Why you shouldn’t join the OKPSA

Mike Crandall, Sandler Custom Growth Solutions

Before founding the Oklahoma Professional Sales Association (OKPSA), I thought a lot about what I wanted the organization to be. More importantly, I also worked hard to find out what I didn’t want it to be.

Setting expectations is critical to making a business group successful (or any group for that matter).

If expectations don’t match, and someone comes in expecting one thing but getting another there’s going to be a disconnect.

So if you’re thinking about joining the OKPSA, here are a couple of reasons why the organization might not be a good fit for you.

It’s not about referrals.

OKPSA isn’t a referral group. There’s no expectation that members will be providing referrals to each other and if you come in looking for referrals you may be disappointed.

There are plenty of very good organizations out there that are focused on exchanging referrals. OKPSA isn’t one of them. If you attend our meetings, you’re under no obligation to hand out referrals.

That being said, referrals may happen naturally but they aren’t the focus.

It’s not for the inexperienced.

While education is one of OKPSA’s goals, it isn’t a good place to come expecting sales training. OSPA’s members are CEOs, business owners, executive-level sales managers, and sales professionals with decades of experience and significant yearly sales revenue.

If you’re looking for a group that will help you start your sales career, we’re probably not the best fit. The types of issues we’ll be discussing in our sessions simply won’t be helpful to someone who’s just starting out.

So why join?

If you’re an experienced sales professional looking for the opportunity to develop your skills and share ideas and lessons-learned with a group of like-minded people, the OKPSA may be a good fit for you.

My goal is to create an environment where we can “talk shop” about the issues that affect us on a day-to-day basis as well as high level sales strategies.

It’s about getting the right people together who are all headed in a similar direction and being supportive of each other’s success through education and networking.

If you want to improve the effectiveness of your sales and develop your sales from “good” to “great”, OKPSA may be the place for you.

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