Episodes

Monday Jul 01, 2019
The Life & Loves of a Technology Visionary
Monday Jul 01, 2019
Monday Jul 01, 2019
#SamSethi is a technologist with a powerful commercial vision. He was employee number 20 in #Microsoft in the UK, he worked at Netscape when you had to explain what a browser is, he brought #TechCrunch to Europe and has been a key influencer in the evolution of many of the world's ubiquitous technologies. Today Sam is pioneering #voice as the new HTML as CEO of #MadeInHead
We discuss the pitfalls of #venturecapital, the hangover of #miltonfriedman on corporate culture and misdirected priorities towards short-term results leaving our economies and our companies exposed to China and companies like #Amazon who fly in the face of being slaves to #shareholdervalue.
Sam shares a wealth of insights into the future of technology and its impact on the evolution of business and how we work. We discuss our favourite books and influencers.
You can hear Sam interviewing me about how to cut through the noise, get to decision makers and shorten sales cycles, get paid premium and close more often here: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6548829926089457664
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If you are the owner or CEO of a technology company in the £10m-50m revenue range, and your goal is to grow your business and achieve real, sustainable hypergrowth with highly engaged and highly productive employees and clients who stick with you year after year, let’s schedule time for a brief conversation.
To book a 1 to 1 with me or check out my 250+ podcast interviews with some of the best salespeople, sales leaders, sales psychologists, founders and entrepreneurs, trainers, coaches and authors click here - https://linktr.ee/marcuscauchi

Wednesday Jun 26, 2019
How To Scale By Upsetting the Status Quo
Wednesday Jun 26, 2019
Wednesday Jun 26, 2019
#DavidSloly is an award winning marketer who has helped build some of the world's largest and most successful channels. Story teller, best selling author, journalist, broadcaster, accidental creative director and marketing automation expert, David discusses how he helped Microsoft grow sign ups and engagement with their partner network of 25,000 partners and rescue a failing channel partner portal.
We discuss the mistakes most companies make in their aborted attempts to create dialogue with their audience and establish trust & relevance because they market selfishly, focus on the wrong end of the problem and insist on talking about what matters to them not their customers. We dig into why emotion is more powerful than reason and logic in sales and in marketing to drive new behaviour and encourage decisions from buyers.
He introduces an elegantly simple technique for creating powerful ideas that have helped him help his clients to scale massively, fast and without the wheels falling off.
David is co-founder of HarveyDavid, the marketing automation consultancy
#Eloqua #marketingautomation #creativity #marketing #personalisation

Why You Need A Business Story And How To Create It

The Eloqua Mindset: Conversations with Successful Marketers Who Are Realising the Potential of Marketing

Zoom!: The faster way to make your business idea happen (Financial Times Series)
If you enjoyed this podcast, subscribe. There is a wealth of useful information and ideas in the series and I'd welcome your feedback or suggestions on other topics or other influencers and authors you'd like me to interview.
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If you are the owner or CEO of a technology company in the £10m-50m revenue range, and your goal is to grow your business and achieve real, sustainable hypergrowth with highly engaged and highly productive employees and clients who stick with you year after year, let’s schedule time for a brief conversation.
To book a 1 to 1 with me or check out my 250+ podcast interviews with some of the best salespeople, sales leaders, sales psychologists, founders and entrepreneurs, trainers, coaches and authors click here - https://linktr.ee/marcuscauchi

Wednesday Jun 19, 2019
How To Brand or Not To Brand, That Is The Question?
Wednesday Jun 19, 2019
Wednesday Jun 19, 2019
I interviewed #GerardTannam, MD of Island Bridge, a branding agency with a difference. Gerard explains what branding is and isn't, how it affects your relationship with your current and future customers, and why getting it right can affect the uptake and trajectory of your idea or business.
Your brand describes the relationship you have with your customer or target audience. He gives several real world stories to explain how branding works, what you can do to develop a strong brand and change the behaviour of your customers, your partners, your suppliers and entire nations.
Gerard has used branding to cut road deaths in Ireland by nearly 60% over the past couple fo decades, he's helped grow hotel chain sales, improve customer retention, reduce waste and drive sales.
Please forgive my tinny sounding voice. I say comparatively little and Gerard is clear as a bell. He is well worth listening to.
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Please subscribe, like and share. Feel free to comment and if there is a topic on sales, sales management, sales recruitment, enterprise selling, the psychology of sales and channel sales management that you want me to discuss or you can recommend a great podcast guest, then please email me on marcus@laughs-last.com.
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If you are the owner or CEO of a technology company in the £10m-50m revenue range, and your goal is to grow your business and achieve real, sustainable hypergrowth with highly engaged and highly productive employees and clients who stick with you year after year, let’s schedule time for a brief conversation.
To book a 1 to 1 with me or check out my 250+ podcast interviews with some of the best salespeople, sales leaders, sales psychologists, founders and entrepreneurs, trainers, coaches and authors click here - https://linktr.ee/marcuscauchi

