You Must Learn to Sell Without the Tech | SOS Ep. 385

We get blunt about the rising “skill gap” in outside sales and why leaning on AI as a crutch makes reps slower, weaker, and easier to replace. We lay out the real test of sales ability: can we walk into a meeting with zero tech and still control the conversation, handle objections, and close.
• why we keep the intro consistent and focus on being a real resource over chasing views
• how AI in sales should amplify skill rather than replace it
• what weak preparation looks like in interviews when answers come from ChatGPT
• the 3% rule and why most sales calls go sideways
• building “off-ramps” to regain control when prospects get distracted
• why top performers stay safe while passive reps get cut in the AI age
• the reality that companies rarely provide deep sales training
• why medical sales is crowded and being “replaceable” is a choice
• the mindset trap of blaming the company and resisting coaching
• the non-negotiable need to keep growing because there is no coasting in sales
DM me on LinkedIn and just say, hey, I'd like to have a conversation. I do free consults
If you want to get your hands on it, all you got to do is go to go.p3 salesmethod.com and you can sign up
If you go to go.p3salesmethod.com and you purchase the p3 sales method and you send me a message on LinkedIn, I will do a 30-minute call with you and discuss your p3 sales method.

Transcript

Why The Slow Intro Stays

SPEAKER_00 0:00

The Surviving Outside Sales podcast, hosted by Mike O'Kelly, presented by Sales Builder Academy. The goal is to survive and thrive in all phases of outside sales, whether you're getting in, dominating, or getting out. Surviving Outside Sales.

