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Business Insights & Strategies From Experts: Unveiling Simple Truths Behind Success. I’m always grateful for Reviews and remember to Subscribe
Episodes
Sunday Mar 23, 2025
Sunday Mar 23, 2025
What if influence wasn’t about tactics and persuasion but about truth, trust, and genuine human connection?
In this episode, Brian Ahearn, Chief Influence Officer at Influence People and faculty member at the Cialdini Institute, unpacks the fine line between influence and manipulation, a crucial distinction for sales leaders and C-suite executives who want to drive sustainable growth without sacrificing integrity.
🔥 What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
✔ The Ethical Imperative: Why real influence is about honesty, natural principles, and mutual benefit.
✔ Relationships Drive Results: How liking, trust, and connection influence decision-making (backed by Gallup’s research).
✔ The Seven Persuasion Principles: A masterclass in ethical influence, from reciprocity to social proof.
✔ Beyond Product Pushing: Why customers "rent an outcome" (like peace of mind in insurance), not just buy a product.
✔ Long-Term Wins: How nurturing relationships, not short-term wins, creates exponential business growth.
✔ The Power of Pre-Suasion: Setting the stage for influence before the conversation even begins.
✔ Avoiding Cognitive Dissonance: Why understanding customer values first leads to easier, natural sales.
💡 Key Takeaways for Leaders & Sales Teams:
🔹 Stop chasing transactions; build relationships. Influence is a long game.
🔹 Teach your sales team ethical persuasion. Trust beats manipulation every time.
🔹 Understand your customer’s real job. They aren’t buying your product; they’re hiring a solution.
🔹 Use persuasion principles the right way. No fake scarcity, no coercion, just natural, human influence.
🔹 Invest in self-awareness. Mastering influence starts with mastering yourself.
📩 Connect with Brian Ahearn:
👉 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianfahearn/
👉 Website: InfluencePeople.biz
📚 Recommended Reads:
📖 Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion – Dr. Robert Cialdini
📖 Influence PEOPLE, Persuasive Selling, The Influencer – Brian Ahearn
🚀 Final Thought:
If you strip away the scripts and sales techniques, could you still influence with integrity? If not, what needs to change?
Monday Mar 17, 2025
Monday Mar 17, 2025
Sales Mastery & The Infinite Game with David Weiss
Episode Summary: David Weiss explores the mindset, habits, and strategies that set top sales professionals apart. From intentional career development to enterprise sales best practices, David shares invaluable insights for sales leaders and professionals looking to elevate their game.
Recorded: August 2020
Key Takeaways:
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The Path to Sales Success: David’s journey into sales highlighted the importance of intentionality and learning from early failures. His experience underscored the necessity of structured training and development in sales.
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Sales as a Professional Sport: Treating a sales career like that of a professional athlete, dedicating time to practice, continuous learning, and skill refinement, is crucial for sustained success.
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Breaking Sales Stereotypes: Sales is often misunderstood as an “expensive dark art.” Leaders must see beyond outdated perceptions and recognize the value of structured, professional selling.
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The Power of Mentorship: Learning from great leaders, and understanding the lessons from ineffective ones, can shape a successful sales career. David shares impactful mentorship experiences that influenced his growth.
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Business Acumen for Sales Success: Sales leaders must ensure their teams understand finance, operations, marketing, and legal aspects to be effective beyond just the sales process.
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Customer-Centric Selling: Sales isn’t the start or end of the customer journey, it’s a part of a broader experience. Leaders should foster a customer-first mindset across the organization.
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Effective Sales Onboarding: The best onboarding programs prioritize organizational understanding, relationship-building, and the sales process before diving into product knowledge.
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Enterprise Sales Mastery: Success in enterprise sales requires experience in internal negotiations, multi-threading, stakeholder management, and long sales cycles.
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Recruiting Top Enterprise Sales Talent: Hiring should focus on candidates with extensive enterprise experience or deep domain expertise. Key attributes include curiosity, relationship-building, and a willingness to challenge the status quo.
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The Habits of High-Performing Salespeople: Self-motivation, thorough research, problem-solving, planning, and organization are critical to sales excellence.
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The Daily Discipline of Prospecting: Even with large deals in progress, maintaining account coverage and prospecting daily prevents commoditization.
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Predicting Sales Success Early: The first 30-60 days of a new hire often indicate future success. Engagement, learning, and pipeline-building should be closely monitored.
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Always Be Recruiting: Sales leaders should proactively build a bench of candidates to avoid reactive hiring, as vacant sales roles are costly.
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Pre-Onboarding for Faster Ramp-Up: Sharing territory lists and facilitating early relationship-building can accelerate a new hire’s productivity.
