Episode 438: The Transition From Rainmaker to Sales Leader with Mike Weinberg

Welcome to another episode of the Above the Business podcast. My name is Bradley Hammond, your host. On today's episode, we have Mike Weinberg. Mike loves all things sales. He's spoken on 5 different continents. He's the author of 4 Amazon number 1 bestsellers, including New Sales Simplified, which has been named a top 5 sales book of all time. Inc Magazine declared Sales Management Simplified One book that every sales leader should read. In his latest book, The First Time Manager, Sales achieved number one bestseller in three categories upon its release. This is probably one of my top 10 for sure, if not top 5 interviews that I've done on the podcast. That is certainly lofty praise, but it's really because of Mike. I really enjoyed this episode with Mike quite a bit. If you've not read his books, they had a profound influence in me and my own journey and continue to, to this day. And I think you're going to get a tremendous amount out of this episode. Without further ado, here's my conversation with Mike Weinberg. Mike, welcome to the Above the Business podcast.

Hey, I can't believe I'm finally here. Thank you, Bradley, for bringing me on.

I am so pumped to have you. We were talking before we hit record about just your books and the impact to me personally, but then also into our community. That being said, if someone is not familiar with your work and your journey, why don't you just take a couple of minutes and kind of bring us from your past and bring us to present day and what you do and who you help.

I'll give you the real short version. Uh, never wanted to be in sales. My dad was a New York City sales executive, and I thought that wasn't for me. I was going to be a business guy. And after a few years of my career, ended up in sales and really liked it and got good at it and ended up being the top, you know, number one salesperson in a few different companies. And through no choice of my own, the first time I went into consulting, it was during a crazy time in the economy and some meltdowns. Ended up in the sales coaching world and loved it. And then spent about 6 years after that trying to play sales executive during some interesting economies and some weird companies and decided 15 years ago, I'm gonna go back out on my own and I'm gonna help companies win more new sales. Like my passion, I got one passion in business. My why is helping salespeople and sales teams win more new sales. And I launched the business 15 years ago And by God's grace and just interesting timing, the 6 months into that, I was blogging and getting a little bit of a following on LinkedIn. And a couple publishers came to me and said, hey, you've got kind of an interesting contrarian point of view about sales and sales management and you're doing consulting. Why don't you have a book? And I'm thinking, I don't know, why don't I have a book? I'll get to that. And I did the book proposal for New Sales Simplified, and the rest is history. I did not. Envision what happened happening. Neither did the publisher that paid me like $4 as an advance. Um, so it's been a really interesting ride having a book that went bananas and what the doors that opened that led to all these engagements, the rest of the books, and the, the really incredible blessing, the opportunity to go into these companies and have conversations with people like you. So that's the backstory.

That's amazing. I actually don't think, think I knew that. I will tell you, I started my business in 2010.

Same, same right here. End of 2010 for me. Oh, wow.

Okay, great. I think I read your book in 2013, 2014, sometime in that, in that period. And I was trying to build a sales team. I had been— I kind of refer to this as the rainmaker of my business, meaning like I was the top sales producer in my business for the first 5 years and I knew how to do it, but I had no clue. Zero clue. I thought it did. I could fake it and tell you at a coffee shop over a beer that I knew what I was doing. But truthfully, I had no idea how to actually build a sales team. Can you talk about— for so many of our business owners that listen to this, they struggle with that. Maybe they were the top producer in their business and they so struggle with how to get it out of their head and then go build a sales team. They can do it themselves, but they struggle with that transfer.

I can't believe what you just said, and I'm not trying to be funny or falsely humble with what I'm about to say, but I had the same exact problem that you did. I was a top hunter and I had not only in this, you know, success in 3 different companies where I was a top salesperson, then I had this 4-year stint in coaching and consulting where we were awesome with my partner. And then I took a job as a sales executive and I flailed. Practically failed. The irony is not lost on me. If you would've seen me and the story I tell in chapter 1 in Sales Management Simplified, and then I, I touch on it again in First Time Manager Sales, my latest book in chapter 7. If you would've seen me as an early sales executive and frontline sales manager, you would've been like, you are the guy who has the 2 most popular books on sales management in the last few years. It's so ironic to me. I struggled and it was part of what I met was a mess is what you just said. I thought If I could just get people to sell like me, I'd be fine.

Yeah.

