[Leadership] How to build sales teams and become a leader with Tom Conklin

What separates great CEOs or even founders from those that may not make it is the ability to have that trust and to let go. If you are trying to micromanage and you're trying to sit in on every call and you don't have the humility to just say, I can't be in all of this. I need to trust my staff to be able to get us to where we need to be at that point at which you're able to let go and then connect with them at a later time point, to collate all of the pertinent information that's needed for you to execute on your job. I think that's when that transformation happens from good to great.

Well, it's also the thing that gives you the most leverage as a manager is like, your ability to get things done through other people. And most of the time that comes through training, coaching, et cetera, it's like, how can I make this team? Incredible to where my time, 30 minutes I spend with somebody or 30 minutes I spend with the team is going to be exponentially more valuable because they're going to take this information and then be able to leverage it right away, use it right away, whereas you can't do that individually. So it's like then the larger the team gets, the more leverage you have, assuming that that level of skill and coaching and training kind of sort of continues. Right before we get into today's show, I wanted to tell you a little bit about what we have going on over here. Succession. So Succession is a life science sales membership that includes on demand courses to uplevel your sales skills, resources to plan and execute your sales process, a community for peer to peer networking and learning, and live workshops delivered by experts twice a month. You can get access to all of this as an individual for just $79 a month. Or you can uplevel your entire sales team with courses and customized learning designed for each individual rep. Come and join us over at Succession Bio. Okay, let's dive back into the show. Hey, welcome to another episode of Sales DNA podcast. We have Tom Conklin here today. He's the director of National Sales at Mission Bio. And this is a great conversation all around sales leadership. We talk about things like hiring, how to build a rep profile, how he got into sales leadership, what it's like to carry the bag. Right. So having to actually go back from being a manager to carry the bag and then hire a team again, and a lot of the nuances in between. So what do you think about this one, Nick?

Yeah, I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed his view on going back to carry the bag and how that's helped his management moving forward. His view on how you're hiring in sales profiles and how it should match the customer, not just the company they're selling for, but a customer they're selling to. That was really great. But most of all, I enjoyed the phishing analogies. So listen for those.

Yeah, we had quite a few. Quite a few of those. So. Awesome. Well, what do I always say that. You always say that? I say starve right in. Hey, Tom, welcome to the podcast. We're excited to have you here.

Yeah, thank you for having me.

And for those of you that are listening and not watching this on the YouTube stream, you, Tom has on a fantastic jacket. So if you. If you want to see it, you got to jump over to the YouTube channel and watch it there. But without further ado, Tom will ask you the same question we ask everybody. Give us a crazy or funny story that's happened in your career.

Sure, I think there's too many funny stories to count if I think back. But in terms of a crazy story, I guess just in recent terms, I'm sure everyone would agree that the market has been quite crazy since last year, but definitely through H1 of this year, and I actually lost about 75% of my team back at the end of Q1 and had to rebuild. And, you know, it's been quite a challenging time. It's, you know, really led me to think about a lot of different things. But, you know, I'm. I'm happy to say that I endured that and I've been able to hire for three out of the four positions that I had open, and now I'm fully staffed again. So I'm very excited about that. But it's pushed me in to a different direction. One of them being player, coach, and having to be able to carry the bag again and understand how to get deals done. Right. Not just manage from above, but to lead by example and work with the team.

So.

So, yeah, I would say navigating what has been the crazy market that we're all currently sitting in.

Right. Say you've been asked to carry the bag again at the time when the bag's particularly heavy. Right. Carry this.

Or is it light? Or is it light? I don't know. I don't know if they're answer there is. Right.

I mean, heavy isn't difficult. Not heavy, is it?

Oh, got it. Yeah, sure.

Yeah. I mean, the bag itself, we have been launching Quite a few NPIs. So it has been getting heavier.

That's great.

It's just a matter of captivating people to want to meet with you.

Right.

