TheInquisitor Podcast

Dan Oblinger is a hostage negotiator by night and commercial negotiation coach by day. His partner Allan Tsang has been helping companies and individuals negotiate complex deals, secure promotions or get discretionary effort from colleagues for the past 25 years. Both have been mentored by the legend Gary Noesner who headed up the FBI's hostage negotiation unit. Allan was trained by the legendary...

#StephenDenny is at the forefront of the new frontiers of marketing. He rips up the old ways of doing things in favour of adapting to how B2B buyers now expect to be treated and are behaving based on leading edge research on how customers actually behave in the real world. He spends his life at the intersection between culture & technology: The future of the brand/consumer relationship The future...

Matthew Dashper-Hughes has rapidly built his personal brand and his business through effective social selling on LinkedIn. Both he and I have learned through trial and error, getting help and relentless experimentation , what works and what doesn't. We've had spectacular failures and huge successes on the platform. We discuss the power of a well-crafted profile and the negative impact of a badly p...

My guest, Martin Lucas is rocking the boat a lot in this episode. He believes that marketing today is a house of cards which is long overdue a shake up. Better still he is doing something about it. His company, #GapInTheMatrix routinely saves client up to 26% on their advertising spend without any loss in performance. In fact, open rates on email campaigns average 150% higher than industry average...

Alex Rawlings recruits top performing executives for fast growth, venture capital & private equity backed companies. To a great extent we disagree about the merits of the VC/PE but his approach to recruitment is exceptionally sound and reliable. Bad hires are the single highest hidden cost in any business. When you consider that 2 in 5 executive hires usually fail within the first year and Alex's...

James Sale, founder of #MotivationalMaps discusses what motivation is and what it isn't. We explore the power of understanding your own and other people's motivation as a management tool, for leadership and to drive personal achievement. Too many managers misunderstand how motivation works. This is a powerful deep dive into the reality of motivation. If you want to get the best from your people co...

@Mike Adams is author of #7StoriesEverySalespersonMustTell and heads up global partnerships at #Anecdote, Story Powered Sales We revisit the subject of story telling by looking at the stories required by buyers at each step of the buying cycles. We focus on memorable story telling through channel partner sales and the use of story to help prospects diagnose their own problems. We dig into several...

Scott Ingram is a top sales producer who has carried a personal quota for the past 20 years. He's led sales teams and bridged the gap between sales and marketing. He is a massive proponent of customer advocacy and hosts 2 successful podcasts, #SalesSuccessStories and #InspiredMarketing. We discuss what top performers do that the rest do not. We explore hiring, onboarding, training, management, acc...

Susanne Jacobs spent 20 years at the top of professional services when she realised that her focus was out of kilter with her values and what really matters. Since then she has been researching and training leadership teams to understand their people, what matters to them, what makes them tick and how to get the best out of them. Our conversation is frank, uncompromising and pragmatic. Every leade...

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it" Upton Sinclair This roundtable is powerful, as you'd expect with Dr Mark Goulston, Todd Caponi and Michael Brody-Waite as my guests. We explore self-deception, self-limiting beliefs and self-sabotage. And we look at the remedies. We practice some radical honesty. And we dig deep into the powe...

Americans and Brits, Europe is NOT a country. Germany is made up of several different regions. the north is different to the south. Straight translations into German don't translate sentiment or what matters most to your various German speaking audiences. The Swiss are very different to the Austrians, and Austrians are different to Northern Germans. DACH buyers don't do business in the same way th...

Imagine you are riding high, publishing 34 of the world's In-flight magazines, then covid hits. Your clients are on their knees, no one is flying and your revenues have dropped from well over $100m to nearly nothing overnight. What would you do when there are no f'ing sales? Simon Leslie is the author of a fun and fabulous sales book called "There's No F In Sales". He also happens to be the founde...

