The Death of a Salesman

Welcome to the 100th Episode of this podcast. And what a guest we have for this one. I met Neil Mullarkey on a coaching course called "Enrich your Pitch" where Neil took us through how one can use the art of improvisation in a business context. Let's be honest, things don't always go as we plan and prospects and clients can throw you a curve ball from time to time - the key is how you handle that...

I spent 7 years in out and out sales roles, before making the move into Professional Services Business Development, joining PwC in Jan 2009. This launched my career to where I am today - along this journey, I have met some incredibly talented BD professionals. In this episode, I am joined by the brilliant Dominic de Mariveles. I met Dominic when I joined Berwin Leighton Paisner as was, now BCLP, i...

How would you feel about being coached by an AI-powered avatar? That's precisely the world we now find ourselves in, and this is the topic of this episode. I chat with Russell Zack, Head of Revenue at www.secondnature.ai , which describes itself as "Scale up your sales coaching with bite-sized, realistic, AI-driven role plays, immediate feedback, scoring and an amazing experience." Oh, and there i...

Let's Party Like it's 1999. This is when my guest Rick Hawkins started out his career in data science, or as it was called back in the day - BI, Business Intelligence. Rick very kindly allowed me to interrupt his career break and be a guest on this episode, where we chat all things data. His career speaks for itself, having been on both the sell-side and buy-side of data science, business intellig...

Or, to be precise, Brent Adamson believes that "Traditional Sales & Marketing are becoming Obsolete" Brent was the co-author of the Challenger Sales & Challenger Customer process. He authored an article on HBR with the aforementioned title. This leads us to my wonderful guest, Jenna Pipchuk, Chief Sales Officer & EVP Global Sales at SMART Technologies. I read Jenna's story about how she and her co...

"We don't need no education. We don't need no thought control. No dark sarcasm in the classroom." I was raised on Pink Floyd, one of my late Father's favourite bands.  In this episode, I am joined by the brilliant Ash Roots, who at the time of recording was between roles, but now is the Chief Digital Officer at The University of Exeter. Where I spent 4 brilliant years studying French & Spanish, wi...

Welcome to another episode of my podcast. Today we take a slightly different tack, but one that is close to my heart, having spent 5 years as an independent management consultant. We are all aware of the narrative that is playing out around the "Great Resignation" and "The Great Re-Shuffle" as we all assess our working lives and what this means in how, where and whom we work for.  My guest today w...

In this episode, I am joined by the CEO & Founder of www.upcontent.com - Scott Rogerson. This is what UpContent does "UpContent is a leading intelligent content discovery technology that helps you drive new, more meaningful conversations with your audience. Quickly find, sort, read, and interact with the news and blog articles that meet your brand’s exacting standards–all while collaborating with...

"Renaissance art marks a cultural rebirth at the close of the Middle Ages and rise of the Modern world" - Wikipedia. Could the same be said for Marketing and Business Development in the Legal sector - or even more broadly? In this episode, I am joined by the brilliant Dominic Ayres, who, through lockdown, decided to put pen to paper on "what would he would advise his younger self about navigating...

In this episode, I am joined by the brilliant Andy Culligan. Andy describes himself as : "Fractional CMO, dipping the toe in CRO water. Salesperson stuck in a marketer's body." who talks about #sdrs, #tech, #sales, #martech, and #marketing.   I have known Andy for a while now, and he has been kind enough to have me a guest on a few of his webinars, hence it is a pleasure to finally pin him down to...

"To tweet or not to tweet, that is the question." With 436 million reported people you can reach on Twitter, should you be on it or not? Well much like any social media platform you need to consider who your audience is and then do the research as to where they hang out, and it could well be Twitter. Samantha Kelly, aka @Tweetinggoddess believes the Twitterverse can be a brilliant platform to conn...

Just me on this podcast. As I reflect on what has been the last year for me and beyond, I try to give some of my thoughts on where sales is, and, is possibly going. It will be fair to say this one meanders off-piste at times, however, for me, the underlying theme is around how can we begin to look at the overall influence we have in our business networks and relationships? What impact, if any, cou...

The metaverse is coming. One way or the other it will be part of our daily routine. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, but, in 10 years time, most definitely.  How will we get there? Some say we are already there in the world of gaming. In this episode, I am joined by Aragorn Meulendijks of Beemup and Your Open Metaverse. His headline on LinkedIn reads as thus : "Let’s 𝘨𝘰 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘯𝘰 𝘩𝘶𝘮𝘢𝘯 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘨𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘦...