I think often, a lot of times people get fixated on revenue.

Right.

Obviously revenue is a lagging indicator and you know, there's leading indicators that lead in that lead into what eventually turns into revenue. And while people can myopically be focused on where's the order, a lot of people don't ask where, where's the meeting?

Right.

Like, let's secure the meeting before we secure that order. And that's something that I've been working on with my team because I think that it's critically important nowadays. I mean, you know, look, we're talking on a podcast and we're having this discussion here. This is one of many that are out there. I think it's one of the better ones. But you know, that being said, there's a lot of noise, there's a lot of chatter, there's a lot of diversification in communication nowadays. And time hasn't expanded with that and reciprocity. Right. So where are people spending time? How do we get a hold of them has definitely been a big focus.

Yeah, it's every, I think every company that we've talked to, pretty much every single one, I don't know if there's one that hasn't mentioned how much harder prospecting has been. And so there's always something related to, you know, some sort of interest related to prospecting. How do we get in front of more of our customers? How do we, how do we get more meetings? Right. It's just, you know, I think with decision cycles taking longer to close because, you know, companies are worried about spending money on things that aren't going to drive like real results that leads to people being less likely to want to take meetings. And you also combine that with all of the crap messaging that gets blasted out on email and LinkedIn and all these different channels. And so people just bombarded with all of this. And so, yeah, it's hard out there to get these first meetings. So I'm curious, so when you first kind of had to go back, pick up that big old heavy bag and start carrying it again, where was the biggest wake up call? Right. It's like, hey, you've been managing people for a while, helping drive, coach, lead the team, what was sort of the biggest wake up call when you had to now be the one on the front line making it all happen.

Yeah. So as I mentioned, I had some attrition on the team. And I think every company has dealt with that, you know, albeit either natural attrition or just through rifts, through downsizing. And that leads to people having to do more with less. And I think that's a, that's a common theme in the field that we're seeing. And it was very eye opening for me.

Right.

You know, where obviously I would work with my team and I would travel on the field. You know, I cover all of North America. I have four people across the United States. So I've been everywhere from Dean Farber all the way through Mayo Clinic in Rochester and Scottsdale, Arizona through Stanford and Fred Hotcho on the west Coast. So I cover everything in between. But the difference between traveling with your team and trying to make sure that we're aligned with what messaging looks like, value proposition, etc. Takes on a whole new emphasis when you're the one that's really leading that. Right. You're the one that's responsible for it. And I think that it's really just encouraged me to be a better leader.

Right.

I think there's a dichotomy that exists between a boss and a leader. And a leader, to truly be a leader, has to walk through the trenches. They have to go through what that is like. And I wasn't completely removed from that. But I've been managing the team for almost three years now and you know, at this two and a half year mark, I'm really getting thrown back into the day to day of an individual contributor on top of trying to manage a team. And I think going through this dialogue with these prospects or even customers and having that firsthand experience to relay with the team and to really align and to be able to have the discussions during our weekly team call to say, are you guys hearing this too? Because I'm also noticing this and then to use that as a manager to work internally with cross functional groups, albeit product marketing or even R and D, to help get these answers resolved is been tremendously helpful for us to survive in this marketplace. So I'm so grateful. I do think everything happens for a reason and I think that, you know, things pushed us in this direction for me to be challenged in this capacity to become a better leader at the end.

Yeah, yeah, I think you said you had to do this for a bit. Yeah, you got some good stories on that too.

I just think what even now, like, still, most roles I've taken on, I, I do this in some capacity. Even if it's like, well, we want to expand into a Territory. So what I'd normally do is I try and take on that territory first because it allows me to see the state of play now. Because if you would have, if you're managing now based on your education of how to carry the bag from five years ago, you are out of touch, right? Yeah. So you can be back in touch by listening to your people. But you, you need to really do that because when they're telling you it's tough out there, it is tough. It is, it's changed. So I think it's like say a bit of a blessing to find that out now. And in five years time, you've not, you've not done that again. And I think as a leader, you should need to be undercover boss. If you've ever seen that program, you need to go back out and experience it again to see what they're going through.