Let me teach 'em how to tell the story, how to run a sales call, how to prospect, you know, how, how to own their calendar, and they'll all be great and I'll turn this company around. And I was naive and I was a little arrogant and I was wrong. And it, it's the thing no one tells you, and it's why I wrote my latest book. The job of leading the team is the antithesis of the job of being the individual contributor who's producing. And no one says that to you. In fact, in chapter 1 of The First Time Manager Sales, I say, congrats, you have the most important job in the revenue organization. And in chapter 2, I say, surprise, no one's told you this yet, but what you got you here will not get you there. And the job of sales leader is nothing like the job of salesperson. Salesperson, high ego's great. That's doesn't work too well as the leader. When your ego gets in the way, you're responsible for yourself. As a, as a contributor, the more selfish you are, the more you own your calendar, the more productive you're gonna be. That doesn't work as a sales leader. You don't win on your own. You win through your people. So what you struggled with is what I struggled with and what almost every new manager struggles with. And today it's worse than ever because of virtual work, because of COVID because of lack of mentoring. We, we can go down those paths, but it is not easy to build and launch a sales team. And if you're the great entrepreneur who started the company, cuz you're the visionary or the technician, or you were this rainmaking salesperson and now you've got to build a team. That's totally different gifting and experience. So I don't know if that resonates the way I said it to you, but I feel like we've lived the same thing.

Oh my gosh, are you kidding me? Like, it is exactly it. That is exactly it. And people would, in my own journey, talk about systems and processes, and I was like, I don't know how to do that. I don't know how to build a sales playbook. I just know how to do it. In fact, I want to give an— I'm actually like looking down this hallway, and I would think, you know, walk somebody down a hallway. I know how to sell them when I'm doing it. I do not know how to transfer that. And I would even, to be honest with you, made it worse, Mike, because I would even bring people in and say, just watch me do it. And then I would say, just go do what I just did. That does not work. But—

Preach, Bradley, preach. Yeah, you've nailed it. So hard. Well, here— and here's the thing that's happening to a lot of people that come from your background, or what I'm seeing the last year. I had more tech business. Normally I'm in— I have a lot of industrial clients. I was in some high-end progressive SaaS companies and global tech companies in the last year. And you know what they're struggling with? They call it super repping. I call it being the hero. It's where the sales manager is doing the salespeople's jobs instead of leading, coaching, or holding them accountable. I'm gonna say this again. It's where the, the manager is playing the hero of the team. They're not leading, they're not coaching, they're not holding people accountable. They're actually doing the job. They're running the sales calls, they're doing the prep, they're shaping the proposals, they're doing the negotiating, they're doing everybody's job for them. It's not sustainable. It's not scalable, but they're making up for this deficiency in talent. And they feel the pressure and they don't know how to coach and they don't do good accountability. They may not even have the right people on their team, so they insert themselves and do what they always did as a seller. And you know, that works for about 5 minutes until you get burned out and you realize I can't do 9 people's jobs. And when there's just so much in there, so particularly in technology, they, they've, they taught me the phrase. I went in saying, hey, are your, are your managers playing the hero instead of making heroes? So like, are they doing instead of developing? And they're like, Mike, you don't even know. And they said, my managers are super reps. They put on the cape and they're the superhero that just jumps in and does all the job. And it's, that's not scalable. That's not sustainable. It's also a really quick ticket to burnout and overwhelm in a job that's already really freaking hard. Yeah. Where you're getting hundreds of emails a day and you're working in places sometimes where the guy in the corner office or the woman in the C-suite has no clue what the frontline manager should be doing. So they send them all these initiatives and emails and like, oh my God, my head. Explode, like, from what I see in my clients right now.

Yeah, I, I think that there was a period that I knew it was not sustainable or scalable. I just didn't know what to do. It was like, how do I start to make that transition? How do I start to see my role differently? How do I actually start to transfer the mindset, like, how I'm approaching it, how I'm preparing it? Even the skills, even the things. And of course, we'll get into some of the specifics. I eventually want to talk about hunter and farmers and personality traits and things like that. But, but what really is maybe your framework or structure for that person that was like you and I who is listening to this, which I think is not uncommon at all, that then says, yeah, that is literally me, now I want to begin to make the change?

