In this episode we welcome best-selling author Mike Weinberg! As a top performer in sales, Mike has embarked on a journey from being a stellar salesperson to a triumphant sales management culture leader. His ride, filled with trials, triumphs and a treasure trove of insights, not only makes for an engaging tale but offers a wealth of wisdom on the importance of sales management and the challenges that come with its transition.
We traverse into the details of Mike's latest book and explore the process behind its creation and the impact it's making. Furthermore, Mike shares his expertise on the necessity of traditional sales principles and the importance of rewarding salespeople who bring new business.
In addition, Mike shares his candid thoughts on how social selling has found its place in mainstream sales, emphasizing the importance of offering value and building relationships. He also underscores the significance of using social as a channel effectively and strategically.
Finally, Mike guides us through the essentials of sales management, highlighting the importance of customer-centric sales approaches and spends time discussing the shift from forecast to pipeline. Don't miss an unforgettable episode filled with expert advice, valuable insights, and a bit of humor.
In this episode we welcome best-selling author Mike Weinberg! As a top performer in sales, Mike has embarked on a journey from being a stellar salesperson to a triumphant sales management culture leader. His ride, filled with trials, triumphs and a treasure trove of insights, not only makes for an engaging tale but offers a wealth of wisdom on the importance of sales management and the challenges that come with its transition.
We traverse into the details of Mike's latest book and explore the process behind its creation and the impact it's making. Furthermore, Mike shares his expertise on the necessity of traditional sales principles and the importance of rewarding salespeople who bring new business.
In addition, Mike shares his candid thoughts on how social selling has found its place in mainstream sales, emphasizing the importance of offering value and building relationships. He also underscores the significance of using social as a channel effectively and strategically.
Finally, Mike guides us through the essentials of sales management, highlighting the importance of customer-centric sales approaches and spends time discussing the shift from forecast to pipeline. Don't miss an unforgettable episode filled with expert advice, valuable insights, and a bit of humor.
Welcome to Social Selling 2.0 Live Show and Podcast, where each week, we explore the future of B2B sales. Social has changed the B2B and professional services landscape forever. Capturing and keeping buyer attention has never been more challenging. Our mission is to help you discover new strategies, new technologies, new go-to-market systems and stay up-to-date with what is working now in B2B sales. Your hosts are Carson Hedy, the number one social seller at Microsoft, tom Burton, a best-selling author and B2B sales specialist, and Brandon Lee, an entrepreneur with multiple seven and eight figure exits and a leading voice in LinkedIn social selling. Brandon and Tom also lead social selling 2.0 solutions, which offers turnkey consulting, coaching and training to B2B sales leaders. Now let's start the show.
Speaker 2:Welcome to episode number 58, Social Selling 2.0. I am Tom Burton, along with birthday boy Carson. Hedy Carson, you're 29,. Did you say? Again, yes, again I thought you said he was 58. 58. Well, that could be true. Thank you, Brad 58.
Speaker 3:Goodness gracious.
Speaker 2:And we have Brandon Lee and our special guest today, our special birthday guest, Mike Weinberg. Mike, welcome.
Speaker 5:Thank you, Always happy to celebrate Carson.
Speaker 3:If you asked nicely on your birthday you can get Mike Weinberg on your show. I am representing St Louis here. Two weeks in a row we got St Louis guest. Last week we had Christie Jones and then, of course, my main man, sean Connery, who died three years ago yesterday.
Speaker 5:Hey, as long as you brought up Christie, I'm going to do a shameless plug for my friend and also St Louis and I just completed the forward to her first book and my kids will be reading this book. A lot of potential and new sales people will be reading this book. I'm very, very excited about what she's put together.
Speaker 3:And I'm going to shout out to my mom too, because my mom watched the last episode with Christie and said it was one of her favorites.
Speaker 5:She's the real deal. It's a real deal. Yeah, a lot of respect for her.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it was some really good stuff in there and I've listened to it a couple of times and taken notes, because there were just so many good things that we went through. Well, a lot of birthday wishes coming through and people jumping in. But before we get into, mike, we have some great stuff to cover. Today we have a, and Brandon pulled some strings here, and we have a special cameo appearance from somebody here. So everybody hold on, and I'm hoping that this works. So give me one second.
Speaker 6:Hey, carson, it's Leah Thompson here, aka Lorraine McFly from Back to the Future, and I hear that your podcast Mate was an extra on Back to the Future in the 50s and that's why he's so dreamy. But I'm telling you, carson, you are even more dreamy. So have a lovely, lovely birthday. Congratulations on having the number one rated podcast on social selling. That's no easy task. You guys must be really funny and awesome. So thank you so much for dressing as my son Many, many times for Halloween, and I really appreciate it, and lots of love. I can't wait to hear your show. Happy birthday, you dreamboat. Happy birthday, you dreamboat. Happy birthday, dear Carson. Happy birthday to you.
Speaker 3:My teenage self is very grateful, my crush Lorraine. Wow, you guys have outdone yourselves. You've outdone yourselves. Thank you, yeah thanks to. Brandon, he made that happen.
Speaker 2:Right then, thank you From lunch room to Lorraine.
Speaker 3:That's pretty amazing. Should we just end off right here? Mike, I know you have some great stuff to talk about.
Speaker 2:I don't know if I can bring anything after that. I'm swooning.
Speaker 3:I think Carson's pulses might be a little too high right now for him to focus.
Speaker 5:So I don't know where to go with this. You know you could go in a glass of water, take a walk or something. Yeah, I think Carson's pulse might be a little too high for a walk or something It'll be okay, I made you the moment.
Speaker 3:Pull me off the floor.
Speaker 2:Now we're still here, Mike.
Speaker 3:So I'm just going to leave and watch Mike.
Speaker 4:So, hey, I have expected you to be dressed as Marty McFly today. It's your birthday, it's a day after Halloween. I mean, I was expecting doing some a DeLorean.
Speaker 3:My kids made me dress as a super kitty this year, but I have dressed as Marty before, so Lorraine's comments hit the mark.
Speaker 2:All right. Well, let's get into it, mike, welcome. Thank you for putting up with us this far, so this is great. So, mike, it's better than a dad joke. That's right. It's better than a dad joke, you're absolutely right. So, mike, tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, and then we're going to talk about some, I think, pretty intriguing questions about selling and social selling and some of the great stuff that you've written about in your books.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I can't wait. I'm looking forward to it. Thanks for having me here. I'm here for Carson for his birthday. I am between running between snow and Minneapolis yesterday and I woke up to snow on Halloween in Minneapolis, and tomorrow I head out to the West Coast for a client gig, so I'm glad we were able to make this happen today.
