Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: One of the things I love to teach is that sales is noble.
And sometimes when I'm in a professional services organization or with a bunch of educators or people that don't fancy themselves as sellers or they have this mental tape in their head or the baggage they're carrying around that sales is dirty and it's used car stuff, and I'm like, what, are you on drugs? Like, the best salespeople in the world are as assertive as possible because they've given themselves permission, because their motivation is pure. I'm not in this for me, I'm in this for the client. I'm going to battle hard, I'm going to do good discovery, I'm going to tell the truth, and I'm, I'm going to make sure I'm getting them the right fit because I care deeply about their outcomes.
[00:00:35] Speaker B: I'm Dennis Sorensen and this is the Think Big, Win Bigger podcast. This is the podcast for sales leaders and salespeople who know they're capable of more and are looking for a system that is predictable, repeatable, scalable and forecastable for growth. It's not theories, it's not motivational speeches. It's an ambitious way to operate your business.
[00:00:58] Speaker C: In my experience, both in selling in the corporate world and in my experience now as a consultant advisor to my clients, the thing that I have seen that is the greatest differentiator and the biggest inhibitor for those that don't practice it is a lack of process. And at its core, the three pillars within that process, an absence of ambition, poor or non existent strategy, and a lack of execution. Because without ambition, teams play too small and without strategy, teams have a roadmap to nowhere. And without a written execution plan with clear deadlines and accountability, strategy is just a wish. Today on episode one, I am very happy to bring a special guest, my friend, my mentor, Mike Weinberg to the program.
Thank you very much for joining us.
[00:01:51] Speaker B: For this first episode of our podcast. Mr. Weinberg, looking forward to this.
[00:01:57] Speaker A: Not as much as I am. And I love, love, love what you've called the show because you are the man who's made me think a lot bigger. And aside from calling me Mr. Weinberg, I'm really excited to be with you, my friend.
[00:02:09] Speaker B: So, Mike, thank you again, greatly appreciate it. Excited to have you here, the beginning of this journey.
And I'm excited to be bringing this podcast finally sort of out of the closet. And interestingly enough, I've been asked over and over again now by a number of the folks that have been through the trainings that we do. And they asked me, do you have a podcast? And so I said, well, it's coming.
[00:02:35] Speaker A: Let me tell you why I'm smiling as your friend, and I know a lot of times you refer to me as your mentor, and I always like, would you stop? Because it's more mutual than not. I think I learn more from you these days, but you did this the right way. And let me. Let me explain to you what I mean. There are so many guys in our space, the sales improvement industry, and it's all hat, no cattle, as my buddy Shane likes to say. And there's marketing wizardry, right? They're the behind the curtain, and they've got content and they've got a following and they've got all the production. And if you saw what they post on Instagram, you would think they're doing a trillion dollars of business. You did it the other way. You went out and built a business. You don't even know which way is up. You're so busy running around the world. I mean, I don't know how many continents you've been on in the last couple months, but I've gotten texts from you at really bizarre hours of the day. But as your friend, watching you build this thing, it's been so much fun seeing your business came first, the value you're bringing to your clients and your marketplace came first. And now you're like, you know, I probably should build a brand. I need a podcast. I gotta get my content out. And, you know, as someone who's benefited from having content, I appreciate and applaud you know what you're doing and know what this is going to do for your business and your impact in the sales and the sales leadership community. So I respect the order that you're doing this. So lots of cattle. You didn't have a hat or a brand. You didn't even have a website for a long time. But now it's time. So pretty exciting.
[00:03:55] Speaker B: No, I appreciate you saying that. I think that, you know, building the business, I think, has been really key. And it's interesting because it's sort of taken a life of its own, right? And the former CEO at Teradata said to me that the thing that makes you different, Dennis, is that you build a business. And I think that it's just sort of what I do. So it just kind of comes natural to build a business from all those foundations.
[00:04:22] Speaker A: Well, that you have. Against my own advice to you, as my friend, right? That's some of the humor in this, which you have not let me forget over the past couple years is my dissuading you from staying in the world of consulting.
[00:04:35] Speaker B: Right.
[00:04:35] Speaker A: And sales improvement as an outsider. So don't think I'm not amused watching what you're building.
[00:04:39] Speaker B: It's been a really interesting journey. I mean, you think about if I go all the way back to the beginning of time for me, and I think about my journey and all of this and the foundations of, you know, even just growing up where I grew up and growing up with the people that I grew up with and the way that they shaped me long before I ever had a formal sales career, you know, I think back to just things that I did and sold when I was in college, long before I graduated, and then moving out into formal sales and beginning to take that journey. It was, you know, was a really interesting thing. And all the lessons that you learn along the way that when I finally found you, I think really crystallized in my mind because everything that you talked about and everything that you taught really sort of brought sort of all those hard learned lessons over the years in sales crystal clear in my mind.
