Podcast appearances and mentions of rose garden consulting

Ali Mirza is the Founder and CEO of Rose Garden Consulting, renowned for guiding seven- and eight-figure founders in scaling their sales operations. Having personally closed over $400 million in deals, Ali has a track record of elevating companies onto the Inc. 500 fastest-growing list and seeing them through successful acquisitions. He is the author of Predictable Closing and Radical Leadership, and his influential work has been spotlighted in Forbes and Business Insider. With a focus on systematic approaches to sales, Ali's leadership has transformed founders into leaders who achieve predictable, scalable revenue growth. In this episode… Are you tired of the never-ending chase for the next big client and the sheer unpredictability of revenue growth? What if the way you have been doing sales is not just ineffective, but also destructive to your company's future? Could it be time for a radical change in your approach? Thought leader in sales Ali Mirza offers a compelling look at the often-overlooked aspects of sales teams and leadership that can make or break an agency's success. He reveals that the biggest obstacle to sales growth can be the founders themselves, stuck in ego-driven patterns that stifle progress. Ali dives into the all-too-common problems of inefficient sales leadership, weak positioning, and a lack of accountability — a trifecta that hinders many. In this episode of Inspired Insider Podcast, host Dr. Jeremy Weisz interviews Ali Mirza, Founder and CEO of Rose Garden Consulting, about shifting from founder-led sales to scalable teams. Ali shares a no-nonsense rundown on why strong leadership and results-focused strategies are non-negotiable in the high-stakes world of agency sales, his holistic approach that led to monumental growth during his time as a CRO, and how embracing direct conversations can transform your sales approach.

Founder of Rose Garden Consulting, Ali Mirza, is an entrepreneur and visionary and in this episode, Ali gives a detailed rundown of three strategies he uses to optimize underperforming sales teams and reveals the making of his new book “Predictable Closing,” set to be released early fall.   Ali Mirza started in sales at the age of 21 when he was going door to door selling life insurance. During his short four years there, Ali became a sales manager while building a sales team of 50 reps. Ultimately, he recognized that this was not the type of lifestyle he wanted to pursue and so then he started Rose Garden Consulting, now 10 years later he is one of the top consultants in the game.    Tune in to hear Ali's story…  [01:07] Intro to Ali Mirza  [02:11] Background  [04:38] Book - Predictable Closing  [06:34] How to optimize an underperforming sales team  [07:42] Strategy  [09:53] Understanding and defining the numbers    [11:38] Only way to grow a business is through visionaries  [13:26] Listening in on calls  [15:14] Break them down to systemic issues   [18:19] Timeline on performance   [19:44] Never apologize for not taking it easy  [20:35] Favorite growth tool – Google calendar   [20:57] Books that have helped   [21:25] Connect with Ali  Resources:   Connect with Ali:   LinkedIn  RoseGardenConsulting.com  Ali's Favorite Book:    The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Green   Predatory Thinking by Dave Trott   Alchemy by Rory Sutherland  ————————- If you enjoyed this episode, please RATE / REVIEW and SUBSCRIBE to ensure you never miss an episode. Connect with Dennis Brown  AskDennisBrown.com LinkedIn Twitter Instagram [Free Giveaways]

WANT THE FULL EPISODE? Check out yesterday's episode, or download it directly here: https://api.spreaker.com/v2/episodes/50779740/download.mp3In a leadership role, it's easy to justify your bad decisions by playing the “blame game” or ignoring a problem altogether. However, the gift of accountability is one of the greatest gifts you can give your team. It's time to take responsibility as a leader!Ali Mirza, CEO and Founder of Rose Garden Consulting, is an expert in helping leaders make important decisions as they grow their teams, their businesses, and themselves as pioneers of their company.KEY TOPICS- Recovering from bad hiring decisions (and making better hiring decisions)- Taking accountability for your decisions as a leader- Commitment to ongoing growth processes for yourself and your team- Quick versus slow approaches to making leadership decisionsCONNECT WITH USDecidedlypodcast.comInstagram: @decidedlypodcast Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/decidedlypodcastShawn's Instagram: @shawn_d_smith Sanger's Instagram: @sangersmith Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly decision-making tips: https://visitor.r20.constantcontact.com/manage/optin?v=001aeU_pPBHJPNJWJBdVbaci6bjGIuEJurH12xHBWDEVT_NxyCadMd7wLSZjcEZglkSjDjehuIbTHD8nABOIdV69ctfYpSzg24RCIytetBUrlIPPKgaGzjGZ8DkM0Wp1LMjbErcYUur7PbZGjeVo4gyXlz821AoJGZRJoin us every Wednesday for more strategies to DEFEAT bad decision-making - one episode at a time!MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODEThe Kolbe System: https://kolbe.com/Donald Rumsfeld, “Known and Unknown”: https://www.amazon.com/Known-Memoir-Donald-Rumsfeld/dp/159523084XDiSC Assessment: https://www.discprofile.com/what-is-disc/ABOUT ALI MIRZAWebsite: AliMirza.comInstagram: rosegarden.consultingLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ali-mirza-sales-expert/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RoseGardenConsultingAli Mirza is the Founder and President of Rose Garden Consulting and has helped his clients reach the Inc 500 list and triple their revenue in less than a year. As a leading sales expert, he has closed over $200 million dollars in sales using his conversation methodology.