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Internal Alignment is Crucial: Enterprise sales success depends on preparation and alignment among all internal stakeholders. Sales should be treated like a well-rehearsed concert.
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Leveraging Partners for Success: Partners play a vital role in enterprise sales. Engaging them early and aligning with their goals enhances collaboration.
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The Infinite Game in Sales: A long-term mindset focused on relationships, brand-building, and collaboration leads to sustained success, rather than short-term wins.
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From Transactions to Relationships: The best salespeople prioritize lifetime customer value over one-off deals, genuinely seeking to help their clients.
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Managing the Challenges of a New Role: New sales hires should pace themselves, focus on incremental growth, and redefine what success looks like in the early days.
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The Role of Sales Managers: Managers must understand individual team members' needs and provide support in today’s changing sales landscape.
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Structured 120-Day Onboarding: A well-planned onboarding roadmap should sequence learning appropriately, build foundational knowledge, and provide clear performance metrics.
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First Impressions Matter: New hires evaluate their organization and leaders early on. Providing strong support, feedback, and guidance is essential to retaining top talent.
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Effective Sales Leadership: Great sales managers hire strong talent, support their teams, and remove obstacles rather than micromanage or rescue struggling reps.
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Coaching Through Experience: Sales leaders should let reps lead customer meetings and learn through experience rather than taking over.
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Rethinking Traditional Marketing: Instead of ineffective traditional approaches, businesses should focus on a strong website aligned with customer pain points and leverage user-generated content.
Follow & Connect:
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Connect with David Weiss on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidlbweiss/
- Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/theinquisitor-podcast https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcuscauchi/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/suzannecauchi/
Tune in to hear David’s expert advice on mastering sales and building a high-performing sales career!
Wednesday Feb 26, 2025
Monday Feb 10, 2025
Monday Feb 10, 2025
Selling your business is the biggest deal you’ll ever close, but are you set up to get the best possible outcome? In this episode, Rob Goddard, business acquisitions and sales expert, shares how to maximise valuation, avoid costly mistakes, and negotiate like a pro.
But that’s not all. The principles of selling a business apply to every high-stakes deal. Whether you’re an entrepreneur planning an exit or a salesperson looking to sharpen your skills, this episode is packed with insights you can use immediately.
What You’ll Learn:
✅ How to increase your business’s value before selling
✅ Common pitfalls that leave money on the table
✅ The negotiation tactics that get better outcomes
✅ Why understanding buyers is key in any deal
✅ What top salespeople can learn from exit strategies
Who Should Listen?
🔹 Business owners thinking about selling
🔹 Sales leaders and professionals who want to sharpen deal-making skills
🔹 Entrepreneurs looking to build a business with exit potential
Next Steps:
📌 Connect with Rob on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/robgoddard/
📌 Want to improve your sales strategy? https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcuscauchi/
🚀 Don’t miss this one, press play now!
Thursday Sep 19, 2024
Thursday Sep 19, 2024
Leaderboard to Leadership with Rebecca Gebhardt & Marcus Cauchi
Summary: This episode offers more than a sales leadership lesson—it’s a blueprint for transformation. Rebecca and Marcus challenge outdated thinking about leadership, relationships, and what it means to truly succeed in sales. Packed with insight and wisdom, it’s a wake-up call for anyone ready to lead with purpose and intention.
Rebecca Gebhardt’s Leaderboard to Leadership doesn’t pull any punches: promoting your top salesperson doesn’t make them a leader. Leadership isn’t just the next step up from closing deals—it’s a completely different game, and most people aren't prepared to play it. Without the right training and mindset, you're not offering them a promotion—you’re setting them up to fail.
This episode goes deeper than your standard sales talk. Rebecca and Marcus cut right to the core: real relationships. Not the transactional kind that evaporate once the contract is signed, but the ones built on trust and understanding—the relationships that last. Their message is crystal clear: if you don’t understand what your customer actually needs, you’ve already lost them.
Marcus brings the heat with AI, but not in the way you’d expect. Forget about AI as a flashy tool; Marcus shows how it can be a brutal mirror, reflecting your blind spots and challenging your assumptions. It’s not about the tech—it’s about seeing yourself clearly and growing from it.
Then there’s Marcus’s golden rule: "sell hot, not cold." If you’re wasting your time on cold calls and hard pitches, you're missing the point. Warm leads—relationships you’ve already nurtured—are the real opportunities. This isn’t just about closing the next deal; it’s about creating something that scales and sustains success.
Rebecca hits on the mindset leaders need to succeed: “abundant, bold, curious.” Leadership isn’t about resting on your past wins. It’s about staying hungry, constantly learning, and pushing even when you think you’ve arrived. It’s this mindset that gets you to the top—and keeps you there.
