Michael Akinlé went from SDR to SDR manager almost overnight, and had to work out how to manage the people who used to be his peers with no training and no map. In this episode of The Outside Seat, Michael, now Head of EMEA at Orum, walks through what that transition actually taught him, why most performance improvement plans are used wrong, and what he would do differently building an SDR function from scratch today with AI in the mix. We also spend real time on the Michael May Football Academy, the youth football foundation he founded in Lagos in 2020 and has run for five years alongside his commercial career.

What's covered:

• The jump from SDR to SDR manager, and what nobody tells you about managing former peers
• Why performance improvement plans are usually used to manage people out, and why that is the wrong way round
• What Orum actually does, and how it differs from tools like Outreach and Salesloft
• How Michael would build an SDR function from scratch today, and where AI genuinely helps
• Why Michael founded the Michael May Football Academy in Lagos, and what running it for five years has taught him about leadership
• The Rapid Fire round: the tool he can't live without, the GTM myth he wants gone, and the book he keeps going back to

Michael Akinlé is Head of EMEA at Orum, an AI-powered sales engagement platform. His career runs from SDR at Dynamic Signal through Head of Growth EMEA and Sales Director at Clari, Country Manager and Head of Sales UKI at Qobra, and Head of Digital Sales at The Access Group. Alongside his commercial career, he founded and runs the Michael May Football Academy in Lagos, Nigeria, giving young people access to football, education, and life skills since December 2020.

Chapters

00:00 Cold open: the Nigeria homecoming
00:24 What The Outside Seat is
01:37 Welcome, and introducing Michael Akinlé
02:30 The jump from SDR to SDR manager
06:22 Coaching versus telling: the football analogy
08:46 Baptism of fire, and finding a mentor
13:30 Firing, and the performance improvement plan
15:55 "You're not managing them out, you're giving them a chance"
18:50 Sponsor break: Flourish
19:35 Getting hiring and firing right, and what Orum does
21:59 Orum's data layer, and where it fits in the stack
24:21 Orum vs Outreach and Salesloft
26:44 Building an SDR team with AI, from scratch
29:09 The Michael May Football Academy: the why
34:02 How to support the academy
36:30 The homecoming story, in full
38:55 Rapid Fire
43:35 Closing and outro

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So what is The Outside Seat?

Most revenue leaders have never sat where their buyers sit. The Outside Seat is the podcast that fixes that, bringing GTM leaders and the unsung heroes behind them into conversations they'd never normally have with each other. Real talk on sales, revenue operations and what actually works from the buyer's side of the table, not the vendor's.

Hosted by Mike Tumalty, 25 years into B2B SaaS GTM, from ServiceNow to founding InsideNow. New episodes every Tuesday.

Matt Webb has sent and received thousands of emails as CEO of MentorGroup. In three and a half years, he has had roughly 3,000 cold emails land in his inbox, and four phone calls. He took every one of the four. That single stat sets up a wider conversation about signals: the ones revenue leaders read correctly, and the ones they mistake for a repeatable motion when they were actually a one-off.

Mike sits down with Matt Webb, CEO of MentorGroup, for a conversation that runs from the World Cup semi-final and the Signal article through to the bluebird deal, the mirage pipeline, and why a falling close rate is so often misdiagnosed as a skills problem when the real issue is upstream in pipeline quality. Matt also talks through the genesis of his and James Barton's book, Infinite Selling, and where AI has genuinely changed his own working week.

What's covered:

• What MentorGroup does and why customer experience sits ahead of KPIs
• The World Cup, the Signal article, and what leadership teams miss when they mistake an outcome for a strategy
• The "bluebird" deal: what to ask before an unusually fast close gets baked into next year's forecast
• Why sales is a team sport, not a relay race, between BDR, AE and CS
• Forecasting a deal that hasn't landed yet, and the "mirage pipeline"
• Two signals leadership teams keep ignoring because it's inconvenient to look at them
• Why a falling close rate is not always a training problem
• Writing Infinite Selling with James Barton
• Rapid Fire: AI adoption, the cold-calling myth, and the most underrated person in Matt's network

About Matt Webb: Matt Webb is CEO of MentorGroup, a UK-based sales performance consultancy helping CROs and enablement leaders build sustainable selling motions and predictable revenue growth. He has spent close to 20 years at MentorGroup following 13 years at Vodafone in sales and sales leadership roles. He is co-author, with James Barton, of Infinite Selling.