Yeah, there was. Do you guys know who Paul Graham is by chance?

Name sounds familiar, right?

He's like the guy who started YC Y Combinator.

Okay.

He's like really famous, like the tech ecosystem. And he has like all. He writes all these great essays and stuff and he's pretty popular. He just wrote this one and he calls it founder mode, which is how he describes the difference between like a classical manager, like where you're managing people that then manage like the work, versus what he calls founder mode, which is people like Steve Jobs, Brian. Oh God. Chesney from Airbnb and a few of these other sort of like founders where they stay as close as they can to the work, even though, you know they're running multi billion dollar companies, but they stay close to the work as much as they can to make sure that they are in tune with what is actually going on. And so it kind of got me thinking about how this relates into sales, which is to your point is if you are sitting out of it for too long and you kind of become just the manager of people, you become out of touch with the actual like work that is being done on the ground by the reps on a day to day basis. Right. Things like, hey, you just had a call, now I gotta go update my CRM. But oh wait, I got another call that's about to come up. I gotta remember these notes now between all of these different calls, like it's those little things that I think the more we spend time in management and we say, hey, go update your CRM, we sometimes forget all of the actual things that have to happen to get that CRM actually updated. And so being as close as you can to the actual action, I think, just keeps it real.

Yeah. And I would also add that it has challenged me, and then my team as well, to think about ways to work smarter and not harder. Right. So I think, as I mentioned earlier, there's no increase in time as we're delegated with more tasks. And I think that it's important that in the day and age that we live in, 2024, that we lean into some of the ways of automation, AI, machine learning. I know all these things are buzzwords, but there is value in them. I was just talking to my team about leveraging ChatGPT to provide structure and framework for strategy planning and organizing, going after certain clinicians, just because it's got this shiny aura to it and you don't really know how to use it in detail. Let's do it together. Let's. Let's try it, see what it can do. So then we can say that we've tried. And to that point, if somebody asked me five years ago, is Twitter a good lead source? I'd be like, absolutely not. It's just nonsense that's on there. But then if you really sit down and you tailor and curate a feed that you want and you need, depending on the market that you serve, it could be a tremendous lead source. You know, for the academic sector and the clinical physicians, research scientists, it's where they post all of their publications. It's the first place they go. It's where they're talking. So it's where they're existing and they're communicating with each other.

Right.

So I think that's very important to be plugged into that, not just looking on a website that could be updated eight months ago, you know, I think so. Selling into the times that we're in is also critically important, so that you're coming off as informed and what they're doing.

Yeah, 100%. Speaking of chatgpt, Nick built. You want to talk about Nick? A little, little project you put together with that.

Okay. Nickname.

Yeah. Pocket Nicknick. Well, it's not even you. You had to clarify who Nicknick is though.

So those listening. I'm obviously, I'm co founder of Succession, but I also am SVP of Energy, which is another company and our head of research is. His name is Nicholas Nikolau. We call him Nicknick for short. But annoyingly, Nicknick isn't always awake at 2 in the morning when I need it. It's just infuriated. Right. It's unreasonable of him not to be awake when I need him and he's a technical expert. So I've built a GPT which is like the ring fence version of chat GPT and fed it all of our publicly facing information like decks, protocols, etc and now while on a call with a customer I can ask it a question and it will answer based only on our publicly facing information, not stuff on the Internet. So I have a technical support expert from GPT and called it Pocket Mimic, which in theory he's Greek as well. So I can even get into answering a Greek accent for fun.

Really tailoring to the end user. Right?

Yeah, exactly. But to your point though, stuff like that though, that, you know, that is a way to save a bunch of time. Right. Instead of now having a rep need to get off of a call with a customer to then go ask a question and then grab to send a follow up email to somebody, they could potentially just ask the question to ChatGPT on the call and get the response and then answer the customer right then and there too.

