From Good to Great: Building a Winning Sales Team and Culture

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  00:38

Mike, welcome to the show.

Mike Manzi  04:30

Happy to be here.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  04:32

Yeah, very excited to do this. You’ve had an extensive leadership career at a bunch of different companies and progressively senior sales leadership roles companies like workable and Time Doctor. And actually you know, we’re just catching up how we have our common friend Liam from Time Doctor Who was actually on the show before too, so excited to have you on but these days, you are interacting with the whole world had million plus views on your official state LS tip channel on tick tock, you’re an influencer there do a lot of sales coaching helping companies really, like get the most performance out of their sales teams. And so this is going to be a really interesting podcast because we’ve done a lot of engineering related leadership podcasts. And this one, I’m excited to dive into sales. But before we get into any of the details there, do you remember when you first started to lead a team? What were some of the early mistakes that you used to make?

Mike Manzi  05:28

Yeah, absolutely. I always like to say I would never hire anybody who hasn’t had at least three leadership jobs. Because just from my experience, the first job I was at CareerBuilder, a big company, I was on a team was promoted to a senior to a new team, the role of my previous manager on the previous team came open, I jumped at the chance had no reason to take the job, had no experience, or anything. But while I was on that team, I was kind of like the go to guy for questions for how do you get a cin number and those sorts of things. So when I got that gig, I immediately focused on writing relationships with the team. And I just focused on relationships. And even my next job, leading a team and social media startup, I was focused on making sure everyone on the team was happy. And my thought was everyone on the team is happy everyone on the team was performing. What I realized was I had an incredible group of friends, none of which I would have hired any other company, because they weren’t performing at a high level. So the biggest mistake that I made was like over indexed on keeping the reps happy. And I under indexed on ensuring that we’re a high performing team. And I’ll be honest, the next company I over indexed on performance and over under indexed on relationships. And I finally kind of got it right probably around workable is where I’ll be able to take a team of four reps and turn it into a team of 18 across five different markets, and was able to do that, and not have as much time as I used to work with did per rep, while still being able to maintain the right relationship, and the right performance.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  06:57

I love this story for so many reasons. One is the it’s very interesting that you say, you know, I wouldn’t hire someone in a leadership position, unless they’ve done it three times, we have this internal thing that we talk about your fellow which is, the experience is basically comes from mistakes. And so when you are paying for experience, someone’s more experienced and they get paid more you’re paying for the mistakes that they’ve had. And if you don’t pay for those mistakes, they will make those mistakes where you are

Mike Manzi  07:31

paying for them in their salary, or we will pay for them in the cost of replacing

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  07:34

exactly and it’s a trade off, you have to acknowledge so very interesting that you say that. And the other thing I wanted to double down on and you know, for listeners of the show, they’ve heard me say this is the whole pendulum of management. So, you know, at first you over index on friendship than over index on performance. And then you find the middle ground. And this is just this is just how it is, even though theoretically we know exactly what to do. For whatever reason, we all do this pendulum thing. And then we realize, oh, there’s a middle ground. And actually, it’s different for each person on my team. And

Mike Manzi  08:07

it’s true for everything I think, see relationships, right, you date, a bad boy, then you date the overly nice one, then you kind of find the person who’s the right fit for you. So everything happens like that. But with leadership, in particular, because your deliverable is to humans and performance and their motivation and skill set. And so it’s kind of similar to relationships in that

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  08:25

way. Yeah. And it’s very interesting, like at a very meta level for people. It’s, don’t be afraid when there’s pain in your job or in your leadership career. Because this is part of the process, you’re supposed to experience a pain so you can readjust and finally find the right place. So one thing I wanted to maybe start with is, so you became an executive at age 29. Coach over 5000 deals. And I want to ask you about the idea of a high performance team, because that’s one of the things that you did very early on figuring out how to take a team that maybe wasn’t at their best, and like really turn them around. And yeah, I wanted to ask you about, like, what characteristics do these high performing teams have? And what have you learned in the process?

