TheInquisitor Podcast with Marcus Cauchi

Innovation or Stagnation? Ron Brumbarger on Leading Through Uncertainty

In today’s fast-moving VUCA world (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous) businesses can no longer afford to confuse motion with progress. In this high-impact episode, we sit down with Ron Brumbarger, American entrepreneur and founder of Struinova, an “innovation-as-a-service” firm helping organisations unlock new products, services, and processes that genuinely delight customers.

Ron delivers a candid exploration of why companies stall, the dangers of systemic blind spots, and what it really takes to build a sustainable culture of innovation. With decades of experience and sharp, real-world insights, he challenges leaders to confront the uncomfortable truths holding them back, and offers tools to navigate the complexity with clarity, confidence, and creativity.

Whether you're a founder, executive, or innovator inside a large organisation, this conversation is your blueprint for staying relevant in an increasingly unforgiving market.

What You’ll Learn:

Confronting Organisational Blind Spots

• Why waiting for permission kills innovation, and how to lead with urgency of agency

• How inattentional blindness sabotages even high-performing teams

• Where middle-management friction stalls progress, and how to refocus on issues, not egos

• The myth of "guaranteed revenue" and why G-A-R-R is a dangerous illusion

Building a Strategic Innovation Portfolio

• A practical definition of innovation: net new or enhanced value that delights customers

• How to assess the real value of your innovation portfolio, and why most leaders don’t

• TAM vs. SOM: Why chasing Total Addressable Market is a distraction

• How to create your own "Purple Cow" in a Blue Ocean" and avoid the commodity trap

• Why innovation lives in the estuary between your team and your customers

Leading Change with Core Disciplines

• Why humility is a superpower in the innovation game

• The role of trust, not just with clients, but within your team

• Practicing empathetic curiosity to unlock customer insights

• Plus: Marcus Cauchi’s powerful insight “Think as your customer, not about them.”

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🗣️ Notable Quotes:

"There’s no such thing as a guaranteed run rate, especially if your top customer walks away." – Ron Brumbarger
"The closer you live to your customer’s reality, the more innovation you’ll find."
"Middle management is often where innovation goes to die, because risk is seen as a threat, not a tool."

🎯 Ideal For:

• Business leaders navigating change

• Innovation teams & product strategists

• Founders scaling new ventures

• Anyone seeking practical tools to drive real organizational transformation

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🔗 Resources & Links:

• Stranova – Visit Website

• Connect with Ron Brumbarger https://www.linkedin.com/in/brumbarger

• Book: Purple Cow by Seth Godin https://amzn.to/3Kg5tCM

• Learn more about VUCA Leadership Models https://hbr.org/2014/01/what-vuca-really-means-for-you

• Mattress Interview:  https://jobstobedone.org/radio/the-mattress-interview-part-one/

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📩 Subscribe & Share:

If this episode resonated with you, don’t forget to subscribe, share with your team, and leave a thumbs up to help more leaders build the courage to innovate.

The 'Grey Space' Advantage: Rob Israch's Masterclass on Scaling from Startup to SaaS Powerhouse

Marcus welcomes Rob Israch, President of Tipalti – a late-stage, fast-growth SaaS company in the finance sector. Rob shares his extensive experience from NetSuite, Intuit, and GE, detailing his unique journey from marketing to president, and the "fun ups and downs and pitfalls" of scaling a global business. The discussion delves into the critical aspects of building and leading a company through various growth phases, adapting to market changes, fostering effective communication, and understanding what truly drives sustainable success in a rapidly evolving economic landscape.

Key Discussion Points:

