Speaker 1: 0:00

The Surviving Outside Sales podcast, hosted by Mike O'Kelley, 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'Kelley.

Speaker 1: 0:35

It has been about a year, a little over a year, since I have been recording podcasts frequently, have been recording podcasts frequently. I have been building a retail wellness business and have learned a lot over the last year and I want to going to be sharing my experiences and sharing what's been happening and how it relates to the business world, how it relates to outside sales. In the last year I've recorded one episode. That was January 1st, so it's been a while, but every month there are multiple thousand downloads of the surviving outside sales podcast. I have done zero promotion. I've basically gone zero dark 30, no Instagram posts, no LinkedIn, no YouTube videos, no podcast episodes in the last 12 months, but there's still several thousand downloads of the podcast and various episodes each month and various episodes each month. That means that people are out there searching and I've said it before, I'll say it again One of the reasons why I do this podcast is for the audience. It is sharing my experience of 20 plus years in sales and business, because people need to hear not platitudes but actionable things. They need to hear stories. They need to understand how to be great not to be a rep, but to be a professional.

Speaker 1: 2:18

And now that our wellness business is almost a year old, we're putting in some better processes and procedures. We've hired the right people. And that's really what it comes down to as well, as we didn't know especially me, I did not know what we were looking for necessarily in the hiring process, and we didn't hire the right people. I didn't hire the right people. I didn't hire the right people. I was looking for talent. I was looking for experience. I wasn't looking for attitude or aptitude aptitude to learn new things or to work with other people, and attitude being a team player, sacrificing some things in order for the team to succeed. And you have to have that, because if you do, if you are selfish, you're not going to be part of teams for very long, you're not going to progress in your career and you're just going to jump from lily pad to lily pad, position to position. You're not going to be sustained in one spot for a very long time. You're not going to be sustained in one spot for a very long time.

Speaker 1: 3:26

Over the last year, I've also realized some of my faults and flaws when I was an employee and I'm going to share those with you briefly today, but I'm going to expand on those later in future episodes. I'm going to try to get back to routinely releasing episodes. Right now, we're in Q4 of 2024. Q4 is my favorite time of the year. It should be yours as well. But a lot of what happens in Q4 starts in Q1, it's worked on in Q2, it's mastered in Q3, and then executed in Q4. But if you're just new to the podcast, you need to know some things today and I'm going to go over those on how to in the last two months of the year and on a high note. So I'm going to share those. So, some of the things that I learned.

Speaker 1: 4:23

It's not simply about performance. A lot of employees and I was one of those I thought everything about my job was about my performance, but it's not. It is about, yes, the performance is important, but does your company, do your clients trust you and I know that a lot of sales professionals believe that their clients trust them, but do your managers, does your company trust you? Are you a headache to work with? If you're going to be a headache to work with, you've got to be number one. You have to be so far ahead of the rest of your team that they will put up with some things. And that's the truth. No one is perfect in this world and everyone has quirks. Everyone has personality flaws, and employers and companies will overlook some of them because we realize nobody's perfect. But when you pass over that threshold of being a pain and you pass over that threshold of being untrustworthy, that is when employers are giving up on you. And so I know that probably everyone almost everyone has at least one experience in their life where a company gave up on them or they were just too much a pain in the butt.

Speaker 1: 5:50

I can't remember if I've shared this before, but I've missed out on management opportunity in the past and everybody thought I was a shoo-in for it. My numbers were great. I turned around a territory and I remember talking to the regional sales director about this opening and what he told me was I just don't think you're right for it, and one of the reasons why was I was not putting my call notes in in a timely fashion. I was waiting until the end of the week to put my call notes in, and my mind is like a steel trap and I could remember about 95% of all the conversations that I had during the week. However, the problem is I didn't realize that my company, the P, the people at the corporate office, were looking on a daily basis at the call notes and every day I'm showing up with zero call notes. They don't understand how my mind works and they don't understand what I was doing. The reason why I did that, it wasn't laziness, it wasn't apathy. The amount of time it took to do the call notes in real time.