Well, there's a few, there's a few ways we could approach this. The one thing I'd say is I would point them to the entire chapter in my latest book, The First Time Manager Sales, where I walk them through the reasons they play hero instead of making heroes. And, and there's some really interesting causes there from ego to perfectionistic tendencies to pressure to making up for it, uh, a deficiency in talent. Like there's some legitimate causes that, that make us do it. So there's, there's identifying why you do it. It's really understanding the consequences, which you and I have already articulated, if you have. But it doesn't work long term. Short term, you may, you may do more business because you're more talented than your reps, but you're on— you're going to burn out. You're sending a really weird message to your people that like you're creating this codependency where they're afraid to do anything without you. That's not healthy. You send a really odd message to the customer that you're now telling, hey, I'm the guy, not my salesperson. So just call me when there's a problem or you need a better price. Like you run away good talent and then forget what it's doing to your life that you, how do you, how do you scale? You're not multiplying yourself into your people. You're not winning through them. You're doing all their jobs. Like, so there's, there's why you do it. There's what happens when you do it, but maybe even most important is where does it show up? Yeah. And, and the question you asked, a really good question, like how do you know? Well, I, I'll just list off a few aspects of a sales leader's job and I, I would challenge the listeners, hold up the mirror. Are you, are you, how do you prepare your salespeople for sales calls? Are you dictating what they should be doing? And here's my strategy and here's how you need to think this through and here's the probing questions you should be asking. Or are you asking questions? Hey, how do you want to handle this one? And talk to me about what's going on in the account and what are the personalities and what roles are the people here and how are you going to ask questions? And that's coaching, which is very different than prescribing. Right? So it's— so how are you getting them ready for meetings? If you're going along with someone, we're making a joint sales call, or we're doing, you know, we're doubling up on a presentation. Leader, what role are you playing in the room? Are you conducting? Are you supporting? Are you elevating and edifying? Are you actually doing the rep's job, which I would argue actually diminishes your role? When you're getting ready for a team meeting, right, and you're leading a sales team meeting, are you doing all the talking? Are you a monologuer? And are you like beating your chest because you want all the glory and tell them how great you are? Or are you pulling the best out of your people, making them share the best practices and their challenges? When you report results to the organization, do you brag about what you accomplished and how you jumped in and saved the day? Or are you like building up your people? Like, there's so many ways to play it out and challenge because it doesn't work. If the reason I'm so wound up, like, I'm not feigning my emotion here, like I see this every day and I see sales managers burning out. Like, the job is hard enough when you're not trying to do everybody else's job. And it's, it's the message that I said it quickly in the beginning and I'll repeat it. When you're the leader, you need to win through your people and the two levers we have. And I'm going to, I'm going to, for those watching this on your video release, I'm putting both of my hands back and forth. You have two levers on a day-to-day basis. Your two most important levers are your two highest impact activities. Lever one is accountability. Are you making sure your people are doing their job by slipping the result under their nose and monitoring the pipeline and asking hard questions about coverage and, and opportunity creation and deals progressing? And if necessary, activity. Like, accountability is a good thing, and good people want to be held accountable. And you don't have to micromanage or demotivate. You can do great accountability. The other lever you have is coaching. If job 1 is making sure they do their job, job 1A is helping them get better, where you're working alongside and you're asking questions and you're observing. And yes, Bradley, with a new person or someone who's struggling, we may model the way. We may say to the new person, hey, watch me run a couple of these meetings, and I'm going to sit down with you. You're going to tell me what you picked up, and then we're going to practice having you do it. Like, there's nothing wrong with that. That's coaching. But if you do it all the time, right? If with every salesperson you take over the meeting, like, what's going on there? So that's the answer is understanding we win through our people. Next to getting the right people on our team, the two things we should be really good at as sales leaders are holding people accountable, holding their feet to the fire for results, pipeline, and if necessary, activity, and then coaching them on skills, on life, on productivity, on deals. And if we do those two things, the job is a lot simpler and we have a lot more clarity, and we're going to move the needle on culture and on results.

I love the fact that you gave— it's accountability and coaching. And I, I can't tell you how vivid this picture is, that when my very first job out of college, when I graduated from Auburn, I was selling Yellow Pages, which you probably remember that, that, that period of time.

And just when I say hashtag War Eagle, or do I just let that go? —like, you can say, where'd you go?

Yeah, please do. Just don't say— don't say—

I know, I know what not to say. I got lots of fans and friends in, okay, other parts of your state. I know.

As long as you say that, because I don't want to end the podcast right now.

All right, so I feel like we're doing pretty well together.

I don't want to— we're doing really well. I don't want to end it right now, Mike. Okay. Um, so, uh, when my very first job, my very first manager— I'll just say her first name, Jennifer— she would come in when I would take her on sales calls. She didn't do what you mentioned, which is to model What she did, she took over the call. She took— she just took over the call. She'd jump in, she would go on. It was a ride-along, okay? Ride-along. We go in there and she would just take over. She had a— she had a big personality. My second job, I was in the pharmaceutical industry. My manager at the time, Sharma, um, she would go in and I was flailing. I mean, I was failing completely. You know what she did? She let— she sat there and just let me— let me do it. And then she did the coaching and did the accountability in the car. But I kept waiting because I had saw and witnessed with my first job. I thought, Jennifer, that's what I thought. That's what a sales manager did. I was expecting Charma to come in and save the day. She was like, no, I'm not saving this day. This is your sales call. And this uncomfortableness, that sweat that's coming off your brow. I was a young, you know, 25, 26-year-old talking to physicians. She was going to let me actually fail and work through that. And then she, she would do the coaching and the accountability. And just those two parallel examples, oftentimes I can end up shaping my experience where I failed early on because I was like, I just got to go in there and do it myself for people, thinking that I'm showing and modeling the way. I wasn't modeling the way. I didn't trust the team members. I didn't train them the way that they needed to be trained. That was— it was so— I'm so glad that you brought through some experiences that I had, honestly painful experiences that I had in my own journey in sales in the past.