[00:05:40] Speaker A: Yeah. I think that's why we connected so easily. It's funny, I smile sometimes. I remember our first face to face meeting. I don't know if you remember. It was Chicago. Right. It was a prep meeting for the Americas and we were all in Chicago. And I know our mutual friend Nate ordered two desserts that night before dinner. That's one of my memories.
[00:05:57] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:05:57] Speaker A: Yeah. And then sitting in the room with you that next day, just talking about sales management. And I think part of the reason that we're like brothers in this world is because you were living out and doing the things that I was writing about. So when you saw my simple frameworks, it connected with you. Not because I was teaching you anything, but because I had kind of codified in a very simple, easy to understand way what you knew intuitively because you were living it and succeeding at a huge level that, oh, this makes sense. This guy just put it on paper in some framing that then could be shared and replicated. Does that make sense? Like, that's why I feel like you were doing what I was talking about already.
[00:06:34] Speaker B: Yeah, it makes total sense. I think that one of the gifts that I felt that I had when I found you was that you helped me to be able to bring everything that I was trying to teach my own salespeople into a really crisp framework to be able to teach. I was trying, I was spinning, you know, I was building. I'VE always built material to teach with. I was. I've always. My favorite part of everything I've ever done is to teach my salespeople. Right. Like, and that's why I love doing what I do now is that I get to go out and do my favorite part of what I've always done with sales teams, which is to help them to build sales muscle and to become stronger and to become better and to become what I call process driven. And that, I think was one of the key things when I found you.
[00:07:25] Speaker A: Yeah, it's so interesting. I was wondering how long it would take till I heard you say process driven, because I know there's some themes that are going to come out in this first episode. And for those that aren't familiar with you, like, I can't wait to have the conversation with you about what does that mean process driven? And what are those four P's? And if there's anything you're known for, I always introduce you as the client who got the most out of me. And for those of you that don't know about my friendship with Dennis, it goes back to, I don't know, Dennis, end of 2016, maybe 2017, where you were running a really big business in California and we got. Got to work together and just getting to watch and learn from you. And then you used me a couple times with some of your leaders and your sales teams. And I always say, no client of mine pushed me harder, challenged me more or got more value from me because you, you led, you pushed, you. You know, I joke about the book from the. The pricing engineer you made me read. I want to kill you still about that.
A German pricing engineer nonetheless. But you have this drive that pushes, that doesn't accept. And even as we'll get into the concept of ambition and, you know, not trying to build up a bunch of little numbers, but going for the moon, right? And that's. That's what drives you.
[00:08:31] Speaker B: So.
[00:08:31] Speaker A: I don't know, you just, you just energized me. But can I ask you a question? Because I don't even know the answer to this, and we didn't prepare for me to ask you this question, but I'm so excited about what you're doing.
My mission is helping people win more new sales. And I play in two areas. I play directly with sales teams, although not as much now because I'm spending more time with leaders and managers. But whether I'm working on fundamentals of new business development or I'm working on sales management fundamentals, those are my two kind of streets I run down. And as you talked about what you're helping sales teams do and perform at different levels, I'm just curious if you look back on the last year or two, how much of what you're doing within some of these large companies, particularly some big tech companies, where you're really moving the needle, how much of it is you're working directly with leaders on increasing their effectiveness and on the tenets of sales management versus how much is it you're really writing plays and building playbooks and doing coaching of the like high level enterprise sellers helping them become more proficient? Because I'm not even sure I know the answer to how you're dividing your time and applying your concepts into both of those channels.
[00:09:34] Speaker B: It's a really strong combination of both because you know, when I come in and I start to talk about what I do in terms of being process driven and understanding the pillars of what it takes to be process driven from my perspective, I think that it really requires that the salespeople and the sales leaders understand that together.
And so, you know, the most effective trainings that I do are the combination of really both the sales leader and the salesperson themselves. And then we do individual and I do individual training with leaders and with sellers. But it's that com. It's when they're combined and when they, when they come to an ambition workshop and they do that work together. Together, you know, because generally when we do it, the sales leaders are there and they lean in and they help their team. They do what I believe they need to do which is roll up their sleeves and put their hands in the business, in their business with their salespeople and they, they make the sessions effective or not effective. And one of the things I've thought so many times about, one of the things that you talk about is, you know, so goes the leader, so goes the team. Right. And I've seen that in different ambition sessions that we've taught when the leader is not engaged in those se, the team is not engaged in those sessions in the best sessions that we have. And when I do the pre work with the sales leaders is as engaged as you are, as engaged as the team will be and what you want them to take away from this, they will.
