Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
The Surviving Outside
Sales podcast, hosted by Mike
O'Kelly, presented by SalesBuilder Academy, the goal is to
survive and thrive all phases ofoutside sales, whether you're
getting in, dominating orgetting out.
Surviving Outside Sales.
Now on with the show.
Welcome to the SurvivingOutside Sales podcast.
(00:28):
I'm your host, mike O'Kelly.
It's been a while.
We are in a new year.
It has been almost three monthssince a continuous episode of
the Surviving Outside Salespodcast.
I've been a little busy, as I'msure a lot of you were, in Q4
of 2023, but that's gone.
(00:50):
Hopefully, everybody hits yourgoals.
You hit your numbers, you gotyour bonuses, you're going to
get your commissions and youhave set yourself up for a
fantastic 2024.
I just want to start off bygiving you a little bit of an
update what has been going on inmy world and then discuss how
to set yourself up for successin 2024.
(01:13):
So let's take it back severalmonths.
If you're new to the podcast oryou're just listening to this
first episode, welcome.
My name is Mike O'Kelly.
I've been in sales and businessof some sort for the past 20
years and in 2023, it was amassive transition year for me.
(01:34):
I've been in the restauranthospitality industry as a bar
manager.
I managed Enterprise Renekar.
I got into pharmaceutical salesand then medical sales medical
device sales Started a salestechnology company.
I started a sales trainingcompany a couple of years ago
(01:56):
and opened a health and wellnessfranchise in 2023.
And that's one of the reasonswhy I was extremely busy in Q4,
getting the studio up andrunning.
We are now open.
We have been open.
We opened on December 14th, sowe had two weeks a little over
(02:17):
two weeks and we did really good.
I won't say great, we didreally good.
The reason why I reserve thatis because great assumes that
everything went according toplan.
We made no mistakes.
But great is something that youstrive for, but we did really
good.
I wouldn't say good, we didn'tdo good, we didn't do average,
(02:38):
we did really good.
I like the trajectory that weare taking and I love the
challenge of creating what isbeing created right now in Rock
Hill, south Carolina.
So I live in Charleston, northCarolina, and my wife and I
decided to invest in a companywhere we go to on or we did go
(03:00):
to on a weekly basis and for meit was a daily basis and that
was restore hyper wellness.
My wife loved to go get IVs anddo cryotherapy.
She had back issues and I wouldgo to restore to do some
cryotherapy and occasionally Iwould do an IV, but most day I
was there for the infrared saunaand the cryotherapy that was
(03:21):
really helping me as a mid 40sguy.
Since we have taken a quoteunquote little break.
I turned 45 into 7.
So I'm halfway to 50.
And the type of things that I'mthinking about now not only as
a father of two, as a husband,as business owner, entrepreneur
and a sales guy, it's also thefact of I'm now closer to 50
(03:43):
than I am 40.
I really have to start thinkingabout my health and my wellness
, and it's funny that I opened ahealth and wellness store.
But my health and wellness hasnot been great over the last
several months and one of thereasons why is I've been burning
the candle at both ends.
I have not really gotten sick,which is great.
That's why I get sick is when Iburn the candle at both ends
and I'm not sleeping great.
(04:03):
I've been working a lot of 16,18 hour days for about eight to
10 weeks straight and I took acouple of days off right after
Christmas.
Right around Christmas we wereclose Christmas Eve and
Christmas Day and I took acouple of days off last week.
There was always things to dofor the business, but I took a
couple of days off and I'll takea couple of days off this week,
coming up just to refresh,because we've got our grand
(04:25):
opening weekend in a couple ofweeks and we're off and running
in 2024.
I'm so excited.
I have finally feel like I havestopped treading water and all
of a sudden now I'm swimmingtowards land and it's great.
I'm very excited.
We have a great team in placeand things are looking ahead for
2024.
(04:46):
When it comes to the Rock Hilllocation of restore hyper
wellness.
I will actually release anotherepisode, probably later this
week, discussing my lessons andthings that I've learned from
actually being open.
What I want to share with youis kind of how did we get from
(05:08):
October to today?
