[Top Agency Series] Unlocking the Sales Potential in Your Agency With Ali Mirza of Rose Garden

Ali Mirza is the Founder and CEO of Rose Garden Consulting, renowned for guiding seven- and eight-figure founders in scaling their sales operations. Having personally closed over $400 million in deals, Ali has a track record of elevating companies onto the Inc. 500 fastest-growing list and seeing them through successful acquisitions. He is the author of Predictable Closing and Radical Leadership, and his influential work has been spotlighted in Forbes and Business Insider. With a focus on systematic approaches to sales, Ali’s leadership has transformed founders into leaders who achieve predictable, scalable revenue growth.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [4:44] Ali Mirza shares his expertise in transforming organizations with founder-led sales teams into scalable and systematic revenue generators
• [7:42] Why the biggest hindrance to scaling sales is often the founder’s own ego and resistance to change
• [14:02] Ali emphasizes the importance of accountability and realistic performance assessment within sales teams
• [17:30] The dangers of not addressing underperformance and why leaders need to be more direct with their teams
• [22:46] The value of having defined processes and setting clear and measurable goals
• [28:05] Common mistakes in sales leadership
• [31:42] Ali discusses the need for stronger positioning and differentiation strategies in agency sales processes
• [36:23] The value of firm accountability and the power of direct conversations

In this episode…

Are you tired of the never-ending chase for the next big client and the sheer unpredictability of revenue growth? What if the way you have been doing sales is not just ineffective, but also destructive to your company’s future? Could it be time for a radical change in your approach?

Thought leader in sales Ali Mirza offers a compelling look at the often-overlooked aspects of sales teams and leadership that can make or break an agency’s success. He reveals that the biggest obstacle to sales growth can be the founders themselves, stuck in ego-driven patterns that stifle progress. Ali dives into the all-too-common problems of inefficient sales leadership, weak positioning, and a lack of accountability — a trifecta that hinders many.

In this episode of Inspired Insider Podcast, host Dr. Jeremy Weisz interviews Ali Mirza, Founder and CEO of Rose Garden Consulting, about shifting from founder-led sales to scalable teams. Ali shares a no-nonsense rundown on why strong leadership and results-focused strategies are non-negotiable in the high-stakes world of agency sales, his holistic approach that led to monumental growth during his time as a CRO, and how embracing direct conversations can transform your sales approach.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Ali Mirza on LinkedIn
• Rose Garden Consulting
• Predictable Closing: Why Quotas Are Rarely Hit, Why Reps Never Achieve Their Full Potential, and How It’s All Been Caused by Overcorrection by Ali Mirza
• Radical Leadership: An Unconventional Guide by Ali Mirza

Special Mention(s):

• Second Bite Podcast
• Predatory Thinking by Dave Trott
• Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High by Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler, and Kerry Patterson
• Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol S. Dweck
• Don’t Get Mad at Penguins: And Other Ways to Detox the Conflict in Your Life and Business by Gabe Karp
• Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity by Kim Scott

Related episode(s):

• “[Top Agency Series] Building Sales Teams for Strategic Business Growth With Scott Scully” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Top Agency Series] Most Valuable Advice When Selling Your Agency With Todd Taskey of Potomac Business Capital” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Top Agency Series] Navigating a Merger and Becoming an End-to-End Digital Partner With Kevin Hourigan of Spinutech” on the Inspired Insider Podcast

Quotable Moments:

• “Sales is the only department on the good side of the income statement. Everyone else needs to be supported by the sales team.”
• “Just because you haven’t figured it out, that’s okay. You’ve got a gift somewhere else.”
• “You cannot afford to keep people on staff just because they’re nice people.”
• “Leadership’s not a role, a position; it’s an action.”
• “Everything is figure-outable.”

Action Steps:

1. Embrace a growth mindset: Acknowledge potential for improvement in sales strategies instead of being fixed on past methods. This encourages adaptation and innovation, essential for keeping up with evolving markets and customer needs.
2. Set clear targets and establish measurable goals: Ensure all sales team members know what great performance looks like. Targets motivate and guide sales teams toward tangible outcomes, improving focus and efficiency.
3. Conduct honest performance assessments: Regularly evaluate sales team members without bias. This helps in identifying areas for improvement, coaching opportunities, and making necessary staffing adjustments.
4. Define and implement structured sales processes: Provide a standardized path for achieving goals. Consistent processes create a reliable framework for sales activities, leading to predictable results.
5. Differentiate with intention: Craft your agency’s messaging to truly stand out in the prospect’s mind. Differentiation solidifies your agency’s unique value, making it memorable and preferred among potential clients.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:01 

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr Jeremy Weisz.

