Welcome To Theinquisitor Podcast

#GeorgeDziedzic spent his career in the channel, building Intergraph into a channel powerhouse. He founded and ran #FosterMcCallum helping start ups to the likes of #Cisco and #IBM build their channels by partnering with & onboarding the #rightpartners. Building on good decisions early in the relationship, George helped his client develop an ecosystem that serves both vendor and partners We focus on the ultimate objectives of growth, profitability, risk minimisation, speed-to-market and rapidly building critical mass We explore each phase of the lifecycle of a partner network, from conception and recruitment, to management and restructuring, as well as providing partner and partner manager training We discuss sales, accountability, codeveloping solutions, coopetition, partner with partner collaborations This interview is packed with valuable insights and advice for anyone considering developing a channel or wanting to work out why their channel isn't working and wanting to revitalise it -- If you are the

You can tell people to go to Hell and if you tell them in the right way they'll say "That sounds like a nice place at this time of year" How do you define someone as a "difficult person"? How does your perception affect your judgement of a person who is upset or picking a fight with you? In this interview, Amy Woodall, EVP at hashtag#SandlerTrustpointe discusses practical, real world tactics you can use every day to neutralise hostile situations, achieving agreement & commitment, even without having consensus. She teaches you to take control of difficult situations, achieve a satisfactory outcome & retain customers even when they are angry or threatening to leave for a competitor We explore the psychology behind conflict & your reaction to it. She offers tips & tactics on dealing with your own feelings when confronting a difficult person so you stay calm & in control. We discuss why people get upset, the psychology beneath their behaviour & how you can overcome your own triggers &a

#BillBartlett is #bestsellingauthor of #TheSalesCoachsPlaybook - unleashing the performance code and #DavidHSandler #AwardWinner I had the privilege of interviewing Bill Bartlett about #salescoachingbestpractice. We explore the 7 step Sandler coaching process, 3 power of the 3 P's (permission, potency and protection)discuss in detail: #Hiring #Onboarding #IndividualPerformanceDevelopment #KPI's #Skills #Behaviour #Behavior #Technique #Motivation #Attitude #Headtrash #LimitingBeliefs #Scripting #Identity #TransactionalAnalysis #Goals #GoalSetting #180DegreeThinking Bonus material on #ChannelDevelopment #ChannelManagement #ChannelAlignment Bill's book is available on Amazon, Audible and via the Sandler shop (links in first comment) -- If you are the owner or CEO of a technology company and your goal is to grow your business and achieve real, sustainable hypergrowth with highly engaged and highly productive employees and clients who stick with you year after year, let’s schedule time for a brief conversation. T

#Firewalker, #glasswalker, #influencer and #coach, @LottieMooreHere chats to me about the myths and facts around motivation and mindset A lot of crap is bandied around about motivation. The fact is, real motivation is intrinsic (i.e. internally generated) and cannot be imposed, beaten into someone, bribed, bullied or cajoled. At best you will achieve a short term uplift in behaviour or performance but it WILL NOT sustain. People do stuff for their reasons not your reasons. And for true motivation to sustain, the individual must feel like they are in control, 100% control, of their piece of the puzzle.  If either component is missing, you're deluding yourself into believing your own onanistic rhetoric.  Lottie Moore of #MindsetMetaphors and I discuss #motivation and #mindset, how to uncover them, how to get teams working towards common purpose. We delve into the realms of #headtrash and #limitingbeliefs which we all suffer from to a greater or lesser extent. We explore the power of #mindfulness to help calm st

#RianLanigan is a feckless Millennial from #Ratoath in #Ireland who doesn't understand that the path to success is paved with years of hard work. Nor does he understand that you need a bit of grey hair or a massively receding hairline to be taken seriously in corporate boardrooms. Which is why the fact that he has a rapidly growing international client base is even more galling and perplexing. Rian is a next generation digital marketer.He understands that to grow big you have to aim small. He operates in a very tight niche in which he is rapidly becoming the dominant force. He combines well considered strategy with simple but sublime tactical marketing that help his clients achieve triple digit growth at negligible additional cost. In this interview we discuss 10 practical tips to explode your marketing's performance. Each tip is clearly explained, examples given and the tactics you need to apply them, shared. How to grab and keep attention Nobody likes to be told what to do What's the point of sending it if