In January, you, for, justcompletely went and there were
very little.
There were two episodes of thesurviving outside sales podcast,
so I wanted to discuss Q4 andsetting yourself up for 2024,
because, again, it's all aboutthe listeners and, speaking of
the listeners, I know we'reseveral minutes into the podcast
(05:29):
.
I just want to thank you for arecord setting 2023 for the
surviving outside sales podcast.
One of the things you have to doin order to stay relevant, to
stay successful, to stay onpeople's radar, you have to show
up.
And for the last quarter I didnot, and it was a conscious
decision, it wasn't somethingthat just happened.
I knew I would have to go allin to get this business off the
(05:53):
ground, because it was a pivotmoment.
It was a pivot moment becausewhen my wife and I signed up for
Restore Hyper Wellness, themodel was a done for you type of
model.
So what my wife and I werethinking was we're going to
invest, we're going tofinancially open a brick and
mortar wellness studio and wewould just kind of be the
(06:15):
periphery, be the owners andkind of oversight.
Well, that changed.
And because by the time weactually got a chance to find a
piece of real estate and by thetime we opened our doors, it was
almost two years after wesigned our franchise agreement.
And that was not any fault ofcorporate, it was not the fault
of Restore, it was the market,it was the environment and the
(06:39):
commercial real estate inCharlotte and in Rock Hill.
We just couldn't find anything.
So it was a very long, arduousjourney that we went on and that
model changed.
And it changed because theeconomy changed, inflation hit
really hard and the cost ofgoods and services skyrocketed.
(07:00):
Whatever the government tellsus is the inflation rate.
I have to tell you, as abusiness owner, it's full of
shit.
Okay, you have to understand,especially if you're in the
sales world.
When you're talking to you know, if you're in the medical sales
world, you're talking todoctors, you're talking to
(07:21):
hospital administrators, you'retalking to office managers.
Don't walk in saying well, Iheard the inflation rate was
like 7%, it was 9%, it was 11%.
That's bullshit, because whatyou have to understand is the
supply chain.
So, for instance, if I havesomething ordered, there's four
to five different steps alongthe supply chain.
(07:42):
Every single person needs tocover that inflationary cost.
So there are goods that twoyears ago would have cost $100.
This year they could cost about170.
So almost everything hasskyrocketed and the cost of
labor skyrocketed.
So Restore Corporate had to gothrough some adjustments,
(08:06):
streamline Operations, so itwent from a done for you model
to a done by you, which is fine.
If somebody signed up to be afranchise owner and Restore six
months ago, that's the modelthat they would have assumed was
going to be happening, was itdone for you, and so it kind of
changed the thought process.
But, as I've always said before,you have to be good with the
(08:28):
pivot and you have to let go ofthings that you think you're
going to do because your path isgoing to change.
Just because you thinkeverything has laid out
perfectly.
It's going to change.
You have to pivot and you haveto adjust and mentally you have
to come to grips with that veryquickly.
(08:49):
You can't hold on to the pastand say, well, this is what I
used to do or this is what Iused to be.
September, late September, Iwent to a conference and I was a
business consultant, I was asales coach and I was a podcast
host that was doing fivepodcasts a week.
(09:10):
I was in the sales world, I wasdoing live webinars on LinkedIn
and I went to a salesconference the last week in
September out in Texas and I metwith a really a lot of smart
people and they said you got topivot, you got to go all in, you
got to go all in right now onthis business until you feel
(09:31):
like it is on solid footing andit's headed in the right
direction and until that momentcomes, don't think about
anything else.
I sunsetted all my clients.
I did not take any new clientson in Q4.
I don't think I posted once onLinkedIn.
I used to post two, three timesa day on LinkedIn.
(09:54):
I basically just disappeared.
I had people text me like, heyman, are you okay?
Which was great, it was great.
I had to leave some people inthe dark.
There was just too much goingon.
There was too much to do.
So you have to understandthat's what you need to do is
(10:18):
just pivot.
You have to pivot and there'sgoing to be some short-term pain
, but there's going to belong-term gain and that's what I
had to do.
