202: The Genuine Factor: How Elle Perez Became Kaseya's Account Manager of the Year

0:00 Scott Ingram: This episode is brought to you thanks to the generous support of Nooks. Nooks is the agent workspace for intelligent outbound. For more, just go to nooks.ai. 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 Today on the Sales Success Stories podcast, my guest is Elle Perez. Elle was the Account Manager of the Year last year at Kaseya and is now leading a team of strategic account managers. Welcome to the show, Elle.

0:44 Elle Perez: Thank you. Happy to be here.

0:46 Scott Ingram: I want to kick things off like we always do. I am all about providing value right out of the gate. So what would you say are the top 3 things that have allowed you to be consistently successful in sales?

1:00 Elle Perez: All right. So, I did not rehearse for this, but I'm going to go off the top of my head. And this has been the key to my personal success. It might not be one for another, but it's my key. It's being genuine. It's being confident in your product and having a good presence.

1:20 Scott Ingram: Very clean. Love it. Love it. And what Elle shared before, 'cause usually I ask my guests, I'm like, what are the top 3 things? She's like, you know what? That's not how I roll. You gotta adapt. Like, we're always reacting to new So right out of the gate, right out of the top. I love it. So Elle, talk about your role a little bit. What is it? What was it? And what did it take to get to number 1?

1:41 Elle Perez: Yeah, so I have been doing sales and marketing and running teams and being an individual contributor since 1997, since I graduated from college. So don't calculate my age, but I've been doing it for some time. I joined Kaseya 5 years ago as an individual contributor on the strategic accounts division. And now I've progressed into leading a team of seniority-driven, wonderful strategic account managers. So that's my role now.

2:14 Scott Ingram: Fantastic. And put your results in perspective for us. What did it take to get to the top of the leaderboard?

2:21 Elle Perez: What did it take? It took maintaining and growing amazing relationships with my partners, and I call them partners because that's what they are. I don't look at them as customers. I don't want them to look at me as a vendor. That's number one. Number 2 is the fact that I was able to bring forth a business result to them within the sales process. I think that's so important, and that's one of the things that salespeople miss is they just regurgitate what they have on their line of product, and that's not how it works. What works is talking about business outcomes and what that means for them personally and how your products coincide with those business outcomes. That is really how I excel in my role in sales.

3:20 Scott Ingram: I'm going to interrupt Elle here real quick to mention that our sponsor Nooks is one of those things that works and drives business outcomes. Nooks helps you boost pipeline with intelligent outbound in one unified workspace where you work alongside AI agents to engage prospects across every channel… calls, email, social, and more. To learn more about Nooks so you can boost your own pipeline, go to nooks.ai. And now back to Elle and the other specific ways she's gotten to the top of the leaderboard.

3:52 Elle Perez: Also, I think being relatable and being able to meet people on their level Being able to talk to the C-suite, being able to talk their language, being able to pick up on key indicators on what drives them. And I think that's so important that you pick up on those things and those little tidbits will get you to where you want to go because ultimately it's not an I thing, it's a we thing. It's a partnership. It goes both ways. So I think that has been the key to my success thus far.

4:27 Scott Ingram: Fantastic. And let's contextualize just a step further for those that aren't familiar with Kaseya. Who is Kaseya? Who are your customers?

4:34 Elle Perez: Kaseya is the market leader for all things back of the house, all things cybersecurity, all things backup, all things compliance for MSPs, managed service providers within the IT space. and managed service providers are an IT company that manages IT, whether it's co-managed or fully managed for small and medium-sized businesses.

5:02 Scott Ingram: Fantastic. Now, you gave us a hint of your experience that we're not going to run the numbers on. What is your origin story? How did you get into sales in the first place?

5:11 Elle Perez: I did not know what I wanted to do when I was in college. I studied business. I had this vision of myself when I was a young girl, being a businesswoman, being in charge, making power moves, and I've always fell back on that. But I started in marketing actually with Anheuser-Busch right outta college. I had an internship and I was hired and I was working in marketing and I enjoyed that role because Marketing is something that you need to understand on how people relate to product. So I think that that really resonates with me still in my sales role. How does my customer relate to the product that I have? And then working at Anheuser-Busch, they were like, in order to move you through this track of management and moving you up through through the ranks, you need to do sales. And I was like, I don't wanna do sales. Like, I don't know anything about sales. I just had this, this feeling like I just saw used car salesmen and I was like, this is not for me. This is not what I wanna do. I wanna be in marketing. I wanna be creative. I wanna do creative things. And sales is just beating the streets and trying to sell things. And that wasn't what I was thinking that I wanted to do. However, I liked it when I did it. I enjoyed it. There was that, and I became very successful at it. And then I had a chance to run my own team. I was running my own team by the time I was 26. I had 9 people working for me and I was just in the groove, right? And just very motivated. One thing I can say about me is that I am competitive. But more competitive with myself and my results myself. I don't compare myself to others. That is a detriment to your both ego, number one, and number two, to your results. You can't compare yourself to somebody else. What they do is what they do. What you do is what you do, and everything that you do is unique to you. In that sense, I am competitive. with me. And I always try to do better research on my products, do better research on my companies, do better research on my contacts. My, I think that is so important is to really understand the customer and understand where you're trying to go and where you're trying to drive this and find the white space within that zone, if you will.