But Marcus takes a step back to show the big picture: Sales alone won’t cut it. To win, you need every part of your business—procurement, customer success, finance, operations, the Board, all of it—aligned around what the customer actually wants to accomplish. Silos are where good people are sent to die, too often chasing the wrong metrics for the sake of numbers. That’s how you burn relationships and your reputation.
The reality? Chasing numbers isn’t leadership. Building relationships is. Metrics might feel good in the short term, but if they come at the expense of trust, you’ve already lost the long game.
Leaderboard to Leadership (out 20th Sept 2024) isn’t a roadmap—perhaps it’s your antidote to mediocrity. It’s a guide to transforming potential into performance, not by accident, but by intention. Rebecca doesn’t hand you shortcuts; she gives you the tools to build leaders who can thrive—not just survive. Stop floundering and start leading with purpose.
What's the Ally Method™?
If you’re tired of promoting your top sellers only to watch them stagnate, it’s time to change the narrative. With the ALLY Method™, I’ll show you how the difference between stagnation and transformation is the story you tell yourself. Together, we’ll rewrite that story and turn potential into performance—deliberately, not by accident.
Let’s have a conversation. Contact me, marcus@laughs-last.com, today, and I’ll show you how coaching and training can elevate your team. If you’re ready to break silos, lead with intention, to build something lasting, the bright path is right here. Let’s walk it together.
Thursday Aug 01, 2024
Thursday Aug 01, 2024
Episode Overview: In this episode, Marcus Cauchi hosts Mike Lander, a seasoned procurement director turned sales trainer, who shares insights from both sides of the procurement and sales processes. The conversation centers around improving sales strategies by understanding buyer psychology and removing uncertainties that often hinder successful sales.
Key Highlights:
- Background and Experience:
- Mike Lander has extensive experience in procurement, having managed substantial budgets and vendor relationships. He now focuses on educating salespeople about what not to do when dealing with buyers.
- The discussion explores the common mistakes salespeople make, such as using manipulative tactics, which often backfire. Lander emphasizes the importance of building trust and credibility with buyers rather than using transactional sales techniques.
- A critical theme is understanding how buyers assess risk. Lander explains that buyers prioritize minimizing risk, which includes concerns about reputational, operational, and financial risks. Effective sellers help buyers mitigate these risks by providing clear, value-driven solutions.
- The conversation highlights the significance of deepening relationships with clients, exemplified by Lander’s experience with a trusted vendor named Malcolm. Malcolm’s approach was relationship-first, offering timely and valuable insights that helped navigate complex decisions and risks.
- Lander discusses negotiation strategies, stressing that sellers should focus on adding real value rather than being seen as commodities. He advises that sales professionals should aim to understand the buyer's needs and co-develop solutions, thereby differentiating themselves in the market.
- The episode wraps up with Lander reiterating the importance of sincerity in sales.
Tune in to hear more about navigating the intricacies of sales and procurement from a dual perspective!
Wednesday Jul 17, 2024
Wednesday Jul 17, 2024
Thursday Jul 11, 2024
Thursday Jul 11, 2024
Roee Hartuv, a former combat helicopter pilot and current expert at Winning by Design, shares insights from his unique journey from the military to revenue architect. His profound understanding of the importance of process design helps identify what works, what doesn't, and what needs to happen to meet business goals. This episode delves into the nuances of sales processes, customer acquisition, and the hidden costs that can drain a company’s resources.
Roee discusses how his interest in process design began during his time as a pilot, emphasizing the critical importance of understanding effective and ineffective processes in high-stakes environments. He provides an in-depth analysis of customer churn and its financial implications, revealing why reaching a Proof of Concept (POC) can cost $43,000 even if the customer does not convert.
Salespeople are encouraged to rethink their training, recognizing that the buyer's journey is not linear and requires strategic adjustments. Roee critiques vendor-biased sales methodologies like MEDIC and BANT, highlighting the need to focus on desired customer impacts rather than just product features and pain points.
Mapping the sales process to a non-linear buyer journey, understanding the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), and their decision-making process are key topics. The episode also examines the conflicting goals of stakeholders, from VCs to profit-driven businesses, and how growth rate-driven valuations can harm long-term profitability.
A deeper understanding of customer acquisition costs beyond surface-level metrics is necessary, along with evaluating data to genuinely understand company performance. Roee explains why some companies will never recover from an unprofitable foundation, even if they pivot to customer-focused strategies. He emphasizes that poor processes lead to amplified negative outcomes with AI implementation.
