The Art of Sales Leadership and Team Empowerment with Simon Cooper
A former FTSE100 Marketing Director, since selling his human insight and coaching business Chemistry in 2015, Simon Cooper has been leading, facilitating, and coaching change across a range of organisations.
A Partner at Positive Momentum, Simon has many years of business change and growth experience having been a Marketing Director at Cable & Wireless following a career in commercial leadership roles in technology, consulting, and telecommunications businesses.
After Cable & Wireless Simon grew the human insight consultancy Chemistry from a start-up in a village in England to standing toe to toe across the world with established leaders in human data analytics, behavioural change and business consulting working with clients such as Vodafone, Experian, and Diageo. He sold that business in 2015.
Prior to Cable & Wireless, as Marketing Director, Simon shaped the cultural and sales turnaround at Energis, a bankrupt business, when he and the team arrived. Simon drove fast, dramatic change across the marketing team, sales capability, customer experience, culture, brand, go-to-market strategy and external marketing, and was intimately involved with the successful exit for the shareholders netting them $750m.
Before Energis he lived in the USA whilst working with AT&T as Global Chief Marketing Officer for their Concert business, before heading back to Europe to join Accenture where he led the sale of +$100m outsourcing deals, working across Europe with clients such as Microsoft, Iberdrola and Nokia.
His early years in management were spent at BT where he introduced market shifting new services (including their first ever BT shop on the internet, yes really!) and formed a market defining partnership with Sky.
Simon has a Post Graduate Diploma in Behavioural Change from Henley Management College and an MBA awarded jointly by INSEAD in Paris and McGill University in Montreal under the direct tutorage of business guru Henry Mintzberg. Henry quoted Simon in his book at the time. The MBA study included periods at Kobe University in Japan, Bangalore Institute of Management in India and Lancaster University in the UK.
He’s never more energized than when playing football on a Friday night and describes his greatest burden in life as his love for Derby County (apparently they won the leagues in 1972 and 1975 – who knew). His humour will most definitely make you laugh, but he saves his widest smiles for his wife Carol, daughter Laura and son Jonathan.
In this week’s episode, Simon unravels the qualities that exceptional leaders possess to inspire their sales teams and surpass revenue goals. We delve into the crucial role of setting a vision, fostering growth, and constructing a high-caliber team. We debate the player-manager conundrum in sales leadership, considering if directors should directly close deals or focus on coaching their teams. We emphasize hiring for attitude over experience, plus the power of networking for genuine connections. We also explore the harmonious relationship between sales and marketing, especially in professional services, and the significance of articulating value propositions.
Topics covered during this episode include:
How exceptional commercial leaders drive team performance, even in challenging economies like today’s.
Why a clear vision and roadmap for teams is critical for success.
How fostering an environment of growth can empower teams to achieve and exceed targets.
Why building a world-class sales team often involves frequent assessment and development.
How sales leadership roles balance deal making with team mentorship and strategy development.
Why hiring for attitude and cultural fit can be more important than industry experience.
How attitudes and behaviours are critical factors in successful sales team composition.
Why networking for genuine connections surpasses networking for mere contacts.
How marketing leaders can craft compelling value propositions for financial decision makers.
Why understanding the economic impact of marketing efforts is essential for business growth.
How predictive modeling of marketing campaigns can improve accuracy over time.
Why collaborative negotiation techniques can transform competitive situations into success.
How empathy and curiosity are potent tools in high-stakes negotiations.
Why leaders should understand core values as they deeply influence professional behaviours.
How recognizing the influence of values can aid in hiring the right team members.
Mike (00:01.348) Simon, thanks ever so much for joining me on Higgle, the B2B sales for podcast.
Simon (00:19.26) Thank you. Thanks, Sue. Really good to join you.
Mike (00:22.012) Now, how many years have we known each other? I've lost track.
Simon (00:25.468) Oh mate, let's not talk about that. I think that's a really bad way to start.
Mike (00:31.932) It's more than two and it's less than 20. So for those people listening who are like, who are these two blokes having a chat, what do you do Simon? What's your kind of background? What's your role? And then something unusual about yourself as well.
Simon (00:34.14) More than two. Yeah, just. Yeah, probably.
Simon (00:49.416) Oh, okay. Well, it's probably all quite unusual. So it started very standard. I'm a classic sort of business to business marketing and sales director. Threw up in technology telecommunications companies. And then bizarrely, having achieved an exec position on a FTSE 100 business, I decided to go and set my own business up. Having thought that was my goal. So I set up a behavioral science, behavioral change business, fascinating and great fun with that.
