#236 Mastering Tech Sales and Leadership with Luis Baez, the Revenue Enablement Maestro

0:00:02 - Mehmet
Hello and welcome back to a new episode of the CTO Show with Mehmet. Today I'm very pleased to have with me Luis, who is joining me from Sacramento, california. Luis, thank you very much for being on the show today. The way I love to do it is I keep it to my guests to introduce themselves, because who can introduce someone better than themselves? So the floor is yours. 

0:00:21 - Luis
Thank you, mehmet. I appreciate this opportunity and I appreciate to anyone who's listening today. My name is Luis, my pronouns are he, him, and I am someone who, by day, serves as a revenue enablement practitioner at a startup, and I moonlight as a consultant helping online businesses and other startups with building their sales teams and building their sales playbooks, and I fell into this career really by chance. I am someone who grew up in poverty. I'm the first in my family to pursue education and to pursue running a business and to go down this path in working in corporate, and so sales was a matter of survival instincts and doing the things that I needed to do to provide, and it ultimately became a thrill ride, and I've worked at companies like LinkedIn and Google and Uber and Tesla. I've worked as an individual contributor and as a sales leader, and I've made a revenue impact of over 600 million as an individual contributor. 

So wild ride and lots of perspective. 

0:01:27 - Mehmet
Wow, really it's a wild ride and very, really I love to hear these stories. It's very inspiring, I would say, Luis and you must have witnessed a lot of transformation, especially because you work in sales in tech industry. So what are the major transformation that you have seen? You mentioned a couple of companies and they are different. I would say, as we call it in the startup world. Their customer profile is different. So LinkedIn is different than Uber, different than Tesla, different than Google. So what you can tell us about this transformation that you have seen and of sales in the tech industry. 

0:02:19 - Luis
Yeah, I think that I came to realize as the world transitioned to virtual selling in the recent years after the pandemic. I came to realize that I've been doing it for a decade prior and I think that that is probably the biggest shift that I can call out over my time in the industry, which spans now 16, almost 17 years and I've gone from literal door to door sales working in advertising sales, showing up at advertising agencies and pursuing relationships and meetings and things like that to leveraging tools like LinkedIn Sales Navigator to warm up and tee up conversations with C-level executives at Fortune 500 companies, and that didn't require being on the streets of New York knocking door to door. It was a very methodical approach from my home office and that, I think, is truly the biggest shift that I've seen in the industry and the biggest impact that the industry is that on the rest of the world it's changed the way that we sell and, of course, therefore the way that people consume. 

0:03:29 - Mehmet
Yeah, really it's a huge shift, I would say, over there. So, like you mentioned a couple of things that you've done, but what are some of the most effective strategies you think that you used in scaling revenues for tech startups? 

0:03:50 - Luis
Yeah, that's an excellent question. 

I think the most important thing to recognize is your capacity, when you step into a situation like that, to lead and facilitate and nurture, as opposed to being very rigid and thinking about being completely prescriptive about everything. 

Most important thing is to really acknowledge and recognize people within a group who are performing well and to allow for that recognition by including them in the process of sharing templates, best practices, wins, losses and lessons learned, creating coaching opportunities, creating opportunities for recording calls and sharing calls. 

I think the most important thing that you can do is start to create and amplify success within the group, showcase and make examples of those success and then think about supporting that with the necessary content and tools, training and coaching. And so if, for example, I'm stepping into a group that has traditionally relied on product led growth and sort of an inbound engine and now they're transitioning to becoming an outbound sales force, they are likely going to hesitate, resist, need coaching, training, affirmations and all those things. They also need tools, cadences, examples, sort of a best in class, and in that instance it's a bit of incorporating what I know to work things like cold calling on, site visits, conferences, emails, etc. Within in the process, also learning again, creating that connected tissue within the group where we introduce something, we test, we optimize and we showcase everyone's success and build the playbook based off of that, off of real learnings from engagement with the customer. 

0:05:56 - Mehmet
Yeah, that's great. So, like you, lewis, you shifted also to to. You know sales leadership roles. So and you know this question because I've I've worked in sales as well so what you can tell me because I'm curious also by asking every single sales leader this question, like offline, online or wherever we can meet so what are, you know, the most significant leadership challenges? That you personally have faced, you know, or that maybe sales leaders usually they face, especially in tech, and what are the best ways to overcome that? 

