August 02, 2019

[E80] Management Week: Part 5 with Donald Meador

9 minutes

Fifth and final part of the conversation with Donald.

In Part 5, we talk

about:

When the manager doesn’t agree with a new

policy/change

The Bargaining Stage with Sales Managers

How to disagree with your boss

Make sure to subscribe and catch all the episodes this

week to hear the full conversation.

Donald’s Info:

Website:

https://thecorporatemiddle.com/

Book:

Surrounded ByInsanity:

How To Execute Bad Decisions

Bio:

Donald has survived mergers, promotions,

re-organizations, and downsizing. Throughout his career he has led multiple

teams of varying sizes consisting of both on and offshore resources. He has

successfully led multi-million-dollar projects and was selected to complete a

two-year program to become a lean six sigma certified black belt. Donald has a

degree in Computer Engineering and an MBA. In-addition to his corporate

experience he has co-founded multiple companies. Donald is an award-winning

speaker and the host of the podcast “The Corporate Middle” where he answers the

most common middle management questions. He is the author of the book

“Surrounded by Insanity: How to Execute Bad Decisions”.

Episode 80 – Transcript

Welcome to another episode of the

sales experience podcast.

This

episode ends the Management Week and the conversation that I had with Donald

Matter, if you’ve been following along for the whole week, I appreciate it.

Thank you for being here. I’m so glad that you wanted to listen to two crazy

guys, two business nerds, a sales nerd and a management nerd talking about this

stuff and hopefully you got some value from it.

Hopefully

you’re learning from it. This episode is part five where we kind of wrap up our

discussion. I know that we could have kept going and it’s very possible just

knowing me that I may book another time for Donald and me to talk and record it

and just literally see what happens because it was so valuable.

was so fun and I know it covered a lot of different aspects. Again, if you’re a

salesperson, if you’re a manager, if you’re an owner, like all of this

information can apply to you were either it helps you be more empathetic to

everyone involved so you understand what’s going on.

could help you as an owner with how you implement change and what makes sense

or how to roll things out or what to do when everybody’s not doing what you

require, what you need for the sake of the business and maybe you’ve got to

make some bigger changes.

Also,

if you’re a salesperson and you’re seeing changes come your way, understanding

the concepts, the logic and everything behind it, especially that sometimes

decisions we don’t like are there for the sake of the whole company surviving

the ship surviving.

doesn’t do any good if the company runs into an iceberg because nobody wants to

change direction and everyone ends up dying. That doesn’t do the company or its

employees any good. So sometimes there’s changes in place that are only seen

from the really high level and we’ve got to accept those changes or leave and

pick a different organization that operates more of how you want.

But

this is episode five. Again, make sure you go to the cutter consulting

group.com website. Go to the podcast link, find this episode or any of these

episodes this week to find all the information on Donald where you can find

him.

He’s

going to mention some stuff at the end of this episode, but just make sure the

whole transcripts there as well. So if you’d rather read all this again, if

there’s some things you missed, you can go in there and find that as well. I

appreciate you listen to this.

I appreciate you hopefully putting these things into practice in your professional life and maybe even your personal life and I’m so glad that you’re here and for now enjoy the final part of my conversation with Donald.

All right, one last thing that I want to go back to talking about sales managers, so what do you think or how have you dealt with in the past for any sales major you’ve dealt with?

Here’s

the challenge that I have with them is I’ve got a new policy I need to roll out

or there’s a change or there’s something going on. Going back to the five

stages of grief and what I’m going to get it from that manager when I’m rolling

out a change and whether they agree with that policy or not.

say I’m at the VP level, I’ve got a sales manager, I know they’re not going to

like it. Here’s the challenge I have, sales managers are generally really good

sales people who have been promoted to managers, so they try to sell and that’s

what they focus on and so they are always trying to sell me on why it’s not

going to work and they’re using every tactic. So what do you do about that when

your managers are selling you on the not accepting it, right?

what’s the five stages? The bargaining stage, right? Absolutely. Denial. Anger.

Now they’re bargaining and there, but they’re using their sales skills and that

just hit your heart. What do you do about that? One of the biggest challenges

is people hang on to that bargaining stage way too long.

They

hit that dead horse as much as they possibly can and that’s where people get

tripped up. And guess what your perception of them is now that they’re high

maintenance. Yep. They don’t even realize what they did. They have no clue what

they just did.

it’s really, this is what I had advised them. You have the one rebuttal rule.

That’s what I focus on. And I tell my team, you get one chance to change

somebody’s mind after that move on. You’ve got one rebuttal, you get one shot

and I promise you 9% of the time it’s not going to work anyway.

Take

your one shot and move on that it by that one rebuttal as in like, I’m going to

roll out a change. So I’m changing the sales script for example, and they’ve

got one question they can ask me and hit me with and try to fight it or I’m

going to only risk no, usually what a, so what I mean is that they have one

chance to change your mind, Got It.

they’ve got one chance to say, I don’t believe this is going to work and here

is why, right. And if you don’t agree with it you’re done. You move on that’s

it. They don’t get to come back to the well three, four, five times. Right.

that’s actually one of the things I talk about in my book is you know how to

disagree with your boss because it is a, it is fraught with peril if you do it

wrong.

one of the things I talk about is the right way to do that. And if you’re

dealing with somebody that doesn’t get that right, they’re doing it the wrong

way you know, you’re the boss and they’re coming in and disagreeing with every

single thing you say.