Mike Manzi  09:11

Yeah, so the very first thing that they have, it’s sort of like a Maslow’s hierarchy. The very first thing that nothing is true across any type of team and sales in particular, because it’s so easy to see the numbers, if they need to feel like they are supported. And they’re safe. If anybody feels like their boss is going to fire them on a when they don’t deal well. Just had a customer, in fact, actually that I was building their sales team out they were doing like next to no sales. And within three months, they were doing 300k. And it was like what do you do different? And it was one of the major things that did different was just created a firing structure and a promotion structure to make everyone know, we’re not going to make crazy decisions here. You’re all safe, that allowed them to have the creativity to be what they need to do. So the first thing is creating that safe environment. The second thing is is defining the values of the team. And the values of the team are defined not only partially by what you say, and we say, hey, the things I care about our autonomy and hard work and whatever else, that’s important. But also by who you keep around, I’m not even saying what you do, it’s who you keep it around. Because it’s not so much what you do, because they don’t see what you’re doing a lot of the time, it’s the fact that you’re okay with Suzy, who comes in late every day. And she keeps showing up. And you’re okay with the fact that Tom is a jerk with people off the team. But he’s also the best performing representing. So those things that you decide that you’re okay with, will dictate to the team, how much respect they have for him. So they respect you a lot, that will drive them up, they will want to do more. And so they will want to be a high performing team. If they don’t respect you or feel like you’re okay accepting less. The only drive up they have is whatever they have internally. So those are the first few things outside of that, the team what I found that actually recently went and I looked at all the teams I’ve had on top reps ever managing suddenly, what’s similar, is they all have a real insecurity. And I actually heard, I think Alex or Mosier, somebody talking about this where like top performers have basically an overinflated ego, they’re overconfident, they’re also overly insecure, but they have a good drive to figure it out. And I have found that they’re very competent people that are on this team. They’re typically the cool people in their group of friends. And they’re also really insecure, meaning they’re always looking externally, though, not for validation, looking at my pool on my pool, but they’re looking externally for how am I am I reaching the bar, there’s something in their body. And it might be, they grew up in the family where there’s like a semi professional athlete, who has always kind of set the bar, and they’ve been chasing that as the standard or their friends are successful. But they try to figure out that bar is always going higher. So if you have a team of all people that are giving 90 100 110% a quarter, everyone, even the person who would typically do 80%, will start doing 100, and then 110, and 120, because it becomes the new standard. So and insecurities is a big piece. And I think that the other bit of the insecurity part too, is these people always feel like everybody else in the team is doing better than them in one aspect, while they have that confidence, and they have that healthy insecurity. There’s specific things they see others doing, they look up to. And that looking up to others in how they prospect and how they whatever, gives them that chip on their shoulder to always feel like I got to do better. So you’ll notice a lot of these things I’m talking about high performing teams are factors that drive you up. If I have a safe manager, I have the space to drive up. If I see a team that’s partially above me, I want to drive up if my competence is higher than my skill set, I need to drive up all of these things pushing you to drive upwards and be a better performer.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  13:15

Yeah, I mean, lots of great things there to unpack. One of the interesting things that you said, in relation to the team that you were coaching recently, to really help them perform better was you came in, and you just set the ground rules by saying here’s how we promote, here’s how we let go. And it just occurred to me that maybe part of the you know, creating safety, and I don’t know, if you would agree is just like creating a more transparent space. So people know exactly what the ground rules are. And by knowing that they know exactly how things are going to go. And maybe that subtly increases the feeling of safety. Is that something that you would agree with?

Mike Manzi  13:57

It really is it’s the first thing I have learned for any of the companies that I consult for is the transparency around Roger goals, around how you get removed and around how you move out. And a good example of this, too, is actually a Time Doctor, where I was managing folks who I didn’t spend almost any time with them because they were all different time zones, right? But I remember specifically having a rep on my team who typically performed by and I was in our we were in our one on one. And he’s like, Well, I have to get the 65k. And I was like, what does that random number? What does that number and he’s like, Well done below that number that I’m in the 75% bucket, which puts me into an email when I get an email from you saying I’m not doing well, which could be on the PIP track. And I was like, Oh, wow. Okay, so I didn’t have to tell him it was there. He was driving and pushing and others in the team were like dude did the Archie was really crushing right now. All because he had that transparency. So he wasn’t afraid of getting removed, because he knew how to do it. He was afraid that he wasn’t going to do what he needed to and just did it without me having to push him to do that. Therefore making this high performance sales statement.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  15:00

Yeah, and the reason why I was yeah, just emphasizing this one is, a lot of times when we talk about transparency for teams, the thing, we often references, oh, let’s make sure that everybody has all the information as if we’re not hiding anything from our teams. But a lot of the stuff that you may be hiding, maybe unintentionally, is the way that you make decisions. And so bringing that forward, that’s a another layer of transparent, that’s the more advanced version of transparency.

