160: Continuous Learning & Becoming the Best Student of Sales with Kaseya's Fabian Perez

0:08 Scott Ingram: You're listening to the Sales Success Stories podcast, where we deconstruct world-class sales performers to provide insights and strategies to help you improve. To learn more, visit us at top1.fm. Here's your host, Scott Ingram.

0:24 Scott Ingram: Today on the Sales Success Stories podcast, my guest is Fabian Perez. Fabian is the top account executive at Kaseya out of Miami. Welcome to the show, Fabian.

0:33 Fabian Perez: Hey, glad to be here.

0:35 Scott Ingram: So really looking forward to digging into this. And for folks who are new to the show, we always jump in with some immediate value. And I'm gonna ask Fabian to talk about the top 3 things that he believes has contributed the most to his success in sales. Fabian, what are those?

0:50 Fabian Perez: I would say just in short, number one would be being the best student. Number 2, just reverse engineering your goals. And number 3 would be having a strong why. So I would say those would be the top 3 things.

1:05 Scott Ingram: Let's dig in and get into a little bit more detail with each of those. So when you say being the best student, what does that mean? How does that apply?

1:11 Fabian Perez: Yeah, that can mean a lot of things, right? So, but for me, I think just being the best student in your industry is a huge factor into helping me be the top executive that I am right now. And the reason for that is in my world, you know, in technology, it's always changing. And so there's always gonna be new customer requests, new customer demands and challenges. And so just staying up to date with the industry is super important. So, you know, being the best student in your industry is very critical. And not only that, just being the best student on what you can offer is what builds confidence. And that confidence will resonate, you know, from one mic to the customer, which will make them believe more into, you know, what you have to offer. And so I would just say, you know, trying to learn as much as you can, being the best student and being coachable with those that have been successful is very key and to my success as well too.

2:07 Scott Ingram: Brilliant. Brilliant. So I know we'll come back around to exactly how you do that as we get into this a little bit more, but talk about… so your second thing was reverse engineering your goals. What does that look like? How do you do that?

2:19 Fabian Perez: Awesome. Yeah, that's the second point there. That's actually a very strong one too. And the reason why is let's say for the year you were given your quota, right? What I usually do is I would multiply my quota by like 2 or 3 or try to do a personal record. And then when I talk about reverse engineering, it's basically understanding the initiatives, understanding the strategies and the activity that needs to take place in order to get to those goals. Right, and lay out a roadmap, lay out a game plan. You know, I'll even review this with my managers, review this with some of the key executives that have done really, really well, get their feedback, and just start to, you know, just start to execute on the game plan. So there's so many things. The privilege of me working at Kaseya is that there's so many resources that you can leverage that it helps me get to those activities. It helps me get to that goal much easier. So Yeah, it's in short, it's, you know, you have a goal, you set your goal in place, and now you just start to think about those steps that you need to take in order to get to your goal.

3:26 Scott Ingram: So brilliant, brilliant. And you called out one of the things I'll kind of emphasize because it's super common is the doubling or tripling quota, right? Like starting with that point, I mean, not building a plan for, okay, well, this is what it's going to take for me to get to 100%, because if you miss, you're in trouble, right? If you miss 200%, you miss 200%, you deliver 180%.

3:47 Fabian Perez: It's not so bad. Yeah, but it's not the best, right? And if anybody wants to be in sales, it's because they're very competitive and they strive to be number one. I mean, I've always been in sports. I'm just very competitive in nature. And for me, you know, I always want to do better. I compete with myself every year. And so I always want to do better. And so for me right now, it's striving as high as I can get to there. And then, you know, it's come to think, you know, a year comes by and you're now at 300%. You would have never thought that you would have gone there. So, you know, just having that, you know, aim high mentality has definitely worked out.

4:24 Scott Ingram: Love it. Cool. So your last thing was having a strong why. What's your why?

4:28 Fabian Perez: It's my family. Honestly, the reason for that is I'm from Venezuela, and in Venezuela, my family has struggled a lot financially. And, you know, coming over here to the United States, we started from the bottom. They didn't have a job. They didn't know what to do. So I got to live my family's struggle financially. Finally, they got to a point where they buckled up, got to a point where they were able to send me to school, even pay for my university. And that inspired me a lot to seek financial freedom. And there's no better way. I mean, there are a lot of good ways, right? But for now, I feel like sales can help me get there. And it's also fun too. I treat sales as a game. The back and forth with your clients, the relationships that you can build, even the bantering. There's a lot of banter that goes in with clients trying to get a deal done. Just all of that is the journey is what excites me. And also the fact that you can be financially well off, it's even better. So that's my strong why.

5:34 Scott Ingram: So good. So good. All right. We're going to come back to some of those things, but why don't we contextualize a little bit first? First, I'll have you talk about just what is your role. Help us understand kind of who Kaseya is and how you got to this number 1 spot.

5:47 Fabian Perez: Awesome. My role is… it's very long now. Sooner or later you'll see a promotion there on LinkedIn. My actual role is called the Senior Principal Account Executive for Key Accounts. But, you know, the job function is just being an account executive. So my day-to-day is working with a book of business of partners that I work with strategically. To renew their services, upsell their current licensing that they have with us, or cross-sell them products that they currently don't have. Right. So that's basically where I get to displace or be competitive with other competitors out there. Right. And just get them to buy into our products. So that's pretty much one of the main focuses. The other focus as well is work with the referral program that we have with our partners that we manage. So that's how we get some of our new customers here as well, too. So but for the most part, I have a book of business as well. And so that's who I work with.

6:44 Scott Ingram: Awesome.

6:45 Fabian Perez: With those partners.

6:46 Scott Ingram: Give just a little bit more context in terms of what is it that you're selling? What is the offering?