In a leadership role, it's easy to justify your bad decisions by playing the “blame game” or ignoring a problem altogether. However, the gift of accountability is one of the greatest gifts you can give your team. It's time to take responsibility as a leader!Ali Mirza, CEO and Founder of Rose Garden Consulting, is an expert in helping leaders make important decisions as they grow their teams, their businesses, and themselves as pioneers of their company.KEY TOPICS- Recovering from bad hiring decisions (and making better hiring decisions)- Taking accountability for your decisions as a leader- Commitment to ongoing growth processes for yourself and your team- Quick versus slow approaches to making leadership decisionsDon't have time for the full episode?Check out the 15-minute highlight reel: https://api.spreaker.com/v2/episodes/50879709/download.mp3CONNECT WITH USDecidedlypodcast.comInstagram: @decidedlypodcast Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/decidedlypodcastShawn's Instagram: @shawn_d_smith Sanger's Instagram: @sangersmith Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly decision-making tips: https://visitor.r20.constantcontact.com/manage/optin?v=001aeU_pPBHJPNJWJBdVbaci6bjGIuEJurH12xHBWDEVT_NxyCadMd7wLSZjcEZglkSjDjehuIbTHD8nABOIdV69ctfYpSzg24RCIytetBUrlIPPKgaGzjGZ8DkM0Wp1LMjbErcYUur7PbZGjeVo4gyXlz821AoJGZRJoin us every Wednesday for more strategies to DEFEAT bad decision-making - one episode at a time!MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODEThe Kolbe System: https://kolbe.com/Donald Rumsfeld, “Known and Unknown”: https://www.amazon.com/Known-Memoir-Donald-Rumsfeld/dp/159523084XDiSC Assessment: https://www.discprofile.com/what-is-disc/ABOUT ALI MIRZAWebsite: AliMirza.comInstagram: rosegarden.consultingLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ali-mirza-sales-expert/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RoseGardenConsultingAli Mirza is the Founder and President of Rose Garden Consulting and has helped his clients reach the Inc 500 list and triple their revenue in less than a year. As a leading sales expert, he has closed over $200 million dollars in sales using his conversation methodology.

In today's episode, our guest is Ali Mirza. Founder and CEO of Rose Garden Consulting. This person is passionate about helping other businesses grow their leads.  He has been a CEO of an organization that increased revenue growth with transformative solutions based on behavioral economics.  [2:42] Why should we listen to you?  I do significantly better than anybody else in building out sales teams and sales strategies to help people grow and scale their teams. If you've got a sales team that you're looking to grow systematically, I think you'd be doing yourself a massive disservice if you did not speak to me.  [3:25] When was the pivotal moment of your life where you realize that this is it?  When I was about 19 years old, I started selling insurance. I did it for four years with fifty representatives. I thought I could do whatever I wanted, but I became a troubled person and ended up getting fired. And that's where I started Rose Garden.    [07:28] Core Values  I'm a very disciplined and principled individual. I will tell you 100% the truth. I also believe to each their own and every adult; I'm not going to play your money manager. My job is to go in there and serve my client and make sure that you buy what I need you to purchase and do the appropriate analysis required. I'm going to motivate you. And I'm going to get a decision from you because indecisiveness is a weakness.   [9:52] Can someone delineate whether or not they should be in the sales game?  Absolutely. That depends on a whole host of different factors. We are Cobian Print Certified. Colby is an assessment that measures your brain's cognitive side and then prints the effect of the sides of the enneagram to be your intrinsic motivators, If you're not coachable, you're not growth-minded, and you got no grit. You're not going to be successful.  [12:25] Simplify information and get to the bottom-line brass tacks. Your natural tendencies will allow you to build momentum quicker, more naturally, and the sale's general function comes more naturally to you.  [14:33] What are some of the biggest clients you've worked with that maybe you can share?  We work exclusively with SMB. We want to work with founders and visionaries who are looking to take the next step. Our clients are Instapage, Linux Guide. We've got a whole host of clients that are all in that SMB space that are sub 100 million that we like working with.  [16:43] Values  Human beings were not meant to be happy. Human beings did not evolve because we sat around, trying to think how we can be happy? We evolved because we constantly create.  What we're chasing is not happiness; we're pursuing satisfaction. We get it through creation and accomplishment that creates this fictitious feeling that does not exist. We evolved because we wanted to develop and to be satisfied. And that is what makes true happiness.  [22:53] What promise did God make to the world when He created you?  Everyone on this planet has a purpose. I am on this earth to be the best salesperson. My gift to the world is to work with clients to achieve genuine change in their organizations.  Key Quotes  [17:23] “Gift of accountability is the greatest gift you can give somebody.”    Learn more about Ali Mirza on:   Website: https://rosegardenconsulting.com/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RoseGardenConsulting  Instagram: https://instagram.com/rosegarden_consulting   

Founder of Rose Garden Consulting, Ali Mirza, is an entrepreneur and visionary and in this episode, Ali gives a detailed rundown of three strategies he uses to optimize underperforming sales teams and reveals the making of his new book “Predictable Closing,” set to be released early fall.   Ali Mirza started in sales at the age of 21 when he was going door to door selling life insurance. During his short four years there, Ali became a sales manager while building a sales team of 50 reps. Ultimately, he recognized that this was not the type of lifestyle he wanted to pursue and so then he started Rose Garden Consulting, now 10 years later he is one of the top consultants in the game.    Tune in to hear Ali's story…  [01:07] Intro to Ali Mirza  [02:11] Background  [04:38] Book - Predictable Closing  [06:34] How to optimize an underperforming sales team  [07:42] Strategy  [09:53] Understanding and defining the numbers    [11:38] Only way to grow a business is through visionaries  [13:26] Listening in on calls  [15:14] Break them down to systemic issues   [18:19] Timeline on performance   [19:44] Never apologize for not taking it easy  [20:35] Favorite growth tool – Google calendar   [20:57] Books that have helped   [21:25] Connect with Ali  Resources:   Connect with Ali:   LinkedIn  RoseGardenConsulting.com  Ali's Favorite Book:    The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Green   Predatory Thinking by Dave Trott   Alchemy by Rory Sutherland  ———————————————————————————————————————————  Are you getting a steady flow of highly targeted leads from LinkedIn??  If not, I can help…  Get the ultimate guide to generating inbound leads on LinkedIn!   Text 44222 with the word LIGUIDE or visit AskDennisBrown.com/guide  If you enjoyed this episode, please RATE / REVIEW and SUBSCRIBE to ensure you never miss an episode.   Can't get enough? Connect with me!  AskDennisBrown.com  LinkedIn  Twitter  Instagram [Free Giveaways] 

