Michael Hanson

Growth Genie

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

Founder & CEO

Are you looking for a more unconventional, unorthodox speaker to shake things up on the sometimes boring topic of B2B sales?

I'm a regular speaker at digital events, in person conferences, podcasts and webinars. I've spoken for brands such as Sales Hacker, the Salesman, Modern Sales Pros, Leadfeeder and Vidyard. A few topics I have spoken about include:

- Selling with less ego - how to prevent ego-driven emotions from damaging your sales process
- From murder capital to the world's most innovative city - how Medellin defined my career
- The 30 touch sales cadence - why a high touch, well thought out cadence is not harassment but truly customer-centric sales.

Email me at mhanson@growthgenie.co to learn more

Public Speaker

The COSMIC Bridge Podcast

In a world of social media polarisation, The Cosmic Bridge wants to close the gap and help build a bridge between extremes and ultimately have more balance in the world. Sharing inspiring stories weekly from cult survivors, pro footballers, death row psychiatrists and more.

Podcast Host

Pavilion

Member

Modern Sales Pros

MSP Expert

Beam

Supporting Beam’s members by donating and encouraging them to achieve their career goals.

Beam is the world’s first crowdfunding platform that helps people from disadvantaged backgrounds to train up and get into work.

Beam has proven a powerful new model to help homeless people get into work.

Beam has been covered widely including by the BBC, The Times, The FT, The Independent, London Evening Standard, Sky, Time Out and others and has been named by The Guardian as one of the most important social tech innovations of 2018.

www.beam.org

Supporter

Trellick Films

Advisor

CloudTask

Board Advisor

I helped scale the company from 5 to 200 employees and enabled our sales and marketing team to do the following:

- Book more qualified sales meetings through outbound sales outreach via calls, LinkedIn, email and SMS
- Increase conversion rates of sales meetings to deals by showing the real value of our solutions to our partners
- Email marketing campaigns
- Increase organic search to our website
- Create relevant content that resonated with our target audience

VP Growth (Sales & Marketing)

enMotion

We work with governments, NGOs and farmholders to empower their communities to:

 - Charge phones using enMotion's solar-powered battery packs 

- Water crops using enMotion's solar-powered irrigation systems

Founder

Opinno

Designing and managing the content of large-scale innovation events in partnership with MIT Technology Review, the US Embassy in Spain and Salesforce. My roles included:

• Preparing, moderating and facilitating design thinking workshops
• Designing event themes and content of interactive breakout sessions (innovation challenges, icebreakers, dynamization)
• Recruiting and managing key-note speakers
• Facilitating relationships between investors and entrepreneurs

Projects and events include:

IN3 - http://in3spain.com/
DreamForce
EmTech France - http://www.emtechfrance.com/

Content Manager

InnoCentive

I was involved in all aspects of the planning and execution of open innovation Challenges. My primary responsibilities were:

• Development and design of Challenges including expert consultation, writing reports, and drafting of all prize design elements
• Moderating and facilitating creative thinking workshops
• Management and organization of final events
• Developing strong and sustained client relationships

I worked with governments, NGOs and leading companies in the fields of pharma, neuroscience robotics, international development and business incubation. Clients included
World Vision, USAID, UKTI, The MasterCard Foundation, Nokia, Novo Nordisk, UBS Optimus Foundation, Votem

In addition to some of our smaller prizes, I was the project manager for the CPN Challenge - a $20 million Program of grants and prizes, which aims to transform the lives of people living with Spinal Cord Injury.

Account Manager

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 like this one
✅ 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

The "Dubai gurus" are lying to you about London.

As a born and bred Londoner, I have to call BS on this scam.

You know those influencers selling you the Dubai dream? 

The ones posting about London's "crime epidemic" while pushing their £5k mastermind from a rented Lamborghini?

They need you to believe London is falling apart.

Because fear sells courses.

Just in the last week in crime-ridden London, I witnessed:

✅ A choir singing Christmas Carols in Fulham
(Don't they know we want silence!)

✅ A group of early 20s office workers smiling in a Soho pub
(I thought Gen Z just scroll on their phones)

✅ A young lad on the tube helping an elderly lady carry her bags
(No one got time for that)

✅ My local coffee barista telling me hadn't seen me in a while
(No one talks to strangers in this city)

Here's a recent photo of me TERRIFIED in this terrible city.

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

My pal Jack Faint just ran the entire length of India with a brain tumour.

He ran 4,000km in 80 days, an average of 50km a day.

6 years ago, doctors diagnosed him with a brain tumour. 

So he quit drinking and smoking, and started running.