6:50 Fabian Perez: Yeah. So, oh, well, Kaseya is an IT management software company. So we have a… so, you know, we cover almost every area in IT for small to medium-sized businesses and, you know, organizations that are considered managed service providers, which are those organizations that you know, provide IT services for organizations that don't have IT, right, for the most part. So we have multitude of products anywhere between backup and disaster recovery, antiviruses, remote monitoring solutions, network monitoring solutions, you name it. We even have professional services and consultants that we can provide for these clients that are struggling to get up to date with the products that we sell them. So we also sell them that. There's so many things, even cybersecurity, which is one of the biggest One of the hot topics right now in the IT world. We sell that as well too. There's a lot of things that we can sell, and the whole purpose of all of these solutions is to integrate them all together into one single pane of glass. So that means under one platform. That way they don't have to go to different vendors. They don't have to have disparate solutions. They're all in just one portal for them to manage, which makes things very efficient, which makes things very simple for them to do. So what would normally cost someone that has different solutions, I don't know, like 60 minutes to do one simple task, with one of our partners, it would only take them to do 15 minutes to 20 minutes. So yeah.

8:22 Scott Ingram: Perfect. And then put your results in perspective for us. What does it take to be number 1?

8:26 Fabian Perez: It takes a lot of resilience. It takes a lot of grit, you know, to be number 1. I would say what really helped me out other than those 3 points is, you know, just learning from the best, leveraging my resources. So one of the things here that we could do as well is have one-on-ones with our executives. And, you know, like most executives, they were the top salespeople too, right? And that's how they went up to being, you know, the executive they are now. So, you know, having access to our executives also has helped me out. And, you know, this year right now in 2022, I hit 350% of my goal. Which was very, very awesome. I mean, I don't know what else to say. It's great. And the financial reward that comes with it is amazing. So one of the best years so far.

9:15 Scott Ingram: Amazing. Amazing. So how did you get to this point? I mean, what is your origin story? How did you get into sales in the first place?

9:22 Fabian Perez: That's a good question because I never thought in my life that I would get into sales. Originally, I wanted to be a taekwondo instructor. 'Cause that was my passion. And also mixed martial arts as well too. I went to college, got my bachelor's in marketing and also international marketing with the focus of social media and Chinese studies actually. And I wanted to go into international marketing and business, but kind of going back into that point that I was telling you where my family was struggling financially, I had to get a job. And there was a friend of mine that came to me and he's like, you know what? Why don't you try doing this? And the job was to, Go do door-to-door and sell some smart home security, which if you guys know this company, it's called Vivint, where they sell like smart home security solutions. Really good, actually. That's how I started in sales, went going door-to-door selling smart home security systems. Let me tell you, I had my ups and downs. It was a roller coaster, but, you know, I had fun doing it while it lasted.

10:25 Scott Ingram: And knowing what you know kind of about sales at this point, right, is there anything differently that you would have done if you could just start the whole journey over again?

10:33 Fabian Perez: That's hard to say because I don't know if I would… I can imagine myself, you know, starting it any other way because it's kind of like going back to the point. I didn't know if sales was going to be my career. And it only took this opportunity that landed on me for me to, you know, just get out of my comfort zone, do door-to-door selling, for me to realize that it was fun, you know, and the reward that you get from doing good was great. So I wouldn't change a thing, honestly. And let me tell you, door-to-door, you build some really thick skin because, you know, it's not like every… it's not like you go door-to-door and people are expecting you to open their doors, you know, with warm welcoming hands. No, there are times where they would just slam the door on your face. They would say a lot of things, curse at you, everything. I remember there was this one guy who was just having a terrible day, just running after me with a cane in his hand. I thought he was going to beat me up with the cane. And, but yeah, I wouldn't change a thing.

11:32 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

11:32 Fabian Perez: So I wouldn't. Yeah.

11:33 Scott Ingram: At what point did you realize, right, say you were thinking about going down this international marketing path. At what point did you go, you know what, like, this is it. This is going to be my career. This is where I'm going to make my money.

11:45 Fabian Perez: Oh, from when I was doing the sales job and door-to-door. Yeah. So while I was pursuing my bachelor's in international marketing and working as a door-to-door salesman, I think it after the 4th or 5th month when I did really, really well as a rookie and got awarded as top rookie of the year was what made me realize, like, you know, if there's a reason why I got awarded this, I mean, if I was awarded this, there's probably a reason why. And it's because I'm, you know, maybe I'm naturally good when it comes to having conversations with people or this is just something that I was meant to do. And so I just kept going after it and even got to the point where I got to be a part of the traveling sales team and go to Baltimore and even sell door-to-door to the Baltimore region. And it was, it went very successfully.

12:33 Scott Ingram: So, and then what was the transition, right? How did you go from door-to-door to B2B and tech sales?

12:38 Fabian Perez: So it got to a point where I saw a lot of my colleagues from university doing the same thing, but just B2B. And there was one of my friends, his name is Gamal. Gamal had talked about, you know, his position at Kaseya, which is essentially what I'm doing. You know, I was open to it and Did the interview, liked what I saw, you know, saw the culture, how everybody was just walking around having a great time selling or, you know, building a relationship with their clients. And, you know, I took a stab at it and went from what I was doing in door-to-door and went to doing business-to-business and software sales. And it's been great so far, honestly. So, yeah.

13:21 Scott Ingram: And speaking of shoutouts, before I forget, I know we both wanted to make sure that we made a point of just thanking Rondre, who is the one that got us connected. So fan of the show offered to get me connected with you. And I think you know a little bit more about him as well.

13:34 Fabian Perez: Yeah, no, he's great. He's been around already for some time at Kaseya. I always see him on the board crushing some deals. And Rondre, if you're hearing this, man, you know, just keep doing what you're doing. You'll get to a point where, you know, you'll be at the podcast or, you know, you'll be good. So thank you for setting this up.

