3 Keys to Greatness in Sales | SOS Ep. 376

Mike O'Kelly breaks down the three key elements that separate great sales professionals from the rest: taking massive action, continuously learning new skills, and building repeatable processes.

• Taking massive action means going beyond basic activity to create productivity
• Most sales happen between the 5th and 12th touch point, but many salespeople give up too soon
• Prospects receive dozens of pitches daily, making persistence and quality outreach essential
• Shift from demanding prospect time to providing valuable insights that move them from unaware to aware
• Successful sales professionals position themselves as go-to experts in their field
• Growth never happens in your comfort zone - constantly learn new skills and adapt to market changes
• Building repeatable processes is crucial for scaling success and preventing the "spinning plates" syndrome
• The P3 sales method creates a framework where buyers view you as a consultant, not just a vendor
• Most sales failures stem from process breakdowns, not ability issues

I do a free 30-minute consult if you want to learn more about where you are in your career and how to elevate your sales performance. Reach out to me at mike@survivingoutsidesales.com or connect with me on LinkedIn and shoot me a DM. The link will be in the show notes - book a time for a free 30-minute call to see where you are, where you're headed, and get a territory audit.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introducing the Three Keys to Sales Success
• 8:03 Taking Massive Action: Quality Over Quantity
• 13:33 Why Most Sales Outreach Fails
• 18:17 Learn New Skills: Becoming the Go-To Expert
• 22:47 Building Unstoppable, Repeatable Processes
• 26:42 Call to Action and Personal Invitation

Transcript

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. Today's topic, I think, is very apropos with a lot of the conversations I've been having recently with sales professionals and with my students. So today I'm breaking down the three keys to be great in sales and there's a lot of keys, but there's three I want to focus on today, all right, and I'm going to run through these real quick and then I'm going to kind of take a little deeper dive. So number one is you have to take action as a sales professional. Okay, you've got to do um, and not just activity, but productivity. If you've listened to the podcast before or you know anything about the Surviving Outside Sales universe, it's not just simply going out and making sales calls, it is having those sales calls being productive and you're calling on the right people, you've got your ideal client profile, you have your right targeting, you've got your right messaging and you're talking to the right people. You have to take massive action. You can't just go out there and say, yeah, well, it's just, it's not working, because you know I've made calls and I'm just not seeing results. Okay, how many calls did you make? Well, I talked to four people. Okay, we had kind of discussed, you know, 75 to a hundred. Because here's the deal Sales is a numbers game. Now, again, I'm not all for spamming, I am not for just wildly reaching out to every single person under the sun, but you do have to send out a lot of messages, a lot of bat signals you got to send out because you have no idea what's happening on the other end of that person. Okay, you're assuming that they're going to listen to your message, they're going to read your email, they're going to be so enthralled to check out your link. They're not. And again, most of sales, 80% of sales, happens to be in the fifth and the 12th touch point. So if you're, if you made four calls and you didn't get any meetings, yeah, you're probably not.

Speaker 1: 2:31

I don't know where this belief is that every single person you reach out to is supposed to magically open up time on their calendar to meet with you. I never want to put people on blast. I never want to share some of the messages. But maybe I need to start doing that and just kind of showing people you know, obviously blocking out their names, but kind of show you some of the ridiculous messages that I get, some of the ridiculous requests that I get.

Speaker 1: 2:59

I've been in sales and business for 25 plus years, owning my own businesses for three plus years, and I get pitched so frequently Every day. I'm getting at least one, maybe two pitches every day and that's probably on a conservative side, but one or two pitches per day and they are so bad. Zero research, zero connection and there's no way that I'm going to trust these people from the last episode, the no like and trust. If they know you, yeah, they know you because you reached out to them. Do they like you? Well, yeah, I don't like most of these people because they haven't even done the, even done the due diligence. They're trying to close off the first reach out, the first email, the first text message, the first video message, the first LinkedIn, the first phone call, voicemail. They're trying to book or close the business right off the bat. I don't know you, I don't like you, nor do I trust you. Okay, and that's what I. The KLT framework is what I went over the podcast last episode.

Speaker 1: 4:15

But taking action is not spamming, okay. Taking action is still having your process where you're trying to get to people to make them unaware to aware, aware to trial to trial to user, user to advocate the five-step sales process. Nothing has changed. Okay, everything should be within your five-step sales process. Every single time you reach out to somebody, you have to think to yourself I just need to get them to the next level. So all you're trying to do is take somebody from unaware to aware.