Jeremy Weisz 0:22 

Dr Jeremy Weisz here, founder of inspiredinsider.com, where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders, today is no different. I have. Ali Mirza of Rose Garden, rosegardenconsulting.com. Ali, I always like to point out other episodes people should check out before I formally introduce you and since this is part of the top agency series, because what Ali really does, he’s a specialist. I’m gonna kind of go more in depth than this, in helping sales teams and helping companies grow, ultimately. And he really helps a lot of agencies do this. So some of the top agencies. One I did was actually Scott Scully. Scott Scully, founder and CEO of Abstrakt Marketing Group. They do b2b lead generation, and he’s been doing it for many years. Really successful company. That was a great interview with Scott.

Also another one I’ll use Todd Taskey. Todd Taskey helps pair private equity with agencies and actually help sell agencies. And he’s got the Second Bite Podcast because he finds sometimes those companies sell more for the second bite, and they do on the first because of the private equity landscape. So we talked about valuation. Usually I just actually didn’t interview with them. They don’t work with companies that are less than a million dollars of EBITDA typically, so a million or more. I mean, there’s been some exceptions there, but most of the time that’s the case. So that was an interesting one.

Also Kevin Hourigan. Kevin Hourigan has had an agency since 1995 he runs Spinutech, and he talked about kind of just the ever changing landscape of business, the internet and the agency world since that time. So those are good ones to check out. This episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25 we help businesses give to and connect to their dream relationships and partnerships. And what do we do? We do that by helping you run your podcast.

We are an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast, and we do this strategy, which is the most important, the accountability and the full execution. Ali we call ourselves the magic elves that run in the background to make it look easy for the host and the company so they can create amazing content, create amazing relationships, and, most importantly, run their business. For me, the number one thing in my life is relationships. I’m always looking at ways to give to my best relationships, and I have found no better way, over the past decade, to profile the people and companies I most admire and share with the world of what they’re working on. So if you’ve thought about podcasting, you should if you have questions, go to rise25.com, or email us at [email protected].

I’m excited to introduce Ali Mirza. He’s a sales expert who’s personally closed over $400 million and has consulted with hundreds of agencies, 18 of them actually achieving Inc. 500 fastest growing companies. Three of those have been acquired. His work’s been published all over the place, Forbes, Business Insider and Maury has actually two books, Predictable Closing and Radical Leadership. He’s see of Rose Garden, which I mentioned. Rose Garden is a nationally recognized consulting group of strategists for seven eight figure founders looking to ignite the revenue by scaling their sales teams, and they’ve helped hundreds of organizations, from founder led sales teams to SMBs with senior level sales leaders. And basically, you can correct me if I’m wrong, but they help really build and improve your sales team. They also help increase close ratio, average deal value and much more. He formally served as CRO, a digital marketing agency that went from $2.5 million to over $40 million in there. In his tenure. Ali thanks for joining me.

Ali Mirza 4:11 

Thank you so much. You made me sound so good. Now I’m a little impressed by myself. Thank you for that intro. It was wonderful.

Jeremy Weisz 4:19 

I could be your wing person. I’ll just show up wherever you are, and I’ll just read that off.

Ali Mirza 4:24 

I you know, I did not know you knew my boy, Kevin. Kevin’s actually a friend of mine. We work together. Kevin Hourigan, yeah, oh yeah. Kevin from Spinutech, yeah. Interesting. Small world.

Jeremy Weisz 4:35 

Fantastic guy. Very small. Just start off with Rose Garden and what you do?

Ali Mirza 4:44 

We help organizations build and scale their sales teams. So a lot of times we’ll walk into organizations where the founder is the best salesperson, regardless of whether they’re the only salesperson or they’ve got a few but they’re typically bringing in majority of the revenue or they have someone that brings in revenue, but it’s not systematic, it’s not predictable, it’s not scalable or repeatable. And so what we do is, we come in, we’ll analyze, okay, what’s working, what’s not working, what’s not being done, that needs to be done, and from there, we’ll actually build out systems, processes, playbooks, scripts, all the strategy for how do we go about building a machine that is repeatable, scalable, and all that jazz.