How skinning the cat can 6x your revenues! This is 1 of 10 tips #RianLanigan gives on my next podcast to help you increase your revenues by 600% or more. 2 minutes and 26 seconds of pure gold Millennials are lazy, entitled, have a short attention span and expect the Earth. Rian Lanigan proves that is utter bullshit. Fresh faced and depressingly young he may be, but the man knows more about street-fighter marketing than almost anyone I have met in the past 32 years. A relentless tester of his theories, he distils 2 years of concentrated effort into 10 practical tips even old fuddy-duddy baby-boomers can apply for immediate profit. Yes, even you! Simple, practical and tested in the real world. He's helped one client grow his audience from a couple of hundred to 600,000 in 2 years. He routinely secures 65% open rates on email campaigns. Another client of Rian's won 2 new 5-digit clients by leveraging her competitor's network! Rian Lanigan turns your marketing nuclear! -- If you are the owner or CEO of a technolo

The Evil Bald Genius, #JonMcCulloch, is a brick and mortar marketer whose opinions are frank, forthright and pointed. Don't listen if you are easily offended. He is on a mission to #SaveTheHighStreet. We discuss why brick and mortar marketers generally aren't very good at marketing and why they are leaving s***loads of money on the table, why they struggle to differentiate and why they are letting their market disappear from under them through lack of imagination and not doing even the basics of marketing. There is a little swearing so again, if you're offended by this, don't listen or if you do, please wrote in the comments to complain so I can tell you "I told you so". He is on the spectrum which gives him a refreshing honesty. He's not in business to pander to your whims or spare your feelings but to put cash in your bank account. Enjoy! -- If you are the owner or CEO of a technology company and your goal is to grow your business and achieve real, sustainable hypergrowth with highly engaged and highly prod

Louis Gudema, author of the excellent Bullseye Marketing, has developed a 9 point checklist to analyse whether your marketing is effective or not. Louis discusses the common mistakes marketers make and busts a load of myths around what works and what doesn't. He warns us against being tempted away from what works by what is popular and in fashion. Did you realise that email marketing can be nearly FORTY (40) times more effective than social media? (#McKinsey, 2014) Are you using intent data to identify quality prospects? Are you spreading your message too thin and losing customers to your competition? Are you working with your partners to develop customer personas and jointly define leads? Are your sales and marketing at odds or in alignment? How does mapping the customer journey help you improve #CX #CustomerExperience? Why does this matter? What are the challenges you face because of #SmallData? Have you fallen into the trap of ignoring the single best source of #CustomerInsight? Louis is a practical marke

"Your Press Release is Breaking My Heart" is Janet Murray's warning shot across your bows about the dangers of producing bad, unremarkable, selfish content if you want to capture the attention of journalists to promote your business The past, present & future walked into a bar … it was tense! Do your headlines leave your target audience scrolling on past you to your competition? Are you producing content that is the equivalent of showing strangers photos of your ugly kids or holiday snaps? Is your LinkedIn content strategy "Fire, aim, ready?" Why aren't you generating business from LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or YouTube? #JanetMurray @jan_murray #contentmarketingexpert, is a former journalist turned poacher. She helps business owners, coaches, consultants and trainers cut through the wall of noise surrounding their target market to speak directly to their prospective clients and stand apart from their competition. Most content produced by small business is excruciatingly bland and unremarkable

#BillMorrison, Managing Director of #SandlerCorporateAccounts EMEA explains why #CorporateSalesTraining fails and what to do to ensure you get buy-in & sustainability from the #SalesTeam. We discuss the importance of #training managers so that they can reinforce the learning and turn the new behaviours into habits and what happens if you ignore this critical aspect of training. Drawing on real world experience we discuss the importance of involving the overall P&L owner, the owner of the sales number and HR/L&D to ensure that your training programme delivers the results you want from your investment. Many training programmes fail because they aren't reinforced and Bill explains how the real value of training happens in away from the spotlight of the classroom. We explain the 4 different roles of management and why ignoring any one of them can prove fatal to the success of your training investment. Bill and Marcus have nearly 7 decades of real world scar tissue in direct, enterprise and channel sal