[00:11:02] Speaker A: Wow. I have so many things I want to say and I want to come back to an expression you just used for the first time. Probably, you know, this is your first episode, but people are going to hear this from you dozens of times till it's ad nauseam. Like I'm talking about one on one accountability ad nauseam. On my show, you said, get your hands dirty, roll up your sleeves. I don't know how many times I've had a conversation with you and not heard you talk about leaders getting their hands dirty, not being ivory tower, you know, executives. And you just made me think of something as you were talking about your ambition workshops, which, by the way, I can't wait to hear what the heck you're doing in those. I led a session. I don't want to say too much, but it was in the Northeast last year, significant company.
And the person who brought me in was the CRO.
And yet the CRO wasn't that involved in putting the agenda together with me beforehand. And then the CRO was very busy on the day of this workshop of their senior sales leaders and was in and out of the room the whole time. I was leading the full day session. And when this person was in the room, they didn't contribute a lot. They didn't challenge me, they didn't interrupt me, they didn't call on people. And I can't tell you one, how much burden, extra burden, I felt like I was carrying because I wasn't getting energy from the leader. And I think there was this odd vacuum in the room. Okay, this guy brought in Weinberg because he wanted these concepts, but he wasn't putting his own fingerprints on it or shaping it. So I felt like, I was like, which is a rare feeling, like this outside guest preaching at them about these best practices. But there was no desire or demonstration of rolling up the sleeves, getting dirty. How are we going to implement this here and put our own version of it together? You know what I'm saying? Like I.
[00:12:42] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:12:43] Speaker A: It's the opposite of you preaching, get dirty, get in. How we doing pre call planning? How we doing business planning? How are we doing ghost? So I'm just curious, like, how are you ensuring or setting up engagements where you're absolutely confident that the senior people will get dirty, roll their sleeves up and dive in? So what we're doing is sticky.
[00:13:01] Speaker B: I think that, you know, the setup, you know, the pre workshop work is really important. And I do that work. I spent a lot of time with the CRO and with the leaders ahead of time. And then as we went into each of the global theaters, in this one particular client that I'm speaking about, as we went into each of the theaters, each of the theater leaders were engaged and I had, I had the actual theater leaders, the EVPs of the theater in the room and their AVPs in the room and their RVPs in the room. And they were engaged and they were learning. And then the work that we do in these workshops with their teams, I talk about it as you have to be hands on and hands in the business. That's the only way that these leaders will really understand. Years ago when I went to emea, one of the key things there was really working with those leaders and helping the organization to realize what the role of the sales leader is. And the leaders who were the most successful and had the greatest results out of the other side were those that really, truly put their hands in it and got their hands dirty. And everything that you teach, if I think about the sales management simplified structure, when you talk about what are the things that the leaders got to do, they've got to establish leadership and culture. And it's pretty hard to establish culture if you're not in the room and you're not there, you're not present, you're not visible by the people. Right. Because they really see and they follow the leader. And then when you think about the, you know, establishing what is going to be really good talent management and sales process, all those elements to me have to have the leaders hands on and hands in them. And then when you take it a step further into the highest value activities that you teach, every one of those is about the leader being engaged with their people.
[00:14:54] Speaker A: So back that up for a second. Let's just go back to your success as an enterprise seller. Because one of the things I like about your origin story is how you made this transition from what probably was more transactional type selling. Right. In your early days at ncr, just like my early days were more transactional. And then you pivoted into what became with the acquisition from Teradata, big enterprise, lots of strategy, multiple stakeholders, multi threading, long discovery, complex sales cycle, lots of constituents, all these things ROI cases. Do you credit like the way you became a rock star in actually your sales career before you ended up as a leader and an executive. Credit the willingness to get dirty and dive in. Why were you so good there? Because I have to believe that was part of what put you on the path to then multiplying yourself into other leaders when you became an executive.
Right? Because when I hear you talk about getting your hands dirty, like nothing makes you angrier than people that don't want to do that and just pretend it's going to work. Because I never loved enterprise sales. That's where you and I diverge. Part of why I've loved using you with my clients is because they asked me these complex questions and I'm like, I've never done what you're talking about. I'm the new sales simplified guy. Targeting, messaging, prospecting, good discovery, own the calendar of the pipe. But as simple as those frameworks are that I teach, you take this thing to another level when you talk in enterprise. So just go down that road.
[00:16:18] Speaker B: Everything that you just said, everything that you teach, everything that's foundational, is true within enterprise sales. Everything is true within enterprise sales. The key in my mind is how do you take what Weinberg teaches foundationally? And then how do you, how do you do that at scale and how do you do it across a very strategic sales motion that's going to take 6 months, 12 months, 18 months, 24 months, 36 months to come to fruition. So all those fundamentals are still true. And that's why they were so important to me even when I was with Teradata, to have you involved in that. Because if you don't do those things well, enterprise sales doesn't work well either. So, like what I would do and what I teach still is like the fundamentals of Mike Weinberg, all the things that Mike Weinberg teaches. But then on top of that, what I try to do, and this is what happened to me in my own sales career, learning the basics that you teach as a seller. But then one of the things that I learned early on at NCR was how to think about an enterprise sale. And how do you develop a strategy for an enterprise sale? Right? So like one of the elements at NCR was strategic account planning. And if you could get strategy right, you had something right, and you had, and you knew what you were going to do and you would do it. And even as an individual seller, I struggled with the idea of selling little use cases or transactional things. What I wanted to still do was whether it was combining a bunch of those transactions or multiplying those use cases, I wanted to look for that opportunity to go play bigger, even as an individual seller. And so when I went to ncr, I learned how to be very process driven because NCR was a very process driven organization.
