Jeremy Weisz 16:08
Well, I asked that too, because, like, let’s say someone is like, “Oh, listen, I’m at a million dollars. I want to get out of sales.” And you may go, “listen, call me when you’re 3 million.” At what point does it make sense?
Ali Mirza 16:20
Yeah, I would just simply say correct. I mean, I think at a million dollars, if you want to get out of sales, I mean, that’s a bigger or a different problem, because you’re trying to get out of sales because you dislike it so much. And then at that point, like, if you’re the founder and CEO, like, is that the right role for you? Because at the end of the day, as a CEO, you’re always going to be selling. It’s just the entire revenue growth of the business just shouldn’t be on your back at some point. But I do think you’re trying to dip too early. If you’re at a million and that tells me it’s, you know, bigger systemic problems, especially if you come to me with the mindset of, hey, I’m at $600,000 a year, or a million or a million, or a million and a half, and I’m trying to make this passive income. Oh, boy, that’s a bad idea.
Jeremy Weisz 17:09
You’ve helped a lot of agency owners. And so I’d love to hear some of the things, what agency owners should start doing and what agency owners should stop doing. I’ll let you start with whichever one you think we should start with either whether they should start doing or stop doing.
Ali Mirza 17:30
Let’s go with what they should stop doing. That always gets me, gets me going a lot more. Stop making excuses for your people. I think one of the biggest things that I’ve realized, especially as of late, is people don’t want to objectively look at the performance of the individuals they have on their team, and they seem to think that you’ve got one brush that you’re going to paint an individual with. And there’s a lot of leaders that feel very guilty when they have to be realistic and because they’ll have an individual on their team that they like, but this individual is not committed. This individual is a good person, great person, socially outside, nice person.
You like them as a friend, but they’re not committed to your goals, they’re not efficient in their work, and they’re not producing results, but because you like them as a person, you refuse to look at those things and address them accordingly. Or maybe this person is a good person, and they are committed, but they’re not efficient, and they’re not producing results. Or maybe this person’s a good person, maybe they are committed, maybe they’re very efficient, but they’re not achieving the results. And Rose Garden you measured against one question, one question only, is, did you achieve the necessary results? Because, if not, very little else matters.
We can talk about the other things after, because they are important. How you got there is important, but if you didn’t even get there, then we got to first figure that part out, so the results and so when we sit there and I talk to people, and I ask leaders, is, like, what’s going on with this person? Oh, great person. I love Jeremy. Jeremy’s just a great individual. Like, I don’t care. I really don’t care about Jeremy, I’m trying to figure out what is Jeremy producing. Did you hire Jeremy as a salesperson because you liked him, or did you hire Jeremy as a salesperson because you needed Jeremy to produce revenue? And nine times out of 10, you find out they hired Jeremy because they liked them, right?
They had the job opening because they needed revenue produced, but they hired Jeremy because they like Jeremy, and now, they refuse to and feel guilty in addressing Jeremy’s performance, because they feel like, if they address Jeremy’s performance realistically, somehow that’s an indictment on his character and that he’s a bad person. It’s not true. Nothing could be further from the truth. Because the reality is, if Jeremy was a bad person, he wouldn’t still be here. The reason why Jeremy still continues to exist is because he’s a good person. But how are we being good leaders by allowing Jeremy to not produce results? Do you think Jeremy is happy with his results? No, he’s looking at you as leadership to guide him, and you are refusing to, you are shirking your responsibilities.
And so I think that that becomes a real problem, that a lot of leaders now need to face it. They need to stop babying people, because your business can no longer afford it, not in this market, not in this market where everyone’s budgets are getting slashed. People are losing accounts, left, right and center. Net new revenue growth is at an all-time low. You cannot afford to keep people on staff just because they’re nice people, because, you know what? How is this fair to the other people whose job isn’t revenue generation but is dependent on Jeremy bringing in net new revenue? What are you going to say to them when you got to lay them off?