Yeah, yeah, it's critical. I mean it could be the difference between getting an answer immediately or spending two weeks in back and forth emails.

Right. And we know time kills all deals.

The number one killer of deals.

The number one killer of deals is time. Yes. And not having the next steps.

Yeah, that's yeah, very critical.

Okay, so maybe I want to take a step backward a little bit and talk a little bit about how you got into sales leadership. What was the kind of thing did you always know you wanted to, you know, kind into the leadership side of things or you just hit you one day how that sort of happened?

Yeah, that's an excellent question. And I think getting at the core of it, I always knew that I wanted to move into leadership, but it was this elusive, I'll do it at some point. And it wasn't until I joined here at Mission Bio that I was presented with a very unique opportunity to move into leadership in a rather short tenure of being in the life science tools industry. And I took it to heart with the opportunity that my leadership team has given me to be able to move into leadership here at Mission Bio. I had done well as an individual contributor and there was a need now at the time to be quite frank. I actually wanted to go for an expansion role in a business development capacity for cell and gene therapy. And after further consideration and looking into things from a more strategic career perspective, it made more sense for me to pursue the opportunity in leadership. And I look back and I'm so grateful and thankful that I was given the opportunity. But I'm also thankful that I pursued it and I went after it because I've gotten such a tremendous amount of experience and exposure to decision making from a high level. You know, I work at a late stage startup and we're not a big team, right? We're like 115 people. So being able to work directly with C suite individuals and being able to work with a chief medical officer on product development for something that we hope to be diagnostically used in the future has been tremendously rewarding, I think. At the end of the day, obviously I love being in sales, but I really am just a technical person at heart. I worked at the bench and I made the transition to the dark side, as people typically say. But the reason why I went into cancer research and the reason why I went into medicine is because I care about helping people. I want to see people not suffer. You know, one in three and that statistic continues to rise is people affected by cancer. It's horrible. I've had family members, I'm sure both of you, family, friends. It's, it's unforgiving. Right. And it's also a lot of times just a disease of our own blueprint, which is terrifying. It's almost like a roll of the dice. So how can we further unravel these perplexing and profound questions around the complexities of cancer? To be able to attack it with the best resources and tools that we have and being able to lead a team in that capacity to carry that weight. I'm not saying I'm on these calls like Mel Gibson and Braveheart charging in, but I do try and take that tone and I do try and lead with my team that we have a real opportunity here. Let's seize the moment, let's go after it, let's give it our best shot and let's win.

Right?

And I think that that's what's been the most important to me. So getting back to your original question, I've always had aspirations of being in leadership. I'm very fortunate that I've been given the opportunity and I look forward to what the future has ahead of me too.

So, I mean, I think one of the other things that you mentioned in there, which is important is this, this sort of intrinsic motivation that you have for the company that you're at. Like you're. There's more, it seems like there's a lot more there than just like, hey, this is my job. And so I think when those things happen, you can kind of, I don't know, it feels like it's a higher calling of, okay, I'm here, I'm going to like, take on more. I'm going to try new things, I'm going to, you know, do whatever it needs to get done because I want to be successful for this company because we're doing some cool stuff. And I think a lot of people get stuck in, you know, it's like job mode where it's just like they clock in, they clock out and they do their job. And maybe it's because they're not at the right type of company and the right type of roles. And it's. I feel like life's too short to try and do that. It's like, go find the right company. If you had a company you don't love, go find the right company where you can like have that sort of intrinsic, know, mission driven motivation to, to want to be successful. And yeah, I think it makes all the difference.

I agree. And I actually think that you're saying about leadership and the mindset, this is my own personal opinion, maybe, but your mindset's actually one step further already. I see that if you're caring about the company and not just caring about your team, that's an executive mindset, because an executive needs to put a company first, above everything. And I think that that's, that's like when people say about growth mindset, that's often what they mean as well.

