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 podcast, I'm your host, mike O'Kelly, very excited to share some updates. So, first off, we're going to take it back old school. We're going to go back to the beginning of why Surv outside sales started and the different phases of surviving outside sales. Different phases of outside sales, what the future is going to hold for surviving outside sales. Some things that I'm creating in the background that I'm really excited to share about.

Speaker 1: 1:00

Thank you to everybody who has reached out. This has been one of the driving factors of how I get to meet people and how I get people to reach out to me. So, as always, if you want to know more about outside sales, if you want to know how to do your best, please reach out to me. I do a 30 minute introductory call with every single person who is willing to do so. You can send me an email. You could reach out to me and shoot me a DM on LinkedIn. Those are the two ways to get started right now, but I'm going to be creating a free resource. So I don't want to spend a whole lot of time on this in the beginning, but I'm going to be doing a free resource, a free community of surviving outside sales. All three phases getting in, dominating, getting out all of the various tips that I have mentioned on the podcast in the past. We're getting close to 400 episodes. It's a lot of podcasts for people to get through, but I want to have a community where there's going to be resources. I'm going to be going live once a month answering any type of questions and just helping to educate the future of outside sales. So that is something that's going to be launching in June next month. So if you're interested in that, dm me and let me know. You can also join the Surviving Outside Sales page on LinkedIn. I'm going to put a link in the description of the show notes. You can join the Surviving Outside Sales group on LinkedIn. I'm going to put a link in the description of the show notes. You can join the surviving outside sales group on LinkedIn. Those are the people that are going to have first priority to to test out this new platform.

Speaker 1: 2:35

But I'm very excited about this because it's all about giving back to the outside sales world. It's one of the reasons why I started the surviving outside sales podcast and, yes, over the last year and a half I have not done as much with surviving outside sales podcast, but I'm back. I'm back. I'm going to be doing this um as close to full time as possible. This is what I absolutely love. This is a passion of mine to help the future generation of outside sales professionals scale their businesses, make more money, make more commissions and live the life that they want to live. Outside sales has afforded me and my family an unbelievable opportunity, and I want to keep that going with anybody who is willing to take that leap of faith and anybody who is willing to invest in themselves and really go for it in this great industry of outside sales. All right, let's get back into it.

Speaker 1: 3:30

So first, the first part of surviving outside sales is the getting in part, and I also just want to clarify that the getting in is not necessarily just getting into the industry. Okay, you can be an experienced sales pro and you can try to get into a new industry or you want to get into a new role. Basically, it is just having the mindset and going through the certain steps and processes in order to explore, to uncover and to actually get that new role that you want. Either it's getting your first role in the industry or it's getting a role in a different industry. Maybe it's getting a promotion. There's going to be some steps, there's going to be some, uh, best practices that I'm going to be sharing and how to do that, and I've probably gotten promoted, um, about a dozen times in my career. I have gotten a lot of roles, uh, towards the end of my career, there were a lot of roles that I didn't necessarily interview, for people reached out to me and it was because of the steps, the systems, processes I used in my previous roles that I was kind of known as somebody who could take over a territory and expand it.

Speaker 1: 4:37

So then, the dominate part the dominate part is going to be moving as quickly as possible to scaling your business and leaving no stone unturned. You're not going to sit back, kick your feet up. You're going to do everything that you can to do the best with your situation. There are some products, some services, that are going to scale faster than others because, let's be honest, they just are better products. Okay, I did not have many products in my career that were the number one top line products. And that's also going to be something that I you know, coach my current clients is focusing on the product itself.

Speaker 1: 5:21

If you've got a bad product, it's going to be really hard to scale that, even if you are doing all the right things, you have the right habits, you have the right processes, if you just don't have the right product and you don't have something that the market actually wants, it's going to be a uphill climb, it's going to be some tough sledding. So it's identifying product market fit. So that is one of the things that, as I'm shifting, a lot of the things in the background, I'm really focusing on making sure people understand you have to understand your product market fit and you know what, if your product and it doesn't fit within your market and there is no room to scale, it might be time to look at, look somewhere else. So it doesn't mean the first time you hit a roadblock you just, uh, you know, pull the rip cord and you and you leave. It is it's understanding. You know what this industry is tapped out, or this market is tapped out, or you know what. My product has too many headwinds, it's just not worth it. I want to do something else. I want to do something I'm passionate about. We'll discuss that as well. And then there's the getting out. So the getting out is if you're leaving the industry, if you're trying to get into a new industry, if you are trying to get out of the current role, maybe get to a new company. That is also what is going to be discussed at that point.