Tuesday Jun 04, 2019
How to Get Better Answers: Ask Better Questions
Tuesday Jun 04, 2019
Tuesday Jun 04, 2019
#RichardFosterFletcher discusses #CustomerExperience and #PartnerExperience with me. We explore culture, recruitment, training, leadership and technology. We identify potential stumbling blocks and how the new kids on the block represent a real existential threat to the old guard software and technology giants.
We kick off with the big question, which is how do we use technologies like #businessintelligence, #machinelearning and #artificialintelligence to help us ask better questions. If you want better answers, ask better questions. New technologies allow us to identify patterns and use them to ask better questions
Did you know that #Mercedes are doubling their income per customer by having customers subscribe to their cars? Why is China such a huge threat and what do we need to learn to adapt or die? How do you create a frictionless experience for the end customer whether you are selling direct or with partners? Why has IT missed the opportunity to attain their place in the C-suite and what opportunity do CX, PX, AI and ML leave for marketing? Which jobs are likely to be the road to CEO in future? Why are the old guard leadership routes destined to be superseded by these new roles which didn't exist even 5 years ago?
We discuss the importance of niching to power growth. We investigate how shifts in the approach to their channel that might backfire on companies like Dyson. We explore how channels are evolving and some fo the opportunities and threats posed by addressing or mismanaging partner experience.
A lively and interesting discussion full of insights and challenging questions
Richard is a digital optimist with particular interest in Data Enrichment, Artificial Intelligence and BlockchainStrategies. Latterly, he's been responsible for #CustomerExperience #CX in #EnterpriseSales accounts for #Oracle. He's a highly sought out public speaker and hosts #DigitalDinners for C-suite executives to discuss trends, opportunities and threats posed by the fast changing digital landscape.
Richard recommends you read:
For big ideas: Safi Bahcall, Loonshots.
For personal journey: Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is the way.
For AI: Max Tegmark, Life 3.0.
I suggest you read Hello World by Hannah Fry and listen to my podcast with #AmyWoodall called How to Explode Your Profits
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If there's a topic you'd like me to explore in one of my podcasts or a particular figure you want me to interview, drop me a line at marcus@laughs-last.com with the details
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If you are the owner or CEO of a technology company in the £10m-50m revenue range, and your goal is to grow your business and achieve real, sustainable hypergrowth with highly engaged and highly productive employees and clients who stick with you year after year, let’s schedule time for a brief conversation.
To book a 1 to 1 with me or check out my 250+ podcast interviews with some of the best salespeople, sales leaders, sales psychologists, founders and entrepreneurs, trainers, coaches and authors click here - https://linktr.ee/marcuscauchi