7:51 Scott Ingram: Yeah, that is such a common theme. I think that, that competitive wiring for sure, but I think recognizing that We grow the most when we compete with ourselves, and we compete with the best version of ourselves. This is the first episode that will be coming out where the answer engine is in place. So, Elle, your episode will be part of that. What I've done… I have gone down a very deep Claude Code rabbit hole, and I built a solution that has the context of all 200 plus interviews. What's amazing… that was the greatest accident that has ever happened… is for the nearly ten years of this show and all of those hundreds of interviews. I've asked more or less the same set of questions. The ability to group them into themes and see what comes out. If folks go to ai.top1.fm, you can ask any question you want about this episode, about what episode you should listen to next based on what you're trying to do. It's super interesting. It's been a really, really fun project and does the thing I've always wanted, which, because people always like, what's your favorite episode? Which one do I start with? And there's so many. And now there's a tool that can get people oriented in the right way. So for your next walk, or even if you're a newer fan, And you've been listening for the last year or two, if you want to start to explore the back catalog and ask for a recommendation for your next drive or however it is that you listen to your podcast, that'll be fun. I'm super curious about like, as you made that transition into sales, and I'm guessing part of what was going on was you probably had some misconceptions about what it actually was. What was different about that? Like, what was different about the reality versus what you thought it was before you went in and why did you fall in love with it?

9:32 Elle Perez: That's a deep question. So it was really having the opportunity to meet people where they're at, on their level, listening to them, listening to their story, and coming up with solutions that make sense for them to better their, their story, right? That was really it, right? When you're in marketing, you're kind of Leading the charge, so to speak. You wanna really direct the narrative, whereas in sales, the partner or customer or client is directing the narrative, and then you take that narrative and you make that narrative work in your direction. That was appealing to me and I liked it, and I've been doing it ever since. So we're what, 26, 27, 28 years now?

10:25 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

10:26 Elle Perez: Own it.

10:27 Scott Ingram: Well, speaking of meeting people where they're at, I wanted to ask, given that you've sat in both the IC role and have come back to it, and now we're kind of back in that management role, how do you think about those 2 things? Like, why do you like one versus the other? I mean, they're very different animals. So I just love your perspective across those 2 experiences.

10:47 Elle Perez: They are different animals. Being an individual contributor is very rewarding. And you can really shine, right? But being in a management role where you have the opportunity to manage individual contributors, you have the chance to sculpt and mold them into shining themselves. It's exciting. It's, it's, it's like watching a journey. It's like sculpting a journey. I'm enjoying it. I enjoy both. To be honest with you, would I go back to being an individual contributor? Sure. Maybe one day. We'll see where this goes, right? I'm ready to and willing to accept all the blessings and opportunities that come my way.

11:34 Scott Ingram: Yeah. If you were starting, I mean, long journey, lots of different roles, lots of different industries, and just a breadth of experience. If you were starting over today in this environment, knowing all that you know right now, how would you think about it? What would you do? What would you focus on?

11:52 Elle Perez: I would focus on being genuine. I think so many salespeople miss that mark. One of the biggest factors in success, in my opinion, in my humble opinion, has been that when you're genuine, and I talk about meeting people where they're at, meeting them on their level, meeting them at their personality level. Is so, so important. People buy things from people they like. That is number one. I had a gentleman reach out to me the other day on LinkedIn and he was like, can you tell me how you became so successful and what would be some words of wisdom? I think he was a new college graduate who wanted to get into technology sales like I'm in. I told him, I said, you have to be likable. You have to be likable. You have to meet people where they're at. Yes, you need to know your product. Yes, you need to understand business outcomes and, and talk about how your product affects their business outcomes. But most importantly, you need to be likable. You need to be easy. You need to be easy to work with. You need to be a pleasure to talk to. You need to be somebody who is proactive, not reactive, and within the sales process. I would give that advice to any newcomer who wanted to get into the business.

13:23 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So good. And I think doubly true in this age of AI where the differentiator is the humanity. It is being a real person who actually cares and the genuineness, genuinity.

13:37 Elle Perez: Right. Yes, both of those. This is the stuff that gets edited out.