So systematically, we know which humans to hire, what to tell them to do exactly, and then how to gauge their performance and success so that we can hold them accountable appropriately, but then ensure that they’re producing revenue. Sales is the only department that’s on the good side of the income statement. And so everyone else, it needs to be supported by the sales team. And so if your sales teams not predictably generating revenue, profitable revenue, then you’ve got a, I don’t know, maybe you got a hustle at best, but it’s not a business.

Jeremy Weisz 5:59 

What are the things people are calling you about the issues in their company. Is it someone? Is it a leader that’s like, I can’t do this anymore, like, all my time? Like, what are the pain points they’re hitting by the time they call you?

Ali Mirza 6:15 

I think it really is just they are either frustrated or exhausted with that hamster wheel, that grind of constantly having to chase that next dollar, that next deal, and not having any comfort as to where it’s coming from, or once they’ve sourced it, not really having any understanding of the likelihood of clothes, right? It’s just a hope. If we put out enough proposals, if we answer enough RFPs, if we talk to enough people, go to enough trade shows, networking events, tap my network, my vistage group, my EO group, enough times, something will shake out, but they don’t have that understanding that intentionality of X number of reps at it will likely equate to X number of dollars.

They don’t have that understanding. And so once they’re finally willing to accept that, maybe there’s a better way, and that just that does not have to be their reality. That’s kind of where our conversations will start. If you haven’t come to that understanding yet, or you’re still want to play hero ball and throw it on your back and then say, now, I’ll figure it out. Then, you know, usually there’s not much of a conversation to have at that point.

Jeremy Weisz 6:23 

What do you find is holding those people back from founder-led sales?

Ali Mirza 7:42 

It’s one thing and one thing only, and everything else is diversion or confusion. It’s themselves. It’s their own ego. It’s the day you can get over yourself and realize that there might be a better way. Is the day you’ll start looking for the solution, because until then, you’re only looking for the problems that confirm why you are the only one that can do it and will be only the only one that will be able to do it.

Jeremy Weisz 8:08 

Sometimes, do you feel, is it taking a leap from, because it’s an investment, right?

Ali Mirza 8:15 

No.

Jeremy Weisz 8:16 

No, you don’t think so.

Ali Mirza 8:18 

I mean, well, first of all, everything’s an investment, yes, and so once you move forward with doing it, yes, it’s an investment. But the reality is, what are we considering, right? And the answer is nothing. So it takes nothing to think through what could be the potential solution. And actually be honest with yourself, it takes nothing. All that time you spend scrolling Instagram, all that time you spend in traffic, all that time you spend doing nothing right, you could just pontificate on what would great look like and what might success look like. And once you start doing that, you understand it’s not that complicated.

Then from there, once you have that understanding and you have that, it’s still not assurance yet, but it’s just an understanding, just understanding and some level of knowledge of where you’re going in that clarity, that in itself, is quite reassuring and actually lessens the risk. The reality is most of these founders, again, because of their ego, refuse to believe that there’s a better way. Want to continue to tell themselves these comforting lies that make themselves feel good, and then refuse to actually explore potential opportunities.

Then, at that point, yes, because you haven’t explored what it could look like, so you’re not aware, then yes, it feels like a gamble because you’re wildly unaware and ignorant to what the actual solutions could be. Because, I mean, how has every other industry been able to figure it out? How have other agencies been able to figure it out? Are you going to sit here and tell me that they add some magical beans that you’re just not privy to do? I don’t know. Well, if you believe that I’ve got some magical beans to sell you. But outside of that, I mean, it’s pretty straightforward.

Jeremy Weisz 10:06 

Do you think there’s some fear, though, involved, like no one can sell, let’s say the founders thinking no one could sell as good as I can. I’m fearful if I bring someone in, then we won’t get the sales.