Mike (01:08.634) Right.
Mike (01:14.212) Hmm.
Simon (01:16.39) Then I sold that and the last six or seven years I've been consulting with my network on really fascinating, interesting gigs, a lot of it to do with my background. So it might be sales, marketing, leadership, culture change. If that's not bizarre enough, the most important thing that anybody has to learn about me is that I support Derby County and it is trust that I bear from my childhood, having grown up in the Midlands.
Mike (01:40.154) Ah!
Simon (01:45.634) When they were a great team and we're still a great team in our heads, but not quite.
Mike (01:50.108) Yes. Do you go to many games? Whereabouts do you live?
Simon (01:56.08) I now live in the south of England, so only get to a few games a year, but follow it all week online, all of that sort of stuff. I'm just one of those stupid people. But love it, it's a real passion. If you want, later I can name every single member of the league winning team in 1973, but we probably shouldn't go there. Okay.
Mike (02:06.076) Very good. Brilliant.
Mike (02:13.884) Wow, OK, we'll save that for another day perhaps, yes. So let's kind of kick off with the questions. So the first kind of question we thought would be an interesting discussion is around what are the key behavioral traits of outstanding commercial leaders that enable them to motivate their sales team whilst delivering against revenue targets, especially in times like this. It's now March 2024. The economy is still pretty tough.
So yeah, just like talk about that bit.
Simon (02:45.852) Yeah, I think it's a great question. I mean, it's always a fair question and probably even more timely now than ever before. I was pondering this, I think there's almost four elements to it. I think the first job as a commercial leader, I call planting the flag. I think our first job is to plant the flag, give people confidence, give people belief, give people a roadmap, give people a journey.
and give them real targets, goals, those sorts of things. And on the one hand, that's completely bleeding obvious. On the other hand, it is something that I don't always see in place. Can you show me the plan that you shared with your team? Is it emotional as well as rational? Does it bring it a lot? So I think plant the flag. I think the other two things then that sit underneath that are both what I would call,
Mike (03:34.044) Right. Right.
Simon (03:43.484) driving performance and inspiring growth. And I use those words deliberately. So driving performance is, you know, in commercial roles, our job is to set targets, hold people account, improve them, help them, support them, encourage them, you know, bring them energy and confidence and skill. On the other hand, we want to inspire growth because inevitably the growth can't come from us, it has to come from the team.
Mike (04:02.588) Yep.
Simon (04:11.388) You know, if we try and do it all ourselves, my experience is it doesn't work. If we trust our teams, create an environment where they can grow, expand, find new markets, do things differently, that's a key piece of it. And then the fourth one, I suppose, and I'll ask a question in a second, the fourth one, that probably underpins all of it is just build a world -class team. You know, that habit of, you know, arriving somewhere,
Mike (04:27.228) Right.
Simon (04:40.476) moving to a new role internally, whatever it might be and going, right, is this team good enough? And after 12 months, after 18 months, after two years, is it still the right team? And constantly pushing the team to develop and where they just don't have the potential to develop, working out how to find the next person, the next person. That I think, I don't know, that's my little four ideas, I suppose. Yeah.
Mike (05:04.572) Okay, so let's just talk about a couple of those for a second as well. What's your view as a kind of commercial leader holding a sales target, say? What's your view about the kind of the player manager role? About should the head of commercial, the chief commercial officer, the sales director, should they go out and still be doing deals? Should they be entirely mentoring coaching? Should they be market facing, internal facing?
Simon (05:14.648) Yeah.
Simon (05:29.404) you
Mike (05:34.204) What's your view of like kind of where you've seen it work really well? How much of a player manager were they?
Simon (05:37.08) Yeah, I think there's a couple of models depending on the context of the business. So I've worked with smaller teams, smaller businesses, maybe a small team in a big business or a smaller business where you almost need to be a bit of a player manager because just because of capacity, just because of capacity. You just can't afford as a leader to only lead, you have to sell as well.
Mike (05:57.274) Yep.
Simon (06:03.996) However, as you scale a business, I think the more you can not sell, the more you can enable your team to sell and focus on that and leave a ridging the team, the more powerful you become, the more effective you become. I think that's my sense. And I think the great thing, the terrible thing is as a sales manager, I sort of got there because I liked sales, but I might not win the best salesperson because not always the best salesperson makes the best salesman.