13:46 Scott Ingram: That authenticity and being like truly genuinely yourself, I think it's always been important. It's been another huge theme that I've seen over across all of these interviews, but that much more important now. Elle, the show is called Sales Success Stories. I feel like maybe you should tell us a story about one of your favorite sales, and maybe it was a big win, maybe it was a big loss, because I find sometimes those are some of the most memorable things. So wherever you want to take it, tell us a great sales story.

14:12 Elle Perez: Oh God, I have so many, but I guess I'll talk about one that happened most recently before I transitioned into management. I was working with this printer copier company who wanted to transition into a powerful MSP. They're $60 million in revenue, 300 people, employees working for them. They were working with a competitor for both their remote monitoring tools and their ticketing system and their cybersecurity belonged to somebody else, but I really liked them. Something about them just had potential. And I knew that the competitor, I understand the competitor landscape and what they're missing on advances within their technology and so on and so forth, just wasn't meeting the mark for them, whether they realized it or not. So I took a trip, I flew out to, to them and sat with them and brought in all of my execs. Remotely, right? We did Zoom remotely. We had our CEO, we had our CTO, we had product, we had everybody from, you know, the whole gamut of the C-suite here at Kaseya jump on and talk about their vision and what that meant. Slowly but surely, I started noticing a change and I was like, I kind of think this is gonna happen. But then it wasn't gonna happen, but then it was gonna happen, right? But just working with them and connecting with them and connecting them with peers who use our products really had an impact on them. And they'll tell you today, like, Elle is our favorite rep. Like, they've become friends. I've been on their yacht. Like, I've spent time with them personally, and they still reach out to me. They're like, what do we do in this situation? What do we do in that situation where I became More of an advisor and a consultant to them than a vendor, and they just weren't getting that attention from somebody else. Somebody once told me, "What you're not doing, your competitor is." You always have to stay on top of that trend and lean into that. What you're not doing, your competitor is. You need to be the one at the forefront of that conversation. We brought in engineers. We brought in everybody to trials and proof of concepts, and. All kinds of good stuff. It ended up being close to a million dollar sale for me, which made me rep of the year last year. Brought me to being rep of the year. That sale brought me over over the peak, right? But it's relationship driven. It's relationship driven. It's getting to know them, getting to know what makes them tick, getting to know what makes them stay up at night, and understanding that. Again, I'm going to repeat it. What your competitor is not doing, you need to do. So I just really tapped into that really hard, really hard, and just went for the gusto. And it paid off, right? I mean, it was a long sales cycle in SaaS sales. I mean, sometimes you can have a 1-day close. Sometimes you can have a 3-month close. This was probably like 8 months of work, but it paid off. And they're happy. I'm happy for them. They're successful. Their tools are integrated. They're saving money. They're just doing fabulously. They're growing immensely. They're using all of our cybersecurity solutions. Like, they have definitely just become a Kaseya house. It was hard to leave them as my customer when I transitioned into management, but we still talk and that, that's That's one thing that warms my heart is being able to see them be successful based on my recommendations.

18:01 Scott Ingram: Yeah, that to me, I mean, that is why, and I call myself an intentional individual contributor. Like, I love that work because I think when you get to directly have that kind of an impact, there's nothing more gratifying, right? It's like, I'm impacting not only this organization, but the humans, right? The leaders of that company, all of those salespeople that have a great setup now.

18:25 Elle Perez: Yeah, they're doing phenomenally. They're growing year over year, 30, 40%. Like they're just bringing on new clients like crazy. They have their stack, they're saving time, they have efficiency within their tech stack, their techs are happy. It's just a marvelous result. And to know that you are a part of that implementation is a really nice feeling.

18:49 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So awesome. So awesome. Mm-hmm. Elle, I mean, you've done a lot. You've been to many, many President's Clubs from what I gathered from your LinkedIn profile. What are you most proud of?

18:59 Elle Perez: Oh, what am I most proud of professionally? Most proud of my children, number one, and that's my greatest success in life. And those are my motivators, right? You have to have something that motivates you. I will always lean back on that. I have 2 children, 21 and 27. And they are both doing really good. And I have been able to afford them things in life based on my success that I wasn't able to have, right? Like I was able to send my daughter to Greece for a month and for her to study abroad and things like that. All those things are the things that I am most proud of based on the success that I've had. That I'm able to extend that to my children.

19:51 Scott Ingram: Love it. Yeah. Let's go the complete opposite direction. What's the hardest part? What do you struggle with?

19:57 Elle Perez: Ooh, the hardest part is that I am in account management. I don't have a hunter role anymore. I have more of a gatherer role. I do miss the hunter role a little bit. But I think the hardest part is when you get a new partner/client/customer, whatever you're calling them, and they've just had a crappy experience with their previous situation with your company and overcoming that. Because when you're a salesperson, you have to fully and wholeheartedly believe in your solution. And when you fully and wholeheartedly believe in your solution and somebody craps on it and is like, oh, you know, I don't wanna hear it, or, you know, you guys did this or that, or something happened with my billing, that sucks. But I will say that it gives you an open, an open opportunity just to go up.