Ali Mirza is the founder and CEO at Rose Garden Consulting, a 7-figure business that teaches big companies to become bigger by selling better. They focus on your sales team and making them better, and they do that through a strength in behavioral economics, teaching why people make decisions, what makes them tick and how you can leverage that understanding to sell better, even when it comes to high-ticket items. In this episode we will get into selling, and we are going to apply it to the daily lives and the daily routines of us, the listeners, because, in life, so much is a negotiation. Bullet points 00:32 - Intro 02:40 - The start as an entrepreneur 04:53 - A wake up call: Getting fired 05:42 - Starting Rose Garden and beginning to scale 07:27 - The story behind the name of the company 08:53 - &BAM 10:57 - The insurance sales pitch 12:53 - Behavioral economics: What does it mean? 15:36 - Where to start: Who the ideal client, and two theories 20:47 - Are there any particular questions you enjoy asking? 23:51 - How many people do you need to talk to? 25:10 - How to get the clients to give you their time 26:30 - A real world example of “why” 31:35 - How refined do you have to get on the “why”? 35:07 - Why the people that are the most adaptable are the ones who survive 40:28 - Who do you work with? 41:33 - What incentive works the best for incentivizing a sales team? 42:47 - Where to find out more 42:57 - Rapid fire question round 43:45 - If you ever had to start again, how would you make your money? 44:26 - What is the most common or biggest mistake that you see leaders making? 45:51 - Who is the best leader ever (alive or dead) and why? 46:20 - How do you hire top talent? 47:00 - How do you evaluate a good business deal? 49:03 - How do you identify a good business partner? 49:30 - What is one of your proudest moments? 49:28 - What is one interesting fact about you that not many people would know? 50:22 - What daily routines do you have (morning or evening) that have helped make you successful? 51:15 - What book (or books) changed your mindset or life? 52:52 - What is the most exciting question you spend your time thinking about? 53:51 - What advice would you give your younger self? 55:42 - What was your biggest challenge starting in business and how did you overcome it? 57:44 - What unusual or underrated food or drink should more people try out? 58:48 - What makes you happiest? 01:00:09 - Any asks or requests for the audience?

To create the perfect sales selling system, you need someone to support you. Mitch Russo’s guest is Ali Mirza, the founder and CEO of Rose Garden Consulting that helps businesses excel. Ali is passionate about helping you develop a scalable sales process and sales strategy. In this episode, Mitch and Ali discuss why you need an assistant to help you operate on your strengths. But you simply can’t delegate and then leave your assistant on their own. You need to create a systematic and repeatable system to make sure expectations are met. Join in the conversation to learn more!Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share!Here’s How »Join Your First Thousand Clients Community today:mitchrusso.comMitch Russo LinkedIn

Ali Mirza is a top entrepreneur, advisor, strategist, author, and the Founder and CEO of Rose Garden Consulting. Ali started his career by selling insurance door to door before pivoting to the financial services, SaaS, marketing, and tech industries. He's since been voted one of the top 10 revenue experts by Business Insider. With Rose Garden Consulting, Ali helps companies scale their sales with a creative, innovative, and team-first approach.  In this episode… No one is born a salesperson. Sales skills aren't necessarily innate; instead, they're developed over time as you learn to effectively communicate values and benefits to consumers. Working with different businesses requires different sales strategies, but how do you develop these strategies? When you are working with various consumers, how do you market your proposal and close the deal?  On this episode of This is Concrete, Chad Gill is joined by Ali Mirza, Founder and CEO of Rose Garden Consulting, to talk about building strategy and creating revenue from existing clients and prospects. Using the Elephant and the Rider analogy, Ali discusses leveraging the decision-making of the unconscious mind to close the deal. Stay tuned.

While most business owners attribute their success to different factors, many credit a huge part of their success to one thing—new level sales skills. In line with this, we interviewed someone who knows sales like the back of his hand, Ali Mirza. Ali is the CRO of Crisp Video Group and the president of Rose Garden Consulting, LLC. At Rose Garden Consulting, they help businesses develop, document, and implement a powerful sales process and strategy that’s sure to scale and achieve revenue goals. If you want to create a robust sales team but don’t know how, listening to this episode is a huge step in the right direction. Ali not only tackled the basics of finding and hiring great salespeople, he also shared a couple of tools that can help you in your search. So many gold nuggets in today’s episode so don’t miss it! RESOURCES: Topgrading by Bradford D. Smart Ph.D. Kolbe A™ Index PRINT Assessment REI Radio Program Rose Garden Consulting Email Address: ali@rosegardenconsulting.com

Ep #34 - Ali Mirza, the president of Rose Garden Consulting and the Chief Revenue Officer of Crisp Video, joins me on the show this week for a candid discussion on optimizing sales processes for scaling businesses. In today's conversation, we talk about strategies and growth techniques to maximize the impact of sales teams.  Ali shares his advice on training sales people including how not to teach them. There's a lot to learn from Ali's years of experience scaling companies. Don't miss this interview.   LEARN MORE ALI MIRZA AND ROSE GARDEN CONSULTING: Check Out the Rose Garden Consulting website at: https://rosegardenconsulting.com/ Follow Ali Mirza on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ali-mirza-sales-expert/ Follow Rose Garden Consulting on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RoseGardenConsulting   Also, please remember to subscribe, rate, and leave a written review for the show if you find value in it. Your reviews help this show to reach a wider audience and I appreciate everyone that has been leaving them.   FOLLOW CHARLES GAUDET ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Follow Charles Gaudet on LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/charlesgaudet Follow Charles Gaudet on Facebook: https://facebook.com/charlesgaudet Follow Charles Gaudet on Twitter: https://twitter.com/charlesgaudet   VISIT THE PREDICTABLE PROFITS WEBSITE: https://PredictableProfits.com

