TheInquisitor Podcast

Introduction Most sales conversations about underperformance start with the wrong question. Is the messaging wrong? Is the tech stack outdated? Is the lead generation broken? Richard Spanier, author of Trust: Sales 2030 — A Field Guide to Frictionless Buying, argues that almost every assumption modern sales operates on, quotas, champions, gated content, CRM accuracy, pipeline stages, gets the buye...

What this episode is about Most salespeople are pointed at targets without being taught to think about them. That gap — between knowing who to call and understanding why it matters — is what Peter Cleary and Tom Stearns set out to close with their book Graphic Sales: How to Build a Prospecting Playbook. The book is unusual. It teaches through illustrated comic strips drawn from real sales disaster...

In this episode of The Inquisitor Podcast, Marcus speaks with returning guest Matt Gaskin about a shift most businesses still haven’t recognised properly: AI search is changing how buyers discover and evaluate suppliers. Matt argues that your website is no longer just a marketing brochure. It is now a trust and credibility signal for AI systems like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google Gemini, xAI Grok, and P...

In this episode, Jay Weiser joins the podcast to discuss the "accountability crisis" in Private Equity (PE). They explore a common, costly cycle: boards replacing CEOs or CROs when performance dips, only to realize later that the underlying system, not the individual leader, was the true constraint. Jay shares insights on how boards can move beyond "theatrics" and "polished dashboards" to identify...

Most leaders say they're playing the long game. Their decisions tell a different story. In this episode, Marcus Cauchi sits down with Reed Nyffeler — entrepreneur, operator, franchise builder, and author of Lead Exponentially — for an honest conversation about the structural and psychological forces that keep leaders trapped in short-term thinking, even when they know better. Reed has spent 20 yea...

What if financial independence isn't a number — it's a system? In this episode, Marcus sits down with Ron Kmetovicz — engineer, entrepreneur, and author of Ghost Money the Book — to dig into what financial independence actually looks like, why most people sabotage themselves before the market gets a chance to, and the deceptively simple strategy Ron has used across three generations of his family....

  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 beh...

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 an...

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-Galfor...

  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 revenu...

  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 h...

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 co...

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 upfron...

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...

Are you settling for "good enough" while your sales organisation invests in an 85% loser rate? In this episode, Marcus Cauchi sits down with David Brock, author of "Is Good Enough Good Enough? Mindsets and Behaviors for Sales Excellence," to challenge the traditional "metrics madness" that keeps founders and sales leaders trapped in cycles of mindless activity. Dave shares his pragmatic, scientifi...

Why do so many sales teams stumble despite talented hires? In this episode, Peter Wheeler, serial entrepreneur and expert in scaling revenue velocity for early-stage organisations, explores the decline of apprenticeship in modern sales and the impact it has on team performance and long-term growth. We examine why the traditional player-manager model often fails, how role siloing prevents junior st...

For busy leaders who want growth without the burn The bottom line Modern sales is not about hunting trophies. It is about helping customers make good decisions. Sometimes that decision is not you. That is not weakness, it is credibility. If sales feels combative, high churn is the price you are paying. Why this matters Boiler room tactics and hire-fast-fire-faster cultures look productive until yo...

In this episode, I chat with Tom Stearns, a consultant to CEOs and CROs, about how mentorship helped him redefine and scale his business.   Tom shares how he gained clarity, focused on the right clients, shortened sales cycles, increased deal sizes, and walked away from boring work, all while achieving a four-day workweek. Whether you’re a founder, sales leader, or consultant looking for practical...

Steve’s journey was marked by sheer graft and some brutal personal blows. His first five years were, in his own words, madness. Eighteen to twenty hour days, six days a week. Then came a messy divorce, COVID and throat cancer. The Founder Dependency Trap Like many founders, Steve found himself in the classic trap. Everyone relied on him to make every decision. He sought help because his sales team...

Why Trust Breaks Down and What To Do About It In this episode, Marcus talks with Charles Green, one of the genuine heavyweights in the world of trust and commercial relationships. If you lead a mid market scaling tech firm and you suspect your sales or GTM function is underperforming for reasons no dashboard can explain, this conversation will feel uncomfortably accurate. Together they explore how...

In this episode, Jordan Corn and Marcus Cauchi dissect the deeply flawed traditional approach to employee performance evaluation, the "Annual Festival of Fiction". They challenge the idea that reviews serve their intended purpose and share actionable frameworks for leaders to build continuous growth systems, rather than just checking boxes. Key Themes for Leaders and Managers 1. The Broken System:...

This episode of The Inquisitor Podcast features Parker Mills, Account Executive at ServiceNow and author of State and Local Government Sales: Beyond the Bid. Parker exposes the systemic dysfunction created when short-term sales culture sabotages long-term public value. With 11 years in U.S. state and local government (SLG) sales, he dissects the brutal misalignment where enterprise is the tail tha...

Why do brilliant professionals consistently underprice themselves? In this conversation, Marcus and Matthew Dashper-Hughes dissect the psychological barriers that prevent founders, executives, and elite salespeople from commanding their true market worth. This isn't motivational rhetoric, it's a diagnostic exploration of the childhood money scripts, trust mechanics, and conversational architecture...

In this episode of The Inquisitor, host Marcus Cauchi sits down with Scott Aaron, co-founder of The Time to Grow, to explore the power of authenticity in marketing and sales. Scott helps coaches, consultants, and service professionals scale their businesses by prioritizing connection over competition, and this conversation is packed with actionable strategies for growing your presence on LinkedIn...

Most founders lie to themselves long before they ever pitch an investor. They convince themselves their story is clear, their deck is solid, and their passion will carry them through. The truth? Investors can smell self-deception a mile away. In this episode of The Inquisitor Podcast, Marcus Cauchi sits down with Ben Wiener, venture capitalist, author of the novel Fever Pitch, and someone who know...