Explore every episode of the podcast Empowered Selling

I’m excited to unveil this episode of Empowered Selling, featuring the phenomenal Amy Blanthorne Hazel, now Senior RVP at Salesforce UKI. Amy’s journey from her early days at IBM to leading some of Salesforce’s most dynamic teams is packed with actionable insights on leadership, sales excellence, and building lasting client relationships.

Here are some key highlights from the episode:

🔥 The Power of a Playbook

🔥 Building Trust and Authentic Relationships

🔥 Mastering Objection Handling

🔥 Sales Leadership in Large vs. Small Organizations

🔥 From First-line to Second-line Leadership

🔥 Resilience in Tough Times

🔥 Self-sufficiency and Speed 

This episode offers inspiring lessons on strategic leadership, building trust-based relationships, and embracing a growth mindset — all from one of the most impressive leaders in the sales world today.

🎧 Don't miss out—listen now and elevate your leadership game!

In this latest episode, I had the pleasure of chatting with Doreen Pernel, CSO at Scaleway, a trailblazing European cloud and AI solutions provider. With a stellar background at Bloomberg, Facebook, and Dataiku , Doreen shares her insights on transforming organisations, building high-performance teams, and embracing innovation.

Highlights of our conversation include:

• The power of relationship-building in sales—trust is your true superpower.
• How a culture of enablement and coaching drives scalability and talent retention.
• Creative strategies for outbound sales engagement—surprise touches, video outreach, and team challenges.
• The role of AI in automating mundane tasks and freeing up sales teams to focus on strategic in-person interactions.
• The importance of daring to take risks—asking for forgiveness, not permission—and seizing growth opportunities.

Doreen’s growth-mindset, authenticity, and adaptability make her a truly inspiring leader. Her advice? - Be bold, stay curious, and never be afraid to "ask for forgiveness"—the most successful often do.

Enjoy!

In the latest episode we had the great pleasure of speaking to the awesome Scott Barghaan, an inspiring Senior GTM leader with an impressive career spanning over 25 years in sales and consultancy. From his impactful roles at EMC and Salesforce, where he shaped sales strategies and developed a groundbreaking global seller experience, Scott shares insights into his work and the lessons learned along the way. As ever this episode is packed with actionable insights, making it a must-listen for anyone looking to elevate their sales leadership game.

Some of the key topics discussed:

• Evolving landscape of selling and the role of Sales Leaders
• The need for sales leaders to adapt their strategies to stay relevant
• Scott's own journey as a cancer survivor, providing him with a unique perspective on the balance between work and personal life

• Fostering a culture of experimentation

• The crucial role of understanding buyer behaviour

• Leveraging AI for improved sales processes
• The need for sales leaders to adapt their strategies to stay relevant

• The art of asking the right questions to enhance customer engagement

We also dive into Scott's role in advising and investing in early-stage sales technologies, while also teaching at a prestigious MBA program and contributing to a national nonprofit that empowers individuals with disabilities. His passion for helping others is highlighted through the touching story he shares of  getting his daughter into skiing with the help of the National Ability Center.

Enjoy!

I was thrilled to reunite with a friend and former coachee of mine who also happens to be one of the most successful Sales Leaders in the UK, SVP of Cloud Services at Salesforce, Maddy Storr. 

Maddy starter in career in her (small) family business, later working in recruitment which she says proved the foundation for her future success. She joined Salesforce a decade ago as an Account manager and has enjoyed tremendous success ever since. She transitioned into first line leadership in 2019, and was promoted into 2nd line leadership in 2022, and in 2024 she transitioned into a third-line leadership role with responsibility for leading the Salesforce Digital business, Revenue & Commerce Clouds, Slack and Service Cloud organisations across UKI. 

In this episode we covered a wealth of topics including:

1. How to truly build and lead a high performance sales team
2. Insights on how to hire great talent (teaser: Experience matters less than core characteristics + potential!)
3. Importance of doing the (future) job before you get the job
4. Overcoming the most challenging aspects of Sales Leadership
5. Approaches for (two-way!) feedback and coaching 
6. The value of clarity & expectation setting + consistency

Listen now and gain insights that’ll elevate your sales strategy and leadership skills!

Sales leaders, if you’re ready to level up, this podcast is a must-listen! 

I had the privilege of speaking with Jean-Baptiste Graire, an incredible sales and tech leader who’s partnered with industry giants like Mars, Coca-Cola, and Chanel. He shares his wealth of experience, from leading a €30 million business at Salesforce to mentoring the next generation of sellers.

In this episode, we discuss:

1. The increasing power and importance of human relationships in Sales in the age of AI
2. Why mentorship is the key to accelerating your sales career
3. How to diversify your sales pipeline and navigate uncertainty
4. Transforming from transactional to transformational selling

Listen now and gain insights that’ll elevate your sales strategy and leadership skills!

What a first episode with rockstar Fractional CRO, John Zurowski as our first guest. 

We're jumping right in, covering some of the hottest and meatiest topics in Sales Leadership today including: 

• Setting up for Success at the start of your selling FY
• Countering the 'Hockey Stick' effect in Sales
• Overcoming Pipegen challenges + driving (effective!) prospecting and piorgen efforts
• Responding to key challenges in Sales/Sales leadership

This episode's guest, John Zurowski has spent 20 years leading sales functions for high-growth companies like Salesforce and Xerox and now works as a Fractional CRO for a range of organisations - from early-stage start-ups to Enterprise orgs, so he has incredible insight in driving a successful sales motion in organisations of all sizes. He shares a tonne of inspiring advice in this episode!