Michael Hanson

Empowering B2B Sales Teams to Have Better Conversations | Host of the COSMIC Bridge Podcast & CEO at Growth Genie

Hi - I’m Mikey Hanson, based in London but have been fortunate to live & work in places like Medellin (Colombia), Madrid (Spain), Berlin (Germany) & Johannesburg (South Africa).

People mainly know me for B2B sales advice as I believe the world of sales is broken.

Only 18% of buyers trust salespeople.

Sellers are stereotyped as sleazy, pushy pests who only care about their commission.

And often they live up to that reputation.

So I believe most salespeople focus too much on their targets but what they really have is a spiritual problem.

They don’t respect themselves and they don’t respect their customers as they:

❌Talk about their product features and not the customer’s goals & challenges
❌Send the same automated email to thousands of people
❌Give the same generic demo with no customer research
❌Rely on email as they’re scared to pick up the phone
❌Use jargon like “best of breed” and “streamline” 

That’s why we created a sales framework called COSMIC that helps you connect with buyers on an emotional and spiritual level.

We use COSMIC to:

✅ Onboard new hires quicker and align sales & marketing by writing sales playbooks
✅ Write sales cadences that help you generate more qualified pipeline
✅ Train & coach you to generate more pipeline by researching customers & being unique
✅ Train & coach you on discovery, demo & negotiation calls to help you close more deals
✅Train & coach you to deepen relationships with current customers to drive renewals, upsells & cross-sells 
✅ Help you convert more marketing leads into closed won deals through training & coaching

For companies that have 5+ salespeople, we offer the following free audits:

✅ Send us 1 of your sales cadences, and we’ll recommend 10 things you should change
✅ Send us 1 discovery or demo recording, and we’ll recommend 5-10 things they can do to improve
✅ Send us a recording of one of your training sessions, and we’ll give 5 changes to make them more engaging

Think all this talk of COSMIC is hippy dippy nonsense? 

Check out our success stories below:

🏦📈Fintech Dext grows revenue 2 x thanks to Growth Genie’s playbooks, training & coaching for their UK, France & Australian teams.

🏠 Fortune 500 real estate leader JLL grows its pipeline with Growth Genie training & playbooks in Europe, North America & APAC

📍Location intelligence tech CARTO receives Series C of $61 million with the help of our sales playbooks 

⏫ Sales outsourcer Operatix decreases new sales hire ramp time by 75% with our playbooks

Want to learn more?
 📞  +447958312534
📧  mhanson@growthgenie.co

Founder & CEO

If you'd like to see one of the following templates:

- Sales training playbook to create more customer-centric messaging
- 30 touch outbound sales cadence to get in front of your ideal customers
- Guides for writing better emails and LinkedIn messaes to generate more consistent pipeline 

Please message me directly on LinkedIn or email me at mhanson@growthgenie.co

No I don't want to scan the QR code to look at the menu.
No I don't want to order coffee from a giant screen.
No I don't want to use an AI chatbot before speaking to someone.
No I don't want to tip on a screen having not spoken to anyone.
No I don't want to check myself out at a grocery store with 47 items.

Call me old skool but I like speaking to humans.

I'm only 36 and I know a majority of the population thinks the same.

Firing humans and going all in on tech, sure you'll cut costs short term.

But you'll lose customers long term and destroy your brand.

Imagine the confusion of my 84 year old dad with this stuff.

Fine, offer your screens & AI as an option. But don't make it the ONLY option.

For my dad, me and millions of others, don't fire the humans that create a much better customer experience.

I've already boycotted companies like Black Sheep Coffee and Netflix that are tech first, humans second.

Wake the F up companies.

What company have you stopped using because you couldn't speak to a human?

B2B Growth Tips + Beautiful News Stories ❤️ Love Endures All Things

So apparently AI thinks I'm a pretentious prick.

I asked it to:

"Make an image based on all of my 2025 LinkedIn posts"

It made the below image plus this text:

"Phone down. Pint untouched. Watching humans be human in the city you refused to leave.

The contrarian at the window, choosing presence over performance."

WTF 😂

I also look anxious AF

3 Young Children Saved Their Teacher After She Started Choking.

23-year-old teacher, Madison Swift, explains:

"I was eating while working with a student when I suddenly started choking on my food."

Her students, Kolton Hersh, 7, Dereck Contreras-Franco, 6, and Bryson Doss, 6 then stepped into action.

"All of a sudden, her face and eyes started going red," Bryson said.

Derek pushed the emergency call button on the wall. Bryson sprinted to a nearby classroom to get another teacher.

And Kolton? He didn't hesitate. The 7-year-old started hitting her back as hard as his small hands could.

"The student next to me started doing back blows to my back to where I dislodged the food. 

They 100% saved my life."

The three boys received prizes from Swift's treasure box in recognition of their bravery and she called them her "little life savers."

Most headline news is about division, death and destruction.

So on Tuesdays, I share stories about love, courage & connection.

#TuesdayTreat

At the end of 2025, I said no to a potential 6 figure deal.


It was with an enterprise with thousands of salespeople so had huge potential for us.

BUT they were huge red flags in terms of what type of client they'd be.

They ghosted me for 2 months.

Then suddenly they said they had wanted to start within 2 weeks.

I said the timeframe would be tight but if they were responsive, it was possible.

So then I started contract negotiations with their procurement manager and things got super weird.

1) He said that he was doing contract negotiations with another vendor.

2) He was requesting hundreds of edits to an agreement that had been approved by the sales leader

I've been in hundreds of battles against competitors.

But normally once you're at contract stage, you've been chosen unless there's a legal dispute.

So I messaged the head of sales and said:

"Tim (the procurement manager) is requesting lots of changes. I'm happy to spend the hours making these but first want to confirm that we are your preferred vendor."