You're thinking growing the company, not just yourself.

And it's important.

You know, going back to what you had mentioned about being passionate, right. I think at the core of anybody that's working in sales, you need to be passionate about what you're selling. And I think something that I've learned at a young age that my father told me is if you love what you do for work, you won't ever work a day in your life. And I agree with him completely. Because yes, you will find yourself in a position where, you know, from a financial perspective, you will need to have a job.

Right.

And I do hope that everybody has the opportunity to pursue a job that they love and they enjoy doing. And I encourage everyone to continue for that pursuit. Right. But for me, I'm an early riser. I get up super early every day and I like to time block things because I think it's the most effective way to operate both business and personal life. But being able to prioritize things, get things in order and then to be able to execute on them and just know that at the end of the day. While I'm not directly in front of a patient, I'm not talking to them. I'm somewhat in a sense talking to them through a clinician researcher that I'm working with. Right. And I'm maybe not affecting somebody today, but in five years time maybe I am. Right. And these discussions take a long time. Right. Especially for something that's diagnostic in its potential. But speaking to Mission Bio and what our goal is is to democratize and to eventually move into the clinical space and have diagnostic utility for single cell mutational profiling and single cell multi omic capabilities. We know that cancer is an extremely heterogeneous and complex disease. So it requires a very elegant approach to understanding and unraveling the molecular complexities that create cancer.

Right.

So like I had mentioned earlier on the podcast here, having that technical understanding and deep desire from my side, from a biochemistry perspective, what makes things tick? Why are things doing what they're doing and figuring it out? It's almost like a puzzle piece that I'm just so fixated on helping answer. And it's important to know that you're also just a cog. Right. Like I'm one person, but when I have four people underneath me, I'm four times as strong, five times as strong in going after this mission that we're ultimately trying to support.

Yeah, I love that. One of the things that you mentioned in there is your technical sort of background expertise. How have you, how do you feel like that has played a part in your success? And what do you, how do you look for that maybe when you're hiring other sales reps?

Yeah, that's a great question. So I think it really depends. There's, there's a wide array of different positions in the sales world. Right. There may just be a straightforward commodity based sale that's more purely numbers driven. There's a lot of run rate, small growth expectations and then there's positions that we have here at Mission Bio. We're a late stage startup, nobody really knows who we are trying to make a name for ourselves. And we're also a custom targeted approach comparative to some other single cell techniques which truly requires somebody to be more of a project manager or a lead on working on clinical trials or studies. Now that takes a tremendous amount of technical acumen to be able to support these discussions. For me, I think one of the bigger sales techniques that I'm fond of is the challenger sale. And for those that are not familiar with the challenger sale, it's all about teaching, tailoring and taking control and it's really about challenging current conventions and then getting people to understand that they may be able to save time or money, but there are more efficient ways to answer questions through certain techniques. Right. And being able to do that is not easy. Right. It's not going to happen overnight. It takes a while for sales reps to be able to become accustomed to this. And it also takes a certain type of rep to be able to fill this mold or to be able to be in this type of role. So when I'm looking at hiring individuals, it is a very rigorous interview process where we're going through and I'm asking very specific questions around next generation sequencing. What is their understanding of that? Understanding their familiarity of workflow. Right. Did you work at the bench? Not saying it's a prerequisite, but it definitely helps. Right. And then also looking at just accolades, I think it's important to know success versus non success, previous roles, where has somebody been at? Would they be a good fit? But I think all these are tremendously important. And one thing that's usually not obvious from a resume where everyone's trying to, you know, pat their stats rightfully so is how, how resilient is somebody? I think that's something that's very critical for anybody that's going into sales. If you are faint of heart and you don't deal with somebody saying no to you, it might not be for you.

Right.