Speaker 5:My deal is I love sales. I was a top sales hunter in several organizations and what I'm doing now was not on my vision board. I did not expect to be in this position or be invited on cool shows like this to talk about sales and sales leadership, but my passion is helping salespeople win more new sales, and I do that a couple of ways. Sometimes I work with sales teams and do training and coaching. My book in that arena is New Sales Simplified, and that book opened a lot of doors which led to Sales Management Simplified. And then my latest book, which we'll talk about, and I spend probably almost two-thirds of my time now working with sales leaders and sales management teams, helping them increase sales management effectiveness, because the sales leader is the key, the key to driving culture, the key to driving results, and most companies have completely lost sight of what the sales manager's job is and how they should be spending their time, and that's a whole conversation we may get into today, but I'm just thrilled to be here and talk about sales and sales management.
Speaker 3:And I just want to say thank you to Mike because, to his point and he underplayed this as he always does this was literally the only day he could be in town in between travels and he chose to be here, so we really appreciate having you, mike.
Speaker 5:Because you told me I would get a ride in your Aston Martin. That is why I'm here. I'm done. Okay.
Speaker 2:We told him that Leah Thompson was coming, so he's.
Speaker 3:I was just going to say can you be seen in Aston Martin? I mean, you're a more.
Speaker 5:I can, especially yours. So that's all good, All right fair enough, all right.
Speaker 2:So, mike, to kick things off because we were chatting. We've been chatting for the last couple of days, back and forth, and one of the things that was really intriguing, I thought, was you're saying there's a real massive shift occurring from sort of the A team sales hero, if you will, to more of a sales management, I guess culture or structure. And I would love to hear your take on that and what you've seen and why you see this transitioning is happening.
Speaker 5:Yeah, and in fact it's one of the motivators to write the book. The publisher actually came to me and said hey, we're doing a series of books. They have a classic book called the First Time Manager and they wanted to build a series around it and one would be for sales managers. And they asked me if I would write that. And one of the reasons I said yes is because I see what you're talking about all the time.
Speaker 5:There is nothing similar between being a top producing individual contributor and being a sales team leader. The only thing similar about the jobs are the word sales. But sales person and sales manager I mean completely different. The sales people who are high ego and selfish and win on their own do amazing work right.
Speaker 5:And then you get promoted into management and you realize, oh, I'm not responsible for one, now I'm responsible for many. I don't win on my own, I have to win through my people. But I can't even be selfish. I have to be selfless and learn how to deflect the glory and the credit and subdue my own ego. So it's such a massive shift to make that flip from individual contributor particularly if you're a star into management, and so a lot of the focus of the book in the beginning gets into what is that shift and how do you approach it successfully, so you don't struggle as badly as I did in my first sales management and sales executive job Because I was not prepared. Nobody told me. After having been a top producer and then a really successful run in coaching and consulting, I finally took a job as an executive and as a sales manager and I stunk my first year doing that for a whole lot of reasons, but one of them is because I didn't understand how to make that shift from winning on my own to winning through my people.
Speaker 3:I just want to say thank you, Larry Levine, Mark, everybody the happy birthday wishes. Larry, Great to see you on Great past Carson, may I look at?
Speaker 5:you. May I look? Can we just be honest? He might be the most loved person in the industry. When I did a podcast episode with him and I promoted the amount of love that was and I don't even think Carson I went back and listened to our episode. I mean it was good but it wasn't our best, like you know, and the fawning over him, people like he could do anything and people like Carson he's the best.
Speaker 3:You're going to make me blush worse than I already did.
Speaker 2:I want you to blush. That's good, he's a dream. Though he's a dream, I got to ask this yeah, dream.
Speaker 3:I got to ask this, so in first time sales manager, let me just say Wait wait, wait, wait.
Speaker 4:Did you notice how quickly Carson turned that around and then went right back to the book? I mean, come on, Carson.
Speaker 5:He's a pro. I appreciate this.
Speaker 3:So okay, so I don't care if you're brand new. I love that this is called first time manager sales. I don't think you're brand new or you've got a lot of years of experience and you're a grizzled old sales guy like me. Like, this is a blueprint for everything selling and what amazes me. So, mike, when I got first promoted years ago, I gifted myself sales management simplified. How do you sit down to write these Like, what are your? Because obviously things have changed a lot from a sales perspective? Yeah, how do you sit down and really, what was your big driving force behind first time sales manager and how do you start crafting the agendas and the messages for these?
Speaker 5:Yeah Well, this one was easier in some ways and harder in other ways. It was easier because it's been eight years since I wrote and released sales management simplified and, while the basics and the fundamentals of leading a team have not changed in any way, shape or form, the truth is I had eight years more experience running around the world and dealing with sales leadership dysfunction and training managers and doing coaching and running people through cohorts where I got to live through their pain and their challenges and their successes. So the easy part was that I had fresh stories and perspective and perspective. The hard part was writing another book on sales management when you said everything you knew in the first book and I worked really hard. The first time I actually said this was in the first interview about this book. This is my best book and it's really hard to say that when you love your other books and they're what put you on the map. But this is my thinnest book because I'm more experienced and it's going to sound kind of weird, but I was able to trim the fat and get this down to like the the you know, brass tacks, base fundamentals. My promise is to new and experienced leaders if you do what's in here you're going to win Because this is I mean, it's the simplest prioritization of what our most important jobs are as a sales leader, and with some frameworks and techniques about how to do those important jobs and how to become a smart talent manager and how to avoid like doing everybody's job on your team and being the hero and burning out and killing your culture. So you know, it's hard to write a book when you're busy. In fact, people keep asking me, mike, do you have another one in you? And I was like I don't know, maybe later when I slow it down and I'm in pseudo retirement. It's really hard when you're working at the pace that you and I work Carson, to find the time to do quality writing.
Speaker 5:And I have friends in the industry, anthony Anarino, I mean he's on like his 13,000th blog post, right, like he's been writing a blog post every day for 12 years. It's some crazy-ass number. Like my respect for his discipline is through the roof. I don't have that kind of discipline, you know. I'd rather go play golf or put on a YouTube on cars or do something like I can't. I don't have that type of thing. So I don't know. I wrote it because the publisher asked me to. I wrote it because I have a heart for sales managers and I see how hard their job is, whether they're new, and they're like the deer and the headlights with everything coming at them. And a lot of times when I run an event, you know we have season. You said grizzled leaders that come to these events and I've had grown men like 55, 60 year old men cry and just say I can't do this anymore. 280 emails a day. Can I say shit in your show here or no? Is that okay?
Speaker 3:You did it.
Speaker 5:Bullshit emails from CFOs with spreadsheets attached. You know on one day they're yelling at you fill out the CRM, get it up there. The next day they're sending you a spreadsheet asking for a forecast. Dragon managers to virtual meeting after virtual meeting, c-level executives who have completely lost sight of how a sales manager should spend his or her time to move the needle on culture and results.