Speaker 1: 4:45

I would, I would love for somebody to reach out to me and say hey, mike, my name is so-and-so, I do XYZ. I'm not selling you anything. All I want to do is just let you know that our product is on the radar. This is what we're doing. If you want to check out our product, here you go. If you have any questions, let me know. Period Instead of I'm still getting messages. To this day, I'm still getting messages. I'd love 15 minutes of your time. Well, I'm sure you would, because your benefit is to sell something so that you can make money. So I'm sure you would love 15 minutes of my time, but I'm not giving you 15 minutes of my life, and that's really how you have to think about it.

Speaker 1: 5:21

When you're asking a prospect, you're asking somebody for their time, you're asking for a portion of their life. How valuable do you think that's going to be? You've got to take massive action, okay. So you've got to reach out to a bunch of people. You've got to do it by moving the ball down the field. So, right now, if you want to reach out to a hundred people, stop reaching out, demanding something from them and give something to them. Okay, start giving value. Start dropping value for your prospects. That's how they're going to start to trust you is if you keep depositing things for them. If not, you're just going to be another person. You're going to say, oh, my company didn't give me good leads and my company didn't do X, y, z. I'm here to tell you right now there are no great leads unless they're inbound. There's no great outbound leads. Okay, there are no great outbound leads, they are created leads. Okay, there are no great outbound leads, they are created.

Speaker 1: 6:31

I have walked in in my career to some places that should be layups, that should be layups, and it just didn't work out. And then some places where you're like, wow, I didn't really expect that turned out to be some of my biggest clients. So, just because it looks like a perfect prospect, oh, I don't understand why they're not interested. Well, look in the mirror. Did you do anything that allowed them to want to do business with you? Because there's a lot. So here's the deal.

Speaker 1: 7:01

There are a lot of products on the market. I don't think sales professionals really understand. Their companies are not telling them how many products are actually on the market very similar to theirs. I hear this all the time. We are the only blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. No, you're not. No, you are not. There are so many products on the market. There's never been more opportunity for choice for business owners or consumers alike. So what the person is doing is they're buying you more so than ever before. So, first step, we're getting back to the three keys.

Speaker 1: 7:43

To be great in sales, you have to take action, massive action. You've got to put people into a cycle where you can get those 12 calls, those 12 touch points. People give up way too soon. You have to have the determination and the grit to stick it out, and most salespeople don't. They give up way too easy. Well, that didn't work.

Speaker 1: 8:13

What did you do? Well, and I'm going to be honest, I, uh, I I'm guilty of this. I was doing a win back campaign for one of my businesses and I sent out an email and I got about five or six people that responded and signed back up for memberships. And I remember talking to a gentleman and he said how many emails did you send? And I said, well, I sent out like 300 emails. He goes, oh, wow, okay, now wait, is that total? I said, well, yeah, that's 300 emails. I sent out 300 personal emails. He goes well, how many people? 300. He goes, wait. So you only sent out emails one time and you got four people to say, yes, why did you stop?

Speaker 1: 8:55

I said, you know, I got busy. It's the old excuse. And look just, you know, I'm fully aware there's no hypocrisy here. I am fully aware that there are still things that I recommend that I don't do in my own businesses, and I'm working on that because I get busy trying to juggle everything from being business owners, um, to being a dad, to, to, to toddlers and, you know, being a husband, um, and virtually I work 24, seven, I work seven days a week and that's not a euphemism, like I literally work seven days a week, so I still have to follow and practice what I preach. And he goes.

Speaker 1: 9:33

Imagine if you had sent out a 15 part email sequence, because you're going to get the people in the beginning. You're going to get the interested people that's always going to happen and then the second round. You'll get maybe one, maybe two third round, but once you get to the fifth, fifth and the 12th, all of a sudden people start to conceptualize and see the whole picture. Cause, also as sales professionals, you have to understand. We, we know our products, backwards and forwards, but our, but the buyers don't. The buyers are really confused. You're dropping all these great things, but if they don't live it every day and as sales professionals, sometimes you can't see the forest through the trees you believe the product is the best thing since sliced bread, but the other person doesn't know all the background that you know, so they can only go off what you've shared with them.