Mike (06:16.316) Yep, exactly right.
Mike (06:27.4) Right. Agreed.
Simon (06:33.532) But I probably did like sales and was probably reasonably good at it. So I am allowed to get involved, you know, have some fun. But I play my role as an executive, you know, whatever that might mean. If it's an account we're managing over time, I'm played in as a stakeholder. If it's a new piece of work, I'm played in as a, you know, whatever it might be. But I think as you get more mature in the sales model, you have to enable the sales.
Mike (06:43.548) Yeah.
Mike (06:56.672) Yeah.
Simon (07:03.068) person to drive your agenda not the other way around. There you have to say, right I need a bit of your time Simon, play you in, do this, this is the brief, don't say that, say this, stick on message, you know all of that. Does that make any sense? Yeah.
Mike (07:06.884) Exactly.
Mike (07:12.42) Yeah.
Mike (07:17.308) So building, it does definitely, yes, absolutely. And I think, and I've, so my experience and belief is that I think you do need to show the way. So as a sales leader, you need to show what great looks like. But if you end up being the hero and bringing in the big deals, then it's self -limiting. The organization will ultimately falter because it's not sustainable.
Simon (07:36.264) Yeah. Yeah, completely. I was working with a sales leader end of last year and the constant feedback from the team was that this person just couldn't resist stepping into everything. Now the team felt incredibly demotivated. It felt like they couldn't really own things. They felt like they weren't learning.
Mike (07:50.768) Yep. Yep. Yeah.
Simon (08:02.972) And of course he was doing it for all the right reasons. He wanted to be successful and he thought he would help them. But actually over the last three months, funnily enough, we've managed to shift his behavior and he's beginning to believe that there's a lot more value had from the team performing and it's changing. And it'll make a massive difference. You roll the clock forward another three, six months and you just know that team is going to be better.
Mike (08:19.728) Yeah, exactly. So just on that point also around, you mentioned at the beginning about world -class teams that you need, is this a world -class team? What's your experience of a new kind of executive coming in as the sales director, chief commercial officer?
Simon (08:36.132) Yeah.
Simon (08:44.892) Yeah.
Mike (08:48.28) building a sales team. But let's say, you know, it's got currently five salespeople and it's going to scale to 10 or 20 salespeople, say. So it's a mid -size enterprise. It's not a mid -size company. It's not an enterprise -level company. How do they know what world -class looks like? Because, like... So what's your view on that?
Simon (09:13.212) So it requires the leader to take time to look at what are the behaviors that make this particular salesperson work. So it's a tell your salesperson.
Mike (09:18.844) Yes.
Simon (09:31.612) selling one year deals versus 20 year deals. The behaviors that make you successful, the way you influence it, the way you build relationships, the way you plan, all those elements will be subtly different. So it starts for me always with what I would call what great looks like. Fairly obvious, but write it down. What are the values and motivations? What sort of level of intellect? What's the behaviors? How does this person show up? Do you know what's the least
Mike (09:46.476) Yep. Yes. We do.
Simon (10:00.226) least useful thing to write down, but you'll write it down, is what they've done before. We all tend to hire from our own industry. You know, it's just right, right? And it's cautious nature in us to just hire. Yes, Simon was really successful at my background in technology and telecommunications, really successful at cable and wireless. Let's hire him into BT. Actually, you can learn products, you can learn an industry, you can learn the business you're going to join.
Mike (10:19.28) Yep.
Mike (10:29.26) Yes.
Simon (10:29.852) it's really hard to learn to change your character, your attitude, your behaviors. You can do, you can develop them over time, but it's a much longer journey. So when you're hiring, you hire for that attitude, hire for that character. And if they happen to have perfect experience as well, fabulous. But if they don't, they can probably learn that more quickly. Does that make any sense? Yeah.
Mike (10:43.684) Yeah.
Mike (10:53.852) Absolutely. Oh my God. So we had a couple of clients I was involved with, some I still am involved with. We went through a whole round of hiring experts, because they were the expert, and then finding that the team hated them. So our internal team couldn't work with them. They just wouldn't fit. And me and a particular chief exec that I work with,
Mike (11:23.708) We came up with a bit of the thing, which basically was, look, hire for attitude, train for skills and experience. Because then we know if you've got the right attitude, no matter what level you're being hired in at, you're going to fit in with the team and you're going to bring the team with you if you're an executive. But if you're a brilliant sales, you've got brilliant track record of delivering big enterprise sales.
but you absolutely don't fit our culture, that will be an utter disaster.
