# Paul Kirch

Paul Kirch hosts the Enabling Buying podcast, where he discusses sales, customer success, buyer trust, marketing, and how AI can support more human conversations.

- Profile: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/creators/paul-kirch/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulkirch
- LinkedIn followers: 18,389
- Median of last 6 posts: 13 reactions, 12 comments (checked 2026-11-02)
- Topics: artificial-intelligence, leadership, sales, customer-success, ai-in-sales, sales-leadership, sales-enablement, b2b-sales, pricing-strategy
- Based on 8 dated posts, latest 2026-10-02

## Summary

Paul Kirch is most useful for podcast-led content on sales, customer success, buyer trust, marketing, and AI.

- Best for: It fits a B2B sales enablement or customer success software brand wanting sponsored podcast or co-marketing.
- Not for: This does not fit developer platform or technical infrastructure vendors needing hands-on engineer content, walkthroughs, or implementation detail.
- Check first: Confirm audience demographics, listener or viewer geography, job functions, seniority, and engagement rates.

### Takeaways

- AI can handle research, follow-up, CRM updates, and meeting analysis so sellers listen and build trust.
- Buying is emotional, and trust is what converts.
- Customer success starts with what the customer is actually trying to accomplish.

## Main ideas

- **Curiosity is the start of a sales conversation, not technique**: Kirch's own stated belief is a chain: curiosity leads to attention, attention leads to better listening, and better listening opens the door to better questions, deeper conversations and more meaningful insights. The practical claim is that what a seller notices and asks matters more than a script or a tactic, and Kirch praises the events they speak at for gathering people willing to question assumptions rather than collect tips.
- **AI should take the routine work so people can do the human part**: Kirch frames AI as a way to absorb the administrative load around research, follow-up, CRM updates and meeting analysis, which frees time to listen, ask better questions and earn trust. In the same argument Kirch passes on guest Gregory Rosner's caution that access to AI is not the point: the opportunity is helping people use it to get better at what they do and deliver more value to customers. Kirch also lists "use AI to strengthen relationships instead of replacing them" among the aims of a talk.
- **Buying is emotional, and trust is what converts**: Kirch states plainly that buying is emotional and that emotional triggers influence when and why we buy, then asks how to use that to sell as a trusted resource. The talk outline that follows is a set of behaviors rather than tactics: build trust instead of generating clicks, turn marketing engagement into meaningful conversations, ask questions that uncover real customer needs, and build a stronger bridge between marketing and sales.
- **Customer success starts with what the customer is actually trying to accomplish**: Kirch highlights guest Maranda Dziekonski's view that customer success starts with understanding what the customer is actually trying to accomplish rather than simply delivering a product or service. Kirch presents that idea as the lesson of her career story, from rural Michigan to executive leadership in Silicon Valley, and frames the episode around leadership and the experiences that shaped how she leads. The argument belongs to the guest; Kirch's contribution is selecting and amplifying it.
- **Common sales advice deserves to be questioned**: A pattern across the episodes Kirch promotes: a received idea is named and pushed back on. In one, the target is "active listening," which guest Patrick Ryan argues people should stop trying to use and replace with something that actually works. In another, the target is pricing by competitor comparison or a personal sense of fairness, with guest Etinosa A. presented as showing what really matters when setting a price. Kirch's position in both cases is that the default answer is a poor starting point.
- **Posting for visibility is no longer a content strategy**: Kirch argues that LinkedIn has moved from an algorithm discussion to an automated, AI-driven delivery system, and that spending time posting just to stay top of mind wastes time, energy and money when it brings no return. The conclusion Kirch draws is to adapt where the effort goes, not to post more, and the episode with Louise McDonnell is offered as a masterclass on where to focus.
- **The interview is the method: guests carry the substance, Kirch frames the argument**: Most of Kirch's published material is a short post built the same way: name a problem the reader recognizes, add one specific claim from a named guest, then link to the full conversation and the guest's business. Guests in these posts come from sales psychology, pricing, customer success, social media and AI. Episodes run about 25 minutes and are distributed as audio and video; the show is presented by Collavia, LLC. The editorial priority is practical direction over product talk — Kirch tells readers to follow the guest and watch the interview.