"I was 12 when lego sued me, then they offered me a job", says Martin Lindstrom Martin humanises marketing and product development like no one else on earth. He spends time in hundreds of homes, observing thousands of people interacting with products on behalf of his global clients. He is passionate about making the user experience the best it can possibly be. Renowned globally as the foremost aut...

Dave Abbott is the author of #HowToPriceYourPlatypus which is an outstanding book on how to price your products and services so you get to keep a decent profit. In this episode we explore how to understand different pricing models around: Inputs Outputs Outcomes We explore why many businesses don't understand their pricing and end up making no profit or worse, paying to work for their customers. W...

Hamish Knox is a man on a mission. The youngest ever David H Sandler award winner, a highly successful entrepreneur, business leader and trainer who is helping companies maximise their growth potential without sacrificing their heart or their values. Hamish and I have been friends for a long time. What I like about him is he is someone who you know you can always depend on. His word is his bond. H...

"If you don't have time for coaching your reps that's bullshit. You want your reps making more bad calls? Management is hard and caring is hard." KD, Kevin Dorsey is a force of nature. Nothing will hold him back. He doesn't whine and moan about how tough the economy is, or how he didn't have the chances others did. He's a man of decisive action and enormous compassion. We discuss the role of the S...

Karen Mangia and Mathew Sweezey from Salesforce share their latest research which explains why many current beliefs that are driving decisions within vendor organisations are fundamentally flawed and encourage unintended consequences. This research will hopefully put a nail in the coffin of the utterly irrelevant and meaningless #NPS #NetPromoterScore. For goodness sake, why do marketing people st...

"Do not save what is left after spending; instead spend what is left after saving", said Warren Buffett. Ted Landgraf is co-founder of procurement and cost reduction giant, #ATS #AboveTheStandard who save their client $10's of billions every year. We discuss why prudent buying is as essential as effective selling and great systems. Ted shares his insights of nearly 4 decades of working with thousa...

"The best companies are ones where we have an SDR-AE partnership", says Simon Gerstler. We discuss (and argue a lot) about what makes for a great hiring process to build a rockstar #SalesDevelopmentRepresentative #SDR team. We explore who to hire and why, what to look for to identify an A-player. We discuss training and coaching, when to demo or not to demo the product, how to qualify, how not to...

Why aren't you able to achieve accurate sales forecasts? Is that preventing you from setting accurate budgets? Are you bothered because you feel your sales teams and/or salespeople should be prospecting more, selling more, and selling more profitably? Do you feel that you could have a better recruiting process that consistently brings you top sales performers? Do you want your organisation to sell...

"There's always the opportunity for you to be able to speak truth and speak better when you listen better. I think that there are because people just group listening as one [or] there's listening to learn or what we call information on this thing where you kind of just gathering all that information. There is critical listening, where you're listening to evaluate and analyse stuff to help you towa...

String Nguyen builds communities. Communities are one of the most powerful marketing resource available but most companies balls them up or have no idea how to build them. For traditional marketers and fossilised old businesses they are scary because they are not controllable, they're terrifyingly democratic and if not taken care of, can turn on you in a blink. String has built communities for som...

Todd Caponi, author of #TheTransparencySale believes you should always tell the truth to customers. I agree. The moment you are caught in a lie, the other person may be able to forgive you but they can never truly trust anything you say. Todd and I discuss the principle of radical honesty and why it is a sales superpower. In a world where salespeople are stereotyped as untrustworthy, liars and emp...

David Hyner says, "SMART goals are bollocks. The goal needs to be something that sends shivers down your spine and makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. The behaviours need to be SMART, not the goals. That's why goal setting usually falls on flat on its face." Dave and I indulge ourselves in a detailed chat about mindset, beliefs, values and motivation. Well worth a listen. Again,...

Why do 70% of employees hide from difficult conversations? Why in an age where we are hyperconnected in true connection at an all time low? (Did you know that when you lose wifi, the most common emotion we feel is ... isolation!)? I'm in conversation with Michael Brody-Waite. Definitely one of my most insightful and valuable interviews. "The way we treat others is the way we treat ourselves", says...