And some of the short-term painthat I had was I had made some
commitments to people that Ifailed and I feel horrendous
about that.
And one of the things I'm goingto be doing here in the first
(10:40):
quarter is trying to make amendsIn any way, shape or form.
I can make amends to the peoplethat I let down.
I made some commitments and Iwasn't able to follow through
because I had to cut bait withquote, unquote the plan, because
what I was doing wasn't working.
It was you can't have, youcan't dip your toe into the
(11:03):
entrepreneurial world.
You have to go in like acannonball.
And so I had to do that in Q4.
And I didn't know how long Iwas going to have to do that.
I thought I was going to haveto do that for maybe a year.
So I was mentally preparingmyself that this could be just
Q4, could be Q1, could be intoQ2 of 2024.
It's probably still going to befor a majority of Q1.
(11:28):
But at that conference I heard avery great speaker talking
about delegation and being ableto delegate out tasks and being
happy with the success and thepercentage of success from those
tasks, and it was 60%.
Delegate all tasks when itcomes to the minutiae of your
(11:51):
business, and as long as you getabove a 60% success rate of
what would have happened if youperformed that task, you just
need to live with that.
And it's crazy because the guy,all he does is coach CEOs and
these CEOs push back and they'relike 60%, that's not really a
lot.
You just have to understand youcan achieve more by just
(12:14):
getting 60% from certain tasks,because instead of you focusing
and getting 100% of success onthat one task, you can get 60%
on about 10 tasks.
You're actually getting morework done.
And the goal in business is notperfection.
It's done is better thanperfect.
And I know this now for a fact,because I went into this
(12:36):
thinking I was going to beperfect on every facet of what
we do at Restore and Rock Hilland I quickly found out that
can't happen.
It's virtually impossible to beperfect on anything.
Now I've always said, and Itell my students and I tell my
staff now, the goal is notperfection, the goal is to
strive to be perfect, andthere's a difference between
(12:58):
that.
You always want to strive to beyour best version.
You're never going to achieveit and as long as you know,
you're never going to achieve it.
You're always going to havesomething to strive towards, but
you're never going to beperfect.
So don't beat yourself up ifyou're not.
The way to know if you'regrowing is you don't make the
same mistakes twice, but youstill move forward.
(13:21):
You're still progressing.
Some months you're going toprogress a couple of feet.
Some months you're going toprogress a couple of hundred
yards.
Sometimes it's consistent,sometimes it's not.
The goal is to get toconsistency.
But it was just a lot and I hadto keep reminding myself.
(13:43):
I had to keep reminding myselfof what was said at the
conference delegate and beingokay with it.
Now it also was a verydifficult Q4 because we had
several losses in the family.
We had several losses in thefamily, which really hurt If
(14:05):
you've listened to the podcast.
My dad passed away in July andso we were still dealing with
this.
We had his military funeral inSeptember at the end of
September and so there was someclosure there, but we had some
other family members that passedaway in Q4.
So it was just on top ofeverything going on New business
(14:28):
.
My laundry list of things to doevery day I'm not joking was
like 15 to 20.
And I'll tell you this it wasone of the most gut-wrenching
experiences of my life the lasttwo years opening this business.
But every time that I dosomething challenging like this
(14:50):
and I highly suggest that youjump out of your comfort zone
and you try something forgetabout oh, am I going to be a
failure?
Just do it.
There's nothing that I feellike I can't accomplish, nothing
.
I was never lacking confidencebefore, because I've tried so
(15:12):
many things and I'm not afraidto fail.
I have zero fear of failure.
I have 100% fear of not goingfor it, and so I can always, if
I go for something and itdoesn't work out, I can always
say you know what?
I tried, I gave it everything Ihad and it just didn't work out
.
It's not everything's gonnawork out, but it's the going for
(15:35):
it, not staying in your comfortzone, but actually going for it
, going for what you want inthis world and using the sales
world as the vehicle to getthere.
But it was a very challengingquarter.
I know a lot about state, local,state jurisdiction.
(15:55):
I know a lot about the statecosmetology board.
Now.
I know a lot about the statenursing board.
I know a lot about the statepharmacy board.
