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  • Andy Weins: How the Words Your Sales Team Uses Are Costing You Deals — and How to Fix It

    Andy Weins: How the Words Your Sales Team Uses Are Costing You Deals — and How to Fix It
    2026/04/20
    Most sales leaders invest in process, technology, and training. Almost none of them invest in the one lever that silently controls all three: the language their people use — out loud and in their own heads. Andy Weins has spent 20+ years in the military as a mass resiliency trainer, built a business from scratch, and studied the neuroscience and psychology of how the words we choose wire our behaviour. In this episode, he and Marcus Cauchi go deep on the specific phrases that signal avoidance, underperformance, and self-sabotage, and the language patterns that drive ownership, execution, and results. If you lead a sales team or run a company, this is not a soft conversation about mindfulness. It is a diagnostic tool. By the end, you will recognise the exact words your team uses when they are not going to close the deal, and you will know what to replace them with. Why This Matters Every sales team has what looks like a pipeline problem, a skills problem, or a market problem. Often it is a language problem in disguise. When your salespeople say "I just wanted to follow up," they are signalling low value before they have even started. When they say "I should call that account," they are parking it indefinitely. When they say "we need more leads," they are frequently deflecting accountability for what they already have. The language your team uses in CRM notes, forecast calls, and customer conversations is data. It tells you who is owning their number and who is performing learned helplessness. This episode gives you the framework to hear that signal clearly. Key Themes and Takeaways 1. Blame, Excuse, and Denial: The Three Default Failure Modes Andy opens with a concept drawn from Brené Brown's work on shame: when there is a gap between what we want and what we have, the brain defaults to one of three responses — blame, excuse, or denial — because they require the least cognitive effort. In sales, this shows up as: Blame: "The prospect went dark." "Marketing isn't generating quality leads." "The economy is tough."Excuse: "I didn't have time to prep." "The deck wasn't ready."Denial: "I didn't really want that account anyway." The correction Andy offers is deceptively simple: ask "Where is my DNA in this?" Even if you are 1% responsible for a poor outcome, claiming that 1% shifts you from passenger to driver. For sales leaders running deal reviews, that question, where is your DNA in this?, is worth installing as a standard. 2. "Just" and "But": The Two Words That Kill Credibility Before You've Started Marcus flags two words that most people use dozens of times a day without realising their cost: "Just" — minimises what follows. "I'm just calling to check in" communicates low value, low confidence, and low intent. Andy's framing: just justifies the nonsense that's about to happen. Train your team to remove it entirely from outreach language. Not "I just wanted to reach out" — "I'm calling because..." "But" — cancels everything before it. "Great work on that proposal, but..." means the compliment is noise. Two conflicting ideas, only one of which is true: the one that comes after but. In coaching conversations with reps, this matters. In customer conversations, it is fatal. These are not stylistic preferences. They are trust and credibility signals that prospects and internal stakeholders pick up subconsciously. 3. The Difference Between a Desire and an Expectation — and Why It Determines Whether You Hit Target Andy draws a sharp distinction that has direct application to how sales leaders manage their teams and how salespeople manage their customers: An expectation is what you want from someone else. It sets you up for resentment, conflict, and passivity — because other people are not here to meet your expectations. A desire is what you want. It is owned. It creates agency, because the question that follows is what are you willing to do to get it? In sales management, the difference sounds like this: Expectation: "My reps should be hitting 80% of quota by Q2."Desire: "I want a team hitting 80% by Q2. What am I prepared to do to coach, structure, and resource them to get there?" The second version puts you back in the problem. That is where leverage lives. 4. "Need" vs "Want": Why Needs Create Victims and Wants Create Agency Drawing on Dan Sullivan's 10x Is Easier Than 2x, Andy argues that needs are a trap. When you say "I need a six-figure salary" or "we need more pipeline," you are constructing a prison: a world where survival is contingent on something outside your control, which justifies inaction when that thing doesn't arrive. Wants work differently. "I want more pipeline" immediately opens the question: what are you willing to do to generate it? The conflict becomes internal — which want is greater, your want for comfort or your want for results? — and internal conflict is where growth happens. For founders: audit the language in your strategy meetings. Count how many times ...
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    49 分
  • Ryan Berman - Risk to Relationship in B2B Sales, Procurement Strategy and Total Cost of Ownership

    Ryan Berman - Risk to Relationship in B2B Sales, Procurement Strategy and Total Cost of Ownership
    2026/04/17

    In this episode of The Inquisitor Podcast, Marcus Cauchi and Ryan Burman discuss procurement in B2B sales, buyer psychology, total cost of ownership, and how sales teams can build trust with procurement instead of fighting it.

