59: Abel Lomas - TrustRadius' Top AE - Alway Be Helping

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.

0:21 Scott Ingram: Here's your host, Scott Ingram. Today on the Sales Success Stories podcast, I'm joined by Abel Lomas, who is the top account executive at TrustRadius here in Austin. Which means we're actually recording this together in the same room, which I enjoy doing when I get the chance. Welcome to the show, Abel.

0:38 Abel Lomas: Thank you so much, Scott. Happy to be here.

0:39 Scott Ingram: This episode of the podcast is brought to you by the 2019 Sales Success Summit that's coming here to Austin October 14th and 15th. I'll tell you more about that in a little bit, but if you just can't wait, feel free to jump over to top1summit.com for all the details. Now, Abel, we always jump right into immediate value. Don't need all the preamble. So talk to me about the top 3 things that you believe have contributed most to your success.

1:06 Abel Lomas: Great. You know, when you originally asked me those questions via email, they came to mind immediately, but I still took some time to noodle them to make sure they were truly my top 3. They are first and foremost bringing positive energy every single day. Second, you're creating value for buyers and for the team. And then third, be human, which I think might actually be the most important thing. And if you don't mind, I'd love to touch on each of these 3.

1:34 Scott Ingram: Let's do it.

1:34 Abel Lomas: Okay. So bringing positive energy, I think, is so critically important because it's not about just coming in and being the happy, excited person that just has all this raw energy, but rather it's about, you know, making sure that other people… that you can make other people feel better. And I think That is so important. And I do that not just in the office, but literally throughout my entire day. And the reality is that actually fills my cup with the energy that I need to continue to be positive. And so it might be bumping into a complete stranger at Starbucks or at H-E-B, the grocery store, or any other place in the city. And it's just about, you know, bringing some light to other people's day. When I see their faces light up, when I see them laugh or giggle, or when they make an awkward comment back to me, that just makes my day. So that's what I think about from a positive energy perspective, making the day better for all those around you that you impact every single day. Secondly, you know, creating value for buyers and for your team. So that has a lot of nuance to it. But, you know, when I first came to TrustRadius, the first thing I did was I spent a lot of time with the messaging. And as a result of that, I actually changed a lot of the messaging and a lot of that messaging has stuck. And then beyond that, just spending time with my teammates and learning from each other. So sharing ideas with people doesn't mean that you're… you have more experience, you're better or whatever, but rather it's that collaboration where you can learn together. And then the same applies to your customers and your prospects and buyers. If you can teach them something about their own business that they don't know, then chances are they're going to latch on to you. And if you always remember that you're in service to them, then it just creates a different buying experience that, you know, builds better and stronger relationships and causes the right behaviors. You know, I was, I was thinking about this the other day. I didn't even know if it'd be appropriate to bring up on the podcast. But, you know, we've all seen the whole ABC, always be closing. And I thought, well, you know, that's, that's so backward because, yes, we all have to close. It's an important part of our job, but it should be always be helping because if you're always helping, then, then people are going to want to work with you. And that's bringing value to their day. And that's making a difference in their jobs, their career. And they're going to want to do business with you. The third one is being human, which hopefully you already heard some of that human element in one and two. But it impacts everything you do. Just having humility, being yourself, and quite frankly, in the words of Gregg Popovich, getting over yourself. If you can get over yourself, then all of a sudden, You know, it just makes life better. It makes life easier. And we have to remember that, you know, coming to work is just part of our day. And doing what we do is just part of our day. It's how do you go home? And when you're no longer selling, are you still happy? And that is just so important. And if you can bring that into all aspects of your day, into your work, into how you engage with your peers and how you engage with your prospects and customers, I just think it makes life better for everybody around you.

5:05 Scott Ingram: So we had a pretty interesting conversation before we hit the record button, and I don't want to preface this too much. I don't want to lead the witness, but just talk about some of the stereotypes in sales and what you thought the show might have been when I originally reached out.

5:20 Abel Lomas: Well, when you first reached out, at first I was humbled and honored by the request in the first place. And regardless of the numbers, I was honored that my CEO would ask me to do this, and I was really excited about it. But then as I started to think about it, I was thinking maybe this was going to be full of a bunch of sales guys that have a bunch of ego. And I'm not an ego guy. And I say that in knowing that I have a very healthy ego. But it's not about pounding the chest. It's not about, you know, claiming the mountain and calling yourself number one. Because the reality is when we wake up on January 1st, we're going to be in a new quarter. We're going to be at zero again. You're going to be even with everybody else. And so how can you take the mountain as a, as a team rather than as an individual? And that requires you to remove the ego and just be yourself. And I was really pleased to listen to some of the podcasts and hear the level of humility, the work ethic that so many of these other professionals have. And because of that, I couldn't be even more excited to be part of this program.

6:33 Scott Ingram: Yeah, it's, it's even surprised me, right? When I started the show a little over 2 years ago, I think we all have these preconceived notions about what a true top-performing sales professional looks like and how they act and what they are. And I've really been so encouraged to see that the reality is not that, right? The reality looks much more like you. And that's, that's exciting, right? Because I, to your point, it's this being human. And I think if you've listened to the show long enough and you've heard enough of these conversations, you under… start to understand that the best of the best are those those who are the best, most consistent, most human authentic versions of themselves. And you've just got to kind of figure out who is that? What is that? And how do I tap into that? And how do I, how do I ride that?

7:21 Abel Lomas: Right. Totally agree.

7:23 Scott Ingram: So now let's get into just a little bit of the context. Talk about your role, how you got to number 1, and maybe talk a little bit about TrustRadius as well for those who aren't familiar.

7:34 Abel Lomas: Sure. So first and foremost, TrustRadius, we are a software company, but for us, it's less about being a vendor. It's more about being a partner that helps vendors to get their customers on the record. So in order to help their buyers through the buyer journey. So the reality is that the buyer journey has changed. It's, it's been turned on its head because of our B2C lives and the fact that everyone is just consuming reviews about every single product. Quite frankly, if you wanted to, you could go to Amazon right this moment and you can look up reviews on toothpaste. Who needs to read reviews on toothpaste? But the reality is people write them and people review them. And that has changed the way we buy from a B2B perspective. And you have to have the voice of your customer on the record. And not just that, but it has to be authentic. It has to be detailed. And you have to be able to find people that look like you in other organizations, similar roles, similar companies, similar company size. And otherwise, you're going to have a hard time believing that review. And oh, by the way, you don't just want to hear the positive stuff. You want to hear the negative stuff too, because what you're looking for as a buyer is you're looking for balance. And so when you think about all these things, these are just a few of the things that we do that really make a huge difference in the buyer journey for our vendors that we partner with. As far as my role is concerned, so I started about almost 9 months ago, and I was lucky enough to come into a territory that had one really significant-sized customer, not in terms of revenue but in terms of a brand. So they're a top 50 technology company that was already an existing customer. Then beyond that, I had a territory that largely hadn't been worked, and so it was really a greenfield opportunity for me. And where I focused my time, it has really been around taking that one customer relationship and making it a lot larger, and then beyond that, identifying, you know, who are the best companies that fit into our ideal customer profile and really spending my time there versus going after anything and everything that moves.

9:50 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So it was actually your CEO, it was Vinay, who introduced us. I've never had much conversation with him, but we've been connected on LinkedIn for some time. We have crossed paths at… we travel in a lot of the same circles and kind of the marketing technology space at SiriusDecisions and events like that. And I saw that he posted you guys were looking to fill some new sales roles. And I said, You know, Vinay, why don't why don't we feature your your number one guy just to give people a feel for what your organization is is about, and hopefully that helps with some of those recruiting efforts. So if you're if you're looking for a new opportunity, TrustRadius has definitely got some of those. And I would love I mean so you've been here a very short period of time but have done a lot. So quantify your results for us the the best you can, recognizing we're recording this and the year's not quite done yet. So there's there's still a little bit left to do.