I was not about to interrupt you. That was the best 2 minutes ever. I would challenge your listeners, go back and listen to what Bradley just shared, that that is the best contrast of different types of leaders and managers. And you know, who'd you learn more from? Who grew you as a rep? Oh, right. I mean, it's night and day. The story is fantastic. That's exactly— and that's— you just gave the example. She was more concerned with developing you for the long term than winning that one sales call. Yes, absolutely. Because she was gonna let you suffer. And you said, the phrase you used was so great. She let the sweat form on my brow. And I was struggling. She did. And 'cause she was using it as a teaching opportunity. Now, let me say this, let me say this to the listeners. Like, that doesn't mean it's wrong to jump in and save a sales call once in a while. Sure. If it's a huge deal and you feel like you can bring some value and the salesperson's still gonna learn the lesson and you're gonna jump in and save it, that's okay once in a while.

Yep.

But if you do that all the time, then you're a perfectionistic control freak and you're not letting your people struggle. Because sometimes the value of the teaching moment from letting the sweat form, as you just described, is, is way more beneficial to the development of that person. Because you're teaching someone how to fish, you're not catching a fish. It's, it's much more expedient. It's much more easier to do their job. Your first manager was cheating you and the process. Just doing it all because she wanted you to make numbers, because she wanted her own numbers. The second manager cared about you as a human and was developing you as a professional. And that's a night and day difference, right, in motivation and, and just approach.

Night and day difference. And to your thing that I circled and underlined is through your people. You win through your people. And I— there's a lot of places that we could go with this. I would love for you to talk about when you are a first-time sales manager or you've been doing it for a little bit of time and you're building a sales team, can you just talk about the recruiting and the hiring aspect of it? Uh, that in and of itself could be a, could be a single podcast just around that one, but your, your thoughts around for maybe that first-time or early-stage business owner entrepreneur that's building their, their sales team in how you go through in the recruiting and, and, and hiring process?

Yeah, that's a deep question. I love it. And I'll work it through with you piece by piece, and if we need to do another episode, so be it. Um, and I, I'm excited, and I prepared a little bit because I went and listened to a few episodes from you, and one I just happened to catch was one you did recently where you talked about sales DNA and who's a hunter, who's a farmer. Sometimes I use the phrase zookeeper. As a synonym for Hunter. And so I had a feeling you'd want to go down this path because you were kind of teasing out our conversation that was to come. But let's, let's stick with the macro that you just started first, which is like, all right, you got a relatively new leader, but how do they start building a team? Right. And particularly if it's an entrepreneur that's trying to get started and they're building their— they're bringing on their first salespeople. And I'm going to say something that sounds so obvious, but it's not happening. You need to do a legit job description that's honest. It's not flowery mumbo jumbo that you're trying to attract somebody. You need to list out, because sometimes what happens is we, we have this bizarre fantasy that you're going to find the perfect, highly versatile unicorn that's good at everything. Yeah. And you list this job description that has 19 requirements, and like the person would have to have a divine background to, to, to be potentially meet, check all the boxes. Like, well, I want someone who can, who's not scared of conflict, but they're really relational and they're good at details and they're technically proficient and they're good at service and they're a fun team player and they're gonna clean the dishes and do the Christmas party committee and they're gonna cold call with great proficiency and they're great negotiators. And I'm like, are you on drugs? Like, there is no person alive that can do all those things. So the thing, and you can hear me getting like agitated 'cause I think I see these bizarre flowery, extensive job descriptions. So I think the first thing we need to do is what is the job? And I ask them to be really specific cuz it's not one size fits all talent management when it comes to sales. Is it pure hunting? Is there some account management? Is it really service, customer success and onboarding and renewing? And those are all completely different jobs that often get mushed into the same role. Yeah. And, and what the job description is gonna tell you is the attributes you need to go find in the person you're trying to put in the role. And life is a lot easier when we find people that are gifted and wired with the DNA for the attributes that we need for someone to succeed in that job. So it starts with a clear job description that really articulates in some detail, what are we asking this person to do? And then we can go find someone who's a fit. Yeah, because not everyone is wired the same. And I'll just go down this path as a starter, and I'm sure you want to go further, but there are people that are wired like hunters. And I'm just going to say this: the two most important characteristics of someone who is going to hunt is, A, they are not conflict-averse. This is the first thing I look at when we're trying to hire hunters. Are you afraid of conflict? Do you always acquiesce? Are you always looking to keep the peace? Because Well, that person is lovable, likable, great at retention, great at relationship management, and rarely pisses somebody off. When you're hunting, there is a ton of conflict and risk and rejection. But the conflict is, you know, you're prospecting someone like, no, we're good, we're set. Does your salesperson go, okay, well, I'm sorry to bug you. I'll try you back in 9 months to see if anything's changed. Or like I would advocate, and I did as a top salesperson, When I get that pushback, I'm like, hey, I hear you. Let me ask you to spend a couple minutes with me anyway, because you're going to get tremendous value from the conversation. I'll share with you how we're solving problem A and achieving result B. Grab your calendar. Why don't we set some time? Even if I'm not a fit right now, you're not looking, you're going to get value. And I just, by the way, just gave a pretty awesome cold call outline right there. But I don't want to go down that path. But, but it's, it's the resistance factor. Like, are you willing to bounce off resistance and be low conflict. The second thing we're looking for in a hunter is hugely competitive. Every top salesperson's competitive. That person keeps score. So we're really, really, really looking for someone who's got those attributes in a hunting role. And if they don't have those, walk away, run away. I don't care if they're the most likable person with the strongest resume, with 1,000 referrals. They probably were successful because somebody was teeing up opportunities or they were really good at their past company because they had the best territory and they got all the right leads, or they had the biggest accounts and they were great at maintaining. But maintaining is not the same thing as creating. Yep. My favorite sales verb is create. The most valuable salespeople create new opportunities. They're not just waiting, they're not just chasing. Sorry for the long answer, but you kind of wound me up there.