"Verbal communication is the least effective form of persuasion... The most effective way to inspire action...is to have them vicariously live out the experience." - Ali Ali Mirza is from Rose Garden Consulting and consistently closes $50,000-$100,000 + deals.  Rose Garden Consulting helps companies scale their sales team.  In this Episode: How Rose Garden Consulting scales sales teams and their tactics that work; Ali's super power; Most important piece of the sales process: Discovery; "Sex-ifying" a non-sexy item; Inspire action, communicate and persuade someone: have them mentally walk through that process and vicariously live out that experience. How Ali is teaching clients to turn the intangible into tangible; Ali's entrepreneurial journey, pivot points and impactful experiences; Much more... Connect with Ali: Visit Rose Garden Consulting to learn more about how they can help you! [Link: https://rosegardenconsulting.com/ ] Contact Ali directly and let him know that you heard him here! Email: Ali@rosegardenconsulting.com  How to Connect with Us! To apply to work with Joel, complete our brief application and set up a phone call now with our sales team to discuss your project. Link: https://newwaytolaunch.com Introducing the Mini-Webinar lead generation formula! We are currently having great success implementing this with our clients.  We offer a training course as well as a done for you service.  To check out the course click here. Link: https://get.thewebinaragency.com/mini-webinar Interested in being a fly on the wall while Joel critiques and break-downs webinars? Check out our Webinar Vault. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you'd like to learn more about how Joel helps fellow Experts with messaging and offer creation, send us an email at joel@thewebinaragency.com  Join our Experts Unleashed facebook group to network with fellow EXPERTS!  Link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/233372473683865 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ If you liked this episode, be sure to subscribe and leave a quick review on iTunes. It would mean the world to hear your feedback and we’d love for you to help us spread the word! Link: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/experts-unleashed-with-joel-erway/id1355408300?mt=2

There are some characteristics and skills that people need to master to make it in the real estate industry. What qualities should you be looking for in recruits? Which is more important: experience or motivation? On this episode, President of Rose Garden Consulting and sales expert, Ali Mirza, shares how to build the best team for your business.   3 Things We Learned From Justin Colby Find coachable people Regardless of the skillset a recruit may have, their willingness to learn is extremely important. Even if someone has no experience in the field whatsoever, their commitment to keep growing makes them more valuable to your business than someone with extensive skills and no motivation to move forward. Prioritize empathy If you can’t read a room, you can’t become successful. Hire people who have high emotional intelligence. EQ is crucial in motivating others, so this is a step that should not be disregarded. Value competitive drive Motivation is a non-negotiable component of success. Make sure your team has the willpower to keep getting better. Lack of competitive drive is the number one reason someone should not be in sales.   To create a great team, you need to build it from the bottom up. Don’t go into the recruitment process with the intention to hire only the best candidates who have been superstars in their field effortlessly. Instead, look for the people who want to keep growing and become the best they can be.    Guest Bio-  Ali Mirza started his working life at the age of 19 as a door-to-door life insurance salesperson. Four years into the job, he’d built up the best team in the country and thought he was living the dream. However, after saying the wrong thing to an executive at a bank, he found himself out of the job. Considering himself unemployable, Ali decided to start his own business and Rose Garden Consulting was born. Today, Ali is the president of Rose Garden, and his accolades include being named 2016 Sales POP Blogger of the Year.    To contact Ali, email him on: ali@rosegardenconsulting.com  You can also visit: https://ww.linkedin.com/in/ali-mirza-sales-expert And: https://rosegardenconsulting.com/author/ali/ 

Ali Mirza is a consultant and sales business strategy. He is the CEO of Rose Garden Consulting, which he started in 2011. He is also the host of a podcast called For the Close. He provides mentorship and guidance to companies in need of assistance in formulating and executing business strategies. In this episode, we talked about sales strategy, business scaling, following up with customers...

Ali Mirza is a consultant and sales business strategy. He is the CEO of Rose Garden Consulting, which he started in 2011. He is also the host of a podcast called For the Close. He provides mentorship and guidance to companies in need of assistance in formulating and executing business strategies. In this episode, we talked about sales strategy, business scaling, following up with customers...