You really think that you’re being responsible because the first person that you serve, is your business, because the business is a living, breathing thing, and if you’re not serving that person, you are not doing the right thing. So to me, again, it’s not about firing Jeremy. It’s about looking at Jeremy realistically. Okay, Jeremy’s a nice person. Jeremy is committed. Jeremy is efficient. Maybe he’s not that efficient, but we need to make him a little bit more efficient, but Jeremy’s not producing the results. Okay? Results. Okay, now that we have addressed it and looked at the reality of the situation, now we can begin to solve it, but people can’t start solving problems until they look at what the actual problem is. But they refuse to look at the problem, because, again, like I said, they somehow believe it to be an indictment on the individual, and they feel guilty about that.
What you really should be feeling guilty about is murdering your own company, because that’s what you’re doing. Because there’s a lot of agencies going bankrupt right now because they chose to keep a lot of nice people on staff and not have appropriate direct conversations with them. And again, I’m not talking about firing Jeremy because he’s a nice person. I’m talking about having an appropriate conversation and helping Jeremy produce results by being honest with yourself and then with him. Sorry. So I got my soapbox done.
Jeremy Weisz 22:08
No, I love hearing your thought process on that. And so one thing agency owners should stop doing is really, they’re not objectively looking at these things, but I want to talk about if there’s anything else they should stop doing. But on that topic, it sounds like there’s failure points from the sales leaders in that situation. So what are some of the mistakes that the sales leaders are making with that particular sale, or with the sales team?
Ali Mirza 22:46
Several. One, they don’t have clearly defined processes and expectations aren’t clearly set, right, in terms of, what does great look like? Right? What are the goals? What are the milestones to getting to the goals? What are the activities that must be present, devoid of achieving said result or not, and the how we go about doing it and then having that clearly understood in a very strategic and intentional fashion? I think that you and I are both basketball fans. You’re familiar with the shot, the floater, right? Tony Parker made it quite famous, right? The floater is technically a bad shot, right? Is it because it’s a lower percentage shot for most people, is because you control the trajectory of the ball to the apex of the arc, right? And then you allow gravity to do the rest.
You’d let gravity take, you let Jesus take the wheel, gravity in that situation, and it controls it to the rest of the rim, the remainder of the arc, or the remaining 50% it’s a bad shot. And when you actually shoot a three pointer. You don’t shoot a floater, right? You control the trajectory all the way to the back of the rim, and that, thus making it a higher percentage shot, because you have more control over. Sales is no different, right? So whether it be sales itself or sales leadership, too many people float sales and sales leadership. They say, let me give you the information. Let me let you do your own thing, right? You’re floating and shirking your responsibilities to me.
You have to control it through and through. Because once you create that control, you Institute it, and you hold the individuals accountable enough of it, it creates that muscle memory. It creates that pattern of what an appropriate way to do it is. If you got 10 lunatics doing 10 separate things, you will never have any control. You will never have any predictability, right? Versus, if I, as a leader, sales leader, want to control my team and want them producing results, I have to tell them what they have to do, because I should know what they should be doing. If I’m going to hire a bunch of people and I don’t know what they’re supposed to be doing, how can they ever look at me for guidance?
They can’t. So that’s where sales leadership, a lot of times, is failing, is they’ll hire people to let them do whatever they want. They’ll say, oh, I was talking to a CEO the other day, and he was telling me, he’s like, oh, I’ve got this young guy in Miami, really good looking guy, XYZ, he’s responsible for net new revenue. I’m like, oh, what does he do? All day long? He’s like, Oh, he’s down there. He’s got a lot of networks. He’s got a lot of connections. He knows a lot of people. He’s just one of those guys that knows a lot of people. And like, I get that, like, what does he do? He’s like, oh, he gets after it. I’m like, what does he do? He’s like, oh, he pounds the pavement. I’m like, okay, so you’re telling me he walks outside every single day and he punches the concrete. Because if he’s doing that, I strongly suggest he should stop.
