Principled Selling: What Questions Are You Not Asking Yourself with Marcus Cauchi #083

Are you tired of the constant pressure of short-term objectives overshadowing your core values? Marcus Cauchi delves deep into the pitfalls of traditional sales and marketing practices that result in poor conversion rates, wasted resources, and fleeting customer relationships. 

Discover the importance of understanding your customer's journey, the need for simplicity in technology, and the concept of the "anti-ICP." Marcus doesn't just identify the problems; he offers a new perspective on business development, focusing on genuine relationship-building and consistently delivering value.

From broader economic challenges to the power of human-AI partnerships, this episode is packed with insights that challenge conventional thinking. Are you ready to pivot from a transactional mindset to one that prioritizes long-term value and relationships? 

GUEST BIO:

Marcus Cauchi has 35 years of failure, scar tissue and bad decisions in sales, in management and in business, under his belt. He’s served across over 500 market segments. He can be found running a series of (usually) non-fatal experiments, deliberately finding ways to do more with less, to remove unhelpful friction, to free up time for higher value activities. He asks challenging questions that make you reassess your status quo, that help you find a better path to your intended outcomes.

He is co-author of Making Channel Sales Work. He’s married with 3 daughters, is a Prolific LinkedIn content producer. He is founder of Sales: a Force for Good and The Red Thread Ecosystem

TOPICS EXPLORED:
 - Values vs. Short-Term Objectives: How to find balance in achieving your goals without selling out.
- Stepping into Your Customer’s Shoes: The power of understanding the customer's journey and why it’s not about you.
- Mistakes & Mindfulness:** The importance of slowing down, reflecting, and seeking external perspectives in sales.
- Tech Troubles: Why simplicity in technology can be a game-changer for sales efficiency.
- Identifying Task Value: Distinguishing between $10 tasks and $10,000 tasks for strategic focus.
- Redefining the Ideal Customer: Going beyond the usual customer profile to understand the "anti-ICP".
- The Broken Cycle of Traditional Marketing: How inefficient practices hurt sales and the push for a new customer-centric approach.
- Building Trust in Sales: Why transactions aren’t the be-all and end-all and the potential of joint ventures and affiliates.
- Marcus's Economic Insights: The significance of systems thinking, global challenges, and the move towards a resilient, circular economy.
- Deep Dives with AI: Marcus's collaborative program on harnessing AI for better conversations, questions, and understanding customer psychology.

RESOURCES:
Marcus Cauchi Resources: https://www.laughs-last.com/recommendations/

On Soundcloud: Jobs to Be Done Podcast, JTBD, Mattress Interview Episode 

Jobs To Be Done Podcast Homepage: https://jobstobedone.org/topics/radio/

The Inquisitor Podcast with Marcus Cauchi: https://www.laughs-last.com/theinquisitor/

CONNECT WITH MARCUS CAUCHI:
On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcuscauchi/

If you're interested in more visit ▶ https://almcbride.com/minicourse
for a free email minicourse on how to gain the psychological edge in your negotiations and critical conversations along with a helpful negotiation prep cheat sheet.

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Transcript

Al McBride  0:02  
Welcome to the dealing with Goliath podcast. The mission of dealing with Goliath is to sharpen the psychological edge in negotiation, ethical influencing and high impact conversations for business leaders who want to be more effective under pressure, uncover hidden value, and build greater connection all while increasing profitability. This is the short form espresso shot of inside podcast interview to boost business performance, using our five questions in around about 15 to 20 minutes format. My guest today is Marcus cow key. Marcus has 35 years of failure scar tissue on bad decisions, in sales in management and in business. under his belt, he served across over 500 market segments, you can be found running a series of usually non fatal experiments can ask about those in a minute, deliberately finding ways to do more with less to remove unhelpful friction to help free up time for higher value activities. He asked challenging questions that make you reassess your status quo that help you find a better path to your intended outcomes. He is the co author of making Channel Sales work. 

He is married with three daughters is a prolific LinkedIn content producer, the founder of sales force for good podcaster, the Inquisitor podcast, and he is the founder of sales for good and the red ecosystem. So there's kind of a mouthful there, Marcus. So just trying to help people understand who's your ideal client, and what's the biggest challenge that they tend to face.