Do you know what your organisation's commitments are to getting to net-zero? Do you understand how green your supply chain is that creates your product or service? When selling your product or service, do you care? Do your clients care? If we are honest with ourselves, we are all guilty of "greenwashing" our sales. However, that doesn't mean we have to carry on this way. In this episode, I am join...

In this episode, I am joined by the one and only Wes "The Meep" Pennock.   Wes made the move into sales in 2019 having started out his career as a programmer. He now helps CEOs of startups build and scale their top of the funnel, lead generation. This is outbound, primarily focusing on email copy and sequences.   One might say that Wes could be the future model of what one part of your outbound te...

The eternal question on LinkedIn, about LinkedIn and the algorithm.  Can you beat it? Well, the person with the answer is the brilliant Richard van der Blom. He and his team have released the 3rd iteration of their research on the algorithm.  To give you the dos and the do nots.  In this episode, Richard gives an overview of the notable changes. We get into the " what makes a good LinkedIn post "...

CRM. The mere mention of the word usually brings horror and groans of, do we have to. Associated with being a management tool to run pointless reports about activity, or lack of by the seller. Contact data that is wrong and out of date, or none whatsoever. I ran a poll on LinkedIn which led to a response from one person that CRM does not help towards revenue generation, they are after the fact and...

Indeed, what is it - This phrase, in fact, put most words in front of Transformation have been talked about for aeons.  Now businesses have been forced into action, or they say they are. In this episode, I am joined by the brilliant Chris Hood. Chris is Business Innovation and Strategy at Google Cloud, as well as the host of the That Digital Show podcast.  Chris' foray into sales, started out as "...

In this episode, I am joined by the brilliant Chris Allen AKA Chief of Sales and Memes. Yes, memes.  If you don't know what a meme is : 1 - an element of a culture or system of behaviour passed from one individual to another by imitation or other non-genetic means. 2 - an image, video, piece of text, etc., typically humorous in nature, that is copied and spread rapidly by internet users, often wit...

In this week's episode, I am joined by Jakob. He is 18. Jakob connected with me over the summer on LinkedIn. I was intrigued as to why an 18-year-old would want to connect, hence, before accepting, I asked him. He said he had found my videos on YouTube useful in helping him build out his LinkedIn profile, and he wanted to connect. I also learned that he hosted his own podcast, which I have been on...

Shane Mahi, CEO & Co-Founder of SalesDRIIVN believes so. In this episode, we break down what was wrong with the antiquated outsourced models and how Shane, along with this co-founder Antoine saw what they thought was a gap in the market. Shane started his business in March 2020, and they now have won a number of clients whom they work with.  As you learn, this goes beyond the assumed, just setting...

In this weeks episode, I am joined by the brilliant Mary Shea PhD. Mary is the Global Innovation Evangelist at Outreach, prior to this she was a Principal Analyst at Forrester. She also has a PhD in Musicology & Ethnomusicology, which, as you will hear, is a word I am unable to pronounce.  What is a Revenue Innovator? Well, if you visit Mary's profile on LinkedIn , you will see this : "Revenue Inn...

"Failure to plan, practice, rehearse, capture lessons and debrief is an act of gross misconduct on their part of the salesperson and the part of their manager. It should result in a minimum of a written warning and repetition should result in dismissal. Harsh words? Not at all. Consider the cost of getting one opportunity into the top of the funnel." Welcome to the world, and more importantly, thi...

Meet Ding Zheng, 14 years in Rap, 4 years in SaaS sales, then he combined the 2 to create the Sales Rapper which he describes as : "Sonic branding for products and services.  Source material dry? Supercharge your content strategy with a Sales Rap!" Ding goes on to say : How do you stand out when everybody's speaking and nobody's listening? You need to BE AWESOME and get a CULT FOLLOWING. But how?...

Tom is my first-ever returning guest! I have followed Tom's journey at SalesLoft for well over a year. He is an SDR there before more recently moving into an entirely new role, created for him. Welcome to the era of the social sales evangelist. What is that you may ask? Well, that's exactly what I thought when I saw him update his profile, so, I messaged him and asked if he would be happy to come...