13:53 Scott Ingram: Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So what are you most proud of? I mean, so you had this huge year last year. I mean, is that the pinnacle so far or is there something else that you to point to or think of?

14:02 Fabian Perez: This is… 2022 has been the most rewarding year for me and it's been great. I don't think there was another year that I've made as much money as I did in 2022.

14:13 Scott Ingram: Nice. And through that, what about the flip side? Like, what do you find to be the most challenging part?

14:18 Fabian Perez: The challenging part of sales?

14:19 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Or just your role or day to day or what?

14:22 Fabian Perez: Yeah, I would say one of the most challenging parts in sales is It's kind of going back to being the best student. There's so many things that you have to do during the day and also be organized with documenting the opportunities that you have and putting into Salesforce or CRM that you're using. Right. And then, you know, managing that time to then, you know, look at industry articles or, you know, who did the latest acquisition. Right. So that way you can educate your clients around that and talk to them about their challenges. So I would say just You know, there is a lot, you know, of responsibilities here. And so just managing the time can be a little bit challenging. So it definitely took me a lot of time, you know, to get to a point where I am right now where I'm able to manage a lot of time. But even then, you know, there's always something new that we need to adopt to because it's only going to better our process. And, you know, so I would say that would probably be the most challenging thing for me.

15:21 Scott Ingram: Let's dissect that and really understand what you've come to. And the way I like to pull this apart is to ask, What time does your alarm go off? And I want a pretty detailed blow-by-blow in terms of how you structure your day from that time that you get up until your head hits the pillow.

15:37 Fabian Perez: Oh man. All right. For most days, my alarm clock hits at 5:30, right? Realistically, I'll probably be snoozing until 5:45 until I'm actually up. And then I take a shower, I go to the gym. Do some HIIT training or whatever training it is for the day, go back, take another shower again, and then go to the office. I get to the office around like 7:00, 7:30, get all of my administrative things out of the way so that way my whole day is just dedicated and focused into having conversations with my clients and sending emails and things that are revenue generating. Right. And so usually I have about, you know, 3 to 4 meetings and they usually last about an hour each. Within those meetings, I'll dedicate 30 minutes or even an hour to update some opportunities that I have in the pipeline. Right. Make sure that my forecast for the month or my quarter, my year is all up to date. I even do some self-reflection on, you know, day one, what my goal was, the activities that I've done and make sure that, you know, through my reverse engineering plan, I'm meeting all of the milestones that I've set to myself. So there will be some times where I'll do a little bit of self-reflection and accountability on that. And then the last couple of 30 minutes, hour to my day, which is like, which gets to like 5:00 PM, I'll make sure that I sent out all the emails to my clients. There's nothing slipping through the cracks. I'll make sure that, you know, if there's a support issue, I'll have, you know, our support guys reaching out to my partners. Right, right. So, you know, that's pretty much how my day goes through those 1-hour calls that I have. Some of them can be more about like business reviews or quarterly business reviews, right, with my clients. That's where I get most of my opportunities. Other calls would be more around demos or, you know, we have dedicated specialists and sales engineers who demo the products to our clients. Right. And then maybe there are other calls where it's just closing business, which are my favorite calls. Right. So yeah, that's pretty much how my day goes. And then what you mentioned about actually going to sleep, right? So yeah, that'll be like 5, 6 PM. Sometimes I'll even stay later till 7 and 8. You know, I don't treat this as a 9 to 5. This is kind of like my baby. This is my business in a way. But then afterwards, shortly I'll go to the gym and do some weight training or even I participate in some leagues, sport leagues. I've played soccer and also baseball all my life. And so I'm in a couple of leagues on that. And once I'm done playing, I'll come back, spend some time with the family, have dinner, and then go to bed.

18:22 Scott Ingram: Brilliant.

18:23 Fabian Perez: And then onto the next day.

18:24 Scott Ingram: Brilliant. So you're doing 2-a-days. You're going to the gym in the morning and something like that again in the evening.

18:30 Fabian Perez: Yes. Yeah. And in the morning it's usually meant for cardio or HIIT training. And then in the afternoon it'll be for strength training.

18:37 Scott Ingram: Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So when you've kind of completed your reverse engineering process, like what are the actual activities that you are measuring and holding yourself accountable to? And where are you tracking that?

18:50 Fabian Perez: That is a great question. So I'm tracking that multiple ways, but I'll start with the activities first. So the activities, first off, I'll do a book of business audit and I'll go from the top partners that spend more money with us until the, you know, the partners that spend the least money with us. And You know, one by one, I'll go into their opportunities, the subscriptions that they have, and basically figure out the gaps of products that they don't have with us, right? And so I'll do that one by one with each of my clients. Then I dissect that by understanding what are some of the activities that's gonna get me to lead to those opportunities or products that they don't have, right? So for some, you know, we have certain sales motions or certain, you know, calls that we have. Like I'll give you one, for instance, it's called IT Complete, where essentially we get a lot of our executives to go through our product portfolio, right, with the first 30 minutes just kind of understanding a little bit more about their business nowadays. Right. And then going and then tailoring, you know, our IT Complete messaging depending on the solutions that's going to help out with the challenges that they have. Right. So I'll make sure that with each of my clients, there's a specific activity that's going to help me get to that opportunity to potentially close that product that they don't have with us, right? So I'll lay out the activities, right? Then from there, I'll set out some multiple touch campaigns, right? Whether it's email, calling them, right? That's very simple, very short and sweet, but to the point that I know they will respond to this because just knowing how my clients work, how they think, You know, I'll tailor my messaging to, you know, to their really their language. The multiple touch campaign usually consists of, you know, 10 to 15 touches. Thankfully, I've worked with my clients for more than a year now, and for most of them, I have a really great relationship and a great cadence. So really the first or 2 touches helps me get to that next step, which is the activities. It's going really well. I have about like 60… no, actually Now it's 50 to 60 accounts that I work with or partners that I work with. So yeah, I put all of this into a personal spreadsheet that I create for myself and I do have some tasks or events that I put into Salesforce just for documentation purposes, but I usually just work off of the spreadsheet that I create for myself.