And then it's taking and bringing and applying that process to the foundation that you teach and doing that at scale, which is what changes the game. Right? And ultimately that's where later on in my career it led me down this concept of, well, strategy is great, but strategy for transactions is sort of a waste of time, right?
[00:18:24] Speaker A: It's like, what does that mean? Like, what does that mean? That strategy for transactions, how much time.
[00:18:29] Speaker B: Do you want to spend planning and preparing and practicing for a. An individual transaction that doesn't yield nearly what you need in terms of quota. So, like, in my mind, it was, it's about taking what you understand and, you know, figuring out, okay, well, we got to play a bigger game, right? We got to play a different game. And that's where for me, being process driven, having really good strategy was important.
[00:18:56] Speaker A: But.
[00:18:56] Speaker B: But when the idea early on happened in my mind in terms of sort of the birth of ambition, right, it was, well, what would have to be true for us to take what we're doing today and do 10x that, 20x that, 30x that? What would have to be true? And then defining that and saying, well, what is the total potential of this account? And one of the things that I think a lot of people struggle with when they think about ambition is, and it still happens, even when we're doing the training, is people will say, well, I think it's realistic that I could achieve this. And I'm like, don't tell me what's realistic. Tell me what's real.
Tell me how high the mountain is, not how far up it you think you can climb today.
[00:19:41] Speaker A: Stop. Say that again. Because I want to make sure that. It's so weird. I know you and I are going to fight this whole episode over who is interviewing whom as we both try to make each other look good, but I count on you and you count on me. It's so bizarre how this plays off. But say that again. Don't tell me about your own view of realism. I want you to repeat the phrase, don't tell me how far you think you can get up the mountain. Tell me how big it is. Like, what does that mean practically.
[00:20:07] Speaker B: When I teach ambition, what we're looking for in ambition is I want to understand what the total potential of an account is. And I want to look out over time and say, if I looked out right now at the end of 2029, if everything went my way, if no barriers were in my way, if I could sell 100% of everything I possibly sell in this account, what does that look like at the end of 2029, how big is that account to my company?
And so what I want to say.
[00:20:37] Speaker A: Yeah, the same concept would also apply in terms of a territory, if it wasn't just an account. So if somebody maybe had a dozen or a few dozen accounts, okay, we've.
[00:20:46] Speaker B: Applied, I've applied This in my sales teams that have had a half a dozen accounts, a dozen accounts, teams that have had 50 or 100 accounts that they're responsible for, we apply the same ambition, thinking, because we want to understand what the total potential of our territory or our set of accounts or our account is, right? And we want to know what that total potential is. Because what I want to do in ambition is I want to be saying, what I'm going to do is I'm not going to be trying to add up to achieving some quota. What I want to do is I want to go compete for the total potential of this account. How do I. How do I have to change what I'm doing to compete for the total potential? So when I ask people in these workshops, and I used to ask my sellers, tell me what's real, tell me how high the mountain really is.
Don't limit yourself today by telling me how far you think you can climb.
[00:21:44] Speaker A: So powerful.
[00:21:45] Speaker B: And what I want to be able to do is to help those people then to say, okay, here's our total potential.
Now we ask the question, well, what would have to be true? What does. Let's imagine at the end of 2029, that we've achieved 100% of the business that's available to us in that account or in that territory. And then we look at and we say, so what does that look like?
And then part of it is then being able to say, okay, then we're going to compete for some portion of that in 2026 or in the year that ahead of us. And what we want to be doing is always competing for a very large portion of the total potential of the account, such that even a modest level of success overshoots what we're responsible for when it comes to quota.
[00:22:32] Speaker A: So this is the antithesis of thinking small or trying to build up little incremental things of how we're going to, I'll use my own phrase, cobble together a way to achieving some minimal goal we would call quota. Is that fair? This is. This is a foreign concept to that.
[00:22:48] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. And we use that exact term. Like, instead of cobbling together a bunch of incremental deals in an attempt to add up to some number, what we're doing is we're saying we're going to go compete for a number of very large opportunities inside an account that. Where even if we. You know, I talk about, like, one of my favorite books is, you know, Dr. Bob Rotello's book How Champions Think.
