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73: 4 Steps to follow if you are called a "Micro Manager" · Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth

• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: There is no worse name to be called in sales leadership by your team than a micromanager.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: But if you do get called that, how do you deal with it and how do you work through it with your team?
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Bite-sized sales podcast, where we believe that you don't need to take time out of the field or off the phones, stuck in a classroom in order to get great sales and sales leadership training, and that taking bite-sized steps each day to get better at your craft is the best way to improve your results.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: I am your host, Andrew Monahan, and I'm using my 20 plus years in B2B sales to bring you simple, actionable ideas that you can use every day to help you get better.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Before we get to the tip for today, this episode is sponsored by Sales Bluebird.
• 1:29
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• 1:51
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• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to episode 73.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: And this one is something that's we hear a lot about in sales leadership, the dreaded name of being a micromanager.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I thought about this a lot over the years, and I think there's some people I've worked with and for and in teams with some reps where if you said, Hey, did you know that your sales manager spends Friday night sacrificing livestock to the great Satan or something like that, they probably wouldn't think of them as badly as if they thought of them as a micromanager.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's almost like the worst thing you could be called in working with high performing teams is, yeah, but he's a micromanager, right?
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's the worst thing that can be out there.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I think because of that, uh I've seen that I've seen some sales managers probably go a little bit too loose on how they run their teams because they're a little bit scared of having that name slapped against them or or have that resentment build up in the team.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe they've been in a situation where they've been micromanaged in the past and they just do not want to get anything close to that at all when they're leading teams, and therefore they don't do it.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: But at the end of the day, there's an element to this of balance, right?
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: There's some things that we should be managing to, not just being you know, big sales leaders, we should be managing to certain metrics.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: But there's no doubt that sometimes it can get too far one way and there's way too much coming at the reps.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: So here are four ways to deal with that if it comes up or you feel like your team is rebelling a little bit around this area.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: And the first one is be self-aware.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you are a micromanager, right?
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you got to the point where you you do find yourself chasing down reps for updates all the time, chasing them down for for numbers, trying to get 15 different metrics into a spreadsheet as you're sitting there in your in your office and they're out there in the field or on the phones, right?
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you are that person who's allowed your own needs and the company's needs and the new sales leaders' needs and everyone's needs to suddenly result in 20 different things getting tracked and you chasing them up every couple hours for updates on deals because you know where you're gonna get asked by the sales leadership, right?
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: So there might be an element of truth to it.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: And if that's the case, you have to figure out how to crawl away from underneath that rock and not be that person.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: Figure out what's truly needed to run the team and how you can manage your time with them so you're not chasing them all the time, trying to get things out of them.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: The second thing would be is to level set with your team on the realities of running business.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the fact is these days most good businesses are run by KPIs, right?
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: And they're out there, big companies, small companies, all over the place.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: And sales is no different.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, you know, the sales team is probably more susceptible to KPIs because what we do can be measured more easily than some other teams in the organization.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: So we're definitely part of that, and we need to understand that that's the realities.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: So if you do have some people who are unfairly or unreasonably saying, hey, we're all getting micromanaged, and you're sitting there going, you know what, I've only got four KPIs I'm managing to here, and they're not out of this world and unreasonable, and I don't go chasing them down every couple hours for updates on things, you know, maybe this is the kind of level setting conversation you need to have with them about the realities of business.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I would add to it as well that, you know, guys, if you ever work for an organization that doesn't track things like this, then you're working for a mismanaged organization.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's the reality.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: And we need to accept it, we need to understand that it's part of our job, it's part of our world.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, what we need to do is embrace it because if these are the right KPIs and we're managing to those, then these things will positively impact our results.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: And this is where you can maybe add something in to say, well, look, you know, if we can get to this, whatever this is, on one of the KPIs, then we know with conversion rates that good things happen in 60 days because of the way it flows through.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: So we're not operating to that level, but if we did, here would be the positive outcome at the end of the day if we did that, right?
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: So always think about how you tie these things to much bigger positive things that they can latch on to and say, yeah, it kind of sucks that I have to give this number, but I get why we're following it, and I get why it's so important, right?
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: The third thing to think about as well is something that I got from Mike Weinberg's book, Sales Management Simplified.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a really simple kind of operating uh methodology to work with with your team, especially if you've got a slightly bigger team, and especially if it's maybe a bit more transactional.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: So he talks about, you know, very eloquently in the book about working for one very experienced sales manager.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: And this guy worked very simply, and he had a three-step process, but sometimes it didn't get down to step two or three, right?