21:23 Scott Ingram: Gotcha. Perfect. And I'm curious about… you said you generate a lot of your opportunities through your QBRs, the quarterly business reviews.

21:30 Fabian Perez: Yeah.

21:31 Scott Ingram: What's your typical structure of that conversation? Because what I heard is you're sort of doing the prep on that to figure out, okay, where are the gaps? Where am I going to create opportunities? Once you've done that work, how do you structure the call itself?

21:43 Fabian Perez: Yeah, so that's a great question. I do some pre-call planning first, so I take about 15 minutes on my off days to do some research on these clients specifically. And for my most strategic clients, I would like to understand if they have done any merger and acquisitions. Just, you know, look up any news articles around them, right? Or even go into their website and see if anything has changed since the last time we've had a QBR, right? And, you know, also LinkedIn, there's so many ways to go about it, right? So I'll just do my pre-call planning first, right? And then secondly, I'll go into these sort of like articles that explains the top common challenges that their typical industry or their typical customer segment is facing. And I try to you know, understand a couple of those challenges and where that solution that I'm looking to present can fit and into the conversation. And then just going into the conversation, I'll build some rapport, just, you know, talk to them, catch up with them, see how their kids are doing or, you know, just typical stuff like that. Then really understand their business a little bit, catch up on their business, what's been the latest, all of that. And then, you know, through breaking the ice, you know, in that conversation, I'll then start to target what I'm looking to accomplish in that call and just talk about those common challenges that the industry is facing and see if it resonates with them. And if it does, great, then we can dig in a little bit deeper into what that solution could do, right? Potentially. That's usually how the calls go. They go very successfully. I tend to shy away from going straight into the common challenges because then it'll be very obvious that you're trying to sell, even though it is. They understand that you are selling them, right? You got to make the journey and the experience very pleasant for them as well, too. So, you know, that's usually how my QBRs go. For clients that I've been working with for a while now, for those that I haven't talked to, like I haven't talked to at all, it's a little bit different there. It's a little bit… there's definitely digging very deeply into even their financial statements up to their, you know, the common challenges again, right? Some of their initiatives or projects they have in place, typical challenges that come with getting those projects successfully done. Have they hit their milestones on those projects? You know, how long has that issue been going forward for the fact that you haven't hit that milestone? There's so many things to go about it. So I try to dig in as deep, as deep, as deep, as deep as I can, and I'll try to drill into the pain as much, as much, as much, as much as I can. So that way, once I present the solution, it's a no-brainer at least to take a 30-minute call.

24:20 Scott Ingram: Right. So talk about in that process, right, how are you getting to the financial piece? Right. How are you getting somebody to open up about like the specifics of That's a, that's a very great question.

24:31 Fabian Perez: Yeah. Because not a lot of people are open to that. Right. And you need to tread a little bit softly when it comes to them being open to it. So the way that that works is I won't do that over email. I will never ask someone to, hey, in this call, let's go over your P&L. It's like, I don't even know you. You need to have a couple of conversations first. Right. So some intro calls, you need to make sure that there's no outstanding things in their way with their account as you're their new rep. Right. Once you've already built a little bit of trust from doing those simple things, then is when you can discuss, hey, you know what? Look, I've been in this business for X amount of time. I've worked with X amount of partners and on a weekly basis we usually go about this. You know, they're open enough to share with me, you know, their P&L statement. And, you know, me being your strategic advisor and trusted advisor and having worked for some time, you know, I can definitely help you and share with you some best insights or practices that other MSPs successful MSPs or successful partners like yourself are doing in the space. And, you know, there may be some opportunities for us to work together if there's a potential solution. Right. And so if the conversation ever does get to that point, you know, I hope you're comfortable with us setting up a next step and taking a deeper look into what that solution could be that will help with your bottom line. And most of the time, if you present it that way, they'll be open to it because then they'll look at you as someone that's credible, right? You have to have a lot of confidence. And what do you call it? There's a word that I'm looking for, but I can't… it's not coming to me. Whatever. Just confidence. You have to have a lot of confidence in your messaging and making sure that, you know, that 30 minutes or an hour is not going to be a waste of time. So yeah, that's usually the approach that I make, and that's always over the phone. I'll never do it over email.

26:16 Scott Ingram: Nice. Nice. So let's talk about your first thing was being the best student. What does that look like? Like, what is your information diet? What are you reading? What are you watching? When are you consuming that stuff? Like, what is your process?

26:29 Fabian Perez: I do that usually after the day or even during it at lunch, you know, from 9 to 5, 6, 7, 8, whatever. That's my go time. So even if I'm eating, I'm always researching, understanding what are the common challenges, all of that. Right. I even look at videos such as, you know, there are, you know, we kind of talked about this earlier, Scott. You know, there are people like John Barrows, right. Or Marc Wayshak. I know there's many others out there that, you know, I follow on YouTube and there's a lot of content out there and a lot of resources that salespeople can start to leverage, you know, just to be 1% better, you know, each day. So, you know, just being the best student is really what's helped me out and, you know, also educating my clients too. Right. So, and even for those partners that know what they're doing, they're being very successful. I'm a student to them and they're my teacher because in essence that will help me educate some of the partners that really are striving to be one of the best partners or one of the best organizations and they don't really know what they're doing. So that gives me that opportunity.