21:05 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

21:06 Elle Perez: Right? You have nowhere to go but up. And if they give you that little window opportunity to enter that door and show them the difference that you're able to provide for them and that your products are able to provide for them, that becomes very rewarding then. I think that is the biggest challenge. Does that always happen? No, unfortunately it doesn't. And that's when we as salespeople say, okay, I'm going to leave this here and I'm going to move on to the next scenario that I can work on and grow. Because you're so passionate about your products and you really believe that this is the best option to help them grow as a business, when they are not accepting of that, no matter how hard you try 10 ways to Sunday, it's hard not to take that personal, right? So there's that. I think that's the biggest challenge right now.

22:02 Scott Ingram: Yeah. I'm curious about how you think about, I'm going to ask a narrow question inside of a bigger question and let you tackle it however you want. From a prioritization perspective, as an account manager with a set of accounts, how are you thinking about that? And beyond that, how do you think about the differences between being in that account manager role versus being in that hunter role? Because if I'm honest, I probably haven't had enough account managers on the show. So super excited that you're here. I think this topic is a meaningful one.

22:31 Elle Perez: Yeah.

22:32 Scott Ingram: Let's kind of unpeel that onion or repeel, like put the onion back together, however we wanna do this.

22:36 Elle Perez: For sure. Well, the difference is that when you're in a hunter role, it's very transactional. You need to make a quick impact and get that sale turned around fast, and then you're onto the next. When you're in an account management role, you need to do that. But maintain the relationship and grow the relationship, which is something that I love. I love, I love doing that. I love expanding within the account. That in itself is sold difference. I don't know, did I answer your question?

23:13 Scott Ingram: I'm trying to think about the best way to kind of talk through some of the differences, right? So I think you already touched on the relational focus and the speed and the style.

23:23 Elle Perez: Mm-hmm.

23:24 Scott Ingram: But I'm again, also curious, like specifically this idea of like, you've got a set of accounts. How are you prioritizing? How are you deciding what you are working on? And maybe there's points that you come to where you think, you know what, there's just not a there there. This is an account that I can't turn around in, in sort of your previous example.

23:40 Elle Perez: Yeah. So let's say we use the old 80/20 rule. You take 20% of your accounts and they'll give you 80% of your ARR. You can focus on it that way if you want, but I'm not so partial to that because sometimes there is opportunities that really surprise you, right? Account management is really relationship management. So it's about finding that white space, finding what makes them tick, finding, finding different people within the company. That can be champions for you and really being an influence over them. I mean, typically I'm the type of salesperson that I work my way down from the C-suite. I start at the C-suite and I work my way down. Some people do it the opposite. Some people start at like the engineer level and work their way up. I just prefer to start at the C-suite. That's just my preference. And I want to understand the company values, the company objectives. I want to understand What their goals are for the week, the quarter, the year, next year, the next 5 years, the next 10 years. Where do they see themselves going? For me, I think that has been the most valuable part of account management is really digging in and understanding the account as a whole. And one of the things that I love to do is go on site. Let me sit down at the service desk. Let me sit down with the technicians at the service desk. Let me see what their job is like. Let me sit down with the marketing team. Let me consult with the sales team. Let me see what their challenges are and what they're doing. Let me sit with the CTO. What's the chief technology officer? What keeps him up at night? Those things are so, so valuable. And that's what I like. It's like an extended family, right? You get all these little tribes of people, these companies, and you, and you get these tribes and they're, they're like a little family and you're like, let me be a part of the family. Can you adopt me? Can I, can I learn about you? Can I see what you do? Can I see how you do it? That to me is the exciting and intriguing thing about account management is having that opportunity to really live in somebody else's shoes. And then once you gather all that information and once you understand what they're doing, how they do it, what makes them tick, what keeps them up at night, then you can understand, okay, well, you have issues with HIPAA and compliance. So let's talk about compliance. How can we make your compliance practice More streamlined, and how can we monetize that for you? What does that look like, and would this work for you? Just give me a chance to educate you. This is not a sales call; this is an education call. We're going to sit here, and we're going to talk about compliance and what that looks like for your physicians groups that you manage. What that looks like for your attorneys. That you manage, what that looks like just as a whole, and then we'll go from there. But let's just have an educated conversation because until I educate you on what I have to offer, you're gonna be in the dark. And whether or not this is something that's gonna make sense for you, that's fine. If it doesn't, no problem. No harm, no foul. But let's make sure that we get educated on what I think might be a solution for you. And that's what drives me.

