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TheInquisitor Podcast with Marcus Cauchi

TheInquisitor Podcast with Marcus Cauchi

De: Marcus Cauchi Laughs Last Ltd
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Business Insights & Strategies From Experts: Unveiling Simple Truths Behind Success.

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Episodios
  • Ryan Berman - Risk to Relationship in B2B Sales, Procurement Strategy and Total Cost of Ownership

    Ryan Berman - Risk to Relationship in B2B Sales, Procurement Strategy and Total Cost of Ownership
    Apr 17 2026

    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 and more on aligning with how procurement evaluates suppliers, especially around risk, reliability, and total cost of ownership.

    This episode is relevant for sales leaders, account executives, and commercial teams working in complex B2B sales environments where procurement plays a key role in decision making.

    Key Topics Covered

    * Procurement in B2B sales and how it influences buying decisions

    * Buyer psychology and how procurement evaluates supplier risk

    * Total cost of ownership (TCO) vs ROI in procurement decisions

    * Sales and procurement alignment in enterprise and mid-market deals

    * How to build trust with procurement teams in B2B selling

    * Why co-creation improves sales outcomes compared to traditional pitching

    * Common sales mistakes when dealing with procurement teams

    * How procurement manages risk, continuity, and supplier reliability Key

    Takeaways

    Procurement is focused on risk management

    Procurement teams prioritise reducing operational and commercial risk, not just lowering costs.

    Buyer decision making is driven by risk

    Suppliers are evaluated on whether they reduce uncertainty or introduce it.

    Total cost of ownership matters more than ROI

    Procurement considers long-term costs including quality, supply chain stability, and maintenance.

    Co-creation improves sales success Building solutions with procurement leads to stronger alignment and higher win rates.

    Trust is the deciding factor Buyers prioritise predictability and reduced internal risk over lowest price.

    Key Insight for Sales Teams

    In B2B sales, every deal must satisfy three buyer needs:

    * Functional, does the solution work

    * Social, how it impacts internal stakeholders

    * Emotional, whether it reduces personal and career risk

    Ryan Burman is the founder of Pitch to Procure and creator of the First to Pitch methodology. He helps sales and procurement teams improve alignment, negotiation outcomes, and supplier relationships in complex B2B sales environments.

    Key Quote “The first transaction is not the win. The first transaction is the test of trust. Pass that test and even if you don’t get a deal, you can get a customer for life.” Marcus Cauchi

    Ryan Berman | LinkedIn

    Marcus Cauchi | LinkedIn
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    44 m
  • Why 90% of Salespeople Think They're Trusted (And Only 30% Are) with Rowly Hirst

    Why 90% of Salespeople Think They're Trusted (And Only 30% Are) with Rowly Hirst
    Mar 31 2026
    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-Galford Trust Equation: Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy ÷ Self-Orientation. In this conversation, Marcus and Rowly go deep on what trust actually looks like in practice, why the most popular sales frameworks quietly destroy it, and what it takes to become a genuine ally rather than an accomplice, or worse, an adversary. If you spend your days in complex, high-stakes conversations, this episode is for you. What We Cover Why trust is defined not by what someone says about you, but by what they do when they could stay vague, delay, or protect themselves, and choose not toThe difference between an ally, an accomplice, and an adversary in a sales relationship, and the precise moment sellers cross the lineWhy the word "playbook" is the wrong mental model entirely, and what replaces itA masterclass in trust-building from an AT&T store in Boston: how a $50 sale became a case study in the Trust Equation in actionThe five operating principles that separate trusted advisers from everyone elseHow Challenger, BANT, MEDIC, SPIN, and Sandler all fail in the same way under pressure, and what that failure looks like in practiceThe 55 sub-factors Sandy measures across the four components of the Trust EquationWhy gamifying your trust score actually works, and ends up benefiting the customer, not just the sellerThe 90/30 trust perception gap: why over 90% of sales reps believe they're trusted advisers while only 30% of their customers agreeWhat Sandy has taught Rowly about his own blind spots, including a real example of how he lost an investor in a meeting and what he changed afterwardsWhy saying "I don't know" is a credibility asset, not a liabilityHow measurement of trust has gone from a $600 human analysis taking a week to a six-cent automated result in under two minutesGallup's estimate that improving meaningful feedback and trust-building could lift global employee engagement from 20% to 80% — an $8.5 trillion productivity uplift Key Idea from This Episode Trust isn't something you ask for or declare. It's something the other person gifts you, quietly, through their behaviour, especially when risk is on the table. It breaks down not when objections appear, but earlier: when pressure rises and we unconsciously shift from ally to accomplice. The fix isn't a better playbook. It's noticing yourself under pressure and choosing differently. About Rowly Hirst Rowly Hirst is CEO of Relate.us and has over 25 years of experience in consultative sales and account management in financial services. He began developing the thinking behind Relate.us in 2013 after a career taking CEOs and CFOs to meet investors, observing first-hand how poorly the industry measured what actually mattered in high-stakes relationships. Sandy, Relate.us's generative AI trust analyst, is built on the Maister-Green-Galford Trust Equation and measures trust objectively across 55 sub-factors, delivering results in near real-time at a fraction of the cost of traditional survey or human-review methods. Connect with Rowly 🌐 relateUS.com 🔗 LinkedIn: Rowly Hirst Connect with Marcus 🔗 LinkedIn: Marcus Cauchi 🌐 theinquisitorpodcast.com Chapters 0:00 — Introduction & Rowly's background2:34 — Defining trust as observable behaviour under uncertainty4:07 — Ally vs accomplice vs adversary5:28 — Why "playbook" is the wrong model7:05 — The AT&T store story: trust in a 25-minute sale9:45 — The five principles of a trusted adviser12:46 — Where sellers cross the line from ally to accomplice15:17 — What managers should stop coaching17:17 — How Challenger, BANT, MEDIC, SPIN & Sandler erode trust20:09 — What Sandy is and how it works25:00 — The gamification effect27:21 — The feedback people push back against most31:00 — Self-awareness vs self-perception32:31 — The 90/30 trust perception gap33:47 — What would tank Marcus's trust score right now37:50 — How Sandy's coaching evolves across meetings38:07 — Inside the 55 sub-factors40:27 — Vulnerability, credibility, and "I don't know"44:23 — Why proposals fail when the buyer's voice isn't in them45:34 — The cost of measuring trust: then vs now47:23 — The $8.5 trillion productivity opportunity48:24 — Rowly's advice to his 23-year-old self If This Landed Don't rush to agree or disagree. Spend the next few days paying attention. Notice when your curiosity drops. Notice when you try to rescue. And if you catch a moment where trust shifted, in either direction , we would genuinely like to hear what you saw. Stay safe and happy selling.
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    53 m
  • Alex Buckles - Partnerships Without Fantasy: Why Your Channel Produces No Pipeline