27:40 Scott Ingram: That's such a great call out because I think a lot of companies really crave that type of insight, right? I mean, if you recognize what it is that we're doing, it's, look, I talked to dozens of people in your position, and I hear the good, the bad, and the ugly. And, you know, being able to share some of those stories of, hey, look, I'm hearing this from this client. They're doing 3 times better than anybody else. Let me tell you specifically about the things that they're doing.

28:05 Fabian Perez: Yeah. Who's, who's going to say no?

28:07 Scott Ingram: Exactly.

28:07 Fabian Perez: Us as human beings, we're just naturally curious people, right? We're just curious beings. And one of the biggest, you know, sales, I guess, strategy or tactic that I use is kind of like the tribal effect, right? Where it's like, hey, all of our, my successful partners are doing this. You should take a look at that. And that's helped out so many, so many times as well too. So there's so many things to go about it that's helped out with my sales, sales process. Yeah. Yeah.

28:33 Scott Ingram: Well, heck, I mean, this show is that, right? It's like, look, you could find tons of examples from people that are doing 120% and going to President's Club, but wouldn't you really want to hear from the guy that's doing 350% what he's doing?

28:46 Fabian Perez: Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's not like, you know, in the beginning I was already at 350%. It's definitely taken me some time to get to the point where I was, you know, last year. I will say I've never missed quota, but I've never been to 350% year over year like I did last year. So definitely it's always, it's always gotten better and better and better year after year. So yeah, I'm very grateful for it.

29:11 Scott Ingram: Well, and it sounds like, I mean, it's that maintenance of that student mindset, right? I mean, it's all the things that you talked about in the beginning, right? You've got a really clear why, you're building a plan and you're executing on it, and, and then you're realizing, I don't always have all the answers. It's that, you know, 1% better every day. Like, what's that little thing that I can tweak, right?

29:30 Fabian Perez: That's exactly it. Yep, you're right on the money.

29:33 Scott Ingram: What's that thing for you right now? Like, what… is there something that you're actively working on going, you know what, like, I have this opportunity in my process, I can do better here?

29:41 Fabian Perez: So I think a lot of it can also be I always like to divide being technical with being relationship-oriented or sales-oriented, right? But maybe if there's a way for me to be a little bit more involved on the technical side, that can help scale my sales process by doing some better qualification on the technical side, right? Because I already do that with the sales side, right? What are your pain points? All of this digging deep, relaying that into the financial statements, right? Since I'm working with business owners. So from the business standpoint, you know, I can dig in for pain. But then, you know, you also need to do the same thing on the technical side, right? So this year, one of my biggest focuses is to be more technical to the point where I'm dangerous and not just having conversations with business owners, but also having conversations with technical people. Because right now I'm getting more partners that are very strategically aligned with us, right, that have a lot of spend with us. And one of the biggest goals for me is to be very multi-threaded within an organization. So I'm not just speaking with a business owner, I'm also speaking with technical people. And so I tend to realize that, you know what, maybe I can be, you know, again, going back to being a student, right? I can be a better student on the technical piece. So I'm starting to, you know, do certifications on LinkedIn and even, you know, just have one-on-ones with some of our technical folks and get to understand a little bit more on the technical side of our products so that way having conversations with the technicians, you know, it can be very seamless.

31:16 Scott Ingram: So nice. Let's talk about some of your own technology. What are the tools and apps that you use to run your day-to-day that you can't live without?

31:25 Fabian Perez: Gotcha. Okay. So number one is Salesforce. That's our CRM here. Let me tell you, if we did not have Salesforce, I don't know how I'd be able to accomplish, you know, doing this job. There are so many things going on, a lot of metrics that we have to follow to make sure that you know, as a sales organization, we're doing all the right activities that's getting us to our sales goals, right? So we're very metric-focused and Salesforce helps me do that. We also have this thing that's called MaxNet, which is basically an AI-based CRM that's able to help me dial, have conversations with clients and record a lot of, you know, conversations that we have and document all the meetings that we have straight into Salesforce without actually having to manually put things in Salesforce. So that helps helps automate some of my process as well as through MaxNet. So we use MaxNet. I think another one would be just Excel, simple Excel. And the reason for that is because, you know, I love to collaborate with my clients on proposals through Excel. That's where I basically work the magic, you know, doing a good deal with my clients and just being collaborative on the numbers, even on P&Ls, because they work off of spreadsheets as well too for their P&Ls for the most part. And so Excel helps me out a lot. What else would I say? I mean, you know, your simple Outlook calendar. OneNote also helps out with documenting as I'm having conversations. So putting that all into OneNote helps me transfer all of that documentation over into Salesforce. So I would say those are probably the main things and probably a simple calculator as well too.

33:01 Scott Ingram: Say more about how you are collaborating with your clients on the proposals. Talk about that. Yeah.

33:08 Fabian Perez: So, you know, obviously when it comes to a proposal, traditionally you would just send out a PDF, right, on the proposal. Right. The way that I like to do it, though, is a little bit different. It's more collaborative because on the Zoom calls, I'll share out my screen and they can see me, you know, adjusting the numbers depending on like where is it that they need to be to get this deal signed. Right. I'll even customize it, make it very, very personal to them. I'll snag their logo from their website, put it into the spreadsheet, put our logo so it'd look like Kaseya and XYZ company logo all in just one spreadsheet. I'll even put their face too, if whatever, just, you know, just for the hell of it. I wanna make things very personal and I want them to see that I put a lot of upfront work into getting this proposal done. And, you know, the fact that they're able to see me, you know, just change numbers and work with them on the licensing, the deal structure, all of that in a simple spreadsheet. I try to make them feel like they're a part of the team, you know, at Kaseya, or I'm part of their team. Right. And so showing spreadsheets and seeing them, me adjust numbers live on the call, you know, restructuring the deal agreement, all of that makes them feel like we're working towards something and that I'm putting a lot of upfront work towards this instead of them just seeing, you know, just a simple proposal. Right. And then having to go back and forth, you know, day after day. You know, because time kills deals. And so, you know, who knows if they're talking to another person, right, or another vendor. And so, you know, the spreadsheets helped me, you know, adjust the numbers live right on the calls and, you know, just work towards negotiating and getting to a deal.