10:42 Abel Lomas: Absolutely. So John is. Numbers down here in advance just so I'd have some accurate picture here. From a Q4 perspective, total contract value, I'm currently at 534% against quota. From an ARR perspective for Q4, I'm 415% above quota. If you annualize that across the 3 quarters I've been here, again, about half a month shy with several contracts to go, my TCV, total contract value, that is 333% of quota. And from an ARR perspective, 241% of quota. So just threw a lot of numbers at you, you software guys and gals out there, that'll all make sense. But I think the net of it is it's been a pretty good run to this point.

11:23 Scott Ingram: Well, and not even a year in. So what do you attribute that fast start to? I mean, you've put up some really significant numbers in a very short period of time.

11:33 Abel Lomas: I think it's really a combination of things, but I think rather than looking inward, it's more important to look outward. It's a combination of things from market forces to great forward-thinking prospects and customers to some fantastic teammates that I've really just fallen in love with here at the company. Every aspect of this team is just fantastic, from Vinay, our CEO, to our entire ops team, to… let's see, I can just go around the office here. Our research team is amazing and very creative and a fun group of people. Our SEO team makes magic happen. All the time, and you walk in there and you ask them for help, and and they will literally drop everything to make sure that you know sales has what they need to be successful. Our marketing team, you know much the same way. We have a new CMO, and and I've worked with him for, and I've known him for over ten years now, and he's just one of the most amazing people ever to work with, and he's already making a huge impact on the organization as well. Our engineering team and our product group… that team is also growing quite quickly at the moment. And the pace that they're delivering new product right now is really pretty amazing. And as far as scale is concerned, they're barely even scratching the surface of what they can do as they continue to scale that org.

12:54 Scott Ingram: So one of the things, I mean, this time of year, we probably see more movement than any other time, right? People are changing roles. They're evaluating these types of opportunities. What was it that brought you here? And what did you do from a due diligence perspective to sort of validate that this is the right opportunity? Because one of the things that I think you alluded to here is it's not all us, right, that produces these results. There's also an art to getting into the right position and getting yourself into an opportunity where you can really blow through the numbers and achieve at significant levels. So kind of talk us through that.

13:32 Abel Lomas: So for me, it was a combination of things, and it really started with the people. And my first interview with Vinay, it was much of me interviewing him as it was him interviewing me. And I had to know that I could work with him, and I had to know that he was someone that I could trust. And what really got me, got my interest piqued in that conversation was when he started talking about, you know, the opportunity and the go-to-market strategy. And all of a sudden, I was realizing that this was far more than the eye could see from looking at the website. That was such a high-level surface area that you really had to go a little bit deeper to understand what the opportunity was here. And thankfully, that conversation is what got me there. Then it was a matter of meeting some more people and understanding what other reps were doing with what I'll say was still a bit rudimentary from a tooling perspective. We've covered so much ground in the last 8, 9 months. It's not even funny from a sales tooling perspective and technology and messaging and so on. But I was still seeing reps that were being very successful in that environment. And then, you know, talking with the marketing team, understanding what challenges they were dealing with and how they were addressing them was important to me as well. And then just getting a sense of the territory, what accounts were there, where did we have opportunities, where did we not have opportunities? And again, the fact that I had a big logo in that territory that was just waiting to be worked was extremely attractive as well. And I had no idea what I was going to walk into. Were they really happy? Were they getting value? Or was it going to be a pretty tense situation where you have to do a lot of repair? And so there was a bit of risk there, but that just comes back to trust. And the trust that I placed in the conversations that I had with Vinay really got me to a point where I was comfortable with it. And thankfully, there was no misleading going on. It was how he depicted it, and it has been a tremendous amount of work, but there really is a massive opportunity here.

15:37 Scott Ingram: Yeah, and it sounds like, I mean, the core of that was just a lot of conversations across a lot of the organization just to get a complete picture.

15:44 Abel Lomas: Oh, and some backchannel too. Talk about that. So I had never worked with Vinay before, but he was the founder or co-founder of Convio, which is a very, very successful company here in town that got bought by Black Box. And I happen to know a number of people that work there. I mean, you could probably walk into any crowded coffee shop in town, and there's probably going to be at least a couple of people in there that work for Convio. And so I started reaching out to my network and just talking to people. And the first question I would ask was, since you have LinkedIn, you know that they work there, how closely did you work with Vinay? And if the answer was, oh, you know, we said hi in the hallway occasionally, then I would say, okay, thanks, have a nice day. But then I'd come across someone in my network that that had spent hours with him, had been on the road with him. And it was interesting because these people talked about 2 different Vinays, and not that he has a double personality, but rather that over the course of a series of years, he's grown. And even in the short time that I've been here, I've seen him continue to grow as a leader, and he's already a phenomenal leader. But, you know, he takes the time out of his schedule to make sure that he's getting coached And he asks his employees for feedback on his leadership and what he can do better. There's been some organizational improvements that we've made here in the time that I've been here that, you know, were really important from the standpoint of retaining the great employees that we have. And it's because he cares so much about the business and the people that run the business. And it really makes a huge difference. Gives me a lot of confidence this company is going to be around for a long time.

17:29 Scott Ingram: And I think that that to me is the key is the back channel. Right? And because I think you get so much more truth from people who don't have a vested interest in, hey, we really want this guy here. We'll tell him whatever we need to tell him to get him here instead. And I really like to talk to, if you can find them, former sales reps, like people who've been in similar situations who again will peel back the thing. Same thing for folks who have worked for the direct leader that you're or the manager you're gonna work for, right? To get the truth about how is, what is it like to work with this person? Because one of the things I talk about a lot on the podcast is, or, or have seen a lot in these conversations is I don't think that there's an example of somebody who has been incredibly successful despite their boss. They've always had a really good champion and somebody on their side. What, what, how is that relationship for, for you here? Oh, it's fantastic.