Marcus Cauchi  1:53  
Right. And my core business, how I make my living is by coaching, really ambitious A's who have a set of values that are currently being challenged, because they're being stressed and tested to try and meet short term objectives. And they know that's not the right thing. And they consider that their reputation, their word is too precious to squander. And they're looking for a way to navigate that path. 

And find a balance between turning the ship and creating a certain predictable pipeline that is built up of only the ideal customer and not wasting their time on low value activity. So I'm a big fan of the old Chinese doctors way of getting paid, which is you pay them a lot of money when you were healthy. And they had to cover your costs and all of your medicine and treatment when you were sick.

Al McBride  2:56  
Now fascinating paradigm. Yeah, isn't it just

Marcus Cauchi  2:59  
so imagine if pharmacies pharmaceutical companies were compensated in that way. So what I tend to do is I ask questions that cause you to see the world through a different lens. And in doing that, you get better answers, and you accelerate the sale, because you're not creating needless friction, you're getting to what the customer actually cares about. 

Because it's not about you, your product, your company, your valuation target or anything else. It's about facilitating the customer to make the best possible decision for themselves for now and the future, whether it involves you or not. And therein lies the rub. Because you have to have courage, and you have to be vulnerable enough to know that you might get hurt in the process. And that's not for everyone.

Al McBride  3:53  
It's not always for everyone, as you said right from the start that you're talking about. People who have a strong sense of their values as a key differentiator in that most polarizing awful salespeople right there. But on top of that, as you said, you wanted to to maneuver them toward, as you said, Being braver toward accepting and encouraging their courage. So what are some of the common mistakes people make when they're trying to to make that shift? They're not feeling it, they're in an optimum state. They're not where they want to be. There's something off but as you said, there's this huge gulf this challenge, maybe no man's land scary stuff. So what are some of the mistakes maybe they make before they find you?

Marcus Cauchi  4:37  
Fabulous question. Okay, so first thing, haste. Haste is the killer of speed. You've got to slow down to speed up. And the second thing and you mentioned in your conversation with Scotty is reflection. No one does any bloody reflection. You need to spend a minimum of an hour a week and I would be recommending 45 minutes to an hour a day in thought. And the most successful salespeople I know who are not transaction monkeys and are just basically starting afresh every month, are the ones who've really given thought to think as their customer, they've given thought to the journey that the customer is going on. And that journey might start three or four years before you ever touch them. 

Because there are niggling doubts and frustrations that occur. If you imagine it's like a like bombing raid. And landscape is just a bunch of little explosions and pops the you can see from the ground SEC from the air on the ground. Now, when you're on the ground, they're very present and very dangerous. But you don't get to see the bigger picture. Now, our job as salespeople is to be able to macro or mete out to see the context in which our customers operate, and our competitive landscape. And then macro down into the bigger picture that the leadership are trying to deal with what is the job they are trying to accomplish. And almost no salespeople bothered to think in this way, largely out of ignorance, they don't know better. 

But when they do, it's hard work. And it requires deep thought, and it requires you actually going out and trying to prove you are wrong, you have critical thinking that people don't do this enough. Now, when you do what it does, it starts to build frameworks. And now we have AI, you can start building those into prompts, so that you can actually inform and prepare yourself in a way that you never could before. Now, this is the kind of stuff that gets me terribly excited, because I'm creating this human AI technology partnership that is very customer centric, that creates a win win win outcome, it's a win for you, it's a win for the customer, and it's a win for your partners. 

Because the other thing that I'm very clear about, especially with people selling technology, which is a lot of my clients is that technology has become so complicated and so sophisticated. And as a result, it should just be complex and sophisticated. But they've made it complicated and sophisticated. So I know sales organizations where salespeople waste two and a half hours a day, navigating their own technology just to get the information they need to do their job. And I know one organization that's resorted to to feeding all of that data into one Excel spreadsheet. And they've now recovered 50 times two and a half hours of prospecting time per day. 

So that's 125 hours per day, 625 hours per week, can you imagine the effect that has? That's insane. Exactly. So this is the third mistake people make is they look at the problem from the wrong end of it. They start looking from where they are. And then they take step by step by step, what they should work out. And there are three things that I would urge everyone to investigate. One is jobs to be done. What is the job to be done, that the business or everyone in the business is committed to now? 

