Selling with Hubspot

HubSpot Sales Manager Shares Tips on How to Master Rejection and Prospecting

• Digifianz • Season 1 • Episode 6

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Join us for an insightful conversation with Carlos Gutiérrez, the Sales Manager for HubSpot's Northcone of Latin America, packed with practical strategies and mindset shifts that can elevate your sales game. He shares winning habits to help sales reps thrive in the saturated market, focusing on consistency, execution, and owning your time.

Charly also shares his innovative prospecting techniques and how to add tangible value for your prospects. And when it comes to rejection, he has a refreshing take: every 'no' is just one step closer to a 'yes.'

Tune in for an empowering session that will arm you with the resilience and grit needed to turn adversity into wins.

🔗 CONNECT WITH CARLOS

👤 LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlosgutierrezb/

🔗 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.

Speaker 1:

Hey everyone, welcome to our podcast selling with HubSpot. We're here inbound with Charlie, who is the sales manager for the Northcone of Latin America. Charlie, can you tell us a bit about your background, how you got to be the sales manager for Latin America? And, yeah, like, what are your work responsibilities? What kind of team do you supervise and what kind of stuff do they do? Frey?

Speaker 2:

thank you. So I am a sales manager for what we call Northcone. So we have divided Latin America in Spanish, spanish speaking Latin America, which is Northcone, and Southcone, and Brazil. So Northcone will be Mexico, central America and the Caribbean, and Southcone will be from Panama, colombia down to Argentina, right? So I manage a team of seven sales reps who manage these countries and we all work with the mid market. Mid market, yes, what exactly is mid market? So mid market for HubSpot will be everything between 25 and 200 employees. When a customer or a prospect has in that range, the number of employees will be considered for us, at least for us mid market.

Speaker 1:

Okay, perfect. And now you have seven people in your team, right yeah? I'm guessing this team has been growing a lot lately, right yeah? And you get a lot of new people in your team as well. What would be something that you'd recommend for someone? A new sales rep that's working with you? What's like the number one thing you want them to know?

Speaker 2:

So great question because, yeah, we have. We normally have like mixed tenure teams, okay. So yes, we have ramping reps recently, higher reps, more tenure reps. So the first thing I told my new reps is like we need to build habits and the consistency. So more than, of course, we are measured by our quotas, but more than focusing on the results or the outputs, let's focus on the, on the inputs, what we call the control, the controllables. So that will be focusing on your process, your prospecting process how do you make calls, how do you make, how do you write emails, how do you write, etc. Etc. So consistency and execution, I would say.

Speaker 1:

Awesome, awesome. And so what kind of habits do you recommend that people actually implement?

Speaker 2:

So one thing will be time management. Okay, it's not like everyone needs to do the same things the same way, meaning maybe you are more of a I like to prospect on my evenings, maybe I might like to prospect first thing in the morning, it doesn't matter. But you need discipline and execution. So what you need to do is like a time blocks blocks on time for prospecting. That is a very important habit, because you need to prospect daily.

Speaker 1:

When we are not we have a saying in our team this when we you're not closing or negotiating you're prospecting, and that's super important, because I mean, like you need to take ownership of your time instead of letting your time take ownership of you. Exactly, yeah, I mean, if you don't plan things out, like you will just be running through the day and and you have no control over what you're doing, and then at the end of the day, you won't realize that you won't have all the tasks you needed to do done.

Speaker 2:

That is correct, because you need to plan your day in terms of, obviously, inputs, but at least have one goal. For example, one goal could be our email 10 prospects. That is a good goal, absolutely.

Speaker 2:

That 10 is just our number as we were saying control what you can control, control what you can control and let's create a deal. That's also something that is controllable. You can't control if you're going to close today. You can control how you are going to speak in that closing meeting or that closing call. Right, that is something that so that this is what I mean when I say control the controllable. We don't know if the customer at the end of the day is going to buy or not, but we can say, hey, I will control my page, I will control how I handle my objections. So that is very important.

Speaker 1:

Love it, Love it. And are there any challenges that you see, like recurrent challenges in your team and their sales operations, and how you can overcome those challenges?

Speaker 2:

So I will say in the top of my mind that prospecting has now become more difficult than ever. Why is that? Because all the companies are thinking the same how can I contact new prospects? I believe that every one of us, all of us have received calls from companies, from credit card companies, emails, linkedin messages. So imagine a sales manager, a marketing director from a prospect company receiving these I mean like reigning calls and cold calls, etc.

Speaker 1:

And we're overwhelmed by all the cold calls. We receive all the cold emails. I know I spam a lot of them Me too.

Speaker 2:

We all do so. Prospecting, I will say, is the biggest challenge, not because of the lack of work that we are I mean we try to do every day it is because we are still and when I say we're the whole industry, we're still trying to innovate. How can we prospect better? But adding value to the customer. How can we add value to the customer? Is it video? I mean we have even tried voice notes over LinkedIn. I have a rep in my team that is working hard on voice notes on LinkedIn and I was like why? I mean I need to iterate because I don't know what to do. So I think that is the biggest challenge right now.

