Inside Marketing with MarketSurge

Speaker: Welcome to Inside
Marketing With Market Surge.

Your front row seat to the
boldest ideas and smartest

strategies in the marketing game.

Your host is Reed Hansen, chief
Growth Officer at Market Surge.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Hello
and welcome back to Inside

Marketing with Market Surge.

Today's guest is on a mission to cut
through the noise and make leadership

simple, actionable, and effective.

Paul Morton is the founder of the
Practical Leadership Academy, where

he equips leaders with the real world
tools they need to inspire teams,

manage complexity, and get results
without the jargon or the fluff.

With years of hands-on experience
in guiding organizations and

leaders across many industries.

Paul has built a reputation for
turning theory into practice,

helping managers become leaders,
and leaders become visionaries.

On today's episode, we'll dive into
what practical leadership really looks

like in 2025, how to balance empathy
and accountability, and why the best

leaders are more like guides and bosses.

Paul, welcome to Inside
Marketing with Market Surge.

Paul Morton: Reed.

Lovely.

Thank you very much indeed.

Delightful.

Delightful to be here.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Well, I, you
know, I'm again, really, really, uh,

honored to have you on the, the podcast.

Can we start a little bit with your,
your background in Origin story

and what inspired you to create
the Practical Leadership Academy?

I.

Paul Morton: know, with these origin
stories, you always wonder where to start.

So you have, well, a mommy and daddy love
each other very much, and then you don't

think that's a bit too far back, right?

So you, you, you dial it forward a
little bit to the important stuff.

And after trying pretty much every
job this client facing out there,

I landed in revenue leadership,
did that for very, very many years.

Um, helped a company go through
two exits, two acquisitions, and,

uh, ended up being made redundant
right in the middle of COVID.

I've never been more grateful
not to have to manage a team.

Right in the middle of that.

So that was a good moment.

They handed me a bucket of money and
said, please leave and don't let the

door hit your backside in the way out.

And it truly did not.

So it was one of those, uh, urgent
moments where you think, do I

have to go and find a new job?

Which of course, you, you panic
about, and then you settle down

and you work out what a new job
actually means and it's security.

Did I.

have enough in the bank and all that?

So I went from leading a team of a
hundred and whatever, delivering you 70,

$80 million revenues in 20 countries.

Which is a thing done EDBD startup to
scale up to corporate, to the whole thing.

It's wonderful experience.

Uh, and then being out my.

A came to me and said, can
you help me do a thing?

And I discovered the wonderful world
of private equity and all their

operators and all that sort of stuff.

Um, and that's what I'm doing
just now is I'm working for a vc,

uh, working with a VC-backed, uh,
training company as their chief exec.

So I run a company called, uh,
RUVR, which is a VR training

company, um, where you can.

Train yourself and your businesses
where it's too expensive, too

difficult, or too dangerous to do that.

But my site gig, my great passion is
the Practical Leadership Academy where

I do a lot of work, um, in the, the,
the hours of darkness with companies

focusing in on sellers and sales teams.

It's always been my passion.

'cause sales is such a microcosm of life.

It just is.

It reflects all parts of how
we exist and how we work,

especially if you do it right.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Yeah.

Well, okay, so let, let's dive into that.

You know, I'm a, um, you know,
currently a marketing agency owner,

but in the past I was in sales.

Uh, so I love to talk shop.

Now you, you talk about in sales
leadership, practical leadership.

So what would you say is the
difference between theory-based

training or leadership and the
practical leadership that you teach?

I.

Paul Morton: of the theory that
we encounter as sales leaders is

around leading teams, So you've
got a team of people to lead,

we've been taught how to do it wrong.

simply, it is just incorrect
information that we've been handed

the teams that we lead are not teams.

That typically experience in life most of
the teams that people experience in life.

The picture you have is like a
football team, whether it's American

or British, whether it's basketball
or whatever it is, it's a group of

people, specialists in their own
area driving towards a common goal.

Sounds about right.

Okay.