[00:23:15] Speaker A: Which you made me read when I Was on sabbatical about a year ago. Thank you for that.
[00:23:19] Speaker B: Yes, well, another book that he wrote is called Golf is Not a Game of Perfect. And what I say to my sellers and to the people in my classes is that sales is not a game of perfect.
So why are we as sellers, putting ourselves in the position of having to play a perfect game? What we want to be able to do is put ourselves into a game where we.
We want the least amount of perfect required to win. And that's what we do. That's what we do through ambition.
[00:23:48] Speaker A: Say that part again.
Why are we trying to get away from having to be perfect? Because here's what I'm trying to get in my head. How much of the breakthrough success that you've achieved as a seller, you achieved as a manager? I watched you achieve as an executive, and now you're helping your clients achieve. How much of the breakthrough from the whole concept and implementation of. Of ambition is because it's smart goal setting that changes mindset and motivation versus how much of it is. You're cracking open your mind to think strategically at an entirely different level. So you're asking different questions, solving different problems, like how much of it is the practical, what you're shooting for? You know, aim high, miss a little bit, you're still great. Well, I'll make you tell the story that you tell a lot of times. Well, Even if I'm 80% wrong, which I'm not, we're still going to blow the number away. So how much of it is the practical side versus how much is it? No, you're really thinking on a different plane because you're now playing an entirely different game. Going from maximum potential versus cobbling together.
[00:24:50] Speaker B: I would say it's a really good combination of both. And part of what I teach is, and what I believe is that once you see the total potential of an account, you can no longer unsee it. If you were playing and you were pursuing a quota of $250,000, and you realize that the total potential of the account is 10 times that, 20 times that. Once you know that, you can't unsee that, the magic in my mind of the subconscious mind is it sort of works on you, right? And once you know what the total potential of an account is, it starts to work for you.
So not only does it work on you, it works for you. And so then when you start to ask the question, well, what would have to be true in order to achieve that? What that begins to do is it begins to reframe the way that you think about the relationships that you need to have, the types of conversations that you need to have. I go back to a Mike Weinberg element in saying the kind of bridge statement you need to have in order to be able to position yourselves differently. One of the things that I talk about in these workshops is, you know, I borrow a quote from the former CEO of PepsiCo in. In terms of, you don't want to be making small changes to small things. You want to be making big changes to big things. And I have that quote on one of the slides in the workshop. Because what I say to the salespeople is, if you're making small changes to small things for your customer, how do they see you? They see you as small. If you're making big changes to big things for them, they see you as big. They see you as valuable. They see you as somebody that should. They should be talking to on a regular basis because you're bringing value at a level that they've never seen before from a vendor that they thought you were.
[00:26:41] Speaker A: Now you've got my pulse up. This is why I'm in sales. Our mission, like this is this. Now you're getting me going. Like, aside from the fun and the freedom and the financial reward, the piece that you're bringing here is the value impact.
My mission as a professional seller is to get the absolute maximum value, best return, highest ROI for my client. And I believe that when I was selling, and now I believe it as a consultant, a coach, a speaker. That's the mission. And there's nothing more fun than being viewed as that value creator, advisor, problem solver, consultant, versus some vendor who's providing little solutions.
[00:27:14] Speaker B: That's absolutely right.
[00:27:15] Speaker A: Totally getting me going here. So I'm gonna ask a weird question. Cause I don't know what your plans are for the future episodes, but I'm assuming since this is your first episode, you haven't told the story yet to your audience of the big company in Texas where you were told you were being. Your sales team was being kicked out and there was no money for you. Maybe this isn't the episode. You'll tell it. You'll. You'll tell it in the future. But I couldn't help but think about that when you were. You're talking about play small. And maybe this is the place that is just for your audience sake. Maybe just set up that story for you to tell at a different time, but because you were being treated as a vendor that was going to be replaced. Right? That's right. And Your people were thinking small, and you had to break the whole mindset, which led to this incredible breakthrough, which I think is probably part of what puts you on the map. And that that story is one of the things, I believe, that changed the trajectory of your career. That's even enabled you to be sitting doing what you're doing now at some of these massive companies where you're running turnarounds.
[00:28:10] Speaker B: There's a lot of really great elements of that story. And what you said is true. It did change the trajectory for me.