Speaker 1: 10:23

And most websites that you look at are hot garbage. They're marketing lingo and mumbo jumbo. There's no clear, concise future state that somebody can attest to from most websites. Some of them do great, some of them, most of them don't, especially corporate websites, big corporate websites. All it does is talks about how great the company is when it was founded and how successful the people are that are running it and what their background is, and then why you should partner with them, because they've partnered with lots of big companies.

Speaker 1: 10:52

Blah, blah, blah. That doesn't move the needle and that's not what people want. People care about their outcomes, and their outcomes alone. I don't care if you've worked with 800 different companies. How is my company going to be impacted by your product or service? That's what I want to know and that's what I want as close to a guarantee as possible, or at least paint a picture of what my future state's going to look like. That's what I care about. That's what buyers care about and, as a sales professional, if you're not doing that but you're not doing it enough you're not casting a wide enough net, you're not cutting through the noise, and that's the thing I mean.

Speaker 1: 11:26

I opened up my email every morning and I have at least 30 emails that have already hit my inbox by the top. By I mean by the six o'clock hour, from from after I went to bed to the time I wake up. Some are automated, some are in campaigns, but I'm inundated with emails from the time I wake up and then during the day, it's text messages, it's phone calls, it's emails. It's nonstop. My phone sometimes feels like it's literally attached to my hand. Just recording this podcast video for the first 12 minutes, my phone has blanked about 15 times.

Speaker 1: 11:59

So if you're going to try to cut through that noise and you're going to try to sell me something, it better be better, more succinct, more clear than what everybody else is sending, because that's what people are sending is not grabbing my attention, which is a shame because there's probably some products or services that could help my businesses, but I can't see the forest through the trees. Neither can your buyers. That's why you need to take massive action. So if you need to, if you need to make, if you need to make calls it's very cheesy, grant Cardone did the whole 10 X, but it actually is a good like just 10 exit. Just keep doing more of it. Just do more of what you think you're doing. Do more. Double down. You're investing in coaching. Double down and get a second coach.

Speaker 1: 12:49

Right now I am actually thinking about hiring two different companies to coach me, because I have several things that I want to get better at and there is not a one-stop shop. So I'm debating on how to do that and want to get better at and there is not a one-stop shop. So I'm debating on how to do that and how to get that done and what that looks like financially, but also my time. How do I go through that? And maybe I have to start with one and then do another, but I'm taking massive action. I've met with about I'm now up to 12 different companies over the last month I have met with trying to find a company that I can partner with to help me in my businesses. And I'll tell you right now the. The thing that's holding me back is the trust factor with some of them. I just don't trust that it's going to work for me, you know.

Speaker 1: 13:29

But number one take action, all right. Number two you need to learn new things. You need to learn new skills. You cannot stay stagnant. You cannot stay what's the word I'm looking for in your comfort zone. Everything is changing. You have got to learn new things. You have to give people new information.

Speaker 1: 13:55

When you reach out to your buyers, let's say your buyers haven't purchased anything in a while. You can't just reach out and say, hey, mark, I wanted to reach out because it looks like you haven't ordered anything in a little bit and I want to see if I can help. How does that help Mark's business? Every time you reach out, you need to reach out with something that is investing in the other person's business a piece of information, a statistic, an idea, a thought, what you can do to help. Instead, you should say something like this hey, Mark, I don't know if you saw the article in the Washington Post regarding your industry and the changes that are about to happen. I've attached a link to that article if you want to read it. If you've already seen it great, we're ahead of the game.

Speaker 1: 14:51

I have an idea around this topic of how I want to. I have an idea around this topic of how you can move your business forward despite XYZ. I'm available later this week to meet in person. I could do coffee, we could do a zoom, whatever works best for you, but my clients have been finding this helpful and I want to make sure you're ahead of XY Z, something like that. That is a message I would respond to. Okay, just asking to place an order. Everybody's doing that. Give me something, show me you're an expert in your field, and I talk about it in my sales coaching. You have to be a go-to expert. You have to be the first person that your buyers think of. Hey, I need to reach out to so-and-so and get their opinion, see if they've heard anything. That is when you know you're making traction.