And that's very important because you're going to get a lot more no's and you're going to get yes. And it's that endurance and the ability to push through some of the opposition, especially in the challenger setting. For somebody to truly understand why something is beneficial to them and why they should proceed forward, that separates somebody from being a sales rep, from somebody being a true sales leader and. And somebody who's going to grow.

It's interesting. It sounds like you've obviously definitely thought about this in depth and you're fresh off of hiring a bunch of new people. But I like the approach that I think you've taken here, and correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you said, hey, what do our buyers want? What is our buying? What is our buyer's process to purchase a product like this? How does it fit into their workflows? And then from the customer's point of view, you then said, what type of rep do we need in order to best support that customer? And then started to figure out, okay, what are the characteristics of that individual? And from there, now you have A hiring profile that you can use for hiring these types of reps that are most likely to be successful in this role. And I think it's really important that you're doing that because a lot of people will just like make blank statements like, I want to hire a scientist or I want to hire, you know, somebody who has a sales experience, but they, but they're taking it from the like experience of that individual versus starting from the customer that says, like, what is our sales process? Like, what does the customer need? What's going to make them most successful? And then build the hiring profile off of that.

Yeah, backwards engineering is absolutely critical. And it really came through the trials and tribulations of, of hiring and understanding what is the good fit and then what isn't. But the customer will always guide you in that direction.

Right.

They will decide based upon that working relationship, the rapport and the relationship and the trust that somebody needs to build. Once again, this is not a like one meeting and then a deal happens. I wish it was that way. I think a lot of sales management wishes is that it was that way, but it is not that way. So what does it take? And I think that, as I mentioned earlier, almost in three years in doing this, I've really come to understand that in particular for the team that I'm supporting and being smaller in nature, the transactional nature is not effective in the role that we're supporting. So finding somebody that has done really well in a commercial setting and while, yes, it may look good on paper, is not translational to somebody being successful here, for example. So as you had mentioned earlier, the backwards engineering from what does the customer need to what do I need in somebody on the sales team has been an effective way for me to prospect for talent and to look for the correct talent in the marketplace to ensure that we're a hitting our goals, but also driving towards that ultimate mission of helping patients.

You just said prospect for talent, and that is a subtle nuance that might have been missed because how many sales leaders probably listen to this or people out there like, oh, we need to hire somebody. I'm just going to go get a recruiter. I'm going to go put a recruiter on it. You made a point very clearly there, which was you prospect for talent. I think that is one of the most important parts of a sales leader's role is like building the best possible team. And if you put that in somebody else's hands solely, I personally think that that's a mistake. Like you should own that as the Leader. That is interesting.

Yeah, yeah. So I've done some of both. Right. We've leveraged recruiting services of which I'm super thankful for and happy that we were able to work with. But then I've also done de novo searches myself, you know, streamed and you know, different things lead to different, different situations. But what I can tell you is that in either capacity, it's kind of like somebody that's operating without a marketing or SDR channel and then somebody that has one.

Right.

And the one where you have it would be the recruiter where you're getting more of like an MQL at that point versus having to go out, carry the bag and search the Internet and try and find somebody. Now what I will say though is there's still extensive research that's being done and, and I hope candidates understand this too. Your Resume and your LinkedIn profile will only get you so far. There is a tremendous amount of back channel that happens outside of the references that you've curated for me to review. Right.

All your friends and family.

Exactly right. Your angel investors here.

How often do you get a message? I get these all the time. Hey, I'm looking at recruiting this person. What's your opinion on them? Right. Does it count?

Yeah, I mean, I get quite a few of those messages and you know, I've sent enough of those messages myself too. I think the beautiful part about something like LinkedIn is this networking sphere that it creates, or your first connections, you have second and even third tangential connections with each ring. It's a little bit further away in terms of the validity of what you can expect, but nonetheless, it's there, you can see. And even if I have a second connection, it's worth just pinging somebody being like, hey, you got five minutes to chat. So that you worked with this individual, they may have reported to you or you may have worked with them in them in some capacity. And I'm all about, once again getting back to the technical side. I'm all about statistical significance. So one curated reference that was provided to me from the candidate versus three back channel, I'm going to likely feed more into the back channel and understanding is this correct choice. And that's really proved to be super helpful and effective to be able to validate at the end of the interview process, going through six, seven interviews with candidates across cross functional segments, is this the right choice? So that's been very helpful.

