Selling with Hubspot
Selling with HubSpot is a podcast hosted by Luis Silva-Ball, CEO & Co-Founder of Digifianz designed to help HubSpot sales reps optimize their sales processes for greater success.
Selling with Hubspot
HubSpot VP of Sales Shares Secrets of Effective Sales Negotiations
Join us for a great episode with Camilo Clavijo, the negotiation maestro and VP of Sales for Latin America at HubSpot. He will inspire you with his stories of transforming his early career mishaps into a phenomenal success story. And why a key part of his approach to leadership is to put his sales reps on a pedestal.
Camilo takes us even deeper into his sales negotiation philosophy: no cliff-hangers, just real insights. Get ready to learn about the pivotal role of gaining insights and team collaboration in navigating the complex sales terrain. Camilo breaks down his process, highlighting how the product, brand, and self-confidence can be your secret weapons in closing deals.
🔗 CONNECT WITH CAMILO
👤 LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/cclavijo2/
🔗 CONNECT WITH LUIS & DIGIFIANZ
👤 LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/luissilvaball/
🐦 Twitter - https://twitter.com/LuisSilvaBall
💻 Digifianz Website - https://www.digifianz.com/
WHAT IS DIGIFIANZ?
Digifianz is an award winning HubSpot Diamond Partner. At Digifianz, we believe in the transformational power of humanizing business relationships. We believe driving honest, open conversations with prospects, and constantly providing them with value before they've ever bought anything, ultimately leads to better sales and a happier & loyal customer base. That's why we help companies grow with a people-first mentality & strategy.
Hey everyone, welcome to our sales podcast with Selling with HubSpot. We're here with Camilo, who's the VP of sales for Latin America. Camilo, you've had a pretty interesting journey on your way to becoming the VP of sales for HubSpot for Latin America. How did you end up in this position? How did that happen? Walk us through your journey.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me here. First of all, it's really interesting to be in a podcast again, so pretty cool that initiative. I love it. Pretty simple, I started from the ground up as a BDR, just calling customers, call, calling. Forget about the CRM. I was using sugar at that time, green screen awful.
Speaker 2:But I ended up loving sales and loving technology and loving helping customers. So I evolved into a sales rep traditionally mid-market accounts, then into bigger accounts. Then I was the global manager for several companies at Google, then evolved as a leader just because I liked that initiative to help people and help others. That became really good at selling Thanks to a lot of training and a lot of effort, passion, tears and blood. Blood is a little exaggerated, maybe a little bit. Then I just evolved and my career was always developing, being curious, learning more. I became a director with Google. Then I jumped into a boat having more impact for Latin America. That's been a sales director for HubSpot From there, learning a ton For years of growth. This is my fourth year anniversary at HubSpot. I became a VP thanks to the trust from the leadership here.
Speaker 1:Love it Awesome. Now I hear that you're pretty much like a legend in negotiations, specifically. Right, that's what they say. When you come into sales, it's because it's in the negotiating stage and something really needs to get fixed there. Yeah, how did you become this sales legend in negotiations? What can you tell us about negotiating? Because it's a very specific part of sales. It's different from the discovery phase, different from prospecting. It's got its own flavor. Yeah, exactly what can you tell us about it?
Speaker 2:I don't know if I'm a legend. They say I have a good close rate. I will keep it like that.
Speaker 1:Good one. It's 90% close. That's what they say. That's a myth.
Speaker 2:We haven't measured that up, but probably it's higher than that. First of all it's experience Just losing a lot of deals. But when you lose you also have to learn and, as you mentioned, this is the last step. So learning how to do your process properly gives you a ton of knowledge. So if you know, if you qualify properly, you know if you are doing the right thing, you know if the customer is ready or not, and that's something that you can show up in that call. That gives you a ton of confidence.
Speaker 2:So I go into that call and I trust myself that I have the best offer, the best product, the best team that works with that customer. And I'm just there to facilitate things. How elevating my rep. My rep is the rock star in that negotiation. If the rep is willing to give them a discount, a concession, I will do it only if the rep is in agreement to do so. So I'm not there to overrule the rep work. I'm there to support my rep and tell them that they are doing the right thing, the value that they are setting is right and that we are not going to negotiate beyond what is going to affect my rep, Because at the end of the day, there was a lot of work being done to be in that position.
Speaker 2:I should be able to close a deal that goes into preparation. You need to prepare that, you need to have the energy. You need a lot of things to be in preparation for you can dig deeper into that one later. But at the end of the day, it's just like making a lot of mistakes but learning that you trust your product, you trust yourself, you trust your brand and the customer needs you more than what actually you need them Makes sense.