27:33 Scott Ingram: I love that. The way you described an onsite sounded quite a bit deeper than what I think most people think of when they think of an onsite. How do you structure that? Like, what is your typical approach?

27:44 Elle Perez: Yeah, so it's a lot of coordination. It's a lot of coordination with the C-suite because obviously our C-suite is very busy with $12 billion company. They make themselves available to meet with customers, which is amazing. And they wanna learn about their business and they want them to learn about our business and how we can work together and make things amazing for everybody. So it's a lot of coordination. Sometimes you sort of feel like an executive assistant trying to get like all these meetings coordinated and have the right people at the right places at the right times. But it's also, like I said, it's about saying to the director of technology, hey, I want to sit down with your team. And they feel flattered, believe it or not. They feel like, wow, this person really is interested in what I do. They're not here trying to be a used car salesman. They want to learn about what I do, what our practices are, and what our challenges are, and what makes us tick. I would say it's Just having those conversations and being, again, I bring it back to being genuine. Like, I genuinely want to learn. I genuinely want to know what makes you tick. I would say that that's how you go about it.

29:00 Scott Ingram: So good. Let's talk about your routines, the way you structure your day. The way I love to ask this question is, your alarm clock goes off in the morning. Tell me what time that happens, and then just give us the blow-by-blow, walk us through the day until your head hits the pillow Okay.

29:20 Elle Perez: So I start very early. I'm a, for sure, a morning person. I do a workout with my trainer at 5:45, 3 days a week, but I typically get up at 5:00 AM and I'll hit the treadmill for 30 minutes before I meet him and then do my workout. Um, my days off, I try to relax in bed a little bit. But I have a natural alarm clock, so I get up very early. I start thinking about my day. I typically get into the office between 7:30 and 7:45. I have my standup meeting at 8:40, and I review our goals, where we're at with hygiene, where we're at with our renewals, where we're at with issues that they're dealing with, how I can help. Part of my job is just being somebody to remove barriers. So we go through that and then we focus on the day, right? And I go through the day, I have probably anywhere between 5 to 10 Zoom meetings a day. And then I end my day with my people at 5 o'clock on a stand-down meeting. And we talk about our day, we talk about what happened, we talk about what deals came in, what we're predicting for tomorrow. Forecasting is so important. Kaseya is looking to go public. They're looking to IPO in the next couple years. That's no secret. I feel comfortable saying that, I hope.

30:47 Scott Ingram: Wouldn't be the first time I've been asked to remove some comments from an episode, so I got you.

30:56 Elle Perez: Yeah. So forecasting is ever so important. We forecast the day, the week, the month, and the quarter. Every day, every single day, I forecast the day, the week, the month, the quarter. And I want to know what changes. I want to know what's happening with renewals. I want to know what's happening with churn, all of that. And keeping my people focused on how do we move the deal to the next level? How do we move the needle? That's my day. I get home. Make myself dinner, spend some time with family, spend some time with my 2 dogs, and then I'm in bed by 10:00 PM and the day starts over again.

31:41 Scott Ingram: Do it again. Do it again.

31:43 Elle Perez: And do it again. Yeah.

31:45 Scott Ingram: What is your information diet? What do you listen to? What do you read? What do you watch? When does that happen?

31:50 Elle Perez: Oh, that's a good question. So I believe in investing in myself, so I'm Very invested in golfing. We spoke a little bit about that before the podcast started. I'm very invested in golfing. I take a lesson with my pro every Saturday and I play every Sunday and I play any other chance I get because I work till 6, 7 o'clock at night. The day's over, even though I live in South Florida, going out in the dark and playing 9 holes or what have you just is not realistic unless I take a half day. So I'm very invested in that. And as I mentioned earlier when we spoke, the reason why I love golf so much is, yes, it's a competitive sport, but it's more of a competition with yourself. You're in competition with yourself, and some days you can have an amazing day and just have all of the right mechanics and the ball is flying and you feel good and you're like, Yes, I crushed it. And then the next time you could just totally, excuse my language, shit the bed. So, but that's like the ups and downs of life at the same time. It's just so good to get out in nature. So for me, that's my respite and my retreat is golfing. I love to golf with partners and clients. That's always fun because you bond on a different level and you laugh and you enjoy the outdoors and You kind of see their competitive side. You learn a lot about people watching them golf, right? So I do that. I also have invested in my education. I, in the middle of the pandemic, went back to school and received my executive MBA. That was something that I wanted to do for so long, and during the pandemic, there was no better time to do so. So I believe in investing in yourself educationally. I also belong to a few executive women groups that for empowerment, one is for golf, one is for motivation, one is just based on connections and networking and things of that nature. So those are the things that I do. But most importantly, as I mentioned earlier, is being there for my kids, being a good mother, supporting them through their journey and seeing their success come to fruition.