Speaker 1: 7:06

I viewed that as missing out on a window to make the next call, because there were a couple of times where I did call notes. I drove to the next location and as I'm pulling up, there were reps walking into the building ahead of me and so as soon as I was done with my call, I would hop in the car, I'd turn on the engine and I would get out of there as fast as I could and I would get to the next building. And when I got to the next building, I was preparing for the next call. I was preparing on the way, but everything was about that next call and then the next one, and the next one, and the next one.

Speaker 1: 7:48

I had a fear of not being first at every one of my accounts and every one of my calls. Was this a rational fear? Maybe not. Probably wasn't, in hindsight, a rational fear. Maybe not. Probably wasn't in hindsight a rational fear, because I viewed every minute that I was out in the field as an opportunity. So there was either an opportunity one or an opportunity lost. So I would wait and put my call notes in. I probably should have done at the end of that day, but I would wait till the end of the week, put my call notes in and basically the manager said or my regional manager said we just don't trust you, because how are you going to train and how are you going to hold people accountable for something that you never did? And that was very 2013.

Speaker 1: 8:39

So this was 11 years ago and I thought it was all about performance Top five in two products, top three in growth in three products. I thought that's what it was about, just the numbers. But it's not. It's not just about the numbers, and I think sometimes in life you have to go through some experiences, some rough experiences, in order to grow, in order to learn, but also realizing. And I kind of knew at the time but I didn't fully understand until now. I have employees and when employees are not doing the simple things, as we call it, the blocking and tackling you know for your football fans, blocking and tackling is the foundation of the sport of football. Blocking and tackling. If you can't do that, if you can't do the fundamentals, you're not going to be successful.

Speaker 1: 9:30

Blocking and tackling in the sales world is entering your sales calls and the reason why it's. It's a peek into the window of what you're doing in the field and the types of communication you're having. In case something happens to you or there needs to be a verification with um, the company, you know if the company, the regional manager, is at a conference and one of your doctors were there or one of your accounts are there, they can look at the call notes and they can feel as if they are the ones that were making the call. So I didn't realize that fully until I had employees and so now I think about it and I look back and I said that was a missed opportunity. So if you're out there right now and you're in the sales world, the little things matter. The blocking and tackling matter. How you do one thing is how you do all things. So if you cut corners or you're not fully efficient in several things you do during the day, you're not going to be efficient in the longterm.

Speaker 1: 10:38

So if you're out there right now and you're hearing my voice, make sure you're doing the fundamentals right. You're doing everything that your managers or your company is asking you to do, because I can guarantee you they're not. And I've gotten pushback from some of my employees. I am not asking them to do things for my health. This is not just oh, I just want to have them do extra grunt work. There's a reason why there is a formula for success. This is not so that I can Lord over somebody.

Speaker 1: 11:17

There are things that I've learned over 20 plus years in sales and business that work unequivocally. They work a hundred percent of the time, but it's the blocking and tackling. And when businesses fail the the employees, the professionals they fail to do the blocking and tackling correctly. Businesses that succeed everyone does the blocking and tackling correctly, consistently, repetitively, every single day, without fail. So right now. I know if you're listening right now and you're in the sales and business world and you've got Q4, I know right now all you're thinking is I got to hit quota, I got to hit quota, I got to hit quota.

Speaker 1: 12:02

If you have some time, examine your blocking and tackling, see if you're doing the little things correct, because the little things turn into big things. It's the foundation upon which your business is set upon. If not, it's a house of cards and it could easily be pushed over at any single moment. Trust me, I've had employees leave the building and some of the things that they were doing was the house of cards and it comes tumbling down and the headache after headache after headache oh, this was said by this employee and this employee gave me this free thing. And you know, trust me, I've been there and it's something that you have to deal with on an everyday basis, and that is the reason why sales and outside sales are not for everyone.