But the way that it changed the trajectory for me is that once that success happened, it changed the trajectory for that entire sales team, because they got to see that everything that we were talking about, this sort of crazy, hey, we're going to go play big, is very possible, right? Because once that deal happened, every other member of the sales team that was part of that team, they then said, oh, my gosh, this can be true. And not only did that success happen, but we had multiples of those successes that happened that particular year. And that year did change the trajectory of my career. And it changed the trajectory of the careers of many of those people on that team at that time, because once they started to play and win bigger than they had ever before, they suddenly became much more aware of how they could change the game for themselves. And then in the future, when many of them became sales managers themselves for their teams, right? Because they took that same thinking, that same approach, those same lessons that we learned in doing that, and they applied it. And the crux of that story, in some ways, is kind of comes to the conversation that I had with another client in that territory that year, where I went in, in my first meeting with that client, and I think that they were spending maybe a million and a half dollars a year with us. And my very first meeting, the client said to me, dennis, we're spending too much money. We need to be spending less. You need to find a way to reduce what I'm spending with you. I don't want to be spending a million and a half a year with you. And I said to him, I don't want you to spend a million and a half a year with me either. I want you to spend 15 million a year with me, and I want you to spend 15 million with me. Because you know that the return on the investment that you're making with me more than justifies that $15 million spent. And just by having a different kind of conversation with that individual, he certainly. He pivoted to say, well, why would I spend 15 million with you? And that was the answer that I wanted. That was the question that I wanted.
[00:30:22] Speaker A: Enterprise selling. Because you're now entrenching yourself in position A as the consultant and the friend and the advisor. And you know, you're doing. As my friend Drew Ellis says this all the time. You're doing it because you're thick as thieves with the customer, because they know that your motivation is that you have their best interests at heart. Yes, in some way, we're acting selfishly because it's good for us when they, you know, 10x their spend. But the truth is you believe in your heart of hearts that it's the best thing for them because you're going to produce them the biggest roi. You're going to solve some massive problem that their CEO is trying to get done or help them achieve some initiative. That's why we're pushing so hard. In fact, one of the things I love to teach is that sales is noble. And sometimes when I'm in a professional services organization or with a bunch of educators or people that don't fancy themselves as sellers or they have this mental tape in their head or the baggage they're carrying around that sales is dirty and it's used Caro stuff, I'm like, what, are you on drugs? Like, the best salespeople in the world are as assertive as possible because they've given themselves permission, because their motivation is pure. I'm not in this for me. I'm in this with a client. I'm going to battle hard. I'm going to do good discovery. I'm going to tell the truth. I'm going to make sure I'm getting them the right fit because I care deeply about their outcomes.
[00:31:33] Speaker B: How do you make sales noble, Mike.
[00:31:35] Speaker A: Right there, that's exactly how you make it noble, is that you're putting the client's needs above your own, and you're selling from the same side of the table as if you're their teammate, not a vendor. That's why I hate the freaking word vendor.
[00:31:49] Speaker B: So a big part of what you do and ambition, work is not only do you look at what the total potential of the client is, but then you look at. Then you look at what the client's most strategic, most important priorities are. You look at what the company is saying they want to accomplish in the next two, three, four, five years, and you look at your business and you say, how can we help them accomplish that?
That particular client you mentioned in Texas, the way that we changed the game was to look at what were they saying were their most strategic initiatives and how can actually help them achieve them. Right. And by aligning ourselves to what mattered to them. That is what changed the game for us. Because it was their most important initiatives inside of their company that we were able to demonstrate that we could help them successfully achieve. And that's what changed the game so powerful.
[00:32:43] Speaker A: You got me excited. I can't wait to listen to your episodes. I will be a regular listener of your show because you think on a different plane than I do. Can I take over and play host for one second and ask you bet. To finish something? Thanks for giving me the grace to do that. So you excel for a couple reasons. One is your drive. It's definitely not your good looks, but it's your drive. And the ambition concept is where I've seen you have breakthrough, but there's a piece that you bring to the table where I am deficient. And it's what you call your ghost G O S T and I'll say it the simple way, because I oversimplify everything is ambition is great, but it's all academic unless it gets executed. And if there's two things that you're really good at, it's one, it's the ambition and thinking big and pushing. But it's two, it's making sure that there is a plan and accountability and tactics in place to actually pull off what we're dreaming about.
So I would be remiss if I didn't ask you to go down this path right now. Could you spool us up on how you take ambition and turn it into something that's implementable, if that's a word.
[00:33:45] Speaker B: Can I take a step back and then we'll come back to it just in one second.
[00:33:48] Speaker A: So since it's your show, I think.
[00:33:50] Speaker B: I'm going to take a step back and I'm going to say being process driven really revolves around the four P's and you mentioned them earlier, right? So plan, prepare, practice, play. Right? And where so many people live and so many salespeople live is in play.
They live in this sort of transactional world. And a lot of times salespeople get pushed there by their management. Right? Because end of the quarter happens, end of the year happens, and everybody talks a good game when it comes to planning and preparation and practice. But when the end of the quarter happens, it's sort of like all of that stuff goes out the window and we just got to live and play.
And one of the things that I think is really Key is that understanding how process driven the four Ps. Then when you talk about, you go from the three pillars that underlie that. So ambition, strategy and execution. So you build a really good ambition plan, you know what the total potential is, you build a really good strategic account plan or strategic territory plan to be able to achieve that ambition. And then you got to have execution. And execution in my mind then comes down to some real things, right? So what is execution? You got to have, you gotta have a really clear written plan for how to achieve what it is that you're setting out. And that plan has got to have accountability for getting things done and it's got to have a deadline for when those things get done.