AI Is Not A Sales System

When Candidates Outsource Preparedness

The 3 Percent Perfect Conversation

Skill Gaps And A Global Talent Race

Territory Turnarounds And No Coasting

DM Me And The P3 Offer

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Welcome to the Surviving Outside Sales Podcast. I'm your host, Mike O'Kelly. Right off the jump, I just want to make a couple statements. So I've had a lot of people in the podcasting world, sales world tell me that when it comes to the podcast, they love the podcast. They think it's too slow to get started. And I just here to tell you, I don't care. Okay. I don't care. I kind of when you when you own the show and when you run a show, you get to do it how you want to. And the reason why I do it is very intentional. I say the same thing every time. Welcome to the Surviving Outside Sales Podcast. I'm your host. Okay. I do it every single time because I'm not trying to get, you know, one million views of the podcast. I mean, that'd be great. But my goal is not to be the most popular. My goal is to be a resource for outside sales professionals who don't have anywhere else to go. And I have to tell you, it's a really scary world out there right now because AI has convinced a lot of people that they know what they're doing and they don't. Trust me. I have a very strong background in AI, very strong background in tech. I'm one of those odd unicorns where I'm I've got one foot in the sales world and I've got one foot in the tech world. And it's really scary when I talk to people, and it's really scary when I interview sales candidates, and they are not prepared. And that's one of the topics I'm going to talk to today. But I was talking to a sales director earlier this week for a very, very large wellness brand not affiliated with Restore Hyper Wellness, the franchise that one of the franchise locations that my wife and I own. And he was telling me that the lack of sales ability has plummeted. The sales numbers are in the toilet, they're in the tank. And the reason he believes it's happening is because people are getting extremely lazy not developing the skills and then using AI and tech as a support system, but trying to use AI as the entire system. You can't. You can't substitute skill and you can't substitute ability. It's the repetitions. There's very few scenarios that I have not been put in my sales career. Very few. It's been 25 years that I've been in sales and business. I was in I was in outside sales for 15 plus years. There is not many things that's going to surprise me. But what does surprise me is not actually in sales, but it's the it's this younger generation. Okay. And I'm not trying to pick on the younger generation. This is not a, hey, in my day we did XYZ, we rode dinosaurs to school, et cetera. Okay. But we didn't have the crutches, which is the technology. We didn't have the tools and the instruments to leverage like like you do now. It was all learning how to have one-on-one conversations, having awkward conversations, because we would have to meet people. We would have to meet prospects. I don't know this person. This person doesn't know me. And you have to walk up and you have to introduce yourself. You have to tell them why it's important they need to be talking to you. And you have to get them to know, like, and trust you every single time. And that repetition is how you become great. It is not going to be, do you have the fanciest AI tool? The tool is there to help develop your ability, develop the process. It is not there to go from A to Z. And trust me, it's been very tempting. I've built a lot of AI tools. I'll talk about that a little bit later. I've built a lot of AI tools for the outside sales world that I'm going to be launching in May. And those are not to replicate, or I'm sorry, to replace sales skill. You've got to have the skill. You have to have the ability. Because think about this. What if the Wi-Fi goes down in the building? What if you don't get good sales service? A lot of places you go into, a lot of these commercial buildings, they have terrible sell service. Well, what if the Wi-Fi is down? What if the Wi-Fi is weak? Are you going to rely on that? You're going into a meeting and you don't know your information, you don't know your presentation down cold, you haven't practiced, you haven't rehearsed, you haven't given yourself off ramps, you're going to fail. And you're setting yourself up to fail. I was thinking back, uh, one of the conversation with the sales director, and I've talked with three different sales directors in the last two weeks. And the sales director spurred something in my mind when the most recent round of interviews that I had for one of the positions at my wellness studio, the can a couple of the candidates really liked very strong resumes. But when we got into the interview, they said, Can I check my notes? And I was really taken back by that because that means that this person isn't prepared. And which was interesting because at the beginning, this candidate absolutely wowed me and my wife. And then we realized it was just ChatGPT or whatever AI that this candidate was using. It wasn't inside of them. It wasn't innate. It wasn't part of their fabric of their professional avatar. It wasn't them. It was AI. And I talked to a prospect this week who reached out to me on LinkedIn. By the way, if you want to get clarity on your sales career, if you want to get clarity on how to develop your skills, DM me on LinkedIn. It's still the easiest thing right now to do. DM me on LinkedIn and just say, hey, I'd like to have a conversation. I do free consults. I chatted with somebody earlier this week. And this candidate I had briefly touched base with last summer. And this candidate or this prospect said, No, I'm good. I think I'm just gonna, I think I'm just gonna, you know, I'm really getting into AI. I think I'm just gonna have AI help me. And I said, okay, good luck with that. Seven months later, still in the same position, still in the same boat. And we got on the call. I wasn't rude, wasn't disrespectful. I just said, How's how's it going? And this candidate said, I'm not getting offers. And I said, Okay, well, where do you think the shortfall is? And if I had a dollar every single time I've heard this or this has happened to me in my sales career, I wouldn't be doing this podcast. I'd be on a beach somewhere. The candidate kept saying, Well, I couldn't control the conversation, and the conversation went sideways and I didn't know what to do. Folks, that is sales. That is sales. Those are the off ramps that I talk about. Everybody can prepare for the highway. Oh, the highway