Mike Manzi  15:27

While you’re saying it to almost makes it feel like leveling within a company should be more transparent to say, just so you guys know, I think bobbing finance, is equal in value to Joe in marketing, even though they’re in different teams, we’re going to level them up, they’re all level sixes, whatever, that I’ll let you let you go, Okay, I’m gonna look at those folks, and emulate what those folks do. And again, you could ruin all this culture now, if those people are toxic mean, don’t come in on time, do things that they shouldn’t be doing. Because then you’re saying, Well, why am I going to work harder? If you’re saying that the guy who’s above me can not do that? So yeah, transparency is really key just to give that safety, and make it clear with what you have to do to move up. So I totally agree with you.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  16:09

Yeah, and I haven’t really thought about the other concept of who you keep around you. And it’s very interesting, because I think a lot of us, I mean, I’ve made this mistake in the past, where, you know, someone is an excellent performer. They have some downsides, you know, can make some mistakes culturally, here and there. But they’re so good. And so by keeping them around, like you said, you’re making that okay. And then if you notice that your team or your company, all of a sudden over the course of time has a different culture, it’s because you effectively made that be the way it is. And so it’s very interesting to point that out. And I think that should increase everyone’s sensitivity to these sorts of things.

Mike Manzi  16:52

Yeah, I don’t say to the sales team, in particular, dev teams, and support everybody. But in the sales team, in particular, everybody hates the sales team. Because we typically think that we’re the most important. So we’re typically shouting at other departments. And when you allow one person to shout another department, because they’re doing 10 times when the person next to them is doing, it, lets the rest of the team know, I can chat about other departments, and lets other departments know, if I’m a top rep, I can shout to others. And so I’ve seen really quickly at some organizations where I walked into some workable, I feel like we were doing a lot of and then we slowed that down by removing reps who didn’t, who were shouting other departments effectively, and let the current team know and other teams know, we had a new culture here, and everybody respected everybody. But everybody performed at a much higher level because they weren’t afraid of anybody else. breaking rules effectively.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  17:44

Yeah, and the other thing I wanted to also point out is I really appreciated how you took something that maybe some people think of as a weakness, you know, having insecurity, and pointing out how actually some of the best performers are the ones that have these insecurities. And, and that’s super interesting, too. For all those who have insecurities out there. It is a string.

Mike Manzi  18:07

Yeah, 100% of us, I will say my best statement, and I made Tourette’s is some version of, I think we all want to hear from our mums and dads, which is I had a recommend team, who’s a top rep, I can just tell you was there, he was doing well. Or he was competent, but he was always number three or four, it would seem like first week with him in the first week of starting a new company that the new boss, holy cow, who was this guy was, dude, why do you think so bad? Like, you’re, you should be number one. You and I both know, know them. The team knows EPA, you know, you shouldn’t. But these guys are bringing you but you’re better than these guys. So what the hell is. And I think giving that confidence to them. There, he already had the insecurity. And then we getting that confidence allowed him to take that insecurity and turn it into fuel to push them up and he became a top represented top rep for two years. So getting here is important.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  18:57

Wow, that’s a pretty big difference just through making some unrealized that that’s super interesting.

Mike Manzi  19:04

Valuable. We all want to hear that for parents. Right? Yeah.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  19:07

And so I guess one of the things and I want to really dive into hiring too, but you and I, you know, prior to hitting record, one of the things that you mentioned, and I think this is super interesting, in particular, there’s a lot of this that goes on in sales, but I think it’s important for all teams, is how do you build a winning sales culture? Because I know you care a lot about the culture of the sales team, and making sure that you have the right sort of environment. So maybe we can start with in your words, what do you think culture is for a salesperson?

