Sales Revolution and Unleashing Your Potential | SOS Ep. 331

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, and I'm your host, mike O'Kelly. Thank you all for listening. I really do appreciate it. I am just going to keep this blowtorch going.

Speaker 1: 0:38

This week I was listening to a podcast it was not Sales Podcast, but it was a new podcast and I heard one of the best lines, and so I give credit where credit is due. I don't have to say the podcast whatever, but this guy was talking about change and how difficult change is. And if you listened to my episode yesterday, one of the reasons why we are in the state we are as a sales company or sales country or sales culture, is people are not willing to change, and when they think about change, they think it's going to be quick and easy. And look, I was guilty of this for a really long time. Now. Quick and easy does not work, and I want you to think about this when you have a W2 position. Do you ever get the mindset of quick and easy? No, because you know you have a paycheck coming in every two weeks and you know you're going to get at least three to seven to nine to 10, maybe even 12 months employment with that company. You know you've got runway and so you ease off the gas, you relax and look, I got a lot of jobs in my career. I loved getting that email or that phone call hey, mike, congratulations, we're offering you the position. I loved it. It was guaranteed money because that phone call was worth 60,000, 70,000, 80,000, sometimes 90,000, 100,000, 100,000 plus. Those phone calls were great to get and it's you pop champagne, you celebrate, but then the reality hits later on. There's no training, you're not getting the support you were promised in the interview, you're not getting the resources, the tools, the expertise to take your business to the next level and it's all falling on you.

Speaker 1: 2:33

Now what do you do? Everything went from comfortable to uncomfortable. How are you going to handle that? That is what I'm trying to shake people up. I'm trying to wake people up in the sales world. Some people think that the sales world needs to have reform. This is the quote from the guy. He's not looking for reform, he's looking for a revolution. That is really, what I'm trying to do in my own way is start a sales revolution. Stop talking features and benefits, stop doing the old, tired salesy professionals used to do, excuse me. Start elevating your skill set, start elevating your network, start elevating your game. That only happens with change.

Speaker 1: 3:38

I listened to the podcast from yesterday and there was something that I was going to correct. I made a mistake yesterday on the podcast and, of course, my dad brain is kicking in and I'm in a stream of consciousness right now. I don't do notes for the podcast. All I do is I have one idea and I tell you what I think On a side note. Is that the most popular? No, it's not. Is it the most polished? No, it's not. Is it the most 100% authentic? Damn right, it is, and I'm not going to apologize for that. I'm not trying to be the most popular podcast. I would rather have 200 loyal fans than 5,000 followers any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

Speaker 1: 4:31

Really, while I continue to talk, I will remember exactly what I needed to correct from yesterday has something to do with about LinkedIn, so I'll go down my LinkedIn follow up. So I was talking about LinkedIn. I was talking about how we need to have a sales revolution. Each one of you that's listening right now. Okay, I'm talking to you. Are you struggling? Are you stalling? Do you feel like you're spinning your wheels? Do you feel like something is missing? Are you missing sales, missing quota? I feel like you're missing out on life I haven't really talked about and I'm not talking work-life balance. I'm talking about living a fulfilled life in sales where you're not miserable, you're not constantly getting to Sunday and having the Sunday scaries, dreading the upcoming week, hating having to go out and make a difference for the following week.

Speaker 1: 5:44

I've mentioned before, I'll say it again and I'll never stop saying it I absolutely love Mondays. I love Mondays, I love my time with my family. But as a man, as a father, as a husband, I have to get to work and the last several years have been rough. I left the stability of a W2. I left the stability of a paycheck and it's taken longer than I thought, but I've made some mistakes. So, as I mentioned before, people can learn from those mistakes. I made some mistakes, but the things that, personally, I'm building and I'm changing in my life I know in two to three years are going to explode and everything is going to be 100% worth it when you say the same in your career.

Speaker 1: 6:51

I got four DMs today on LinkedIn alone and they all said the same thing. I'm not going to tell you. I'm never telling anybody whose name they are and I have not responded to all of them yet it's the same thing. I feel like I've got golden handcuffs and I'm stuck. I know there's a lot of you out there that's struggling with that. You don't feel heard. You don't understand where your career is going. You're just spinning your wheels. You're going out and making sales, but you don't know to what end. You've lost passion and that loss of passion is spilling over into your personal life. Trust me, your professional and your personal life are interconnected.

Speaker 1: 7:35

When they say work-life balance, what most people think of is oh, how much time do I get off to recharge and regenerate? Do you have passion in what you are doing for a living? Because you need to have passion in your life, and if you don't have passion that's almost equal to or greater than the passion you have for your life, then that equation is out of balance. That is the work-life balance. You need to have the exact same amount of passion that you do for your work. That's the amount of passion that you do for your work, that you do for your personal life. And then I'm not talking about time off and all that stuff. Yeah, that's great. I mean time off is great, but when you love what you do and you have a passion for it I know it's cliche, but it's true you don't feel like you work a day in your life.

Speaker 1: 8:36

I work harder as an entrepreneur than I did when I was a sales professional. I work more hours. I work long after the sun goes down, after my kiddos go down. I'm sacrificing, sacrificing time with my family, especially my wife, but it's for the long term. Sacrifice now, reward in the future. What the W-2 does is its instant gratification. Gratification Now, I'm not bashing W-2.