And then he’s like, oh, I guess I don’t know what he does. I’m like, okay, that’s the reality. Okay, now that we’ve gotten to some point of honesty with ourselves, okay, now we can build up from there. Okay, you don’t know what he does all day long. That’s okay. Let’s start trying to figure it out, right? And I think that a lot of times, when we actually sit down and look at what our people are doing on a day to day basis, we find out how open their schedules really are, because there’s a lot of people. I was in a meeting the other day up in Connecticut with an organization and their sales guy. I’ve got the CEO who is managing the sales guy, and I’ve got the CEO and the Chief Marketing Officer both in the room, and the sales guy’s not in the room. And I asked the CEO, like, okay, well, what’s taking up this individual’s time? And he’s telling me, oh, he spends this much time doing this, this much time doing this. He spends about five hours a week on the marketing stuff. And then the CMO perks up, whoa, what? And then, and he’s just like, how much time did you just say?
And he’s like, says about five hours. That’s what Mike says. Tells me he spends about five hours a week doing some marketing liaison. And then the CMO is just like, Mike shows up to the marketing meetings. He’s only there just so he’s in the loop. It’s a 30 minute meeting. He contributes nothing. He never has any action items out of it. That’s what’s happening. You get these people who are like, oh, I’m so busy, I’m so stressed. Oh, I’ve got to do this. I’ve got to do that. That’s where they’re hiding and that’s where you’re losing your money. I’m not sitting here telling you that all your people are stealing and robbing you blind. What I’m telling you is that guy, Mike, very nice guy, well intentioned, but what we don’t realize is the stuff we tell him to do, what is the mental load and fatigue it actually places on him? Right now, we all know that Mike’s phoning it in, right?
But it probably is taking up at least two hours mentally of his time, whatever he thinks he needs to prep beforehand and afterwards and whatever to come in there, just in the event that he’s called on right because he brings in his pipeline, and he preps for it specifically, I guess, for the marketing meeting and to never be called on. But it’s wasting time. It’s things like that that are killing organizations. Figure out what your people are supposed to be doing, and just let them do that.
Jeremy Weisz 28:05
So, at least so from a sales leader perspective. Let me see if I have this straight right from mistakes wise, no expectations, no real goals, no real milestones, not knowing what the activity is and not objectively looking at the salespeople, there’s an accountability issue. Can be an accountability issue and maybe a no process issue. Anything else that I’m missing from the mistakes that sales leaders make that they don’t may not even realize they’re making.
Ali Mirza 28:38
No, those are excellent takeaways. Actually, the only other thing that I would say to add to that would be is, very quickly we can become very disillusioned and tell ourselves, Well, yeah, well, I’ve given my people goals, but just be honest with yourself, are those a SMART goals, quantifiable in any sort of meaningful way? And will those goals actually help you get to your end outcome. And then how are you tracking them and measuring them on a weekly basis, from an activities and a results standpoint? And then how are you holding your team accountable? And where’s that feedback loop? Because I’ve seen a lot of people have goals, allegedly, but then there’s just like, oh yeah, we put it on. Paper at the beginning of the year and oh, let me go dust it off.
It’s like, if, unless you’re looking at it on a weekly — I look at our goals on a daily basis. We use Google Sheets internally for everything. We’re HubSpot certified and all that jazz. But I still like my sheets. It just looks sexier for me. And I’m looking at my goals on a daily basis. We update everything in HubSpot. I personally look at all my goals on it Google Sheets every single day. I’ve got them plastered right here on my TV.
Jeremy Weisz 29:46
From the stop doing perspective. And what should agencies start doing? Maybe it’s the reverse of stop doing, but what should they start doing?