You ever heard a sales team that
actually can be defined like that?

No.

not a sales team.

A team of sellers is not.

A team of people working
together towards a common goal.

only person who has the common
goal on the sales team is the boss.

else has their own target
and now they're not.

They're, they're very good team players,
but they're not playing with each other.

That's the biggest
insight I think I found.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Yeah,
we, you know, and, and, and to go

on that point, I read, uh, some.

Some content you had about the
football team mentality versus

the parallel team mentality.

Can t tell us a little bit about that?

I, I, I love these sports anecdotes
in particular, and, uh, you know, h

how does that come to be and, and how
does that look like in a sales team?

Paul Morton: You've got a team of
football players, basketball players,

don't care what the team is, you've got
somebody who is good at good in a goal.

You've got somebody who is good
at stopping the goal being shot.

You've got somebody who's
good at passing the ball.

You've got some, you've got somebody
who's good at different things, and

you need all of them, all 11 of them,
all 40 of them all, however many

there are in order to score a goal.

So far so good.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Right, right.

Paul Morton: now think
more of a, an Olympic team.

Okay.

You're trying to get medals or
trying to think of a group of golfer.

Okay.

You're trying to go in the league.

Each individual is running as hard as
they can, throwing their JL as hard as

they can, hitting that ball into the
cup as fast as, as best as they can.

But they're not doing it together.

don't rely on the other golfer.

I rely on me my caddy, and my coach
and the manufacturer of my golf clubs

or the javelin or the whatever it is.

I am part of a team a.

it's a parallel team,
not a horizontal team.

I'm, I'm a specialist, but
I'm similar to other people.

I'm not different.

The teams that we're used to being taught
how to lead are different, and that's

why they work together for a common goal.

Okay?

The technical term for this
is they are interdependent.

They depend upon each
other to do the thing.

A sales team, a team of priests, a team of
teachers, a team of surgeons don't depend

on the other surgeons to do their job.

The only thing they have in
common is the boss, that is the

start and the end of the problem.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge:
Yeah, that is interesting.

And you know, having been in on a, a
number of sales teams, I have observed.

Um, often some salespeople lean
into the, uh, the team dynamic too

much and almost as an excuse for
maybe lagging behind a little bit.

Like, um, you know, not taking enough
initiative, but, but being super willing

to develop, uh, training, training and
templates for the rest of the team.

And, um, it, it, to me, as you're
describing this really resonates because.

The individual contributors need to
think of themselves as contributors,

not, not as, um, uh, you know,
like the point guard or the

Paul Morton: collaborators.

They're contributors.

That's it, right.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Right.

Right.

And yeah.

And, and so it is like, yeah.

And like you say, it
centers on the leader.

The leader is the one that, um, keeps
everybody in their lane, uh, and keeps

them moving towards the goal, but not,
uh, he does, he should discourage,

uh, them, you know, and I'll go
back to my very first sales job.

I worked with a, an individual who.

It was just deep into his
spreadsheets and had, you know,

it was just building reports and,
and all sorts of like, wizardry in

Excel and, and training documents.

But yeah, but he just never, he didn't
ever pick up the phone and, you know,

and so it, it, uh, didn't, didn't end up
working out well for him in that role.

Um.

So now you know the elephant in
the room and, um, I'm a marketing

technologist and, and I have just been.

Fascinated by the changes in, in AI
and how it affects marketing, how

it affects sales teams of all kinds.

Um, what do you think is the role
of a sales team, uh, in light of

the, the new tools we have with ai?

What, how is that changing?

Um, do, do sales teams need to
reposition or, uh, you know, or, or are

they still still primarily relevant?

I don't know.

Paul Morton: Um, I think salespeople
will be one of the last to

be replaced, frankly, there.

Somebody came out a couple of days ago
saying that they wouldn't be getting

a job in law or medicine anytime soon.

Because these things
will be taken over by ai.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because they fit perfectly within it.

thing that salespeople do
is the human interaction.

It is.