0:06:33 - Luis
Gosh, okay, that's an excellent question. So the biggest challenge that I've faced, when I think about leadership and when I think about what it takes to be an effective and inspiring and influential and impactful leader, I think about the need to that intersection of IQ, right, your sort of, you know, intellectual capacity, eq, your emotional intelligence and your capacity for connecting with people. But then there's a third component of cultural intelligence and that is your capacity as a leader to sit at a table with people who are vastly different than you in terms of the communities that they are part of or the perspective that they bring to the conversation, and your capacity to still have and facilitate a successful and productive conversation where everyone grows. That, I think, is, you know, what I have come to learn, is the trifecta, if you will, of a really strong and effective leadership. And so I, being someone that grew up in New York City and someone who is first generation out gay and all of these things, I thought that I had that emotional and cultural intelligence downpack and that's been the biggest challenge for me, stepping into leadership, is realizing that there was an opportunity for me to further develop my cultural intelligence and my capacity for gathering people and influencing a conversation or a project in a very specific direction, and I think that the way that you develop that capacity is being an active listener right, not always, you know inserting yourself and insisting on the answer. 

Being the active listener, there are plenty of books and podcasts to consume, right. There's work that you've got to do on your own right, and I think there's also plenty of leaders in the space to learn from and to witness and to take on as mentors and guides, if you will, and so I think that the way to develop that is really developing your capacity for listening. 

0:08:43 - Mehmet
I loved. You know, you know this third factor, which is the cultural intelligence, and I believe this is an underrated one, and I repeat this also myself, Luis, because you know when we talk about, you know culture of startups mainly, and you know because we cover startups and tech here. So one of the things that I highlight is being able to understand the cultural difference, and I know for a fact that you know, because US is like multi-cultural, you know, like in each state might be different than others, and this one I talked to founders and I tell them okay, when you come to other parts of the world, so you need to understand this as well, because and I heard this, you know from many people like what works, for example, as you mentioned, for example, on the East Coast in New York City, might not work in on the West Coast, like in San Francisco, let's say, and I'm telling them, the same applies. So maybe you have a common thing in the US. It doesn't apply in Europe, or it doesn't apply in the Middle East, where I live, for example, and you know you need to factor this in your sales methodology and you might have the best product, you might have the best technology, but you need to touch on the culture. 

So I love this really, luis, like really, you know it puts out, say, the human part on. You know the sales. I would say. So thank you for sharing this. Now you mentioned some methodologies, like few moments ago, but again maybe we can, if you can, delve a little bit into this. So what can startups learn from the methodologies you mentioned when it comes to building and selling high end products? 

0:10:35 - Luis
Yeah, okay, when, first of all, there needs to be a mindset shift. Right, your capacity for selling something that's higher end is already met if you've been selling all along. What I've learned that is that it takes the same amount of courage and energy and the same processes and steps to close a $200,000 deal as it does a $20 million deal, right? So there's that mindset shift that needs to happen on an individual sort of basis. I think the bigger thing also as a company, is coming to terms with the fact that your sales cycle will be much longer if the product or the service is more expensive or high end, meaning the customer is not likely to close on one phone call or in the first meeting. 

There needs to be a process of education, transformation and visualization where a customer sees their success by working with you. Right, you do that through a series of qualification calls and discovery calls, demonstration calls and the such right Scoping calls. You have moments where you're engaging with the customer throughout to really size up the solution and personalize the buying experience for them, and that is actually the requirement of high end sales. Is a personalization for the buyer, right, if they feel like it's just a transactional cookie cutter sort of experience. If you're not listening actively to what it is that they need specifically to meet their requirements or to achieve their end state, then you're missing out. You're not going to thrive selling high end. 

0:12:17 - Mehmet
Yeah, great insight. So now, like this is, I mean, it should start with the founders. Let's say, especially if you are talking about startups here, right, so how you like what? Let me rephrase it this way so what are some of the strategies that you know business owners, or like founders, can do? So, first, so for themselves to become, you know, better leaders, and then start to, you know, put these methodologies and put this culture that you were talking about into their teams. So what are some of the strategies that you know they can utilize? 