Speaker 1:

And we've been hearing a lot about the voice notes on LinkedIn. It's something I think we haven't tried yet, but we definitely have to. I mean, that's the thing you need to try different things, right, correct, you can't just be satisfied with sending an email or, I don't know, having a call. I mean, if it's not working, you got to try a new approach. You got to contact your prospect in any way. You can Correct and figure out what's the right channel for them, right?

Speaker 2:

So what's the right channel for them and, to be honest, it's not. I mean, we say that prospecting is science and art. I know it's cliché, but it is. It is science, but it is art. So you, as a rep, need to, I mean, please obviously follow your own process, but also be willing to change things, be flexible, because maybe last month what worked for you, what's been prospecting via WhatsApp messages, maybe this month it won't work. Why we don't know. We don't know.

Speaker 1:

It is like that it absolutely is Like sometimes things just change and you got to figure out what's the new way to do things Correct. You got to test things out, be dynamic and get to where it's at.

Speaker 2:

Execute. But you mentioned something important, but execute. So that is the habit. Returning back, going back to your question habits, execute. We have a saying also that better done than perfect, Better done than perfect Go. Let's do it. It didn't work, it doesn't matter.

Speaker 1:

And it's so easy to fall in that trap too, because, I mean, I think we're all, or at least a lot of us, are very much like perfection, especially in sales, like we're very much driven by, we want things to be just right, and trying to get things to be just right can lead us to the point where we're afraid to do things because they are not just right and we just won't get things done, because it's way better to have something that's 80% okay, that has a chance of working, than waiting for months for something to be perfect and then never see in the light of day.

Speaker 2:

I totally agree. Better done than perfect, and especially with new hires or reps that are ramping. That is a difficult thing, because it's not that they are scared, it's like, hey, if I do this will I make a mistake. And we need to embrace mistakes. I mean fail fast.

Speaker 1:

I love. Mistakes Fail fast, so I'm talking about mistakes. Can you tell us about a mistake that you've made in your career? In my career that has really, yeah, left an impression on you, like every day.

Speaker 2:

In top of my mind. I will say, as a sales rep. When I was a rep I did imagine this, so I quote I send the quote of a customer to another customer with a special discount. Imagine that it was intended for another customer and I send you their quote.

Speaker 1:

Oh, man and you see their voices.

Speaker 2:

And some data. This was like, honestly, like 12, 13 years ago and it was I mean my manager was very.

Speaker 1:

You learned from that, yeah.

Speaker 2:

My manager was very happy with me.

Speaker 1:

Of course, yeah, I can imagine.

Speaker 2:

So those mistakes like paying attention to details, that is very important, but hey, we all do them at our starting in the career.

Speaker 1:

We are not perfect and the important thing is to learn from the mistakes that we make.

Speaker 2:

We need to learn from mistakes. If otherwise, it means if you're not making mistakes, it means that you are not innovating. Therefore, maybe your process next year I don't know Maybe it will be good, maybe it won't. So we need to do that. Mistakes we commit them every day. It sounds like a joke, but yeah we all do.

Speaker 1:

I think what you just said is just so absolutely crucial to understand that If you're not making mistakes, it means you're not doing anything new. You're in your comfort zone. And you have to get out of your comfort zone, Because if you just stay in your comfort zone, like eventually a big wave is going to come and take you away and wipe you out, and you don't want that. You need to be on your toes. You need to be always innovating, failing, learning from that failure and innovating again.

Speaker 2:

Executing execution Do it do it, do it execute, execute Hustle.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, absolutely, if you will. Awesome, love it, charlie. One last tip for somebody who's new to sales, someone who's new to prospecting, having those discovery calls, closing deals, someone who's having this whole new experience, specifically selling HubSpot.

Speaker 2:

Great question. So, going back to the process, the execution, the discipline, that is important. But I want to answer the last thing that you mentioned, that is, to prospect. So what would be? I say that to a sales rep that is just starting to prospect lose the fear of call-call, lose the fear of prospects hanging up the phone or saying please do not call me ever again, I hate your voice, et cetera, et cetera. It's normal, but you need to really really get into it and learn to love the no. Learn to love the no, because one more no means one less no to a yes. That makes sense.

Speaker 1:

Totally, totally, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Every no you get gets you closer to a yes, but you need to do it, and so you get used to it. I mean you need to have a thick skin, man, you need to because at the beginning no one likes Prospecting at the beginning.

Speaker 2:

No one is like man, I love getting no's. No one is like that. You need to embrace them. I mean, maybe of 10 no's you will have one yes, and you need to do 10 no's to get one yes, you need to get used to it. So I will say that David Goggins man?

Speaker 1:

I don't know this just seems very David Goggins. Learn to love the pain Absolutely. Learn through that suffering, because it makes you stronger, it makes you greater, and that's like you want that no, because that no is going to get you that yes. It's going to develop like a harder mindset and you're going to earn that yes, and you're going to feel so great when you do right.

Speaker 2:

I mean now you gave me a team for my next team meeting. Like what will David Goggins?

Speaker 1:

do Right, absolutely. What would Goggins do? I love that. Yeah, oh man, all right, awesome. Well, thank you, charlie, rachel, thank you, great talk, thank you and thank you All right, have a great day.