    The discussion reframes procurement as a risk management function rather than a price cutting function.

    Ryan explains that successful sales teams focus less on persuasion and more on aligning with how procurement evaluates suppliers, especially around risk, reliability, and total cost of ownership.

    This episode is relevant for sales leaders, account executives, and commercial teams working in complex B2B sales environments where procurement plays a key role in decision making.

    Key Topics Covered

    * Procurement in B2B sales and how it influences buying decisions

    * Buyer psychology and how procurement evaluates supplier risk

    * Total cost of ownership (TCO) vs ROI in procurement decisions

    * Sales and procurement alignment in enterprise and mid-market deals

    * How to build trust with procurement teams in B2B selling

    * Why co-creation improves sales outcomes compared to traditional pitching

    * Common sales mistakes when dealing with procurement teams

    * How procurement manages risk, continuity, and supplier reliability Key

    Takeaways

    Procurement is focused on risk management

    Procurement teams prioritise reducing operational and commercial risk, not just lowering costs.

    Buyer decision making is driven by risk

    Suppliers are evaluated on whether they reduce uncertainty or introduce it.

    Total cost of ownership matters more than ROI

    Procurement considers long-term costs including quality, supply chain stability, and maintenance.

    Co-creation improves sales success Building solutions with procurement leads to stronger alignment and higher win rates.

    Trust is the deciding factor Buyers prioritise predictability and reduced internal risk over lowest price.

    Key Insight for Sales Teams

    In B2B sales, every deal must satisfy three buyer needs:

    * Functional, does the solution work

    * Social, how it impacts internal stakeholders

    * Emotional, whether it reduces personal and career risk

    Ryan Burman is the founder of Pitch to Procure and creator of the First to Pitch methodology. He helps sales and procurement teams improve alignment, negotiation outcomes, and supplier relationships in complex B2B sales environments.

    Key Quote “The first transaction is not the win. The first transaction is the test of trust. Pass that test and even if you don’t get a deal, you can get a customer for life.” Marcus Cauchi

    Ryan Berman | LinkedIn

    Marcus Cauchi | LinkedIn
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    44 分
  • Why 90% of Salespeople Think They're Trusted (And Only 30% Are) with Rowly Hirst