And so in putting together the structure for execution or for execution planning, what I thought about was what I call the Ghost paradigm, right? And so the ghost paradigm really applies in a couple of different areas in sales. One is in execution, right? And where I look at and saying, well, these are my goals, these are my objectives, these are my strategies, and these are my tactics. And how am I going to lay those out in such a way to say that if these are my goals for the year, then these are my clear, measurable objectives that achieve those goals. And these are the strategies I'm going to pursue to achieve those objectives. And then these are the tactics I'm going to work on.
And when we build a ghost plan, what we do is we look out and we say, well, here's when the goal needs to be achieved and then we build backwards from there everything that we need to get done.
And one of the things that's really key about the Ghost paradigm is if you can learn to apply the ghost paradigm for yourself in execution, you can learn to apply the ghost paradigm for your customer as well. And here's what I mean. So when you're in the process of doing your discovery with your customer and, and your customer's talking about their goals, one of the things that should guide your thinking when you're asking questions in discovery is you should be thinking about, well, what are the objectives that achieve those goals for the customer?
What are the measurable, specific things that when they happen, the customer will achieve their goal. Because if I can help them achieve their objectives, or I can help them execute their strategies, or I can help them execute tactically deliver that strategy, then I can bring value to the table, right? So part of the ghost paradigm is not only for ourselves in terms of our own execution, but it's helping our customer and ourselves in discovery with the Customer to identify where in the ghost paradigm we can create value for them.
[00:37:10] Speaker A: When I hear you talk like this, what's running through my head is that you found a way to make the process of, in the biggest broad, macro, generic sense we would call business planning. And it's like you've taken it from the world of academia and irrelevance, where you write a plan and it goes away and collects dust or hides in a drawer to a living document. Because when I hear you talking about, particularly involving the customer in which objectives they need to hit those goals, and then what strategies are we going to implement and hold ourselves accountable for the tactics. This doesn't seem like it's something academic at this point.
[00:37:42] Speaker B: No, it's not. And one of those lessons came to me, you know, when, when we would have these really great account plans or territory plans, and a lot of those plans would get built for management, right? We would build those for management and for management review. In fact, you know, I worked with some clients over the last few months where their salespeople went through building their strategic plans for 2026. And I think those are great, right? They're all written down. They. They're saying where they got to go and what they got to do. And now the next step is to take that and to put it into an execution plan to say, okay, when is each of these things going to happen?
And when am I going to put essentially a stake in the ground to say that I'm the one accountable for getting it done by that date? When's that actually going to happen? Right? And what I would see happen over and over again is the salespeople would create these great plans and the management would review it, they'd bless it, and then that plan would end up shoved in a drawer somewhere or in a file on your computer, and they don't get looked at again. And then the next year, when your manager asks you, hey, Mike, can you give me your plan for 2027? You'd go back to your 2026 plan. You pull it out and you'd blow the dust off it, and you'd flip through it and you'd go, oh, well, that was a good idea. We should have done it. Didn't do that, and we should have done that. And this is where I saw that happen over and over and over again with my sellers. And one of the things I wanted to do is to say, okay, we've spent all this time and effort on this great plan. What are we going to do to execute it right? And so we took the plan, we took the strategic account plan and we put it into an execution plan. We write out how it's going to happen so that we know what we're doing and we know we're doing today and tomorrow. And why that's important is because the job of sellers expands to fill the day and emails come at you, training comes at you, all this different stuff comes at you, customer problems come at you. And what you got to know in sales is that these are the one or two things that have to happen this week or today. And if I do those one or two things, no matter what else doesn't get done this week, if those two things happen, I know that my sales motion is moving forward. And that is especially critical. It applies at every level, but it's especially critical when you've got something that you're playing for that's very large, very strategic for yourself and for your company and for your customer.
[00:40:03] Speaker A: Yeah, I love how you wove that into accountability. Because you know, the thing I'm preaching every day is the results. Pipeline activity, accountability meeting. And what you're doing right there is saying we are going to insist if someone's not filling the pipeline at the desired rate. Right. If we're looking at their pipeline and the coverage isn't there and they're not bringing in new opportunities at the top of the funnel, it becomes very apparent we're going to have to ask about their activity. And what like gets me jazzed up. The way you describe it is it's not just willy nilly activity, it's like, hey, grab your ghost plan.
What tactics? What strategies? And then specifically on a timeline, what tactics seller did you commit to to advance this ball forward with this account? You wrote the plan, I didn't write the plan.
