The Commercial Leader

Are great salespeople born extroverts? It’s one of the most repeated beliefs in sales. It also does real damage. It shapes who gets hired, who gets promoted and who rules themselves out of a career they could be great at. In this Myth or Method episode of The Commercial Leader, Bram Lagrou puts that belief under the microscope. He looks at Adam Grant’s Wharton study, where the extroverts came last...

Your AI can research a prospect, draft the proposal and write the follow-up in minutes. So can your competitor’s. When every sales team has the same information and the same polished emails, what’s left to choose between? In this episode of The Commercial Leader, Bram Lagrou unpacks what AI does brilliantly for commercial teams. And what it can’t do at all. This is not an anti-AI episode. Bram use...

You spent three weeks on the board paper. Then the Chair stops you on slide two. Twenty minutes later, the decision gets deferred to next meeting. Sound familiar? In this episode of The Commercial Leader, Bram Lagrou explains why capable commercial leaders struggle to get a yes from a board. The problem is rarely the idea. The presentation is built for operators, not for people who govern. Bram sh...

Every salesperson knows the line. Always be closing. But where does it actually come from? A film about desperate men selling land nobody needed. In this first Myth or Method episode of The Commercial Leader, Bram Lagrou puts the most famous rule in sales to the test. He starts with what ABC gets right. Many salespeople simply never ask. Then he shows why the pressure behind the rule backfires in...

What would your board see if absence, turnover and claims sat on the same page as revenue? This episode is for Managing Directors and GMs who run an Asia Pacific region. You're measured on growth and profit. You're also measured on safety, culture, retention and governance. Often in the same quarterly review. I open with a quarter that looks green on the slide, and five people problems that never...

Is psychological safety just a soft, fluffy concept? I used to think so. In this episode, I compare two workplaces I experienced as a salaried employee. In the first, I felt I belonged. I spent 200 nights a year in hotels, covered two full territories, and grew one from six countries to fifteen. In the second, I didn't feel safe. I spent my energy protecting myself instead of looking after clients...

Most engineering firms lose bids they were technically better placed to win — and blame the price. I saw the real reason firsthand inside an international engineering and automation business, and it showed up from two directions at once. Marketing built beautiful, story-led materials that landed perfectly with the people who made them, and with almost nobody else. The engineers built dense, spec-h...

Staff turnover. Work health and safety claims. Sick days. Sales conversion rates. Every business tracks numbers like these, but most leaders stop at the number itself instead of asking where it came from. In this episode of The Commercial Leader, Bram Lagrou unpacks what your everyday business metrics are really telling you: a story about how well your people understand and connect with each other...

Have you ever lost a deal not because your price was wrong, but because you went quiet at exactly the moment your buyer needed you to lean in? In this episode I unpack the real difference between following up and following through and why most salespeople only ever do the first one. I open with a story from a friend in Europe who, in the same year, experienced both sides of this: as a buyer shoppi...

Big Four scandal headlines and AI disruption usually get covered as two separate stories. They're not. And in this episode I connect them, landing on the one thing left in this industry that neither force has touched. I open with a story that actually happened: a Big Four firm getting caught out by the exact AI failure mode it was selling clients how to avoid. From there I walk through what I call...

Got a deal on your board that's been "close" for months and just won't move? In this episode I unpack buyer indecision — not as a sales process problem, but as a psychology problem wearing a process costume. I walk through a model I call the Brain Elevator: three floors a prospect's brain has to move through, in order, before they can actually make a decision. Skip a floor and no ROI case in the w...

How many leadership books do you own that you've actually finished? I own about forty, and if I'm honest, I couldn't tell you the ending of half of them. In this episode I run seven of the biggest names in leadership (Covey, Collins, Sinek, Goleman, Brown, Scott and Lencioni) through four blunt questions: what's the actual evidence, who does it assume "the self" is, who's allowed to speak up, and...