34:45 Scott Ingram: Nice. So, I mean, almost it sounds like you're describing kind of a real-time negotiation, like, look, let me help you pull on the levers here and let's get to a place that you're comfortable that we can move forward.

34:54 Fabian Perez: Yeah, exactly. Yep, exactly.

34:55 Scott Ingram: I like it. I like it.

34:57 Fabian Perez: Yeah. Yeah. And I just… I don't know if you caught this before, but I would put even their logo into the spreadsheet. I'll put our logo just to kind of give more of an executive summary, right? Like, you know, something that's not cookie cutter, make them feel like, you know, this is a good proposal that we're doing. So I'll try to like… I'll even try to theme it out with colors, with their colors, all of that. Like, it's just that it's the devil's in the details, really.

35:21 Scott Ingram: So yeah, I like it. I like it. Fabian, do you subscribe to a particular sales philosophy?

35:28 Fabian Perez: There's one that I apply. I think there's 2 that I mainly apply into my, you know, conversations, just the way that I go about things. One is the Sandler model, Sandler sales model.

35:39 Scott Ingram: Yep.

35:40 Fabian Perez: And the other one is the Challenger sales model.

35:42 Scott Ingram: Gotcha. You just named the 2 most common things mentioned on, on this show. Talk about a little bit more kind of how you apply those because they're different, right? They're 2 different things. How do you bring those together and kind of what's your style in that approach?

35:55 Fabian Perez: So it really depends on the client that I'm working with, right? Because I have to be a chameleon in a way. There are some clients where it's just hard. They know what they're doing, right? It's like they're already set in their mind. So that is… I feel like the Sandler sales model helps me out with that because a lot of what Sandler teaches you is to dummy down or to ask questions, right? And be that student in a way, right? And just be naturally curious, right? And a lot of times that helps me be successful with building good relationships with these business owners that really, really know what they're doing. They're making a lot of money, right? And, you know, who knows? I mean, you know, through those conversations, a lot of them, they open up a lot and I get to dig in deep into things that they mentioned in there and what they're saying at that point, right? So Sandler helps me basically dig deep a lot more and ask better questions. Now, Challenger Sales really comes into play really well when I'm talking to someone that, you know, needs to be a little bit more educated into being successful. So, you know, just being, you know, thankfully, you know, me having been in Kaseya for about 5 years and knowing a little bit more about the MSP industry helps me to be more of a challenger to my clients, given the fact that, you know, I've, I've worked in this industry for a long time and I get to propose, you know, pains that they really never thought of until I actually told them. I'll give you one example. I just had a conversation the other day with one of my clients who's had this whole pain of managing tickets and managing a lot of alerts and tasks or things that are coming through to him, right? And he just didn't have a team that's able to do that. And he was doing that all by himself. I dug into pain, all of that. He was kind of reluctant to solving this issue because he had other projects or whatever. But the Challenger Sales Methodology always tells you to educate them. To uncover some of the pains that they don't realize. And earlier in that conversation, he mentioned that he wanted to grow 10… not 10 times fold. I think it was like 3 times fold in the next 2 years. And I pretty much told him like, hey, well, I mean, if this were to keep going on for the next 6 months with this issue and all these projects that you have going on, what time are you going to be able to leverage to get those projects done? And get to those revenue goals, right? So it's just basically making them think, making them, you know, just really think, huh, wow, I never thought about it that way, is where Challenger Sales has helped me out, you know? So, yeah, or even benchmark them with some MSP partners that have used that and kind of showing some results that they've done and comparing them alongside with those successful partners. So, and then them being in the end, them being like, man, you know what? I want to be like these partners. You just tell me what I need to do to get there. So yeah.

38:56 Scott Ingram: Yeah. I like that idea of like almost benchmark selling, right? It's like, look, you're here. I have other clients who are already where you want to be. Here's what they're doing that's different, right? Here are the ways that you sort of bridge that gap.

39:08 Fabian Perez: Exactly. Exactly. Benchmark selling definitely helps, you know, just doing assessments into the current process today, the current tool stack. Kind of showing them like, kind of like a gap analysis of where they need to be in order to get to a certain result that they're looking for and showing them the resources or professional services that we have that can get them there. Right. In case if they don't have enough resources or personnel that can help them there. So yeah, there's, there's so many ways to go about it, but yeah.

39:35 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Fabian, is there something you believe that the average or typical sales professional would think is crazy?

39:42 Fabian Perez: Oh, let me think about that one. So your question is, is there something that I believe that typical salespeople are crazy and would think it's crazy? You know what? Nowadays, a lot of times salespeople think that they have to go into conversations being the most professional self, right? And, you know, a common mistake that I see is that a lot of them are following that herd, right? Of being the most sales professional robot that they can be. And, you know, all of this and that. And not being their genuine self or cracking a joke with the partners that they're working with on a day-by-day basis, right? At least in my world, right? And what's really worked for me is I crack up with my clients all the time. I tend to be very conversational. Obviously I get to business when we need to get to business, 'cause if not, they would never pick up the phone. They would just think I'm a clown. But I feel like just being yourself, cracking jokes with them, just being genuine, just being of a human being has helped me out. And a lot of times salespeople, they tend to shy away from that. They tend to just be as professional as they can because that's how they're gonna get the sales and that's how other people do it. And I feel like this is like a common theme that people think about. And it's like, just relax for a bit, going into this conversation, it's another human being that you're having a conversation with. And so I feel like that's one thing that I would say.