To avoid over-investment, developing a solid growth plan and resisting investor pressure is crucial. Roee offers strategic advice for business success, stressing the difficulty of abandoning ineffective practices and the necessity of operational support for enterprise sales.
The dangers of a poorly managed pipeline and the resulting increase in churn are examined, along with strategies to enhance customer success activities to improve reputation and reduce churn. Roee shares the benefits of customer advisory boards and the extended role of marketing teams beyond top-of-funnel activities.
Addressing the skills gap among middle managers who thrived during the growth-at-all-costs phase is essential, preparing them for a changed business landscape. Finally, the importance of testing processes before scaling and having a measurable process to identify problems and opportunities for improvement is highlighted.
Tune in to gain valuable insights from Roee Hartuv and discover how to perfect your sales processes and strategies to drive sustainable growth. Don't miss this engaging and informative conversation!
Contact Information:
- Roee Hartuv: LinkedIn
- Marcus Cauchi: LinkedIn
- Winning by Design
Read Jacco van der Kooij‘s book ‘Revenue Architecture” https://amzn.to/3xJ4k0G
Subscribe, rate, and review our podcast to stay updated with the latest in sales strategies and business optimization.
Thursday Jun 27, 2024
Thursday Jun 27, 2024
Key Takeaways:
- Ditch Cold Outreach: Creates distrust; focus on building relationships early.
- Value First: Understand buyers deeply and empower their vision.
- Measure Right: Prioritize value per hour, not dials or meetings.
- Cultural Fit: Hire right, create great work environments, avoid micromanaging.
Rethinking Sales:
Buyers engage salespeople to make confident purchase decisions. Instead of prospecting to active buyers, focus on companies that will be in the market 6-36 months out. Build relationships and understand their context before they start evaluating. When they do evaluate, you can guide them based on their specific needs rather than pitching features.
Flaws in Sales Practices:
Cold outreach has abysmal conversion rates (0.3% success), yet companies still invest heavily in it. Discounting and fake urgency often push buyers away instead of accelerating deals. Conventional discovery methods trigger buyers' fight-or-flight response by focusing on past pain. Metrics like dials, activities, and short-term pipeline drive self-oriented behaviors that are misaligned with helping buyers.
Ethical Sales Approach:
To be timely, relevant, and valuable, understand the buyer's context well in advance. Build trust by aligning with the buyer's intended outcomes, not your own sales agenda. Create "binary effects" that avoid triggering adrenaline or cortisol, and instead promote serotonin and dopamine. Operate with integrity to become the most trusted business advisor buyers know.
Improving Enablement:
Most sales managers are over-promoted individual contributors lacking real leadership skills. Recruitment and creating an environment for people to thrive should be top management priorities. Focus on coaching reps on value contribution per hour rather than micromanaging activity metrics. Consider a subscription-based coaching model to truly enable reps beyond one-time placement fees.
Contact Leah Borges 📕 | LinkedIn
If anything in this episode resonates, test your sales strategy and book a free 30 minute strategy session https://bit.ly/NewSellingAptitudeTest
Wednesday Jun 26, 2024
Wednesday Jun 26, 2024
Mary Gentile discusses her book "Giving Voice to Values" and insights on navigating ethical dilemmas in business.
Key Takeaways
- Mary's approach focuses on rehearsing and pre-scripting effective ways to voice one's values when facing ethical conflicts, rather than just philosophical debates.
- Anticipating objections and finding ways to address concerns while upholding values is key, without requiring the other party to feel shamed.
- Self-knowledge, understanding motivations/fears of others, and normalizing ethical conflicts as part of doing business enables more constructive conversations.
- Practicing scenarios and developing scripts allows building "muscle memory" for voicing values effectively in real situations.
Voicing Values Effectively
- Understand your most effective style (questioning, analysis, storytelling etc.)
- Anticipate objections and reasons/rationalizations for unethical behaviour
- Frame responses addressing the other party's fears and motivations
- Position yourself as solving a problem for them, not opposing
- Build trust by demonstrating understanding of pressures they face
Practicing v Role Play Scenarios
- Unlike role-plays, GVV scenarios have all parties working towards voicing the ethical stance
- Avoids defaulting to embedded unethical arguments and rationalizations
- Focuses on developing new, constructive ways to reframe and address the situation
- Builds "muscle memory" for having these conversations effectively
Managing Pressures and Ethical Conflicts
- Understand your strengths for persuasion that align with your values
- Explore the other party's fears, risks and what's at stake for them
- Provide substantive suggestions showing you understand their situation
- Position yourself as being on their side, not simply opposing them
- Normalize that ethical conflicts are a normal part of business life
Contact Mary via her website:
Contact marcus@laughs-last.com
#givingvoicetovalues
#ethicalselling
#innovation