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Mar 24, 2026
Mar 24, 2026
54 min
The Honest Conversation Nobody Else Is Having
Every founder reads the analyst reports. Every sales leader nods along in the conference sessions. Partnerships are the future. Ecosystems are everything. Co-selling is the key to unlocking faster growth, bigger deals, and stickier customers.
And yet, ask those same founders and sales leaders whether they're actually banking on partner-sourced revenue to hit their number this quarter, and the answer is almost always the same: no.
Why? Because it's never been reliable. Because it's always been treated as a nice-to-have. Because nobody actually knows how to make it work.
That's the conversation this episode is built around. Alex Buckles has spent 20 years in enterprise sales, in the SAP ecosystem, the Adobe ecosystem, running and exiting two professional services companies, and figured out early in his career that if he wanted deal flow from partners, he had to earn it. That realisation eventually became Forecastable, a company whose only measure of success is pipeline production through co-sell motions.
What You'll Hear in This Episode
Why the instinct to hire a partnerships professional first is wrong
When a sub-150 person company decides to get serious about partnerships, the first move is almost always to bring in someone with a traditional partnerships background. Alex argues this is the wrong call, not because those people aren't valuable, but because what you actually need at that stage is proof of concept, not infrastructure. A junior AE or an SDR with the right playbook can prove repeatability faster and cheaper than six months of PRM setup and deal registration frameworks.
The co-sell door opener and why discovery calls don't cut it
The most powerful concept in this episode is what Alex calls the co-sell door opener: a high-value experience you invite the prospect into rather than a pitch you push at them. Think of it like a $5,000 event that the vendor covers, limited seats, relevant to a specific pain, designed to create genuine engagement rather than manufactured urgency. It doesn't feel like a sales motion because, done right, it isn't one.
The three types of value anyone ever sells
Fix something. Prevent something. Improve something. That's it. And when you're building co-sell plays, Alex argues the fix is almost always the most powerful place to start. If the prospect has a raging toothache, don't pitch them a one-year dental plan.
Why 60% of pipeline dies in no decision — and what's really behind it
Marcus and Alex dig into something most sales training doesn't touch: buyer safety. Not qualification. Not discovery. The deeper question of whether the person sitting across from you can actually afford, professionally, politically, emotionally, to make this decision. When you ignore that question, you end up with a pipeline full of deals that were never going anywhere, a constipated middle of funnel, and a close rate that would make any CFO reach for the antacids.
The second room problem
80 to 90 percent of the sale happens without you in it. The internal conversations, the allocation committees, the corridor conversations between stakeholders, none of that is visible to the vendor. Which means your champion has to carry your story, unedited and unaccompanied, into rooms you'll never see. The question isn't whether your deal is qualified on paper. It's whether every stakeholder in that buying committee would go to bat for you when you're not there.
What great partner enablement actually looks like
It's not onboarding decks and quarterly business reviews. It's getting in front of the frontline manager with a win story, asking for 15 minutes on their weekly team call, and showing up with something their reps can use in the field that week. Ghost-written outreach. Account development research. Win wires in shared Slack channels. Perpetual mindshare, that's what you're actually after.
Demos: mostly a waste of time
Alex's take on this is blunt. Once you've given a demo, the buyer has locked in their view of you. You've answered a bunch of curiosities, and they may ghost you. Save the demo for last. Use it to confirm the order, not to create one. If it won't change a stakeholder's decision, don't do it.
Three Takeaways You Can Use Tomorrow
1. Start with the interview, not the one-pager. Before you build any co-sell playbook, get the most trusted systems integrator in the room and ask them what makes them different. Real conversations produce better plays than merged marketing decks every time.
2. Know who owns the problem and who owns the outcome — they're almost never the same person. In most organisations, the partnership professional owns the problem but has no budget and limited authority. The sales leader owns the outcome but views partnerships as fluffy. Bridging those two people explicitly — not hoping it happens organically — is what gets deals done.
3. Ask yourself the second room question for every stakeholder. If this person were in a room with their boss right now and you weren't there, would they go to bat for you? If you can't answer yes with confidence, you've got more work to do.
About Alex Buckles
Alex is the CEO and co-founder of Forecastable, a professional services company that stands up partner programs and co-sell motions that produce measurable pipeline. With a background spanning enterprise sales, the SAP and Adobe ecosystems, and two exited professional services businesses — all built through co-selling — Alex brings a perspective on partnerships that is grounded entirely in what produces revenue, not what looks good on a slide.