Speaker 1: 12:53

It is relentless. You have to have a very thick skin, you have to be very disciplined. You cannot be lazy, you can't be apathetic. You have to care about what you're doing and improving the outcomes of the person you're trying to engage every single time without fail. Every single time without fail. You can't have an ounce of phoniness and you can't go through the motions. A lot of people try to fake it, quote, unquote, fake it till you make it. No, you can't do that, it's impossible. So, right now, you can be authentic, you can focus on the little things, the blocking and tackling.

Speaker 1: 13:37

And if you're listening right now, I would recommend you reach out to your manager and just touch base and say hey, hey, excuse me, as Q4 is going along, I'm really curious. I just want to make sure that I'm doing everything that I possibly can. Can we review my strategy for Q4? And I'd love to get your input. Managers love to hear this, bosses love to hear this. It shows engagement, it shows you're trying to be proactive and, quite frankly, if you have a manager or boss who doesn't want to engage you like this, it might be time to look at a different company, because your manager might be going through the motion, and different company, because your manager might be going through the motion and not focusing on the blocking and tackling. You should have somebody that wants to invest in you the time, energy in order to do so.

Speaker 1: 14:30

But those are some of the things that I've learned over the last year I've also learned in a retail business. There is no such thing as a set it and forget it. You've got to engage people all the time, every day. So all the lessons that I've learned in the outside sales world about constantly being out there, constantly reminding, promoting marketing, talking to people making sales calls you have to do that almost 10 X in the retail space. People easily forget about you. So you're constantly. You have to do that almost 10 X in the retail space. People easily forget about you. So you're constantly. You have to be relentless. So what you have to do is you have to find people who also share that mentality. They have the energy, they have the aptitude and they have the right attitude in order to do so. I know those. Those are some of the things that I have learned. If you're listening, if this is the first episode you listened to or you've been listening for a while, do me a favor, reach out to me on LinkedIn and just shoot me a DM and say hey, mike, really appreciate everything that you're doing. I'm happy that you're back and you're going to be doing more content because it is Q4. It is time to focus on pulling through those deals and hitting those bonuses, especially now. The economy has taken a big turn in the last year. I know people are very bearish for the future.

Speaker 1: 15:53

It's all about how you can control your mindset and how you can control the things you can control. Whatever happens in the upcoming election, you can't control If you voted. You've done your part. You can't control what else is being done. You can't control who's going to be in office. You can't control what your city or state is going to do. All you can control is what is in your power to control, and that's it. You can change your circumstance, you can change your surroundings, but you can only change what you have the power to change. That's it. Can't do anything else. Can't sit around and whine and complain. Can't sit around and hope and wish. You have to take action.

Speaker 1: 16:39

As I've said it before, I'll say it again you have to take massive action If you're not getting the results that you want. Go bigger, go bigger, re-examine, adjust, do it again, adjust, do it again, examine, adjust, do it again, keep going. Don't give up. I've mentioned before I've made big sales the last day of the year, the day before new year's Eve. That was the last technical business day of the year, but I've made big, big, big deals have been done at the last, at the 11th hour I don't recommend the 11th hour, but you still have time. There's still an opportunity.

Speaker 1: 17:21

If you're listening to this right now, I don't care what time of day it is. If it's early in the morning, you've got a whole day ahead. If you're doing this over your lunch break, guess what? You have a whole afternoon. If this is on your drive home, reset your mind and get after it tomorrow, and then the next day and then the next day. Keep showing up. Keep showing up, blocking and tackling.

Speaker 1: 17:45

I want to thank everybody who's been listening. Um, I have to turn back or turn on all of my uh, uh social media. I have to, uh, start posting again. But I'm going to be launching some new resources for people to take advantage of in the future, so stay tuned for those. I'll probably announce those over the next couple episodes. But I want to thank everybody again who has been reaching out. I have been getting LinkedIn messages and emails over the past year from people who are listening, so I really do appreciate that and just keep doing what you're doing. Keep showing up and I would love to hear from you. So hope everybody has a fantastic rest of your day. Attack it and we'll see you next time. Survive in outside sales. Cheers.