Speaker 5:So my heart has really shifted where I'm spending more time with the sales leader because when you get the management piece right, like when you get the culture and the leadership and the coaching and the accountability right, everything changes and you benefit from what I call the multiplier effect right, because one great sales leader can make a huge dent in the business because they're impacting all of the people on their team and if they're building the right kind of culture and they're maximizing the production of their A-players and they're quickly addressing underperformance and they're leading team meetings and energizing equip and they actually make developmental coaching not just reactive coaching when there's a crisis or a giant opportunity, but proactive, intentional, developmental coaching a priority, which is the first thing every manager cancels when the crap hits the fan, like when I see that happen. I see business change and I see sales managers like have joy in the satisfaction from running the business and developing their people. So I don't know that's a long answer, but you got me kind of wound up there.
Speaker 3:No, I love it and I want to thank everybody again for all the birthday wishes. This is fun, Like I'm just sitting here like dressed down and watching people give me shoutouts while talking to Mike Weinberg.
Speaker 5:I agree with Mitch. Mitch almost asked you to marry him in this episode.
Speaker 3:I love you man. Shake and bake, brother, shake and bake. So, mike, I got to ask this. It's kind of a chicken and egg scenario, because I'm a big believer that the leadership sets the tone for the culture right, and sometimes it's lack thereof. That is, in essence, what forces someone who may be newly minted as a manager to feel like they have to be the hero, because it's the only rhythm and only way they know. And I got the gist from you and I appreciate kind of your being forthcoming in this.
Speaker 3:I had the same experience. I was promoted very early in my career when I was in my 20s and you know, multiple times, and then later I came back to being an IC and then I got back into leadership. But I really realized in my 20s like I was completely driving as the hero. I had to, and I think I learned the hard way that that was not the way. So as I reinvented myself as a manager later in my life, I was much better at it. But I think the leadership sets the tone. You've got to have good sales leadership that empowers and enables your people to lead correctly and to train you properly. How could we as leaders today, how can we create and nurture that type of a culture that enables our leaders to not have to feel like they've got to be the hero.
Speaker 5:It's such a deep question and I'm going to take a different tactic as I approach the answer than I've done before, because you said a few things that sparks some thinking for me. I think the first part of my answer has to do with the leader. Particularly the newer leader has to have a very high degree of self-awareness, because some of the thing that causes you to play hero is what made you great as an individual contributor Ego drive, perfectionism. Those three just popped up in my head Ego, drive and perfectionism. We love that in an individual contributor and if your ego is a little bit too big when you're in sales, it actually, I think, works to your benefit. You know you have a little bit like Teflon. You enjoy the applause and the limelight and you know you let the criticism kind of bounce off you. But when you bring a high ego into a leadership role, that gets old really fast. Like nobody wants to work for the guy or the gal that's stealing the credit and putting themselves on the stage and bragging about what my team has done Right, and there are certain themselves at the last minute in every deal so they can say they saved it.
Speaker 5:One of the great executives I worked with. He said you know, what's really important is when the senior leader hears from a sales manager. Hey, boss, you know. I just want to let you know I saved the deal. I jumped in the last minute, I turned the whole presentation around, I handled the negotiation. I got that deal for us. Instead of applauding the manager, which is what most executives do, the right thing to do is, hey, that's great, I'm thankful we saved the deal. Can I ask you why were we in that situation and what kind of coaching were you doing of your team member beforehand and were you guiding them or like, were you developing? Do you not have sufficient talent on your team? Well, you feel like you've got to step in. So all of that ego, drive, perfectionism, pressure to produce numbers those things conspire where people who are really successful on their own they're now leading a team and the pressure and the legacy way of operating it gets them in this mindset well, if it's going to get done, I got to do it and I'll grant this Carson.
Speaker 5:For the short term, a leader can play the team hero and do everybody's job, and the way I like to contrast it is it's doing versus either leading, coaching or holding accountable. And, in the short term, the leader. If you've got seven or eight people in your team, you can try to solve for all of them and you can get into a lot of big meetings and you can dictate when you're doing presentation prep instead of coaching and asking leading questions, but at some point that is not a sustainable or scalable model. You can't work that many hours. You can't do seven people's jobs Plus. You're running off your top talent.
Speaker 5:Nobody wants to work for the control freak. You know Liz Wiseman calls these people the diminisher in her book multipliers, like it's the opposite of the kind of leader you want to work with. So the danger is going back to the question. You don't really know that you do these things until you get in the role and you're a leader and no one warns you that this is coming, because the things we used to applaud you for when you were on stage at the president's club getting the trophy are now the things that actually hurt you when you're supposed to be leading and developing other people, and that is massive.
Speaker 2:You know it's interesting listening to this, mike. One's a comment and then I have a question is listening to? What you're talking about is not just a situation or an issue in sales management, but just in startup business or entrepreneurs in general? Right, you have somebody who has been a hero or a superstar in a certain area now tries to run a business, have multiple people working under him same sort of challenges, just different situations and different things that are there. But the question I have is I think that you know and I've worked in a lot of sales organizations, coached, consulted with a lot of organizations the sales manager is kind of a forgotten role. It's not a role that's given, at least in my history, a lot of attention or maybe even importance. Are you seeing that changing? I mean, obviously, as people read and consume more of your content, but are you seeing that shift occurring in companies, realizing that this is more important?
Speaker 5:Not enough. Not enough, I mean Carson, I'm sure has a take here. No, in fact, I said this to a client yesterday. I was in a boardroom for a couple of days planning the rollout of some content. They were using my video series and we were planning like a year of training for this big organization and I made the comment out loud. I said if the world had better sales managers because we were developing them and the C-suite had a better understanding of how important the sales manager was, I would have a lot less training business and I would be okay with that.
Speaker 5:So many of the sales things that ails sales today, things that are broken, are due to sales management and effectiveness. Look at all the amateur salespeople doing show up and throw up, spray and pray, demo without discovery, coming across like a vendor, not a value creator, not consultative. Yes, man, yes, women, do whatever the customer says. I call all those things selling like amateurs and I'm telling you, 80% of the reason that happens is because managers don't work alongside their people anymore. And so, to answer your question, no, I don't see it shifting, I don't see the wake up. I feel like there's a few of us, you know, banging this drum about the importance of the sales manager. But and it's rare, I mean it's rare where I get a call from a big name company that we all know the name of and they're like hey, could you come in and do a little sales management assessment? And would you, could we gather our leaders in a few regions of the globe and can we do the best practices on culture and accountability and coaching? Because in my opinion that's what moves the needle. I mean I get 100 calls for sales training. The one call about can you come do a little assessment of sales management and help my people be better coaches and better leaders and whole people accountable, and I mean the multiplier effect. I said that before, if you get that right. So no, I don't see it changing and it it's good news for my business and my book sales. It's bad news for sales. I rather it would be the other way around. I find some other way to make money in sales.