Do you have any good, do you have any good questions that you ask? Because it's one thing to ask somebody like hey, what are your thoughts on this person? And you'll get some vague answer. But hey, have you, have you found any like home run type of questions that you ask those back channel references of like to really get at the heart of like what is this person like and will they be successful here?

Yeah, so I, I do, it's a very simple question and I, and I just ask what is this person's drive like? Because that says a lot. Jumping off of that is how prompt and attentive are they? Because the other thing that it's important to note in sales is following up and just being prompt with replies is worth its weight in gold. It's probably the one thing, and I treat it as like a fishing analogy, if you have a fish on the line, you better reel that damn fish in because if you just let it go, it's going to keep swimming away and it's going to get further away. The line's probably going to snap and you're not going to get them back.

Right.

So I think that's super important. But getting at the drive part, I think that's what's most important to me is does somebody care about what they do for work? Because feeding into the comment I made earlier, you need somebody that's passionate about what they do. If somebody is not passionate or if they don't believe in what they're selling, they're not going to sell anything. And that's very important because we've all seen those reps that are just carrying the bag trying to make their paycheck. Let's see how we can work some end a quarter promos. Maybe I can make my commission. That's, that's no way to live in my opinion. We've all been in those scenarios and we've all, you know, been in these end of quarter situations. But what, what is your purpose beyond just making money? That's you're all out here making money. It's a means to an end. And are you working to live or are you living to work? Is another great question to ask yourself. So yeah, I would say what does that individual's drive? This is a very important question.

It's a good one.

He was talking about like finding the right people and there was a quote. I'm pleased. I heard him many years ago, helped me when I was thinking about recruiting and it was a guy called Stephen Bartlett. He's a famous sort of entrepreneur outside of our Space Bin UK is on the equivalent of Shark Tank. So he's one of these guys and he said when he first started his business, he thought the. It was so important to be involved in everything, to know what everyone's doing and follow things around, be at the coal face, all of this stuff. And he said it wasn't until he realized that his main job as CEO is to recruit the right people. If he does that, he doesn't have.

To do anything else.

Right.

So a CEO, he just said all he has to do is get the right people. And he said that once he, Once he realized that, his life became a lot easier. Yeah.

Yeah. I think that speaks to what Harrison mentioned earlier about some of these founders. Right. Like, Steve Jobs was very adamant about surrounding himself that. With people that were smarter than him. I think that's. It's an excellent way to look at it. There may be a desire.

I think you cut out a little bit.

I said it's why Harrison wanted me on his team. He needed people smarter than him.

I just, I just like being the smartest person in the room all the time. And so that's why.

No, but what you had mentioned is very important. I. I think that what separates great CEOs, or even founders from those that may not make it is the ability to have that trust and to let go.

Right.

If you are trying to micromanage and you're trying to sit in on every call and you don't have the hum. The humility to just say, I can't be in all of this. I need to trust my staff to be able to get us to where we need to be at that point at which you're able to let go and then connect with them at a later time point to collate all of the pertinent information that's needed for you to execute on your job, I think that's when that transformation happens from good to great.

Well, it's also the thing that gives you the most leverage as a manager is like, your ability to get things done through other people. And most of the time that comes through training, coaching, et cetera is like, how can I make this team incredible to where, like, I. My time, you know, 30 minutes I spend with somebody is. Or 30 minutes I spend with the team is going to be, you know, exponentially more valuable because they're going to take this information and then be able to leverage it right away and use it right away, whereas, like, you can't do that individually. Right. So it's like, then the larger the team gets, the more leverage you have. Assuming that that level of, you know, skill and coaching and Training kind of sort of continues, right?