Do they understand what their role is in executing their part of that job? Now, in many organizations, people don't understand what the job to be done is. So they're all working at cross purposes, and thinking they're doing a great job, which means that you're creating inherent waste. Remember the Chinese doctor? Well, I think leaders and directors should be compensated on how effective they make the organization, not the illusion of efficiency, which is the big sacrifice that we seem to have made.

Al McBride  9:02  
As an awful lot of pics here. That's quite a right. That's right. You know, because as you said, you were meant to go. Jump back to start where you're talking about reflection seems to be one of the key. For one for better word force multipliers in a positive or negative way, because it's done it, it gets people this is the first thing I say to most clients, whatever stage they are in their career is even 15 minutes after lunch on a Friday. Start with that and then we build it up to an hour as you say a week. But it's the exact same thing because you get to see your own patterns of mistakes. Yeah, then people like me or you come in to tell them all their blind spots and mistakes there. But they can start with their own.

Marcus Cauchi  9:46  
Well, that's the other mistake they make. They try and do themselves, ask for help. There are lots of people out there one of my favorite bits of advice to my clients is go out and find people whose history is your future. And then contact them and say out Chicky ask, would you be my mentor 20 minutes a month, I will bring you the shittiest gnarliest problem that I can't break the back of. And I'll tell you the three things that I've tried to fix them. Anytime I failed to do this, you can find me What do you say? And you did that with 12. People five will probably say yes. Now you've got brain trust, and these people can save you the effort of making those mistakes, you can make different ones.

Al McBride  10:27  
Actually, you make it what do you say? I usually say upgrade the problem. You know, let's, let's just keep upgrading that next challenge that next problem? Absolutely.

Marcus Cauchi  10:37  
This is a really great exercise. Look at the jobs that you do. What are the $10 jobs, the $100 jobs, the $1,000 jobs and the $10,000 an hour jobs absent? Which ones are you doing? And who should be doing them? What are you doing to delegate those and how you empowering them to make good decisions?

Al McBride  10:56  
Exactly. This comes back to your roles, as the business needs roles to deliver the service or product that they're being paid for, as you say, but are people clear on the roles or even the boss is clear on the roles half the time now there's gonna be this disagreement. I mean, one of the one of the great things to do, as I said, is get you write your staff role, have them do it as well. And then compare your notes. And you'll see the stuff and not an awful lot of overlap. My pal

Marcus Cauchi  11:24  
Antonio Garrido has an awesome exercise for this. First day, the chairman I invited him in as CEO, the new CEO, and said, Antonio, what I'd like you to do, and he slid across his very expensive Montblanc pen, and a blank sheet of paper, write down all the qualities that will make you successful in this role. So he wrote all those down. And he passed them across and Chairman looked at them, you can do better, and he slid it across. And the same rigmarole happened another time. And on the third occasion, okay, well, that'll do. 

That's now your job description. And I want you to carry that piece of paper around with you. And at any point, I can ask you to take that piece of paper out and show me what you've done in the last week to work on one of those areas to improve or get better. Now, I've adapted this because I'm meaner than Antonio's chairman, which is flip it over on the other side? What are the characteristics of let's say, a CEO, that will cause them to fail? What are the characteristics that are? What are the values, the red flags? 

Okay, because one of the things that I urge my clients to do is develop an anti ICP, right? It's not good enough to just have an ICP, which most people have no idea how to do either. But that's crucial. But then you need to know who the anti ICP because your total addressable market is not your future customer base, a tiny proportion of them will be. And it's your job to try and sift those out. And nurture those relationships for as long as humanly possible in advance, whilst they are in either they don't know that they're going to need help in passive looking. 

And when they move from passive to active looking, you really want to have connections with all the key stakeholders, the people who are going to suffer the outcome of whatever decision leadership makes the people who are going to spend the money, the people who are going to evaluate the people who are going to have to live with and maintain the people who are going to renew the people who are going to ultimately sign off and authorize. You can't do the drive by shooting anymore. It's not a numbers game. I was just on a call with flag. Vlad, blagdonovich blagdonovich. Sorry, Vlad, I'm so sorry. 