18:21 Abel Lomas: In fact, since I started, we actually added a new head of sales, Andrew Lamb. And, and Vinay told me in the hiring process that that was going to happen, and I just didn't know who. And so Andrew has been a fantastic addition to the team. He really supports his people. He'll go out of the way to make sure that everyone has the things that they need. In addition to that, he's… I don't know, he's going to kill me for this, but he's kind of a goofy guy. But I mean that in such an endearing way because he's silly, and I love silly because he causes just great laughter and breaks, you know, breaks the walls down, and, you know, and you can just be yourself. Going back to that human part, Right, but along those same lines, he's not afraid to push you and push you in good, healthy ways because you know what we do is really hard, and sometimes you feel like you've done everything you can, and then you know you got you've got this guy who is is just going come on Abel there's got to be an or he won't even say this he'll he'll just he'll ask for the result and we need this to happen. And there was a situation recently where we were in a contracts process. And he said, hey, well, we have to have a conversation with them this week. Can you just get that on the calendar? I'm like, sure, no problem. The line of business person that I've had a great working relationship with, I sent a note, I get a response back, yeah, we'll meet with you next week. And I report back and he's like, no, no, no, we have to meet this week. And so the next day I sent another email, hey, you know, blah, blah, blah. I can't remember what I said, but it was just asking for time and I got a response back the second day in a row of, we'll meet next week. He stopped by my desk and he goes, Abel, that's just not acceptable. We have to meet with them this week. And, you know, as a professional, I know I have the right to say, look, I've asked twice, it's just not going to happen. But out of respect in our working relationship, I paused and I said, okay, under what circumstance will this person who clearly doesn't want to talk to me, will then have a conversation with me this week. And so that's what I'm talking about from a push element. And I literally sat on my computer for an hour trying to write a 3-sentence email, and I wrote several different scenarios, and I wasn't sure which one was the right one until finally it clicked in my head because I finally got into the skin of that other person that's 1,000 miles away. And, and it goes back to being human under what's circumstance is that person going to do what you want them to do? And what occurred to me was, well, I wasn't trying to help them. I was trying to help me. That's why I kept getting the we'll connect next week thing, because they just weren't ready to connect because it was all about me. When I reframed what I was asking for in the context of, hey, I've done this before, I have some ideas that it's going to help you, because I realized What this is, what we're asking you to do is taking away from your day job. And I have a few contacts to give you, and I can even tell you what to ask these people to make your job easier so you can focus on the more important things. And then here was the twist. I didn't use that many words, but here was the twist to it. It was happy to discuss this with you next week or sooner if you'd like. And what that cost was, you know, I was no longer putting pressure to talk now. I was offering help. I was being a human. And the reaction was within a couple hours, and I'm sure she didn't want to see my name in her inbox again. Within a couple hours, I got this message back. It was at this point at the end of the day with, can we meet first thing tomorrow morning? And so that was a good example of my boss pushing me in a healthy way and me trying to find the right human element to get the response that I needed. And at the same time, it just goes back to that comment I made at the beginning about always be closing. No, always be helping. When I found a way to be helpful, then I had the opportunity to close.

22:30 Scott Ingram: Love it. All right. So let's take a giant step back and talk about the origin story. How does Abel get into sales in the first place?

22:39 Abel Lomas: I don't think there was any one story. And so the only thing I can point back to was when I was in college, every time there was a group project, and everyone knows group projects in college stink, usually one or two people get overloaded with all the work while everyone else goes out and plays. And, but for whatever reason, anytime there was a group project, I was the one that was always nominated to present. I don't know why. I could not figure out why, but for whatever reason, it was always me up there at the front of the room. And all through college, I still couldn't figure out what I wanted to do with my career. I literally had no clue. When I graduated from college, I considered joining the military, not because I wanted to, but because I still hadn't figured out what I wanted to do. I came to Austin in the summer of '95. I had about $400 in my bank account. I had every possession I had in my car, and I had my sister at the time lived here, and I crashed on her in her spare bedroom, their office, for about 2 months and paid her $50 a week. And I just knew I needed to be here in Austin. I needed to figure some things out. And that's when I decided that I wanted to be in sales. And I started to connect those dots around the fact that, you know, everyone wanted me to present for a reason because I could tell the stories and convey a message. And but I had no sales training. I had no sales skill. I had no idea if I'd even be good at it. So I eventually landed my first sales gig after being denied I don't know how many times, and it was at a hardware company actually. And I did that for about a year and a half before I decided that hardware wasn't for me. I needed to jump into software. And so I've been in software ever since then, so over 20 years now.

24:29 Scott Ingram: Well, hardware was more of a thing in Austin in the early mid-'90s with Dell and everything else, right? Right? Absolutely. And then the shift has been happening ever since. So knowing what you know now, especially going into either that first role or early roles, is there anything that you would have done differently that maybe would have put your, your sales career on a different trajectory?

24:51 Abel Lomas: I think you have to go back even further than that. I think what I would have done differently even before going into college was choosing a different major. I chose business administration because it was pretty generic and I didn't know what I wanted to do. Had I known I was going to be in technology sales, I probably would have gone after a CS degree or something like that because I definitely had the smarts to do it. But I just, I didn't know what I would do with a degree like that. I had literally no idea. And for whatever reason, no one could really help me make that choice or lead me there. And so I went and took a pretty generic path with no idea where it would take me.

25:31 Scott Ingram: So, Abel, one of the things that you mentioned, and this is a question that I added more recently because I recognize, wait, the show is called Sales Success Stories, and why are we not fleshing out more of the real stories? And we're obviously getting your story, but I would love to hear your favorite sales story. And I'm just going to leave it at that and let you go wherever you want to go.

25:52 Abel Lomas: How much time do we have?

25:53 Scott Ingram: Plenty. This is a long form.

25:57 Abel Lomas: So my favorite story actually happened here, and which, which, you know, pretty happy about as well. So when I came on board again, I had, you know, one named account that already existed, and then I had pretty much greenfield, you know, opportunity. And this one company, I just knew that I wanted them to be a customer. I knew that they should be a customer. It just made sense. They were growing quickly. They had great brand recognition. And they just seemed like a very natural fit. They operate in the social media space. They had offices in New York and Austin and other places, but those are the 2 primary offices. And some of the people that I needed to sell to were here. And so it made it pretty convenient as well. So a lot of good reasons, a lot of good synergies to work with this company. So I find out that, you know, our BDR team had been banging their door for months, if not years. With zero success. And so I jumped in with 2 BDRs actually, and myself. We all started sending out messages to different people. Well, I'm not going to claim that any of those worked because we… none of us got a response. But what happened was this one person filled out a form on our website, and I guess they finally cried uncle and they agreed to meet with us. And went and met with them. It was moving very quickly. I remember having conversations with Vinay about it. We were a little concerned. It felt a little bit too easy because we went from a meeting to proposal to contracts within a matter of about 2 weeks. And we'd never seen a sales cycle move that quickly. We were even going through negotiation. That wasn't easy per se, but it went very quickly. And so we were within a week of signature when all of a sudden lights got dark. And they stopped responding. And finally, out of a little bit of just trying to poke the bear, I reached out to their general counsel who I knew the contract was sitting on his desk. I didn't get the reaction that I wanted, but I got an answer and the answer wasn't good. It was that because of budget movement, they put the contract on hold and we should revisit it in July. July rolls around. I already knew the answer. Every sales guy knows the answer, but you know you still had to go and hunt down that answer. And so middle of July comes in. I try to reengage, and I get the response that I had been waiting for, which was this has been deprioritized indefinitely. Let's revisit next year. And and at that point, I'll be honest with you. I think it's really really important to point out as well. Again, going back to being human. Human. I had to grieve that loss. I had to go through the, you know, just the bottom point of a sales engagement. I think it's really important to do that, especially as you think about, you know, people earlier in their career. It can get really easy to go, oh, lost that one, I'll get the next one. But no, I took this thing all the way up to nearly the point of signature when I that deal. I needed to go through a grieving process. So there was about 3 days where, you know, it was really hard to bring that positive energy because I couldn't even like get it out of my head. And it was finally on, on, you know, Friday that I started to feel better. I didn't touch the account. I just let it sit. Saturday morning comes and I woke up with my normal sense of positive energy, which is so important because finally my head was clear and I could think freely and I wasn't bound to this thing because it was lost. It was gone. It was in my past. And that's the moment where I thought, what can I do that will finally get the attention of the CMO? Because the CMO, he had never engaged with us in the process. We were working with some VPs and I came up with this very brief text. I had his phone number. Number, but again, he'd never responded. And I decided I was going to send him a text right at 12 o'clock Eastern time because he's in New York. I figured he's in New York, chances are he's eating a late lunch if he's going out for lunch. There's a good probability he's sitting in his apartment or his home. There's no better time than noon on a Saturday. He's not in a meeting. So I hit send right at 11 o'clock Central, 12 Eastern, and then I it. 20 minutes later, I get a response back from him, finally, after months of trying to engage with him. And he tells me that he now wants me to engage with a new person on his team that he had just hired, and it is important to him, and we will re-engage. That started the fight all over again. That's when it got fun. But it was truly a chase, and I had to continue to find ways to, to engage this new person by showing value and showing her things that she hadn't seen before, had maybe hadn't considered before. But she was not one to be too kind with her calendar. She would intentionally push me way out. She wouldn't accept my meeting invites. And I would just have to tell her that I'm going to call you at this time. And I would have to trust that she was going to be there. And I would text her ahead of time, hey, time's coming up, looking forward to talking to to you. Again, bringing that positive energy even into a text message. And the same thing happened with a trip to New York. I centered this trip around a meeting with her, and she would not accept my invite. She did not accept the invite until the morning of when I had already been in New York for a day. And we… I had delivered all types of documentation to her. I'd built a business justification. For her, and she had, you know, responded with very, very brief messages along the way of, thank you for this, this is helpful, that sort of thing, but not really engaged. So we're on site, and never forget this because it's kind of silly, but she walks out finally about 15 minutes late for our meeting.

