Episode 117: Welcome Back! Season 4 Premiere
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Welcome back to Prospecting On Purpose®.
After a year-long unintentional pause, Sara Murray returns for the Season 4 premiere with a quick update on where she’s been, what she’s learned, and what’s ahead for the show.
Listen in for a behind-the-scenes catch-up, a preview of the exciting guests coming this season, and a look at the next chapter of Prospecting On Purpose®.
We are back, baby.
You're listening to Prospecting on Purpose®, where we discuss all things prospecting, sales, business, and mindset. I'm your host, Sara Murray, a sales champion who's here to show you that you can be a shark in business and still lead with intentionality and authenticity. Tune in each week as we dive into methods to connect with clients, communicate with confidence, and close the deal.
Hello, hello. Welcome back to Prospecting On Purpose®. Welcome back to what I am officially calling Season 4 of the show. If you have been following the show for a while, you may realize it’s June 2026, and we went on a very long, unintentional hiatus - to the tune of about a year. It wasn’t planned. It wasn’t on purpose. But that’s what happened.
This episode is just a really quick welcome back and a quick catch-up on where I’ve been, what’s going on behind the scenes, what’s to come for Prospecting On Purpose® moving forward, and some of the great guests that we’ve already interviewed and will be rolling out over the next couple of weeks. So it’s a short episode, but a big roadmap.
The first thing I want to start with is where I’ve been. The honest answer is, if you’ve been following along with the show, year three in business was when things really took off. All of the different seeds that I had been planting came to harvest, which was wonderful. But I got really, really busy. Travel was busy. My client deliverables had to take priority, and unfortunately, the podcast had to be what was put on pause.
The next episode we’re going to get into is around handling overwhelm because, in that period, I was going through some overwhelm, and I want to share what I learned from that experience. So stay tuned for our next episode, “8 Tips to Handle Overwhelm.”
Before I tell you what’s new with the show, I want to give a few highlights from the last year because they are the reason the show was on pause, and I believe there is a lot of value to the journey. For the folks who have been with us since Season 1, I am so grateful for you being with me along for the ride. It has been really fun.
2025 was an amazing up-level for the business. I have had the chance to do a couple of different international speaking and training opportunities, which has been a really big dream of mine. The business is called Murmaid International for a reason, and I feel so lucky to have contacts, a big network, and clients around the world. So I have been on a lot of planes. I have been doing a lot of speaking gigs, client trainings, sales trainings, and industry conferences. I have been in rooms with leaders that I admire, in cities I had never been to before, and I have been doing a lot of interviewing and lessons learned along the way.
One thing that was kind of fun, too, is that I was a story producer for two seasons - Seasons 5 and 6 - of Project MFG’s Clash of Trades on YouTube. That is a reality show shining a light on the labor shortage of skilled tradesmen and women, which actually impacts every industry that I serve. From commercial construction, manufacturing, technology, and engineering, to team members at hotels, there are staffing shortages there. So it has been really fun to be part of that and give back in a different way.
What’s funny about story producing on a reality show is that it is honestly not that different from producing a podcast. You’re finding stories. You’re interviewing people and finding different angles that would be interesting for a viewer to care about. It is funny that building the podcast led to some of my biggest clients, led to my business coach Raul, and led to the Clash of Trades opportunity. It has been really cool to trace the clues back and see where they led.
On the client side, I have been working with dozens of different teams utilizing the Prospecting On Purpose® sales program. That is really broken down into three parts.We do a pre-call with leadership to understand the team goals and organizational goals. Then we do an in-person day that is customized around that team. We go through skills building, and at the end of that in-person day, we come out with a roadmap together of what they are going to focus on for the next 90 days, six months, to a year.
Then part three is that I hold them accountable. It has been so, so, so fun - beyond fulfilling - to see the results from those in-person days and the results from that time together. Every single team is thriving. One team has already hit last year’s full sales number at the end of May. Another client increased their close rate from 20% up to 38% in the past year from working together. There are just so many wins from clients taking action, taking that risk, deploying the frameworks, holding themselves accountable, and I am just celebrating right alongside them. It has been so awesome.
Another thing that has been keeping me pretty busy is a lot of different events. I truly believe in in-person connection. I think it is the catalyst for relationship building, especially with all the AI noise that we are navigating right now. Retreats, industry summits, networking events, panel events, vendor events, client trips - it has been a lot of organizing and a lot of executing. But it is something that I am good at and I like doing. So it has been cool to add that as a service into my business.