is easy. Oh, you just go 75 miles an hour in a straight line. That is not a sales interview. That is not a prospecting call. That is not a sales meeting. It does not go according to plan 100% of the time. Shoot, I would say it probably goes according to plan maybe five to 10% of the time, if that, and that depends on your market, that depends on your product. That depends on a lot of different factors. So I would just say this: I'd say 3% is the golden rule. I'd say 3% of all sales conversations go 100% how you how it's planned. In other words, you walk in, you give a presentation, they don't really give any objections, they sign up because they see tremendous value. They're not distracted. You have plenty of time. It's a great environment. You know, there's no tension in the air. Everything's perfect. That's about 3% of the time. It's the 97% that's going to go off the rails. It's going to go sideways. They're going to be distracted. You have to regain their attention. Prospects are like toddlers. If you have, if you have children or you've had kids, if your parents listening right now, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Prospects are like toddlers. Okay. Really hard to wrangle, really hard to grab their attention. And when you grab their attention, you aren't quite sure if they're actually listening to you or if they're just staring at you, waiting to ask mommy or daddy a question. That's a prospect. Okay. Most of 97% of the time, you have no idea where this conversation is going to lead, where this conversation is going to go. You have to learn the skill of wrangling the conversation, directing it, and keeping it off the rails. That is the skill that I talk about. And that is what AI is not going to be able to replicate. And that's one of the reasons why AI is not coming for sales jobs, at least most sales jobs. Now, again, I think it's the 80-20 rule. I think 20% of the sales industry is going to be fine, the top performers. And I'm not talking the top performers with their numbers. I'm talking the top performers that actually know how to go out, get business from somebody who's never ever used your product or service. Those, that 20%, they'll be fine. The other 80% are going to be out of work. The ones that just they're very passive, they let the day attack them. They don't attack the day. They passively go through deals. They let things go through, you know, they have a leaky bucket, the deals slip through their fingers, they don't take action, they don't guide the prospect, they don't understand the buyer's journey, they don't understand the sales process, they don't have a sales process. If you don't have all of the requisite skills to immediately walk into a room and understand where the prospect is in their buying journey, where the need is, how to fill the gap, how to convince them that they're gonna have a better future with your product or service. If you don't know how to do all those basic, and those are basic, by the way, those are those are sales skills that you should have years two, three, four minimum or a maximum. By year two, you should be able to walk in and diagnose any single business that you're trying to sell to. You should be able to diagnose it and give them a free audit if it's asked for. But you should be able to diagnose immediately exactly what product or service, where it's going to go, and what the ROI is going to be. You should be able to calculate that. Okay. If you don't know how to do that, that is a skills problem. And no amount of AI and you know, no amount of quote unquote training by your company is going to allow that. And it's interesting that nowadays, you know, I hear, oh, you know, my company's not doing X, my company's not doing Y. I mean, if you have listened to this podcast, I have been talking about this. It's in 2026. I've been talking about this for five years. Your company is not going to give you the in-depth sales training that you are hoping for. If you're expecting them to hold your hand and guide you through becoming an expert in the sales world, that's not going to happen. They hired you because they believed you could take what they offer and what they provide you, and you can make it with that. You know, they're handing you the apples and they expect you to make apple pie. That's what companies expect now. And there are plenty of people on the sideline, especially from the industry that I came from, which is the medical sales world. Oh my gosh. Every single day on LinkedIn, I see topic after topic after topic, post after post after post. I'm really hoping to get into the medical sales world. I really want to get into the medical sales world. Shoot, every single one of my clients that I have coached has asked me, Mike, how do I get into the medical sales world? Every single one who wasn't in it, mind you, but every single one asks the exact same question. How do I get into this? How do I get into this? So if you're in the medical sales world, you are easily replaceable because everybody wants your job. Everyone. What are you going to do to keep it? You have to develop the skills. And I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna ease up in this whole thing about skills because what I'm seeing right now, and I mean, look, full disclosure, I love AI. I am all over AI. I spend all day, every day on AI. I don't scroll on social media, I don't watch TV. I pretty much am working with my tech stack, my AI tech stack. And it's Claude, it's Manis, occasionally perplexity, uh, 11 Labs. And if you know, you know. And I'm focused on building the best tools possible to elevate the outside sales world. Things that I wish I had, things that I dreamed up in my head 15 years ago are now possible. The impossible is possible now with AI. But I had to build the requisite skills to know exactly what needed to be built. AI, though, is an amplifier. You still have to have the skills. So you have to ask yourself, if you're listening right now, do you have the skills? Because the lipness test is if you can if you strip away all technology, if you had to walk into a business right now, would you have the ability to close a deal without using tech, without using any props, without using any crutches? You can't send emails, you can't do anything. You can't send text, you can't send emails, you don't have brochures. Can you verbalize to someone? If you can't, you don't have the skill set yet. You have to develop it. And there's no two ways about it. The sales professionals who know how to develop actual selling skills where they don't have to use an outside tool in order to close a deal, those are the ones that are