We deal with people because unless you're
dealing with decision making tools,

you're dealing with decision making
people, and people are not rational.

are rationalizing people make an
emotional decision first, and then

they rationalize it with data.

Okay.

AI can't do that.

the thing that I've seen already is
what happens with the ABS and the Cs?

You got the A players, you got the
B'S players and you get the C players.

And we all want teams of A players, right?

And if you give a an A player good tools,
even just corporate access to chat, GPT or

Gemini or whatever it is, they'll use it.

Use it well, they will do
what they're doing better.

They'll become a plus.

You give a B player access to
these tools, they'll become b plus.

You give a C player access to
these tools, they become a D.

Because what happens is they're already
shouting at walls and they're Yes.

Spamming like crazy.

So now they're just gonna
do more of that louder.

Right.

And you must see this in marketing.

Hi, on a minute I can have AI develop
my entire marketing campaign and all

the content and the frequency and the,
and the, and the, and the, And you know.

what?

Your AI is gonna take the two lines
of text that you prompted it with

and write five pages of information.

gonna send it to me.

AI is gonna take that five pages of
DRL and compress it to two lines,

and I'm not even gonna read that.

So tools, if used correctly, can
amplify success, but equally like

alcohol, they will amplify failure.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Interesting.

So, um, you know, I, I,
that resonates with me.

I, um, you know, I think there's
tremendous opportunity, but, uh,

at the same time, I think that the
communications, the direct communications

we have with each other, um, have
become even more novel and more, um.

Can like more of a connection than,
um, than they were in the past, just

in light of how much content were
being thrown, uh, from AI engines.

Um, so.

Just to pivot a little bit, I, uh,
have always been fascinated, you know,

I've seen a few examples of this.

A a top sales performer is moved
into a, a leadership role and,

um, what I've found is that there
often isn't a correlation between a

top, uh, sales, like an individual
contributor translating to management.

And I, so I've seen.

Mediocre and poor sales reps being
moved into management surprisingly,

and, and doing extremely well.

What, what do you, what?

Why is that?

What, why are the skill sets different?

Paul Morton: I, I asked somebody
once if there were particular

leadership traits that you could look
for just as a conversation piece,

and he said very firmly, no, Um,
because the idea that you can lead

anywhere is, is, is it's not true.

You do need that degree of technical
specialism in some, some aspects.

I think what you saw.

Was a beautiful thing in action.

You saw perfect promotion because the
typical disaster promotion is the best

sales rep gets the job as a sales leader.

And what happens then, you're lucky,
your best sales rep turns out to be an

average sales leader and not everybody
quits, and you do okay, you don't

get the leverage you're hoping for.

What you wanna be looking for is
the best coach, the best leader

of people, and promoting that
person into the leadership role.

'cause if you promote the best sales
lead, best, best seller you have into the

leadership role they're not good at it,
you've lost both the best seller, lost

the leverage of the team, and people quit.

So you lose in so many different?

ways.

You want to hire somebody who burns.

For the success of others whose driver
who is driven by being in service of other

people, by making other people successful.

It's one of those, it's one of the, the
two big things that I, I talk about all

the time, one, to salespeople themselves
is, you know, you're not actually

selling the thing you're selling.

You're selling the thing that happens
after the thing that you've sold.

Has been used, You're not
selling a two inch drill bit.

You're selling a two inch hole.

In fact, you're not even selling that.

You're selling a warm home with
pictures of my kids in the walls.

That's what you're selling.

I put that up.

The second, is that the job
of a salesperson's leader?

Is to lead, is to make that
individual seller more successful

tomorrow than they were today.

to unlock the greatness
inherent in people.

It's to serve the people that
are, that report to them.

And if they get that in their head
that their job isn't to be the, the all

singing, all dancing answer to everything
just to serve and to make people

successful, make other people successful.

that's nine tenths of the battle.

So you find people who can do that.

are good coaches then?

most sellers are actually good coaches.

The really good ones are good coaches,
which is why it's not such a disaster.

But more often than not, they're
a good seller for other reasons.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Yeah.