• From Marketer to President
  • Rob’s background as a marketer and his career trajectory from CMO to President at Tipalti.
  • The importance of embracing "grey space" – taking on challenges beyond one's immediate job scope and being willing to learn.
  • Why getting results, being humble, and executing, even on "unsexy things," are crucial for career advancement.
• Advice for CMOs Aspiring to Leadership
  • The necessity for marketers to be analytical, capable of marrying creativity with metrics, and speaking the language of finance and the board.
  • Avoiding sounding "too much like a marketer" by focusing on truth-finding and problem-solving with numbers, rather than just storytelling.
• The Evolution of a Scaled Business: Tipalti's Journey
  • Insights into Tipalti's growth from 25 employees to over 1,000 in 11 years.
  • Changes in hiring, talent acquisition, and leadership skills needed at different stages of growth.
  • The increasing importance of communication and alignment as a company scales.
• The Critical Role of Middle Management
  • The immense impact of a strong middle management layer on a successful operation.
  • The challenge of selecting the right leaders, maintaining a high bar, and knowing when to promote from within versus bringing in outside talent.
  • Detecting leaders who "talk a good game but can't actually get results".
• Operating Rhythms and Communication at Scale
  • The necessity of formalising company values and mission as a business grows, moving past initial cynicism.
  • Examples of operating rhythms, including quarterly leadership offsites, cross-functional business leader meetings, and CEO roundtables.
  • The importance of one-to-one conversations and cross-functional SWAT teams to break down silos in larger organisations.
• Detecting Hidden Issues (Rot Under the Floorboards)
  • Using a balanced scorecard as a metric system to avoid people gaming a single goal and to gain comprehensive insights.
  • The value of early indicators and actively listening to employees and customers to uncover problems not captured by metrics.
• What Investors Should Ask (But Rarely Do)
  • The need for investors to dig deeper into a company's identity, target market segments, and differentiators to understand the "why" behind the metrics.
• Dangers of Misguided Scaling Assumptions
  • The common mistake of assuming that simply hiring "top talent" from prestigious backgrounds will solve all issues, without considering their fit and ability to adapt and execute at all levels.
  • The continuous need for leaders to adapt and evolve every six months as the business changes.
• Holistic Business Growth vs. Deal Momentum Theatre
  • Protecting against "deal momentum theatre" where new wins are celebrated, but cash flow, retention, and loyalty lag.
  • The shift towards a healthy, holistic approach with happy, advocating customers as the most profitable way to grow, even if it feels uncomfortable.
  • How Tipalti re-emphasised customer centricity through values, committees, and new metrics when growth challenged earlier informal approaches.
• Regrets in Institutionalising Processes
  • Regretting a period of too much focus on new business conversion at the expense of the entire customer lifecycle.
  • The tricky balance between investing in product vision and addressing immediate customer needs.
• Balancing Investor Pressure with SaaS Reinvestment
  • The importance of a smart LTV to CAC model to balance short-term gains with long-term sustainability and profitability.
  • LTV to CAC as a filter that guides investment decisions and helps communicate strategy to investors.
• Rethinking Customer Health: NPS vs. Net Value Score
  • Rob's advocacy for NPS as a humbling and valuable metric for customer-centric culture, though acknowledging its limitations in directly linking to business results and long-term value.
  • Marcus introduces his concept of a Net Value Score which ties customer outcomes directly to revenue retention and margin for a more honest and predictable measure of future relationship value.
• Loyalty as the North Star
  • The distinction between renewal, repeat purchases, and customer loyalty.
  • Loyalty as the ultimate aspiration for a business, which naturally drives the other two, and serves as a vital "North Star" for employee motivation.
• Systematising Referrals and Customer Expansion (GoToBase)
  • Using data science and data mining to correlate customer behaviors with LTV to CAC, expansion rates, and product usage.
  • The observation that customer expansion and "GoToBase" motions are often immature in many organisations, with a heavy focus on new logos.
  • The argument that referrals should be a systematised engine, not an accident, and that happy customers are the foundation.
• Adapting to the New Economic Reality and the Power of Trust
  • The shift from an environment of cheap money and growth at all costs to one demanding profitability and sustainable metrics.
  • The need for go-to-market leadership to adapt or be replaced, with increased importance of customer success, account management, and marketing/channel functions.
  • In an age of decreasing trust due to AI and media, companies that build around trust within their customer and partner base will thrive, making trust a powerful, measurable "operating system" and "North Star".
• Rob's Best Mistake:
  • Being naive and taking chances in "grey spaces," which doesn't always work out but consistently leads to valuable learning and experience.

Connect : You can find Rob Israch on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/robisrach/

 

Don't forget to like, comment, and share this episode! If you're a leader navigating rapid growth, this conversation is for you.

Stay safe and happy selling!

Unleash Your Freedom Through Process – A Transformative Dialogue with Adi Klevit

Are you bogged down by the daily grind, struggling to scale, or feeling like your business owns you instead of the other way around? This episode of The Inquisitor Podcast is your roadmap to liberation. Join host Marcus Cauchi and special guest Adi Klevit, founder of Business Success Consulting Group, as they dismantle common myths about business processes and reveal how true freedom, growth, and profitability lie within structured systems.