Simon (11:57.468) Yeah, complete disaster. And one little complexity about that as well, which is I used to, I think the way I used to think about this was that you wanted people to be, to fit the culture. And that almost feels like it's a stack of people, you know, you stack all your coins up, all the coins are the same. And I've begun to work out it's probably a bit, a bit more like a jigsaw.
Mike (12:18.024) Yes.
Simon (12:18.374) you want them to fit in culture but bring slightly different attributes. We're complex, we've got 84 billion neurons each. There's a lot of complexity there. Allow that personalisation, allow that individuality, but there is still a limit around your jigsaw. If it's too big, if it's too on the limit, as you say, they'll bounce off you.
Mike (12:42.012) They will. And I think it is an organism and organisms evolve. And you want, yeah, the person that comes in with a slightly different characteristic and slightly different attitude, but it's in line, that moves the organism on. It evolves.
Simon (12:46.396) Yes. Yeah, I like that.
Simon (12:58.716) Yeah, absolutely right. Yeah, completely right. Yeah, it's alive, isn't it? I think you're absolutely right. And I think that what's interesting is, you can have the same team for a couple of years, it's performing, but because the market changes, the business changes, the culture moves on, one or two of those people are slightly less effective. And then you've got to work out if they have the potential to grow with the business, or actually you are better finding someone else. And I think one of the hardest decisions I ever make in business, when I used to run big teams,
Mike (13:03.548) It is.
Mike (13:18.914) Yeah.
Simon (13:28.06) was letting someone go, it's a horrible thing to do. But what I worked out was that someone who ultimately didn't fit, I would start, my expectations would outgrow them, and they just ended up miserable. I've seen, they don't end up unhappy and frustrated and fighting. And actually, of course, whenever those people then, I had to ask them to leave and they left and they went somewhere else and I stayed in touch because I'm sort of a nice guy, of course, they had a much better life.
Mike (13:38.244) Right. Yeah.
Mike (13:53.196) Yep. Yeah.
Simon (13:55.068) Yeah, they landed somewhere new, they're a good person. They're not a bad person, they don't fit anymore. They go somewhere else, they're happy, successful, and you bring someone new in. Yeah, I think.
Mike (13:58.588) Exactly.
Mike (14:02.684) Exactly.
better for everyone. So this bit isn't prepared at all, but you prompted some thinking in my mind. So I'll see what you think. So do you follow the work of Matt Dixon and Ted McKenna? So Matt Dixon wrote a book called The Challenge of Sale back in the day. Yeah, so he wrote that book, The Challenge, and that became a bit of a sales kind of Bible thing, didn't it? It was a way of selling.
Simon (14:18.67) No.
Simon (14:24.06) Oh yes, I remember that. Very well. Yeah.
Simon (14:29.756) I did.
Mike (14:33.692) And he's written one recently called Jolt with Ted McKenna. And that's all about all sorts of things. But one of the things is why you get ghosted in a sales cycle. What you prompted me to think was about characteristics. It's one of the audiences thinking of hiring a sales director and they're like, oh, you know, well, what kind of person should I hire? And they think, well, what I need is someone with what we used to call the kind of like the kind of book of contacts.
They'd have this amazing book of people they know that, yeah, exactly. Yeah. People that they know that, oh, you know, they're bound to buy our services. So people are tempted to hire that people that's got that book of amazing contacts. What the recent research from Matt Dixon, Tom McKenna says is actually that's not true anymore. What you need is connectors. You need people that are sales leaders who are very good at joining the dots and building relationships over the long term.
Simon (15:03.676) Yes. Yeah, that'll do.
Mike (15:32.796) and connecting things that may not actually be in your remit as a service provider, but you introduce them. So I might say, oh, you know, you're looking for someone that's like a performance coach at a very high level for executives. It's not me, it's definitely Simon. I'll introduce you. And people that can do that, you build this trust with these longer term prospects and they'll come back to you because you're the good person to know.
Simon (15:42.172) you
Simon (15:51.164) Yeah, there you go.
Mike (16:02.556) that has been helpful and connects people. And I thought that's interesting because I think 10 years ago, we were all looking for that magic person that's got the book of contacts that will bring in all these deals. And what they've said is that's no longer actually true.