0:13:07 - Luis
Yeah, absolutely. I think that that capacity for active listening is going to be really important. Not just listening to the customer iterate details about their day to day, right, but like really understanding what. Why does this matter to you? What would it impact if we fix this? How would you quantify that? What would that result in a year from now? 

Right, I think that really, you know the that capacity for understanding and empathizing with the customer is the most important thing that you've got to develop, and it's a matter of when you're listening, practicing, tying that whatever feedback you get back to a pain, and also developing the capacity to slow the customer down or slow yourself down and ask those secondary and tertiary questions to get to the root of what is going on. Because, as you think about amplifying your efforts, building out a team and getting other people on board to engage customers and sell what it is you have to offer and evangelize what it is that you're doing you have to give them. You know that playbook of this is the customer profile. These are the kinds of questions that they ask. This is what they're scared of. You know. This is what is a risk to them. These are the features or the services that most appeal to them, based on the hundred conversations. 

I had before I sat down at the table with you today, right? So that active listening, that resilience to keep going right, you're going to fail several times before you start to see some success and those failures are actually going to be the bigger lessons in the winds. And so you've got to be that active listener, that person who captures all that knowledge and all that information about the buyer, the buyer, psychology, intention and the things that motivate them, and and teach that to the next, and then have that person then amplify everything you do. What I like to tell founders, in particular of companies, is you will always be salesperson number one right through and you will always be leader number two. 

See, the thing is that as a founder, you have to be that visionary, you have to be the one that leads the charge, but really you need to find one other person to help you amplify that vision. You have to find your first leader, your number one. Right, that could be another scalable executive, your chief revenue officer or sales director well, whomever that is but somehow someone has to take that capacity that you develop to talk about the product or the service and they have to carry that torch love this, love this, lewis, you know, and it's about you know, being able to sell actually the idea that you came, you established this business you know for, or maybe the problem that you are trying to solve. 

0:16:09 - Mehmet
So you need to, to learn how to sell it actually. And when we say, unfortunately, when we say the word sell, you know, like don't take it in the negative way, but actually it's like you need to spread, you know, your solution to as many people as possible. And let me ask you this, because this is I will repeat it on the show, but I want to hear your opinion about it, lewis how important is storytelling here? 

0:16:37 - Luis
I think storytelling is everything when it comes to relationship building, and it's certainly the most important tool that you can, or skill that you can, develop in selling and in leading. Right, there is, there, there's. There are two things, there are two approaches. Right, I can tell you, as I'm walking you through something click here, do this, do that. Those three steps you'll follow along, but they won't stay with you beyond the exercise or that immediate moment. They don't make their way into your long-term memory. 

However, if I tell you a story about how a customer came to me, they were frustrated, they were weeping, they were up at night, they were anxious. 

You know, there was this physical manifestation of everything that they were going through and they jumped on the line and we got together and we figured out that the right thing for them to do was to first click here and after click, they felt immediate relief and they felt that you know then, right, if you, if you can describe for someone what it's like to go through the process and what it feels like to go through the process and and help them visualize for themselves that success or that outcome or end state, the information that you share with them is more likely to stay, and so I rely heavily on storytelling and data. 

See, this is the other thing. One of the biggest skills that you can develop is using data, using engagement, retention, usage, whatever data points make sense that for their customer and weaving that into your storytelling right. So I remember I connected with the customer, just like you. Their revenues were down 38% and they were frustrated because they needed to 5x in this capacity, and so we moved down the line. We implemented these three things and within five days we thought we saw 120 increase in productivity. I'm telling you the story of data, and when I do so, it adds more credibility to the story that I'm telling. 

0:18:43 - Mehmet
Yes, 100%. This is very important and actually this is how you establish also the empathy, I believe, because, at the end of the day, as I was saying, as you mentioned also, luis, like you're trying to solve a problem and you need to establish this empathy that you were that we had customer who was struggling, facing issues, we shifted him from point A to point B and this is how we did it, so, 100%. Now we mentioned data and, regarding data here, when we talk data, we talk technology. So what are the key technologies that you think are essential for boosting sales and revenue, of course, in today's market? 