In this unmissable conversation, you'll discover:

• The Surprising Truth About Freedom: Learn why process isn't a constraint, but the ultimate key to unlocking more time, allowing you to focus on higher-value activities, live a better life, and reclaim personal freedom from day-to-day operation

• Creativity's Best Friend: Challenge the widely held belief that systems stifle creativity. Adi and Marcus reveal how well-designed processes act as a "well-paved freeway," channeling your efforts and enhancing your ability to innovate and scale without getting stuck

• Leadership as Process Architecture: Understand why effective leaders are the "systems and process architects" of their organisations, building frameworks that simplify work, reduce cognitive load, and empower their teams to excel

• Beyond the Balance Sheet: Redefining ROI: Discover how the return on investment from process improvement extends far beyond monetary gains. Hear compelling examples of how strategic process design can yield precious "mom time," the ability to pursue new ventures, or even just the freedom to take walks during the day for strategic thinking.

• The Radical Approach to Eliminating Waste: Marcus Cauchi introduces his bold strategy for identifying and immediately stopping processes with high failure rates (anything below 5% effectiveness is blacklisted!), freeing up wasted time, effort, and opportunity costs.

• Navigating the Invisible Gaps: Uncover the critical importance of focusing on the "seams" and "handovers" between departments – these often-overlooked gaps are where most failures and bottlenecks occur, directly impacting customer satisfaction and your bottom line.

• Empowering Your Team and Breaking Bottlenecks: Learn why involving your team in process development isn't just nice-to-have, it's essential for fostering ownership, driving growth, and preventing leaders from becoming the very bottleneck they're trying to eliminate.

• The Chaos You're Creating (and How to Stop It): Get a blunt look at the painful realities of a lack of process: inconsistent results, customer complaints, key employee knowledge being held hostage, and a significantly lower business valuation. Then, discover how to shift to a culture of accountability and clarity.

• The Power of "Just Start!": Adi Klevit shares a powerful message: you don't need to be a process expert to begin. Identify one low-hanging fruit area in your business that promises the biggest return and start documenting TODAY.

This conversation is packed with actionable insights and real-world examples that will transform how you view your business and your life. It's time to stop complaining about chaos and start designing your freedom!

About the Guest: Adi Klevit is the founder of Business Success Consulting Group, a company dedicated to helping entrepreneurs systematize, document, and implement processes to achieve scalable growth and personal freedom. Adi brings her expertise as an industrial engineer to solve real-world business challenges, empowering hundreds of companies to thrive. You can learn more about Adi and her work at bizsuccesscg.com

 

Connect with Adi Klevit:

• LinkedIn: Adi Klevit

• Website: bizsuccesscg.com

• Email: adi@bizsuccesscg.com

• Call/Text: 503-662-2911

 

Ryan Clark: Standing Out In a Sea of Sameness

Standing Out in a Sea of Sameness - Selling with Relevance, Integrity, and AI

Key Themes and Takeaways

🔹 Use AI to elevate, not replace, your thinking

Ryan explains how he uses tools like Claude to extract specific language from a prospect’s online footprint. LinkedIn posts, articles, podcasts  and craft bespoke messaging. It’s not about pumping out generic templates. It’s about using AI as a research and ideation partner to move faster and personalise better.

🔹 Ditch mass outreach. Embrace hyper-personalisation.

Spraying generic messages doesn’t build trust. Ryan shares how a handful of well-crafted, highly relevant outreaches can beat a thousand emails. Loom videos, thoughtful angles, and sharp research help him connect with hard-to-reach buyers.

🔹 Sell to the solution-aware

Why waste time with prospects who don’t even know they have a problem? Ryan suggests targeting those already looking  the ones who’ve tried other solutions, failed, and are ready to buy something better. Focus on intent, not just interest.

🔹 Stop bulking up your pipeline to look busy

A bloated pipeline might make dashboards look good, but it hides weak deals and wasted effort. Ryan advocates for qualifying with integrity walking away early from bad-fit opportunities rather than clinging on and discounting to win.

🔹 Be customer-centric, not submissive

Being buyer-first doesn’t mean saying yes to everything. Ryan holds his line on pricing by anchoring the conversation in unique value and clear outcomes. He explains how long-term thinking and strong qualification eliminate the need for last-minute discounting.