31:58 Scott Ingram: I'm sure you weren't sweating in those 15 minutes.

32:00 Abel Lomas: Not so much. You know, it was… I knew we were going to see her one way. Positive energy, right? I knew it was going to happen. And she comes out and she first meets Andrew, who was with me, and shakes his hand. Then she turns to me with her hand stretched out, and I said, sorry, I'm going to need a hug. Created a bit of an awkward moment. She gave me this awkward side hug, and we walked into this meeting room, and we just started talking. And it was literally talking about personal stories, just getting to know each other. And about literally 10 minutes into the meeting, she Pauses and she goes, I really like you guys. We're going to work on a deal together. And then she turns over to Andrew and she goes, you know, Andrew, Abel has done things that most sales guys don't do. He's constantly reaching out to me but not bugging me, always sending me stuff that was… that I thought was always helpful. And you guys are just such wonderful people. I want to work with you. And so talk about turning a sales cycle on its head. And we walked out of there with a handshake agreement, and we signed that contract about 3 weeks later. And it was probably the second largest contract in company history.

33:18 Scott Ingram: That's awesome. What a great story. But I have to ask, what was the contents of the text to the CMO?

33:24 Abel Lomas: You know, I should have looked at that before this session, but it was something effective. So part of the rumor I heard Which is just a rumor, might have been wrong, was that the reason why budget shift shifted in the previous quarter was because they had a softer quarter than expected. And again, I don't know if that's true or not, but also the reason why I can't really mention the company name. And so my text essentially went along the effect of his name, and then if you truly believe that your buyers trust your customers before they trust your marketing. Then we should share vision together. And if we had, possibly you would have had a better quarter. And I think it was pretty simple message. And you know, texts… they have to be short or no one's going to look at them. And you only have so much real estate on the screen. But whether it was good message or not, it kind of doesn't matter because it's history and it worked.

34:16 Scott Ingram: Abel, this is a great story, and I love that you shared it, and I love the the detail in it and. Just, you know, the humanity of it. I, I think that it brings it all back. Let me talk for just a minute about the Sales Success Summit that's coming back to Austin next October. Still quite a ways out, but if you're serious about your own success and development, I hope you'll make the investment in yourself and commit to coming out and joining us. And I'm sure Abel will be there because he has to go down the street to, to attend the event. This is the only event I'm aware of that's built 100% for active individual contributor sellers by other active sellers. So everyone that you'll see on stage is someone that has been on this podcast, really just talking more in depth about what's working for them in the real world. There will also be some incredible networking. I'm really intentional, intentional about the way that I build this event so that that space exists. In fact, I was having a conversation on the way here to talk with Abel about someone that was there last year, and she was saying it is amazing how well connected we have all stayed and the conversations that have persisted since that event. One of the things that I'm working on now is making sure that the people that sign up this early, many months in advance, have an opportunity to connect with each other so they don't have to wait all the way until October to reap some benefit from some of those relationships. I expect that roughly a quarter of the audience will actually be made up of the top 1% sellers who've been on this show, and that just leaves 150 seats for everyone else. And I've already Sold a pretty good number of those. So this is about an intimate experience where you can really connect with these top performers in a meaningful way. So don't wait. Go to top1summit.com and take advantage of the current offer there right now. That's top the number one s u m m i t dot com, and I will see you here in Austin next October. So Abel, from whether it's TrustRadius or one of the other stops in in your career to this point. What are you most proud of from an accomplishment perspective?

36:20 Abel Lomas: That's a tough question, not because I have such amazing accomplishments. I think it's really the people. When I think about it, you know, seeing the growth of so many people around me, the success of people individually and collectively, I think, you know, to me, that's what's most important. And, you know, being part of those stories, you know, other people's success stories. And, you know, thinking about people that I managed years ago that I'm still in contact with today and they're doing well and they're kicking butt in their current role, that to me is so much fun hearing that. And that's when I feel like I've made a difference. It's, I don't know, maybe it's part of that parent in me. You know, you carry a lot of pride for your kids. Well, I carry a lot of pride for my team. I'm not part of the leadership team here, and you know, not trying to advocate for that either by any stretch of imagination. Because you can, you can be a leader without being in a leadership role. And to me, that's, that's really what it's all about: making an impact to help some of these other amazing people optimize their career, optimize their role, whether it's sales or another department, and then seeing how other people take their own intelligence and their own initiative and personal drive and just making great things happen. That's, that's awesome.

37:38 Scott Ingram: I love that. I love that. And, you know, one of the things I talk about a lot and, and I think about, again, the people that, that are attracted to the summit is what I think of as the intentional individual contributor. Right? Not like we couldn't go into a leadership role if that were of interest, but you don't have to have the title to lead. You can absolutely lead from the field. And I think in a lot of ways, you can make more of an impact from that perspective without, again, necessarily having the quote unquote authority that would be required. Let's, let's pivot and go to the other side. I typically ask about either the biggest challenge you faced or the time you've struggled the most, and, and maybe you've got one of those, but I was really intrigued by your talking earlier about the grieving process and how you process that and think about that. And if that's something that, you know, it's, it's, it needs to happen and you just you let it happen and allow it to happen, or, you know, do you try and get over it more quickly? Because that's an area we probably haven't talked about enough on, on this show is just the emotional. This has got to be the most emotional profession. Maybe medicine is, is worse because this is, it's not life and death, but man, do we ever ride a roller coaster. Absolutely.