No, it's, it's, it's a complete answer. Which I think is important because, uh, what ends up happening is you, you bring somebody in, presumably they're a hunter, and let's say that they are a hunter, and even if they get into the position, you, I can often see where roles start to, to blend over into now they're doing account management and now they're doing customer success. Now they're doing all this stuff of servicing the account when they're like, wait a minute, that's not what I was signed up to do.

But if you have the wrong person, if you have the wrong person, they're looking for those opportunities to do those because that's their preference. I'd rather service than sell. I'd rather fight fires. I'd rather get the attaboy and the good feels from my customer that's thankful that I'm jumping in and solving their customer service challenge. Absolutely. And those are important attributes. I'm not down on those, but that is not the same thing as creating, advancing, and closing new sales. Which we're desperate for our hunters to do to fill the pipeline and win new business. And there's a, I hate to use the word weak, but I'm gonna use it. There's a lot of weaker salespeople that get their jollies from playing glorified customer service rep and firefighter, and they use their busyness attacking those other challenges as a very convenient excuse. That's why they didn't have the time to go create pipeline and win new business. And that's the opportunity cost of that is deadly. And you know where I'm going with this, right? I mean, that's, that's where the talent—

so go ahead. I can ask, can I just make an observation on something that I had not thought about before this interview?

I love that I triggered you.

Go. Yeah. Your book is called New— your first book, New Sales Simplified. It's not Sales Simplified. You could have written that book. You've said new quite a bit, and I think that's incredibly important in the context that we're talking here with a hunter. They are going to go get new opportunities, new sales to be able to bring in versus— now, you may not use this language. I think in that podcast episode I talked about kind of a role of ascension where they're, they're, they're going into a current customers or a group of people nurturing that over a longer period of time. And that's a different mindset that we may be able to get into in just a second. But you're specifically referring to, look, hunters are gonna go get new sales. They're gonna go get the new business to be able to bring in, not just sales.

It's always fun when the person interviewing me has better ideas and is more articulate than I am. I 100%. What you just said was 100%. It's new sales. And the only thing I'll add to that, new sales can be new logos, right? It's a customer, a prospect that has not bought from us, or at least in a long time, and the hunter goes and gets that business. But I'm gonna bring in something you started going on the path 30 seconds ago. Even in an account management type role where someone who's hybrid, where you want the ascension, I love that word. Like some, the synonym I would use is penetration, right? Oh, yeah. An account is, is growable. There's penetration opportunity to cross-sell or upsell as you call to ascend in the account. I love that because it's like, um, aspirational, your, your word ascension. But here's what I'll tell you. I see, I see a lot of wimpy, overly relational account managers that are very quick to acquiesce to whatever the prospect says, and they're afraid to upset the apple cart. They don't want to do political damage. They're, they're hesitant. And what I will tell you is even account managers in air quotes, the better account managers who are really trying to ascend and cross-sell and upsell and grow an account. They are not scared of conflict either. They're willing to push their contact for more intros, or they're going to go to the other facility, or they're going to meet more stakeholders. And even though it's, it's growth within the existing account, to me, that's still new sales. And it requires some hunting skill within the customer because there's a difference between a glorified customer service rep who's taking orders and saying thank you and demonstrating a lot of love. Which is an important role, but that is not a sales role per se. That's right. I always say the role of sales is to increase revenue. So I place a lot of value on the account manager penetrator who's doing the thing that you call ascension. I'm curious for your take on my take. Okay. Yeah.

And so I'm going to share— first of all, I love penetration.

I love that I can trigger you on your podcast. I'm so excited. This is great.