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What’s Broken in Modern Sales (and How to Fix It)

Ryan and Marcus also dig into the systemic issues plaguing sales and marketing:

• Me-too messaging: Large Language Models regurgitate what’s already out there, so unless you feed it something original, you’ll end up sounding like everyone else.

• Misused metrics: Activity-based KPIs (dials, emails, sequences) drive volume, not outcomes. Ryan calls this “ludicrous maths”  too many inputs, not enough impact.

• Marketing irrelevance: Most messaging lacks relevance, timeliness, or personal value  which is why it gets ignored.

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Strategies That Actually Work

• Speak directly to your buyer’s real-world problems — avoid “expert language”

• Define your ICPs very specifically (e.g. startup CEO vs enterprise CTO)

• Use storytelling, curiosity hooks, and polarising opinions to stand out

• Create marketing that guides the buyer through their journey: from problem-aware to root-cause aware to solution-aware

• Build a unique methodology that makes you a "category of one"

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What Drives Ryan - Beyond Sales

• Take faster, imperfect action

• Stop overthinking pitches and outcomes

• Ask for help, personal and professional

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This episode is ideal for sellers, marketers, and founders who want to:

• Cut through digital noise

• Sell without chasing

• Use AI responsibly

• Build long-term buyer trust

Contact:

Ryan Clark | LinkedIn

Marcus Cauchi | LinkedIn

 

Book 15 minutes with Marcus

Mike Davis-Marks: What a Nuclear Submariner Knows About High-Pressure Decision Making & Servant Leadership

In this episode of The Inquisitor Podcast, host Marcus Cauchi speaks with Michael Davis-Marks, a veteran of the Royal Navy who commanded a nuclear-powered submarine and now focuses on leadership development and advocating for the veteran community. They discuss decision-making under pressure, the unique transferable skills veterans bring to civilian life, and the critical differences between traditional and effective leadership models like servant leadership. The conversation highlights the importance of training, teamwork, delegation, building trust, and fostering a culture where people feel valued and empowered to do their best work.

• Michael Davis-Marks: Spent 36 years in the Royal Navy, primarily as a submariner, including commanding a nuclear-powered submarine. Served in the British Embassy during 9-11. Since leaving the Navy 13 years ago, he has focused on leadership development and culture. He is also the managing editor of TheVeteran.uk, a publication that gives voice to the veteran community. His mission is to amplify the lived experience of veterans, challenge outdated stereotypes, and advocate for what armed forces veterans can offer to organisations, employers, and society.

Key Discussion Points:

• Veterans as a Valuable Asset: Veterans possess extraordinary transferable skills such as leadership, teamwork, discipline, and commitment, which can be enormously helpful to organisations and society as a whole. There are approximately 2.2 million veterans in the UK, about a million of whom are of working age, representing a significant pool of talent.
• Challenging Stereotypes: The common stereotype of military people as "Colonel Blimp" or a "shouty sergeant" is inaccurate for the vast majority of veterans.
• Veteran Mindset: Many veterans, including Michael, don't initially realise how much they have to offer civilian life due to a self-effacing mindset developed through military training that prioritises the team over the individual.
• Decision Making Under Stress: The military trains individuals to remain calm and think clearly in high-pressure situations. The ability to make good decisions under stress is crucial and can be developed through training and building resilience.
• Leadership Defined: Leadership is not about telling people what to do. It's about motivating and inspiring people, helping them become better versions of themselves.
• Servant Leadership: This model posits that the leader is there to serve the people subordinate to them, helping them realise their full potential. It's about looking after the people in your charge, not just being in charge.
• Delegation vs. Abdication: Leaders who spend their time "doing" are stealing learning opportunities and growth from their people. Empowering people to work things out for themselves, rather than always providing the answer, is crucial for development. Michael's rule was "don't bring me problems, bring me solutions". Allowing people to "have a go," even if they make mistakes in a safe environment, fosters learning.
• Creating Conditions for Trust: Trust begins with the leader's self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and empathy. It is developed by assigning low-risk tasks initially, being a mentor and coach, gently nudging rather than directing, and providing encouragement and positive feedback.
• Leadership is Trainable: While some may be "born leaders," leadership skills can be taught and developed through training and practical experience. Openness to feedback and the realisation that one is not perfect are key to improvement.
• The Staircase of Learning: This concept describes the progression from unconscious incompetence (not knowing what you don't know) through conscious incompetence and conscious competence to unconscious competence (second nature). Training and repetition are critical to moving through these stages and building resilience.
• Continuous Improvement: In the military, standard operating procedures were changed "all the time" because you can't stand still; "every day is a school day". Agility of thought is essential because plans often don't survive first contact.
• The Leader's Role: The leader's job is to create the conditions for their people to do their best work. Delegating tasks to competent people allows the leader to step back, maintain a strategic view, and avoid becoming a bottleneck or single point of failure.
• The Importance of People: People are the most important asset in any organisation, not just numbers on a spreadsheet. Treat them as people. A high staff retention rate is often a sign of a happy and well-led company. People frequently leave jobs because of their boss, particularly if the boss prevents them from doing their best work. Beating people does not improve morale.
• Advice for New Managers: "Get Off Your Arse" (GOYA) is crucial advice. New managers should spend their initial time listening, walking around, asking curious questions about what people do, what they like/dislike, and what can be improved. Taking notes shows you are listening and helps you remember. Getting out and talking to people makes them feel important and that they belong. This approach should be routine, not just for the first few days.
• Lesson for a Younger Self: Michael would tell his 23-year-old self that he knows much less than he thinks and is surrounded by people who can help. He would advise working on relationships with others to learn and grow together as a team, emphasising that people are the most important aspect in everything.