Yeah. And so two things, right. We've all had micromanagers. They're the worst and nobody likes them. They are actually counterproductive. They don't help. And I am a big fan of Michael Weinberg and his Sales Management Simplified and even Sales Simplified. I would encourage everybody to read that book.

It's great.

It's a great book. Right. I think Mike Weinberg is one of the best in the game and his big thing is having a sense of personal accountability. It's not micromanaging. If we're asking people to follow through on their tasks and responsibilities and we're setting metrics to hold people accountable, it's not unfair to ask people to log notes to CRM. I think it's completely rational to be able to automate things, make things less tedious for the sales team. And so I've tried to do here at Mission Bio, but we're still going to have to hold each other accountable. We all have goals. And, you know, in addition to that. And as you had mentioned, sure, I can try and strongman positions where, you know, I'm getting on calls and I'm trying to do the presentation, I'm trying to close the call and, you know, delegate other things to my team. But it really comes down to that mantra of you could teach somebody, or you can. You can fish for somebody and feed them for a day, or you could teach them to fish and feed them for a lifetime. And I think that's very true in sales too, where teach your team how to fish, you'll feed a lot more people.

Yep. And then make sure they follow up with that fish over and over and over.

I don't know why we keep coming back to fishing analogies. I'm a big fisherman myself. I do like fishing, so maybe that's fine.

Yeah.

I always usually just tell everyone I recruit that you are going to expect to be the managing director of your territory. Yeah. And if that's. If you're not okay with that, then you shouldn't be coming to this team. Because I can't organize myself. I'm not going to be able to organize somebody else like Chrissy.

I can confirm he cannot organize himself.

Organizing someone else as well sounds a horrible job.

I say something similar to my team. I essentially tell them, hey, listen, I'm here to support you and your ownership and operation of the Mission Bio franchise in the Northeast or the Southeast or the Midwest or the West. Right. And I'm here to provide you with the tools and resources I. E. The french fries and the burgers that you need, get out there and get people to buy the french fries and burgers.

Right.

And in the case of what we're doing, it's in single cell instrumentation and consumables. So burgers, fries.

Don't try and eat them though.

Yeah, you'll get. If you eat our material. I'll just put that disclaimer out now. Yeah.

Should have gone with higa fish burger because then you'd have kept the fishy metaphor. Fruits in a fast food metaphor.

Well, there is the McDonald's fish filet. People get pretty pumped about it too.

We call it filio fish over here. Yeah, same thing.

Yeah. Awesome. Well, we're coming up on time here, Tom. It's been a pleasure so far. But one last question for you. Since we've been talking a lot about sales leadership, be really curious to hear maybe a piece of advice that you'd give to somebody in sales that's thinking about if management is right for them or if they should go into leadership. What would you say to them?

I would encourage anybody that has the opportunity presented to them to seriously consider it. I think that if it's something that you've been thinking about, it's likely something that you're yearning for. So follow through on it, go with your gut feeling and truly vet whether it is something that you want to pursue. It's not going to be for everyone. We know that. And I think that that's important to also have the humility to say if it isn't right for you to not pursue it.

Yeah.

But I do think that a lot of times people look at things from the perspective of, oh, well, I'll just try and get into management by going to another job. And that's. That's not gonna work. Right. Like, if there's an opportunity for you to move into management with where you are now, weigh the pros and cons and see if it is worth it. But if it's something that you've been thinking about, I highly encourage you to pursue it because there is, there is definitely a need for more sales leaders out there that are willing to put in the extra effort to rise above the noise and to lead teams, not just manage teams.

I love that. Yeah. Well, that's great. Great way to end the. The podcast. We appreciate it, Tom.

Of course. Thank you.

Yeah, it's been great talking with you and. Yeah, we'll see you soon.

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