38:54 Abel Lomas: I think anyone who has chosen this as a, as a career profession and has done it for any decent length of time might have a bestseller in them if they would just sit down and write it. Because, you know, the last 8, 9 months here, while it's been a lot of fun, I've had success, it has definitely been a roller coaster as well, and especially on the emotional side. So back to your question on grieving part, I don't know that everyone does this. I don't know if I'm the only one that feels this way, but, you know, there's… anytime you get a deal down to a decision point or beyond, So decision point meaning, you know, the customer is going to choose you or somebody else. And so it's really, really hard for me to lose a deal there. If I've lost a deal from that point on to signature, to me that is really, really painful. That particular deal, I had never lost a deal that deep in the sales cycle. And so that created so much pain for me. And, you know, pain from so many different aspects, from the standpoint of, you know, I just… it was important because that was going to be my first deal here. And so I wanted to show that not only would I hit quota my first quarter, but even exceed quota my first quarter. And so there was that personal side of it. There was a personal side of it from a family perspective of, you know, thinking about my responsibility to my family. And it's my responsibility to bring home, you know, the paycheck. And so that, even though my family didn't think anything poorly of me, I felt poorly about myself in that situation because it's my responsibility. There was grieving for, you know, the customer on the customer side because, you know, these are people that I put trust in and I expected that they were going to follow through on their commitment. And, and so when you take that level of trust and, and you're out there on that ledge with them and they walk off the ledge, then all of a sudden, you know, you have to grieve through that process. And not thinking poorly about those people, but it's about, man, what situation were they in that they had to walk off the ledge and couldn't, you know, jump off with you? And then there's the letdown in the office. Office around, you know, it's not just me, but other people are on this journey with you. And other people helped you to get to that point. And now, you know, they've… they're going through their own grieving process. And so then it's to those people, it's, hey, it's okay, it's going to get better, we're going to find a way. And not knowing if it's even possible, but, you know, just reassuring people that it's going to be okay. And building them back up. And so it literally took me, you know, 3, 4 solid days of just kind of, you know, trying to manage my own level of, of happiness and working through it and finally getting to a point where I realized that, to my point earlier in those conversations with Vinay, was that it really had been too easy. I really hadn't done the selling that I needed to do, and I had not earned that deal. And when I finally could take on that level of responsibility, then it became, you know, then it became a challenge of, you know, what can I do? What can I do differently? What should I have done differently? And by all means, you can't look back and go, I should have changed this, that, or the other, but rather, how can I go and do something different now to change the future? Future rather than change the past because you can't change the past.

42:38 Scott Ingram: I'm going to keep waffling back and forth, right? So, so there's the low points. Do you do anything to mitigate the high points?

42:46 Abel Lomas: The high points are short-lived. True that. You know, in fact, I don't know how other sales professionals feel about closing deals. Sure, there's that initial excitement of getting the deal done, that dopamine hit that comes with But they're really, really short-lived because the… quite frankly, in most contract signings, I feel more relieved than I feel excited. And I get my excitement actually from, from seeing the reaction of other people. There's, you know, the excitement that other people share in the cheering and in toasting, you know, a drink and hitting the gong and the applause. And it's just fun to see all the, all the smiling faces, all the joy that it brings to everybody else. So that part is awesome. But from a raw deal perspective, it's a relief, not, and far less of a joy, if that makes any sense. I don't know.

43:40 Scott Ingram: It totally does. Because I actually find for myself, like the excitement and the high point typically comes at the point where it's truly inevitable. Right. And that's why I can totally understand why there's a much more grieving process because you got to inevitable. And then it was not evitable or whatever. But, but, but again, like, yeah, it's, it's not… I don't know that it's relief for me. It's more just like, oh, well, yeah, I've known this was going to happen for however long that was, right? I've known this for a week and it's like, okay, so, but to your point, like, that's the point that everybody else gets, gets really excited because it's at that point that we're now sharing the news with the, with the rest of the team. We get to celebrate and do all that stuff. So Let's pivot and talk about… I love to just dig into habits and routines and that type of stuff. So walk me through a typical day. Alarm goes off. What time did that happen? And give me the blow-by-blow from there on just sort of a day in the life.

44:46 Abel Lomas: Got it. So start of the day usually comes a little before 6 o'clock in the morning. Sometimes I wake up, you know, 4 o'clock. And just because I can't sleep. But worst case scenario, my alarm rings a few minutes before 6. I get up, I have to shave my head, otherwise it just gets out of control. And that takes a little bit of time. But then I'm usually hitting the front door by 6:30. And it's really important for me to just get a jump on the day every single day. I know not everyone is a morning person. If you're not, I hope you're doing this at night. But, you know, I I usually will stop at the Starbucks across the street from the office, and that's a really important part of my routine.

45:26 Scott Ingram: Wait, I got to stop you there because that… your Starbucks across the street from that office is like the Starbucks in Austin. There are many, many, many Starbucks in Austin, but that is the Starbucks you sit in if you want to see like the who's who of pretty much freaking everybody. But it's geographically inconvenient for me, so I don't get up here very often.

45:48 Abel Lomas: It can be a pretty busy place, and usually by 8 o'clock or so, it tends to get a little noisy for me. And so I tend to leave between 8 and 8:30 at latest, if not before that. But what I do when I get there is, I mean, that's kind of the pickup of around getting that energy from other people. And so even though I might have 1 or 2 teammates here already, it's really important for me to go there because I get to interact with different people every single day and bring a little bit of joy to their day and seeing those people smile and greeting some strangers. I know I'm weird that way, but it's, it's part of being an extrovert. And then quite frankly, a lot of times it's not engaging with any strangers. It's literally sitting there and just consuming the energy from the room and powering up my own batteries. Has far less to do with coffee and far more to do with the raw energy of the people. And then I plan out my day. I'm looking at my schedule and occasionally going, oh my, I should have prepared for that yesterday, or I have so many meetings today and where am I going to fit in other tasks? And other times it's, oh my goodness, I don't have enough meetings. What should I have done differently yesterday and how can I plan my day today so That way tomorrow is better. But generally speaking, my calendar tends to be relatively full. And so that time is following up with open tasks from yesterday, planning my day today, and making sure that I have presentations ready. I've done my research. If I haven't done my research, I schedule time to make sure I can do that research in advance of those meetings and just making sure that I'm all buttoned down so I can get through my day. Day without, you know, and being prepared for the meetings that I have to conduct.

47:36 Scott Ingram: Are there any documents or, I mean, do you have sort of a meeting plan or a specific structure that you use or a specific way that you go about your research, anything like that?

47:46 Abel Lomas: It depends on the meeting itself. So discovery meeting is really all about, do I know what business you're in? Do I know who I'm talking to? What is their background? Who do we know in common? You know, what is their activities outside of the office if they post that socially? That we can draw from and create a personal connection? What is the state and health of their business? Are they working with any of our competitors? And if they are, what does that look like from an external eye? And what are missed opportunities that, that I can spot without even talking to them? And so that way, when I'm in that discovery call, I might not be telling them anything, but I'm asking questions that starts to lead them to an understanding of how they might consider looking at the world differently. And so, and that's really what the discovery call is all about. It's not a selling call, it's a learning call, but the learning should also lead them to a point where they start to have a different lens. So when the selling begins, they're looking at it from the proper lens. So then a demo call, let's call it, where I'm following up with them From the discovery, there's a standard deck that we use. A lot of it was was stuff that I contributed early my stay here, along with contributions from other team team members. And that's a reiteration of what I heard, making sure that they you know agree with my assessment of their situation. And then it's education. It's educating them on on how the buyer journey has changed and getting them to realize that even. Even though they are working tirelessly on whatever it is they're working on, there is a massive missed opportunity. And it's really, it's about teaching them and then starting to connect the dots around, hey, look, here's how we're helping some other people that are in a similar situation to you. Even showing them some of their own data that they might not even know exists. And that can also be very eye-opening to them because not everyone believes that the buyer journey has changed, and they might not even believe your stories because they don't believe salespeople. But if you can show them data that can validate what you're saying, then all of a sudden, you know, they realize that maybe something is different. Another kind of meeting is a business justification meeting, and that's all about walking them through pillars of value. And but even before that, and when you're closing out, let's say a demo meeting, you know, they oftentimes will ask you for pricing and it's really easy to just say, yeah, here's the pricing and walk away. And, or might say, well, what are next steps? Right? Sales reps do that all the time. What do you think next steps should be? But rather, you know, maybe it's, hey, let me give you high-level pricing, but more importantly, how would you justify something like this? They usually don't know, even if they're experienced buyers. Buyers, because what you're, what you're asking them to consider for purchase, they've never purchased anything like it before. And so would it be helpful if we were to provide you some pillars of value in order to help you justify this expense? Yes. And so then it's going back to that next call, and it's… oh, actually, even before that, in that closeout, it's, well, when you think about pillars of value, we think about these things. What are pillars you think of? And getting them to either buy into your pillars or tell you what pillars are important to them and building value around those things. And when you can do that and then give them a custom price based on their situation, you know, good things happen. Awesome.