## Work to read

- [Enabling Buying, Episode 15: Gregory Rosner on using AI to get better at sales, not to replace the seller](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/paulkirch_enablingbuying-b2bsales-b2bmarketing-activity-7506020262367096832-OYf9)
- [Enabling Buying: Maranda Dziekonski on leadership and what customer success is actually for](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/paulkirch_talk-about-inspiring-i-recently-sat-down-activity-7495919649700757506-LHoW)
- [Enabling Buying, Episode 18: Patrick Ryan on buyer trust and why 'active listening' advice fails](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/paulkirch_ep-18how-patrick-ryan-builds-buyer-trust-activity-7521240636902109185-HH0O)
- [Enabling Buying: Louise McDonnell on what still works on social media](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/paulkirch_enablingbuying-socialmediamarketing-contentmarketing-activity-7511092331987714048-gpwp)
- [Enabling Buying: Etinosa Agbonlahor on pricing](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/paulkirch_ep-17how-etinosa-agbonlahor-uses-pricing-activity-7516150700930658304-Yjt5)
- [Is buying behaviour emotional? Kirch's own presentation on buying motives](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/paulkirch_is-buying-behavior-emotional-this-image-activity-7506064483425873923-LVrn)
- [Insights Marketing Day 2026: Kirch on curiosity as the start of better selling](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/paulkirch_insightsmarketingday-marketing-customerengagement-activity-7508601307633508352-O3Zl)

## Brand relationships

- **Collavia, LLC** (disclosed_partnership)
- **PitchKitchen** (mention)
- **Sell On Social.Media** (mention)
- **Little Bird Marketing** (mention)
- **Insights Marketing Day** (mention)

## Partnerships

Nothing in the material reviewed sets out a sponsorship or paid-partnership offering from Paul Kirch. His posts promote Enabling Buying podcast episodes, an event appearance, and interviews with guests such as Maranda Dziekonski, Gregory Rosner, Louise McDonnell, Patrick Ryan, and Etinosa Agbonlahor, with links to listen on audio, watch on YouTube, and visit the guest's own site. Those are distribution and guest-credit links, not partnership routes. The one commercial arrangement his own writing states is a presenting credit: an August 2026 post describes the show as "brought to you by Collavia, LLC." No media kit, rate card, sponsorship terms, audience specification, or booking form appears in the evidence, so a brand cannot plan against published requirements. Treat any approach as a direct conversation. The distinction matters: this records an absence of a documented offer in the material reviewed, not a claim that Kirch never accepts sponsorships.

## Alternatives

- Kortney Harmon: Choose Kortney Harmon when the sponsor's buyer is a staffing or recruiting firm rather than a general sales-enablement or customer success audience, and when the sponsor wants the AI-in-marketing argument carried by a named commercial result. Harmon hosts Recruiting Evolution, rebranded from The Full Desk Experience, and the reviewed posts frame the same buyer-discovery shift the brief is built around: buyers asking AI who to trust and building shortlists before they ever speak to a sales team, with the warning that a firm is "either being discovered or being overlooked" and that showing up in Google is no longer enough without authority in AI tools and AI Overviews. The first episode under the new brand puts a number on the same theme, a campaign that reclaimed $1.1 million in revenue, and the guest argument that AI needs more than a basic prompt and should be built into repeatable sales and marketing systems. A sponsor selling into staffing firms, or one that wants the AI-versus-human-work message illustrated with a revenue figure, gets more usable material here than from a general interview show.
- Mark England: Choose Mark England when the brief shifts away from AI in sales conversations and toward franchise ownership, entrepreneurship, or career transition. England's posts describe a route from software engineering into franchise ownership, consulting, and mentoring other business owners, and they announce a Franchise Directions series, Rethinking Ownership, aimed at professionals weighing a career change, opening with the question of whether someone is moving toward an opportunity or simply looking to escape their current situation. A sponsor whose buyer is an aspiring or current business owner, or one that wants an ownership-and-mentoring angle rather than a software-workflow angle, is closer to this material than to a sales or CS show.
- Alex Louisy: Choose Alex Louisy when the sponsor's buyer is a finance leader and the campaign is about a category or product problem rather than sales conversations. Louisy hosts The Growth-Minded CFO Podcast with Lauren Elizabeth Pearl and uses it for two things the reviewed posts show: telling the human stories behind finance leaders, such as Christina Liu of Sigma describing a former manager who was both a successful executive and a working mother, and narrating why a product category exists, in this case the argument that the gap between sending an invoice and getting paid is a financial relationship a company can measure and improve on purpose. A sponsor selling into finance or CFO teams, or one that wants a founder who can explain where a product category came from, gets that here.

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AI-assisted summary of public posts. Audience demographics are not available. Engagement appears only where we checked recent posts. Method: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/methodology/