After several ultra marathons, he's now gone and ran India.

He's also been raising money for cancer charities.

And there's still time to donate here - https://gofund.me/c87fa582

Jack, honoured to call you a friend you lunatic.

Most headline news is about division, death and destruction.

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

#TuesdayTreat

Most sales managers ignore the most critical metric for cold calling.

They waste all their energy on KPIs like:

- Connect rate
- Number of calls a day
- Number of meetings booked from calls

While these are all important, they're useless without understanding:

✅ Your conversation to meeting conversion rate

According to Koncert the best cold callers book a qualified meeting every 10-20 conversations.

So this means from 5-10% of conversations.

If your team is below 5%, then you need to do a lot more call coaching.

As more activity will not solve your problems.

After 40,000 followers and 1,000+ posts, here are my top 16 LinkedIn tips:

𝗖𝗢𝗡𝗧𝗘𝗡𝗧 𝗦𝗧𝗥𝗔𝗧𝗘𝗚𝗬

1) The hook is 90% of your reach - spend most time here
2) Mix up formats - polls, videos, photos, text only
3) Educational content generates the most leads
4) Combining educational content and personal stories is the magic formula

𝗘𝗡𝗚𝗔𝗚𝗘𝗠𝗘𝗡𝗧 𝗧𝗔𝗖𝗧𝗜𝗖𝗦

5) Reply to your comments as much as possible
6) When you comment, leave something meaningful instead of "great post"
7) Personal stories are more engaging than generic advice
8) Share posts not related to work (family, partner, hobbies etc.)
9) But only 10% of the time or it becomes cringe

𝗠𝗜𝗡𝗗𝗦𝗘𝗧 𝗦𝗛𝗜𝗙𝗧𝗦

10) Getting trolls means you're winning
11) Sharing failures shows your authenticity 
12) When you go viral for the first time, nothing changes
13) Focus on quality content not the algorithm - you can't change it anyway

𝗣𝗥𝗔𝗖𝗧𝗜𝗖𝗔𝗟 𝗧𝗜𝗣𝗦

14) Use AI to make posts shorter but not to replace your unique voice
15) Be consistent - set a posting goal (e.g. weekly or daily) & stick to it
16) LinkedIn hates hyperlinks as they make you leave their platform

But here's the truth:

None of this matters if you don't start.

Don't overthink and just publish the post.

You don't need a genius idea and funding for a startup.

That mindset is total BS.

I had no clue what I was doing when I first set up my company.

I set up Growth Genie by pure accident.

In my old VP Growth role, I started regularly posting on LinkedIn.

I started with 1 post a week, and then eventually built up to 5 a week.

I didn't even have a goal in mind for posting.

It was just to share my journey, and sales & marketing tactics I was learning.

After 1 year of doing this, people started reaching out to me.

They were looking for help with their own sales team.

So I took on my first training clients.

I remember finishing one of my first training sessions with so much imposter syndrome.

I was training guys and gals who were older than me and thought:

"I have no idea what I'm doing".

But after 4 sessions, the VP Sales called and said their pipeline had 2 x. 

I thought "holy shizzle, this works."

So I quit my old job and the rest is history.

Richard Kone, who was homeless in 2019, will play in the 2026 World Cup.

"It's terribly difficult being homeless in my country," Kone said of sleeping rough  in the Ivory Coast.

He was trying to survive on the streets of Abidjan just 5 years ago.

But one friend eventually helped Kone by introducing him to the president of the "Don't Forget Them Association".

After training every day, it led to Kone's selection to represent his country at the Homeless World Cup in Cardiff in 2019.

It was the first time he had left the country, let alone flown on a plane.

After the Homeless World Cup, 16-year-old Kone moved to London.

He was then recruited by Athletic Newham in the 10th tier of English football after being spotted on Hackney Marshes.

He scored a hatrick on his debut for them, and continued to score regularly after.

He soon signed for Wycombe in League One.

"He was extremely humble, taking everything in his stride and showing maturity beyond his years," his former coach explains.

After 18 months at Wycombe, QPR came calling - he'd reached the second tier of English football. 

Then another milestone, and the biggest of them all, was around the corner.

His first Ivory Coast call-up and debut.

"That's what I'm playing football for, to represent my country at international level," Kone explained. 

Kone still hasn't forgotten where it all started for him at the Homeless World Cup 6 years ago.

"It gave me the platform to grow and set me on the career path to where I am today," he said.

Most headline news is about division, death and destruction.

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

#TuesdayTreat

This stat by Gong is total and utter BS:

"I hope you're well" increases reply rates by 24%.