Mike Manzi  19:38

Yeah. So I think the center of the culture and the sales team is the values that you write down every single week in our blood money mashups, or resets and talking about our three values, and every company is a little bit different. But what those values are, I create those values by having an off site with the team first. So talking to the team and the off site on things we learn go For the last month, things you want to do issues what they were facing? And also, Hey, guys, what do we feel like the team’s values are not we want it to be, what is it, we all have individual values, but we’re now group. So that kind of what do we care about, and boiling that down to one, two or three words. And so I think that is the beginning of it, I can remember that I’m referring to example, we were frustrated when leads were coming down from marketing, because he caught me changing. And so constantly, the team was complaining. And so we made one of the values control what you can control. And I can remember specifically multiple reps over the course of six months a year, in just regular conversations, saying, Listen, I know I can control what I can control what I can control. So here’s what I’m thinking I’m going to do in my world. So the culture or the activities and beliefs of a group of humans, the belief is the words that we’re running down. And then the activity is seeing in a meeting, let’s say we’re not in a meeting that so and so just said, I was struggling with EPS. So therefore I did why, and that why not being complained about it, it was like a solution to you then see, oh, this isn’t the kind of group where people will come up with solutions got it. So even though we had a new folks, they saw that was the culture from his actions. And those actions were dictated by the beliefs that we put together as a team. So that’s, that’s the first thing. The second thing is, your values, as a manager, will be the unspoken nucleus of values for the entire team. So even though as a team, if we decide the values are A, B, and C, if the things that I care about as a human being authentically are xy, and Z, values are actually going to be ABC XYZ, you came back a year later, you say, what are the values and say these three, but also it kind of doesn’t care about these three things over here. Because how you act is how the team is allowed to act, you know that if you have a dad, or parents who worked their butt off? You would, and they would expect you to also work your butt. It’s a new expectation, it’s a standard of living. Yeah. So what I feel is important is to, as a manager, write down, what are the couple of things that you really value that are really true to you, outside of work? For me, it’s not taking life that seriously. It’s authenticity. And it’s creating real relationships with people. That’s what I care about. And I think that if you look at any of the places that I’ve worked at, even though the values of the team were never in those things, those were never the values. Every team was very authentic with their peers, they were creating real connections. And it came from the actions I was thinking, which was an odd one of ones I’d asked about what it was like when they grew up, I would tell them how things were tough for me, I would tell them when I was insecure, and that create relationships and what was authentic, and we wouldn’t take life too seriously, we joke around. So that became the underlining culture. So the culture is who you are, what you guys said, as a team. And the actions you guys take, how you create a high performing culture, is through a couple of things. You got to give feedback, whatever someone is doing what they should be doing. You got to get feedback when they’re not. And you got to remove folks when they are when they’re not, and promote folks when they are. So if people see that not only there are beliefs and their actions, but there are consequences to those actions, those three things stacked upon upon each other, or create a solidified culture, and one of performance.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  23:33

Hey, there, just a quick pause on today’s episode to let you know that we’d really appreciate you helping us spread the word about the Supermanagers podcast, if you’re enjoying what you’re hearing so far, dial into your podcast app of choice, whether that’s on Apple, or Android or Spotify. And just leave us a quick review. Now back to the interview. Yet, again, so much to unpack there, lots of wisdom that you’re communicating with us today. So one of the I mean, I love the control what you can control. And I can totally see, given the context that you shared, how that was something really important for the team at that time, and how it becomes part of the language that the team starts to use. And what I wanted to emphasize here for the listeners is, even though your company may have some cultural values, teams should also have their own and it can be an incredibly powerful tool, right? Like this is how you can really get your team to perform in a particular way. So it doesn’t have to be only whatever the company has.

Mike Manzi  24:40

Yeah, typically the company what is kind of BS or disconnected or it has to be generic because has to fit everybody putting your team of three people in the finance department. What do you guys care about? What are the things you guys stand for and what will you not stand for?

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  24:54

Yeah, and the sub it’s almost like subculture of urban maybe It’s the underlying, I guess, tone of the culture is dictated by the leader. I thought that was absolutely, that was super interesting as well. So you hinted at it, it seems like one of the top tools that you have to reinforce the culture is through your one on ones, I know that you have at least two videos, I think both of them on tick tock have more than 2 million views. So I’m sure some of the audience have seen some of them. But let’s talk about one on one. So these are, in your opinion, one of the most powerful tools that you have, in order to influence performance.