Yeah.

And I, you know, and going backwards,
the, um, analogy of a lot of s.

Top, um, athletes, you know,
if we were talking about sports

earlier, uh, make terrible coaches,
they just don't understand.

Um, you know, like everything
maybe came so easily to them.

They never really had to
think about it and, uh,

Paul Morton: savvy by ao?

So why are you so good
Raphael on Naval Nadal?

I don't know.

I just hit the

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Right.

Paul Morton: I just hit it and it works.

And their coaches there going,
yes, yes, Rafi, of course you do.

Of course.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: That's right.

Paul Morton: make a ton of money,
but nowhere near as much as these

guys because they can't do it.

They can teach it,

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Mm-hmm.

Paul Morton: do it

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, and I have observed that
some of the best, this may differ

from other lines of business.

A lot of the best salespeople, uh, stay in
a individual contributor role their whole

career, and they make a lot of money.

They do great.

And, uh, you know, whereas like
if you were a tremendous marketer,

you would move up or, you know,
become a CMO of something.

Uh, you know, in finance same, same thing.

You, you don't stay at an
individual contributor role.

Um, but sales, it's like, you know,
like that individual contributor

if, if good, you want to keep
him there and keep him happy.

And, um, so now I know you've worked
with a lot of different industries.

And, you know, I imagine that
covers services and products.

And, um, can you tell me some of the
common patterns you see in teams that,

that thrive versus teams that struggle?

And mostly in, in context of, um,
you know, are there common themes

that I, I could pass to the audience,
uh, that they could use to coach

their own teams, for instance?

Paul Morton: Well, I'll, I'll give
you one very big one, it's the,

the idea of President's Club, okay?

You,

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Hmm.

Paul Morton: people, if you've
ever worked for any company of any

reasonable size, top sellers, they go
off to Maui for the weekend, right?

Okay.

Or Croatia or whatever it
is, depending on your world.

Top sellers off they pop.

Why?

Because they sold the most.

fair, isn't it?

If you sell lots, you get to
pop off and do your thing.

Why do you have President's Club?

Why is it there?

Is it a reward for the top sellers?

Is that the only goal?

Is that it

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: No.

Paul Morton: What is it?

What's it for?

It's to improve everybody else.

It is competition.

You've got three spots,
you get 50 salespeople.

You want to be one of those three, right?

Don't you, don't you?

Of course you do.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Yeah.

Yeah.

Paul Morton: number ever change?

Very, very rarely.

I've got data.

I've got five.

I managed to get hold
years worth of CRM data.

And it showed sellers over a five
year period changing, as you would

imagine, there's about 80 or 90 of them.

And all this is in the, the
gift I'm gonna give away.

Some lovely little, uh, power up
playbook thing with some good data there.

And it showed very clearly.

Jackal happens same.

Successful people are still successful.

Five years later, nothing happens.

Club.

Yeah, the same guys keep going on.

It doesn't motivate the middle.

The bottom half, the bottom
third, they all go anyway 'cause

you fire them, but they quit.

It doesn't motivate change.

Competition change these things.

That's not how you do it.

If you wanna fix your
President's club, you add badge.

the reason for going on it is you have
to be voted on it as being the most

valuable person by all your colleagues.

Not the top seller, maybe not just the
top seller, but you've gotta be the

top seller have added something to the
collective knowledge of the organization.

That's how you fix it.

All of a sudden, you're engendering
a culture of learning and sharing.

If you say top three people go to
Maui, are those top three people

gonna share how they got to Maui?

Sure as hell not, So they're
hoarding their knowledge.

It goes as well.

The other thing you were asking
was what does successful teams

look like versus bad ones?

I dunno how many pipeline
meetings you've sat through.

I've sat through more than I could ever
possibly wish to, and they're mostly, if

you'll excuse me, they're absolute drl.

got a room full of TWI and
I've run them for years.

I've run them like this and then
I realized, what am I doing?

12 people in a room, 12 sellers
from a team, and you say, let's

go round your top three deals.