0:19:34 - Luis
Gosh, I'm trying to be mindful of an early startup or an early stage business versus this business that has more funding. I think, as you are sort of an early stage, a lot of your data will be anecdotal. A lot of the information that you pull will require you to sit with customers and get them to disclose the impact that something has had on the way after working with you. But as the business evolves and you're able to invest in systems you want to be thinking about, if I were selling an app, I would want software that tracks all the engagement and all the ways that customers use things and that way I can come back and pull data and say customers that use these features are five times more likely to see this result. That's how we arrive at those data points. 

So thinking about tracking behaviors, tracking engagement, even on the sales side there's opportunity to create data around performance, not only looking at sales cycle like how many days does it take to close a typical deal, or segmenting that data. 

It takes this much time to close a deal of this size versus this much time for a deal of that size. 

That's what we mean by segmentation, and so thinking about leveraging tools like Salesforce and other CRMs to arrive at this information, and even beyond that, thinking about leveraging revenue intelligence tools like GONG, which listen in on calls and have all these AI solutions built into it that analyze all of your sales calls and surfaces information for you Data points on behavior, data points on specific words that drive conversion, specific features during demos that drive conversion, or even thinking about using that data to help drive certain behaviors. And so when we think about there have been times where we've gotten feedback about being a more gender neutral in the way that we approach our customers, so we look at data around. How often people say things like hey guys on phone calls, right, these are tools that you implement as you grow, and this is the way that you use these tools and leverage that data as you grow is you have all these systems in place and you need to then dedicate the resources to analyzing that data and applying it. 

0:22:08 - Mehmet
That's interesting one, luis, because you mentioned AI. So by any mean, it's not a tricky question or something to challenge, but it's something that I wrote, I think, this article 2017. And then I had a couple of guests that the topic came and we're discussing sales, and then the topic of AI came and then we're trying to understand how much AI would be involved in the whole conversation and how much AI could be involved in decision making as well. I mean not only from seller perspective, from buyer perspective, and it's maybe a wild idea. And in 2017, there was no chat. Gpt. This technology was, of course, like it was in the labs, but I mean it was not out to the public. And I asked a question like would we see one day a robot selling to the robot or a robot when it bought? I mean an AI system that is taking the decision? Like, is this like too much science fiction, do you think? 

0:23:28 - Luis
I think that there will always be boundaries around this. I think that there's enough of a critical mass around AI that there will be enough voices to do and say the things around protecting businesses and people while also harnessing the opportunity of leveraging AI. And so let's consider early stage business or a business that is strat for resources, right, like I've stepped into businesses as a practitioner where I was a function and a team of one and I had to produce massive amounts of content, training, et cetera. And you know, in the moment of the pressure mounting, the deadlines mounting and having no resources available to hire or delegate or anything, I have certainly leveraged tools to help me outline content, to help me generate questions for quizzes, to help me generate emails that I can then repurpose and edit and, you know, and customize for the use case, right, and it certainly speeds up the process and speeds up my capacity to deliver. 

And in a situation where I've stepped into businesses that have that capacity to invest in revenue intelligence tools, right, I might be again a team in a function of one, listening to and training and coaching 10, 20, 30 reps across the business and everyone is failing to close. They seem to get their deals. You know I've got this intelligence where I'm looking at. You know, the deal cycle and our close rate is abysmal, and so I don't have time to listen to everyone's call. But I can leverage this tool to surface those calls where certain behaviors are happening. The last 10 minutes of a phone call I can look at transcripts of calls, instead of having to listen to the entire conversation. I can home in on the incident where you know I can learn and coach. Right. That also then puts me in a position to develop more content. So I go okay, everyone's failing because everyone's doesn't. 

They don't have a tool that represents or calculates this, so let me go back and create this tool and deliver that to my team Right, and so that is how I, as a solo practitioner in a situation, have been able to deliver the results that the business needs for the velocity of the business. 