Simon (16:15.004) Yeah. And honestly, Mike, I think people still do. I think people, I still see it. I still see it in an industry. You know, I'm privileged to work across lots of sectors and every sector has its own version of this, which is, you know, I was with an insurance client last week. They're hiring someone new and we're working through, I'm helping them think through the process and they are desperate to hire someone because he just knows all the brokers. And, you know, and that is not sufficient to hiring.
It may be, and if it's a connector as you say and it's got all these other characteristics, it may be brilliant, but on its own it's not sufficient for all the reasons we're talking about.
Mike (16:45.308) It may be necessary, but it's not sufficient.
Mike (16:56.572) correct.
So next topic that we talked about was, how can marketing leaders, certainly in professional services firms, work more effectively with their sales leadership counterparties to focus their proposition on tangible value creation for prospects clients? So I've got a big thing about this currently. I work with a lot of marketing agencies, and I'm constantly talking with those agencies about you've got to be able to demonstrate value creation in...
some kind of like value ladder, some kind of meaningful economic terms so that your potential buyer understands, well, if I buy your services for half a million dollars, I can see where I might get $5 million of value back. I don't mean scientifically, but directionally. So how does that kind of work between marketing and sales?
Simon (17:46.908) Yeah, and yeah, I think you're right. So and, you know, there's people on the call who do not heard of me before. I was a marketing director, Futsu 100. I have that background. But of course, I've also run sales and now I have the privilege of working with both camps. And there's no doubt when I started in marketing, marketing was called colouring in, you know, especially in B2B.
Mike (17:59.228) you
Mike (18:08.446) Right. And you have the right to say that because you were a marketing director in a FTSE 100 company. Yes.
Simon (18:16.764) So that's right, so I'm allowed to say it so I was you know school head of coloring in and And so one of the things in fact Thank you, thank Thank you. You know, that's the title for the this week's podcast And and I think one of the things that I learned and I got better and better at was How do you? Start as a marketeer. I'm obsessed with a customer
Mike (18:25.948) That is gonna stick, Simon, by the way. That will now stick in my mind. Okay.
Mike (18:33.628) It is.
Mike (18:46.338) Yes.
Simon (18:46.652) That's really useful when it comes to value statements, working out how valuable something is, right? Take that obsession as a marketeer, really explore the customer and what's going to change in them in order to then build your economic model backwards. And I think what it requires is, you know, the element of colouring in that's tricky for, I was going to stop saying that, tricky for me is, am I or my team capable of turning that into a set of numbers?
Mike (19:16.54) Yes, exactly.
Simon (19:16.956) Honestly, eight spreadsheet with some assumptions. And of course we know we are estimating the impact we have and we're making all these assumptions and it's, you know, it's slightly tricky, but it's not supposed to be, you know, it's not supposed to be after the fact measurement. This is before the fact projection and you're allowed to take a view on it. And if you're experienced and capable and you've done your research, you've spoken to customers, you've thought about the proposition, you've thought about the products in your business,
Mike (19:34.876) Yep. Correct.
Simon (19:46.076) You can build a model that starts to bring alive the impact of what you're doing. And once you run the campaigns, you can measure it. And once you run the campaigns and you measure it, the next model is better. And the next model is better. The next model is better. And so I had the privilege many, many years ago, Package, do you remember Bob Hoskins, Good to Talk at BT? Of course. So I was in the middle of that and I ran...
Mike (19:47.9) Yes.
Mike (19:58.78) Exactly.
Mike (20:10.236) Yes! Yes!
Simon (20:15.484) the field sales force, 250 people, and I ran a, I was part of a team that ran quarterly campaigns. And we were doing, we were doing, what was it, 11 million phone calls a quarter, would you believe, to households in the UK. And I was sort of the link between marketing and that channel. And all this, I had a field sales team and that sort of thing. And the first quarter we ran that, we guessed at what impact we were.
Yeah, we just had a guess. We tried our best. We spoke to a of customers, had a guess. But the second quarter, we suddenly had some data. And then the third quarter, and so by the time you got to like the fifth, sixth quarter, you could predict, you could start to get really confident. So someone who wanted to launch a new product called Iversion or whatever it might be in BT's world, it doesn't matter, they could come to you and go, right, I want to launch this product. What do you think the impact will be? What's my business case look like? And we had some data to build their version. And...
Mike (20:57.82) Yeah.
Simon (21:13.498) So then that's what you're after. But I think for me, that discipline is really important and it sits at odds with my colouring in mindset, which is creative and rich and exciting. But actually I've got to be able to do both. I've got to have a foot in both caps.