And his process is just so beautiful. Instead of 200 accounts, it's 11. And they ended up getting three out of the nine that they engage as clients, but they 10x. So they end up with 30 extra revenue that they would have ended up with before. That's what I mean by hastening the category speed, because they're confusing scale with real, sustainable growth. And you have to have the right things in place. So the organization needs to have the Cs in place to be able to cope with the growth in sales. So you got to recruit that ahead of time. But you've got to plan that beforehand. And this is why salespeople come unstuck, because you sold something and then the business can't fulfill. So now you have egg on your face. Should you sell.

Al McBride  14:50  
Yeah, well that again, that's a different problem, isn't it? Slightly. We're, you see this a lot where salespeople do what's required to get it over the line and the P People buy one example software engineers in the back have to build the damn thing are going, Are you crazy that last concession you just wiped out half our margin because they don't know how it actually breaks down and the real cost structure, they don't know how many developer hours such a thing is.

Marcus Cauchi  15:14  
So let me show you the idiocy in practice with actual real life practical numbers, okay, and this is taken from live data. Any marketing organization would probably be happy with a 3% click through rate and a 15% conversion rate. When you translate that into how that cause the job to be done, in my mind, when I spend money on advertising is to convert it into revenue, it failed to deliver revenue 99.9955% of the time, and only delivered revenues 0.0045% of the time. On that basis, I then throw all of those non unclosed leads over to sales, many of whom should probably never have been attracted in the first place and the anti ICP. 

And each of those on average at the moment requires about six to 11 follow ups for inbound, just for you to be able to engage with them. Now, on average, it's taking around 14 effective touches to secure one meeting. And on average, what I see is seven out of eight first meetings did not result in a second. Now, what is the answer that most marketing and most investors and most boards come up with, in order to solve the problem that we're not generating revenue, almost sitting at the top, perfect. 

Now, you've created a problem here, because not only have you passed on these shit leads that sales has to follow up. But because they're chasing their tail, they don't have any time to build long term, medium term pipeline, or relationships and build trust, intimacy, credibility or reliability. They're always a quick funnel behind the bike sheds, thank you very much, Madam and off I go. And then they're moving around to the next one and the next one and the next one. So they're just selling themselves spreading themselves too thin. 

Then, once they've closed any deal, they can, because they've got a quota to meet. They chuck those over the wall to CES, you've got a bunch of people who are unsuitable being mis sold, have wrong expectations and become churn risks automatically. And it's not unheard of to have a 15% churn rate. Well, 15% churn means every three years, you have to replace 49% of your customers. And after that ball ache, are you serious? So what we should be doing is asking a better question right at the front end, which is, what is the job that unifies us all that serves the customer. So we create products and services that don't come back for customers who do and then bring their wealthy friends. That's,

Al McBride  18:11  
it sounds simple, but a lot of these things do come down. They start with fairly simple principles. And then they can grow to greater complexes after that. But don't start with complexity is one of the things I love about your your philosophy and your attitude there. And another thing just to point out to the listeners that might be tuned into this. I love that piece that you mentioned about flipping it into the negative. It's something so few people do. They write, you know, how do we get there? And they do maybe a bit of project planning or whatever, and contingency planning, but they rarely actually flip it into if they have a to do list or have a not to do list.

Marcus Cauchi  18:49  
Don't list? Absolutely.

Al McBride  18:51  
Yeah. salutely. In psychology, they call it inversion technique. It's where you flip it and it's like a photograph, you look at the negative other things become apparent. Very useful tool. So you're absolutely spot on

Marcus Cauchi  19:03  
the universe is 94% Dark Matter, isn't it? Because

Al McBride  19:10  
they don't want to do so. It's dark matter.

Marcus Cauchi  19:13  
But it's the same thing for us. It's the anomalous, think about this, if you stop thinking in the sort of classic way that most traditional sellers think. And instead of thinking about selling cold, direct and new business, you think about what is it that we can do in order to maximize revenue with minimum effort, maximize profit and deliver the most amount of value? That's a difficult question. 

It's requires a lot of thought, but it starts with speaking to your customer. Where is your customer? What does that journey look like? What are their struggling moments along that journey? Where we can represent real value and show up or pretend To highlight the red flags, give them the trigger warnings and say beware of this. So when it happens, who the hell do they call? Oh, well, it's us why?