Why?

It's generic and could be automated or copy-pasted by anyone.

You're wasting prime real estate that showed you actually researched them.

Like "saw you're hiring AI engineers" or "Seems you're scaling the UK team."

Never trust data blindly. Even from reputable sources.

It may be clickbait for marketing purposes, not real advice.

It may not be relevant for your market or your role.

I know from 10+ years doing outbound business development, this is BS.

Trust your own experience. Trust your gut.

The best cold email opener?

The one that shows you spent 30 seconds researching them.

Not the one some report told you to copy-paste.

Ollie Whitfield

Slingshot Content

Building content that nobody else would come up with. 

Positioning Founders and their businesses at the tippy top of their ICP's mind when they come to market. 

Ask me how.

Partner

durhamlane

Marketing (Fractional) 

gtmDIFFERENT

Media brand owned by Slingshot Content. Sponsored by brands who believe in doing B2B differently.

Co-Founder

MySalesCoach

Helping build the marketing team at MySalesCoach. Running webinars and building content partnerships.

Fractional, Marketing

Spiralyze

Continual content development and ideation + iteration. Building the best B2B game show, CRO Crimes and deep thought leadership content with the Conversion Lab series.

Content Strategist

Splashmaker Media

Flatsafe Holdings 

VanillaSoft

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.

Marketing Lead

The 1st Growth Marketer at VanillaSoft. 

Planning & executing all lead generation campaigns and ongoing activities over the year with a lead commitment reverse engineered from a growing yearly revenue target.

Ran experimental campaigns into emerging markets, tested new messaging and tactics to drive Demo's and lead flow for the sales team. 

Noteworthy:

Tested Law Firm's as an ICP for VanillaSoft by cold calling - 
Spent 2 weeks cold calling law firms to test out self-created sales messaging for VanillaSoft to see if there was traction or any resonation with the buyers in this market with what we offer. Pages of market research notes. Call script and email cadence created and sent over the course of the 2 weeks.

Growth Marketing

Product Marketing for the Autoklose product line at the time of acquisition by VanillaSoft. 

On acquisition - 
ExComms & announcement preparation

Post acquisition - 
Product-related content
Product release communication internally & external announcement
Upsell & cross-sell campaign planning

Product Marketing

The 0 To 5 Million Podcast

Subscribe👉🏻👉🏻 https://anchor.fm/0-to-5-million-podcast 

Ideation, Planning & Co-Host of the podcast. Top 11% of Business podcasts worldwide in 2022 according to Spotify Wrapped. Regular listeners in 14 countries, top 30% of most followed podcasts on Spotify

Started March 2021, currently at 4000+ downloads with a weekly upload schedule (Now on YouTube and LinkedIn Live as well as the usual Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music etc.)

Top episodes:
Nancy Kelly: Delivering Quality Service At Scale & Community
Michael Hanson: Cold Email Cadences, Following Up & Feedback Emails
Is This Podcast For You? Shawn Finder & Ollie Whitfield Explain 🙌🏻
Chris Walker: Inbound Marketing, Choosing Channels, Fine-Tuning Your Services
Alex Oswiecinski: Pivots, Covering Your Weaknesses & Rapid Scale Growth

Co Host

Creation Agency

Top project/Client Account Manager.

Managed team of 5 across $400k/year of clients in the SaaS/Sales Tech space. Responsible for maintaining client relationships on monthly retained services and upselling new services or expansion within client accounts. 

Noteworthy: 
Led the largest account on the client list for 2 years prior to leaving the firm. 

Sold & implemented Hubspot CRM as part of our Hubspot partnership agreement for 1 client. 

Led and ran £300k project for ABM & Social Selling pilot with global enterprise client. Hit 100% of weekly quota for lead generation from beginning to end of the client engagement. POC on the account promoted to Deputy CMO of the organization during the engagement. 

Sold 3 pilot engagements for new service & project managed the clients for 12+months. 

Weekly & Monthly delivery of:
Content planning
Podcast
Blog
Social Media Management
Email Marketing
Image Creative
Video Creative
Landing Page creation
Social Ads (Facebook, LinkedIn) 
PPC 
Ebook creation & promotion
Facebook & LinkedIn Live content
Dashboard creation
Salesforce <> Hubspot integration building
In-person event ticket sales
Book launch & promotion
Online workshop ticket sales

Client Relationship Manager (North America)

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...

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The Battle

Michael Hanson

Ollie Whitfield

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The Battle

Michael Hanson

Ollie Whitfield

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Michael Hanson's LinkedIn Performance

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