51:27 Scott Ingram: So the other thing I noticed that, that us morning guys do is, is we can detail the morning out for you real good. And then, and then you, you left out that off that there's the meetings. So how does, how does, how does the day close out? Like what time are you typically kind of wrapping up here? And then what, what's the evening look like?

51:47 Abel Lomas: That's so funny you called me on it.

51:49 Scott Ingram: I see it because I am it.

51:52 Abel Lomas: You know, the, the, the day just kind of takes on its own life. It's different every single day. Sometimes you're traveling, sometimes you're in back-to-back meetings all day long, and sometimes you're, you're building these documents that I'm talking about. Building for presentations or what have you. But typically I try to leave the office by 6:00 so that way I can spend some time with the family. And if I'm really lucky, I might get out earlier. Maybe I have a commitment. It's not about how much time you spend here. It's really about, you know, what do you have to do to be successful? And so usually that day is from, you know, 6:30 hitting the door to leave in the morning to leaving here at about 6 o'clock. And believe me, sometimes there's some late nights depending on commitments that I have. But the evenings, I have 3 kids, all getting up there. I'm getting old. My son is 19. He's almost 20. I have a daughter who's adopted from Russia who's just amazing, and she is 18. And then I have my baby, who's another daughter who is 15, who is an amazing baker. And also loves to ride horses, which is an odd combo, but that's what she loves spending her time doing. And so usually I'll go home and one of my daughters usually helps me to make some dinner. Sometimes we order out, sometimes we go out to eat, but generally it's it's my daughter and I coming up with a dinner plan and and working together in the kitchen, which is always just tons of fun. I love to cook, and then it's cleanup and sometimes. Sometimes it's my wife and I just sitting around and chatting with each other, catching up on our day. Sometimes it's watching a show or catching up on some email that I ignored because I didn't have time to hit during the day. And I try to get to bed by 11, but it doesn't always happen that way. And sometimes if I'm lucky, it's earlier.

53:40 Scott Ingram: Sometimes it's much later depending on what's going on on the home front and what I didn't do during the business Yeah, any other habits or routines that are just sort of central to the success and the way that you're able to operate?

53:53 Abel Lomas: So I think this is really important, Scott. It's it's not about what you do; it's more important to think about what you don't do. So being very mindful, being very selective. When I got here, there was I felt like there was whether this is reality or not. I felt like there was a lot of noise around. Hey, you should hit this account, or you should hit that account. Out. And I just looked at it, I'd look at these accounts and I would say, I would think to myself, well, I'm never going to hit quota if I spend all my time working on accounts that look like that. And so I would get those notifications and I'd push them to the BDR team and I would spend my time on the accounts that I felt were going to drive the right outcome for the company, the right outcome for me, and ultimately help the company grow more quickly. And I think that was an important and mindful step. And I try to practice that every day. And believe me, it's hard to do. But it's really about the things that you don't do as much as it is the things that you do, because there's a million things coming at you every single second of the day.

54:55 Scott Ingram: Yeah, great point. Great point. What about your information diet? What are you listening, reading, watching, and when do you fit that in?

55:05 Abel Lomas: So sometimes it's even in the those mornings when I'm sitting at Starbucks charging up my day, I might actually sit there and read a book and I'll read part of a chapter or a whole chapter or what have you. And other times it's in those evening, late evening hours where, I don't know, my wife thinks I'm nuts because I like to consume business information all the time. And she's into fiction and my kids are into fiction and they have all these great stories to tell, to tell me about. But I think about it, I'm like, yeah, that's really cool and fascinating stuff, but there's no dragon in my office. But it's really, it's that constant learning. And when learning becomes fun, it's not work, and it can be a bit of entertainment. So right now I am, I have actually now 3 books in front of me. There's, I'm working through The Customer Challenger, which if you… anyone hasn't read it yet… Challenger Customer. Challenger Customer, thank you. It reads like a textbook, and I'll be honest with you, I'm not a fast reader, and you throw a book like that in front of me, it's really gonna slow me down. So I'm taking it very slow and being very mindful. I'm literally taking pictures of things, I'm writing notes while I'm reading it, and I'm trying to think through how apply that. I've learned so much by, by doing that and actually treating it more like a textbook. I have a book that… and I wish I'd have written this down before because I'm gonna forget the… I'm gonna mess up the titles of them all… but a book that a friend of mine recommended is kind of next up on my list to read, and it's The Million Dollar Consultant or something like that. That sounds familiar. And so that's kind of next up on my queue. And so there's books, and then I really like to read or listen to things that have nothing to do with sales. So teach me about humans, teach me about psychology. And so when I'm surfing through LinkedIn, I love to read or listen to just about anything that Simon Sinek produces, for example. I think the guy is fascinating. He comes up with so many great ideas, and I don't agree with them all either, but I think nothing 90% of the time, the guy's probably right. And you think about, you know, the leaders eat last and start with why. And that has as much application to your sales career as it does to life. And I really kind of geek out over that stuff. And I try not to talk about it too much because people think I'm crazy. But I think if you apply those principles to your workday and to your office environment and to even your personal life, that you're going to have better outcomes, you're going to have better relationships, and you're going to have better results. Love it.

57:55 Scott Ingram: Love it. And I tell you, like, the frequency that particularly Start With Why has come up on this show is insane. One of the things that's on my list for this year is to go back through all of the episodes and pull out all of the different book recommendations and put those into a consolidated document for you guys. So we will always push those things out through the mailing list. So if you've not done that yet, if you go to top1.fm, make sure you're on that thing. And if that's of particular interest, shoot me a note, harass me about it, and we'll make it happen a little bit sooner. What about tools or apps? Like, what's kind of core to your functioning there, whether it's on your phone or on the laptop or whatever?

58:37 Abel Lomas: Let's see. I'm an older guy at this point, and I don't know where you are age-wise, but I'm very quickly realizing that I'm becoming an older guy in the office, and it seemed like just yesterday I woke up and I was the kid in the office. And I think back to the early days of my career, and, you know, Hoover's was a set of textbooks that were in the office. Do you remember that? And I remember when Hoover's came online and, you know, but they didn't really have any contacts to look at. And the point being, it was really hard back then to find people that you ultimately needed to go and sell And I say this also because LinkedIn, and you probably get this in every single conversation you have, in particular Sales Navigator, I think is a phenomenal tool. I use it every single day. I could not do my job without it. And it has helped in so many different ways from a sales perspective, but, and also from a career perspective and being able to maintain your network, whether it's, it's, you know, a network of contacts, whether it's a network of close, you know, personal business contacts, just having them there. And even when you're not connecting with them regularly, occasionally seeing them and seeing what they're working on and hearing about their successes, giving you an excuse to reach out to them, I think is a lot of fun. And even, you know, your customers, right? Because at one point you were prospecting them and you reached out to them and you're like, man, I hope they connect with me on LinkedIn. And then, you know, then they become a customer and you're, you know, you build this relationship. And then maybe, you know, the course of years you've changed jobs or they've changed jobs and they pop up in your feed again and you're like, hey, how's it going? And because those relationships, they still matter, even if you, you can't sell them something, they're still of material interest to your life. And so just reaching back out to them, making sure everything's okay, checking on their family, that sort of thing. I get a lot of enjoyment from that. And it's one of the reasons why I love LinkedIn so much beyond any of the other social media types of tools. Sorry for digressing so far, so long on that topic. But I think about that and there's not… so many other tools are replaceable. You know, I couldn't live without PowerPoint, but if someone said you can't use it anymore, anymore, I'll use Google or I'll use, uh, what's that new one everyone's using? Prezi. Yeah, yeah. There's, you know, everything else is so interchangeable, you know, whether it be even Salesforce, which would be mind-boggling to replace it, but there's a million options out there. There's a million options for, you know, we use Outreach.io, but there's several different options for that. So there's, I think there's just a lot of tools that we use that can be easily replaced. LinkedIn, I think, has an enviable position in that I don't think you can replace that tool.

