6 Things Sir Alex Ferguson Taught Me…

With Sir Alex now out of hospital recovering, I thought I’d reflect on his incredible career and write a piece on what I've learnt from him... from a management and sales point of view.

I recently re-read his book, ‘Leading’ which was co-written with Michael Moritz.

‘Leading’ examines Sir Alex's management style and applies it to the business world, treating Manchester United not as a football club but instead as an organisation with their product being football.

The book also confirmed what I already thought, football aside Sir Alex should be regarded as one of the world's greatest managers.

During his time at the helm of Manchester United, Sir Alex recruited, coached, developed, motivated and led his ‘employees’ to consistently achieve. It was success followed by success regardless of the challenges along the way, he and his team always adapted and found a way to succeed for 26 years. Twenty-Six. Only retirement could stop him.

In total, Sir Alex and his teams achieved 49 trophies, he also claimed close to 100 personal awards.

All of this success come in one of the most competitive, relentless and unforgiving of industries. Football. It doesn’t matter if you're Zinedine Zidane winning 3 Champions Leagues back to back or Claudio Ranieri leading ‘little’ Leicester to achieve the impossible, only in football can you be successful on a Saturday and out of a job come Monday morning.

Clearly, there was something special about Sir Alex's leadership style and I read his book because I aspire to lead and coach a sales team in the near future and I wanted to see if I could apply his approach to my world, the world of sales - another extremely competitive, relentless and unforgiving industry.

Here are the lessons I took from Sir Alex on how to be a successful manager; 

1. Observe: “There’s a reason that God gave us two ears, two eyes, and one mouth. It’s so you can listen and watch twice as much as you talk. Best of all, listening and watching costs you nothing” Sir Alex Ferguson.

As a manager, you can learn a lot by simply observing and listening to your team in action. He'd often just stand and watch his team and listen to the conversations of those around him. He also explained that every away game, post-match he'd enter the opposing manager's office with a bottle of wine, to many it looked like he was being friendly but Sir Alex had another agenda, he would try and keep quiet and just sit in the enemy's den and listen to the rival's backroom staff, listening to what they were saying, in case they dropped any nuggets of information on upcoming players etc. This is one of the reasons we signed the players like Andy Cole, Michael Carrick and Rio Ferdinand as he heard the backroom staff of rival teams raving about them post-match.

As a manager what do you observe? looking at CRM metrics, work rate and simply trusting your team because they're 'experienced' is one thing but not for Sir Alex, he didn't just look at data and let Giggs do his own thing Monday-Friday, he set time aside to watch them train and perform every day. Every day. From his observations, he could identify what training was required and who was deserving of the starting 11.

As a manager, it’s vital you have visibility into your team's conversations and observe how they actually sell - how they present, handle objections, negotiate and close, whether that be during training, over the phone or out in the field!

Without actually observing how your team sell, it's virtually impossible to coach and develop your reps into star performers.

2. Share Experience: “We maintained a virus that infected everyone at United. It was called winning” Sir Alex Ferguson.

Staff come and go, its a natural part of business whether that be moving on to a new role or simply retiring; when this happens you lose experience and at United Sir Alex went out of his way to avoid losing what he referred to as 'the virus of his success' and therefore with his most respected and star performers he retained their services moving them into coaching roles. He felt having their knowledge and experience on site would help new recruits who in turn would pass on their learnings, ensuring success cycled round and round and the 'virus' was injected into every employee. That's why he begged David Moyes to stick with his backroom staff when he retired. Did Moyes listen? Noooo... still, this isn't a football blog so I'll stop my rant there!

What about your experienced and star performers, how are you capturing their knowledge and experience making that available for everyone to learn from? Perhaps they buddy up with new hires and mentor? that's one method but what if they leave or when the day comes and they retire?

I've taken from this the need to capture their experience, after all, if you spend time and money coaching your sales reps for them to eventually leave the business you'll still want to benefit from your investment, I therefore strongly advocate the recordings of calls and demos which leads me nicely to game tape...

3. Game Tape: "It's astonishing how many biases and preconceived notions we carry around and these influence what we see and hear or more precisely what we think we see and hear and in doing so it would be very easy to overlook a quality or, much more painfully ignore a major fault" Sir Alex Ferguson.