0:26:08 - Mehmet
Yeah, great use case, I would say. And again, now it was a controversial question. Let's say that I asked, but this is what I believe it's like. It's not here to replace the whole thing, it's just a tool to power us and, as they are saying now, augment, you know, our capabilities. So, as you said, it's going to save time for you to coach your team on the other side, from customer perspective actually. So I believe it will help customers. They will not give the full control to AI, of course, but it's going to help them in, you know at least, let's say, because I know I sit on both sides and I know things, how it works, but I can say it's going to save them the time, you know, for round one, round two, round three of evaluations. So they, instead of evaluating 15 proposers so maybe they would be able to know it Okay, they're going to sit and end up with three instead of 15 proposers, because these are the ones that you know. We know for sure that they fit their requirements and it solves their problems. So, 100% on this. 

Now, shift a little bit, gis, you know, as we are coming to the end, Luis, so I know that you had a LinkedIn learning course and it was taken by more than 15,000 people. So what were the key factors? I'm curious, you know, because you know a lot of, as you mentioned, like solo contributors. They go to this route as well. So what were the key factors to make this online course a success? 

0:27:45 - Luis
Yeah, there are a couple of things happened. I, in my own business and in my own practice, started leveraging video as part of my sales process. Short form video People are used to consuming short form video. They're on TikTok, instagram all day long, and so if we could create some of that magic in our sales process, we'll be connected with customers and why not? And I started speaking on shows and live broadcasts about some of the work that I've been doing and some of the results that I've been seeing, leveraging video and sharing that openly. 

A publisher tapped my shoulder and they said we'd love to invite you to teach. You know how it is that you do this to an audience and you know see if the opportunity for distribution. So we produced the course. It's all focused on different micro conversions during the sales process, everything from the first encounter with the customer to leveraging video to demo the product, communicate asynchronously you know objection handle, deliver customer testimonials. I baked all of that into the program and we produced it and it got picked up for distribution on LinkedIn learning, and so that is how that came together, as far as the behind the scenes. But the content is really focused on that intersection of, again, technology, data, but also leveraging that personalization and bringing authenticity to the sales process. I think that what's happened is in that haste to automate and scale. There's a human touch that is often missed, and there are scalable ways of humanizing and personalizing a buying experience without burning yourself out as a business owner or as an organization, and so those are the things that I dive into into that program. 

0:29:40 - Mehmet
That's, that's you know good, I would say, strategy that maybe some someone else can can utilize. So it looks as we almost like coming to the end where people can find more about you. 

0:29:54 - Luis
Yeah, certainly connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm always hanging out there and happy to chat it up, and if you are wondering what it is that I'm up to, or maybe one access that LinkedIn program I just shared, you can head on over to learnfromluiscom. 

0:30:08 - Mehmet
That's great. I'll make sure that this will be in the show notes of the episode. 

0:30:14 - Luis
Anything, luis, that you wish that I had touched base on, gosh, I think the only thing that we didn't get into was the importance of taking care of yourself, and I think that all too often, we're so focused on the results. The silver bullet, the hack, the magic formula, the magic. Whatever the businesses that we're building, the ambitions that we have and the things that we ultimately will build, will not happen if we are not well, and, as leaders, as sales reps, as entrepreneurs, whatever capacity your influence might be if you do not focus on your mental and your physical well-being, you will never achieve the results, and even if you do, you won't be well enough to enjoy them. And so do not lose sight of prioritizing your wellness and your team's wellness. Remind them to work out, to take their meal breaks and to make sure that they see their doctors and practitioners. It's incredibly important, otherwise, no one gets anywhere. 

0:31:18 - Mehmet
With advice and thank you for mentioning this and touch base on this. It's very important. We covered this in a couple of episodes and I have some full episodes just about burnout and mental health, which is important actually. So you cannot perform if you are not physically and mentally fit. I would say so thank you again, luis, for mentioning this. So we come to the end of the episode. Really, time flew out. 

Say thank you very much for all the insights you provide us, luis, today. I really appreciate it and for my audience, they know by now how I end my episodes. Guys, keep the feedbacks coming. Whether it's something you like, you don't like, share that with me. I'm always keen to try to enhance this podcast, making it better. So I'm listening to you and also, if you are interested to be a guest also on the show, don't hesitate to reach out. I would be more than happy to have you with me here on the show. It doesn't matter where you are based in the world. I can fit all time zones. I'd say so, no problem at all, and thank you very much for tuning in. We'll meet again very soon. Thank you Until next time. Bye. 

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