Speaker 5:But no, I'm, it's the disrespect, it's the low view. You know, clean up an aisle, three, send the sales manager. You know, I mean that's, that's kind of them. That's the view of it in a lot of places and I am a friend in South Africa. I got a couple friends in South Africa, some of the smartest sales management gurus Alan Verschdeck and Tony Cross and we were doing an event in London last year and Tony Tony put Alan up there who's really funny and he said something to the group.
Speaker 5:He said we were better sales managers collectively in the 1980s, before email, before cell phones, where we were called in field sales managers and all we did was rotate through working with our people, getting in their cars, prepping with them having dinner, having a beer, having a coffee, challenging them about their territory, asking about their account list, prepping for big meetings, debriefing after the meeting like challenging them. I mean, think about that. I mean and this is this is the part blows my mind in the old days and I mean when I was younger, before this was great 15 years ago I would hear managers brag about how they developed their people. I inherited this girl. She was totally messed up. Last, no one taught her anything. She was on the on a plan. I got her on my team, I doubled down, I spent more time where we traveled, we wrote plans, I held her accountable, I coached her. Today she's going to president's club or I got this young rookie kid at a school.
Speaker 5:He didn't know anything, he was all green. I spent some time with him and today, man, he's on the track to be the star. Like that was a common sales management brag 15 years ago. Do you know? I don't ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever hear a manager brag by. They turned someone around. Today they're not even on their radar because they're buried in all that corporate crap, sitting in virtual meetings, getting yelled at about spreadsheets and all this money going to now I'm going to get. Now I'm getting mad. Like all this money going to sales enablement and tools and garbage and you know all the hacks online and and like what about getting in the car with someone or getting in the bullpen? When we used to go to work before, we decided that people don't need to work together. We should all just live virtually, like all that stuff was valuable, and today we it's not happening, and no one like I'm trying to preach, and so are a few others, but where's the wake up call that the manager's job is to develop his or her people?
Speaker 3:That's a great call out. I mean, one of my favorite things ever of sales leadership was the person that needed me to jump into just about every customer meeting that they had when we first started working together, and then the eventual moment when they didn't need me at all anymore Brandon what is your? Take.
Speaker 4:You know, my brain's going through history, everything Mike's saying. I'm thinking of this experience, that experience, this experience I mean I've got. I didn't know how to ask the question because I feel like it's not an answerable question, but I keep coming back to you know, we, we, we had a season where we really looked a lot at personality profiles, like Tom and I were talking about this the other day. I used a tool called the Simmons Survey, that in hiring people, because it showed what their tendencies were, what did they tend towards and what did they tend to move away to. And it feels like I mean I think everybody will agree with this you take, you take the best salesperson and then you move them into sales management without any thought of how is this person going to be as a leader. And so I don't know if there's a question or a statement here. I don't know how to break that cycle, like I learned from when I had a really bad sales leader in my first sales job.
Speaker 4:A friend of mine's dad had said something to me. He's like you know, as a sales leader, we're supposed to take responsibility for all the mistakes and celebrate the team for all the victories, and your boss is the exact opposite and he's like I would move on. You know you're young, you're impressionable, you're trying to I'd move on and I did, and I and I chose that. But I've always had that in my mind when I've been in leadership roles is I need to build them up, you know, get rid of the ego and and let them enjoy all the victories and know that my paycheck was going to, you know, be good enough. For me, it was more their victories, my paycheck increase, and like, what do we do? I mean, I know that's what your book's about, but how do we break this, because there's so many layers of crap from the spreadsheets, from the CFO and everything else. Like, how do we break this?
Speaker 5:Yeah, I think I mean you said so much and almost didn't need a question at the end. Sorry, it was powerful in the way you framed it, cause it's the truth and it's everything from taking our best salesperson and making them a manager, without really considering whether they have the makeup to succeed and whether they'll enjoy the job. There's a, there's a young guy in sales super star named Dominic Testo that, of course, is probably met him because we're friends and we always he might be on.
Speaker 3:He might be on the show he's probably here.
Speaker 5:You know he, the guy's a rock star individual contributor and he's been asked to go into management. He's debated it for years and he read the book, even by chapter two. He caught me up and he's like are you okay, when I write my review of this book, if I say, mike, thank you, you've affirmed my decision to stay as an individual contributor. I love the fund, the freedom and the financial rewards and I don't want what you're describing and I'm like you're brilliant, know thyself right. Yeah, like so.
Speaker 5:So part of where you're going, brandon, is like we need to do a better job painting a picture of what the real job is. And then I'm clueless and I hate to say it this way. I don't know the answer of how we're going to manage up better. To help the people in the corner office and in the ivory tower understand how we should be spending. We meaning sales leaders, frontline leaders spend in our time, because that's where the battle, and I spent a lot of time helping frontline managers manage up and get their bosses committed to their priorities and their plans.
Speaker 5:One of my favorite podcast guests, one of the best clients I've ever had, got named Dennis Sorensen and he says you really got to manage up by getting your boss to sign off on what your priorities are. So the following week, when three other people in the company send you 94 emails and give you all this work to do, that's going to take, you know, five weeks to accomplish. You got to bring that to your boss and go question you and I agreed these four things are what's going to move the needle, and I just got assigned five weeks of work from other people in the company that want me to work on this. Would you like to help me prioritize this, because I can't do it all and we're not having that conversation with enough spine at this point, if that makes sense.
Speaker 3:So, mike, brings out everybody. There's Dominic. I knew he would be on today. Mike brings out everybody. Great comments from the chat too, from Dave. I worked side by side with salespeople. That's how I was mentored. That's what it all comes down to is, I think a lot of it it has to come from the culture. It has to be get you know one to the next, and if I think all of us at some point I mean we've had those bad Apple managers We've also hopefully had some greats and you take a little bit from both right, you know what not to do and what to do, and I think it all becomes part of our arsenal over time.
Speaker 2:There was another great question, tom, I think yeah, I wanted to hit a couple of these because there's some good ones here. We'll hit James first. Is you know James is asking how do you navigate the leadership view about how much reps make? Do you think that's the cause of a barrier, I guess, to investing more in dollars into reps, because, hey, they're going to make too much money? I think, james, that's the question you're you're asking there.
Speaker 5:Who wants that one?
Speaker 3:It shouldn't be the case. Well, that's all of these are my questions. But that shouldn't be the case. You know, as a leader, as a good leader, you should want your team to get paid as much as their worth. And I think, frankly, that goes back to, mike, what you were just saying about Dominic's decision. You know, I think when you make that move into leadership, you know that you will take a pay cut ultimately. You're doing it because you want to multiply and you want to enable people to be their best selves and you want to help them find success, ideally success that you had. I mean, frankly, the fact that I was an IC as long as I was. That's one of my favorite jobs I've ever done.
