This week on our show we dive into one of my favourite topics…sales!

For this conversation, we have one of the world’s most notable experts on the subject, Tony Hughes.

Tony is an international keynote speaker, best-selling author, professional selling educator, award-winning blogger, and the most-read LinkedIn Author globally on the topic of B2B sales leadership.

He is the co-founder of Sales IQ Global and ranked by Top Sales Magazine as the most influential person for professional selling in Asia-Pacific.

With 35 years of sales and business leadership experience, Tony is an experienced CEO and company director having served as Director of Sales for public corporations and as the Asia-pacific Managing Director for several tier-one global technology companies.

In our conversation, we cover our origins with selling, and how it transformed both of our lives, we move into the ancient truths of selling through to the cutting-edge approaches in a digitised world. The message is selling isn’t dead, old truths are now radicalised through the digital era.

We go on to discuss, how to lead in creating a customer-centric culture, the future of selling in the fourth industrial revolution and the foundations of sales success in the age of empowered buyers.

Tony teaches ‘modernized selling’ within the MBA program at the University of Technology, Sydney and has taught at other universities, and we discuss how selling hasn’t been taught traditionally in universities as its fallen under the scope of marketing, but as many sellers and marketers know, they are different crafts, Tony shares his views on the future of this relationship too.

I have had the benefit of reading a couple of Tony’s books and recommend The Joshua Principle to anyone that loves sales and connects to the Hero’s Journey, it’s a beautiful story of a novice seller and mentor and their combined journey.

His other book, Tech Powered Sales is a meeting point of Sci-Fi and Sales, it’s radical and future-oriented as it connects Digital, AI, and selling into an ecosystem of connected sales engagement. It’s a remarkable read.