You

basically have to take them aside and let them know what’s going on and just

say hey, I respect your opinion. You’re right, there’s definitely some

challenges with this decision, but here’s what we’re doing and this is the path

forward and I need your help to make sure we can implement this, Right and

that’s it.

you know, the more they do it, you can start talking about some other things,

but that’s the right way to handle that is to take them aside and say, hey, I

appreciate your opinion. A lot of the stuff you’re saying is right, right.

You

don’t want to just dismiss people’s concerns because a lot of times they’re

valid, right? Anytime you implement something new, there’s going to be

challenges. That’s the point, right? We’ve already talked about that and so you

just got to make sure that one, you address them, you understand them, you can

say that’s great, but you’ve got to pull them aside and say, Hey, listen,

you’ve got one rebuttal.

This

is it,you can’t keep going on and on and on. Right? It’s not productive for

anybody. Let’s, let’s move on and get going. And when that happens, too many

times it starts to move into, and this is back to your perception. It moves

into the, maybe this isn’t a good fit for you type of conversation,exactly.

the thing is, I think most people don’t even know it, right? They don’t even

realize they’re being acquainted sales people who just get into that automatic

sales mode because they’re trying to convince their manager, their manager gets

into sales mode.

People

are just unconscious, and again, they’re doing what they think in their brain.

And what’s interesting is when you have that sales manager who’s doing that,

they’re rebutting and they’re fighting against change and then when their

salespeople do the same thing to them, like they agree with them because that’s

how they operate.

they invite those arguments basically. Yeah, and I think that’s the challenge

is that again, people don’t even realize what they’re doing and it kind of goes

back to some of the things we’ve been talking about, right? The gut reaction is

to fight, right? They want to fight.

They

want to convince, especially with the sales, right? That’s what they like to do

anyway. They will, you know? Yeah. They’re like, all right it’s a debate time.

We’re ready to go and so you have to make sure one part of the way you head

that off is what we talked about earlier is make sure all the company Mumbo

jumbo and try to figure it out. Right?

You

have to make sure and do it the right way to help head off some of that and you

have to make sure it’s communicated ahead of time. Here’s what’s happening here’s

the effect it has on you personally. Here’s some of the challenges that we may

have because that’s the thing you can do as a leader too, right?

It’s

okay to point out the flaws in your own plan, right? A lot of times we like to

just say, hey, here’s what’s everything amazing about it. It’s okay to say,

here’s the challenges I expect to happen. I need you guys’ help to figure this

out, and that’s okay.

it’s okay to point that out. Yeah. Like I said, early on in our conversation,

I’ve always done that just by default because that’s also how I sell. Not

everything you sell like as a sales person is 100% perfect.

There’s

always some downside. There’s always a negative, you know even if it’s the

greatest thing on the planet, but it’s a 12 month contract and somebody may not

like that or it’s the greatest thing on the planet, but it may affect your

credit a certain way and it’s still going to help you.

There’s

always a negative, and I have always brought up those negatives because I know

that transparency is super important for getting the sale done the right way. Long-term,

not just in the moment but long term. So they’re still a client.

when they wake up at two o’clock in the morning, they’re not freaking out about

something they didn’t know about. They remember I shared with them and I think

that’s the same way with management, change management, dealing with sales

teams, sales managers, is to also share that that good and bad, hey, we’re

changing the comp plan.

You’re

going to make more money, however it’s going to take more work or you’re going

to have to focus on x, Y, and z instead. Yeah, that’s different. But you know

there’s good and bad with it. And Ben, it’s up to you. And I’ve always said

that, and this is totally up to you whether you want to go with this change or

not.

think most salespeople, especially the really, really good ones, understand

people. They get it, they understand empathy, they understand perspective, they

understand what motivates people. But for some reason when they get into some

sort of leadership role, they throw all of that out the window.

They

just throw it out and either they become a dictator or they just try to apply

their own personality to everybody across the group. As we talked about, you

already know the skills needed to be successful as a salesperson, you literally

use them every single day.

People

are the same. Whether you’re customers, employees, your peers, teammates,

they’re pretty much the same. If you actually would look at it that way and

understand that and apply it, you’re going to be successful or there we go.

think that’s a good way to end to this episode. Donald, thank you so much for

being here. In case people don’t check out the show notes and the

transcription, where can people find you get in contact with you, find your

book? Yeah, absolutely.

my book is available on Amazon surrounded by insanity, how to execute bad

decisions, which covers a lot of the stuff that we’ve talked about today is how

to function as a manager. When you’re asked to do something you may not believe

in, and even just as an individual, you know how to have that leadership and be

successful in those types of environments.

You

can also find me on Donald [inaudible] dot com and I also have a podcast, as

you mentioned, called the corporate middle, which is available on any of your

podcasts providers where I talked about a lot of these topics on how to be

successful as a leader in a corporation and its Donald meter, m e a d o r.com.

Right.

You’ve

got it, Perfect all right. Thanks Donald appreciates it. This was fun absolutely,

Thanks Jason.

...more

View all episodes

By Jason Cutter

4.9

3535 ratings

August 02, 2019

[E80] Management Week: Part 5 with Donald Meador

9 minutes

Fifth and final part of the conversation with Donald.

In Part 5, we talk

about:

When the manager doesn’t agree with a new