🔗 Find Alex on LinkedIn or visit forecastable.com for published pricing and use cases.
About The Inquisitor Podcast
The Inquisitor is hosted by Marcus Cauchi and is built around one idea: honest, evidence-based conversations about what actually works in sales, go-to-market, and revenue leadership. No posturing. No vanity metrics. Just the real work.
If this episode was useful, share it with a founder or sales leader who's talking about partnerships but hasn't yet made them produce. That's who this was made for.
Mar 16, 2026
Mar 16, 2026
50 min
If you run a business with a sales team, this episode will make you uncomfortable. That's the point.
Marcus Cauchi and Andy Hough have a no-holds-barred conversation about why sales has become distrusted, what's causing it, and what founders and CEOs can actually do to fix it.
Andy has spent decades in the field, from Lloyds and Barclays to 16 years at EMC (now Dell), and has since sat through hundreds of hours of sales meetings as a researcher. He knows where the bodies are buried.
What we cover in this episode:
Why sales has shifted from a relationship-driven profession to a numbers and technology treadmill, and what that's costing you in customer trust, revenue quality, and staff retention.
How shareholder pressure flows down through leadership, management, and sellers, and arrives in front of your buyers as inauthenticity, shallow discovery, and unwanted pressure.
Why the best sales interactions are built on understanding how your customer makes money, protects margin, and carries risk, and why most sales teams have lost this entirely.
The 90-day productivity myth. Research puts it at 3.2 years for a salesperson to hit full stride. Most organisations churn people before they ever get there.
Why activity metrics destroy quality, and what the alternative actually looks like in practice.
The player-manager trap and why it almost always ends badly for the team, the manager, and ultimately the customer.
What sales coaching actually is, and why the gap between what managers think they're doing and what salespeople are experiencing is wider than most leaders realise.
Why seller psychological safety is as important as buyer trust, and how the wrong people keep getting promoted.
Why your CRM is aligned to your sales process and not your buyer's journey, and why that single misalignment is costing you deals you didn't even know you lost.
The case for sustainable sales: focusing on the 6-to-36 month pipeline where there's no competition, time to build real relationships, and room to become a trusted adviser rather than another vendor chasing a quarterly number.
The question this episode leaves every founder and CEO with:
Are the systems you've built designed to create trust with customers, or are they quietly destroying it in order to hit this quarter's number? And critically, does anyone in your organisation feel safe enough to tell you?
About Andy Hough
Andy Hough is co-founder of the Institute of Sales Professionals, a tireless advocate for sales as a profession, and a doctoral researcher studying the adaptability of salespeople and its impact on performance. He lectures at Cranfield University and is part of the Global Sales Science Institute. He has carried a target, led teams, and spent his career trying to return sales to what it was in its best form. A genuinely human, outcome-focused profession.
Connect with Andy on LinkedIn or visit the ISP at www.isp.uk.com
About Marcus Cauchi
Marcus Cauchi is the host of the Inquisitor Podcast and works with founders, CEOs, and sales leaders on decision safety, go-to-market alignment, and building sales organisations that create long-term customer value. He is currently completing a manuscript on the systemic compromises that accumulate inside sales cultures and the cost they carry.
Connect with Marcus on LinkedIn
If this episode resonated, share it with your CRO, your Head of Sales, or any founder who's wondering why pipeline feels harder than it used to. The answer is probably in this conversation.
Feb 27, 2026
Feb 27, 2026
54 min
In this episode of the Inquisitor Podcast, host Marcus Cauchi talks with LinkedIn expert Graeme Riley, a platform user since 2004 and business development consultant since 2012, to cut through the noise and get practical about what actually works on LinkedIn.
Graeme shares why most people are using LinkedIn wrong, how the platform's algorithm has evolved, and what separates the salespeople who consistently hit their targets from those who burn out in 18 months.
Topics covered include: building a LinkedIn strategy tied to revenue goals, curating your ideal client network, optimising your profile for today's audience, the right content mix for dwell time and reshares, the difference between free, premium and Sales Navigator accounts, and why most companies are wasting their investment in the platform.
Whether you're a solo entrepreneur or leading a sales team, this episode will challenge your assumptions and give you actionable steps to stop being a well-kept secret.
Find Graeme Riley on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/grahamkeithriley/
Jan 27, 2026
Jan 27, 2026
55 min
Stop leaving money on the table.