Chapters:
00:00 Cold open: the outside seat, and today's show
01:15 Welcome and guest introduction
03:43 What MentorGroup does and why customer experience comes first
08:27 The World Cup, the Signal, and the Liverpool vs Man United thread
15:35 The bluebird deal: what a fast close is really telling you
22:43 Sales as a team sport, not a relay race
26:38 Forecasting the bluebird and the mirage pipeline
31:20 Two signals leadership teams keep misreading
33:41 When a falling close rate isn't a skills problem
36:10 Why nobody comes to work to fail: getting the North Star right
40:56 Writing Infinite Selling with James Barton
45:42 Rapid Fire
47:46 Close: sign-off and how to get involved

Check out our Sponsor: https://info.helloflourish.com/hire-a-sales-exec/

New to the Outside Seat? Start Here - www.youtube.com/@theoutsideseat

Follow us on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/theoutsideseat/

Connect with our Host: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tumalty/

Follow us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@theoutsideseat

Follow us on Twitter: https://www.x.com/@theoutsideseat

Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theoutsideseat

Check us out on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/033ujY7VMYJiHa40HlycUb

Check us out on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-outside-seat-podcast/id1896892470

So what is The Outside Seat?

Most revenue leaders have never sat where their buyers sit. The Outside Seat is the podcast that fixes that, bringing GTM leaders and the unsung heroes behind them into conversations they'd never normally have with each other. Real talk on sales, revenue operations and what actually works from the buyer's side of the table, not the vendor's.

Hosted by Mike Tumalty, 25 years into B2B SaaS GTM, from ServiceNow to founding InsideNow. New episodes every Tuesday.

England didn't lose their World Cup semi-final because they weren't good enough. They lost it to a decision made ten days earlier, in a different game, under completely different conditions.

In this special solo episode, Mike Tumalty breaks down a leadership mistake that shows up everywhere, not just football: a good result gets recorded, the conditions behind it get thrown away, and what's left gets promoted to strategy. He traces it from Sir Alex Ferguson's approach to winning, through England's misread signal against Argentina, into the exact same failure mode Mike sees constantly inside B2B revenue teams: the seven-week deal mistaken for a repeatable motion, the webinar mistaken for a channel strategy, the save mistaken for a playbook.

It closes with a simple three-question framework any GTM or sales leader can use before turning a result into a conclusion.

Chapters:
0:00 The cold open
0:21 Welcome to The Outside Seat
1:33 Why this topic wouldn't leave me alone
3:58 Sir Alex Ferguson: "I planned to win every game"
6:25 The misread signal that cost England the final
8:53 Hollywood makes the same mistake, plus a word from Flourish
10:58 The same failure, inside your revenue engine
13:26 The three-question framework
15:49 Applying it: Mexico vs. the seven-week deal
18:08 Outro

Drop your answer in the comments: what is the win your business is still taking the wrong lesson from?

GTM strategy, B2B sales strategy, revenue leadership, commercial due diligence, mystery shop, sales leadership lessons, Alex Ferguson leadership

Check out our Sponsor: https://info.helloflourish.com/hire-a-sales-exec/

New to the Outside Seat? Start Here - www.youtube.com/@TheOutsideSeat

Follow us on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/theoutsideseat/

Connect with our Host: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tumalty/

Follow us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@theoutsideseat

Follow us on Twitter: https://www.x.com/@theoutsideseat

Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theoutsideseat

Check us out on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/033ujY7VMYJiHa40HlycUb

Check us out on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-outside-seat-podcast/id1896892470

So what is The Outside Seat?

Most revenue leaders have never sat where their buyers sit. The Outside Seat is the podcast that fixes that, bringing GTM leaders and the unsung heroes behind them into conversations they'd never normally have with each other. Real talk on sales, revenue operations and what actually works from the buyer's side of the table, not the vendor's.

Hosted by Mike Tumalty, 25 years into B2B SaaS GTM, from ServiceNow to founding InsideNow. New episodes every Tuesday.

#gtm #fifa #england #tuchel #lesson