Ali Mirza 29:57
Well, I think yes, the reverse of this. Up doing. But I think I would actually want to double click on the intentionality component with being honest with yourself as to why a sale may or may not occur. And so I had a former employee, Alex. Jeremy, you met Alex, right? Alex, good peoples, Alex would always talk about a pre-mortem, right? So a lot of people talk about a post mortem, like after the death. It’s like, yeah, well, yeah, hindsight is 2020, but it doesn’t really help you much on that deal. So Alex loved doing a pre mortem. Alex is a lot smarter than me. Alex was a nerd, but, like, the data guy, right? So he was always in the pre mortem, and he’s just like, why is this deal gonna go? Is this deal gonna go wrong? Like he was just a negative Nancy as you can I loved it, because he just would sales guys would come in all excited, and then he was the exact opposite of filling him full of piss and vinegar.
He would just deflate the living hell out of him. Alex would be like, okay, why would this deal die? This deal is gonna die because of this and this and this and this reason, and then this is gonna happen. And just you like, that’s something that you really need to start doing. So when you’re submitting a proposal, when you’re submitting an RFP, stop sitting in your comfort zone. And it was what was ultimately helpful for him to understand that, like, okay, how do I differentiate myself? How do I actually turn this around in a way in which it’s actually going to help. And so I just think that more people need to start asking themselves those honest questions of, okay, how do I differentiate myself? If I’ve just put case studies in there, that’s not gonna be enough, because my case study is really good, but their case studies are also gonna be really good. What’s that narrative that we’ve got? So again, sitting down and being honest with yourself about, why would you win a deal? Why would you lose a deal?
Jeremy Weisz 31:42
I want to talk about the, I mentioned you formerly served as CRO of a digital marketing agency went they went from 2.5 to 40 million during your tenure. So I want to talk about some of the things that you helped implement. We won’t have enough time to really one of the things I find fascinating about you is, you’ve been in the trenches for many, many years, including selling life insurance, I think, door to door, building over 50 person sales team. So we want to get to talk about those war stories, although I would love to at some point. Let’s talk about CRO and when you were a CEO of the digital marketing agency, and what were some of the things that you saw help put in place, and maybe some lessons along the way.
Ali Mirza 32:31
A lot. I mean, my time as a CRO I was fortunate enough to serve under a really strong CEO, a lot of the understanding about leadership that I have today, if not most, comes from him and there was a lot that I learned about managing people from my time In insurance, because it was constantly about herding cats. But when it came to leading, which are two separate things I learned as a CRO at the agency, and I would say the two biggest things that I learned, I think I’ve briefly touched on them already, but it’s one, is holding people accountable. And two, how you do that is through the second way is having direct conversation with people. A lot of times, we shy away from those direct conversations because it’s uncomfortable, and we don’t want to be uncomfortable. We don’t want to make someone else feel uncomfortable.
But again, I always ask myself, what is my role as a leader, and would it be irresponsible of me to allow this madness to continue? And the answer always is yes. And so right, like, leadership’s not a role, a position, it’s an action. And so are you acting like a leader? And just because you can tell yourself you’re a leader if you’re not acting like one, well you’re not, and then that stems into your culture. I have a very unique perspective and take on culture. I’m just not one of these “rah, rah, everyone needs to feel good.” We’re a family type of guy. Absolutely, I’m the exact opposite, if anything. But I think culture is wildly critical to the growth of any sort of organization, the sustainability of an organization, and so culture is not a set of beliefs or words or core values, and I’m not trying to say that those things are not important, but that’s not culture.
Culture is your actions, right? And that’s what Ben Horowitz says all the time, is, how you act, is who you are. And so I think that that’s probably the biggest two key takeaways that I have is anything about leadership is all about accountability. It’s about having to. Direct and difficult conversations. Because if everyone could do it, then everyone could be a leader. That and being growth minded, bro, not enough people are growth minded. This world is filled with a fixed mindset. People, it’s unbelievable. I have never heard somebody say, yep, I’m a fixed mindset. Everyone will be like, Yeah, I’m a growth mindset. But are you? Are you? How do you take criticism? How do you take criticism? Where does your brain instantly go?