34:18 Scott Ingram: Awesome. What about the technology side of your world? What supports all of this? What are the tools and apps that you can't live without?

34:24 Elle Perez: Oh, now I'm addicted to AI. It makes life so much easier, right? It really does. I live in Salesforce all day long. So being proficient at Salesforce is, is super important. I live in ChatGPT and Claude as well. Easy to recap. We do have our own proprietary software for recapping our meetings, which makes life amazing and easy. No longer have to write 500 characters of notes after a meeting to save the Salesforce notes. But those are the things that I rely on. I mean, there's so much valuable information out there on AI and apps like ChatGPT and Claude that you can just find out so much stuff. I recently had a human resource situation where I had never been through that before, and I just typed it in AI and learned all the legalities of the situation. And I was like, wow, this is great. Okay, now I know how to proceed moving forward. There's so much valuable information you can learn from a management perspective, from a Partner-facing perspective, even when you're talking about white space. Here's what my partner's using. How does that fit into my portfolio with Kaseya? How would you position this? Those are some of the things that I use every day, all day.

35:52 Scott Ingram: Yeah. What are some of the most impactful ways that you are using ChatGPT and Claude kind of on a day-to-day?

35:59 Elle Perez: Yeah, when I need to talk to a VP or when I need to talk to Our CEO or our CTO, and I need to get a concise. They don't have time for paragraphs and paragraphs of recap. I need to get a concise recap on what I'm trying to say. I plug it into ChatGPT, and I get a concise one. It makes my life so much easier, so much less stressful. I remember back in the day spending an hour typing an email and. Going back and erasing and retyping and reevaluating and retyping. And they're not thinking about it like that, but I was thinking about it like that, right? Like, because I wanted it to be so perfect. But now that's one thing that I use when I need to get a concise and precise email together, or even a Teams message together to a C-suite person within my own company to come across as articulate and professional, yet very much in the fact that it's very concise and to the point, and they can just read it and understand what I'm trying to say.

37:11 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. So good. So good. Elle, do you subscribe to a particular, like, sales philosophy?

37:18 Elle Perez: I don't. I used to. I don't anymore. Just because I think I've become, over the course of so many years, I've become A combination of so many things, but most importantly, I've let my own personality and who Elle is shine through. And that's when I started seeing great success. I think one thing that people don't realize that is one of the keys to my success, and people don't think about this enough, Is your presence and how you come across and your body language. And are you smiling? Are you listening? Are you interrupting? These are the things that are so important. The way you communicate with people is I can't even put it into words. It's so important. I think that I have mastered that. I have. mastered being able to connect with people, whether it's over Zoom or in person, when it comes to my partners. And that has gotten me to the next level.

38:30 Scott Ingram: Yeah. What are the other elements of the Elle Perez, like, sales philosophy? And just like, how are you applying your style to that?

38:39 Elle Perez: One of the things is you need to make Your customer, your client, your partner, whatever you're calling them, you need to make their lives easier, right? So what does that mean? That means being proactive, not reactive. When you're proactive, people are like, wow, this person is so easy to work with. Like, it's just a joy. It's just nice to work with them because they already have predicted what I'm gonna ask for and got me the answer before I even had to ask the question. Being proactive is top of the list. I would say also, as I mentioned before, I would say being personable, having a presence about you, having a way to meet somebody on their own level. If somebody is what I call an Eeyore, how do you bring the Eeyore up, right? So when somebody's an Eeyore, and I get Eeyores a lot.

39:39 Scott Ingram: Occupational hazard, right?

39:40 Elle Perez: Yeah. How do we bring them up to a level of happiness? How do we, how do we get them there? Do we laugh at their poor joke? Do we chuckle at the fact that they're poking daggers at your company or your product? How do we get this turned around? How do we turn this around? It's mastering having, again, somebody like you, and when they like you, They start liking your company and what you represent.

40:08 Scott Ingram: Great stuff. From a motivation perspective, what motivates you? How do you think about motivation in general?

40:16 Elle Perez: I've always been self-motivated. I'm very self-driven, and not everybody has that. So I think the best salespeople are self-driven. I'm extremely money motivated as well, and if I interview a potential sales executive who can't articulate that, they're not gonna be a fit for my team. Okay. I would also say you have something that you're working for. For me, it's my children. It's the future. It's, it's what I see for the future. One day, my son, my 21-year-old, is profoundly autistic and he lives in an adult group home. For autistic individuals, and one day I'd like to open my own group home. I have a target after retirement as my passion project that I'm focusing on every day, and how am I going to get there financially? For me, these are these are you have to have those those elements, right? Unless you have those elements, you're probably not going to get. Too far. You'll be mediocre. And that's another thing. Mediocrity is not an option in my world. I work every day not to be mediocre.