41:11 Scott Ingram: I like that.

41:11 Fabian Perez: I like that. Yeah.

41:12 Scott Ingram: What about the flip side? Is there something that the average or typical sales professional believes that you think is crazy?

41:19 Fabian Perez: You know, it's one thing. This is actually going to be pretty funny, but this has helped me out so many times is cursing with my clients. So, and I say that because there are some people that sit around me and they hear me have these conversations with my clients. They're like, oh my gosh, like the amount of cheekiness or like the things that's going through this guy's mind to just be chopping it up with these clients and just cursing at them or just bantering with them and this relationship that they've built. You know, it's like he's speaking to a friend or whatever. So some people think I'm crazy for doing that. I mean, it's helped me out. And one rule of thumb, I will never curse until they curse first. So that's one thing I would say.

42:04 Scott Ingram: I like it.

42:04 Fabian Perez: Yeah. Yeah.

42:06 Scott Ingram: You know, it's funny. I try and keep this show relatively clean because I know there's a lot of people, they listen in the car with their kids.

42:11 Fabian Perez: Yeah, that's true. That's true.

42:14 Scott Ingram: It is the human thing. It is when the more you can be you, and if your style is super buttoned up and that's just your approach and who you are, well, yeah, be that. But if you're not, if you don't sound like that when you're talking with your friends, then I think there is value in being you. And, you know, it's okay to drop an F-bomb every now and then.

42:35 Fabian Perez: Right, right. I mean, it's, it all depends who you're talking with and just mirroring the other personality out there. Like, I'll be honest, you know, there are a lot of people from the Northeast that I work with and they're very straight to the point. But, you know, once you've been able to, you know, build a good relationship with them, they'll throw F-bombs everywhere. And you know what, if they started it, I'll do the same thing too after just to, you know, Just, you know, mirroring, you know, in the end of the day, have them be like, you know what, there's something about this guy that I like. I don't know what it is, but I just like this guy and I trust him.

43:06 Scott Ingram: There's a fair amount of research on this, right? I mean, it's… if you can curse with your clients, then you're in a pretty good place. So Fabian, what have been the most important lessons you had to learn to get where you are today?

43:22 Fabian Perez: Uh, curse with your clients. I'm just kidding. I would say Some of the lessons that I've learned, I would say actually, you know, going back to being human was one because in the… it's funny, I was a victim of this in the beginning. I was that sales professional robot that everyone tends to be, right? Very… I probably used the word touchpoint like 8 or 9 times and follow up like 10 times in just one sentence with these guys. So, you know, I learned from my mistake of doing that. And my coach at the time, he helped me out. I even followed a script and in B2B sales, you can never follow a script. You kind of have to think on your feet. And he crumbled up my script and I now just had to think on my feet. And so that helped me out. And I kind of learned from that. I would say the other thing as well too, is in order for you to be successful in sales, you also have to even deliver upfront contracts with your clients, you know, because you want to set the right expectations of what the next step, next couple of steps are going to look like, what's next after, what's next after, right? In the beginning, I was very… I would just go into the conversation and then afterwards I didn't even care to send a calendar invite. I would just be like, yeah, I'll follow up with you the next day. And that's, you know, I learned my lesson there. So just sending, you know, establishing the upfront contracts on what the journey of the sales cycle would look like and matching to what that would look like with their path to purchase, right? Or what their, you know, what do you call it, their criteria looks like, you know, what their procurement looks like, then I think that's very important. That's helped me out too. Yeah, I would say those are probably one of the things that's helped me out.

45:03 Scott Ingram: Nice. What advice do you give to people that are just starting their careers in sales? How do you help them kind of get on the right trajectory?

45:11 Fabian Perez: I would start to tell them like, hey, understand what industry you're in, right? Get really familiar with it. Be coachable with your managers. A lot of the times, a lot of salespeople think that their managers are just you know, there to manage them, but it's not true. Like they're there for, you know, their, you know, the rep's best interests, you know, to make a lot of money because if they make a lot of money, I mean, if the reps make a lot of money, they make a lot of money, right? They're tied to the hip there. So I would say just be coachable. Obviously they're a manager for a reason. It's probably 'cause they were a rep like yourself and they did really, really well. And so just being coachable, going back to being the best student, and all those other 3 points is what really, really helped me out. Also understand if sales is for you to begin with. Like, if you don't feel that fire, that passion of going every single day to have conversations with your clients, see what sort of challenges are coming up next and, you know, reaping the benefits of getting those deals done, ringing the gongs. Like over here, we ring the gong for every deal that we do, right? We even have like personal music that goes off. Like, if that doesn't fire you, that doesn't excite you, I don't know if sales is really for you because for me it excites me every single day when I close business. And so anyway, nice.

46:32 Scott Ingram: What's the music that plays when you close a deal?

46:35 Fabian Perez: Now, recently, actually, I need to think of a new one. Before there was like this, there was actually a YouTube video that I used to play from Corporate Bros called Scooping Butter. So if you want to look that up, that's what would go out every time I would close a deal. Now there's this new electronic music that I'm really into. I'm probably going to start to put it there. It's called Escape by Deadmau5 and Kaskade. It's good. There was one that I used to do back in the day. It's by T-Pain, All I Do Is Win. So all I do is win, win, win, no matter what. Got money on my mind. You know, so it was, yeah, it's fun.

47:11 Scott Ingram: Nice. Nice. So like we always do, if you go to top1.fm/this episode number or top1.fm/ Fabian dash Perez. We're gonna look up that stuff, and we will we will have links to all of it. So I don't know the I don't know the corporate bro butter thing. So I'm curious.

47:31 Fabian Perez: Yes, I'll I'll send it to you after the scooping butter. Brilliant. All right.