Sir Alex didn’t coach by himself, he had a team of coaches which included data analysts and a video feedback department.

These departments were responsible for reviewing the team in action and creating 'game tape' - a reel of highlights to review, which included how they performed in previous games and out on the training pitch. This footage was then observed by Sir Alex, his coaches and the players and it was in this game tape they uncovered weaknesses and strengths and used this to coach and develop their players, making a plans for future training sessions and match tactics. They'd also watch game tape of opponents to plan their attack for the next match.

By watching 'game tape' and seeing what actually happened with the ability to rewind and watch again Sir Alex was able to make sound judgement and not one on bias opinion or preconceived misconceptions

As a manager do you coach and lead your team on 'myths' and/ or opinions or do you have access to 'game tape' from your team's sales conversations? Moments that can be praised or coach, segments of brilliance that can be shared with the rest of the team to drive consistency and ensure each rep is delivering the same winning message?

if no... why not?! The good news here is you don't need a team of coaches and video departments to create Sales Game Tape!

With Conversation Intelligence and Sales Coaching Platforms, it can be done automatically. Platforms like Refract use A.I and Machine Learning to automatically analyse your team's sales conversations and uncovers both likely coachable and key revenue decisive moments as well as surfacing revealing stats like rep talk vs listening %, the number of questions they ask and the most common objections they're facing.

Having access to Sales Game Tape allows you to discover what is truly happening in your team's sales conversations and identify what your top performers do differently, you can also give Sales Game Tape directly to your reps and allow them to see what's working and what's required to be successful in their next conversation.

4. Listening to your team: “If I were running a company, I would always want to listen to the thoughts of its most talented youngsters, because they are the people most in touch with the realities of today and the prospects for tomorrow” Sir Alex Ferguson.

If it wasn’t for taking feedback directly from his players, United would never have signed the likes of Cantona, Keane, Rooney or Ronaldo. All of which were signed because his players played against them in a match and then urged Sir Alex to sign them. As a United fan, it's not worth contemplating a history without these amazing players. I’m just glad Sir Alex listened to his team and trusted their judgment.

From a management perspective, I think it's clear you need to spend time with your team listening to their conversations, understanding what objections they're facing and whom they're coming up against out in the field. Without this knowledge, it's impossible to adapt and keep ahead of the game which leads me on to innovation...

5. Innovation: “I tell the players that the bus is moving. This club has to progress. And the bus wouldn’t wait for them. I tell them to get on board” Sir Alex Ferguson.

Football (and the world in general) changed a lot over Sir Alex’s tenure and he managed to evolve and keep ahead of the game. If you keep doing the same thing you will get the same results.

In management, you must never stand still. Embrace new methods, new technology and new ways of selling. Are you ensuring you and your team are developing and keeping ahead of the competition? 

6.  Hard work and never giving up: "Hard work will always overcome natural talent when natural talent does not work hard enough" Sir Alex Ferguson.

Sir Alex, above all else, would always demand hard work and a 'never say die' attitude from his players. If in any game come the 75th minute United wasn't winning he would shout "throw the kitchen sink" and that basically meant one thing - attack! If we lost a game but everyone gave their all he had no complaints - at least not with his players...

In the world of sales, there are so many things out of your control - I've personally had deals fall apart because my contact had left, a competitor swooped in, budget evaporated and so many other reasons. The one thing you can always control though is how hard you work and if you keep going. Afterall, games can always be won in Fergie time!

So there you have it, 6 things Sir Alex taught me from a management and sales sense. What one was your favourite?

‘Leading’ is a fantastic case study in coaching and leadership techniques. The book covers everything including coaching, pipeline, delegation, decision making and operating in global markets. I would recommend it to anyone.

In my opinion, everyone can learn from Sir Alex. I certainly have and when I'm leading my own Sales team I'll reflect back on his book - perhaps a future sales rep I'll be working with and coaching is reading this now!

If you've enjoyed this post then do let me know, I'd also be grateful if you'd hit the share button and open it up with your network.

I'd also like to know if there's someone this post has made you think of, someone you feel we could all learn from in a similar sense - if so comment below!

Thanks,

Mark.