41:30 Scott Ingram: So good. Is there something you believe that the average or typical sales professional would think is crazy?

41:37 Elle Perez: Hmm. That's a good question. I don't know if they think I'm crazy, but I think anything's possible. I think you can turn any client around. I think you can Somebody will say, this is never gonna happen. Like, give it a shot. Don't rule it out. What do you have to lose? Give it a shot. And then when you come to the conclusion that this is a hard no, then take your energy somewhere else. But give it a shot. Give it a shot. Give it a good go. Don't give it a half-ass go. Give it a good go. And once you see where that outcome lands, Then you'll know how to proceed moving forward.

42:19 Scott Ingram: I like it. What about the flip side? Is, what is it about what everybody in sales is saying, or that's like part of the sales dogma that you're like, yeah, that's actually wrong. I disagree with that.

42:29 Elle Perez: Hmm. That's a good question. I would say that I disagree wholeheartedly with transactional sales when you're in a role like I'm in. Right? Some people are just there to turn the key and make the deal happen and move on to the next. I completely disagree with that. And yes, that'll make you fast money, but I believe the, the bigger money is in the bigger picture. I believe the more you grow the relationship, the more that you're able to infiltrate and find out what, again, is the need of the customer and what keeps them up at night. Is really the key to having long-term sales success with that customer. I'm not a transactional salesperson at all. When I was an individual contributor, people tell me, oh, well, you know what, on the next deal, tickets for our, our annual conference, add those in there. I'm not doing that. I'm sorry, I'm not doing that. I'm not doing anything that somebody hasn't respectfully requested or I respectfully sold to them because this is a relationship. This isn't about being sneaky. This isn't about getting each little dollar right there before the month closes, before the quarter closes or what have you. This is more about a long-term play for me. A lot of people disagree with that, but I see success in that.

44:01 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Similarly, and some of it is just do the right thing sort of stuff, right? I had a very recent deal where the customer signed the wrong order. I think what had happened was we started redlining an earlier version of the order, and then as that was happening, we sort of renegotiated some pieces of the deal. The terms were all correct, but they signed the wrong bottom line amount.

44:26 Elle Perez: Hmm. Uh-oh.

44:27 Scott Ingram: I saw it before they did. So, it was working with my team, calling that out, getting in front of that and saying, hey, we messed this up. We're gonna do right, even though it was in my favor and it was a whole bunch more money. But no problem. Like, we're gonna fix this. We're gonna do an amendment because this isn't the last deal I'm going to do with that particular firm. Right?

44:44 Elle Perez: Even if it was the opposite way and you were to come out on the bottom side of the deal and made less, it's the right thing to do. You always have to do the right thing. You always have to do the right thing. I so wholeheartedly believe in karma that, yes, you have to do the right thing.

45:03 Scott Ingram: Sales karma is a very real thing in my world, and I just find it's one of those kind of what comes around goes around, but it might not be on the same deal. Like something might go sideways, but you get rewarded for doing the right things in other ways. And some bluebird will fly in your window and you'll make your quarter when you didn't think there was a way.

45:18 Elle Perez: Yeah, we love that. We love that.

45:21 Scott Ingram: Elle, it sounds like you actually had this conversation recently, but I'm curious, like what other advice, because we talked about the being genuine piece, but what other advice do you give to somebody that's just starting out in their sales career today?

45:34 Elle Perez: Body language. Body language is so important, whether you're over Zoom or in person. I cannot stress it enough. Body language is key. It's the first thing that people pick up on psychologically and makes them comfortable. That's not a common answer. It's very uncommon that for somebody to say that, but I wholeheartedly believe in that.

46:00 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. It says so much. What about for somebody that's further into their career? They're no longer new at sales and maybe they're either struggling and trying to get back on track, or maybe they're like, look, I'm good, but I'm not at that top 1% level. How do I make that move from good to great?

46:17 Elle Perez: Oh man. I don't know if you've ever read the book Good to Great. Great book, by the way, but I would just say And not to be repetitive, but what's your definition of mediocrity? And whatever that definition is, be greater than that. Be greater than that. What does that mean in your world? Whether it means being proactive with your clients, being on time, being investigative on their business and trying to understand their business a little bit better than what you would have. Don't settle for mediocrity. In yourself. I think that's the advice that I would tell somebody. And everybody has a different definition of where their line is of mediocrity, but align yourself with people who are great. What does that look like for them? What do they do every day? How do they wake up? What motivates them? What can you find in commonality with them? That can motivate you. I would say avoid mediocrity by all stretches of the imagination if you want to get to the next level.

47:27 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Well, and you also described the reason why this podcast exists, right? So you can, even if you're not directly connected to them, you can still surround yourself with greatness and hear these stories and really understand what resonates with folks. Elle, what would you want to know about the top account managers in other organizations and the things that they're doing?