I know a lot about construction.
I know a lot about rules andregulations.
I know a lot about inspections.
I know a lot about HVAC systems.
I know a lot about opening aretail store just from a, just a
(16:17):
retail business, a brick andmortar.
I know a lot about opening ahealth and wellness studio.
I know a lot about the latestand greatest technology Cause.
Remember, if you've listened tothis podcast, I was a retail
branch manager for EnterpriseRenekar until 2008.
A lot has changed since 2008.
(16:37):
I mean, obviously we know that,but the amount of technology
that is used in a restore isthrough the roof.
I mean, we have about 10different platforms that we have
to use and everything has totalk to each other, and you have
to go through a lot of hoopsnow with Google and with Meta to
(16:58):
advertise and to make sure thateverything is connected.
And you know, people use theirsmartphones now.
So if you don't have a linkthat's connected and it goes to
nowhere, you've missed anopportunity, and so there's just
a lot of things on the backendthat have to get tied up and
we're still working on it.
I mean, this morning it's NewYear's Day.
I wasn't planning on doinganything for work, but I just
(17:20):
felt like you know what, I justneed to do a couple of things
and I just decided, hey, let mejust have a podcast, let me get
out there, and I've got peoplethat are listening and it is
crazy.
The last three months there'sbeen about 2,500 downloads and I
haven't released a singleepisode.
I haven't done any kind ofmarketing whenever, and I've
been on 2,500 downloads in thelast three months.
(17:40):
And shoot, there was threedownloads today and I know it
doesn't sound like a lot butthree downloads on New Year's
Day, when I haven't had apodcast episode in months and I
haven't promoted any of them.
It's just probably people thatwere like maybe going back and
listening to other episodes orepisodes that hadn't downloaded.
(18:01):
But point being is I don't knowwhat the point was.
I got off on a tangent.
I apologize, I was shooting.
I'm shooting from the hip today.
You know it's New Year's Day.
I'm about to sit down and watchsome football.
Both my kiddos are taking a nap.
I've got a beer in my handbecause you know what?
I've worked hard and I justdecided to have a beer.
(18:21):
I'm not doing a video podcast,but just wanted to come on here
and talk about Q4 and then thePivot 2, q1.
So that's a little bit of abackground of what's been going
on.
If you happen to be in theCharlotte Rock Hill, fort Mill,
(18:43):
lancaster area in South Carolina, please stop by.
Please stop by, just check usout.
Come get a tour.
It's a really cool place andit's funny how, when people come
in, they're just amazed at howcool the technology is.
I mean our cryo machine.
It looks like something out ofa sci-fi movie.
It is unbelievable and if youwanna check us out?
You can go to Instagram.
(19:04):
We have a very popularInstagram page right now that's
growing very quickly.
It is rhw underscore Rockhill.
I believe that's right.
Let me just double check realquick.
This is what happens when youdo live podcasts.
I'm trying to figure out yeah,let's see R, yes, rhw underscore
(19:29):
.
That little line, that bottomline, rockhill.
No spaces on Rockhill.
Rhw underscore Rockhill.
Go check us out and give us afollow if you're local in the
area, and come check us out.
It's unbelievable for yourhealth and wellness and getting
you on the right track in 2024.
Would really love your supportand I'd love to meet you.
(19:50):
I'd love to have a conversation, especially if you're in sales.
Why don't you stop in?
I'm still a sales guy.
I'm probably gonna do somesales stuff in 2024 with some
companies.
I've had a couple conversationswith some companies that just
happened to randomly reach outto me in December.
So I might be doing some stuffto kind of get back in the game.
(20:11):
I will.
You know, I just love the salesworld and it has been kind of
hurting me that I haven't beenable to share experiences and
talk about the best plans forgrowing your business in Q4.
I know it was a super importantorder for people, so I do
(20:32):
apologize, because I wanted tobe out there and I know you were
listening and all of a sudden Idropped off.
But I'm back.
It's Q1.
So I just wanna spend about 10minutes, giving another 10
minutes.
I thank you for listening forthe first 20 or so.