When they've gone door to door to sell a product for any amount of time, a salesperson truly learns what they can take. Being a good sales rep can absolutely be nurture over nature and with the right processes in place, any company can turn out a good sales team and garner great results. Today's guest,  Ali Mirza, comes from a pure sales background. These days, he is mixing his true old-school sales experience with expertise in the online world. He started Rosegarden consulting about 8 years ago and now focuses on helping SaaS businesses build out their sales processes. Rosegarden helps set up a salesforce that does what they need to make the sales while following a set of parameters that can be repeated over and over again. Each of his custom sales processes is tailored for the client to achieve consistent, long-term growth. Episode Highlights: Ali's sales background and how he got into his current business. His beliefs on natural-born salespeople. How to find and hire rockstar salespeople. Where Ali starts in creating sales processes for the client. How much the process changes from client to client. The amount of flexibility given to sales reps within an organization in order for them to be able to do what they do best. The correct balance of product knowledge for the reps who are selling the SaaS product. How SaaS business owners can achieve continuity between the sales reps and the backend team. When a business should start to think about systematizing their sales processes. How the process is measured by Ali and his team. Some standout successes Ali and his team have achieved Transcription: Joe: Mark I understand that our friend John Corcoran referred someone to Quiet Light to be a guest on the podcast; Ali Mirza. He's from Rose Garden Consulting. First of all, John thank you very much and if anyone else has suggestions for a great guest like Ali please send us an email. We'd love to have some people on that can help you grow your business or sell your business or even buy your business. Now as I understand it Ali is in the SaaS world helping people optimize that sales process, that onboarding process which is kind of challenging and critically important in the SaaS area right? Mark: Absolutely and John and Jeremy I think they're just going to become our new podcast guest sourcing agents because they've been referring so many awesome people over that have really added to the podcast quite a bit. But Ali comes from this traditional sales background and he and I talked quite a bit about this because that's my background as well. When I was a teenager my very first job was a telemarketing job. Yes, I was one of those guys. And then I also did B2B door to door sales for long distance optimization. I mean talk about some of the most brutal conditions for learning basic entrepreneurship. Ali comes from that background; he's really good at it. He's a killer sales person and so what he does now is he works with SaaS organizations to help optimize their onboarding processes. And how do you set up a sales team that is both free to do what they need to do … is it not this tight like script that a sales person has to have but still have these processes that are repeatable and can be optimized so that you're not losing money through your onboarding process. It's the same thing as like CRO; Conversion Rate Optimization.  So many people have these leaky conversion funnels and just by optimizing those they can increase the revenue substantially. This is the same thing with any group and any SaaS business that has an onboarding process for potential clients. So kind of an old school soul … young guy but old school soul when it comes to the sales process and mixed it in with the online world. Joe: I'm looking forward to listening to this one myself, let's get to it. Mark: Ali, thank you so much for joining me I appreciate … first of all your patience because I cancelled this podcast on you twice both for totally legitimate reasons. My mom's basement was flooding the first time. I was literally like outside shoveling snow when I was texting you saying I can't make this one and then the last time was I a little bit lost my voice. And it's still kind of gone but thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate it. Ali: No problem. I appreciate you having me. Mark: Do me a favor and let our listeners know basically why I'm having you on the podcast; what's your story and what do you do. Ali: So what I do I'm still trying to figure that out half the time but my story … so I got in the sales when I was 19 years old. So I was a guy that would go door to door at Sun Life insurance. I did that for four years. I built up a team. I was the number one agent in the country and handled about 50 sales reps under my belt. Things are great and all but as a true entrepreneur, I knew that that wasn't exactly where I wanted to be for the rest of my life and obviously my [inaudible 00:04:19.6] wasn't fulfilled. Long story short we have decided to start my own company; Rose Garden. That was almost eight years ago now. Originally we started off as kind of like a hired gun. I didn't like the bureaucracy and all that stuff that came with selling insurance and so I just hey I'm a salesman just let me sell that's all I want to do. So we'd go into companies, you put us on retainer and we could sell for you and when we close the deal you pay us bigger. That worked out great for a while; 2 ½ years or so then one of my clients this is great but if you get hit by a bus tomorrow we're back to square one. And I said yeah you're right about that and then he said well why don't you write down what you do for us. I said well that wasn't our original engagement so why don't you pay me for it? And so he said yes. And that's kind of when the light bulb went off and I understood that wait hang on, building people sales processes is infinitely more scalable than me actually selling for people. So that's about five or six years ago or so we pivoted. And since then we've almost exclusively been building out sales processes for our companies. Mark: That's awesome. So I actually come from that direct sales background as well; like I cut my teeth my very first job. And most people's first job was like McDonald's or something like that right, fast food? I think at the age of 12 or 13 I made a promise to myself I would never work in fast food and so my very first job was a telemarketing position. And boy you learn pretty quickly how to deal with that and I think probably … I'll put this as my worst job because I was kind of burnt out at this point. I was in that for about five years of doing telemarketing in some of the worst stuff out there too. I did door to door business, door to door telephone long distance service sales. They would send us down, it was a team of us, we'd go down in like teams of three and we would really hit like a downtown area and some small town, knock on doors to come see a long distance bill. All these are … oh my gosh man that was brutal but it was an awesome experience as far as learning how to A. be an entrepreneur but also B. how to sell. Ali: Yeah. Mark: A great background for an entrepreneur. Ali: Yeah I know I mean going door to door that will put some hair on your chest. And once you do that I mean you don't really fear things anymore. I think a lot of what holds people back as entrepreneurs is the fear of what could or what realistically what will happen right? If I take this risk will it pay off with, will it break me? I don't have that anymore. When you have to knock on someone's door and try and sell them some life insurance it's … all inhibitions … when you do that for a few years all inhibitions are gone. You just have enough wee care anymore. Mark: Yeah you learn how to laugh off the nose and actually appreciate the guys that just like in telemarketing the best thing that we could have happen is somebody hangs up on us right? Because that's a very quick no, I can immediately get on to that next prospect. And you get kind of this cold like I don't care if you do that. There was one guy at the door to door telephone long distance company where he actually had somebody throw a wrench at him so that's actually a little bit more aggressive. Hopefully, that doesn't happen but yeah you're right that puts hair on your chest. You learn very quickly to lose that fear. So alright today I want to talk … you do a lot of consulting for SaaS companies and helping build their sales processes. And this is obviously really important for just lowering that cost of acquisition. If you have a more efficient sales team you're going to be signing up more people. So I want to get in that. I'm going to kind of open up with a question here that … I don't know maybe it's a softball question but aren't there natural born salespeople? I mean isn't it really coming down to … and I know what you're going to answer on this but doesn't it come down to … again I did a little show prep; thanks me. Doesn't it come down to finding just those rock star sales people? Ali: So those are two different questions right? So a natural born sales person in my opinion and my opinion is always right of course. Mark:  [inaudible 00:08:11.9] Ali: Yeah exactly, right? I would do it. I think it was the Charles Barkley book where it was like I may be wrong but I doubt it. But in my opinion, there's no such thing as a born sales person. The only things that are born are baby boys and baby girls. Sales people are trained. No different than there's no lawyer gene, there's no doctor gene, all these other things. There's no sales gene as much as people would like to believe. A lot of what we attribute that to is people that are just outgoing, charismatic, extroverts. That's learned. That's nature not … oh, I'm sorry that's nurtured not nature. So it depends on external environment built, factors and things of that nature of what your personality ends up to be. That doesn't necessarily guarantee that you're going to be at closing and actually bring money in the door. We know lots of extroverts that just talk, talk, talk, talk, talk and burn deals. So there is no such thing as a born sales person. Now, looking for a rock star that's a different thing; you're looking for someone that's … you may not know what you're asking for but really what you're asking for is somebody that's already trained that someone else has put the work into and now you're going to … you're fixing to benefit off of their work. That is more reasonable than looking for a natural born salesperson because at that point what you're really saying is someone that doesn't have sales training but just going to sell. And so looking for a rock star is someone that has that sales training that you can vet their experience. Now that being said that's incredibly difficult to find especially in today's market. I mean if you can sell your … sales is the only money side of the balance sheet. Everyone else is an expense we're the only income, right? So sales … when someone can sell someone's picking up your company, you're not going to let them go. So good salespeople are golden handcuffed in. Of course, there are founders and companies that drop the ball with great sales people but the likelihood that you're going to find that person on the open market is next to none. They know people that know people that don't land on their feet pretty quick. Mark: Yeah I think one of the problems I see with a lot of companies especially as they're scaling is the founder might have that ability to sell the product but they can never really expand beyond that. And I actually have this problem with Quiet Light when I started initially. I went through … I think it was probably within the first year of Quiet Light, I went out and I hired five people that I thought were going to be really good at this but they ended up not really working out. Some of them did a little bit but not really, they all kind of phased out. It wasn't until Jason joined the team that I