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How Great Leaders Turn Resistance Into Rapid Growth
00:12:24
In this episode, John Kaplan and John McMahon sit down with Jeremy Duggan, President of Multiverse, to talk about a tension every manager feels: how do you genuinely care about your people while still holding them accountable?
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- [00:06]
A
In this episode, Jon Kaplan and John McMahon sit down with Jeremy Duggan, president of Multiverse and longtime software sales executive. They talk about attention every manager feels. How do you genuinely care about your people while still holding them accountable? The team digs into a real story of a high potential rep who wasn't thrilled about a big quota increase and what it took to turn that resistance into growth. Along the way, they break down how the right intent, honest conversations and data backed coaching can elevate performance. And they share practical frameworks and tools that separate good managers from true leaders. Here we go.
- [00:46]
B
What I find sometimes is people misinterpret what you're saying and they say I got to make it all about the people. And therefore what I do is I try to be friends with the people. I create kind of like an us versus them mentality with corporate or with, you know, it's our team and then we go native and I'm with my team and I have a responsibility to protect the company. But when I'm so intimate with my people, sometimes I get confused on that. Can you both kind of comment on that? Because I think it's really important.
- [01:16]
C
Well, I think what Jeremy said is the most important, is that you're there to lead your people, give them a vision, you're there to develop the people. So you're not really there to just be their friends. Because if you're just their friend but you're not developing them, making them more competent so they can do the job without you, then you're not really leading.
- [01:38]
D
Yeah, I think, I mean, absolutely. And. Well, actually, one of the points I would have. If you, if you think about what that looks like in action, which is, which is what your point is, John, how do you take that kind of overview and turn it into what it looks like in action as there's a number of things you can look at. I think, I think one of the things that's a big challenge for leaders, which is based on exactly what you just said, is how do you, how would you have difficult conversations with people? How did you. How do you do things where people aren't going to be happy, what you're with, what you're saying to them or what you're asking them to do, but you do it anyway. And, and I think, I think the reason that if you're, if your whole goal as a leader is to change somebody's life and you're in that job by definition, because you're really great at the job they're trying to do, sometimes they might not be coachable and they might have, at that point, they might not have the experience at that point, they might think they know a better way to do it. So you've got to go through that, that period where they're not going to like you very much because you're telling them something that they don't want to hear. Right. So being able, so being a leader isn't just about being mates with people at all, it's about, it's about leading them. I'll give you, I'll give you a great example. Recent one from, from Multiverse. We had a, a really, really great young kid joined us called, called Noah Stevenson. You know, this, this kid, he's tall, he's good looking, but you know, got a first from Cambridge, you know, great start to his career. And we hired him just at the time that I was joining Multiverse. And, and at the time he was coming in as a, as an inside sales rep. And when he was joining the quote, it was 600K. And then, you know, when me and Stevie Mack went in, we took a look at the quotas and how we were going to change the messaging and all that kind of stuff and we figured that, you know, the inside sales should be, should be a million. And we were going to develop the team and give them the skills and the tools and the messaging to, to make that achievable. So Noah comes in and, and he's, you know, he's, Noah's, you know, he's a confident kid. He's, you know, pretty, you know, full of himself as he probably should be. So he kind of hears this number from his manager and he says, well, I don't think that's right. You told me it was 600k coming in and now it's a million. It's not fair. Fair enough. So the manager comes to me and says, well, I don't really want to, I don't know what to do about this, you know, So I said, well, no problem, I'll have a call with Noah. So I have a call with Noah, explain the logic behind it, the facts, the reasoning, what it means for him. He's going to learn all these new ideas that he's never had. He's going to develop him for the future. And at the end of the call I've given him all this logic and he says, well, that all makes sense, Jeremy, but I'm still incredibly pissed off because of a nice, well spoken English guy, you know, so incredibly pissed off about this quota change. So what I look at there is. I'm kind of laughing inside, right, because this is the cocky young kid who's got a load of potential. But what I see is this is, this is a lack of coachability because he's heard all the facts and logic, but he's still pissed off. So I say to Noah, well, guess what, kid, this conversation just all changed around, right? So you come in this conversation, you're thinking, I'm selling to you on why you should stay with this new quote. And you were right. I was happy to do that. Now you're reapplying for your job, right? And so you've got 24 hours to get your job back, right? And I want you to go away, listen to what I said, listen to the logic, right? And let me know if you still, if, if someone's saying, if you do convince me why, why you should, because what you've done isn't that smart. So anyway, comes back 24 hours later, he says, I get your logic, I get your arguments. I shouldn't have reacted the way I reacted. I want to learn. This is why I came, right? The kid comes in. What, what changed in that moment was he recognized that he was being uncoachable and he became coachable right in that moment because he saw facts and logic and, and a different way of doing things he hadn't experienced in his first year. He was a top inside sales rep, right, by a mile. Got promoted, be an enterprise rep in his first year, top enterprise rep, right? Got promoted to RD, first year as an RD, top RD. And now he's an AVP. And the kid's 26, right? Incredibly talented, talented boy. And, and when I think about that story back to your. What you're saying, John, is what ultimately happened there was, you know, I cared enough about this kid to, to risk upsetting him and to risk maybe, maybe he walks, right? Because I wanted him to do great and I knew he had the potential to do great. But if he was going to do, be able to do great, he had to be coachable. He had to listen to people around him. He had to, you know, you know, understand what, what he needed to do to do differently. And if on his first day at work he's coming in and telling everybody what the quota should be, that's not a guy who's going to listen that he needs to pipeline, generate every week. You see what I mean? So I, I think, you know, we're hitting this point straight on, John. One of the, one of the big things about leadership is you've got to be able to have those difficult conversations. But if you're coming at it from the perspective that you genuinely want to help people and you genuinely want to change their life and you genuinely want to make a difference to their life, you've got nothing to fear in those difficult conversations because your intent is always good. It's only if your intent is bad that you should be worried about those things. And if you want to change someone's life and that's your goal, your intent is great. So it gives you confidence in those times.