Speaker 1:So, preparation how do you prepare to enter a negotiation? What needs to happen? A sales rep is in the negotiating phase. They're entering that phase. What goes into making sure that they're ready for that? I?
Speaker 2:mean they need to be sure, like the product they are buying or the solution they are buying is going to help at doing something different at that company. So why they need to do something with us? The first question. The second one is like what happens if they do nothing? And if the answer is flaw, fee is not clear. There is no clear value on those. Don't move forward. There is no deal there. There is no activity that you can do there that is going to convince that customer. Just go back into discovery phase and we'll learn what's going on over there. If that happens.
Speaker 2:Well, go into the next one. What is the tech stack? You need to understand how this is going to be implementing on top of something or replacing something or connecting with something else and be sure that you actually have a technical win, which means like if they choose you today, you are not gonna have any issue developing a proper implementation for that customer. And the third phase is just creating scenarios. I do two or three scenarios. When you can think about pricing, you can think about all the alternatives that could happen in that meeting. Never negotiate one thing. Think about a wider realm of scenarios or things that you can negotiate that you're willing to give but you're also willing to get from that customer. Prepare those and then go into the meeting with that part. Confirm that you have a need clear. Confirm the status tag when you have a technical win and then go into negotiation. It's not only pricing, it's a lot of condition that you can think about to negotiate.
Speaker 1:And that's a great point, because people often tend to get stuck in pricing. I think we were just talking about Grant Cardone how he always talks about how people tend to go to pricing like that. Oh man, my negotiation is falling down. Okay, I'll reduce the pricing and sometimes it's not about the pricing and kind of counterintuitively, maybe even increasing the pricing can work sometimes. Have you seen that happen? What can be a different factor that might be the important thing for you to cap into that might make this deal happen?
Speaker 2:that is not the pricing, yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, this is a project, what we're selling here at HubSpot. So you are selling licensing, you are selling implementation, you are selling time that they're gonna be committing to you, you are selling how fast they can start implementing, you are selling being a reference or not, and all those pieces come together. Sometimes the customer is more important for them to solve a need, at whatever cost they have. If you identify that you have a win card in your hand. If you don't, that's when they start losing the negotiation from scratch. How do you identify that?
Speaker 2:The question that I mentioned what happens if they do nothing? And if the answer is like, well, we're gonna be fine, you don't have a deal? That's when you come in it's like look, if I can solve this problem, is it worth it for you to do it or not? And sometimes you found doing a discovery again in that negotiation that they I will give you an example with hops they don't need marketing, they also need sales, and sales is a new realm of possibilities with a lot of seats. And now you it adds to the price, it adds to the price and you keep adding more product because they know like it's not about just funneling deals into their sales reps. It's about how they can work those deals more effectively. And you ask two or three questions and you notice that Can you go back to scratch or to someone, do another discovery, be patient but be able to we produce that into a bigger deal and then go negotiate again in the future. But you can grow the price ticket if you do the right question.
Speaker 1:Absolutely cause you're solving the problem that they have. You're not just getting stuck on selling your product, but you're actually like listening to them and going for okay, what I was selling you on wasn't solving your issue and the problem was not price. It was that I wasn't solving the issue that you have.
Speaker 2:If you are solving something, they will find the budget Absolutely. That's never a problem for a company.
Speaker 1:Love it, love it. Any last tips on negotiating somebody who's starting, someone who's new at negotiating or who's not fully comfortable with how they're negotiating Any last tips for them?
Speaker 2:Trust yourself. You need to trust yourself, otherwise the customer is not gonna trust you. If there is no trust, there is no negotiation happening. Practice I practiced a lot with my little six years old girl and I lose a lot with her, so that's something I need to get better at. I can get something from you.
Speaker 1:I don't have kids. I negotiate with my dog. Okay, there you go.
Speaker 2:Practice. You can practice all the time. Practice with significant other. Think about the activities that you wanna do during the weekend. That's a negotiation that is happening right there. And third, preparation. Don't forget that piece. Prepare for every meeting that you're having in negotiation. You have 30 minutes before to prepare. Last but not least, ask for help. You are not alone. If you're in a sales team, someone probably saw that same situation, so probably saw that coming or happening in the past, and they just can't help you on how they saved it or how they were able to turn it around and increase the ticket price, for example. So ask for help.
Speaker 1:Love it all right.
Speaker 2:Cool Thanks, camilo. Thank you, luis, appreciate it All right.
Speaker 1:Love it, thank you.