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: He started his one-on-ones talking about results.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: So what actually happened in the last month or or two weeks, depending on the last one-on-one, what have you achieved?
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: What's the what have you closed?
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: Things like that.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: Secondly, where's your pipeline?
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: Is it growing to the right level?
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: Is it at the right level?
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: Are some of the big deals in there progressing nicely?
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: Is it moving through?
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: Are the deals moving through the pipeline appropriately?
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: Things like that.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: And the third thing is down to activity.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: So what are you booked?
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: What are you working on?
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: What did you book last week?
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: What do you actually do?
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: Things like that, right?
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: And what Mike outlines in the book is this sales manager, I think his name was Donnie, would always start with one.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're executing great, right?
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: If you're you're number one in the team and you're against your own goals about uh what you want to achieve in terms of bookings and pipeline generation, things like that, it might not get past number one, right?
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: He said, Listen, you're doing great, keep going.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll talk again in on a one-on-one in a couple of weeks or a month.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, rarely was that the case.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: It would often get down to number two, where he's talking about the pipeline.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: So, how's the pipeline good doing?
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: Is it growing the way you need it to?
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: Are you operating at the level where we need it to be operated at to be able to hit our goals?
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: And and oftentimes that's where the one-on-one would stop.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: But if things weren't going well in the pipeline, that's when he would get into activity.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: And in his world, he would actually pull out, okay, show me your calendar from last week and the week before.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: Let's look at where you're spending your time.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: Are you spending enough time on the right things?
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: What's your plan for this week?
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and get down to actually a set plan to get things back on track.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: So that very simple way of moving down from results to pipeline to activity meant that the top performers who were truly executing across all fronts didn't go through the full colonoscopy about, well, where what was that meeting last week and why did you do 10 and not not 15, or why did you do six and 10, whatever it is, and get get into the details, right?
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe that's a good way to look at the how you're operating with your team to say, is there a way I can change what I do so that for not for everyone am I going down to all the detail and therefore losing their trust and losing their confidence.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: And the fourth thing I would I would add into this about um working with someone or a team who thinks you're micromanaging is the idea that if you're helping them execute their own plan, their own territory plans, their own account plans, whatever it might be, then it's much harder for them to then come back and criticize you for helping them reach their plan.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, if you give them numbers to go ahead, I used this used to annoy the crap out of me when I was a rep, right?
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: Used to hear this all the time.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: So all sales reps should be making whatever it is, you know, 50 calls a day, or they should be doing 10 meetings per week, right?
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: 10 10 first meetings per week.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I always used to wonder, you know, if I'm sitting there and I've I'm running a 4x pipeline and I'm at 120%, does that do I still have to do that, or should my time actually be better focused on closing deals at this point, right?
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: It I don't know, it seems like one size fits all never seems to work out.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: I used to resist it a lot when I was doing really well.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I think, you know, if the idea is look, you know, in my case, right, might be, hey Andrew, like your plan that you worked on and you we worked on and you you decided it was your plan, says that you want to work at this level, how are we doing against your own plan?
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's much harder for me then to complain and say, oh no, no, this is not relevant for me, right?
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: I think in the Sandler world, they they have a phrase that goes something like, you know, people don't argue with their own data.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're helping your team members execute against their own plan, helping them stay accountable to their own plan, then they're much more likely to be bought into the process.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: If when you interact with them, you pull out their plan and say, hey, how are we doing against your plan?
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: Where are we falling short?
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: Where are we ahead?
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: And how can I help?
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: Suddenly, what might have been seen as a micromanaging activity is actually more about you helping them succeed.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: So these are four things to do.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: If you feel like or you are being labeled with that micromanager uh label and it doesn't sit well with you, uh go through these four steps and see what you can pick out to help you either change it or figure out how you can work with your team so that you're all successful by doing this.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: Address it head on.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: Don't ignore it.
• 11:33
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• 11:41
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• 11:44
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• 11:50
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• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: Also, I need your suggestions, please.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: If you have a topic you want me to cover or just want to get in touch, simply email me at upside at unstoppable.do.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's upside at unstoppable.do.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: And now to wrap up, training without implementation is just entertainment and pretty poor entertainment when I deliver it.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: So make sure you take action on what you learned today and keep getting it better and better each and every day.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: Also, this world does not need more sales BS.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: So please don't create any more.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Be great at the fundamentals, be honest, be real, be yourself, just do not BS.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, I'm signing off as the great Joe Sexton would by saying gone to sell.