Mike (21:13.788) Very good. It is.
Mike (21:21.988) Yeah, yeah.
Mike (21:30.108) Definitely. And in fact, I thought that was a very good example is that you basically, you build a hypothesis, you then get some data, and then the empirical evidence informs your hypothesis, you update the model, and then over time, the model becomes much more accurate.
Simon (21:35.688) Yeah.
Simon (21:48.572) Yeah, exactly right. Exactly right. And in a high volume world like consumer, actually your data management and the use of AI becomes really powerful really quickly because you've got so many data points. In our B2B world, which many of my customers are today still, your data gathering is there's less data points, but you still got data points that don't ignore them. It's not acceptable to just say we don't have enough data.
Mike (22:10.94) Exactly. Yeah. And also just that I get a lot of pushback from agencies saying, well, it's impossible to build a kind of value model. I mean, we're in a creative industry. I'm like, well, if that was truly the case, and imagine that you're a CFO of a brand and I'm trying to sell you something as an agency, and I rock up and say it's going to cost you half a million dollars.
Simon (22:34.812) Yes, exactly.
Mike (22:41.02) but I struggle to find out where you're gonna find the five million from. Well, don't be surprised if it's really hard to sell that. And I know it's more complex than that. I know there's lots of nuances, blah, blah, blah, but it is, you've got to be able to tell a story.
Simon (22:54.204) But it isn't, I agree, Mike, it isn't. I call this the CFO test, right? If you can't pitch any business case, it doesn't even have to be marketing, it can be any change. If it doesn't pass the CFO test, what chance have you got? And the CFO, they're not stupid, they understand that business is more complex than a spreadsheet. But if you can't explain the impact of value economically.
Mike (23:14.97) Yeah.
Simon (23:22.19) Because even reputation has economic value. Brands have economic value. If you haven't gone to that level of thinking, then yes, you're right, you may get it signed off, but you know what? Chances are quite often you won't, or you'll just get less. Of course, and then you get less and then it's less effective and then people lose more confidence. And you get into a downward spiral instead of an upward spiral.
Mike (23:25.212) Exactly.
Mike (23:36.668) Exactly.
Mike (23:45.692) I think that's exactly right. And I think the opposite is also true is that sometimes it's a case of where you're trying to avoid or mitigate risk. And that's got a value. If you don't do something, then bad things might happen and those bad things might cause you to have economic loss. But you've got to be able to sit in the CFO's chair and work out, well, if you were the CFO and you were asked to sign this budget off in this business case,
Simon (23:56.38) Yes, it has a value.
Mike (24:15.708) but there were no assumptions and the numbers were all over the place and you couldn't tell a story, you wouldn't sign it off, you just go, well, no, that's not gonna work.
Simon (24:25.326) Now, what I will do is add a little caveat here, which is, do we think there are sometimes investments we should make which are linked to a broader objective that is not commercial? So, our impact on the world, our impact on our employees, you know, there's a bunch of other dimensions. Fine, but make sure you've got those dimensions included as well. You know, it's not just a general statement. This will make a certain...
Mike (24:50.332) Correct.
Simon (24:54.03) a better business, you know, it's a specific thing.
Mike (24:56.732) Exactly right. So the third topic to kind of like touch on was around negotiation and negotiation mindset. So how do the characteristics of a negotiation mindset compare to those required by an executive leader in a high growth business?
Simon (25:15.868) Gaia, Gaia, that's a good question. So I have this sort of prejudice, which is that as a leader, I am constantly influencing and negotiating. That's sort of my job. I think that's what I do. I think I constantly influence and negotiate. So to a degree, you know, a negotiation mindset is just a prerequisite of being a leader, right? It's just a...
Mike (25:31.324) Right. Yeah.
Simon (25:45.148) I think there's a subtle difference where, for example, let's say we're negotiating with a customer or a third party or a supplier or whatever it might be. When you're a leader, there's also a power element that's more important. You've got sort of that power dimension to play with. I think what's fascinating is, of course, if you overdo the power, you're going to fail anyway. You actually have to ramp up the negotiation because if my job is to get...
Mike (26:10.012) Absolutely.
Simon (26:13.756) my team to do more, the product guys to develop their product quicker, the service team to raise their standards, whatever it might be, that's all about influence. That's all about planting that flag, filling them with inspiration, getting them on there, getting them to believe, getting them to add that incremental effort that will get us over the line that, yeah, they're all good people, they're gonna try hard anyway, but if I really want them to follow my agenda, I'm sort of gonna influence them to do that, and that's about that.