stumbled upon I would guess in your world the sales process. And I never really thought about in terms of a process because we don't think about in the same way here at Quiet Light but I'd like to get into this a little bit as far as finding out what that process is for your company. I would imagine depending on what you're selling and within the SaaS world specifically as well. The process is going to differ quite a bit from if you're selling say a $300 a month SaaS product versus … I think I just talked to somebody yesterday where his average price upon is $20,000 per year with three year minimum commitments. So what does that process look like when you're going into an organization and you want to start to identify A. the characteristics of that sales process and am I even putting this in the right way or do we talk [crosstalk 00:11:35.1] skill process? Ali: That's exactly what we do. So every sales process we build is custom and unique. Now at the surface level or at the face value after the fact there's only so many ways to skin a cat and so I could just turn around and be like oh you know what Company A sales process looks quite a bit like Company B but we can't start there, right? So we have to treat everything unique and custom from the beginning. And then it may end up looking somewhat similar to someone else's but we arrive at that independent of that. So we're not trying to predetermine. Yeah, so our process of how we do that is first thing we do is we do an assessment. So we'll actually go in there and spend a day on site and work with their sales leader, the founders, work with the sales team and really understand everything that they're doing right that they need to continue doing, everything that they're doing wrong that they need to stop or change, and everything that they're not doing that they need to be doing. And so we start at a very high level, they walk us through their process, they walk us through their typical deal flows and cycles and so we start to really pick out things from there. I'll get them into one of those three categories and then from there we get very granular and look at all the tactics. Then we build a report and say step by step right if I was your VP of sales or if I was the founder of this company or you know I had to build a process this is what I would do. So you get a little diagnostic and I basically can walk you through it step by step. It helps you understand what you need to do in what you do. Because sometimes even if things that we're doing is right it's just having that extra validation from someone who sees it from … we've seen hundreds of SaaS companies do it the right and the wrong way. I've seen crazy growth, I've seen two, three, 400% month over month and I've seen one or 2% year over year. So you can pick out patterns pretty quick. Mark: Yeah. How much has that sales process changed though from one organization to the next? I mean for example Quiet Light Brokerage, when I hired on those first five people as brokers I took on somebody who was really good at relationship based sales and was fine with taking that sort of long term sort of approach and then I also hired somebody who is the number one salesperson for Quick Books Online but he was much more close. He was a closer and that's what he wants to do and frankly, he struggled a lot and didn't really do so well. So at one point and more specifically for the people listening here and they're thinking about the sales team that they have how much do you look at the company, what do you look at with a company I should ask to start to determine okay this approach is right versus this approach is wrong as far as what they're doing? Ali: I mean you got to start with who they're selling to because even within a particular company between the service, offering, product, solution, whatever it is that they're selling depending on which market and depending on who is buying that sales process very well could change. So I'll give you a perfect example, one of our clients a SaaS company sells into the education or is an education platform. Let's call it an online education platform that sells to large organizations. But they also have individuals, freelancers, people like … let's call them hobbyists coming in there and buying their solution as well. So it's an online learning platform but their goal is to sell large organizations packages and number of seats but they also have one offs coming in as well. So the sales process is completely unique for the one offs and the people that are buying less than five seats, a small organization that has one, two, three, developers or just someone that wants to up level their own development game. I'm not a developer so I don't even know if I'm using the right terminology but that's irrelevant. Mark: It sounds great. Ali: Yeah exactly there isn't enough coloring right on a black screen with green— Mark: Just like the Matrix. Ali: Exactly, yeah. So the sales people what we have to do with them was we have to get that stuff off the sales people's plate because we're paying our sales people too much, in my opinion, to sit there and sell a $49 a month deal. It's pointless, right? We were losing money at that point on that sale if we had to not only pay the sales person salary because there was some cost to fulfillment even though it was SaaS and then pay him a commission off of that and then it was just annoying the salespeople. Now you got to look at opportunity costs. So what we did was we segmented them completely because the guy that's buying one or two seats is going to ask maybe not all of the questions but they're going to ask a fair bit of the same questions that the person that we're selling one to 200 seats too and I want all my sales people focused on that. So we have to segment that out, we have to change up the sales process, there was a lot of things that we did there. So even within the organization, the sales process changes. Now again we had to build that unique for them and we have to look at their … we started with their who's buying, what are they buying, why are they buying, how are they buying, etcetera and reverse engineer the sales process that way. And you could look at that sales process and probably compare it to 10 other clients that I have and say well there's a lot of similarities. Well yeah, there's only so many ways to skin a cat but at the end of the day, if I had been like wow who does this client remind me of, it reminds me of this person let me bring this in here then you're … it's like renovating a house. I mean yeah you can put lipstick on a pig but at the end of the day, it's still a pig. Mark: So how much of that sales process vary within an organization, the concern I would have would be having a one size fits all sort of a strategy when different clients are going to be coming with different needs. So how much latitude do you give the sales people within an organization to be able to freelance that process or even within that process at certain steps? Ali: A lot, so here's what we do if you don't have anything to benchmark off of how will you ever measure success? How will you know that … if you don't have a control group you will never know whether you're picking up all the money off the table? With that being said I'm not looking to handcuff and put my extra salespeople in a straightjacket so we give them parameters. We tell them here's what you need to do. And again what it's really used for is making sure that at first 18 months of a sales person they have more than paid for themselves. After 18 months, after someone's been working … selling for a year and a half in a company they've pretty much worked most if not all types of deals that walk in and they know what to do. What I don't want is oh you know this person … we say hey just go sell. What are they going to do? They're going to burn deals and they're going to flush out within six months so you have to give them something. But again if it's too tight they're not going to close or they're going to look for ways around it. And your best salespeople, that same part of the brain that it takes to kind of see the seams and run that route and through a sales process, the same part of the brain to get to that and score a touchdown is the same part of the brain that does it internally and tries to figure out okay how can I max out my commission, where do I need to sandbag, what do I need to do, what leverage do I need to pull to maximize it for myself? And sometimes … a lot of times it ends up being very detrimental to the company. So don't give your sales people enough rope where they're going to hang themselves with. So give them a process because they're going to go outside that process so anticipate that and say look here's what a typical process looks like you go from A, B, C, and D. Understand though if circumstance 1, 2, or 3 arises this is where you can jump to, this is what you can do, this is how you can do it. And now you're starting to turn their brain and you're designing where they can cut corners because they're going to do it anyways. So you at least design and you account for it.  I always do … figuring out when your P&L six months later after John's left and be like oh shit all of his deals are about to fall through and we just … yeah. And then that happens all the time as much as … no one brags about that right? None of your entrepreneur friends are going to sit around and be like oh yeah I just got shafted for $50,000 of commissions that I paid some guy three months ago and now he's gone and all his deals are about to fall through, I'm about to lose a lot of money. No one brags about that. Everyone brags about the logo that they closed. But that stuff happens all the time I get to see it from the inside. Mark: Yeah absolutely and keeping that process, you're absolutely right. I hated it when I was in sales especially in telemarketing. Telemarketing is really churn and burn, get through as many numbers as you can and if I did a telemarketing job and was handed a script I guarantee you I freelanced because you know … you hear it, we all get the call … those annoying calls and the person can't pronounce your name and they can't really even … they're tripping over the script and all that sort of stuff and that's an extreme example obviously but having that looseness. Now with a SaaS product, obviously there's a certain amount of expertise that somebody has to have, how important do you see that in the process of developing a sales team to make sure that you're front end people doing product demos and everything else know that product in and out and how much emphasis should SaaS owners be putting on that part of the sales training process? Ali: It's a fine balance. So here is the thing, knowledge is ammunition and the more ammunition you have sometimes you might use like a tank to try and kill a mosquito because we see that all the time; it's the show up and throw up right? But on the flip side if you don't know what you're selling how are you going to sell it so it's a fine balance. Here's the way that I like to position in and I don't want anyone to get this confusing but I would like to teach my sales people everything they need to know about the product but also more importantly is teach them how to position it. It's more important than teaching them what it actually does and when to bring it up and how to bring it up. Because I think that that's important and once you start explaining that it prevents a little bit of that throw up and show up type of thing but on the flip side and this … everyone's going to freak out when I say this but you need to know this much more than a prospect in order to sell. I have sold things that I have absolutely no clue what I'm talking about for one reason and one reason only subtext. It's not what you say, half the time it's what you don't say. So if you're a really good salesperson you don't need to know anything about anything you just show up I mean not to