Speaker 1: 15:49

I used to get those text messages hey, mike, I heard X Y Z, is there any validity to this? To get those text messages hey, mike, I heard X Y Z, is there any validity to this? And I said, let me go check and then I would do the research. I wouldn't make, because I would do the research and I would take the next step, which, again, is taking massive action. I would get the face-to-face, I would get the meeting, I'd share my findings and if I didn't know, I would reach out to somebody in my network who did know hey, I heard this from one of my doctors Is there any validity to this? Do you know anything about this? I Googled it and I can't find anything. What's the word? And then somebody else would say, hey, and I would get these. I would get these messages too, from other colleagues, other people in my network. Hey, mike, do you know anything about this? Or hey, what is your opinion on XYZ? I have a client of mine that was asking about it and I'm not really too familiar and I would share that information. I have a network of people that I can reach out to in various industries and get their professional opinion.

Speaker 1: 16:50

I'm viewed as a go-to expert. Well now, I'm not a salesperson, but I was viewed as a go-to expert in my market. That's what I, I I I preach that. I teach that to my, to my clients. You have to become the go-to expert. That means you have to keep your finger on the pulse of what's happening in the market. You can't have your head in the sand.

Speaker 1: 17:16

And yes, well, I will tell you this, hearing the phrase work-life balance is like fingernails on the chalkboard to somebody like me, especially a business owner. Um, work-life balance is basically um, once you are successful, you can do anything that you want. That's the work-life balance. But if you're concerned with work-life balance and if your job ends at, let's say, five o'clock and you don't do anything for work until the next day, whenever you quote, unquote are supposed to, you are an employee. That's it. You're not a professional, you're an employee. You're basically a glorified hourly employee. If you're a sales pro, if you're not a professional, you're an employee. You're basically a glorified hourly employee.

Speaker 1: 17:54

If you're a sales pro, if you're not going to do anything, if you're not going to research anything, if you're not going to study, then you're not going to advance very far in your career, unless you have one of those products that just flies off the shelf. Because the businesses trust the product, they don't need to trust you. But for most products out there, for most services out there, there's a lot of sameness. It works just as good as another product. So what happens is they go with the person that's easiest to deal with, the person they trust the most, and that person usually is the one that learns more, that is willing to try things, that keeps growing, has a growth mindset. A growth mindset does not stop once you get a sales job. It does not stop once you hit your first quota. It does not stop ever. It should not stop ever, because the markets are always changing. All right.

Speaker 1: 18:51

So the first one was you got to take massive action. The second is you have to constantly be learning new things, you have to be elevating yourself. And the third is you have to build an unstoppable, repeatable process for everything. Having the right process, processes or multiple processes, is crucial in order to scale your business. Everything from how you reach out to a first time, first time client prospect, to how you handle followup after a call, putting them in your pipeline, trying to bring them through the customer journey, you know that. 12 touch points and then, after 12 touch points, you know keeping them around but not focusing a lot of your attention, cause if you've reached out to somebody 12 times and they still are not giving you the time of day, guess what? They're not interested and you can move on. That's okay.

Speaker 1: 19:43

Not every product and service is for everyone. Don't waste your time. You know I call it the time suck. Don't let them suck your time away, because the time is one of your most valuable assets and one of the most valuable resources as a sales professional. Do not let them do that.

Speaker 1: 20:00

Building that repeatable process means you're breaking down. You analyze every single portion of your business. For instance I've mentioned this before the P3 sales method. It is the sales process that every professional should have Period point blank, full stop. The P3 sales method is how every single sales interaction, every single meeting, sets up the perfect framework for your buyer to realize that they need your product or service, as long as your product or service actually delivers. If it doesn't deliver, if it can't promise, then no methodology is going to work. But the P3 sales method is the process that I've used.

Speaker 1: 20:40

I was taught something similar. I kind of made a little spin on it, I made it my own and really kind of flushed out some of the things I felt were missing. And really what was missing was the, the end part of the P3 sales method, where I called the consultant close. It is when the buyer views you as a consultant, not a, not a sales rep, not a vendor, not somebody that they buy something from, but they view you as a consultant, somebody that they want to reach out to when they have any business questions whatsoever. That is the difference, because for many years I was scrambling, I was making sales, I was growing my business, but it was like I was spinning plates. If I wasn't in the territory, if I wasn't out in the field, my sales would dip. If I wasn't in the territory, if I wasn't out in the field, my sales would dip. I'd go to a national sales meeting and for that week my business would plummet. I did not set up a business prepared to scale, so I made adjustments and I did everything. Here I took massive action.