1:01:29 Scott Ingram: Yeah, fair enough. And I certainly live on LinkedIn just for those exact reasons, the relationships. There's a couple of things I think back to. We'll play our old guy cards here. Just like, how would you manage relationships before, right? And I guess things moved slower, right? You'd have your Rolodex. But how effective is a Rolodex when people change jobs every 3 years on average or, or whatever it is? Right? I mean, there's, there's so many parts of that. The other thing is somebody will have to reach out to me and explain this to me because it was apparently a little bit before my time. I don't understand how you would have managed redlines without Microsoft Word.

1:02:09 Abel Lomas: Very true.

1:02:09 Scott Ingram: So somebody can enlighten me on that at another time. We won't go to, we won't go too deep into that. But there's some things I wonder about sometimes. Is there a particular sales philosophy that you subscribe to? Yes and no.

1:02:23 Abel Lomas: So I say yes and no because I think every company has to adopt some philosophy. And at the same time, I've, you know, obviously I've read The Challenger Sale. I'm going through The Customer Challenger right now, which I think is really fascinating. Fascinating. Everyone should read that, by the way, including those marketers that listen to this as well. I think it's as much for marketers as it is for salespeople. Same with Challenger Sale.

1:02:50 Scott Ingram: Yes, very much so. I mean, we're all in this together.

1:02:52 Abel Lomas: I think if you were to pick apart what I do from a day-to-day basis in the sales cycle, it's very much aligned with behaviors that are in the Challenger Sale. But I don't profess to be an expert in it. I don't profess that that what I follow. It's really, it's kind of a marriage of experiences combined with trying to understand how these other humans work in this other company and how we can ultimately help them. And part of helping them is the psychology around, they work in a very chaotic environment and that chaos can kill your deal. At any moment. And so how can you help those people to give all of them a win, but a combined win, not a win that is, you know, different to every person, but rather is a rallying cry around, you know, unity? And maybe it sounds, you know, cute, but if you can aspire to that, then all of a sudden you get people working together. And they start to rally around you. And I don't know that that necessarily ties into any sales philosophy, but it's part of what I try to do is everyone has their own agenda, but what part of that agenda do they have in common? And how can I build a rallying cry around that one thing? And it might be something that I prescribe and it might be something that I've pulled out of them. Them, it kind of doesn't matter. But if you can find that one thing that everyone can rally around, because you're selling to, what is it, 8+ people these days on average? And even if you're only talking to 1 or 2, there's another, you know, 6+ that they have to influence. So what can you do that gets all those people rallied around some new idea or concept that they can all join forces in?

1:04:49 Scott Ingram: What's an example of one of those where you found sort of that coalescing idea?

1:04:54 Abel Lomas: There's a fun one that I'm engaged in right now, and it's… they're not sold, but just delivered a proposal actually about an hour before this meeting and had a pricing discussion yesterday. And so really a lot of fun people, really smart people. And it started out with a meeting the BDR set up with a director-level person. The director-level person was intrigued enough that she took me to her VP. VP was intrigued enough that she said, you need to talk to our SVP. And she asked me for the slide deck that I'd used so she could use that as bait for the SVP. So she sent that to him along with a message, and I get a message back from her a week later saying that, you know, he's not interested right Really, thank you for your time, but you know we're not going to do anything. But she did offer, and let me know if there's anything else that you think I should send him other than just to your website. And I responded back with, "Well, don't send him to our website," and not that there's anything wrong with our website, but the website is about us. I needed him to think about them. And so I did a Google search, and I won't tell you what the Google search was, but I. I did a Google search about their company and I took a screenshot of it and I sent that screenshot in an email. I said, have him do a Google search with these terms and he's going to get a response that looks something like this. Let me know if he wants to change that. And I got a response back from, from her saying, my SVP would like to take a meeting with you. And, and so that's, that's what I'm talking about. I mean, and sometimes it's easier than other times to find those things. But even like the nature of that meeting when we got the SVP and a bunch of VPs together, you know, the SVP starts out the meeting saying, hey guys, we've got a big problem here and we've got to rally around this and, and find a solution. And they didn't know if I was going to be able to prescribe a solution or not. Not, but they knew that they had… that I had uncovered a problem for them that they didn't know they had.

1:07:05 Scott Ingram: Yeah, that's challenger in action if I've ever seen it. That's what makes sales fun. Totally, totally. So Abel, what advice would you give to somebody that is just getting started in their sales career today? Oh, let's see.

1:07:17 Abel Lomas: You're going to break a lot of glass and it's okay. It's okay. Just go break it. You're going to lose more than you win and it's okay. And you're going to dust yourself off and you're going to stand back up and you're going to keep charging and just keep doing it. But every single time you trip and fall and every single time you lose, take a piece of that with you, learn from it. And then as you start to learn, make sure you're feeding the people around you because then you'll learn faster. They will learn faster. And as a collective body of salespeople, you'll all be more successful. Good stuff.

1:07:58 Scott Ingram: I also like to ask, what about somebody who is further into their career? They're doing well, or maybe they're not, but there's definitely another level of achievement. You know, maybe they made their number, but they're not making President's Club. Like, what advice do you have for them to take it to the next level?

1:08:14 Abel Lomas: I think that's an even more challenging question. I think I would want to have a conversation with them, quite frankly, but just to understand what the situation is. But I think there's a lot of factors that go into being successful with any particular sales role. And it has as much to do with the company, the product, the people, the organization, the market dynamics, and everything else as it does with the person. The problem usually isn't the person. The problem is usually something else in that environment. And while it's important for that person to take responsibility, sometimes the responsibility is maybe my situation needs to change. Maybe there's something different I should be doing, whether it's, you know, on that job or on the next one. Because what I can tell that person without knowing who they are or what the situation is, that it's not you. It is not you. It's not your fault if you're not achieving what you want to. To. You can, you can break through, but there might be something about that situation that needs to change because somewhere out there, there's a different situation that might get you everything you dreamed of and more. So just keep fighting, keep learning, keep helping others around you and make a difference in everyone's day. And, you know, good fortune and good karma will come your way. Yeah.

1:09:42 Scott Ingram: That's, that's really interesting advice. I wrote a very personal story about that in, in the book. So if, if you're, if you're new to the podcast and you've not heard about the book that we did, it's called Sales Success Stories, 60 Stories from 20 Top 1% Sales Professionals. This is one I've been trickling some of those stories out through the podcast feed. Just give folks a, a feel. This one's a little too personal for me to give away for free. So you'll have to, you'll have to pick up the book to get that one. But I, that, that really resonates with kind of that story and that particular situation. And I think there absolutely is something to, you have to be, you have to own what you need to own, right? You need to take responsibility for what you are responsible for. But to your point, a lot of times there are things that are just out of your control and the situation's not right. And man, there is a lot of opportunity out there right now. So go find a situation that is right. Abel, what about, what would you want to know from somebody who's at the top of their game in another organization?