Speaker 1: 9:19

Let's not get this twisted. What I'm saying is, if you're solely doing it for the money and you don't need to, don't do it. Do something else you're passionate about. I spoke to a gentleman six weeks ago, maybe six weeks ago. He said he had 36 months of runway not touching his 401k, not touching his IRAs investments. He said I got 36 months of runway three years and he and I were gonna work together on what I call sales escape plan.

Speaker 1: 10:02

The sales escape plan for those of you who don't know is for sales professionals who are looking to make a change in their career. They want to get into management leadership. They wanna move to another industry within sales. They wanna start taking on multiple streams of income. They wanna start building a portfolio. Maybe they wanna start a business. It's people who are looking for more and they wanna follow in my footsteps. Because this is what I've done. I have the blueprint for the sales escape plan. I was a W-2 employee selling radiation machines to dermatologists. I will never be a W-2 employee again because of the decisions that I've made, the work that I've put in and what I have built for myself using my strengths. My strengths are not your strengths. So this is not Mike's plan for anyone else. This is coming up with what you are great at, and every single person has one skill that they are great at.

Speaker 1: 11:02

The conversation goes around can you make money off of it? If the answer is yes, perfect. Let's come up with a plan, execute it and have some realistic expectations of what's going to happen. Every single sales professional needs to go through that. That's a revolution. That's not reform. Reform is just well. I'll just keep doing what I'm doing. Or maybe if I'm making 40 calls a week, maybe I'll make 50 and see how that works. If you're not doing it properly, because you haven't been trained properly how to run a business, how to run a territory, if you don't understand the backend, how money is made, if you don't understand how your prospects you're talking to, if you don't understand how their business operates, how they make money, what interests them, if you haven't gone through any of that, you're at square one. You're just gonna keep spinning your wheels and, no matter how many more calls you make, you're not going to grow and you're not going to make the money that you want. You have to do things differently. You have to approach them differently physically, mentally and emotionally completely different. You need to have some rewiring done.

Speaker 1: 12:22

One of my favorite sports movies is Hoosiers famous line in the movie Gene Hackman, who's the coach. He said well, first of all, I gotta tear these boys down and I gotta build them back up. That's the only way we're gonna win. I'm not saying I tear down my clients, my students, but I metaphorically do. I break down what they've done in the past, their skill set, what they're doing today and then a plan for the future. I call that the PPF method. You can apply the PPF method to any single scenario you've ever had in human connection and relations. The PPF method Past state, present state, future state. If you don't know all three, you can never get to a future state that's enhanced. I believe that's one of the reasons why the people that I work with intimately more than 10, 12 hours of one-on-one coaching are more than satisfied.

Speaker 1: 13:36

If you are not where you want to be, if you are not on a path to where you want to go, reach out to me, shoot me a DM and let me know. Like I said, I had four today about what I would call the sales escape plan. Doesn't matter what phase. This podcast is called Surviving Outside Sales, get in, dominate and get out. That relates to the three phases of sales Getting your first sales job, getting into that industry, getting into that role, dominating. Once you are in it, it is pedal to the floor. You're building networking. That's the time where you have to go out and get the results. And then the escape. At some point in your career you're going to want to have to change. You're doing the same thing for 10 years, 15 years, 20 years. It doesn't matter how many years.

Speaker 1: 14:37

If you want more in your life, you have to come up with a plan to do something different. You have to take action, do something different and then execute it with reckless abandon. Go after it, and you should not give a shit about what other people think. Period. I had people doubt. I had people say it wasn't going to work. I had people say I was crazy. I don't hear from those people anymore. It's funny how that works. Start a sales podcast. Why 325 plus episodes? Actually now we're 330 episodes plus. Strong, continually growing, set a record for downloads and then last month, highest downloaded month in the history of the show 17x more downloads than last summer.

Speaker 1: 15:57

Listen to what I have to say. If you take action you take action with me or you take action with somebody else just take action. Okay, just take action. It's the only way you're going to get to where you want to be. It's the only way you're going to make the money. It's the only way you're going to live the life that you want. If not, three, four years from now, you're going to be saying the exact same thing to yourself. I wish I would have listened to Mike. You can start today. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1: 16:32

I would really appreciate if you, if this show has earned a five star rating. I would love to have a five star rating on Spotify or Apple. It is interesting. I don't care what my rating is, but a higher rating will spread the show to more people. But it is interesting that on Spotify somebody gave me a one star. I just laughed when I saw that Somebody gave me a one star. I had on Spotify, I think it was four or five five stars and then one one star. I think that's hilarious Cause you know what I know for a fact that people who do podcasts do not have time to listen to a ridiculous amount of podcasts and give them one stars. So I want to thank my hater out there. I appreciate it. I would just again love for you to rate the show. I think so far on Apple still a five star rating. I'd love for you to go and rate a five star. That helps with their algorithms to show more people and you have no idea what that is doing for other people. You have no idea if somebody can get exposed, because there's not a lot of outside sales podcasts out there that are talking like I am the real stuff.

Speaker 1: 17:57

It's a lot of platitudes, it's a lot of corporate speak. It could save somebody's career. Share this with somebody. Please give five stars to the show if you believe it's deserved. Spotify, apple, download the episode, share it with your friends and create. Find somebody who's an accountability buddy. Find somebody that you're going to go through this period of growth together and hold each other accountable. But I've said this before and I'll say this again there are so many ways to make money. There's so many ways to be successful and happy in this world, to be passionate about what you do on a daily basis. If you are not, reach out to me and let's have a conversation, because we need to come up with a plan to get you turned around. Thank you so much. I do appreciate it. We'll see you tomorrow surviving outside sales. Bye-bye.