Mike (26:31.844) Yep.
Simon (26:43.452) What do they need to do that? What do I need for them to do that? How do we find that compromise, that happy middle ground that accelerates us forward? One thing I'd add is I think the word compromise is sometimes misunderstood as leaders. I think leaders sometimes view compromise as failure. I think it's as brutal as that. They won't say it, but I think they do. I believe that great leaders compromise all the time.
Only little things, maybe little things, maybe little things, but they're constantly working out in order to get my direct reports, their teams, my peers, their teams, you know, all the ecosystem that I'm trying to influence to work, there's always a little bit of compromise. Because if it's just my agenda, that might last for a little while, but it doesn't tend to last in the long term.
Mike (27:32.028) Yeah.
So on the negotiation theme, and on the theme you just talked about, about compromise, lots of research done, obviously, around negotiation, outcome success, and the characteristics of individuals. And broadly, for higher stakes kind of opportunities, where the stakes for both parties are material, the best route through is collaboration. So all the evidence points to, if you
Simon (28:02.748) Yes.
Mike (28:05.468) If you engage in a collaborative negotiation, both sides, then you tend to get better outcomes. So what's your experience of and thoughts on where you've got two executives that have different styles? One's a collaborator and one's a competitor. I've got people in my mind actually from the recruitment industry that I remember, weirdly. How does that work?
Simon (28:26.04) Yes.
Mike (28:34.108) If one's trying to collaborate and one's trying to compete in the same company, how do you resolve that? Because it can become a bit of a Mexican standoff.
Simon (28:44.156) No, I think well it depends who you are. I think if you're the competitor then that's pretty hard to resolve. I think if you're the, you know, I'll give an example from my past. So I was, my story is a bit more collaborative and I had a leader who was more senior than me and he ran huge sales function in the business I used to be in and I ran marketing. And it was, I was going to say war of attrition. It wasn't a war of attrition.
Mike (28:56.796) Yes.
Simon (29:12.956) It was a journey of influence of me just getting to know that person, getting to understand what they cared about, giving them a few wins, but also standing my ground. And famously I took this job on and I was told, you'll never get to work with this guy. I'll say a name, but because no one else will know who I'm talking about. His name was Alan. You'll never work with Alan. It's impossible. And within, and this is something I'm quite proud of, so don't mind telling this story.
Mike (29:20.284) Yes.
Mike (29:28.924) Right.
Simon (29:41.98) There's loads of things I got wrong. This one was all right. After about six months, Alan turned around to my boss and said, you know what? He's the best marketing guy you've ever had. He didn't actually talk like that. I'm just diverting you. So, you know, but essentially I think it was about getting, yeah, Alan was bright, capable, motivated, wanted to succeed. And once he worked out that I wasn't trying to win against him.
Mike (29:52.964) Hahaha!
Yeah, yeah.
Simon (30:12.508) His competitive instincts dampened down and he became a great collaborator. And he was still going to be prone to competition. There'd be moments, of course there were. There'd be moments where I probably didn't push him hard enough because that's my style maybe in that case. But between us we found, I don't know that makes any sense, but between us we found that middle ground.
Mike (30:16.186) Yep.
Mike (30:21.816) Yeah.
Mike (30:32.764) That's a very good illustration, definitely. And I think it's something that people face all the time, irrespective of what size the organization is. Those tensions always come up and you have to have a mechanism to address those tensions. Because I know in sales situations, I get asked about it a lot by salespeople, you know, what do I do? I said, well, there isn't an exact answer to this. If you've got a client who is competing and you are...
Simon (30:40.156) Yeah. Yeah.
Yes.
Mike (31:01.948) as a salesperson trying to collaborate, there's a few options. So it'd be good to get your experience just as we kind of close off where we are on this. The salesperson can turn into a competitor. So you can change your style and become competing. So you match. But in my experience, matching has quite big implications. What's your view of Conelite when that does happen and what the fallout is?
Simon (31:26.62) Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So if you look at the psychology that sits underneath some of this, then that competitor, once you start listening to them, showing that you're listening to them, empathizing with them, then they start to soften. Just psychologically, that's just true, right? Because what you're not is a threat anymore. And then that enables them to, you know, to
to move into that more collaborative space. So it has to start with, so I used to think, I'll tell you what, so I'm incredibly competitive. And when I started in business, I used to think that when someone disagreed with me, when they didn't get my point of view, I just had to shout louder. You know, and tell them, okay, I've obviously not worked at, tell them a story a different way, tell them a different example, you know. And then what I learned, and this was a magic moment for me,
Mike (32:12.526) Right. Yeah.