Speaker 1: 21:50

You know I've invested close to six figures in my education, um post-college I'm talking like consultants, coaches, courses um books. I have spent a lot of money and time to elevate my knowledge, my skillset. I've learned new things. I've gotten out of my comfort zone. In fact I don't really have a comfort zone Now. If you know anything about my past, I've kind of listened, I've kind of listed this on past episodes. My whole life has been changed, so I am not fearful of change. I'm very adaptable.

Speaker 1: 22:26

I haven't had a lot of consistency in my life as far as a role, a career life as far as a role, a career, um, the most I mean the longest consistency I think I've ever had was I lived in the same condo for a decade. But before that I mean before I purchased my condo, I mean living in Charlotte I'd probably lived in six different places in eight years, nine years. I moved a bunch, moved to different parts of the city, moved in with a different friend. I've had a lot of jobs. A lot of the companies that I worked for were bought by bigger companies and the sales team was let go or was realigned, or I left to go to another organization because I got in and they didn't have the same morals, ethics, beliefs that I wanted. Um, even going back to high school, I mean I went to two different elementary schools, two different middle schools. Um, every year it was a new baseball team, new baseball coach. So I was used to that. I mean, getting to college it was new teammates every year, you know. And then I was on three minor league teams in two and a half years for, actually for minor league team, I was signed to four minor league five yeah, five minor league teams and in three years.

Speaker 1: 23:46

So I'm very adaptable, learning new things, and I think that that has helped me in my career. So I've taken massive action, I learn new things and, of course, building repeatable processes. I'm a process and a systems guy. When something usually breaks down, it always breaks down in process. It usually doesn't break down an ability, it's just the process wasn't followed. Like I mentioned before, my process wasn't good for my win-back campaign. I didn't build one out, I just kind of shotgun it out. So I didn't even follow my own processes and that's the reason why I'd failed. It didn't fail because, um, because of the product or service that I was offering. It was literally because I didn't take big enough action. I didn't have a process. So those are the three things.

Speaker 1: 24:25

If you are in sales, these are, these are the three things, three of the bigger things to being great, three of the biggest keys to be great in sales. You've got to be willing to take massive action. You have to be willing to learn new things, new skills. Get out of your comfort zone Okay, growth never comes in a comfort zone and you have to build repeatable processes. You do those three things. Sky's the limit. Now, if you're struggling with figuring out those three things, please reach out to me, because I go through all three of these things in my coaching programs. And no matter if you are brand new to sales, if you're experienced, or even if you're 15, 20 years into the sales world, sometimes you can't see the forest or the trees. You don't even realize that some of the things are broken down within your process forest or the trees and you don't even realize that some of the things are broken down within your process.

Speaker 1: 25:15

I do a free 30 minute consult If you want to learn more about your uh, where you are in your career and you want to elevate, reach out to me. You can do so, mike, at surviving outside salescom, or you can connect with me on LinkedIn and shoot me a DM. That is about how 95% of the people reach out to me is LinkedIn and they shoot me a DM. Absolutely, I'd love to meet with you. I can send you over a link afterwards or the link's going to be in the show notes. Just book a time.

Speaker 1: 25:41

It's a free 30-minute call. Kind of see where you are, where you're headed, and if it doesn't make any sense for us to work together or you don't feel like it'll help, great, at least you got a chance to um, ask your situation and I'll give you my breakdown. Kind of do a little bit of a territory audit as well where you are, where you've come from, where you are and where you're headed and at least you have that you know. So I want to give you something for investing 30 minutes of your life with me and help you out, and if it makes sense to continue it, fantastic. If not, reach out to somebody who really could use the podcast, send them the link, maybe convince them to get on a 30 minute call as well. The more the merrier.

Speaker 1: 26:24

This is what I enjoy doing. This is the the give back. As I've mentioned it before, I did not. I had to fight tooth and nail to try to find people to help me, and people were not as willing to do things like this. This is kind of the give back Worst case scenario. It's 30 minutes of your time, 30 minutes of your life. It'll set you up for success. So reach out to me. Thank you so much. I really do appreciate everybody who's listening and sending me those LinkedIn messages. I absolutely love getting feedback and it's one of the reasons why I love doing what I do. And, uh, we're hurtling towards 500. I'm trying to get back on more consistent. Again, my podcast process has been broken down, so I am trying to get back on that train because I absolutely enjoy this and, um, I love hearing from sales professionals helping them in their journey. Um, so thank you all and I'll see you next time surviving outside sales Cheers.