I got 10 minutes and let's talkabout setting yourself up for
success in 2024.
Okay, first thing that's gonnahappen, it starts with mindset,
(20:56):
and the mindset has to be agrowth mindset.
So some of this stuff is basic.
So if you've been listening tothe podcast, you've heard this
stuff before.
Having a growth mindset Allright, having a growth mindset
that 2024 is gonna be the bestyear ever.
It's gonna be better than 23.
It's gonna be better than 22.
It's gonna be better than 21.
You have to believe that.
I believe that every year Istart and every quarter I go
(21:17):
into, I'm saying to myself thisis gonna be the best.
That's the mindset.
If you start having a limitedmindset, if you start having a
defeatist mindset, you'vealready lost, because what's
gonna happen is when push comesto shove, when things get
difficult, you're gonna startpacking it up, and you don't
necessarily wanna do that.
So when you are looking towardsJanuary, you have to have the
(21:45):
mindset.
Number two you have to have anunderstanding of where you are
in the market.
Okay, and part one ofunderstanding where you are in
the market is Q1 of 2024 is notthe same as Q1 of 2023, a Q1 of
2022.
No two quarters are the same.
Everything evolves.
Your market evolves, productsevolve, your buyers evolve.
(22:08):
What worked last year is notgonna work in Q1.
So there is no rinse and repeat.
Now you can have the sameprocess of fact-finding, of
creating goals, understandingyour messaging, but just
repeating and regurgitating thesame things that you did in 2023
, it's not gonna be successful.
Now, if you do happen to have areally great product, if you do
(22:30):
happen to have a really greatproduct, a great company that
you work for that has a namebrand, it's going to mask a lot
of the success that you have anda lot of times I've seen it
before a lot of sales pros theyassume that it's because of them
and it masks a lot of thethings that they could have been
doing to grow their businessand they kinda just rode the
(22:51):
coattails of a big brand's nameor a big product's name.
I mean, if you have a productwhere people are just constantly
calling you left and right andyou don't really have to do a
lot of work, you don't have todo a lot of prospecting how much
did you earn that sale?
I want you to really thinkabout this.
This is not accusatory.
This is just how well did youacquire that sale?
(23:15):
Was it you?
Or could you have just takenthree weeks off and your inbound
leads would have come in?
Think about that.
But you have to understand whereyou are in the market.
How are you viewed?
This is a great time.
I'm not a big New Year, new youtype guy.
I just believe that okay, it'sa new year, so it's a new
(23:35):
quarter.
I see every three months as arebirth and a chance to go after
your goals, but also to preparefor what's upcoming, so that
you can maximize youropportunities, and that's really
all sales are.
It's just maximizing youropportunities.
That's what you wanna do.
So there's gonna be newopportunities and those
(23:58):
opportunities are gonna changeand they might look different
this quarter.
So you have to adjust.
You have to ask great questions.
Again, I love leading withquestions.
Never assume In the minute youbelieve you get the right
information.
Ask one more question toclarify.
(24:19):
So you might have somebody whocomes in and I'll give you an
example of what we're goingthrough right now is a lot of
people are coming into ourstudio and they say oh man, this
is great, how much is yourmembership?
Well, if we just answer thequestion, well, our memberships
are XYZ.
We have no idea what's going oninside their head.
(24:41):
The client's head, the buyer'shead, it's the exact same head.
We don't know what's going oninside the head.
We haven't qualified them.
We need to ask more questionsInstead of just answering the
question in kind, which is notwrong.
It's good.
I was mentioning this to myteam the other day.
It's a good thing to thinkabout.
There's good answers, there'sbetter answers and there's best
(25:02):
answers.
Good, better, best.
There's three levels.
Good is just giving theminformation.
That's needed.
Better is nancing it, but notgetting an action.
The best is nancing it, gettinginformation, making the other
person verbalize what they needto do and then getting a
commitment out of them andpulling through the sale.
(25:23):
That's best.
Having them say it in their ownwords, what they need to do,
the action they need to take,and then holding them to what
they say and pulling themthrough.
So, for instance, in our Restore, hyper Wellness Studio, it is
if somebody comes in and theysay do you have memberships?