Simon (32:23.932) was I learned I just had to get more curious. And it's ended up with this phrase which I call you, which is, I ended up working out I had to be more interested than interesting.
Mike (32:37.372) Yes.
Simon (32:38.908) And this idea that by being really interested, really curious, softening them up, and I don't mean that in a bad way, I just mean enabling them to then enter into collaboration. And so that would always be my advice to a salesperson who's got a tricky character is you start with empathy. Start with, and show it, and demonstrate it. Show that you care, show that you're interested. And then, of course then they allow you to then start influencing them more effectively.
Mike (32:47.236) No.
Mike (32:51.814) Exactly.
Mike (33:08.732) Because it is actually, I do believe it is human nature, is that if you genuinely engage with someone and you're interested in them and you ask them questions, it's a rare person that's just gonna keep on bashing you over the head.
Simon (33:23.868) Totally, totally, absolutely wrong.
Mike (33:25.756) And actually, so you've come and evolved my thinking in the conversation a bit as well, which is my advice for salesperson would be, I think absolutely is approach it like you've just described. If ultimately they do keep bashing you over the head, then walk away and say, you're not the kind of person that actually we want to deal with.
Simon (33:46.172) Totally right, totally right. Customers are like Marmite, you know, and you have the right to decide you don't like it. You know, and if you've got a good boss and you have the conversation and you try the different strategies, you know, you've got to decide not to trade with some customers. You know, that's not a bad thing because they will become caustic and, you know, they will create ripples throughout your organization moving forward and you need it. You need it.
Mike (34:00.764) you
You have.
Mike (34:12.508) They will.
And they don't change their behavior patterns. In my experience, if they start out like that, then the other side of the deal when you're working together, they will continue like that. That's never going to change.
Simon (34:18.076) No.
Simon (34:23.564) Yeah, absolutely right. It's about character, right? The character doesn't suddenly change the other side of the deal.
Mike (34:29.884) It is.
Exactly. Out of interest, the psychological model about why we don't, isn't there something about our values are quite deeply buried inside us. They're very hard to change someone's values. So in change management, we try and change behaviors, but we can't change values.
Simon (34:44.764) Yeah, exactly, so... Yeah.
No, not so in our sort of, you know, if you saw the research, which is yes, by the time you're a sort of a teenager, you're getting to a point where the core values and motivations that shape how you see the world are sort of set. And they shape the behaviors that you layer on top of them. So, you know, in really simple terms, example from me, so I'm quite competitive and I like winning and succeeding.
and moving at speed. And all of those sit within my motivations and values. One of the things that means is I'm absolutely terrible at planning because I don't really value it. Now, you know, for one period of my career, I was at Accenture and I was forced to plan because I'm brilliant at it and the environment forced me to. So can I plan? Yes. Yeah, I can plan quite well. Do I want? Yeah, but do I want to?
Mike (35:32.284) Right.
Mike (35:43.996) You can change your behaviors, but you don't really want to.
Simon (35:47.58) Do I want to? So if it's left up to me, I won't. If the environment makes me, then I will. And so when you are hiring me, you'd have to know, do we care about planning? Yes or no. If we don't, that's fine. If we care about it deeply, can we create an environment around Simon that will make him do it? Then yes, I'd be great. If not, I'm a bit of a risk.
Mike (36:06.204) Exactly.
Mike (36:10.268) Yeah, very, very good illustration. Simon, I knew this would be fascinating. It always is. I wish we had a glass of wine in our hand instead, but we don't. But never mind. Next time, exactly. So Simon, thanks ever so much for joining me. It's been an amazing conversation and for bringing your huge expertise and experience to bear on some hopefully interesting questions for the listeners. Where can people find out more about you?
Simon (36:14.908) Thank you.
Simon (36:20.18) Next time.
Simon (36:25.436) question.
Simon (36:36.796) So, I mean, if people really want to track me down, I work for a business called Positive Momentum. Look up, Google it, Simon Cooper Positive Momentum, you'll find me on LinkedIn or on the website. Thank you, Mike. Really enjoyable.
Mike (36:50.428) Very good. Thoroughly enjoyable. Thanks, Simon. Right, I will now stop recording.