Recommended Resources:

• "Turn the Ship Around" by David Marquette (Discusses an "I intend to" model of leadership empowering the team).
• "Always Start With Why" by Simon Sinek.
• "Leaders Eat Last" by Simon Sinek (Highlights the principle of leaders serving those who rely on them).
• TheVeteran.uk: Publication giving voice to the veteran community.
• Connecting with Michael Davis-Marks on LinkedIn

Edward Ingham: Sales Got Easier the Day I Stopped Pitching - finding fulfilment and results through client-centric selling

In this episode of The Inquisitor podcast, host Marcus Cauchi interviews Edward Ingham about his journey from traditional, product-focused sales to a more customer-centric approach. The conversation delves into the real-life moments that shaped Edward's shift and the practical impact it has had on his career and well-being.

Guest: Edward Ingham, Senior Sales professional (biopharm-bd.com)

About Edward: Edward is a dual national British-Spanish salesperson based in Madrid, with 10 years of experience selling into enterprise pharma and startups. He has observed recurring sales themes across different company sizes and has learned significant lessons from his experiences.

Key Discussion Points:

• The Epiphany Moment: Edward realised the need for change about five years into his sales career. This shift occurred when he stopped focusing on the technical aspects of the product and the prospect's role (like CBO or CEO) and instead looked inward, considering how his own actions were affecting the other person, viewing them as human beings. He began to think about how he would feel if someone was doing what he was doing to them. The second part of this transition was spending time to truly understand the prospect's world, recognising that they don't make impulse purchases and need to "sell" internally within their own organisation to get things done.
• Breaking Point: The old way of selling became unbearable, particularly during lockdown, when facing constant rejection alone in an apartment led to self-doubt. This coincided with him starting to listen to The Inquisitor podcast, which offered a new perspective on questioning people to understand their situation. The sense of rejection was the most difficult part of the old approach.
• Understanding Buyer Behaviour: Marcus highlights that buyers don't reject the salesperson, proposition, or product itself, but rather the uncertainty and lack of safety associated with the decision. Buyers want to make the right decision effectively and know that a purchase will deliver the intended outcome. Creating false urgency creates distrust.
• Learning and Improvement: Edward learned from ghosting experiences that prospects are not necessarily "mugging you off," but often have internal issues or priorities that take precedence. The key is to probe and ask tough questions (nicely) to understand the prospect's reality and qualify or disqualify opportunities early. This prevents "bulking up" pipelines with uncertainty, which can negatively impact forecasting up to the board and investors.
• Becoming an Ally: The moment of realisation that his job was to be the customer's ally, not their accomplice or adversary, came from slowly implementing client-centric approaches and seeing immediate positive results. Switching the tone in emails or meetings led to responses from non-responders, positive reactions, and feeling appreciated in the room.
• The Power of Client-Centricity: Edward found that adopting a client-centric approach, treating prospects as human beings with emotions, helps overcome imposter syndrome, especially for those without a deep scientific background in technical industries like pharma. This approach serves as a unique differentiator against salespeople who product push. Clients appreciate honesty, like direct answers to questions such as "Who is better, you or your competitor?".
• Improved Results: A major difference seen is that very little unqualified opportunity enters the pipeline. By asking questions and understanding the client's position and internal readiness, opportunities are typically only added at a later stage (like "submit proposal"). This results in a very high close rate for opportunities that do enter the CRM. This certainty is valuable for communicating upwards within the company.
• Prospecting for Life: Shifting the mentality from transacting or booking meetings to prospecting for a customer for life changes the entire conversation tone. The focus is on genuinely understanding the other human being and their pressures.