Speaker 3:Yes, but it gave me the credibility to be in the role that I'm in today. I have credibility walking into the room, but it's not my job to tell people how to do their job. It's my job to uncover their unique superpowers and make them the best that they can be by figuring out whatever gaps they have, where they want to go if they want to get promoted, et cetera, so on and so forth. But I expect my team to make a lot more money than me.
Speaker 5:Yeah, and I get very concerned, karsten, when I hear the opposite, when I'm in the corner office and I hear begrudging the checks that we're issuing to the sales team. It's only one of two causes Either we have an accountant or an engineer or an arrogant, brilliant person who founded a company who doesn't value sales as a function and they think my thing is so brilliant any idiot could go sell it, which always scares me when I get that attitude. But the other thing is it's poorly constructed compensation plans. The plan should not only drive the desired behaviors and results, but we should love love writing the biggest fat ass checks possible to salespeople because they earned the money. It wasn't a check for babysitting, it wasn't just for renewing, it was someone who worked, they penetrated, they upsold, they cross-sold, they found new logos, they broke their way in, they created business that's my favorite word in sales proactive and create.
Speaker 5:If the comp plan is structured that we highly compensate people who earn the business by creating and closing new sales. That's why I call it new sales, simplified. What's possibly could be wrong with that right? Particularly in some of these accounts where you're dealing with not just ARR but lifetime value of a customer. You look at that's worth to the organization. Is it not worth paying very handsomely to the hunter who's going to go bring that business in to reward them so they have a significant carrot to keep them hungry and drive the behavior? Smart comp plans. I'll just go for 30 more seconds on this. I often have conversations with senior leaders that sometimes I think the compensation, the variable piece, should decrease over time, because why would you keep paying someone crazy money to renew and babysit and serve their friends that we sold a decade ago at the same money as to go that heavy lifting of really penetrating or really opening a new account? I think we need to be smart with compensation so it not only drives the behavior but everybody wins the company and the salesperson.
Speaker 3:So another amazing thing about this episode is the all-star cast of people in the comments Brent Tillman hi, brent. Sales leader doesn't give their reps fish, they teach them to reel in whales Powerful.
Speaker 5:But you know, to Brent's comment and hello Brent, I've recommended many people to you lately who have asked about LinkedIn and how to be better in terms of using LinkedIn as a tool for selling, and the comment about catching fish versus teaching someone to become a proficient fisherman. It's really a challenge because sales managers are so challenged for their time right now and it's just easier and it's more expedient. Oftentimes it's to just go do the deal, get it done, close it, as opposed to investing in the person to make them better. And I'll just tell one quick story. That's in the book. It's in the chapter on not being the team hero.
Speaker 5:I'm leading this giant workshop for a big company, not about 130 young sales leaders in the room. This is kind of a company where they hire you out of college and if you're good, three or four years later you're a frontline manager. So I had a bunch of people in their late 20s in this room and this girl told the story how she, in her first year, was so overzealous as a sales leader. She sold for all her people and two of them made it to the president's club because she was committed to having her team be successful. And she's telling the story and we're like why are you telling this? What's the big deal? And she paused and she goes and this last year I had to fire both of those people because I realized I was doing their job for them.
Speaker 5:They didn't make president's club. I made president's club for them and when I took my hand off the wheel and I started trying to coach and develop and let them do their own thing, they weren't even capable. They were the wrong people. And it's just that lesson like because no one decided to teach them how to fish and then so she was catching the fish. She didn't even know they were in the wrong role. So a lot of danger when you do your salespeople's job.
Speaker 3:So if we went back in time and we told Mike Weinberg a few years back that he'd eventually be on a show that had social selling and the title, you might think he'd go in a completely tangential area.
Speaker 3:Mike had some big statements about social selling a few years back, but they're very valid because it was. There was a trend that was out and there was an article that Mike wrote and I know he got a lot of traction on that article and rightfully so, because it called out all of the just bad behavior, and I know this is something that Brandon talks about a lot. I'd love to hear from Mike and Brandon on this topic. But you know, mike, when social selling became this big thing a few years back and it was this whole get rid of all the you know relationship building, get rid of the cold calling you know you do this social selling mechanism, you make these posts and you're going to be rich. How is social selling, or at least maybe what social selling is known for and like its reputation in the mainstream sales area, how is it modified over the years and what are your thoughts on it today?
Speaker 5:Yeah, first of all, I love how you frame the question and you're one of the reasons that it's modified. Let's be honest, it's some of it is the role you're playing in the community and you're continually beating the drum for the how it's could be done properly. And you, you, actually. I was thinking of this answer all day because I have friends that are already like Mike. You're going to talk about social selling, like the crap in my own inbox right now is like you. They invited you to talk about social selling. Yeah, especially after what I wrote in sales truth.
Speaker 5:You started the answer by saying this because, initially, what social selling was was a replacement. You're all idiots, you're dinosaurs, you're Luddites. You're going to bother people, you're going to pick up the phone, initiate contact, don't you know? Today you can take selfie videos and you could blog and you could comment and get in people's inbox and you could do all this other stuff to social engineer and when they're ready, when they're 57% through their buying process, they'll come running to you with money and hands. And, what's interesting, those people were were preaching it's a replacement. And I said very early on and so do some of my friends who took out this battle with me, it's not a replacement, it's a supplement. The old is good and the new is good and you should use. You know if everyone's heard the channel right, like we just had this conversation with someone the other day. So the difference is the Charlotte tins that were the founders of the movement by the way, none of them are still in the sales industry and I won't say their names. But the guy who called himself the pioneer of social selling we've seen him on LinkedIn for four years begging for a job, okay. And the woman who named her firm hashtag social selling, gone doing real estate somewhere else out of Silicon Valley, and I could go through the list. And there were some more modern names I could share people that started. There was a guy that you know was a chief sales officer of a company that to claim they were the digital sales transformation people and he was talking about Kylie Jenner is going to be a billionaire on her social media efforts. You see, the cold calling isn't as effective as social media and I'm like Kylie Jenner posting half naked selfies of herself selling makeup is my example as a corporate salesperson in a business Like you're really making that argument. That's social selling, like. Are you stupid Like. So all those people are out and the people that are left are the Larry Levine's talking about. Be authentic, build a brand, carson, what you're doing, the store.
Speaker 5:You told on my podcast about the number of contacts you had in that giant like lifetime deal that you got with your massive account and how long and how long it took and the depth that you built from using LinkedIn and social engineering. So I think that's a long answer because I felt like I had to give the context because of where I was on this. But it's evolved to the place where no one's talking about as a replacement and was interesting because of the damage that was done to pipelines and results. Now everybody says we should prospect, we should initiate contact. They're not. They're not misquoting the challenge or sale research anymore and we have these great new tools and videos.