Ali Mirza 10:19 

So I could go very esoteric with that question. And I don’t think it’s fear of that. I think it’s fear of, I won’t be, you know, worthy of a gold star anymore, because it is like, how do you know that to be the case, right? Like, okay, so let’s play this out, right? Okay, so my fear is that I’m going to hire somebody and they’re not going to be able to sell as well as I am, and I’m just going to hand over everything to them, and we’re going to lose millions of dollars. Okay, how would that happen? Why would that happen? Why would you hire somebody that is an unknown quantity and then turn everything over to them? That sounds ridiculous, and if you’re going to do that, I mean, that’s just a bad idea, and you deserve what’s coming to you.

So if you actually play it out, you hire somebody, you go through a systematic process of trying to understand who you should hire, then from there, understanding how you should ramp them, and how should you slowly piece business off to them until they’re slowly because there’s levels to this, right? And so until they’re slowly able to edge up level by level by level by level. And of course, they’re going to make mistakes. And of course, from day one, they’re not going to be as good as you. But if they can consistently produce revenue. Because what I’ve found with a lot of founders is q1, if q4 of the previous year was bad, q1 of the current year will be great, but then q2 and potentially q3 will be bad, because now you’re no longer generating revenue. Now you’re servicing said revenue, and then you start to feel a dip, and now you start to generate revenue again, right?

So you’ll either have a quarter on quarter off or quarter on two quarters off, depending on how good that previous quarter was. And so let’s just say that a great quarter for you could look like $5 million $1 million in net new revenue. Okay? And what does a great quarter look like for a junior rep? I don’t know, let’s call it half a million. Okay, yeah, they’re half as good as you, but you get that half a million consistently. At the end of the year, they produce equally as much as you produced a million quarter one and a million in quarter four. This junior rep, this person that’s not as good as you, allegedly produce half a million every single quarter at the end of the year, you’re in the same spot. Number one, number two, if you allow for that, what did you accomplish with your freed up time?

Number three, and probably more importantly, we can go and get five of those little guys, and now we got 10 million. And it’s just like, okay, yeah, that sounds like I was someone. I know there’s gonna be someone saying, like, okay, yeah, that sounds great, but it doesn’t work that way. Blah, blah, yeah, yeah, yeah, tell yourself whatever you want. Okay? And then they say, well, my answer to these people is always the same, no, no, you can’t do it, so get out of the way and let somebody else who can do it, right? Just because you haven’t figured it out, that’s okay. You’ve got a gift somewhere else. Go focus on that. Right?

You know who Maria Forleo is, right? She’s great. She says the rule of figure outable, right? Rule number one, everything is figure-outable. Rule number two, if something is not figure-outable, it’s a fact, stop arguing with it. Rule number three, if it’s figure-outable, but just not for you, maybe you just need to understand that it’s just not your passion and someone else can figure it out, just not for you to figure out, right? But then you need to step out of the way and let somebody else figure it out. Sales is figure-outable. So that’s what I’ll say about that.

Jeremy Weisz 14:02 

I start there because I feel like there’s a lot of mindset stuff. And I’m sure people come to you with certain, I don’t know what you call it baggage or past thoughts on this topic, and it’s just their own perception of this, right? And what place do you think an agency needs to be at, from a revenue whatever, I don’t know, whatever metric you deem proper to start to get out of founder led sales?

Ali Mirza 14:37 

So a lot of it. So that’s asking me, like, how long is a piece of string? But I’ll try my best, because a lot of it depends on if you got an exit and you’re sitting on Trust Fund money, or a daddy’s money, or you’re just sitting on a couple million dollars of cash, right? So there’s that outlier, most of us are not in that situation. There’s also the profitability of how clean you run your operation, right? For someone, they could probably start thinking about getting out of sales at 3 million in revenue, if they’re running a clean, clean outfit. But for some people, 7 million is not enough. Because, you know, they got 7X wives that they are hemorrhaging money.

And from there, they got boat payments, etc, etc. And so they, at the end of the year, they got nothing left over. So it just depends. So first of all, you have to find some path of profitability first, once you have profit, now you take those profits and you reinvest it into the organization by ways of increasing the revenue through a salesperson. So that would be kind of the first thing that I’d look at. And what I found, typically, if you’re running a relatively clean agency, you know the starting point is around the $3 million mark is when you can start looking to get out of the sales. Again, I’ll say this: If at the $5 to $7 million mark, you cannot afford to get out of the sales yet, you’re doing something wrong. You’re either too cheap or you’re hemorrhaging money like something’s wrong, is what I would say. But again, I’m not anyone’s money manager.

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