toot my own horn but I mean like my head is already big enough as it and as you can tell I'm … no one is more impressed by me than me but I've closed seven figure deals not knowing what it was that I was selling. Because if you can ask the right questions not only are they going to tell you everything you need to know but they're going to answer their own questions and all … you just have to know so little and position things. And sometimes it's just as simple as nodding your head and be like “yup, uh-huh, yup” and it's just answering their questions. And then they're like you know what Ali I think I need to move forward with it. People do not understand the importance of subtext. Most sales people will never be able to master that so, as a result, it's very important that you need to be able to teach them. You need to not only teach them what the product does but then how to position. I think that's more important than the product knowledge itself but if we're going to get really philosophical with it in my opinion subtext is far more important than anything else. Mark: The most valuable lesson I ever learned in sales was learning how to shut up. Honestly and I think it was in a Zig Ziglar book that I read way back in the day where he talked about that active listening and just being quiet and more importantly not just being quiet and looking and kind of blankly not listening but listening to what the prospect says and then being able to simply when you're invited to that point to respond, responding to what they actually say. And we've seen this at Quiet Light and this is completely unintentional, we have a pretty soft approach with our sales process. But what I've found in the past is that when I tell somebody not to sell their business which we tell people a lot because I honestly think it's in their best interest; oftentimes when we tell somebody not to do something the opposite starts to happen. They end up becoming more determined to do it and part of that is just dealing with entrepreneurs where all the smartest people are in the room and they wanted to … okay, I have one more question for you. I have two so if we can fit two in we'll do it but one more big question and this is something that I find to be a problem with a lot of online service based companies and SaaS companies and that is the continuity between the sales person upfront and the back end team; so pretty simple sales person is over delivering, over promising what's going to happen after. Do you consult in this area at all and how can business owners, SaaS owners look towards that continuity between their upfront sales person because not having to do the account management necessarily after the sale? Ali: See both of that are training, right? A lot of times … let's call me an optimist in this and I believe that most sales people don't typically want to lie and so if they know that they're lying they'll probably shy away from it. Unless you get a shady sales person then all bets are off type of thing but I'd say the vast majority of sales people don't want to lie and it's just because you haven't taken the time to properly train them on what actually happens after the deal is done. So for us, it's very important to sit with customers of SaaS and really understand how because that's really how we create the pitch. So we sit with costumers of SaaS, we see what people are saying, how they're saying it, we interview customers, and once we understand that we reverse engineer the pitch. Once you give someone the pitch it's black and white; what we do, what we don't do, how we do it, and if you're going off script it's very easy to call you in and be like hey brother what's going on here? You're supposed to say we do X, Y, and Z why are you saying one, two, three, and then it happens a couple of times and you help them transition out. But you're 100% right it's all about setting expectations on the front end from a sales person with the prospect so that when they do become a client it's not a problem but you as the founder, business owner, VP, whatever, the sales leader have to also do that. You have to set expectations with the sales people because a lot of times you're like oh … and a lot of times this also happens, I'll be brief with this is the founder is this visionary, delusional, optimist who thinks their product is the best products since sliced bread and is pitching it that way and the salesperson gets all jazzed, full of piss and vinegar, gets excited and says the exact same thing to a prospect then the prospect comes and finds out that half the widgets don't work. I see that all the time too. So just be reasonable. Mark: Yeah I know. I mean I dealt with that with a service company recently where the sales person showed me graphs and all these beautiful things and I'm like this is so clear like if they can deliver on half this and then I got into the account management stage and there's a lot of tampering of expectations. Ali: That doesn't work at all. That's on our roadmap for Q4. Mark: Yeah I'm like well at this point you need to just kind of sit back and just kind of wait for  … that's not what I saw, that not what I was told upfront. At what should somebody be thinking about putting in the sales process and I'm thinking again about really early stage people here they're maybe just coming out of beta, they're starting to go off for a launch and they might be hiring one maybe two sales people here. When should somebody be saying we need to start getting this process honed in? Ali: I'd say first few sell. As the founder, you need to sell. After you've sold a few and you've kind of figured out what happens, what's good, what's not good I'd recommend hiring two sales people; let them battle it out together. Let them feed off each other, learn from each other. The goal is not the strongest survives the goal is both of them steel … was it steel, sharpen steel or whatever. Get back going and before you go and hire employee number … or salesperson number three, four, five, six, ten, that's when you need to start the process. So after the first two people have started to prove it out then go from there. That's when you need to start building it out and systematizing and documenting everything. And now you have become … it makes your life so much easier after that because again sales process is not something that you build once and that's it. It's a living breathing document that's constantly being iterated but you need you to be the foundations start off of. Mark: How do people measure this? I mean do you set up milestones along that sales process that you're going to be measuring kind of like a funnel or are you just looking at inbound and out as far as inbound calls coming in or prospects and actual conversion rate. Ali: I mean it's both. I mean you're doing a qualitative and a quantitative. So overall you … I look at the quantitative just so that I can have … it's like a measuring stick but I really believe it's more qualitative. You've got to listen to the calls because there is no perfect closing percentage. And I'm always concerned when someone has too high of a close percentage. When they're like oh I close 80% of my deals I'm like something's wrong there. So you're either selling it too short or you're dequeuing people that you shouldn't be dequeuing, all of this other stuff. So the quantitative will only tell you what you're prepared to understand and what you're prepared to understand is filled in by the qualitative. So you got to listen to calls. You've got to figure out did we sell that for as much as we could have, was that too easy, was that too hard, what was going on in there. You got to figure all those things out and data can't tell you that. Data can only tell you if that improved or didn't improve and if you're not doing the qualitative you very likely are leaving a lot of money on the table. Mark: Absolutely 100%. Alright I want to talk about some of the success stories that you guys have had at Rose Garden Consulting because really when you start to look at this again I think two of the lowest hanging fruit areas of any business would be conversion rate optimization and two if you have a sales process where you have this on boarding process and you're having that customer interaction improving that process as well because you don't have to do anymore as far as bringing in the inbound traffic, you're just optimizing what's coming in. So I'd love to know more about some of the successes that you guys have had. What are some of the things that kind of stand out in your mind as far as kind of eye popping numbers? Ali: One of our clients in three weeks we … their average deal was 35k, within three weeks just changing out their process we closed three deals that I think is just over 70 something and then it just kind of stayed there. And it was just by changing up the way that they spoke to their clients. So right there from the qualitative standpoint, we 2X in less than a month. That was a good one. One of our clients and the cases are online and so one of our clients we took from 5 million ARR to 12 million in one year and rank 500 in the fastest growing company. We've got several stories like that but for me the numbers are great and all but for me, it's really … I just like going in there and proving things wrong because the best are the stories in where hey everything is great, we just need to go from 5 to 50 reps and then you start to find things that hey why are we doing it this way, why are we doing it this way? And all the sudden instead of going from 5 to 50 reps to hit their goal we go from 5 to maybe 15 and we're hitting their goal because there was so much money on the table. So those are the ones that I really enjoy. Mark: Yeah just making the existing team that much more efficient and being able to find out areas where like you said some of that qualitative stuff, they might have a high closing rate but they're disqualifying people way too aggressively or they're just not selling for it as much as they possibly could be. This is fantastic information. Where can people learn more about you or reach out to you if they are interested in getting somebody in to take a look at their existing sales processes? Ali: RoseGardenConsulting.com is our website. You can always email me at Ali@RoseGardenConsulting.com rose like the flower. My podcast is For The Close; that's ForTheClose.com so anywhere shape or form hit us up I'm always happy to help and talking sales is my jam so I really enjoy it so anytime I can help I am always happy to. Mark: And a huge shout out to Jeremy and John from Rise25, they connected us over at Traffic and Conversion. You're actually the second guest that I'm having on who they hooked me up with. Ali: Second, how am I not the first? You got me right in my fiddles there. Mark: You know what you're not the first because I had a delay. I had to cancel on you twice. Ali: Who is number one? Who is first? Mark: I just talked to him yesterday and you put me on the spot man so who was it? Oh the guy from Sourcify. It's a completely different area and he's talking about sourcing products from all over the world and manufacturing products and a fascinating, really smart guy. He made me feel like a complete idiot. But— Ali:  [inaudible 00:32:31.5] on me. Mark: You know what I like about having you on is that you're a sales guy cut from the same cloth that I came from and so that's just … I don't know manufacturing like that other guy did. I feel like I could talk more with you although you know infinitely more than I do about scaling up these sales processes and I appreciate you coming on and sharing some of this information. I think you and I are probably going to talk for a full hour just because I could talk about sales forever. I think it's fascinating but yeah thanks for coming on. Ali: Yeah, no problem. Thank you for having me, brother. I appreciate it. Links and Resources: Rosegarden Consulting Email Ali For the Close Podcast