Wednesday May 29, 2019
How to Join Up Your Channel For Control & Profit
Wednesday May 29, 2019
Wednesday May 29, 2019
An oft overlooked truth of partner/channel management is that you are dealing with people. People do things for their reasons, not your reasons. Channel partners are in business for their reasons, not your reasons. They don't lie awake at night, excited, thinking about selling your product. Perhaps they should, but what you NOT doing that makes them see you as a commodity, an interruption?
In a very lively debate with #OlivierChoron the best practices and mistakes being made by vendors looking to scale their channel we explore the impact of good and bad use of PRM (Partner Relationship Management), niching, targeted channel marketing, expectation management, segmentation and differentiation.
Olivier says that "Channel sales is a sales role with a massive coordination hat on." And he's right. We discuss the qualities and competencies needed to be an ultra successful channel manager and channel chief. These roles are closer to a general manager and a chief executive than they are to a sales manager or VP of sales.
We discuss the dangers of using partner personas - one size fits all - to categorise partners into sales, technical, marketing. We investigate the danger of these assumptions and how it damages your relationships and the performance of your partners
We explore what it takes to create good conditions for genuine partner engagement - Where do you start to establish a true partnership? How do you maximise your return on investment in every partnership, in every individual within every partner? How are you adapting as your partner evolves? How do you help them sell, implement and scale your partners?
A crucial mistake many vendors make is their failure to communicate in a meaningful, personalised and targeted manner. The cost in a large vendor can be prohibitive but this offers scale ups in the £3-50 million turnover range an opportunity to differentiate and build their special forces unit of partners.
Communicating effectively as your channel grows beyond a manageable level is tough. It's easy to fall into the comfort trap of communicating using the wrong media, the wrong language, delivering generic messages to make your life easy and keep your costs down, missing the mark for the majority of their partners. And this is a key weakness in the strength of larger vendors you could be exploiting
Failing to understand how to prioritise high versus low touch partners also means that you have fallen into the one size fits all camp. Don't make this mistake and your most productive partners will engage, feel valued and understood and produce hyper-profits helping you to scale fast without losing control
Large vendors have a hangover because of where sales and business leadership traditionally comes from. The smartest scale up vendors are going to have their channel chief on their board along with their VP of Customer Success/ Customer Experience because both these roles will drive growth and profitability
If you want to get hold of Olivier you can connect on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/olivierchoron/
If you want a copy of "Making Channel Sales Work", you can buy it on Kindle on Amazon https://www.amazon.co.uk/MAKING-CHANNEL-SALES-WORK-World-Class-ebook/dp/B07FDHMRH2/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=making+channel+sales&qid=1559125877&s=gateway&sr=8-1
For a paperback copy email suzanne@laughs-last.com with "MCSW" in the subject line. Please provide your postal address and company details so we can invoice you correctly
To be a guest on my podcast, email marcus@laughs-last.com with "Inquisitor Guest" and we can discuss the possible subject matter of our conversation
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If you are the owner or CEO of a technology company in the £10m-50m revenue range, and your goal is to grow your business and achieve real, sustainable hypergrowth with highly engaged and highly productive employees and clients who stick with you year after year, let’s schedule time for a brief conversation.
To book a 1 to 1 with me or check out my 250+ podcast interviews with some of the best salespeople, sales leaders, sales psychologists, founders and entrepreneurs, trainers, coaches and authors click here - https://linktr.ee/marcuscauchi

Wednesday May 22, 2019
How To Unlock Channel & Sales Success With 7 Stories
Wednesday May 22, 2019
Wednesday May 22, 2019
#MikeAdams is best-selling author of "7 Stories Every Salesperson Must Tell". Mike has gone from zero to hero in 4 completely new vertical markets selling both complex and commoditised products and services internationally using the power of 7 stories.
Human beings can't tear away their attention from a good story and Mike explains why and how to craft a good business story for the 7 key functions:
- Personal
- Key Staff
- Company
- Insight
- Success
- Values
- Teaching
He coaches me through the process of developing my own customer success story to demonstrate how to build a powerful story for yourself. Experience has taught me that good stories help salespeople shortcut the need to demonstrate products or services, do presentations, write proposals by helping their prospects take care of their concerns in their own imaginations.
Sandler Rule:
- "The best presentation you ever do, your prospect will never see"
A good story helps the listener see and experience themselves in the role of the key characters with the salesperson as their guide. When that happens, the story becomes their own data and prospects never argue with their own data. By helping your prospect experience owning or using your products and services in their imagination, you help them feel as if they are already your customer, you inoculate them against making the mistakes or creating the conditions for stalls and objections, internal resistance or approaching the internal sale badly that can cause a deal to die on the vine. Stories position you as an expert, rehearse your sponsors on how to navigate their own organisation, help you neutralise resistance and turn adversaries into allies.
Have a listen. See how you can develop your own stories whether for your direct sales team, your customer success team, or your channel.
Mike's book, 7 Stories Every Salesperson Must Tell, is available on Amazon and Audible
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If you are the owner or CEO of a technology company and your goal is to grow your business and achieve real, sustainable hypergrowth with highly engaged and highly productive employees and clients who stick with you year after year, let’s schedule time for a brief conversation.
To book a 1 to 1 with me or check out my 250+ podcast interviews with some of the best salespeople, sales leaders, sales psychologists, founders and entrepreneurs, trainers, coaches and authors click here - https://linktr.ee/marcuscauchi