Speaker 5:Incredible, and I have I mean I would be a hypocrite Most of my relationships come from social. That's why I met you Right and a lot of these relationships have turned into real life friendships or clients. So it's the blending of all ways and if you can learn more and become warmer and be a better investigator and have a relationship, I mean I have people that I barely know, but because we commented on each other's Instagram posts. I'm a guy who's in my industry. I've seen him one time in person and I would tell you we're good friends. And I mean the day he dropped his daughter off for college and he posted something and I sent him a little private message. I'm like, dude, I've been there and every tier you shed today is valuable. Like I get it, like all of that was social, so I'll yield. But I think it's evolved hugely. Where it's part of the mainstream, one of many tools, you better use it. You better be smart.
Speaker 3:Well, the comments are any indicator. Everybody agrees with you, brandon. I want to hear your thoughts.
Speaker 4:I don't know. I like Mike soapbox. I'd like to just like scoot him over a little and jump on it. I mean I feel like I should have worn my social selling suck shirt today. You know it's. Yeah, it's in.
Speaker 4:Mike used a really important word. It was the charlatans in the early stages of it. And I think, looking at Social as a medium or as a channel to use the tried and true existing sales principles of offering value and building relationships and doing discovery and learning and research, it's fine, but it was the way people were using it. It was. It was kind of like I said this one time on on stage is like remember, with fax machines and there were the charlatans end that all of a sudden it was spamming. Fax out to people, right Facts, was a great tool at the time, but it was a way people used it and I think it's the same way and it's you know, tom and I keep working on and building and and I don't know if we feel like it's baked or part baked or will never be fully Baked. But we look at this, this revenue operating system, with a social Element to it and, and even though I like social first and a lot of areas. It doesn't mean social only, and I think we're still dealing with that stigma People that said, oh well, we tried social and it didn't work.
Speaker 4:No, you didn't try social, you tried charlatan, hack, crap, pitch-slappy shit. That didn't work and you threw it into a big category of social selling doesn't work and you never looked at it again because you got burned one time. Well, it's time to back up. We got to pick up on our big boy and big girl underwear and say what is valuable here? And let's take the time to weed out the garbage, figure out where the good soil is and leverage it. So that means personal brands are important, because personal brand means reputation. Our Communications have always been important. How much is our team getting in front of people has always been important. We we categorize is how many calls did you make in a day? What about how many conversations Did you create today? So I'll jump off my soapbox because I I that's that's obviously the one that starts pissing me off, because people threw things into a category that was crap, hack Activities, put a label on it and then everything that was near that label ended up, they believe, smelled like garbage.
Speaker 2:What was that, brandon? I want to make sure we got that Charlotte Crap pack bullshit. Was that the? Was that what you?
Speaker 4:said it's in crap, hat bullshit. I like it, I. There's a new shirt. Yeah, there's a new guys fired up today.
Speaker 3:This is amazing. I'm loving the comments, tara, but how do you really feel to Brandon? This is, this is fantastic. No, you know. What's amazing, though Like because I always I always try to really hold myself up is what I like to call a noble night of the selling game. I think it's a noble responsibility to get to de-risk decisions and solve problems for Clients and customers, and so I think that's the key element is that's what's helped. Some of the you know from the ashes of the Charlotte's and Crab hack has helped people to come up, do it responsibly and garner a good reputation. I mean, I wouldn't be where I am today without social selling, but it was doing it right. And don't get me wrong, I've made my fair share of mistakes. I've sent stuff out, it was probably received as spammy, and I've altered my approach as a result. I've been doing it for a decade. So, yeah, I think that's the key is, be willing to Acknowledge that it it's got to be done with the customer and helping the customer and serving the customer at the heart.
Speaker 4:But Carson, it's also just like we've. We've made bad cold calls before.
Speaker 3:Yeah, right, and then we've had to.
Speaker 4:We have yes that's true, but but I've made Bad cold calls before and you don't throw the phone out because you said something stupid on a cold call, right, right, and that's that's what I think happened with a lot of this is the charlatans. The automation, the pitch, slap emails Sold people a pipe dream that they were gonna press a button, it was gonna automate for 24 hours a day and they were just gonna get PO's in their inbox. And it didn't work.
Speaker 5:Well, it didn't work because it was a stupid tactic, not because it was a stupid medium, the maturity at the wisdom of what you Just shared in the last minute of you don't throw the phone out and the way you came back with that. And that's exactly what happened. The reason I picked aside and jumped in this battle is because I wanted to shoot the charlatans, to defend the sales people from the Failure that they were gonna face. If they really thought that Gary V, as brilliant as he is, drop an F bombs with his ski cap on the summer, take a selfie videos was gonna get you appointments with C-suite people Selling software like they would, you know it's not the same. It didn't translate the Kylie Jenner thing. So I'm with you and here's where it really comes down to.
Speaker 5:I guess and I've only been in the sales improvement world like 15 years, but I've seen there's been enough cycles there's always the bandwagon jumpers in our industry that need to make a living so they jump on what's hot today. So there was the social selling bad wagon. There was the account based selling bandwagon. You went through it, right and it's, and I realized, oh, this always is gonna happen. The people that don't necessarily have a following need to make a living, so they put their finger and they see which way the wind's blowing and they oh, I'm the expert now in this and I think that's what happened for a while and social was really big.
Speaker 5:It's kind of like AI today, except we all we know that AI is legit and it is going to change the world and we're all struggling with what that means. But it's interesting. I think the way people are talking about AI in our industry is much more mature and I'm hearing like wise voices say you better wake up, not like the old days. Well, the sky is falling. We're all gonna get replaced because they're gonna put in kiosks everywhere. No, I don't think that's gonna happen, but it's. How are you using these tools to come up with better probing questions, to role play, to do research, to maybe just crafting like that? But it's interesting I'm seeing people behave a little smarter where it's not not everyone's out there with the shingle. I'm now the AI sales expert, which is what we did see a decade ago with social selling.
Speaker 2:So so, mike, yeah, kind of taking this full circle. Going back to sales leadership and sales management, do you see that's a key responsibility to help the team understand how to use social, how to understand how to use AI and not, I guess, abuse it from that perspective, and at the same time not discarded as going, oh, it just doesn't work. I mean, where does that balance fit in?
Speaker 5:Yeah, I think, I think balance is the right word and I will tell you that because I'm not the tools guy and I stick to a very simple framework and fundamentals. I don't go too far personally down that path with my clients. I rather point them to you and to Brynn and to Carson and to others, because I don't I I don't like speaking out of my lane but I would say yes, but where I would also point to sale yours. We have better nailed down these fundamentals and if we can use social as a vehicle, as a tool for a lot of important things and I'm gonna listen when I'm talking with sales team In my new sales simplified mindset, there's five things we got to be able to do.