gonna rise in the AI age. Because we're in an AI age. It's here, it's not going anywhere, it's not lessening up. And what's gonna happen is companies are gonna realize hey, for those top performers, we can just let some of the bottom people go, save that money, and we can allow the better performers to have larger territories. And this just happened. I was talking to my for one of my former company, one of my former bosses. I was chatting with him the other week and I asked him, I said, Hey, how's the Charlotte Territory doing? And he said, Well, there's no rep there. And I said, Really? I said, There's no rep. What what happened? Well, it was losing money, and so the owner decided to shut it down. And it hurts my heart, folks, because this is the same territory in 2014 that they had done the same thing. They had mothballed the territory. Four reps in five years had failed. The the territory wasn't making any money. And my hiring manager at the time convinced the owner hire this guy, he will turn it around. And I did. I took it from being in the mothball of the company. Nobody cared about it. It was an afterthought of a territory, and I made it one of the top territories. I was in the top 10 before I left. And it hurts my heart that in just less than five years or six years after I left, the territory is back at square one. And I said, Well, what happened? And it was the same, it was the same rep, same rep was there for six years. And it was just, I don't really want to get into it, but let's just say this person wasn't you. And the reason why the territory was successful when I was in it, and this is not egotistical, it's not braggadocious, is first my mindset, my competitive mindset where I will not allow failure. I will constantly be iterating until I get it right. But it's also I work ferociously on my skills, even now. I haven't been in the field in five years, and I am still focused on developing those skills because those skills translate in every form of business. The ability to prospect, the ability to cold call. I still do it to this day, really, but it's in a different form. I approach CEOs of companies to come in and use our wellness services in Rock Hill. I convince companies, I convince hiring managers, I convince office managers to come into the studio. We discuss corporate accounts, it doesn't end. But it all comes back to the same thing developing the skills and not setting it and forgetting it. And that's again, I probably I'm melding like six different topics into this one podcast, but that's how important it is. And you have to understand that if you're gonna be in sales, it is a long grind. Okay, it is a long grind where you have to put in the work. If you enjoy work-life balance, sales is not for you. You better have a product where you don't have to work. In other words, Botox is one I always use. Viagro was one from the past. If you have a product that people are knocking down your door, they're calling you left and right because they need it, that might be the job for you. But if you but that's maybe one-tenth of one percent of products nowadays, the market is commoditized. Every product pretty much is a commodity that can be interchanged for another one. So the reason why people buy certain products is because of the person selling it. They articulated and they clearly defined a better future state, a better potential state, talking about the P3 sales method, a better potential state for themselves, and they believe it. Everybody can talk a good game, but can you actually convince somebody of what you're saying is the truth? That is how a career is going to be made, and AI is not going to replace that. You have to stay ahead because here's another thing, too. It's a global sales world now. If you take a look at the sports world, you can see this happening in it. It's happened for a really long time in Major League Baseball. It's now happening in the NBA. The foreign, the Euro players are taking over. It's a global game. So if you're an American basketball player, you're not just competing against, you know, if you go to Duke, you're not just competing against somebody who goes to Georgia Tech or North Carolina or Clemson. You're competing with the world. Are you the best in the world? That's the new standard. And every single day you wake up, every time you, you know, press play on the Surviving Outside Sales podcast, whenever you click on something on Audible, whenever you're role-playing, that is what you have to think about. I'm competing against people that I have no idea are even in my market. Here's another thing, folks. Let's say you're in your 20s or 30s right now, your future competition is eight, nine, 10, 11 years old. Because industries start tend to skin, industries tend to skew younger. So your competition is still in grade school. They haven't even gotten braces yet. But in 15 years, when you're in your early 40s and you haven't developed that skill set and your numbers don't continue to scale, companies are going to look to get younger. And one of the reasons why they do it is just for hope. And I'll tell you this speaking of this, as a business owner, we evaluate every single employee we have in the building all the time, my wife and I. You're always evaluated. Now it's not always a pass-fail, like, are we firing this person? Are we keeping this person? But everything is something. Okay. Everything you do is something. When it gets to the point where we feel like it's a lost hope, that's when that's when business owners, that's when companies move on. So if you're not growing and you've been in the field 15 years, the conversations behind closed doors are why is so-and-so not growing? They've been, they've they're a 15-year pro. Well, let's do this. We can save some money. Let's hire somebody new who's hungry because maybe they're not hungry enough. Maybe they're not willing to do what it takes. So let's hire somebody younger, somebody cheaper that we can mold in our image. That is the conversation that's being had behind closed doors. Whether you'd like to admit it or not, or whether you knew that or not, that is the conversation. It is not, well, so-and-so has been with us for eight years and their numbers look really, you know, their numbers have been strong. That's not what they want. They want, they want growth always in all ways. If you're not providing the growth, they will move on. So you have to focus on the growth. You have to focus on developing your skills and improving your skills. And I had a conversation with uh a guy who's in his mid-40s. He was at a crossroads and he reached out to me and said, Hey, I'd just like to have