Tuesday May 21, 2019
Kieran Krohn: How Do You Become the Best Channel Manager in The World?
Tuesday May 21, 2019
Tuesday May 21, 2019
#KieranKrohn was named the world's best #channelmanager at #Hubspot. Now to do that in Hubspot means you have to be very special because they have a very powerful and effective #channelsalesprogram.
Kieran is 31 and has only been in sales for 7 years, so his achievement is remarkable. It was humbling to learn how he works in genuine partnership with his channel. Would it surprise you to learn that he spends 75% of his time every day coaching partners 1-to-1 and some group coaching 25% in direct prospecting activity? He shared his habits around mind-body-spirit that help him stay sharp, his #growthmindset, his cadence of mutual #accountability that he has with his #channelpartners.
He explains the critical importance of understanding his partners' C-suite and salespeople's business, their personal ambitions and growth objectives for their business, their exit strategy, their challenges and adding value to their business. Focusing on them and their business means he outsells all the others in a vital and competitive sales environment. He helps them understand the sales process that helps them make money by partnering with Hubspot and specifically, by partnering with Kieran. He has become a trusted advisor despite his youth because he has so much exposure to the various business problems, challenges, best practices and opportunities he has to deal with to do his job well. His partners trust and respect his contribution because he cares and keeps his promises. He puts their interests above his own and understands the true nature of service
Kieran has such a healthy attitude towards failure, taking action, taking personal responsibility, it lifted my day. He demonstrates commitment, vulnerability and empathy. He is nurturing but tough when it comes to prioritising how he uses his time and with whom, what he expects and what is expected of him, and doesn't shy away from difficult conversations
Seriously good interview with a talented young man who star is rising. I predict he will go far and his impact will be great.
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If you are the owner or CEO of a technology company and your goal is to grow your business and achieve real, sustainable hypergrowth with highly engaged and highly productive employees and clients who stick with you year after year, let’s schedule time for a brief conversation.
To book a 1 to 1 with me or check out my 250+ podcast interviews with some of the best salespeople, sales leaders, sales psychologists, founders and entrepreneurs, trainers, coaches and authors click here - https://linktr.ee/marcuscauchi

Thursday May 16, 2019
How Are You Wasting Growth Opportunities?
Thursday May 16, 2019
Thursday May 16, 2019
#HilmonSorey, co-Founder of #ClozeLoop, co-developer of #TriangleSelling and co-author of #TheSalesEnablementPlayBook,#SalesPlaybooks: The Builder's Toolkit, #SalesDevelopment chats to me about his experience working with series- A, B, C and D technology scale ups and the horrific acts of idiocy and self-sabotage he's seen repeated that are wasting growth opportunities.
Learn from the depressingly deep scar-tissue Hilmon and I have earned over the past 3 decades, serving scale up founders and CEOs, building their teams, helping them achieve exits to cash out like bandits or to crash and burn into anonymity and poverty.
Learn from the mistakes we have seen countless founders make with poor planning, failure to implement a joined up marketing, business development, sales, account management, customer success, customer service experience. Bringing costly business in through the front door, only to let it out the back door is STUPID but some many companies focus on new business and don't focus on retention.
We've seen founders and investors focus on new business and land grabbing new customers instead of building their business on the principle that they're in business to make a profit and then scratch their heads when things go tits up. Sure there's a well trodden model that says you can do that but it creates bubbles and is onanistic and short sighted.
We've heard founders who said "If only we could kick sales into touch and focus on product development. then we could create a great product and people would come knocking at our door in their droves!" Bulls**t!
We have seen some really crazy things go on with channel partners - some suffer from premature channelisation, and others come too late to the channel (no groaning at the innuendo please)
Hilmon and I pull no punches. We slag off the parasites sucking the lifeblood around scale ups. He's much nicer about them than I am but I know he feels the same level of abhorrence I do towards the bad recruitment practices and bad recruitment practitioners.
A fun, lively interview and I am very much looking forward to interviewing him again on some more contentious subjects.
Please like, comment and share this podcast.
If you want to get hold of Hilmon on LinkedIn ... https://www.linkedin.com/in/hilmonsorey/
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If you are the owner or CEO of a technology company and your goal is to grow your business and achieve real, sustainable hypergrowth with highly engaged and highly productive employees and clients who stick with you year after year, let’s schedule time for a brief conversation.
To book a 1 to 1 with me or check out my 250+ podcast interviews with some of the best salespeople, sales leaders, sales psychologists, founders and entrepreneurs, trainers, coaches and authors click here - https://linktr.ee/marcuscauchi

