TheInquisitor Podcast with Marcus Cauchi

Marcus Cauchi, Laughs Last Ltd
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TheInquisitor Podcast with Marcus Cauchi

Business Insights & Strategies From Experts: Unveiling Simple Truths Behind Success. I’m always grateful for Reviews and remember to Subscribe

  1. 6 HR AGO

    Avner Baruch: Why Misalignment Is Killing Your Go-To-Market Strategy (and How to Fix It) 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 🔸 Outdated Metrics and Misplaced Incentives They challenge the use of legacy metrics like booked meetings and conversion rates for SDRs, which often encourage the wrong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. 📚 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

    1h 2m
  2. Alan Versteeg: 9 Brutal Truths Every Sales Leader Needs to Hear

    10 APR

    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

    52 min
  3. Matt Gaskin: Lean Principles for High Performance Selling

    3 APR

    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?  🚀 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. 🛠️ 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?” 🎯 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

    1h 6m
  4. Brian Ahearn: Influence of Manipulation? The Ethical Sales Advantage

    23 MAR

    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?

    53 min
  5. Mindset Habits & Strategies of Top Salespeople with David Weiss (recorded August 2020)

    17 MAR

    Mindset Habits & Strategies of Top Salespeople with David Weiss (recorded August 2020)

    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: 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Effective Sales Onboarding: The best onboarding programs prioritize organizational understanding, relationship-building, and the sales process before diving into product knowledge. Enterprise Sales Mastery: Success in enterprise sales requires experience in internal negotiations, multi-threading, stakeholder management, and long sales cycles. 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. The Habits of High-Performing Salespeople: Self-motivation, thorough research, problem-solving, planning, and organization are critical to sales excellence. The Daily Discipline of Prospecting: Even with large deals in progress, maintaining account coverage and prospecting daily prevents commoditization. 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. Always Be Recruiting: Sales leaders should proactively build a bench of candidates to avoid reactive hiring, as vacant sales roles are costly. Pre-Onboarding for Faster Ramp-Up: Sharing territory lists and facilitating early relationship-building can accelerate a new hire’s productivity. 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. Leveraging Partners for Success: Partners play a vital role in enterprise sales. Engaging them early and aligning with their goals enhances collaboration. 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. From Transactions to Relationships: The best salespeople prioritize lifetime customer value over one-off deals, genuinely seeking to help their clients. 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. The Role of Sales Managers: Managers must understand individual team members' needs and provide support in today’s changing sales landscape. Structured 120-Day Onboarding: A well-planned onboarding roadmap should sequence learning appropriately, build foundational knowledge, and provide clear performance metrics. First Impressions Matter: New hires evaluate their organization and leaders early on. Providing strong support, feedback, and guidance is essential to retaining top talent. Effective Sales Leadership: Great sales managers hire strong talent, support their teams, and remove obstacles rather than micromanage or rescue struggling reps. Coaching Through Experience: Sales leaders should let reps lead customer meetings and learn through experience rather than taking over. 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: 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!

    47 min
  6. Matt Gaskin - Lean, Selling & Why Most Transformations Fail

    26 FEB

    Matt Gaskin - Lean, Selling & Why Most Transformations Fail

    What if everything you thought you knew about transformation was wrong? In this episode, Marcus Cauchi and Matt Gaskin cut through the nonsense and dive into the brutal truths about why most change programs flop—and what Lean really looks like when it’s done right. 💡 Key Takeaways: 🔹 Lean isn’t a methodology, it’s a mindset. It’s about learning, adjusting, and delivering value daily from the bottom up, not just implementing a new set of tools. 🔹 Go to Gemba! True leaders don’t make decisions from behind a desk, they go to where the work is happening. Want to understand inefficiencies? Get out there and see them for yourself. 🔹 Simplicity is hard. Lean sounds straightforward, reduce waste, increase value, but in reality, cutting through organisational complexity is an art form. 🔹 Selling isn’t about pushing, it’s about pulling. Lean organisations understand that the market should pull products through the value stream, not the other way around. Deadlines and durations are not the same thing. 🔹 The trap of traditional sales systems. Most sales processes are riddled with inefficiencies, so what are we actually prospecting for? The ideal customer isn’t just someone willing to buy but one who will return, expand, and refer. 🔹 Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Motivation. When the task is simple, extrinsic rewards (like money) work. But when creativity and problem-solving are required, intrinsic motivation wins. The famous Candle Problem experiment proved this decades ago: when people were rewarded for solving it faster, they actually performed worse. 🚩 Red Flags in Transformation Programs: ❌ Consultants promising specific cost savings before they’ve even observed your processes? Run. ❌ Leaders who think transformation is about tools, not people? It will fail. ❌ Ignoring how change impacts individual contributors? Expect resistance and failure. 🛠 Lessons from Toyota: Toyota is hard on the process, not the people, a critical distinction. Sustainable improvement happens when organisations hire problem solvers, not just people who follow orders. 🔥 If revenue wasn’t your primary measure of success, how would you define whether your transformation is working? 📲 Tune in now and rethink everything you know about Lean, sales, and leadership. Connect with Matt Gaskin on LinkedIn for more.

    56 min
  7. Rob Goddard: Sell More Scale Faster Exit Strong

    10 FEB

    Rob Goddard: Sell More Scale Faster Exit Strong

    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!

    47 min
  8. Rebecca Gebhardt discusses From Leaderboard to Leadership

    19/09/2024

    Rebecca Gebhardt discusses From Leaderboard to Leadership

    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.

    1h 6m
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