- [07:00]
C
So what you did is you have his best interest at heart. You know, it's genuine, it's authentic. And one of the best ways to be a great leader is to also be very intimate with your people, intimate with their strengths, their weaknesses, their. Their fears, their doubts, their insecurities, those types of things. Because if you really want to motivate people, if you really want to develop them, if you really want to make them more competent as a leader, the more intimate you are with your people, the better off you're going to be versus a manager who's probably looking at all his people as if they're the same, and then cookie cuttering, you know, their management style across all those people. That's management versus what you described as leadership.
- [07:43]
B
One thing I want everybody to listen to, and this, first of all, Jeremy, that was incredible, but for leaders out there, I want you to hear this, because as I'm listening to Johnny Mac and to Jeremy, I'm thinking, everybody loves to be led. This is one thing you have to believe in your heart. Everybody loves to be led, provided they believe you can take them to a place that you can't get to, that they can't get to on their own. And so I think what happened to Noah was, is that you kind of showed him that your interest is to take him to a place that he might not be able to see or might not be able to get there on his own. That is a really huge characteristic of leadership. Do you guys agree?
- [08:24]
D
Yeah, yeah, no doubt. And I think you make a really good point there, John. If you move on to kind of a second view on leadership in action, which is the point you made, was they want to be led, but they've got to believe they're being led in the right direction. And this is where, if you're then breaking it, breaking things down, then you. The. The place you almost have to start as a leader, when you've, when you've got this concept right, you want to change people's eyes. You've got to know how to do it. So that, that starts with, with you know, the work, a lot of work, right? And so you know Stevie Max, you know who I've worked with, you guys know him for a long time. He's the best at this. Because what you, what you've got as a leader is you've got a situation where you've got to understand what great looks like, right? Otherwise you can't lead, drive people down that, that path. And so you know, the three of us and all, all the people that you interview, we spent you know, years and years and years understanding and, and adapting and, and tweaking this, this playbook that we all use, whether it be, you know, medic as a sales process, BVAs PG, the three hours, whatever it might be. We've been like honing that all the way through because that's your, your roadmap to success, right? And so then when you've done that work and you understand and you continue updating it, you, then that's what you use for the, for the development of your people, right? And you know, you, it's got to be in, in many different ways, got to be formal, it's got to be one to ones, it's got to be on the job and all that kind of stuff. But then what I find what happens then is people a lot of, a lot of leaders, they know this playbook and they intrinsically understand it. But on a day to day basis they get really busy because there's so many things going on. You've got to, you've got to go on sales calls, you've got to recruit, you've got to, you've got to, you know, you know, update you know, the leaders on what's going on. You got to update Salesforce or whatever it is. And so then what, what can happen is sales, sales leaders will then stop looking at the, the actual development data, right? Like the leading indicators that are making, that are making people successful or showing where they're not successful so you can spot those gaps. So you've got to have a program, Stevie Mac, for example, he builds a dashboard for every salesperson in his organization. At times been, it's been up to 250 people and every Friday afternoon he sits down and he goes through his dashboard about to look at each individual rep where there's, where they're hitting the leading indicators that we know will make them successful, where they're missing, right? And then you'll do a little report, you'll send it to the managers and saying, listen, you know, John is doing a great job on pg, but his VO activity is not good. So there might be a translation between, there's obviously a problem between the flip over from PG to void and, and, you know, getting traction the view. So it could be a champion building problem. So what he's doing all the time is he's looking at data and facts and logic based on the playbook that we know makes people great. And he's looking for the development areas of the people. And he's doing it every single week, right? And every single day. And because he's doing it, his managers are doing it as well. And so what you've got then is you've got an environment where you're saying to kids like Noah, we're going to change your life and make you great. And he goes, okay, I buy into that. I'm going to do everything you need. Then as a leader, you got to, you got to show them that, that map and you've got to, you've got to bring the goods, you know, until, until they get there. And you can't do that unless you know what it takes to be great. And you're looking at it every single day in order to develop your, your people along that, along that roadmap.
- [11:59]
A
Thanks for listening to today's episode. If you enjoy the content, please subscribe, rate and review the show to help us reach more people. This show is brought to you by Force Management, where we help companies improve sales performance, executing the growth strategy at the point of sale. Check out forcemanagement.com for more information.