a chat. I see you do free console calls. I want to have a chat. And so I chatted with him and I said, Okay, well, where do you feel like you are with your skill level? And he said, Oh, I'm a 9.5. And I said, Okay. I I really I had to stop from laughing. And I said, Okay, you know, why do you why do you feel, why'd you give yourself that that rating? Well, there's nobody that I can't sell, and there's No deal that I can't close and all of that. And I said, okay. I said, you know, then if you don't mind me asking, why are we on the call? Well, I just feel as if I've kind of gotten stale in my career. Okay. Tell me about it. Why do you feel like you got stale? Walk me through the scenario. Well, you know, my company is expecting X and I'm doing Y. Okay. So why do you feel like you're not growing? Why do you feel like it's stale? Well, my company's not providing me. And I'm like, okay. And my in my mind, I'm like, yeah, the the this is a lost cause. And I will tell you this, as a sales coach, I used to take on almost everybody because I thought myself, oh, I can fix them. You can't fix certain people. You can't fix a negative mindset, a limiting mindset. So I made a I made a conscious decision last fall that I wasn't going to work with everybody. They had to have the right mindset. And this gentleman did not have the right mindset. Flailing at his job felt like he was in quicksand, spinning his wheels, but only blamed the company he was with. And I said, okay, you know, if you're if if if you feel like it's the company's letting you down, you know, why don't you move? And he goes, Well, I get paid really well. And I don't want to have to start over. Okay. So basically, this gentleman just called me to complain. And I gave recommendations, and none of the recommendations really landed. Those, that type of mentality is what companies talk about behind closed doors. Executives talk about behind closed doors. And people are like, I can't believe they got rid of John. Oh my gosh, his numbers were really strong. John might think he's a know-it-all. John might push back on every little tip that the regional manager might have had. John is pushing back on developing. John doesn't want to have to put in more sales calls because John thinks his numbers are good. But you have to always be growing. There is no such thing as maintaining in the sales world. There isn't. There's no such thing. You're either getting better or you're getting worse. So the big takeaway from this, I hope, I hope the big takeaway is pretty obvious. But the the takeaway from this is you have to keep working on your skills. AI is there to amplify and help you. But AI is not here to do it for you. And the future is going to be won by people who have every skills or I'm sorry, every sales skill available without the need for any of the technology that's going to help them get there. Strip away the tech. If you can sell, you are going to win the day. So what I want you to do is I want you to ask yourself, if I didn't have a cell phone, if I didn't have my CRM, if I didn't have any of the materials, the studies, if I didn't have any of the white papers, if I didn't have any of the products, if I didn't have anything to show somebody, to share with somebody, to use as a cheat sheet or to communicate with them electronically, would I be able to be great at my job? That is the question I want you to ask yourself. If the answer is no, you got some work to do. If the answer is yes, reach out to me. I'd really like to know how you did that. But if the answer is no, reach out to me. You can DM me on LinkedIn. You know, I have websites, but actually the LinkedIn is probably my favorite. Just DM me on LinkedIn. Connect with me. Hey, Mike. I listen to the podcast. I get about four to five people per week. Even though I don't I don't release a lot of episodes recently. I know I'm I'm trying to get better at that. I've got a lot of things going on right now. And I told you I am obsessed with AI. And I've been working nonstop on AI to work on all of the things that I'm building. And just so you know, this is a lot of fun for me. We're entering a very awesome time, but I digress. If you want to, if you want to discuss where you are and where you want to go in your sales career, reach out to me on LinkedIn. Let's connect, let's sit down, let's have a discussion, and I can point you in the right direction. It's very simple. That's all you need to do. One last note, I'm launching the P3 sales method for the first time as a standalone product. If you want to get your hands on it, all you got to do is go to go.p3 salesmethod.com and you can sign up. It's$97. It's a one-time offer for lifetime access. It is, there's also some other freebies and some bonuses that I threw in there, things that complement the P3 sales method. But you can go there right now, check it out, and I have a 30-day money-back guarantee. If you don't like it, if you think it's trash, okay. That's your opinion. I mean, it's the same say it's the same sales methodology I've used in my entire sales career, and it's done pretty well for me. I know it's going to work for you. It's very simple. You can you can use it in almost every sales environment. You also can technically do it in your personal life. You know, I mentioned before that it's one of the things that I used to do in the dating world was to be able to just cold approach people and to go to parties where I didn't know anybody and immediately start to build connection with people. It's the P3 sales method. It's the past, it's the present and potential state. It's simple. Doesn't mean it's easy. You have to work on it, you have to practice it, you have to know it like the back of your hand. But check it out. Go.p3 salesmethod.com. Reach out to me on LinkedIn. There's a lot of different ways to connect. If you want to have a consult call, great. If you want to get the p3 sales method, fantastic. If you get the p3 sales method, if you go to go.p3 salesmethod.com and you purchase the p3 sales method and you send me a message on LinkedIn, I will do a 30-minute call with you and discuss your p3 sales method. Okay? That is my that is my gift to you. I'll walk you through exactly in your business what you need to do in order to set up your P3 and have that sales system and sales structure. I'll talk more about the P3 on the next episode. So stick around for that because nowadays, sales systems rule rule the day. Shooting from the hip, you're never going to build a successful career. Go.p3 salesmethod.com. That's the number three. Go.p3 salesmethod.com. Check it out. We'll catch you next time on surviving outside sales. Bye.