Mike Manzi  25:31

Yeah, so there’s two different ways that I’ve structured them, depending on who I’m working with leaders reps, but I’m the more structured one, it would be the GLSL 10 version, which we talked about, but typically what I do is 1010 1010, for you, separately, temper future, or what really ends up being reality 10, personal, 10, professional, and future, either one of those were these, to me are the most important meetings, so long as you follow a certain a couple of certain rules. And these will be equally as detrimental, as they can be good. If you get any of these things wrong. Number one, you can move them, but you cannot lose them. If you delete a lot of even though maybe you don’t want to go, maybe they don’t want to go. Deleting it says I don’t care. We’ve all been at a recital at a baseball game or whatever. And our parents didn’t show and they didn’t want to be there. And we didn’t care that they were there. But the fact they didn’t show up men, you don’t care, not anything about the event. You don’t care about me I was here. So you cannot forget that you can move on but you can’t. The second thing is you need to really double down with them that it’s a safe space, no matter what on your forehead, it says I can fire you no matter what. So even if you’re like everybody loves to think they absolutely to the universe. And they talk differently to you than they do to their brothers. That’s your monitor. So what I do in those meetings is first I like to have the same phrase every single time to let them know the meeting has begun. Because suddenly they’re walking in your door, the Zoom is happening or whatever. So every company I do a little bit different, but it’s something as simple as Howard. And I usually add a sigh with that. Something to be like worried. And it’s the same way every time parameter years, but we do it. So you know, we’re in the same space. The other thing that I do is, in these meetings, the first one I have, I go overboard, explaining how much I care about them, why I care about them. And at a deep level. And what we’re going to do in these meetings, so typically, hey, Vern, do you want to watch this type of check in bring any questions you have, let’s just make sure we stay on track. I’m like, listen to these one on ones mean, the world’s a pain, because you are one of the central pieces of the team. And my goal is to make you really effective, there’s something I care about. That’s like level one, level two, let’s say like something that I really care about is making sure that you’re really proud of yourself, what I’m gonna get as a manager is, no longer do I get satisfaction from a deal closed, I get satisfaction from you come into the office and say, I’m better. So like you doing good is, to me, the equivalent of when you close a deal to you have good deals. So I’m so invested in it. And finally, I want you to know, Ria might say here, but I grew up, I didn’t feel proud of myself, you know, my dad MySpace games. And I never thought it was that important. My friends were all better than me in my head. And so I’ve made it a sort of secret mission, a minor sort of oozed out of me eventually, that the thing I’m on this planet for, is to make sure no one ever feels like they should. They’re not proud of themselves. And if I can use 30 minutes a week, to make you more proud of yourself, because you’d become better at your job because of things I can support you with. I’m doing what I should be doing. Now imagine you hear that. You’re like, holy cow, I get it, I get it, I get it, you care about making me better at my job. I’m having to triple down on that and really explain the why. Because they still will see me as that was very nice. I know you can fire me. So you have to kind of go 10 steps over the line just to get them to see where the actual light is. So they understand how much you care about it. But let me take a second to explain the 1010 10. So the first 10 minutes are personal. How are you doing? How’s everything going with your family? What are some things you got going on outside of work? What are some things that you’ve been struggling with? And you might bring in some stories of yourself and that’s cool person or the next 10 minutes professional. This is when you’re going to be saying how’s your workload? Is anybody pissing you off? Are there any things you’re trying to accomplish that are just like annoying? Are there any meetings you’re in? You don’t have to be in? What was the one of the tougher things you got to deal with over the last week to understand some of their challenges at work and then the future is what you care about. What do you try to get better at? Cool What are a couple of things that are holding you back from doing that? What’s something you could do to try to resolve that, I’m gonna give you this as a resource for you. Cool. So that’s the actual coaching framework at the end there, to coach them to do whatever it is that you want to do. Now I’ll just make a caveat here to say I’ve said you can do one on ones three different ways, send you 10, personal 10, professional 10 future. I’ve also said you can do the LPL 10 version of awesome said you could do 10, you can meet 10 future. So I also usually spend time talking about myself here, what’s going on my life and things that are frustrating me and I use that time when I’m talking about myself exclusively, exclusively, mostly to talk about things that I know are going to be shared vulnerabilities, things I shouldn’t share, which make you feel like it’s okay share with me. And that’s how humans connect with other humans. We share vulnerabilities, we become trauma bonded over, you know, our own paths, and then we figure things out together. So that’s what that looks like. If you don’t have those meetings, people just see you as a boss, they just see everything as number, and you’re not providing enough deposits, for you to be able to demand withdrawals in the future, which inevitably will.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  31:10