• Client Reaction and Referrals: When this shift occurs, people actually want to spend time with you and become just as invested in the conversation. The feeling of needing to chase disappears. Edward receives messages directly from prospects on their personal phones. He finds he needs to do less work on accounts because internal people know he isn't difficult to work with and will help them internally. People who were historically bombarded may reach out, demonstrating that less work structured differently leads to inbound interest.
• Activities Eliminated: Edward no longer wastes hours with "tire kickers" or spends time on "just checking in" follow-up emails. This time is reinvested in self-improvement or sales enablement. The customer-centric approach reduces waffle and uncertainty in pipeline discussions.
• Doing the Right Thing: A principled approach includes the absolute minimum gesture of honesty, such as advising a prospect that a competitor might offer a better, cheaper, or quicker solution if their request is out of scope. This is uncommon but helps differentiate a salesperson and build long-term memory with the prospect.
• Impact on Self: Being human-centric makes you a lot happier. You go home feeling like you've helped someone, which is often the antithesis of traditional sales. Done well, sales is about facilitating good decisions and empowering people.
• Engaging Broadly: Edward aims to engage with around 12 or more people within an account over the medium term, having interactions not solely focused on the sales process. It's important to get in touch with key people (like procurement or legal) before you need something from them.
• Working with Procurement: Edward learned that engaging with procurement with purely their interests at heart is pivotal. They are trying to save the company money and have specific KPIs; understanding these can help make their life easier and create internal advocates.
• The Power of Mentorship: A critical move was seeking mentorship from people he had previously interacted with, particularly those he might have "pissed off" as a salesperson, or people in roles like procurement. He crafted concise LinkedIn messages asking for 15 minutes a month of mentorship with "no strings attached" and a promise not to abuse the goodwill. The response rate has been incredibly high (above 90%). This provides invaluable insight into the customer's world, their internal pressures, and the emotional factors influencing decisions.
• No Need to Discount: Edward learned that discounting feels insincere and is effectively "lying to people". It should be avoided at all costs unless value has been clearly delivered and the prospect understands they need the product. Discounting hurts cash flow, forces more prospecting, and procurement remembers suppliers who are quick to discount.
• Owning Your Development: Edward advises people who are waiting for company training to stop pointing the finger. It is the individual salesperson's responsibility to train themselves. Finding role models (through podcasts, content, reaching out) and making yourself vulnerable by seeking feedback are key.
• How You Sell Matters More: Both Edward and Marcus agree that how you show up and how you sell matters more than what you sell. The intent behind the interaction will be remembered, not the technical details of the product.
• The Real Issue: The fundamental issue in sales is often time and relevance for the prospect at a given point in time, not the product itself.
• Becoming a Board Director: Edward's recent transition to a board director highlights the value of having frontline sales perspectives on boards, providing insights into market dynamics and customer reactions that senior execs might not have due to being removed from daily sales interactions.
• Final Challenge: Stop product pitching and focus on the prospect's world, their agendas, and their life. Treat them as human beings, understanding their needs and priorities, not just focusing on your own targets.

Recommendations for Further Learning:

• Books: Demand Side Sales by Bob Moesta, Trust-Based Selling by Charlie Green, The Other Side of Sales by Mark Schenkeus, How to Make Friends and Influence People.
• Podcasts/Content: We Have a Meeting (WAM guys), Benjamin Dennehy, Jerry Hill.
• Community: Veblen Community (Callum Lang).
• Networking: Seek mentors through respectful outreach. Consider Sellers Anonymous.