    Alex Buckles - Partnerships Without Fantasy: Why Your Channel Produces No Pipeline
    Mar 24 2026
    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 revenue to hit their number this quarter, and the answer is almost always the same: no. Why? Because it's never been reliable. Because it's always been treated as a nice-to-have. Because nobody actually knows how to make it work. That's the conversation this episode is built around. Alex Buckles has spent 20 years in enterprise sales, in the SAP ecosystem, the Adobe ecosystem, running and exiting two professional services companies, and figured out early in his career that if he wanted deal flow from partners, he had to earn it. That realisation eventually became Forecastable, a company whose only measure of success is pipeline production through co-sell motions. What You'll Hear in This Episode Why the instinct to hire a partnerships professional first is wrong When a sub-150 person company decides to get serious about partnerships, the first move is almost always to bring in someone with a traditional partnerships background. Alex argues this is the wrong call, not because those people aren't valuable, but because what you actually need at that stage is proof of concept, not infrastructure. A junior AE or an SDR with the right playbook can prove repeatability faster and cheaper than six months of PRM setup and deal registration frameworks. The co-sell door opener and why discovery calls don't cut it The most powerful concept in this episode is what Alex calls the co-sell door opener: a high-value experience you invite the prospect into rather than a pitch you push at them. Think of it like a $5,000 event that the vendor covers, limited seats, relevant to a specific pain, designed to create genuine engagement rather than manufactured urgency. It doesn't feel like a sales motion because, done right, it isn't one. The three types of value anyone ever sells Fix something. Prevent something. Improve something. That's it. And when you're building co-sell plays, Alex argues the fix is almost always the most powerful place to start. If the prospect has a raging toothache, don't pitch them a one-year dental plan. Why 60% of pipeline dies in no decision — and what's really behind it Marcus and Alex dig into something most sales training doesn't touch: buyer safety. Not qualification. Not discovery. The deeper question of whether the person sitting across from you can actually afford, professionally, politically, emotionally, to make this decision. When you ignore that question, you end up with a pipeline full of deals that were never going anywhere, a constipated middle of funnel, and a close rate that would make any CFO reach for the antacids. The second room problem 80 to 90 percent of the sale happens without you in it. The internal conversations, the allocation committees, the corridor conversations between stakeholders, none of that is visible to the vendor. Which means your champion has to carry your story, unedited and unaccompanied, into rooms you'll never see. The question isn't whether your deal is qualified on paper. It's whether every stakeholder in that buying committee would go to bat for you when you're not there. What great partner enablement actually looks like It's not onboarding decks and quarterly business reviews. It's getting in front of the frontline manager with a win story, asking for 15 minutes on their weekly team call, and showing up with something their reps can use in the field that week. Ghost-written outreach. Account development research. Win wires in shared Slack channels. Perpetual mindshare, that's what you're actually after. Demos: mostly a waste of time Alex's take on this is blunt. Once you've given a demo, the buyer has locked in their view of you. You've answered a bunch of curiosities, and they may ghost you. Save the demo for last. Use it to confirm the order, not to create one. If it won't change a stakeholder's decision, don't do it. Three Takeaways You Can Use Tomorrow 1. Start with the interview, not the one-pager. Before you build any co-sell playbook, get the most trusted systems integrator in the room and ask them what makes them different. Real conversations produce better plays than merged marketing decks every time. 2. Know who owns the problem and who owns the outcome — they're almost never the same person. In most organisations, the partnership professional owns the problem but has no budget and limited authority. The sales leader owns the outcome but views partnerships as fluffy. Bridging those two people explicitly — not hoping it happens organically — is what gets deals done. 3. Ask yourself the second room question for every stakeholder. If this person ...
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    55 m
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