Yeah, lots of good stuff there. One of the things that you said, and it was interesting, I hadn’t really heard the analogy, or the metaphor of the baseball game, or the recital and parents showing up to that. What do you say when if you have and maybe this is a parenting question in disguise, but like, what do you do if your son daughter or your child says, I don’t need you to come to the recital? Like don’t come? Do you still go? And there’s a subtle thing here too, right? It’s just like, I don’t I don’t need to do our one on ones. I don’t come in with topics. And as a matter of fact, we do them too often. Can we do them less often? Like what do you do in those situations? Do you listen to them? Yeah. So

Mike Manzi  31:53

yes, and no, you have to show up to the baseball game in the recital first, and then Wii U, this is all sort of dictating your values here. Like if I say to you, it’s okay for us to miss the one on ones, then suddenly you feel okay to say, Well, can we miss pipeline reviews? And is okay if I miss the Monday morning meeting? And is it okay, if I don’t show up this meeting inside, all the structures start to break down. So you have to show, you can adjust them. I’ve said, Listen, if you are someone who really pushes back, I’m like, let’s make them 15 minutes, or let’s do that every other week. But I don’t love that I only do that from the top rep who I want to retain. And I don’t want one on ones to come up for the exit interview as a reason that they left you know. But what I would say to them is listen to these one on ones I’m going to drive, I don’t want you to, to the present, prepare anything, I want to come here I understand what you’re doing, what challenges you have, I never want you to you’ll never be in a situation where you have anything to say I will have all the questions. I want these one on ones to not only be for you, but they’re also so you could hold me accountable. So not only will I tell you what you need to do and see where you are, but you can ask me where I am. And I’ll show you where I do what I’m doing. That’s something that I’ve done a lot sort of like six to 12 months into a new gig, people will start being like what are you even doing as a boss. And so when you’re proactive to go, like, here’s what I’m working on, here’s how it’s going. Here’s the next step. So I have my priorities, they then egg interesting, because they’re like, Oh, we’re getting kind of a look behind the veil, I’m not allowed to ask my boss to do it, they’re just showing it to me, and see if they’re gonna respect me because they realize you’re doing a lot for the team. And that will allow them to, or that’ll make them want to open up, show up. Worst case scenario 15 or whatever in the week, but it’s gonna be a tough run.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  33:38

Got it? Got it. And so one of the questions I had for you is, you know, obviously, part of if you’re a first line sales manager, you know, part of your job is also coaching the team. When do you coach the team? Is that would you ever do that during the one on one time? Or is that separate? Or how do you think about coaching, you know, on the sales call, like very specific to Hey, you did this on this call or that kind of tactical coaching? You know, where does that fit in?