How to Connect:

• Edward Ingham: edward.ingham@biopharm-bd.com or reach out on LinkedIn.
• Marcus Cauchi: Get in touch regarding Sellers Anonymous or the Career Pathfinder.

The conversation highlights the transformative power of shifting to a truly human-centric and principled approach in sales, leading to increased effectiveness, personal fulfillment, and stronger customer relationships.

Avner Baruch: Why Misalignment Is Killing Your Go-To-Market Strategy (and How to Fix It)

In this episode, Marcus speaks with Avner Baruch about the invisible costs of misalignment in go-to-market functions and why focusing on traditional sales metrics like ARR and conversion rates often misses the point.

Avner shares his journey into sales enablement and how it led him to develop a methodology called Project Moneyball, which digs beneath surface metrics to uncover the real issues. By factoring in soft skills, time management, and process adoption, this approach helps teams identify problems much earlier, often during onboarding, rather than waiting months for reports to catch up.

Key Themes Explored:

🔸 The Real Cost of Misalignment

Misalignment across sales, marketing, and customer success leads to noisy pipelines, stalled deals, wasted effort, and poor customer experiences. Avner explains how one company saved over $1 million a year by fixing inefficiencies at the top of the funnel. Marcus adds that leaving customer success out of the GTM strategy is a massive oversight that leads to direct and indirect waste.

🔸 Outdated Metrics and Misplaced Incentives

They challenge the use of legacy metrics like booked meetings and conversion rates for SDRs, which often encourage the wrong behaviours. Instead, the focus should be on quality meetings with Ideal Customer Profiles who are a genuine long-term fit.

🔸 Smarter ICP Design

Avner recommends using customer success data to define what a great customer actually looks like, then feeding that back to marketing. This creates a more focused ICP, a cleaner pipeline, and a more effective use of resources.

🔸 Leadership in Uncertain Times

When things get tough, leaders often make panic moves like reshuffling teams or jumping on automation tools without fixing broken processes. They also tend to reuse job descriptions from failed roles, which sets up new hires to fail. Avner argues for proper job design based on desired outcomes, with hiring managers involved from the start.

🔸 Managers as Multipliers

Managers should be hiring well, removing friction, building systems that work, and actively coaching. Enablement is not just a department, it’s a mindset. Research shows that operational coaching by frontline managers delivers strong ROI and better outcomes.

🔸 Cultural and Structural Blind Spots

They dig into leadership behaviours that hold teams back, including ego, resistance to feedback, fear of hiring strong people, and a desire to avoid conflict. These behaviours lead to bloated pipelines, poor handovers, low trust, and declining performance.

🔸 Spotting and Fixing the Gaps

Leaders need to put a number on the cost of the current way of working. That includes symptoms like pipeline bloat, poor onboarding, high churn, CS teams carrying too much weight, and inconsistent sales performance. Avner and Marcus outline practical steps like watching early-stage calls, examining handoffs, and separating SDR and BDR roles to allow for real skill development.

🔸 CRM and Forecasting

They question the value of traditional weekly forecasting meetings, which often provide little insight and lots of theatre. Tech should be used to provide real-time, actionable data, not just serve management dashboards. CRMs should make selling easier, not add friction.

🔸 The Human-Centric Leadership Advantage

The conversation ends with advice to listen, seek feedback, hire well, and drop the armour. Vulnerability and trust are not weaknesses. They’re essential for building teams that are resilient, motivated, and capable of delivering sustainable growth.

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📚 Avner’s books The Top Sales Enablement Challenges and The Multiplier explore these topics in more detail. He and Marcus also talk about a potential collaboration to help private equity firms measure "alpha drift" caused by inefficiencies in go-to-market execution.

If you’re a sales or revenue leader tired of vanity metrics and poor alignment, this episode gives you clear, practical ideas on how to fix what’s broken and build a go-to-market function that actually works.

Contact 

Avner

https://www.linkedin.com/in/avner-baruch/

Marcus

https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcuscauchi/

or

Email team@laughs-last.com

if you'd like to know more about pipleline triage

 

 

 

Alan Versteeg: 9 Brutal Truths Every Sales Leader Needs to Hear

In this episode, Marcus is joined by Alan Versteeg, a coach and sales performance specialist with years of experience helping companies unlock what's really holding their teams back.