(25:43):
Absolutely, how often do youthink you need to come in?
Or how often were you thinkingabout coming in?
Because somebody just says, hey, I want a membership.
Well, there's lots of differentmemberships.
And again, you don't wanna justsell something for the sake of
selling something.
You want to give them asolution to what the problem is
(26:04):
or something that they perceiveas the problem.
So you have to understand whatthat problem is first.
And that problem is differentin January of 24 than it was in
December of 23.
It's amazing how that happensand I'm telling you, you might
have been talking to prospectsin December of 23.
I am 100% certain the problemsthat they have are larger in
(26:27):
January than they were inDecember or they're different.
They don't have the same typesof problems they think they do.
And that's the problem Allowingthe prospect to dictate their
problems without asking a bunchof questions and having them
verbalize what has changed?
Has the environment changed?
Has their situation changed?
(26:49):
You gotta get the prospecttalking.
You need to dig deeper.
January the credit card billsare coming due for what people
spent in December.
It's the same in a business.
When I was in the medical world, a lot of the physicians, they
spent a ton of money in Decemberto get that 179 tax credit.
(27:10):
So come January they weren'teven thinking about buying
anything because they wereexhausted.
They're tired from buyingsomething and you had to push
through that fatigue that theyhad.
They probably didn't get enoughtime off, so they were tired.
You gotta push through that.
It's the same thing right nowin the retail space.
(27:31):
People are gonna come in andsay well, I just, I don't know,
I spent all my money atChristmas, all your money.
You broke, you got no moneyAgain.
It is focusing on the mindsetand it's focusing on your market
.
And the last thing is so thethree things focusing on your
(27:53):
mindset, focusing on your marketand creating goals that are
going to push you.
Okay, you wanna have realisticgoals, but you also wanna have
stretch goals.
And, to be honest, I reallyonly do stretch goals because I
realize I'm not gonna be perfect, but if everything lines up,
where would I be?
And then I can get pretty closeto where I'm going, and if I'm
(28:17):
close enough, I realize that Iwould have blown past realistic
goals.
So those are some things that Ihighly recommend you do.
You can do them today, doesn'ttake a lot.
You can do them today, starttomorrow.
But I always say too, the firstweek of January is that buffer
week.
Okay, so from today, monday,january 1st, all through this
(28:41):
week, that's a buffer week.
This is when you're puttingyour plan into place, but Friday
, before you're done with work,your plan needs to be set up for
the month, for Q1, and for theyear.
Now I would also try to do Q2,q3, and Q4.
(29:04):
I would try to do some goalsBecause in order to hit your
goal for 2024, you have to knowall four quarters, because
obviously the year comes up tofour quarters.
So let's say, your goal is 100Kin sales and Q1, 120 in Q2, 140
in Q3, and then another 140,.
(29:25):
What's that math?
That's 500K.
Well, how did you get to 500K?
How did you get to 500K if youonly did Q1?
Point being, figure out yourgoals and then figure out how
are you going to get there.
You should be striving for 8%to 10% growth monthly and you
(29:45):
should be understanding how toreengage clients who fell off,
how to get referrals, how tobuild advocates and how to pull
people through the clientjourney.
Those are three easy things youcan do this week.
You can get your mind right,you can come up with your plan.
And I'm listening to my dogsbark outside and I've lost train
(30:09):
of thought of what the secondone was, but you already heard
it.
Those are the three things youshould be doing Besides,
obviously, listening to theSurviving Outside Sales podcast.
So reach out to me.
Reach out to me on LinkedIn.
You can shoot me a DM, michaelKelly, follow me on LinkedIn if
(30:31):
you aren't following me already.
Listen to the podcast, sharethe podcast with a friend, have
these conversations and be aprofessional.
Understand the business ofsales.
Understand the business, be abusiness professional in the
sales world and you're gonnahave the best 2024 of your life.
(30:54):
All right, thank you so much.
I do appreciate it.
Hope you have a great rest ofyour New Year's Day and the rest
of this week and I will talk toyou soon on the Surviving
Outside Sales podcast.
Cheers.