This is great. I'm totally stealing the word. I'm going to use— I'm going to credit you and I'm going to say penetration when we're talking about ascension, because that's exactly— I've never actually used that word with it. Um, I have a question. Let's say that somebody listened to this is going to be honest. You mentioned when you create the job description, just be honest. Okay, so here I'm a business owner. I am going to be honest with you. I need an account manager. Okay, this hypothetical person, but I know that this is very true for a lot of people listening to this. I need an account manager, Mike, and I need the account manager to pivot. I need them to cross-sell. What are the attributes I need to look for? Okay, I've heard everything you've mentioned about somebody that's going to go get me all new sales. I get that. Okay. They're, they're not afraid of conflict, number one. Okay. And they, and they're competitive and they keep score. Okay. That makes sense to me. But I've got this role over here that I really honestly need a hybrid. What do I need to look for?

You said it. Yeah. So they need, they need to have a little more patience than someone like me. And they have to have some stick-to-itiveness and be tolerant of fighting some internal battles and have enough humility. I would— I'll use that word here— to do some, some roll-your-sleeves-up service work, kind of, you know, chasing down customer service issues or assisting other people. I think it's the same, the same, uh, outward characteristics, the competitive and the not conflict diverse, but with a heavier dose of relational peacemaking and servant-hearted stuff that goes along with it. And, and I think it's really— I mean, this is a hard conversation because there is a fine line between account management and customer service. But all I can be is honest. And I get called into companies, Bradley, when they're not bringing in more new sales. And they say to me, Mike, can you help my team? Bring in more new sales? And my answer always is, I can try, but it depends. Can I see your people? And if they trot out to me 9 people wired like a zookeeper— sometimes I use the term zookeeper instead of farmer, and because— and I'm very intentional there. I say zookeeper because zookeepers are animal lovers who, who live to protect the animals under their care. And they feed them and they bathe them and they groom them and they shovel the poop and they protect it from predators. Like, that is a great description of a caretaking, loving retention salesperson. Yeah. And then sometimes they say to me, but I need that person to go hunt. And I, I look at them and go, let's talk about that salesperson who has the DNA of a PETA member, vegan, protect the animals at all costs, lives to care for, protect feed these animals entrusted to them. That's pure account management. And then you're saying, but I also want you to hunt. So take off your zookeeper cap and put down the baby bottle you're feeding your little baby, you know, tiger cubs, whatever you're feeding them. And then you pick up a weapon and you go out in the field and you start shooting those same animals you like to protect because we're carnivores and we gotta eat. And I, and that's when I have to look back at the executive and go, I hear you. That you want these people to do more business, but you're showing me a staff of people wired a whole lot more like customer success or customer service people. And it's, it's a challenge because given their bent towards service relationship, low conflict, they're always going to err towards that. It's similar when I go into a company that's full of clinicians in the healthcare space where they have former nurses who are now selling some healthcare service. And they're, they're more interested in the patient's care and the details of that than they are in selling their solution. It's, it's, it's beautiful to— they are. Or I have clients in the highly technical space where the salespeople are engineers by background, and there's nothing they like more than to go take apart a customer's machine and put it back together and problem solve. And they're very competent at that, and that's a wonderful gift. But what I need them doing is creating, advancing, and closing deals because that's what sales is. Yeah. So I hope I'm trying to paint a broader picture, but most people, I don't get the call when they're not doing good service work. They know who's calling me for that. They're calling me, which most companies have the need for, is more new sales. So I feel like I have to be the bad guy and go, well, do you have people that are willing to go get you new sales in the role?

How, how often? I don't know if I'm looking for a percentage. I don't know. I, I know I'm going to ask the question then, and then you can take it however you want. How often do you feel like that when you go into an organization like that, you meet with the people, you know, these are great people, but boy, this is going to take a hell of a lot of coaching, or you're gonna have to switch out the people? Like, where is it? Do you work— because you're going to be honest with the sales leader, the, the owner, etc., the upper management, to say Look, we can do this, but the amount of coaching this is going to take because of who you've hired and again, great people, but boy, it's going to take a lot or you're just going to have to replace people and actually get the folks in that actually can go get new sales.