Speaker 1: 6:35

So the surviving outside sales, the three parts, the getting in, the dominating and getting out um, I want to be sharing kind of everything. I'm in the process of writing a book regarding surviving outside sales, and so I'm kind of going through the process of dumping out my bag and putting everything out there, all the ideas, all the things that I was taught, all the things that my mentor shared with me, all the things that I tried in the past. I've tried a lot. I've been a serial entrepreneur in my career. I have done side hustles, I have built businesses, I have signed up for lots of different projects 1099s. Some worked out well, some flamed out gloriously, and I have all the lessons from that that I take to my next one. And what I do is I learn lessons from everything and I stack those on top of each other. I'm going to share all of those.

Speaker 1: 7:36

So, really, when you think about it, there are three phases to the outside sales journey that every single person goes through. Every single sales professional goes through these exact same three-step journey, just as your buyers go through their buyer journey, the customer journey. You go through a journey as well, and I want you to take a moment. You can push pause or you can do it later. I want you to think about where are you in your journey. Take a moment and think about yourself, because a lot of times, we just focus solely on the buyers and it's just move on to the next month, move on to the next quarter, move on to the next year. Body's in motion to stay in motion unless acted upon by the outside force.

Speaker 1: 8:17

And I'd like to be the outside force for you right now. Where are you going? Where are you headed? Are you going in the right direction? Are you where you want to be? Are you making the type of money that you want to be, that you want to make? Excuse me, are you? Do you feel fulfilled? Do you go to bed every night believing that you made a difference, or is it just checking off a bunch of boxes and finishing a bunch of tasks. That is something that you should be asking of yourself and challenging yourself.

Speaker 1: 8:50

If you have the ability to do more, why not push yourself? If you have the ability to live out your dreams, jump off the ledge, get out of your comfort zone. What's stopping you from doing that? Is it fear? Is it that you're not a risk taker? Is it the unknown? There's something that might be holding you back, or are you exactly where you need to be? But that is the one thing that I challenge you to do right now is focus and think about where are you today, where have you come from and where are you headed? Moving forward that I can.

Speaker 1: 9:44

So the first is the what I'm doing right now. Currently and I'm just telling everybody as I'm switching over from my website I'm phasing out my website as being my primary hub and building a new platform and putting everything in this, and this is going to be the surviving outside sales hub and it's going to have everything. Every video that I have. It's going to, it's going to be posted there. There's going to be lots of resources. It'll be lots of content. There's going to be a lot of things that were on, were behind paywalls before that are going to be free. It's kind of my gift to the outside sales world. And then there's some other new things that I'm working on right now that I'm really excited to share, but all in due time. So the surviving outside sales world, the surviving outside sales podcast, is having kind of a reboot, a refresh, as we kick it up because, let's be honest, it's it's about to hit summertime.

Speaker 1: 10:42

This is when some people relax, but this is when the true professionals they prepare. They prepare for the fall, they prepare for the prime buying season, which is Q4. This is not a time to kick your feet up and relax. Yes, it is time for vacation A lot of your buyers are going to be going on vacations but it is time to refocus. It's a great time to dump out your bag and get yourself prepared for the second half of the year. There's still two more quarters in 2025. There's still two quarters left of opportunity, and I know that the students that I'm working with right now we are focusing on the processes, the students that I'm working with right now we are focusing on the processes, we're focusing on the systems and we're getting them set up for success for Q2 or, I'm sorry, q3 and Q4. So they can have the best year that they've had so far.

Speaker 1: 11:34

So check out the links below. Again, as a reminder, please reach out to me on LinkedIn. Shoot me a DM. If you're interested in doing a free consult. There's a link that I can send you. Also, there's a link in the description. If you want to join the Surviving Outside Sales page and be alerted as soon as we go live with the Surviving Outside Sales hub, it's going to have all these resources for you. Please let us know.

Speaker 1: 12:02

Again, thank you to everybody who's downloading the episodes. I know this has been a very sporadic, uh release of episodes. I'm trying to get more consistency and kind of get back into a rhythm and a flow. There's just been a lot of stuff happening behind the scenes, um, a lot of exciting things that I'm going to be sharing over the next four to six weeks and if you want to get involved, if you want to know more about this Fighting Outside Sales podcast, please reach out to me. I would appreciate if you send this to a friend, somebody that you believe would be interested, or this could help just share with them and start a conversation and perhaps that could spark changing that person's life by changing their outlook on their sales business. So thank you so much. I really do appreciate it and we'll see you next time Surviving outside sales Cheers.