 Because we're the only one who put the time and the investment and effort into making sure that we looked after them. Because trust comes from credibility, reliability and intimacy, over self orientation. And risk is generated in the mind of the buyer. Through uncertainty and vulnerability, we only half sorry, to a cafe view, we have control over the level of uncertainty we can generate with the customer or the buyers mind. And in order to remove their level of vulnerability, we have to be vulnerable.

 First, if we can remove risk associated with us as the seller, then they will want us beside us beside them on the buying journey. Now, the hard part for us is to know when to bug out. Because they will want us on their journey if we've done our job, right? Whether they're going to buy from us or not. Now, sometimes, often, in fact, it behooves us to recognize that now is not the time to make a transaction happen, but still keep the touches going and keep the relationship going. Because they have an ecosystem. Now we start to think organically. Well, you think about the joint ventures, the channel partners, the affiliates, the associates, the alumni, the customers customer, the family tree, and all of a sudden, one account becomes a career.

Al McBride  21:50  
And because of the basis interest, yes, because they actually, dare I say it might even like you, at least they respect you and that base away. And the key thing is I say to my clients, it's the same stuff, it's they need to feel that you get them to a certain level. And weirdly, it's just by comparison to the other people who are having similar conversations with them or aren't, their conversations aren't similar at all.

Marcus Cauchi  22:16  
And the bar is, so

Al McBride  22:18  
it's really very low and a lot of it. Exactly. So you don't even need to do that much. You know, in relative terms,

Marcus Cauchi  22:27  
I teach my clients the Jimmy Carr rule, I'm not going to give the full version of it. But he says if you meet three horrible people by 12 o'clock, you're the horrible person. It's all colorful language. So the reality is just turn up and be a decent human being care. genuinely give a damn. And put their interest before your short term selfish self interest. If your boss is telling you no, you know, we need this dealing. 

So what why should your lack of preparation and lack of prospecting 12 months ago be paid for by your customer by prematurely coercing them into a decision and incidentally, for anyone who thinks putting your customer are under pressure at the end of the quarter to make a deal happen? Let me tell you what goes on in their brain. you trigger the disgust and contempt response in the insular accumbens. Go and have a look. Go look it up. Okay. Because if you want to battle against 3 billion years of evolutionary hardwiring, go ahead, you ain't gonna win.

Al McBride  23:41  
Absolutely is the point. You've just burned that bridge because they were going we're moving along at a nice pace. Again, you can parallel it to another relationship, you know, moving along a nice pace you suddenly Oh, sudden pressure. Oh, sorry. You know, it's now or never yes or no, it was like, Whoa, well,

Marcus Cauchi  23:59  
this, again, is a question that leaders and managers really need to be asking themselves. Why are we prospecting short term pipeline? It's insane. That certainly if you're selling enterprise or anything remotely important, the decision began months or years before and I would urge everyone who's listening to listen to Bob Mesters mattress interview on the hashtag JTD be BD sorry, podcast jobs to be done. And it comes in two parts. And he interviews a man who bought a mattress that looked like a spontaneous purchase at the exit of Costco. 

The journey began four years before and if you're in marketing, and you're listening to this, or you're an owner and you're listening to this, and you're developing a product that you think is whiz bang, make bloody certain you listen to those interviews, because it will Open your eyes. The second thing you need to learn about is systems thinking. And theory of constraint. 

If you don't learn about these things as salespeople, as founders, as practice owners, you're in deep trouble. Because the economy you're going into, if you think it's been hard of late, let me just set the scene. It is now the 31st of August 2023. We are going into an election year next year in both the UK and America. Imagine the joy, the bad actors are going to have fomenting civil descent. Okay, there is a high level of uncertainty at the moment, we have interest rates, I'm getting 6.17% on my savings, because I'm old. 

Interest rates inflation, inflation is wiping out the interest that I am earning to make it worth less than nothing. depressingly, so imagine if you're paying interest how much you're losing. Okay, there is a war for talent. There is a massive disparity as the generational shift occurs. And it looks like we're probably already in world war three. Yay.

Al McBride  26:15  
You think things just mixed up there?

Marcus Cauchi  26:17  
Well, I'm a pragmatist. That is I cannot control any of that stuff.