She said they were still deciding between the two of us.

At that point, I walked away from the deal as they were either:

- Going to decide a vendor based on legal terms which is madness
or

- I was just a tickbox - they'd already gone with the other vendor

It's important to never be attached to any one deal and respect your own time.

What's the biggest opportunity you've walked away from?

A salesperson just made me spend 40% over my budget.

Here's how.

In Q4, I was looking for software to host our new course. A founder recommended a tool, so I signed up for a free trial.

The product was solid. 80% of what I needed.

But I had questions. So I contacted support.

What did I get? An AI bot that couldn't solve my problems.

It took 2 days to speak to a human. When I finally did, it was a 10-minute call with someone in a massive call centre reading from a script.

So I looked elsewhere. Two more vendors. Same story. Bots and slow responses.

Then I found a vendor that changed everything.

Their tech was similar. But their people were different.

The salesperson asked real questions. She actually listened. She tailored a solution to exactly what I needed.

Then she introduced me to a Customer Success Manager who held my hand through the entire build.

Not one of many in a call centre. A product expert who genuinely cared.

I had budgeted $5k for this project.

At the end of the trial, the salesperson offered me a deal at $5k. But it didn't include a feature that solved a critical pain for me.

So I paid $7k instead.

No regrets.

In a world obsessed with AI and automation, outstanding humans are the ultimate differentiator.

What product have you churned from become of a bad AI experience?

This Loyal Dog Saved an 82-Year-Old Woman Lost in the Woods.

On Dec. 29, Karen Joyce Davis from Oregon went missing when she went for a walk in the woods.

She was lost for hours. Then suddenly it went pitch black.

Karen clung to her blue heeler cattle dog, Cami, as the freezing temperatures set in. Unsure if anyone would find them.

After hours of searching, a rescuer explains:

"I yelled 'Cami,' and about 300 yards away, I heard a dog bark. 

Without Cami, we wouldn't have found her, so the dog really saved her life.

The temperature was near freezing and I don't know if she'd have made it overnight."

Most headline news is about division, death and destruction.

So on Tuesdays, I share stories about love, courage & connection.

#TuesdayTreat

Ollie Whitfield

Produces content nobody thinks of. Generates pipeline, awareness, differentiation.

We break the boring out of b2b content. So much of it is utter trash. 

How to work with us:
Starter Video Pack - for Founders who need to make a name for themselves
90 minutes of your time, content strategy mapped, 5 short form edited videos cut for you. 
Dont like them? Full refund. 

Hour a Month Content Pack - 
Similar to the above, just 60 mins of recording instead of 30. 
More videos. Quantities TBD per deal. 

Build Us A Show:
Custom. You ask us to make "Hot Ones" but for your brand and situation. We go and do it. 

Work examples: 
⏬ GTMDifferent (Pinned post)
⏬ CRO Crimes (Pinned post)
⏬ More we can share soon...

Marketing Team Lead - Demand Generation

Leading the Demand Gen team at VanillaSoft and Autoklose. 

Q1 2022 - 105% demand gen lead commitment
Q2 2022 - 125% demand gen lead commitment
Q3 2022 - 110% demand gen lead commitment
Q4 2022 - 115% demand gen lead commitment

Noteworthy:
Give-A-Con - 
VanillaSoft's first ever Virtual Conference executed March 2022. 250+ highly qualified target buyers registered in the Higher Education market. 16 leading speakers in the space delivering 8 sessions over the course of the 1-day event.

Growth Month - 
Autoklose's first ever Virtual Conference executed June 2022. 47 leading Sales and Bootstrapped growth speakers delivered 2 sessions per day, over every business day in the month of June. 1250+ highly qualified target buyers registered for the event to support the Autoklose product line pipeline, focused  on Founders running their SMB's. 

Leading Bi-Monthly Webinar Execution - 
Twice monthly webinars focused on separate target markets to provide pipeline and lead flow for our 2 product lines, each having very different ICPs. 
Guest planning and logistics, approaching sponsors and Hosting each show. 

2021 record webinar: "The State of Cold Sales Outreach" hosted by Darryl Praill ft. Brynne Tillman, Victor Antonio & Samantha McKenna. Sponsored by Lavender, RepFabric, Tenbound, Progress Coaching. 800 registrations.

2022 record webinar:  "Write The World's Best Emails" hosted by myself ft. Samantha McKenna & Kyle Coleman. Sponsored by Allego & Lavender. 500 registrations.

The 0 To 5 Million Podcast - 
Launched the podcast in March 2021 from idea to weekly publishing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Apple Music and all other popular podcast platforms. Currently at 4000+ downloads.
Began publishing video episodes on YouTube in November 2022 as well as weekly LinkedIn Live and Twitter broadcasts.

My big bet for what marketing teams will try and do this year:

Far simpler repurposing of content. 

Now the standard is:

Do webinar/podcast....
... "Can you get some clips out of that?"
.... Gets clips, but they're all 3 minutes long. 

This year:
Plan ways to get clips out of things you shoot, before you shoot.
Then repurpose the purposefully-collected content to repurpose. 

It's a small planning step to make. But infinitely easier to repurpose from that level than the one before.

Fractional + Marketing Agency for b2b sales firms. - Partner @Slingshot Content

Pet peeve: Stop calling a Podcast a Webinar. And a Webinar, a Podcast. 

Drives me mad. And also is a dangerous mistake...

The Best Episode Yet. CRO Crimes is back. Ademola Adelakun, MBET takes on Sahil Patel. I am the completely unbiased referee. 

More guests coming this season and an IN PERSON event where I am playing and hosting in FL. Lets gooo

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