Of course, I have also been attending other people’s events and learning right alongside them. If you are someone who does not like to travel or does not like to go to industry conferences, but you want to stretch yourself, I highly encourage finding opportunities to get together in person.
I also stepped into a new leadership role with the Female Founders in Hospitality group. I serve as the head of internal programming. It has been such a joy to put together things that help our founders build their businesses. Because of that, my network has expanded exponentially in the hospitality industry and in the travel and tourism industry. I am learning so much, and it has been so awesome. The list goes on, but you get the picture. Business is good.
None of this happens without the clients who have hired me, the people who have referred me, my friends and peers who have championed me, and of course, my lovely, lovely, lovely podcast listeners. I am so grateful for every single one of you.I really can look back and piece all of these little breadcrumbs back to the podcast, so I am so excited to have it back on the air. Moving forward for the podcast, just a couple of behind-the-scenes things.
We have a brand-new look. We did a little rebrand for the Murmaid International brand and the Prospecting On Purpose® brand, so you are going to see a new visual identity. We are up-leveling. My clientele is really luxury, and I love that. I want to make sure we continue to service and show up in a luxury way because that is going to be the future. I am going to be right there with you on the forefront of what’s next in delivering a luxury experience. That could be a CNC manufacturing machine, or it could be a five-star hotel. We are able to deliver that same experience with these frameworks and with these lessons, so that has been really fun.
Of course, even while the show has been on pause, I have been meeting incredible people. So many impressive people. I have been recording amazing interviews, and we have a stack of guest interviews ready to go.
The next few episodes that we are rolling out, you are going to hear from Melissa Maher, who is the former CMO of Expedia Group. Melissa has started her own executive coaching firm, and she has a bestselling book called Holding Your Own. We are going to talk about executive presence. She is a great person to have in your network, so make sure you tune in for that one.
We also interviewed David Newman, who is the founder of Do It Marketing and Do It Sales. David has such amazing energy. We had such a great conversation around authentic salesmanship and how to market and sell without losing your soul, which I think you are going to really enjoy.
We also had Bart Berkey. He is a former sales trainer from the Ritz-Carlton Group, and now he runs his own firm. Bart and I were fellow speakers at the New England Inns and Resorts Association conference this past November. He has a beautiful view on what he calls humanality — how to be a good person in business. He is super warm and super wise, and I think you are going to love him.
Lovell Casiero is the former Senior Vice President of Strategy at PM Hotel Group. PM Hotel Group is one of the major hotel ownership and management firms in the country. She has an incredible personal story, and she started her own firm and her own podcast around helping people become unshakable and how to stay calm and present in the face of uncertainty, trauma, and hardship. I think it is something the world needs right now. You are going to really enjoy Lovell’s energy.
Last but not least, one of the next upcoming guests we have rolling out is Jordana Cole. She is a TEDx speaker, an adult learning expert, and an improv comedian. We dug into what you do when you don’t know what to do next. It is something that hits all of us because that is the world we live in now. What I love about Jordana is that she gives a lot of tactical strategies.
There is nothing vague. It is very hands-on. So that is just a little preview of what is to come. There are many more. We have a lot of great interviews on the calendar. We also have a lot of solo episodes, which I love creating. They do take a lot of time, which again is why they had to drop. The next episode you are going to hear is “8 Tips to Handle Overwhelm.”
That is just one of the many topics that we have on the docket because, in this past year, I have grown so much personally and professionally from deploying things with my clients that work, and from making mistakes - because that happens literally every day. How can we power through and learn from that? I am really enthusiastic about where things are going and where they are going to continue to go.
To wrap us up, to the listeners who have been with us through Seasons 1, 2, and 3: your reviews, your DMs, your feedback, and your encouragement mean so much to me.I cannot put words to it. Especially when I started the business, there were no clients. There was no money. I had to really pour energy into this, and it has been such a beautiful experience for me. I appreciate you. I have missed you, and I am so happy to be back.
Thank you so much for being here. Thanks for coming back. Welcome to Season 4 of Prospecting On Purpose®.
We are back, baby. Stay tuned for our next episode, “8 Tips to Handle Overwhelm,” and our guest episodes rolling out over the coming weeks. Thanks so much. See you next episode.
Thank you so much for listening to the Prospecting on Purpose podcast.
If you'd love what you heard today, subscribe to the podcast and please rate and leave a review for more info on me, or if you'd like to work together, feel free to go to my website, saramurray.com on social media. I'm usually hanging out @Saramurraysales. Thanks again for joining me and I'll see you next time.
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