#GavinIngham is a sales veteran, a #TEDxSpeaker and #founder of #IAm10. He specialises in helping companies build powerful sales teams on a foundation of #MentalToughness. We discuss questions like: What is mental toughness? Can it be developed? How? What separates the winners from the losers in sales? Why do bad habits persist in sales and sales management? What impact can managers have on the performance of a sales team? Why do gaps in management capability exist? How important is management culture in creating the conditions for mental toughness? What do bad leaders do to hamstring good salespeople? What is motivation? Can a manager really motivate a salesperson? Gavin and I have a frank conversation about the highs and lows in sales, the roots of self-sabotage, the power of cultural pressure to conform instead of challenge the status quo. As usual, no punches are pulled. Practical advice based on over 60 years of scar tissue, this interview is a must for #BusinessOwners, #CEO's, #VPSales, #SalesDirectors

Best selling author of one of the Top 50 Selling Books of ALL Time (according to Top Sales World Magazine), #SandlerEnterpriseSelling (published by #McGrawHill, #BrianSullivan chats to me about his 30+ year career in big ticket, complex sales and sales management. We chart his journey from #XeroxCorporation to #CapGemini and now as VP of Sandler Enterprise Selling (#SES) at #Sandler. We discuss a number of simple, practical tools that Brian has designed to help enterprise, transactional and channel salespeople: Sell more Sell more often To more buyers For more money And get out of deals they can't win, fast I'm a huge fan of these tools because unlike the tools I was given earlier in my career these take a fraction of the time to complete. They have been designed by salespeople for salespeople to help us do our job instead of being designed by audit for audit purposes. No 3-day off site meetings to complete blue sheets, green sheets or pink sheets that gather dust in the boot of your car. We explore the hidd

Businesses stay small because the owner keeps them that way! #DaveHiatt is a 25 year #Sandler veteran who has run his own #SandlerFranchise and for the past 15 years has been working for Sandler at Home Office. He is the product champion for the #OrganizationalExcellence #OrganisationalExcellence programme. Dave and Marcus discuss the blind spots that are probably holding you back and dive deep into the details of the 6Ps of Leadership for Organisational Excellence: Planning Positions People Processes Performetrics Passion As a franchisee with Sandler for the past 15 years, I have seen massive positive transformation since our CEO #DaveMattson has applied the principles of #OE in his business. He felt is was so good he bought the rights to the content and we have brought it all together in one place. The principles and process we discuss enables companies to achieve #hypergrowth and #hyperprofits without losing control. In our own business it has allowed us to map out our path to 600% growth over 3 years whi

#AntonioGarrido, author of #AskingQuestionsTheSandlerWay discusses the power of questions in this lighthearted but not lightweight interview. Plenty of vital information and plenty of laughs. We explore why your credibility comes from the questions you ask not the information that you give. We explain why answering a prospect's questions actually does you harm and does your prospect a massive disservice. We share stories about how we have failed and messed up and how our scar tissue has made us better salespeople, better managers and better people. We explore the psychological underpinnings of the #SandlerSellingSystem and how it is rooted in biology and evolution. Trust me, you are NOT good enough to override 300 million years of evolutionary hard wiring. When you understand how the brain works, how people make decisions, you realise that you can stop making effort to convince people to buy. My motto in life and business is do less but better on purpose. Actually, it's double the money for half the work! If

Fewer than 12% of sales leadership positions are held by women. I interview #LorraineFerguson author of #TheUnapologeticSaleswoman where she explores why women can make a great career in sales. Sales offers high income potential with flexibility, the ability to carve out your own path and to advance on your own merit. Historically there have been many barriers, not least among them, prejudice which has been rife. That said, many women don't see themselves conceptually as salespeople despite the fact they possess many of the attributes that can make them great at this, the oldest profession! All adults are children trapped in adult bodies so the skills of motherhood can be easily transferred - empathy, listening, caring, understanding - which are in direct opposition to the gung-ho version of testosterone fuelled bad salesmanship that has given the profession a bad reputation. We discuss the challenges and opportunities represented by sales for women who want to have a satisfying career and have a family. We e