47:49 Elle Perez: I'd wanna know how they are expanding their reach within accounts. What are they doing to make that happen? Who are they reaching out to that, who are they reaching out to? How are they reaching out to them? One of the tricks of the trade in technology sales is, okay, let's look at their tickets and let's call the techs and talk to them about their tickets and see what's going on. Or, you know, I would like to know more tricks like that. How are you getting to know people within the account? As I mentioned before, I start at the top. I always connect with the C-suite. I connect with the CEO. I connect with the CFO and the CTO. Those are my 3 most important people that I talk to. And if I can't develop a relationship with them, then I know something is going to go awry. I'd love to know how they, how they're doing that. Are they sending them Dunkin' Donuts coffee on a Monday morning? Like, what tricks of the trade are they using?

48:53 Scott Ingram: Yeah. What is that for you? What is the most common way that you're opening the door with a new CEO, a new CFO, a new CTO? And then how are you continuing to navigate the organization from there?

49:05 Elle Perez: Yeah, I think one of the best ways to open that conversation is get executive alignment. Reach out. Hey, my name is Elle. I'm one of the managers here in strategic accounts, and your account falls under me. One thing that I like to do is have some executive alignment with your C-suite and our C-suite. Can I set up a meeting? And most times, nine times out of ten, I would say they're down for that. And then that starts the conversation, and then. They realize, wow, that this person, Elle Perez, is really interested in me. Like, I'm an MSP. It's probably a $9 million business who's connecting me with a $9 billion CEO. How cool is that? That's super cool. And I'm having my one-on-one time. So that's one of the tricks that I use is when I have a tough situation, when I have somebody that doesn't want to engage with me, I use that trick.

50:07 Scott Ingram: Love it. Love it. We've covered a ton of ground. I wonder if there's something we didn't talk about that you really hoped we would.

50:15 Elle Perez: God, no, we covered so much. I mean, again, I just can't emphasize enough how you come across to people and how you relate to people and how you connect with people. And now that we're living in 2026 and we're all connecting over Zoom, how can you perfect connecting with somebody over Zoom when you're not in person? How can you do that? That's one of the things that I love to work on. I want to be able to connect with you. I want to be able to feel your emotions. I want you to be able to read my body language. I want you to be able to feel my genu… genu… genu… we went over this word before. Now you stumped me. My genuineness.

51:06 Scott Ingram: ChatGPT and Claude are going to fix us after this. We were going to look up like, what is the… is it the plural we're struggling with? I like, I don't even know what the right type of word this is.

51:16 Elle Perez: Right. That is important. That is important, especially when you're making relationships with your customers. For me, it's so important.

51:24 Scott Ingram: Let's get really tactical on that though. Like, how are you applying that? How are you trying to connect and mindful of your body language specifically in Zoom where I think it's so much harder?

51:34 Elle Perez: I watch myself back. Is that like psychotic? No, I do. There's so many times where I've come home at night and I've watched a Zoom meeting back and what could I have done better? How can I have reacted better? What could I have said better? Watching yourself back on a sales call, a Zoom sales call, is epic. It's epic to your growth. It is epic. I would highly recommend doing that, even as cringy as it is, as the young kids say, that's cringe. Well, yeah, it's cringe, but you need to do it because You're able to see what they see and you're able to interpret what they interpret from the things you said and how your reactions were. So watch your sales calls back.

52:28 Scott Ingram: The more you do it, the more uncringe you become, right? So you have to uncringe yourself.

52:33 Elle Perez: I have to uncringe. Yes. Don't be cringy.

52:36 Scott Ingram: Elle, the way that I like to wrap these up is I like to try and make it as actionable as we can. So what would you challenge our listener to do over the course of the next say 1 to 2 weeks to improve themselves and improve their results?

52:52 Elle Perez: Oh God, we just touched on it. Watch your sales calls back, guys. Watch your sales calls. Watch how you reacted. Watch how they reacted. Listen to the tone. Watch your tone. Watch your body language. Do you know your products? Do you know what the business outcomes are of your products? Do you know how to forecast accurately? Where's your sales pipeline? Where are things at in your sales pipeline? Are you updating it every 48 hours? Because you should be. Things like that are super critical to your success. Are you checking it every day? Are you having a meeting with your boss to discuss what your next 5 are? What are your next top 5 deals and how are you getting there? And what's your plan to get there? And if your boss can't strategize with you, then you need to have a higher conversation with them about how they can collaborate with you better.

53:41 Scott Ingram: Brilliant. Elle, this has been a blast. Thank you for spending some time with us and sharing your wisdom. I appreciate it.

53:48 Elle Perez: Absolutely. So much fun. Thank you for having me.

53:50 Scott Ingram: 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.