It's hard to answer that question. I'll give you a number because you asked for a number. I bet 30 to 40% of the time It's the legacy way of operating and the wrong talent or undeveloped talent. And I'm going to give you one example of that, which is very relevant right now. I shared earlier I had more technology clients in the past year than I typically do, and we're recording this in early 2025. Well, from mid-COVID, once we got through the craze of the shutdown from COVID we know that by the second half of 2020 and for the next several years, there was crazy demand in the technology space. And anyone who was 24 years old and a recent college grad who was a rookie salesperson in any of these technology companies sold a ton. Some, some of them made President's Club in '21, '22, etc. And then the world slowed down. Interest rate— we had inflation, we had supply chain. The Federal Reserve raised interest rates to the roof and we slowed the economy down. And today I'm in these sales and I'm in these technology companies where they have salespeople who made President's Club in 2021 and 2022 who are now starving, not even making their quota. Hmm. And, and I'm uncovering it faster with my clients because I'm helping them do really good accountability, which I argue is the number one lever. And what they're now identifying much quicker is the people in the role are not able to self-generate sales opportunities. When we were teeing them up, MQLs, marketing qualified leads, and there was all this inbound demand and customers were raising their hands saying, hey, we need this, we need this. The salesperson was great at doing a demo and selling the solution. Yeah. But they weren't generating opportunities. They were fulfilling opportunities. Big difference. And a lot of them, what we're uncovering now is they didn't have the DNA, the competitive thing, the, the happy to go through conflict. And now the, the nightmare that I'm uncovering is they're 3 years into their sales career. They have no idea how to freaking sell. They can't prospect. They can't get a meeting. We're not even sure some of them are the right people. And they've been selling— this is a whole other conversation, but they've been working from home, working remotely, selling virtually without being mentored or coached, never being around other successful salespeople. And now I have these companies looking at me going, what are we going to do? Yeah. And I— you don't want anyone to hear. I mean, these are heavy, hard conversations. Yeah. And these, these are people who actually look successful for the past couple years, but they were riding the wave of a hot economy or a segment in the industry where there was a lot of demand. So I don't know if that's helpful, but it's super helpful.

I mean, basically you're saying that for a long time that they were just given MQLs, marketing qualified leads, on a silver platter and said, here, you know, and it was shooting fish in a barrel. They didn't have to actually go get the business.

And that's why your passion— this is why when I would listen to your episode on hunters and farmers and that you're on the right track, that that is a massive issue. In sales today. And I wish it wasn't so. I wish I didn't have to tell that truth. I wish I was just doing, you know, sales training. Yeah. Show people how to good, did accountability. But if you don't have the right people, if you're the sales leader, every day is hard. I mean, you live in perpetual frustration as a prisoner of hope that your non-fit salespeople are going to magically start doing the job that they haven't done. Wow. And that's not fun. And that's— you're like diluted. I mean, definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over again and thinking you're going to get a different result. And I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but you, you need people who want to do the job. That's why I go back to what we said 15 minutes ago. The job description is really important. What do you need in the role? And then find the person who has that natural gifting, who wants to do that job. Then things are a lot more fun and it's easier.

It's, it's more fun for you, more fun for them, and it's just simply easier because you've got the right, right person in the right role. You've got the right person in the right role. By the way, I love prisoner of hope. I circled that, and that was—

I stole that from Tom Riley. I stole that from Tom Riley who wrote Value-Added Selling.

So give him the credit. That, that was a— that's a fantastic line. Okay, last question. This came from actually one of my members, um, as a business owner specifically who is also operating in a sales leader, sales management role. Okay, that's one of hats. Let's think of it that way. It's one of the hats. They are CSOs, so to speak, of their small business. They have so many other hats to wear. They also are handling the marketing within their sales team. And let's say that they got a team of somewhere between 2 and 10, something like that, right?

Yep.

And they're doing, you know, half a million to a couple million dollars in revenue, and they're wanting to build to get past that to where they can actually have somebody truly in a sales leader role. But for right now, they're doing it. How do they, how do they balance wearing all the hats? Because they can't do sales leadership all day. They've got to manage all these other aspects and be CFO, CEO, etc. What's your recommendation? I love the question.

It's a brilliant question. Let me, let me give some comfort, and I know that's some of your world, right? Those are your clients in the area that you're playing. You can lead for that size organization. You can absolutely be a successful part-time sales leader. 'Cause sales management is not a full-time job if you have a handful of people, but you have to get really good at the precious few high-payoff activities that move the needle. A lot of sales managers waste a lot of time doing corporate nonsense and admin and chasing stuff and feeling important. If you cut out all the crap and you get down to the single few activities that really move the needle on culture and results, which I would argue are the one-on-one accountability meeting. And I've got some great free resources we can point people to for that, right? If you don't want to buy the book, like, I have a free video and a PDF guide. It's— I'll give to anybody. Okay, awesome. So, so doing really good one-on-one accountability, which I would argue you can do in 10 minutes per week or per month per person. I'm not asking you to add a lot of time. The second thing would be a little bit of coaching slash observing. You and I had that fun conversation about managers. It means once in a while You're riding shotgun and you're doing more than just sticking your head at a screen evaluating someone. You have to watch 'em work. So you see the body language and the tone and the customer perception. You can't, you can't lead a salesperson and purely hold 'em accountable or coach 'em by looking at numbers. You have to observe them. Hmm. So, so one is the accountability meeting, two is coaching, and then three is the team meeting. And if you have more than one rep, then you're having some team meetings where you're getting together in a room or on Zoom. With your handful of sellers, and those meetings need to energize and equip the people. It's, it's more than an admin session or a beatdown. And there's all kinds of tips, and I've got a whole podcast episode on— and, and cover that in Sales Manager Simplified— just tips for running good sales team meetings where you're creating interaction and you're giving the work away. But in very few hours a week— and let me say this, particularly if you have the right people on your team, because they actually want to do the job In very few hours per week, you can lead the team well. Because Bradley, I understand this. If you wear many hats, and I have that, I mean, even some of my bigger clients where, like, if I'm doing work at a John Deere equipment dealership, the GM or the branch manager of that local site, he has got full P&L responsibility for this whole branch and the 80 people that work there and the service department and the parts and his 4 salespeople. And the thing I've learned watching them is they never default to sales management because the operational issues, the HR stuff, the customer service fires, the financial things, those are urgent and in your face every day. And they don't even realize they have a sales problem until the end of the month when they look at the report. Yeah. But if we could get them part-time to do a little bit of accountability and a little bit of coaching and run a good team meeting once in a while, you can really, really get some lift and move the needle. That's my coaching to the, the part-time manager.