47:34 Scott Ingram: Brilliant brilliant. What advice do you give to somebody that is they're looking for that next gear, right? They're looking to break through. Like like they're doing well. They're overperforming quota, but they're trying to figure out, man, how do I get to 350%? What do you tell? Them?

47:49 Fabian Perez: So I would just review with them what their goals are for that quarter or for that year. And if typically their goal is to match their quarterly goal, then I would just be like, hey, that's not enough. You're going to have to… the pipeline that you're going to have to create or you're going to have to move over from last quarter to this quarter is going to be this much. It's going to be 4 or 5x the goal that you have. And depending on what their conversion rate is, how successful they've been with each of the opportunities they manage, We have to take that into consideration as well, too. So, you know, it's just using numbers first and then from there, then we have to go into the activities that's going to help them out. For some, you know, a lot of them, some of them struggle to do quarterly business reviews because they're new or whatever. So, you know, for those people, we'll probably get them to get on a call with the managers or some of the executives to help to have them do the selling for the reps. Right. Because at the end of the day, they'll learn from those people that are running the calls. Right? So a lot of it is kind of, you know, everything that I do on a daily basis, I'll just share with them and teach them on how to do it, right? So, you know, it's funny that I say that because I also do this with my customers too. It's like, what are your biggest goals, the initiatives that you have in place, the challenges that are going through? So it's like, it's a vicious circle. It's so funny.

49:13 Scott Ingram: Well, so you're a student of all of this. What would you want to know from the top sellers in other organizations?

49:21 Fabian Perez: You know what? That's a really great question. I would be curious to understand the activities, metrics that they follow, or types of personalities, you know, people that they work with on a daily basis for those that are not in the industry that I'm in or that are selling different services. So I'm curious. I'm sometimes curious to understand from other sales professionals, you know, what their world looks like depending on the industry that they're in. So, you know, others can be like, you know, there's some that are like in real estate. I'm curious to understand what that looks like sometimes. I know for a fact that tech and software sales is somewhere where I want to be for the long term. I'm going to stick through this for a very long time. I think Warren Buffett once said that, you know, if you're going to be good at something, be good at one thing. Not several things, right? And just be the best at it. And, you know, kind of want to do this long term. But I'm always curious to understand, you know, what other sales professionals are doing so well when it comes to enterprise sales, when it comes to different types of sales, because who knows? You know, you know, one day I'm here, one day I'm somewhere else. But, you know, as for right now, I'm happy where I'm at, you know, here at Kaseya. But yeah, I always like to chat with other people that are in other industries.

50:34 Scott Ingram: So Yeah, I meant to ask earlier, what's your favorite metric?

50:37 Fabian Perez: The amount of meetings that I set up. You should really, really see my calendar. It's so booked up, which is a great thing. So I always strive to do about, what do you call it, like probably like 15 meetings a week, maybe more. And it'll be about anything. It doesn't have to be all of them quarterly business reviews. Just, you know, it's just having those recurring engagements is what's going to lead to opportunities and money.

51:03 Scott Ingram: So, and what's the biggest driver of that? Like, where do you find is the most successful way to get those meetings going?

51:09 Fabian Perez: I think it's just having confidence in proposing what the next step or what that meeting is going to do for their business and making sure that they're going to value that time. So confidence is one. What else? I would say just resiliency and just persistence in emailing, calling, and making sure that you're always on the top of their minds, you know, to reply back to that email and agreeing to some time. And I'm okay if they say no, you know, if they say no, especially for someone that I have a great relationship with, I would like to understand, you know, where I missed the mark or if they would like to focus on something that actually does make more sense. Right.

51:49 Scott Ingram: So good stuff. All right, man, we have covered a ton of ground, talked about a lot of stuff. Is there anything that we didn't touch on? Like, was there a story or some example or something that you were hoping to share that somehow I just didn't ask the right question to get to it.

52:03 Fabian Perez: I think we covered a lot of things and I really appreciate you, you know, allowing me to jump in here. I think this was great. And for everyone that is, you know, striving to be greater in sales, I hope this was very, very helpful. You know, I'm accessible to anybody, so you can follow me on LinkedIn, message me, and if you'd like to have a simple conversation over the phone, I'll be more than glad to take that with you. You. All right, I'll share with you all the challenges, everything that I went through, so that way, you know, you going into it, you know, you'll basically overcome without it even happening, or, you know, just, just learn from it.

52:38 Scott Ingram: So it's awesome. That's a great offer. I always try and end on something really actionable, right? We've talked about a whole ton of stuff, but what would you challenge the listener to do over the course of, say, the next 1 to 2 weeks to improve themselves and improve their I would say choose a book that you can start reading.

52:58 Fabian Perez: What's one of the books obviously that helped me out was Challenger Sales, one by Antonio Garrido from Sandler Training called Asking Questions. That's a really, really good one that has helped me out. So I would say, you know, get a book that you feel like you resonate with or feel like that would help with your sales process. Read a chapter a day. Right. You know what? Even one thing I would say, you know, hitting the gym has helped me out so much in clearing my mind. So going to the gym, go to the gym, have one-on-ones on a weekly basis with your, with your managers. Right. Make sure that you're always in a good direction to getting to your goal. Also, I would say one last thing I would say on your lunchtime, you know, read articles, read anything that can enable you to have better conversations with your clients. 'Cause in the end of the day, all of that just, you know, comes down to money, to making a lot of money.

53:57 Scott Ingram: So Fabian, this has been great. Thanks for the time, man. I appreciate it.

54:00 Fabian Perez: Yeah, of course. Thanks for listening to the Sales Success Stories podcast. To be sure you never miss an episode and for an invitation to our Sales Success Community powered by Influitive, subscribe to our newsletter at top1.fm.