In this episode, sales historian and author Todd Caponi reveals why traditional negotiation tactics are destroying trust, eroding margins, and creating unsustainable business models.
Todd shares the revolutionary Four Levers framework that helped him close a $7.5M deal when the customer demanded 35% off - and they ended up with only 15% discount while paying upfront for three years.
What You'll Learn:
🟣Why building trust until the close, then "starting to lie" about pricing is killing your deals
🟣Negotiation Without the Games: Todd Caponi's Four Levers Framework
🟣The 115-year-old concept of "sound basis pricing" that buyers have been demanding since 1910
🟣How the 4x pipeline rule forces reps to waste time on garbage opportunities
🟣Why BANT qualification is outdated and what to do instead
🟣The Four Levers: Volume, Timing of Cash, Length of Commitment, and Timing of Deal
🟣How to stop discounting unilaterally andEducating buyers to squeeze harder
🟣Real data: 20-30% reduction in discounting, 7-8 figure profitability improvements
🟣Why every unasked-for concession (even net 45 vs net 30) signals everything is negotiable
Perfect for: Founders, sales leaders, and top performers who want to increase deal values, improve forecast accuracy, and build sustainable pricing models.
About Todd Caponi
Author of "The Transparency Sale", "The Transparent Sales Leader" and "Four Levers Negotiating," Todd is a longtime sales leader, self confessed transparency nerd, and the only sales history expert who collects artifacts from the 1800s-1900s.
His approach has been working for 17+ years across multiple organizations.
Get Todd's Book: "Four Levers Negotiating" - https://amzn.to/4jPmjG9
Connect with Todd:
🎙️ The Sales History Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-sales-history-podcast/id1571354113
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/toddcaponi/
💡 Found this valuable?
Like, comment, and share with your sales team.
📊 What's your biggest negotiation challenge?
Drop it in the comments.
#SalesNegotiation #B2BSales #SalesLeadership #Pricing #RevenueGrowth
Jan 17, 2026
Jan 17, 2026
1hr 4 min
Most B2B deals don’t end in “no”.
They die quietly. No decision. No movement. No momentum.
In this episode, Marcus Cauchi speaks with Karl Schmidt,one of the leaders of the research teams that helped 100s of companies take advantage of the insights from The Challenger Sale.
Buyers now do most of their thinking before they ever speak to a salesperson. Buying committees have doubled. Information is everywhere. Confidence is not.
This conversation explores why traditional sales approaches struggle in this reality, and why the best sellers are no longer pushing solutions. They’re helping buyers make sense of risk, complexity, and internal politics. You’ll hear:
• Why decision confidence matters more than solution confidence
• The fears that quietly kill deals
• How sellers unintentionally strip buyers of agency
• Why “no decision” is the real competitor
• What framemaking looks like in real sales conversations
If you’re a founder, CEO, sales leader, or an aspiring top performer, this episode will change how you think about discovery, deal reviews, and what it really means to help a customer buy. This is not about tactics. It’s about leadership in the buying process.
Jan 12, 2026
Jan 12, 2026
52 min
Are you settling for "good enough" while your sales organisation invests in an 85% loser rate?
In this episode, Marcus Cauchi sits down with David Brock, author of "Is Good Enough Good Enough? Mindsets and Behaviors for Sales Excellence," to challenge the traditional "metrics madness" that keeps founders and sales leaders trapped in cycles of mindless activity.
Dave shares his pragmatic, scientific approach to performance, revealing how top performers achieve their goals by being "intelligently lazy" and cutting out the "dead work" that consumes the average workday.
They explore the "Three-Pile Strategy" for auditing tasks, the high cost of customer churn, and why personal accountability is the ultimate differentiator between top performers and those who make excuses.
A major highlight of this conversation is David’s contrarian take on AI. Having used Claude AI as a "thought partner" and "debate partner" to co-author his book, David explains why AI is a "profound amplifier" that makes deep thinkers better but makes "lazy idiots" fail at scale.
Learn how to use discovery-based prompting to internalise strategic ownership and why curiosity remains the foundational behaviour for the next generation of leaders.
Key Topics Covered:
• The Trap of Activity vs. Outcomes: Why being "busy" is often a mask for underperformance.
• The Three-Pile Audit: Examine tasks and reclaiming 40% of your team's capacity. • Retention vs. Acquisition: Why the obsession with new logos is a recipe for wasted effort.