Speaker 5:You got to nail down our target list or, again, strategic, and we know who we're going after. We need compelling messaging that's about issues we address and outcomes we achieve for clients, not self-focused crap about speeds, feeds, buildings, histories, legacy. So, target list, compelling messaging. The ability to get a meeting from proactive pursuit, which with through any ethical, effective means, necessary, sometimes job one, you know, send smoke signals and a carrier page put a message in a bottle. Use Twitter, use LinkedIn in appropriate ways, not, you know, connect and pitch and bots and all the crap that's in our inboxes every day, but telephone.
Speaker 5:So targeting, messaging, proactive pursuit to get the meeting run, a great early-stage discovery, consultative sales call, and they're, for goodness sakes, on the calendar and the pipeline like an adult. And if you can master those five things, really good things happen every time. And if you lay on top of that the sales management principles of Do accountability and do coaching and get the right people in the role and don't play hero and support and discriminate and Overserve your best people to help them win and quickly coach up or coach out under performers, that's the whole book. If you do those things at the same time we're targeting, messaging, pursuing, running consultative meetings and own the counter, the pipeline. I don't know anything else about sales.
Speaker 5:What else? Am I gonna write another book? I don't know. I've told you, I've said the same thing. I don't have any more material because every time I get involved, I don't care if it's the most complex company or it's a little 20 million dollar company trying to break through the ceiling in complexity. When they do those basics that I just listed on sales management and sales, they win.
Speaker 3:Spend a second talking to us about the activity. You know kind of the activity review that managers can and should be doing with their team members and I think that kind of actually some of what you just described fits into that umbrella, right. You know, as we as sales leaders, just the value that that it, that it serves spending that time Reviewing some of the activities that our team members are doing. You know what are the tools that they're using, how are they using them? Right, because you know one tool may work really great for somebody in my line of work but may not for some others. So I think you all.
Speaker 3:For the personalized activity review really comes into place.
Speaker 5:I'll do it, but first I have to say this to Bruce Kirk captain Kirk, send me a direct message. I'm sending you a sales Street t-shirt for your comment that I shot the charlatan. That is the absolute best comment, any event, I've ever seen from any human. Bruce, if you can hear me, send me a message and I'm sending you Tales, truth, golf balls and t-shirt. Okay, that's as good as it gets today. You just made my day.
Speaker 5:Captain Kirk A Carson asked me about accountability and what that looks like. I had a mentor who was my sales manager and then was my business partner, named Donnie Williams. Guy was freaking brilliant, love salespeople, understood the heart of the salesperson but didn't like to micromanage. He came up with this framework that helps you do great accountability without micromanaging and killing someone's freedom. It's this little three-part framework. I introduced it in Sales Management, simplified eight years ago in Chapter 20.
Speaker 5:What I say is in Chapter 3 here I say your most of all the things I could have put in the first chapter, I was given advice. Chapter 1 says congratulations, you got the most important job in the world. You lead the team that drives revenue. Chapter 2 says your new job ain't nothing like your old job, buckle up. That's the winning through your people kind of transition we talked about. Then, the very first chapter that I get into coaching, it's Chapter 3. I say your most important job is making sure your people do their job.
Speaker 5:I went a little fresher and deeper in a simpler way. I explained this progression, results, pipeline activity. We all know that activity drives pipeline. If the person is talented and has skill, pipeline drives results. But where my mentor, donnie, was so brilliant, he flipped that on its head and the meeting always starts with results. Let's see where you stand. How are you doing? I'll show you how you're doing. Let's look at where you stand on the team. Where you're against your plan, against last year, you spend a minute or two looking at results. If they're great, you cheer. If they're not, you look at the sales person and go, hey, what happened? You ranked eight out of nine people on our team. What's going on? You let them sweat it a little bit, because the job of a sales manager is to transfer the burden for results from our shoulder to the producer's shoulder.
Speaker 5:The majority of this accountability meeting is spent looking at the pipeline, because that's the lifeblood of the business. What's your coverage? Are there enough deals in here. Let's do some math together, not coaching the deal, but just looking at numbers, data, not emotional data. Then I like to ask what did you create? What's new? What are we working on? We weren't working on it. Of the longer-term deals, which did you advance?
Speaker 5:What I'm telling you as sales leaders if you go through results and you go through the pipeline with everybody every month, there's nowhere to hide. Sometimes you get with a sales person and after you've gone through the pipeline, you look at them and they look at you and they're like there ain't enough in here, is there? Not only are you missing your number this quarter or last month, we're looking at the current pipeline and there's not enough business in here for you to make a number for this month. And now I'm concerned and I'm not cool with you failing. Open up the CRM. Grab me your business plan, show me the target list and get your calendar. Tell me what you did last month and this week and next week.
Speaker 5:What is on the docket for you? Because I'm concerned because your results stink and your pipeline's weak. I don't have anywhere else to turn my mentor, donnie. Where his brilliance comes in is you. Don't even ask that question until they've forced it to, because the results of the pipeline led you to the conclusion they're either not trying, which is a big problem, or sometimes worse, there is a lot of activity but they don't have the skill or the business acumen to turn those activities, conversations, into real opportunities. So, carson, thanks for asking. I think we have two big levers coaching developing our people, coaching the deal, coaching the skill, coaching life and accountability, shining the light of truth on their actual result and their pipeline. And if we would do a better job with these two levers, we could move the needle on culture results, regardless of who's on our team.
Speaker 5:So that's my strong opinion, love it.
Speaker 4:Love it.
Speaker 2:And I want to spotlight one comment that we had a few minutes ago and, as we kind of wrap up here, one of the things that Tim said is that you know, and we touched on this right we talked about data with data and customer or spreadsheets and all of that. Mike, as I listened to you and I've been listening over the last, you know, even the last few minutes what's hit me is and maybe this is more in the tech world, but there's a confusion between RevOps, or revenue operations, and sales management and sales leadership, and you know, as you peel those two apart, those are two very different jobs and very different responsibilities that I think it all gets mashed up together into one thing.
Speaker 5:Tom, no one is talking about what he just said. I remember he said it that way, like that's a brilliant assessment, because what's happened? This is what I've seen, the big tech companies and you know tech is like 10% of my business. I'm in the industrial world, I'm in a lot of other places, but I'm in enough tech companies and I get out to California enough to have this feel.
Speaker 5:There's always this confusion between the forecast and the pipeline, and particularly if it's a public company and Carson lives in this world, so he Carson correct me if I misspeak but what's? Because everyone's got short-term thinking and they got to make the quarter and the CFO is freaking out and sending out spreadsheets to the EVP of sales, who's then sending it down to the front lines, the RVPs, and like it all. It all the shit goes downhill. Everyone is running around nuts talking about what they call the outlook or the forecast, what deals are going to close for the quarter. That is not the same conversation I just articulated, where you sit someone down and go, hey, would you put the pipeline and what are we working and what did you advance? Because that's the accountability conversation and that gets completely lost in the tech or public company world where I have to make the quarter. No one's thinking about the pipeline and the health, they're talking about the forecast. And the way you just articulated that, where Rebops gets confused with sales management, I think is absolutely brilliant.