Would it surprise you that the average length of time a company has been breached before a cyber-attack or physical theft happens is 242 days. #JennyRadcliffe is the #PeopleHacker. Her company, #HumanFactorSecurity helps corporates mitigate the single biggest threat to your security. This weak point is responsible for 80-90% of breaches of security in corporates. £millions are spent each year on IT & physical security - firewalls, password access management, email security, identity badges, fingerprint scanners, security guards - yet each week we hear about attacks like those on #Starwood (#Marriott etc), #Visa, #MumsNet, #Facebook and #Aadhaar (1,000,000,000 records!!)   What is the chink in your armour? People. Common or garden human beings. Whether through malice, stupidity, carelessness, naivety or ignorance, your people are probably leaving you exposed. Jenny discusses how her clients employ her fascinating and very rare skillset of people hacking and explore the subject in the context of security, l

Mike Crandall and I discuss true Motivational Management (Audiobook). None of the ra-ra crap you read about or have to suffer at sales kick-offs when some snake oil salesman tries to get you pumped up and within days you are back to performing like you always have. This is the stuff of champions Motivation comes from within every person. It is every manager's job to uncover it, stoke it and direct it to ensure that a salesperson's personal goals are aligned with their corporate goals in order to get the best out of them AND serve the business. Both Marcus and Mike have a deep interest in what drives people to behave in the ways that they do and they share an interest in psychological models proposed by Transactional Analysis. We discuss the difference between internal and external motivation, the impact of culture on motivation, how managers can apply strengths to maximise performance and developing resilience. Mike introduces the BAT model for which Sandler is famous - Behaviour, Attitude, Technique - as a m

The devil is in the detail. #JayMcBain, #Forrester's lead analyst on all things #Channel says that "More has changed in the last 18 months than in the previous 36 years". Listen to find out what and why. Jay explains why 96% of MSPs can't scale beyond 10 people and why 70% of MSP owners are working incredibly long hours for average margins that are barely break-even. We discuss what effect is that having on their businesses, the global trend towards consolidation, recruitment of talent and customer loyalty. How will the winners in the future of channel have to evolve their business models to stay alive or go the way of the dinosaurs? How are buying patterns changing that materially impact when, where and how vendors can reach them? How will those trends impact the partner eco-system across all 27 industry verticals? Forrester's #MarketResearch shows unequivocal trends which you ignore at your peril. 75% of ALL products are sold via the channel today. No later than 2026 we will see 90% of technology sold via t

Entrepreneurs! Listen to to my interview with Mike Michalowicz and learn how to liberate yourself from entrepreneurial poverty! Are you sick of being a cash crop for the taxman? Are you tired of working stupid hours, building a "successful" business yet you get to keep too little money? Do you know which traditional business practices are holding back your financial freedom? What prevents you from optimising your efficiency & effectiveness in your business? The traditional accounting model of "Sales Revenue - Expenses = Profits" is broken. The smartest entrepreneurs take out profit first and use the remainder for expenses & costs. Utilising the principles of #ProfitFirst: Get your business to pay your PERSONAL tax bill Intelligently use your scarce resources for maximum profit Establish a business of significance that serves you instead of you being a slave to it Regain control of your time so you can spend it with the people you love doing what you love Be known for excellence in your market attract

Accountability is freedom. It should never be used as a stick. Instead it should be used to ensure you and your people win or learn. Certainly, there will be some instances where a failure to perform will result in termination of a salesperson or a partner, but Hamish Knox explains how and why an accountability culture increases clarity, encourages personal responsibility and drives predictable results. Almost no one comes to work wanting to do a bad job. As a manager it is your job to find the best people and then help them perform at their best. Accountability takes the guesswork out of leadership and management and it gives focus and purpose to your people. It helps establish the ground rules for success and reward and it removes the culture in management where the boss is Fire Chief and Chief Arsonist. Sales Management is not a place to get your emotional needs met; it's a place to help your salespeople go to the bank. We explore how it helps identify unhelpful management, recruitment, compensation practi