Together, they explore 9 critical truths most sales leaders overlook, and the hidden leverage points that can transform your results without overhauling your tech stack or doubling your headcount.

What you'll learn:

• Why your middle managers are your most underused asset, and how to activate them

• How on-the-job coaching delivers a 72x return when done right

• The dangerous illusion of control CRMs create, and what to focus on instead

• How shifting from managing individuals to managing the sales environment changes everything

• Why asking basic questions like “Why do we prospect?” can unravel deeper issues in your sales process

• How to identify the handbrakes slowing growth, often hidden in plain sight

• Why failure is your most powerful tool, if you build the right culture around it

• The key difference between managing tasks and driving impact

• And how changing perspective can make the difference between short-term wins and long-term performance

If you're a CRO, VP of Sales, or leading a team in a mid-market organisation, this episode is packed with practical, thought-provoking insight you won't get from dashboards or sales playbooks.

 

Connect on LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/in/alanversteeg/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcuscauchi/

 

Get Personal Sales Insights

https://bit.ly/NewSellingAptitudeTest

 

Triage Your Pipleline

https://bit.ly/PipelineTriageAudit

 

Or https://bit.ly/TalkWithUsNow

 

 

 

Matt Gaskin: Lean Principles for High Performance Selling

Lean Selling: How to Make Buying Effortless & Ethical

🔍 What if selling wasn’t about ‘closing’ but about making it effortless for customers to buy?

This episode dismantles outdated, wasteful, and buyer-hostile sales tactics, replacing them with Lean principles, built on respect, trust, and ruthless efficiency. Matt Gaskin joins Marcus Cauchi to challenge sales dogma, expose hidden inefficiencies, and lay out a high-performance, humane approach to selling.

🔥 Sales teams waste 60–80% of their time on the wrong work. Want to fix that? 

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🚀 What You’ll Learn

1️⃣ The Brutal Truth About Sales Waste

❌ Chasing bad-fit leads that will never buy.
❌ Lying to customers, overpromising, hiding flaws, forcing urgency.
❌ Measuring the wrong things, activity instead of meaningful progress.

💡 Lean sales isn’t about doing more. It’s about removing everything that doesn’t serve the buyer.

2️⃣ The Buyer’s Brain is Wired for Threat Detection

• Every sales process either builds trust or triggers alarms.

• Objections = proof buyers don’t feel safe yet.

• The question isn’t "How do we close more?" but "How do we make it safe to buy?"

3️⃣ Selling is the Art of Elimination

🛠️ Sales is like sculpting: chip away everything that doesn’t belong.
🔍 What’s slowing down decisions? What’s making buying harder? Remove it.

4️⃣ Lean = Power to the Frontline

• Salespeople should own their process like engineers own Lean manufacturing.

• Leadership’s job: remove roadblocks, not create more.

• Sales, finance, marketing, and operations must work as one system.

5️⃣ Failure is a Superpower (If You Use It Right)

✅ Track mistakes. Learn weekly. Improve constantly.
✅ Eliminate what’s not working instead of ‘trying harder’.
✅ Most sales teams repeat bad habits instead of evolving. Be different.

6️⃣ What Happens When You Apply Lean to Sales?

🚀 Better qualification = less wasted effort
🚀 Smarter targeting = more trust, faster deals
🚀 Process built for buyers = salespeople who love their job

💡 The best sales teams don’t ‘sell’, they create clarity, eliminate doubt, and let customers step forward.

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🛠️ 5 Things to Do Right Now

✅ Audit your sales process. Where are you creating friction?
✅ Start a Failure Log. Track bad outcomes, tweak, and improve weekly.
✅ Kill bad-fit leads early. Prioritise buying intent over quantity.
✅ Get outside the sales bubble. Spend time with customers and frontline teams.
✅ Ask this question daily: “What conditions make it easy for customers to say YES?”

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🎯 Final Thought

💡 “Most sales teams are optimised for busywork, not outcomes. What would your process look like if your only goal was to make buying effortless?”

 

Connect on LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcuscauchi/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-gaskin-a530b020/

 

Books

Jeffrey Liker - The Toyota Way to Lean Leadership https://amzn.to/4i1qPPk

 

Podcast Ryan Tierney - https://www.leanmadesimple.com/podcast

 

 

 

 

 

Brian Ahearn: Influence of Manipulation? The Ethical Sales Advantage

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?