Mike Manzi  34:03

Yeah, let’s split up coaching and training. I know, it’s kind of like marketing and advertising. It’s like, what the hell is the difference? So, coaching to me, is exclusively in New Orleans. And the framework for coaching is what I mentioned before, so you first are going to collaborate on the goal. What do you want to get better at? And you want to collaborate on the plan? What do you think you could do to get better at it? What’s the plan you could do to improve that skill? Then you want to collaborate a milestone? What’s a objective quantitative thing that would allow us to know you’ve mastered this challenge, then you want to offer support, don’t ask us if they need support, because I’ll say no, offer support and see if they’re cool with it. A good example of this I had a rep who wasn’t gonna want to get better at emails. And I was like, Okay, you want to get better emails? Like how are you going to do that? He’s like, your frickin awesome emails, like Ken, how can you help me? And I was like, What do you think I’m gonna do? And he’s like, maybe I can, like BCC your emails, give me feedback. And I was like, I’m cool with that. And if I do that, how are we gonna do Just one day say I’m better. And he was like, well, maybe we could do it. So like, I’ll send you 10 A week, when we get to the point you’re giving feedback on to her last week. And the rest, you’re just saying thumbs up. I was like, sounds great. I will provide you with the feedback every week. That’s the support. And eventually, he was so good, actually, the fact that he was this new company inside squared, and they were like, This guy doesn’t even he texted me. And I was like, that’s crazy. Good job. So that’s an example of coaching, that has to happen what I want, because they’re sort of dictating the process, side of the coaching, I recommend that whatever they want to be coaching on or whatever they think they should do the first two or three times you do it, a yes, let’s do that. Versus you pushing your agenda. Cool. Training is different. Couple things with training. Training, needs to be simple, simple ideas has to be words, phrases, one button push physical thing. Like training dogs, you wouldn’t be like, we’re gonna train you how to like run over there, grabbing a stapler and come back. And look, I’m gonna train you how to run arbitrary on the pinnable newspaper, those are all three different trainings. So the first thing is make it really simple. The second thing is make it really clear, which is kind of a same as keeping it simple. But make the ask very clear, not be nicer. I’ve simplified it just be nice. But what is nice, so dictate what that is, ideally, in a script, if you can, or any sort of phrasing. The third thing is, you need to practice it. And the fourth thing is follow up. So what I’ve done is I came to accompany worktables, a great example of came to the company for sales reps kind of didn’t have a manager, the head of ops was managing them. Everyone had different sales process. I came in I’m like, this is the sales process. And so I gave them exact words to say that each morning, I started doing this a curriculum, they actually taught me about it. Each morning, every morning, we would go to a meeting for like 19 Argentine. And I would just say, okay, Joe, you’re the customer. All right, and I pick on one person to start the phone call. And I’d go a couple seconds, and I’d have somebody else continue and someone else continue with someone else continuing someone else continue. So they were all having to stay alert, and know what’s happening next, to do it. So we were practicing it. And we were to follow it up every day, only for a few weeks. But after two or three weeks, it was on every call, it wasn’t like a train once a month, and then it takes them forever ever happened. There I didn’t do I didn’t follow my principle of making sure that it was simple, because it was multiple things we had to solve. But moving forward, what I’ve always done is I trained on one topic. So I will be like at the end of our calls, you need to say these four sentences in this order. And that I will try every day or every other day for a short period of time. And then I’ll pull calls and get feedback for a short period of time. Because what I find is if you do training in a short period of time with a high level of intensity, it sticks. If you do medium level intensity or a long period of time with anything other than that, it doesn’t stick.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  37:51

Yeah, super interesting. I you know, the question I was going to ask you was because it sounds like when you went to workable, Sales Team existed, different sales processes existed. And my thought is like, if you go into a place and they’re already doing something in a certain way, and then you come in with a different way of doing things, it’s one thing to say, here’s a new sales process, but actually making everybody change the way that they’re doing things. That’s a very difficult task. So thank you for explaining how you did it. How long did it take from from the moment you said, this is a sales process to where you felt that everybody had shifted to the way that the new way you were recommending

Mike Manzi  38:30

four weeks, four weeks, four weeks, and I would say the one thing that we’re missing there to add to that change, management, change is really important. And how you handle it was really important. And all those things that I just told you, those four things are important. But the insert to start change. The one thing I miss is the beginning, which is getting buy in. So what I did with the company was I went through what I interviewed every single person on our team, customers lost customers, other executives came back to the team, we had our off site, and I was like, Hey, here’s what I’m seeing. Here’s what I’m picking up down. Do you guys agree with that? Me? Well, I’m having one on ones. Everyone’s like, I’m on board with this guy. I’m on board with this guy. I then said, Here’s what I think it is to the top reps. And they said let’s tweak this to that. So when I went to the whole team and said, Hey, guys, here’s the plan. The top reps were like, hell yeah, I’m totally on board. Everybody else was like, I’m on board with Mike. But the SOP rep seems to be on board with him. So I’m just gonna blindly trust it. And I’m on board with all this because I know he’s done his research. So then when I go to do it, everyone’s like a blindly following. He was doing.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  39:29