If you're lucky, 66 deals later, the
guy at the end wants to hang himself.

The guys at the beginning have tuned out
and they're checking their blackberries.

I'm that old, right?

So nobody's paying any attention.

That's your meeting, not theirs.

So can come to, you're trying to
manage a sales team like it's a

football team and they don't care.

They don't work like that.

If, however you said, right, we are
gonna go and we are gonna manage this

differently, we are gonna think about how
we run our pipeline meetings in a new way.

are gonna have a standard of the week.

What is, who had a significant win or
loss that we can learn from this week?

Walk me through the exact steps.

What was that email that you sent?

What was the subject line?

What was the question that you
asked to open the door, gimme all

the details there and you captured
it in a rolling playbook, right?

You can then think about who's got,
who's stuck in a problem Right.

now.

Gimme a specific problem, not
just, oh, I've got a tough client,

but I've got a client who won't
reply to this proposal email.

you call it a who do meeting.

Who do you want to do what
for you and your client?

Okay?

Anybody, anybody faced this before?

Anybody got some ideas
about what has worked?

Collective intelligence.

you as a leader, role is
then a facilitator, a coach,

not the problem solver.

getting people to solve
their own problems.

You're getting people to come
together to learn together.

Right.

And then you have the
standard of the week.

So what's one standard?

What's one tactic?

What's one thing we're all
gonna try and get to this week?

Okay, this week everybody's gonna
try the three sentence follow up

that, uh, Sarah over there suggested.

That makes it actionable.

It makes it something you can
follow up the next time you have it.

Who tried that last week?

Oh, I did it.

It was great.

It didn't work for me.

Why not?

You've got a learning, you're
building a learning culture.

You're building this shared
intelligence there, you move,

you see bad pipeline meetings,
so you fix bad pipeline meetings.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: That is
some great and actionable advice.

I, I really like that.

And it's true.

I've sat through many, uh, pipeline
meeting where it was, you know, it

felt very repetitive, um, based.

Yeah.

Right,

Paul Morton: people.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: right,

Paul Morton: You know, you're,

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: right,

Paul Morton: at that.

That's horrible.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: right,

Paul Morton: truly

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: right.

Paul Morton: and you're

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Yes.

Paul Morton: your turn, like you're
about to be tortured 'cause you

are mentally about to be tortured.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Right, right.

Well, and yeah, it was almost more
about establishing, uh, manager's

dominance, uh, you know, than, than
it was doing anything productive.

Paul Morton: that anymore.

We never

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: No.

Well, oh, so follow up to that.

So many leaders are really focused
on the accountability piece of

the, uh, the part of managing
a sales team to, to an extreme.

You, you know, it's, it's, you know,
ruling with an iron fist and then others,

you know, there is a, uh, the opposite
extreme where they are super empathetic

and, and just wanna listen and, and, um.

Uh, you know, allow the sales reps
to wallow and complain and, and,

um, you know, take, take their
side to a, to an extreme extent.

How do you coach people how
to balance those two forces?

I.

Paul Morton: For one, for the individual
sales leader, there's something you need,

they need to understand and that their
team not the people who report to them.

Their team is, is their peers.

Okay.

It's the other people who report
to their boss, that's their team.

So they need to work together at
that executive level, that that

leadership level with other people.

If I'm the sales leader, I need to
work together with the marketing

leader and the CS leader and the
other guys and girls on at my level.

That is my team.

Okay.

that's an understanding
because then I'm operating at

a business level and not at a.

I don't know.

Juniors leagues, little bubble
of happiness and cuddles.

Okay?

We're not gonna get these people to
cuddle around and say Kumbaya, okay?

It's just not gonna happen.

And if you're trying to make that
happen, you're gonna fail people

will quit or they'll just ignore
you because you don't understand

how sales teams work, number one.

That's the thing.

You try to push people to be
collaborative and they're not.

They are, but not with you.

with, not with each other.

Your job is to be that facilitator
of learning and the coach.