• AI as a Debate Partner: Moving beyond automation to elevate your strategic thinking.
• The Sacred Habit: Why scheduling 20 minutes of reflection daily is non-negotiable for excellence
Contact David Brock on linkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davebrock/
Email: dabrock@excellenc.com
Website: http://partnersinexcellenceblog.com/
Read the book: https://amzn.to/4brvQku
Contact Marcus https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcuscauchi/
Jan 10, 2026
Jan 10, 2026
56 min
Why do so many sales teams stumble despite talented hires?
In this episode, Peter Wheeler, serial entrepreneur and expert in scaling revenue velocity for early-stage organisations, explores the decline of apprenticeship in modern sales and the impact it has on team performance and long-term growth.
We examine why the traditional player-manager model often fails, how role siloing prevents junior staff from learning the ropes, and why leadership needs to move beyond administrative tasks to actively coach and support teams in the field.
Peter highlights the systemic dysfunctions caused by shareholder primacy and short-term thinking, including the hidden costs of high sales turnover, conflicting departmental metrics, and the erosion of trust and integrity in organisations. He explains why senior executives, not just salespeople, must engage with customers to understand real-world challenges and make informed strategic decisions.
We also discuss practical solutions to restore apprenticeship and learning in sales, including aligning teams around customer outcomes, leveraging AI as a personal coaching tool, and fostering a culture of trust, integrity, and long-term thinking.
Listeners will gain insights into how to build high-performing teams, reduce churn, and develop sustainable business growth, even in times of uncertainty or economic turmoil.
Whether you’re a founder, sales leader, or executive looking to improve team performance, this episode offers actionable advice, fresh perspectives, and strategies to thrive in a sales environment that too often sacrifices learning for short-term results.
Key Takeaways:
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The hidden costs of high sales turnover and short-termism
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How role siloing and player-manager models stunt growth and learning
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Why senior leaders must be actively engaged with customers
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Strategies for aligning departments and prioritising customer outcomes
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Leveraging AI for coaching, personal effectiveness, and customer-centric entrepreneurship
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Thriving through market uncertainty by focusing on what you can control
Contact Peter on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterledgrowth/
Contact Marcus https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcuscauchi/
or email team@principledselling.com
Jan 7, 2026
Dec 12, 2025
Nov 17, 2025
Nov 17, 2025
41 min
Steve’s journey was marked by sheer graft and some brutal personal blows. His first five years were, in his own words, madness. Eighteen to twenty hour days, six days a week. Then came a messy divorce, COVID and throat cancer.
The Founder Dependency Trap
Like many founders, Steve found himself in the classic trap. Everyone relied on him to make every decision. He sought help because his sales team was struggling and he realised he needed to learn how to step out of the way so his business could run without him.
The Uncomfortable Mentorship: Facing the Tormentor
Steve brought in Marcus and very quickly discovered this was not a cosy training course. He describes it as counselling for sales, full of uncomfortable moments, direct questions, and role plays that forced him to confront his own habits.
The turning point came when he learned to challenge and filter prospects properly. At first he thought it was rude to push back or walk away. In reality, detaching from the outcome stopped him wasting hours on buyers who were never going to buy.
The Measurable Transformation
The discomfort paid off. In spades.
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Efficiency: He went from putting in 100 percent effort to about 25 percent, yet was selling four times as much.
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Asset Growth: Between 2020 and 2024, while battling both COVID and cancer, the company’s net worth grew from £750k to £2.5m.
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Profitability: Pre tax profit rose from nearly £200k to just under £500k.
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Final Win: He closed his career with a £1.7m order. As he puts it, he started selling paper yachts and ended selling a battleship.
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Personal Return: The negotiation skills he picked up even saved him hundreds of thousands in his divorce settlement.
The Outcome: Freedom
When he sold in February 2025, Steve felt absolutely floating. The win was not just financial. He had finally proved the business could run without him.
If you are a founder trying to build a saleable asset and escape founder dependency, Steve’s story is well worth your time. It is honest, hard won, and full of lessons for anyone walking a similar path.
Contact Steve on Linkedin
The Framemaking Sale by Karl Schmidt and Brent Adamson: https://amzn.to/4jHYYpU
The Challenger Sale https://amzn.to/4qv7w63
Noise by Daniel Kahneman https://amzn.to/4pzcGwr
More resources at theframemakingsale.com