Al McBride  26:24  
Where's the opportunity? There we go. Yeah, you can

Marcus Cauchi  26:28  
control my response. Exactly. And I can surround myself with an ecosystem of like minded shared values, we have diversity and everything apart from shared values. Okay, and what our objective is to create resilience, a closed eco a circular economy, where we end up creating business for one another, because when I solve a problem, it creates a problem you can solve. And then I can refer you and we create this environment. So we ally, we create an alliance with our customer, because we are helping them execute the job to be done. We're not trying to peddle them a product. And I always have a reason to talk to them, whether I have something to sell them personally or not. Because I have a duty of care.

Al McBride  27:17  
That's the key term, isn't it? It's also can be called a fiduciary responsibility. But we're the old professions, but it's that duty of care. That's the difference. There's one, just a parallel that I always remember, this was summed up, we're talking about actually caring. More so having the client or the counterpart feel cared for is maybe the better way to sit. And malpractice for doctors in the United States, a lot of studies done on it, what's the difference with the same errors, right, whatever those errors may be, the difference where there was a lawsuit or naff malpractice suit or not, was whether literally down to how much time the doctor spent beforehand with the patient, how much the patient See, literally taught, felt cared for by that doctor,

Marcus Cauchi  28:10  
it goes even deeper, because the study then went to look at your students and their bedside manner. And from the, from the moment, they first apply for a premium that has been defined for life, on the basis of their ability to be a human being, and create real empathy. Mark Goulston, one of my mentors who wrote a fantastic book called just listen, and also another book called talking to crazy, which is mainly about talking to yourself. And he says that all human beings crave this. They want to be heard, to feel felt and to be understood. Now, hearing listening is the transfer of emotion, not just meaning and understanding. And that is a rare skill. And that's the other thing that I spend a vast amount of my time helping my clients to learn. It's hard.

Al McBride  29:06  
It's the foundational piece or pieces, isn't it? You know, it's one of those foundational blocks that if you get that right, then it's not about the script. You know, this is the same thing people are looking at to a too high level of problem half the time as you said, the problems are deeper. They're more foundational. Yeah. The classic one, what do I say when they use this objection or that objection? It's not about what you say. It's not saying the line. It's the relationship you've built in the first place. So that if you can't if you're if you're trying to explain or trying to find that need, then as he said, it's not as critical a question the same question coming from three different types of people, right?

Marcus Cauchi  29:49  
This is sorry, it's just to build on that the quizzes are key. And the most important thing you can do and AI is a great opportunity to get some objective feedback on the quality of your questions. Because if you get shit answers back, or you sound bland and mundane like everybody else, then you're not asking the right question. And the key is, if you want better answers, ask better questions and start with the questions. You ask yourself, what is your I want my career to give me in life? What is it I want my business to give me in life? Am I living my values? 

Or am I having to be someone? I am not? You have an opportunity to today to be able to make that choice. And at the moment, you're making another choice? Is it deliberate? Well, I think you have an opportunity to take control of the few elements that are within your intrinsic control the stuff that's extrinsic and worrying about what other people think and worrying about how you're eating and all this other rubbish. 

Whether you're on top of a leaderboard, does that really matter? Is that sustainable? I doubt it. What are the questions you're going to be asking yourself on your deathbed? Could I have spent more time at work? I doubt that too. Did I leave behind a legacy? Have I done something useful with my life? Did I make a net contribution? I think these are things that people genuinely care about. And that's what engages them. And that's what brings people to brands. If the brand leaves those values, it's and it's the leader, the founder, it's the practice. Yeah, whoever the manager is that determines the culture.

Al McBride  31:41  
Usually, as you said, that's, that's that element of trust, that a brand has somehow managed to get across to their customer base. Yeah, that's why as you said, when a great brand can sell all sorts of different products, and people buy into it. Because it's more than just Oh, you're an X company or a Y company. It's, it's a whole attitude. It's a whole approach. Absolutely. It's all identities.

Marcus Cauchi  32:05  
Look at the queues that were formed outside an Apple Store, and people, you interview people, I'm not sure what it is, but it's apple.

Al McBride  32:18  
But this is the thing. It that's the very thing, Apple just do marketing, they don't really need to do sales, people just walk in, and sales is just buy here, click the Buy button after.