1:10:44 Abel Lomas: Some of the similar questions you asked, I would want to ask. And it's, you know, what do you do differently? But ultimately, it's who are you? Who are you as a person? And what makes you think the way that you think? And because I would want to figure out how they think differently. What is their lens on the world? And then, you know, all of that aside, I'd want to know that when the selling is over, when they go home, their officemates and teammates are no longer present, are they happy? And if so, then give me your recipe because that's what it's all about.

1:11:18 Scott Ingram: So this is the most dangerous question because I get to turn it around. So I mean, I think we've started to understand, but who is Abel? Like what What drives how you're thinking, and are you happy when you go home?

1:11:31 Abel Lomas: Oh, absolutely. I mean, I couldn't be happier. I mean, there's always hopes and dreams of more money, bigger houses, all that kind of fun stuff. Actually, I'm a pretty simple guy. I want to be able to take care of my family and not worry about the next paycheck. So there's that whole thing, but it's really about just happiness doesn't come from stuff. It comes from, you know, the people around you. It comes from experiences. It comes from that space between your ears. And so I'm… I tend to be the most happy guy in any room that I'm in, and possibly to the point of being annoying from time to time. One of my teammates who I was chatting with recently, and I was going through a difficult time from a sales situation, and I was expressing to her how down I was about it. And she goes, Abel, your level of down is so incredibly positive. It just… I don't know how you do it. And so, you know, that's a big part of who I am. And my wife and I are complete opposites, by the way. You know, she always comments about how my glass is not only half full, but it's always full, if not running over. And her hers was thrown, shattered, and stolen all at the same time. But that's what makes relationships work, right, is those differences. And I don't know that I'm answering your question, but I'm an extremely happy person just by nature. And I want to see… I really work hard to see other people find happiness too. And to me, that's That's really, really important. And then beyond that, you know, I'm just a guy who grew up in San Antonio to a really poor family. And, you know, I think all of my siblings have achieved some level of success in what they do. But I just know that I didn't want to grow up or I didn't want my kids to grow up the same way I did. And so in my mind, I'm constantly thinking about how I don't want to be poor. And so it's… and that, that has so much meaning outside of just wealth and money. It has, you know, impacts to my mood and, and so many other things. But that's a big driver, is, is I don't want to be poor. It's funny because I was… I'm not a fan of the Cowboys, and, and I'm not, I'm not a big football guy. I That's really the issue. I mean, Cowboys, you know, great if they're on. Yeah, I'll watch. Let's not talk about that.

1:14:13 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah, I'm sure they're getting ready to disappoint me real soon.

1:14:17 Abel Lomas: But I remember this interview from years ago of Jerry Jones, and I can't remember who interviewed him, and I can only remember one thing about this interview. And, you know, here's one of the wealthiest men in America, you know, being interviewed, and the final question they asked him was, you know, what is your greatest fear? And his response just blew me away because I was just suddenly glued. He goes, my greatest fear is being poor. And so I thought about that. And because he grew up… I don't know his complete story, but I think, you know, he grew up not having much either. And I think there's something in there that causes certain behaviors and work ethic and desire and hunger. And even when you have something, and you're still thinking it's not enough. I need to push harder. I need to do more. I need to continue learning. I need to continue to evolve just to keep up, much less stay ahead.

1:15:11 Scott Ingram: Yeah. You know, it's interesting. I had a short conversation this morning with Antony Rhine, who's been on the podcast. And one of the things that for me was most memorable about that conversation, and I don't remember which episode it was. So if you go to the show notes at top1.fm, we'll have a link in there So you don't have to go hunting for it. He had just this miraculous way about how he really built like curriculum for himself and decided, I'm going to study this. I haven't been quite that practiced about it, but I do find that I go on, I go on like thematic kicks and like you, like I have to work really hard to read fiction. It's, it's all nonfiction all the time. And right now I'm kind of in a memoir phase and have been here for quite a while, but, you know, at one point I went on this big habit time management thing. But one of the most interesting adventures I went on a number of years ago was sort of this happiness positive psychology sort of kick. And there's a lot of good books. And I think what kicked off that for me was I read Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh, who's the CEO of Zappos. And he references a number of different books and resources and is a big kind of proponent of positive psychology. So if that's something that that you're interested in digging into, I think it's a really worthwhile effort because it is something that you have to kind of figure out yourself and you have to work at it. It's not just an automatic thing.

1:16:36 Abel Lomas: Yeah, absolutely. Every single day, it's, you know, what am I going to do differently today? And it's bringing that positive energy to everything you do. And, you know, it's kind of interesting. Bad things happen. It's business and it's humans, right? And either, you know, it's going to get you down and keep you down. Or you're going to get back up and, you know, take a look at it from a different perspective and figure out how to address that situation. So either it doesn't happen again, or so you can actually go and fix it and change it and make an impact.

1:17:07 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. And it's no accident that the first… I don't remember how many stories… 13 stories in the book are all about mindset. Mindset is such a core piece of this particular profession we chose. So, Abel, this has been fantastic. I always try and close out with something actionable, right? We've covered a ton of ground. What would you challenge the person listening to this to do over the course of the next week or 2 weeks to improve themselves and improve their results?

1:17:35 Abel Lomas: You know, that's a really interesting question. I think there's probably a lot of things that I can take away from this and go and do better myself. But one of those that I really try to do that I haven't talked about at all today is practicing empathy. And so if you really want to help somebody, whether it be a teammate or whether it be a prospect in your pipeline, then you practice empathy. Think about what is, what is that person working on? What is their mood while they're working on it? And how can I affect that in a way that they might not even realize? And in order to get there, you have to practice empathy. You have to get a sense of how is this person feeling? What is their feel state? And I would encourage you to try that. You know, I think one fun exercise would be, you know, go into your next group meeting and conduct the meeting as usual. Don't do anything differently. But after you walk out of that meeting, take a mental inventory of every person in that room. Where were they sitting in that room or standing? What were they doing during the meeting? Were they, were they working on something else that they shouldn't have been? Were they happy? Were they sad? Were they distracted? Were they focused? You know, and what was their mood? And take that mental inventory. And then, as something occurred in that meeting, whether it be good news or bad news, how did that impact their mood? And then go back and reassess their mood after that news was shared. And if you can practice that, I think that will make a huge difference in your selling motion. Because now, as you engage with your buyer, and you can get a better sense of their feel state about not, not necessarily about you, but rather about their situation, about who they are. And then you can figure out better, better ways better strategies to impact them that drives the right result, that builds trust and ultimately helps to conduct business.

1:19:44 Scott Ingram: Wow, man. Way to close. Abel, this has been, this has been a blast. Thanks for taking the time with me today.

1:19:50 Abel Lomas: Thank you so much for having me. This has been a lot of fun.

1:19:52 Scott Ingram: So 2 last things before you take off. First, don't forget to register for the 2019 Sales Success Summit at top1summit.com. If you're not quite ready yet, at least get on the mailing list so you can get updates as we start to build the agenda. Also, now that 2018 is behind us, I'd love to know who finished as the number one top performer in your organization. This show wouldn't be possible if it weren't for some great introductions like the one Vinay gave to me when and connected me with Abel to the best of the best. Send me an email and tell me about your number one, or maybe that was you. Either way, you can send a note to scott@top1.fm, and I try to respond to every one of those messages. Personally because I really appreciate you reaching out. Thanks for listening, and here's to your success in 2019.

1:20:40 Abel Lomas: Thank you, Scott. Thanks for listening to the Sales Success Stories podcast.

1:20:46 Scott Ingram: 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.