Ali Mirza began selling insurance door to door but went on to become the founder and president of Rose Garden Consulting. He and his team help companies to improve sales processes and increase sales. Ali is also an entrepreneur, speaker, podcaster, and soon-to-be author. In this episode, we talk about with Ali about where he […] The post Ali Mirza | Predictable Closing: How to Create a Consistent Sales System appeared first on Smart Business Revolution.

Eric is the founder of 10xFactory, an entrepreneurship group hosted over Slack with over 1,200 vetted members and the founder of One Cup Media and the Sweat Pants Agency, spending over $1m / mo in Facebook ads. He is the marketer behind several brands that are the leaders in their category. He also helped scale Hunt A Killer from $0 to 8-figures, fully bootstrapped, becoming the fastest growing thriller subscription box ever and has over $100m of TV, internet, and radio advertising experience.   Follow Eric below: Linkedin 10x Factory Website _ Ali is the founder and president of Rose Garden Consulting, a contemporary sales process firm, Co-Founder of WMC, a beta stage SaaS platform, Mentor at Propellant Labs, Host of For The Close Podcast and an Adjunct Professor at General Assembly. In addition to that, Ali is a renowned speaker and an author, getting ready to publish his second book with Co-Author Aaron Ross, a follow up to the bestseller Predictable Revenue; titled Predictable Closing. — Follow Ali Mirza online here: Instagram Facebook Linkedin Website Twitter iTunes Spotify __ Want to work with Ali? Visit us at https://rosegardenconsulting.com     Thanks for listening to For The Close!