And I’ll tell you this man, it’s rare to meet people that are growth minded because a growth minded person does not care about what they’re doing right. A growth minded person only cares about what they’re doing wrong. So when somebody criticizes you, what’s your instant reaction? Is your instant reaction telling them about the time? Oh yeah, I did that one time. Oh yeah, I do that too. Oh yeah, this, oh yeah, that? Or is your instant reaction asking deeper questions about okay, but hang on, why? Okay, well, how would you do it? That’s a growth minded person, not the person that says, you know what, you’re right? And in fact, I do that too. Constantly, I’m giving people feedback.
I’m like, “hey, why did you say that?” Like, “you shouldn’t have positioned it that way.” Oh yeah, no, I’ll usually. I’m like, oh yeah. So this just happened to be the one time you chose not to do it. Yeah, I believe that. Okay, get out of here, man. Like, we’re talking about money here. Like, what are your feelings have to do with this. Just grow up, be an adult.
Jeremy Weisz 36:23
What else happened that you helped with from that in that tenure, that other agencies should be doing as well?
Ali Mirza 36:33
Positioning and differentiation, those are vitally critical. Everything I know about positioning, I learned from Al Reese Rory Sutherland and Dave Trott. They’ve got wonderful books. So Rory Sutherland’s book Alchemy, Strongest, Just Pick It Up. Al Reese’s and Jack trout’s book on Positioning Strongest, Just Pick It Up and then anything by Dave Trott start with Predatory Thinking. Those are wonderful books. So positioning, it’s not what you do to a product. Rather, it’s what you do to the mind of a prospect. That’s what Al Reece would always say. So it’s — how can you position something? So it’s not enough for you to say we are the best. This is great. We produce this that the third our team cares. Nobody cares. Literally nobody cares.
You are annoying people, and you’re embarrassing yourself. And I have to have that strong language in order to shape people to stop it, nobody cares. Stop telling people about your team. Stop telling people about the results you get. Nobody cares until they do. That’s when they need it, when they’re ready to post rationalize the everything before them is about them, and it’s about how you’re going to emotionally evoke reactions. So that’s what you need to be fixated on. That’s what your differentiator needs to be fixated on. And then so positioning then leads to differentiate. And I’ll give you this nugget for free. Here’s my litmus test on whether or not your differentiator is good, or can I swear, yeah, oh, whether or not your differentiator is shit.
Would anyone else ever say the opposite? Because if not, it’s not a differentiator. So for example, if I asked you, hey, why would I choose your agency versus agency B, oh, that’s a great question. Thank you for so much for asking us. And a lot of people ask us this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, one of the reasons why you should choose this is because of our team. Our team is wonderful. We source excellent candidates from all across the country, etc, and the results we get, oh, and my team, we care and the culture we’ve built in, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, don’t nobody care. Is anyone else going to say you should choose us because we have an awful team. We don’t get results.
None of my team cares, and you. Good luck. No one’s going to say that. So saying the opposite of that is not true is not going to move the needle. So stop it, right? This is where you can insert that. Michael Jordan, meeting where he’s talking about telling kids not to do drugs. Stop it. Get some help. Just stop it.
Jeremy Weisz 39:07
Ali, first of all, I know we’re at time here. I want to be the first one to thank you. I wrote a couple things down, if there’s any other books or resources that you’d recommend, but I wrote down a really good one Crucial Conversations I actually had. The author on Joseph Grenny, the Carol Dweck book on growth Mindset, that you mentioned, you mentioned a bunch with Al Reece and Jack trout, Predatory Thinking. There’s another one, Don’t Get Mad at Penguins, by Gabe Karp, which is really good about not avoiding those hard conversations any others really quickly, because I know you got to run.
Ali Mirza 39:45
Radical Candor.
Jeremy Weisz 39:46
Radical Candor. Yeah, cool. And then yours as well.
Ali Mirza 39:51
Yeah, if you want to check it out, Predictable Closing and Radical Leadership.
Jeremy Weisz 39:56
Ali, thank you so much. Everyone, check out rosegardenconsulting.com and contact Ali if you have questions. Ali, thanks for joining me.
Ali Mirza 40:06
Thank you. Appreciate your time.