Yeah, that’s amazing. I mean, it’s a very instructive way of how to create change within an organization. And the other thing I wanted to say was your example on you coaching that particular rep on email was really interesting to me, because I think for a lot of conversations, and for a lot of managers where that conversation might have stopped would have been, okay, BCC me on emails or replying, give you feedback, and this will help right? And it’s super interesting that you quantified it and you You actually had a, here’s our exit path when it gets here we are done and you have been coached on emails. And I think it’s just the instructive thing there is when you are coaching someone on your team, you have to define the what success looks like. Because otherwise, how do you feel accomplished, that you’ve actually done the thing and gotten better? It’s super instructive there as well. I know, it’s more

Mike Manzi  40:21

you want to say questions you want to ask. But I feel like this is a pivotal point in this conversation, which is the absolute key to a high performance team, regardless of what matters is follow. Because if I say to you, here’s the book, how to perform at a high level, I can guarantee you make a million dollars, and I walk out of the room, you’re gonna have second guessing it down and whatever else. I never follow up saying, Look, I’m care. But every time you follow up, what you’re saying is, keep going, keep going. This is important, keep going. So every time you don’t have that, when you are saying, This is not important, you can stop. So if they know they can stop, it’s hard to move forward. I’m sure that there’s more people to finish the marathon than finishing 26.2 mile run on the treadmill, because they can stop on their treadmill, but there’s embarrassment of a stop in America. And that invariably comes from their peers in the crowd. I’m the embarrassment. Because I’m saying keep going follow up. Keep going, keep going, keep going. So if you stopped doing, you look that to me. And if I’ve created a relationship where you care about how I feel towards you, you’re not going to bottom, keep raising and raising and raising and that’s a great performance.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  41:34

Yeah. Thank you for the extra emphasis there and follow up. There it is. So Mike, before I asked you the final question we asked from everybody, in case people want to reach out to you to follow up like, how do they find you on the internet?

Mike Manzi  41:50

Everywhere. You can find me at official sales tips. So Instagram, YouTube, anywhere else for leaders in particular, I have a tick tock that’s official sales leader tip. So tick tock.com/official, sales leader tips, LinkedIn, like Manzi sevens like linkedin.com/i, n slash like big seven. And if you want to just figure out like, I want to join your newsletter, I want to get the templates of all the things you do you have free templates for VPS, those sorts of things. It’s linked TR dot E, slash official sales tips. That’s where you find me.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  42:21

That’s awesome. And so we will include all of those things in the sales notes. If you’ve haven’t downloaded and installed tick tock yet, Mike is worth downloading this app for I’ve been following him

Mike Manzi  42:33

on Instagram and

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  42:35

YouTube too. So there you go. I’ve been following your account for a while. And I can very truthfully recommend it. So final question. We asked all of our guests on the show, you know, for all the leaders, managers constantly looking to get better at their craft. Are there any final tips, tricks, resources, or parting words of wisdom that you would leave them with?

Mike Manzi  42:56

So I think I’ve left a lot of words. And so I’ll actually just leave other resources. I had loved with Manager Tools and Manager Tools basics. It was recommended to me by a guy who was the SVP of sales to working in Salesforce and slack and Zendesk. So it was like fine, you seem smart. You should be a podcast, but now it’s an App Manager Tools, basics. And the second thing would be Michael Weinstein, his book sales leadership, simplified our sales, management, simplified. Those are a couple of good books and nothing but the last book too is the Harvard Business Review. First 90 days gives you a good like strategic look at how you should think about things. And those three things. Pretty much tell me how to be

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  43:38

awesome. And yeah, we’ll include all those in the show notes. And for those who are interested, I had second Manager Tools recommendation we had mark on the podcast as well. He’s great.

Mike Manzi  43:49

Really good Four Horsemen on the podcast. Holy cow. I took him in crazy company right now. Yeah, he’s

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  43:53

awesome. In his podcasts, actually, he had been running it for like 20 years or something. Something crazy. So Mike, thank you so much for doing this. Thanks for coming on the show. And we really appreciate it. 

Mike Manzi  44:00

Take it easy.