So your pipeline's not where it needs to be. So go ahead and grab your calendar and grab your target list and open up this plan and why don't you show me? You wrote the plan, you declared the strategies, we bought off on them, you committed to the activities, to these very specific tasks that we're gonna get done. Have you done those?
[00:41:06] Speaker B: And then so often. That's exactly it. That's exactly it.
[00:41:09] Speaker A: And what drives me crazy, and that's the conversation managers aren't having. And friends hear me on this. That's the furthest thing from micromanagement or demotivating someone. We're not even going down that level of inspection unless the salesperson's earned it because the pipeline's insufficient. And this is the guidebook that keeps them on the path. So I would argue that we're not holding up our fiduciary responsibility to the humans that have entrusted to our leadership if we don't ask them about why they're not succeeding. You wrote the plan, you committed these things. We agreed this was the right thing to do. And so often what I see when we ask the seller, this is like, well, I didn't get to it. I got busy. We had fires to fight. We had this hard implementation. Customer success is dropping the baller, plug in the excuse. And those excuses sound great. Cause the salesperson feels important and they have all this stuff as they're blowing smoke and trying to hide behind the complexity. But I'm like, at the end of the day, dude, it's results.
[00:41:58] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:41:59] Speaker A: And you're not getting it.
[00:42:00] Speaker B: So you just nailed it. Right? So following your framework, essentially what we did was say, well, activity is demonstrated in your ghost plan.
So if it's written down, it's real. And if it's real, it's in your ghost plan. And so when, and one of the beauties of the ghost plan is that as you build it, as your sellers build it, this whole idea of micromanagement goes out of the window because they actually have a written execution plan. And what they most sellers who want to be successful, they want to review their, their execution plan. They want to review their ghost plan with you. And so it's, it's not about me having to say, hey, get your calendar. It's me saying, let's review your ghost plan. Let's look at where you're at. Let's see the things, you know, did everything that was supposed to get done in last week get done? Did everything that's going to happen this week, is it on track? Yes, yes, yes. I mean, micromanage, but no. It's just me, hands on hands in the business, doing what I'm supposed to be doing.
[00:42:57] Speaker A: No. And I've heard you talk about this before. In the past, it was your top producers that were the ones that came to you and said, hey, let's spend some time on this.
[00:43:03] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:43:04] Speaker A: They're the ones demanding your attention because they want your input. Plus they're kind of half bragging, hey, look what I put into this. And by the way, I wouldn't mind a little insight from you about some coaching. And now together, you're advancing the ball forward and you're building into your people. Because one of my things, and this is, I really struggled as a new sales manager and a new sales executive, and I see this in so many newer leaders, is they forgot about the concept of winning through their people.
[00:43:28] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:43:29] Speaker A: They're still doing it the old way. They're thinking they're going to be the hero. They're going to win every deal. Well, that, that's. That works for a really short term. Right. But it's not sustainable or scalable. And the way you scale, and this is what I got to watch you do where you are, my client running big divisions or countries or continents, multiple continents. And now what I'm watching you do with your clients is you're multiplying into them, which creates scale, and that's where you get that multiplier effect. And that's what's so exciting about what you're going to do with this podcast.
[00:43:56] Speaker B: So the only way you can scale. The only way you can scale is. Is you got to have process, because that's what makes it scalable. Right? You got to have process and you got to be able to teach it. You got to be hands on, hands in the fundamentals. All the things that I learned from you and that crystallized from you, all those things are true. They all got to be there. That's the foundation. But then you build process on top of that foundation and that's how you scale the business. So, Mike, this has been great. Really appreciate it, brother.
[00:44:24] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm so excited. One, I'm excited to watch what you do, my master. Yeah, I think it's doubly mutual, my friend. It's not just exciting to watch what you're doing with your clients, but now I feel like I've got something I can tune into to listen.
So.
[00:44:36] Speaker B: Well, you know, we'll do our best to deliver. We'll have a number of really good topics to talk about this, and we'll dive into all of it.
[00:44:44] Speaker A: Well, I need to have you back very quickly on my show because I have some very blunt questions for you, and maybe this will be another episode we'll share on both platforms. But I've got some blunt questions for you of what you saw in 2025 that's working and also in so many places, things that are not working because there's some real challenges out there. And I think we're entering a year of really important strategic sales management where leaders are going to need to lead on really hard stuff, from getting the right talent on the team to making some hard calls, to doing coaching at a level they probably haven't had to in a while.
[00:45:15] Speaker B: I think we're entering a really exciting time, and I think those that are prepared for it are gonna. They're gonna explode, right? The ones who are ready for it, they're gonna explode. They're gonna have tremendous success.
[00:45:26] Speaker A: It's awesome. Thanks for having me, my friend.
[00:45:28] Speaker B: Thank you, man. Appreciate it.
[00:45:30] Speaker C: Thanks for listening to the Think Big, Win Bigger podcast. Until next time, think bigger and just win.