Second thing, as you mentioned there, as
well as we talked about it before, let's

talk about that, the com, the competition.

You say, well, I, I, I got to the
top of the tree by being competitive,

so I'm gonna make you competitive.

Okay, fine.

You're just gonna waste a lot of
money and a lot of time and piss

off a lot of people because most
people are never gonna get to Maui.

They're just not, nothing will change.

Number three, as you
said, is letting it go.

I'm going to empower you to be your
own boss and step back and go and

hide behind my spreadsheet because
this leadership thing is scary.

And yeah, that's, that's, they're
the three big, the three biggest

things I see all the time.

Accountability is so easy.

If you do it right and you've
got, there's a lovely thing.

It's very simple.

It's called tight, loose, tight.

You're very tight about the
why and the what I want done.

very loose about the how, but
you're very tight about and the the

how it was eventually performed.

It will be performed.

So you go in tight about the
measurable outcome that we want.

You want to know what with no
ambiguity, how do we know that

this has been done successfully?

And you say, what are the guardrails or
the constraints that are ex, that exist

within this task that I'm giving you?

So you've got to use the
right budget template.

This is the firm deadline.

This is the format that it
needs to be delivered in.

And then you go off the pop, they're away.

They're away doing their thing.

You've got set though a time
when you'll check in in progress.

I'm gonna check in here and here.

Not to micromanage, but to support.

You're checking in,
you're not checking up.

Okay.

then the delivery on that, the,
the, the tight at the end is you're

very tight about the deadline,
the format, and the fact that it

needs to be delivered on time.

Tight, loose, tight.

So you get people to be accountable
and very simply, you say, are

you on track with this task?

No, I'm not.

What do you need to be on track?

Oh, don't say, why are you not on track?

Why haven't you made your bed?

Why haven't you tidied your room?

Because I haven't.

Dad, leave me alone and get off my back.

Okay.

What do you need to have done
before you can go skateboarding?

I.

need to have tidy in my room.

Good.

What do?

What do you need to get back on track?

What tools do you need?

What access do you need?

What resources do you
need to get back on track?

That's it.

Are you on track?

Yes.

No.

do you need to get back on track?

Accountability 1 0 1.

Done

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Yeah.

Yeah.

No, I love it.

Paul.

Uh, you know, I love,
I love what you said.

I, I feel like you are.

Uh, giving us a lot of good things that
we can implement, uh, in our business.

Now, you know, I'd love to point
people to you and, you know, those

that are interested in our audience.

Um, you know, first how can they find you?

And then second, I know you've, you've,
uh, talked about there's a gift that is

available to people that reach out to you.

Um, love to hear about those two, and
I can include links in the show notes.

Paul Morton: Uh, well, you can
find me ubiquitously on LinkedIn.

Um, uh, my, my team and
I, we post a ton of stuff.

I have my own, my own little leadership
podcast called Leadership That

Sells, which is also the name of
the program that incorporates these

three things, dead easy, dead Fast.

It's a super fast power
up for your sales leaders.

three Zoom calls covering the three
big things, and some coaching.

And you can find me at the Practical
Leadership Academy website, which is

also where you will find our free gift,
which I'm sure there'll be a link in

the show notes, like you said there.

uh,

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Absolutely

Paul Morton: Leadership
Academy slash gift, and it's,

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: great.

Paul Morton: Power Up Playbook.

It's a practical toolkit for leadership
leaders of high autonomy teams.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Awesome.

And I, I love your URL, it's very easy
to remember Practical Leadership Academy,

which is a, which is perfect branding.

Um, well, Paul, this has been
a real pleasure and I look

forward to future conversations.

I would, uh, point anybody that
is looking to level up their sales

team to reach out to Paul, and,
uh, this has been a great episode.

Thanks for joining us, Paul.

Paul Morton: pleasure.

Thank you.

Speaker 2: Want to stay ahead of what's
actually working in marketing right now.

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and see how we're helping businesses
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That's market surge.io

because your next breakthrough
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