I had really high expectations for this, for this podcast, and you exceeded them. How about that? I mean, I'm honestly— this has been, it's been great.

This is so much fun. Yeah, well, I just want to say thanks. I had high expectations because I had listened to other stuff from you, and I just want to thank you for chasing me down, and this is really fun. So thank you.

Appreciate, appreciate you serving, uh, serving our audience. People want to connect with you, learn more about you, and find, uh, some of those resources, where would you point them to, Mike?

Uh, all the freebies are available at my website, right there on the homepage near the top, mikeweinberg.com. W-E-I-N-B-E-R-G, mikeweinberg.com. And on the socials, it's Mike_Weinberg. Got it.

We'll make sure we will link all of that in our emails and obviously in our podcast episode. Mike, appreciate you coming on the podcast. Goodness. Where do I start with all of my takeaways from that episode? I'm looking at the paper where I take my notebook, where I take all of my notes, uh, as I'm interviewing someone on the podcast. And I just have circle after circle after circle of things that were kind of key takeaways for me. Look, winning through people. I mean, that's paramount for sales, but it's paramount for everything else. I just love that. Also love the breakdown. Where he was talking about accountability and coaching and kind of the difference between those. I often kind of get lumped, but I think that was, that was certainly key. I love when he talked about the penetration with, uh, whenever I was referring to ascension. I loved his comment around, uh, being a prisoner of hope. I love just the— when he talked about the having an honest job description. I love that. Just be honest about what the job is. So often we can use fancy language to say things, but let's just say it in third grade language. So everybody knows what it is that we're talking about. I picked up so much from this, certainly hunters versus farmers, or what he referred to as hunters versus zookeepers. I thought that was excellent. There's just so many really great takeaways from that episode. I hope that you all enjoyed that. Love to be able to have Mike to come back on the podcast. I want to give a shout out and thank you to our sponsors, Club Capital. If you want to be able to get control of your financials to increase your top line, to increase your bottom line and be able to take more home. In your business, go to club.capital. They can be able to help you to understand, have the mindset for your financials, some skills and the tools that you need to be able to bring home more of the money that you've worked so hard for in your business, to be able to reinvest that into more people so you can go expand and grow your company. Go to club.capital. If through this you're wanting to start to expand your team and bring on true A players, you'll not really exactly know where to start. Autopilot Recruiting can help you. Go to autopilotrecruiting.com, autopilotrecruiting.com. They can help you to build a bench. And finally, all that time where you talk about, I need to always be recruiting, Autopilot Recruiting can help you to do just that. Go to autopilotrecruiting.com. If you're an insurance agency owner and you want to be around other people, but also have a place where your team members can be developed as well, Coach P can help you. Go to coachpconsulting.com. You're going to see behind the scenes exactly what they are doing that they've been able to scale as large as David has with across his agencies and businesses. You're going to hear from his team members. You're also going to be able to be around a select group of peer insurance agency owners that are trying to scale just like you. Go to coachpconsulting.com. With technology, there's so many choices, but oftentimes it's difficult to know exactly which tech to use, which CRM to use, which, you know, tool for this to use. If you're an insurance agency owner, go to todayapppro.com. Today app. Pro.com. It's going to work with your corporate-approved CRM. It's going to be seamless. Your team and you are going to love it. TodayAppPro.com. If you love what we do, love the things that I talk about on these Monday interviews and on Friday podcast, I'd love for you to come and join me at one of my live web classes. Go to blueprintos.com Assets, and you'll be able to join one of my upcoming web classes and learn how you can go from being the operator in the day-to-day to become the owner of your business so you can ultimately work above the business and finally grow your company so it depends and runs without you. Blueprintos.com/assets. All right, everyone, that was a great episode. Till next time, lead well and go be great.