Wednesday May 15, 2019
Video Can Make Or Destroy Your Personal Brand
Wednesday May 15, 2019
Wednesday May 15, 2019
The tastiest plate of food, that looks like dog food isn't nearly as appealing as one that is presented well. The same applies to video for business.Get it wrong and the effect is ruined. Get it right and great things happen
#EvelyneBrink coaches CXO's and professionals who want to use video to build their business, raise their profile and establish a strong personal brand. If you need to convince an audience, promote your products or services or become known as an expert in your field, video is a fantastic medium.
Unfortunately, most videos produced by well intentioned but unskilled practitioners are excruciating to watch. The result. Dwell time of a few seconds, objective missed, time and money wasted.
Evelyne is an actress, comedienne, internationally renowned Madonna impersonator, coach and all bon viveur. She shares 16 easy to apply tips that can turn your video nightmares into 24 hour a day sales engines that attract the right people, engage prospects in dialogue and build your reputation as the go to expert in your niche.
Evelyne has been my coach for the past couple of months and the difference in my video quality is obvious. I always had decent content but the production values left something to be desired. Take a look at my latest series of videos on blindspots in your business.
You can find Evelyne on https://www.linkedin.com/in/evelynebrink/ and via her website https://brinkcoaching.com/
And if you were around in the 80's here's a nostalgic trip down memory lane https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsVplKh434g with Evelyne as Europe's number 1 Madonna impersonator
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If you are the owner or CEO of a technology company and your goal is to grow your business and achieve real, sustainable hypergrowth with highly engaged and highly productive employees and clients who stick with you year after year, let’s schedule time for a brief conversation.
To book a 1 to 1 with me or check out my 250+ podcast interviews with some of the best salespeople, sales leaders, sales psychologists, founders and entrepreneurs, trainers, coaches and authors click here - https://linktr.ee/marcuscauchi

Saturday May 11, 2019
How To Secure & Explode Your Profits
Saturday May 11, 2019
Saturday May 11, 2019
"The customer is not always right but when they wrong, it's often our fault" - Amy Woodall
In this interview Amy shines a glaring light on the idiocy of traditional sales and marketing culture. Looking after your customers is the cheapest way of growing your profits. It can cost 6-25 times more to win new customers than to keep them.
Amy teaches companies why putting the customer at the heart of everything they do, paying real service, not lip service, to customer experience is the best investment you can make in your business.
We discuss how to hire great customer service and customer experience representatives who retain and grow your loyal customers and remain loyal themselves. And we identify the biggest red flag to help you prevent making bad CX hires who will cause you loses and lose you clients.
Companies that focus on getting business in through the front door and let it out of the back door are focused on the wrong end of the problem. It makes no sense to invest a lot of money attracting prospects, investing time, money and resources selling to them, and once they're customers only to treat them as less important than new business. Absolutely crazy, crazy, crazy!
46 minutes of pure gold
https://www.linkedin.com/in/amywoodall/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdLl6BWVZ3Y
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If you are the owner or CEO of a technology company and your goal is to grow your business and achieve real, sustainable hypergrowth with highly engaged and highly productive employees and clients who stick with you year after year, let’s schedule time for a brief conversation.
To book a 1 to 1 with me or check out my 250+ podcast interviews with some of the best salespeople, sales leaders, sales psychologists, founders and entrepreneurs, trainers, coaches and authors click here - https://linktr.ee/marcuscauchi