Ever had a pitch, a team, or a negotiation fall flat and you couldn't quite figure out why? In this episode of The Commercial Leader, I unpack three practical lenses for reading and adapting to anyone you're trying to influence, no matter where they're from. I grew up in principles-first Belgium and built my career in applications-first Australia, so I've lived this clash from both sides. I break...

My guest this week is Koen Cardon — Belgian engineer, Officer of the Order of Leopold II, and the man who spent 30 years building Katoen Natie's business across Southeast Asia, from a standing start to an operation spanning Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. We talk about what actually made that growth possible — and it wasn't warehouses, forklifts or contracts. It was culture. Koen explains why he...

Most sales teams I meet are tracking eight, ten, sometimes twelve KPIs — and wondering why nobody's excelling at any of them. In this episode of The Commercial Leader, I unpack why fewer KPIs almost always beat more, drawing on The 4 Disciplines of Execution and years of running WIG (Wildly Important Goal) workshops with sales teams across industries. I share what happens when a leader walks into...

Every sales framework you've come across — SPIN selling, the Challenger sale, consultative selling, straight-line selling — shares one blind spot: they assume there's a single right way to sell to every buyer. In this episode, Bram Lagrou (who spent six and a half years working alongside Brian Tracy) breaks down why that assumption is quietly costing sales teams the majority of their pipeline, fro...

In this episode, I sit down with Kate Russell — conflict resolution specialist, speaker, coach, and author of Leaders Who Lead — for one of the most honest conversations we've had on this show about what leadership actually looks like in the real world. Kate has spent 30+ years working inside governments, private enterprises, and not-for-profits, walking into the messiest situations imaginable — e...

  Every organisation has them: the sales team pushing for speed, finance demanding accuracy, operations wanting process, and leadership expecting results — yesterday. The friction feels personal. It isn't. In this episode of The Commercial Leader, Bram Lagrou breaks down why inter-departmental clashes are so persistent — and why no ERP system, CRM rollout, or restructure will fix them. The re...

What if the most frustrating person in your life is also your most valuable coach? In this episode of The Commercial Leader, Bram Lagrou makes the case that "difficult" people aren't the problem — they're a mirror. Whether it's the client who won't stop asking for more information, the colleague who moves too slowly, or the stakeholder who seems impossible to read, these people are pointing direct...

Most organisations aren't struggling because they have the wrong strategy. They're struggling because they don't truly understand the people executing it. In this episode of The Commercial Leader, Bram Lagrou unpacks the deceptively simple idea behind going from good to great — and why it has nothing to do with more hiring, more technology, or more process. Drawing on 20+ years of work across 25 c...

In this episode of The Commercial Leader, Bram Lagrou unpacks why even well-funded corporate training programmes rarely deliver lasting results — and what forward-thinking organisations are doing differently. Drawing on 15+ years working across 25 countries, Bram explains why the "two-week fade" kills training ROI, why feedback in the rear-view mirror is never enough, and how AI-powered practice t...

In this episode, Bram Lagrou makes the case for why tailored communication is the highest-leverage skill available to leaders and commercial professionals — and why most people are still defaulting to a one-size-fits-all approach that consistently underperforms. Drawing on conversations with senior defence leaders, client case studies, and 15 years working across 25 countries, Bram explores the pr...

What separates a sales team that consistently performs from one that's left to chance? It comes down to architecture — and most organisations are building without a plan. In this episode of The Commercial Leader, Bram Lagrou unpacks the six-part cadence framework he's seen work across organisations in 25 countries: the weekly team huddle, monthly deep-dive workshops, quarterly bootcamps, annual co...

In this episode of The Commercial Leader, Bram Lagrou explores why assessing your sales team can reveal where your business is winning, losing and leaking revenue. Many salespeople rely on their natural communication style. That may work well with buyers who think like them, but it can create friction with buyers who need a different pace, level of detail, decision-making process or style of engag...

In this episode, Bram Lagrou makes the case that most corporate training fails not because of the content — but because of the design. Drawing on DISC profiling and years of experience across 25 countries, Bram breaks down exactly how personality styles should shape every element of a learning program: the room setup, the group activities, the pacing, and the follow-up structure. He covers why hig...