Marcus Cauchi  32:32  
It is in their case. But sales is just a subset of marketing. It's more personal. It used to be face to face, but now it's over video or phone or whatever, anyway. But the medium has changed the channel has the channel is the mind of the buyer. That's all. And as long as you can tap into that, and the conversations they're already having and understand the context in which they operate. You're already ahead of the curve. But you got to make that time for yourself. And you can't make that time if you're rushing around chasing a list of 2000 names trying to dial every one of them to convince all of them to buy your shit. Find the 11.

Al McBride  33:19  
Phenomenal insights there, Marcus, there's a huge amount that we've just touched on. But I love the way you brought it back to start with yourself. Start with the reflection start with yourself. Notice those, as he said, Get improve your questions because your questions have a presupposition, subconscious or very overt presupposition watch what they are. This is huge stuff. And as you said we were building from those bases from those foundations up. Do you need the solid foundations to start with?

Marcus Cauchi  33:52  
One of my favorite things at the moment is to use the AI to deconstruct my conversations and to critique me. It's reshaping the painful I mean, I'm 35 years into this I should know better. And what's fabulous, is it's brutal. And my ego cannot possibly complain. Because I asked for it. And it's just giving me objectively back what I asked it. So if the question is bad, that's on me. If the answer is what I wanted, I then have to examine where are my biases in this? What are my preconceptions? What are my hopes and fears? You know, what, what baggage am I bringing to this party that's causing this to fail? I've improved so much as a result of having this thing beat me to death on a daily basis.

Al McBride  34:46  
It sounds like you'd have a whole conversation on how to use Chachi VT or other AI is in a very effective way because so many people seem to be using it in a very thin way in very unhelpful ways. Just churning out crap But as you said, it's such a powerful tool when, when used in an effective manner.

Marcus Cauchi  35:06  
And again, it's mixing and matching, because they've got different language models. And I developed a prompt, it took about 20 minutes to eventually get down to it. But it was worth it. Because now, whenever I want research, I just move the stuff from the square brackets and change that. And then I press, click, and off it goes. And it comes back with a dozen bits of really good quality research, which I can then go and validate. 

But you do that on bad, you don't do it on GPT. Because I want the up to date research up to 23, not 21. Right, then I apply what I find in there on GPT on Larmer. And all of a sudden, I'm getting these very different perspectives. And I can lay a questions for example, I can layer a mon style question in order to get an unbiased response. I can have a jobs to be done question. I can have a solution focus therapy question. And I can build all of these questions into my frameworks. It's just awesome. I've never ever been able to think in this way.

Al McBride  36:17  
binominal so if any of this stuff, please definitely. I mean, I was gonna ask you, though, do you have any resource around that that people can can learn? Yeah, because a lot of people are just tripling, you know, tripping over themselves, the Chachi party, they're playing with it, but they're not very effective. I'm

Marcus Cauchi  36:37  
launching an offer on this one. But we've I partnered up with my pal Mellie Dahmen, who's a neuroscientist and he worked at CB at the time when they were developing challenger. He was one of their sales directors, and then went over to Gartner. And we put a program together and it was essentially a six part program on how to use AI well, and how to formulate great questions, then how to research your customer psychographically. 

Understand, over time, how to use public information to understand their psychology, understand their current sentiment, using analyst calls. In order to identify strategic drivers and changes in sentiment and direction. Then how to research your market how to research your competition, how to research your customers competition, and then how to pull it all together to develop a hypothesis. 

So that when you open up the door, the person who refers you in because this is the other thing that we've realized is people aren't picking up the phone or answering email. So you have to learn how to sell hot not cold. So combining the research with how do you get introduced by somebody who is trusted by both sides and for them to deliver your hypothesis like a bullet between the eyes. That's what that program is. So we have that available but with a lot of learning came from the first two iterations. So I'm launching a third now.

Al McBride  38:15  
Marcus, where can people get in touch with you? Where can they learn more about you?

Marcus Cauchi  38:19  
LinkedIn is the best place that Marcus Cauchi CAU ch I Marcus at laughs hyphen last.com Twitter I'm in V underscore Inquisitor and the the Inquisitor podcast with Marcus Kalki, those are probably the best places

Al McBride  38:36  
standing stuff. Marcus, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you

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