    Why 90% of Salespeople Think They're Trusted (And Only 30% Are) with Rowly Hirst
    2026/03/31
    What does it actually mean to be a trusted adviser and, how would you know if you were one? Most customer-facing professionals believe they're trusted. Their customers largely disagree. That gap is the problem Rowly Hirst has spent his career trying to solve. Rowly is CEO of Relate.US and the creator of Sandy, a generative AI analyst that measures trust in real time using the Maister-Green-Galford Trust Equation: Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy ÷ Self-Orientation. In this conversation, Marcus and Rowly go deep on what trust actually looks like in practice, why the most popular sales frameworks quietly destroy it, and what it takes to become a genuine ally rather than an accomplice, or worse, an adversary. If you spend your days in complex, high-stakes conversations, this episode is for you. What We Cover Why trust is defined not by what someone says about you, but by what they do when they could stay vague, delay, or protect themselves, and choose not toThe difference between an ally, an accomplice, and an adversary in a sales relationship, and the precise moment sellers cross the lineWhy the word "playbook" is the wrong mental model entirely, and what replaces itA masterclass in trust-building from an AT&T store in Boston: how a $50 sale became a case study in the Trust Equation in actionThe five operating principles that separate trusted advisers from everyone elseHow Challenger, BANT, MEDIC, SPIN, and Sandler all fail in the same way under pressure, and what that failure looks like in practiceThe 55 sub-factors Sandy measures across the four components of the Trust EquationWhy gamifying your trust score actually works, and ends up benefiting the customer, not just the sellerThe 90/30 trust perception gap: why over 90% of sales reps believe they're trusted advisers while only 30% of their customers agreeWhat Sandy has taught Rowly about his own blind spots, including a real example of how he lost an investor in a meeting and what he changed afterwardsWhy saying "I don't know" is a credibility asset, not a liabilityHow measurement of trust has gone from a $600 human analysis taking a week to a six-cent automated result in under two minutesGallup's estimate that improving meaningful feedback and trust-building could lift global employee engagement from 20% to 80% — an $8.5 trillion productivity uplift Key Idea from This Episode Trust isn't something you ask for or declare. It's something the other person gifts you, quietly, through their behaviour, especially when risk is on the table. It breaks down not when objections appear, but earlier: when pressure rises and we unconsciously shift from ally to accomplice. The fix isn't a better playbook. It's noticing yourself under pressure and choosing differently. About Rowly Hirst Rowly Hirst is CEO of Relate.us and has over 25 years of experience in consultative sales and account management in financial services. He began developing the thinking behind Relate.us in 2013 after a career taking CEOs and CFOs to meet investors, observing first-hand how poorly the industry measured what actually mattered in high-stakes relationships. Sandy, Relate.us's generative AI trust analyst, is built on the Maister-Green-Galford Trust Equation and measures trust objectively across 55 sub-factors, delivering results in near real-time at a fraction of the cost of traditional survey or human-review methods. Connect with Rowly 🌐 relateUS.com 🔗 LinkedIn: Rowly Hirst Connect with Marcus 🔗 LinkedIn: Marcus Cauchi 🌐 theinquisitorpodcast.com Chapters 0:00 — Introduction & Rowly's background2:34 — Defining trust as observable behaviour under uncertainty4:07 — Ally vs accomplice vs adversary5:28 — Why "playbook" is the wrong model7:05 — The AT&T store story: trust in a 25-minute sale9:45 — The five principles of a trusted adviser12:46 — Where sellers cross the line from ally to accomplice15:17 — What managers should stop coaching17:17 — How Challenger, BANT, MEDIC, SPIN & Sandler erode trust20:09 — What Sandy is and how it works25:00 — The gamification effect27:21 — The feedback people push back against most31:00 — Self-awareness vs self-perception32:31 — The 90/30 trust perception gap33:47 — What would tank Marcus's trust score right now37:50 — How Sandy's coaching evolves across meetings38:07 — Inside the 55 sub-factors40:27 — Vulnerability, credibility, and "I don't know"44:23 — Why proposals fail when the buyer's voice isn't in them45:34 — The cost of measuring trust: then vs now47:23 — The $8.5 trillion productivity opportunity48:24 — Rowly's advice to his 23-year-old self If This Landed Don't rush to agree or disagree. Spend the next few days paying attention. Notice when your curiosity drops. Notice when you try to rescue. And if you catch a moment where trust shifted, in either direction , we would genuinely like to hear what you saw. Stay safe and happy selling.
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    53 分
  • Alex Buckles - Partnerships Without Fantasy: Why Your Channel Produces No Pipeline

    Alex Buckles - Partnerships Without Fantasy: Why Your Channel Produces No Pipeline
    2026/03/24
    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 ...
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    55 分
  • Why Buyers Don't Trust Salespeople - And What CEOs Can Do About It with Andy Hough

    Why Buyers Don't Trust Salespeople - And What CEOs Can Do About It with Andy Hough
    2026/03/16

    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.
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    50 分
  • The LinkedIn Playbook for B2B sales - with Graham Riley

    The LinkedIn Playbook for B2B sales - with Graham Riley
    2026/02/27

    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/
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    54 分
  • Negotiation Without the Games: Todd Caponi's Four Levers Framework

    Negotiation Without the Games: Todd Caponi's Four Levers Framework
    2026/01/27

    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:

    🌐 www.toddcaponi.com

    🎙️ 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
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    55 分
  • From Challenger to Framemaking: Redefining Modern B2B Sales with Karl Schmidt

    From Challenger to Framemaking: Redefining Modern B2B Sales with Karl Schmidt
    2026/01/17

    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.

    Resources Mentioned: 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 Contact Karl: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karl-schmidt-q/

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    1 時間 4 分