Speaker 3:I think most of the whether or not I'm going to make the quarter was determined last quarter or the quarter before that, based on what I put in the pipeline.
Speaker 4:But that's the way you think about it and the problem is not enough people think about it right. You see, too often companies, there's two weeks to go before the quarter and all sales activity let me rephrase it the right sales activity just gets thrown out the door and everybody goes into fire drill to try and close deals. And then they wonder why their customers are so fricking confused as to really who they are and where the conversation is going to go, because they think, oh, we're going to offer you a 20% discount, but you got to close by this date and it completely changes the relationship with their buyers and their reputation and everything else, because it was pushed down for a fire drill.
Speaker 3:Oh, it's hilarious because I'm the opposite of most tech sellers and when I first started selling in tech, what I hear from a lot of customers was you know, you're the biggest check, right, I don't give you anymore. Or the only time you ever show up is when you want our money. So I try to take the most counterintuitive approach, to say things like hey, I, it's my job to ensure that you're privy to all the resources that you're entitled to because of your significant investment. And lo and behold, I could get any meeting I wanted because I showed up with that mentality and that mantra zero tech background. So I started bringing in all the smart people. I knew the smart people and I was successful because I was resourceful, because of relationships, and that's it.
Speaker 5:Yeah, but I don't want don't lose this point. And brand is little hand gesture was exactly the point, and this is what's lost today. With like a mentoring, you flip the whole thing on its head. It wasn't about carcin and microsoft anymore, it was about the client. Your whole point, in the way you message to them and the way you came across, is I'm here to work with you and I want to maximize your outcome. It was completely selfless in your sales approach and I mean we all see it today with sales people.
Speaker 5:There are people with business acumen and the presence that understand how to come across like a consultant and a value creator, but the majority of people in sales roles do not sound like you sound. I'm here because I'm under pressure to get a deal and I gotta figure out what pain you might have. So let me torture you because I gotta get you a proposal, because I have a need to get a deal done, not when are you struggling and what's going on? By the way, your client I wanna make sure you're maximizing your, your bed from being our client, like that's a night and day difference.
Speaker 4:I don't know, brandon, you know what you want, like this yeah, exactly. And that all goes right back to your, your book, right? We as managers? They're not equipped To do the right thing at the right time and stay the course. And what I love I think I say this a lot times what I've learned from carcin, what carcin does really well, is simply this he just shifts the perspective, just enough, and it completely changes the story, the narrative in the conversation.
Speaker 3:Everything's gotta be all about the client. I mean, it blows my mind sometimes that more people don't take that approach or talk like that or sound like that, because that's how a small town kid like me, a clown like me, became the top Social seller in the biggest brand in the world. Like you know, anybody can do it. I'm not that special.
Speaker 4:You are marty mcflane junior you are.
Speaker 5:You are dreamy, don't forget you are dreamy, I want to add one one thirty second point to carcin's wrap up because I think it's so illustrative for what sales managers need to be doing. If we as leaders would spend more time in the field and in customer calls and prepping for calls and debriefing after them with our people, we can help them become the type of seller that carcin is and why he's been so successful. It was that brand, is that flip? Because if you're out there on your own, you don't even know you're doing it, you don't see it. But if your mentors with you and they care that you're modeling for you or they challenge you about it, and that changes performance. So Salute, salute the whole conversation yeah, well, thank you, my carcin.
Speaker 2:Did this live up to your, to your expectations for your birthday episode?
Speaker 3:I'm gonna go out there and watch this again, as I have a piece of cake and play with the dog and hang out with the family.
Speaker 4:So yeah, I think the only thing left was tom was gonna sing happy birthday, was gonna do a solo before we went out. Less, less mic.
Speaker 2:Mr president style yeah, no, I let lia do that. She did a better job.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's all downhill from the cake today, you guys, I did yourselves. So, my, I don't even know if I can come back next week after the. How high of a show.
Speaker 5:This was the best I think you'll figure it out. I think you'll figure it out. Yeah.
Speaker 4:And my give a give a little pitch to your, your, your, next event. In it, lana says it's. I was thinking it's next year, but it's right around the corner is it is.
Speaker 5:We booked all the dates. We keep going back to lana cuz they're so good to us. People love that venue and we do three, four times a year. Yeah, we need to come over. We might. We might have a little room for special guest brain, and so now that we're buddies, I think we should have a conversation with him okay, then you think carcin's gotta come to.
Speaker 5:Three or four times a year I do an event called supercharger sales leadership. We limited to fifty people. It's a premium venue. We've currently been doing the last seven of them at the portion experience center, which is truly the end of the runway In atlanta at the airport, so any human can get there on one flight.
Speaker 5:We have people come truly from Dubai, we have people come from london and then all over the us and it's just a full day drinking from the fire hose on the keys from sales manager simplified and now from the first time, manager sales and some people come for two days and they stay in, drive cars the next day and you get extra coaching and some other things like that and it's. Those are the most satisfying days of my career because everyone in the room wants to be there and they bring their heart and they share their challenges and frustrations and we group problem solve and we we go deep on the topics we've already addressed. So you can find out more about the supercharger event or other things I'm doing for sales leaders at Mike Weinberg dot com and there's a little events tab on the menu. You can Read out right there can I?
Speaker 4:can I book the first slot in that event, since I don't have to get on a plane?
Speaker 5:you can call me a little side conversation here.
Speaker 2:Perfect, right, well, and I. There's a couple questions about getting the recording. Definitely also, if you want to get any of the past recordings, it's pod Social selling two, two dot two zero. Social selling two zero dot com and it's on all the podcast. So please go go subscribe to social selling two dot. Oh, and we're also on youtube and you get the replay here on linkedin as well. All right, well again, thanks again, mike. Happy birthday to Carson. Get the book at the book happy birthday to Carson.
Speaker 5:Go buy yourself a copy this book for Carson's birthday.
Speaker 2:That's right, my publisher and I thank you, carson. Wrap us up here my thank you.
Speaker 3:Safe travels to my friend always a pleasure to see you and Brandon tom man, thank you for a special show and for everybody that was on. Thank you all. Steven, saw your comment good to see a brother. Thanks for calling today and until next time happy social selling. Thanks everyone everybody.
Speaker 2:Hey tom Burton here and I wanted to personally thank you for listening, for watching today's episode of social selling two dot. Oh. If you enjoyed or found value in today's show, please share with your friends and colleagues. Also, we'd really appreciate it if you could leave a review on itunes or your favorite podcast outlet. And please also subscribe to our youtube channel and join our free online community at social selling two zero dot com. There you'll get free access to the latest social selling resources, training sessions, webinars and can collaborate with other social selling professions. Thank you again for listening and I look forward to seeing you in our next episode.