Full Transcript below. Here you can find the condensed show notes.
Intro: You are listening to the sales success stories podcast, where we deconstruct world class sales performers to provide insights and strategies to help you improve, learn more and visit us at top one fm. Here is your host, Scott Ingram.
Scott Ingram: Today my guest is Jeff Zelaya, Jeff is the number one sales manager at Triblio which is an account based marketing solution that generates demand and drives engagement through personalisation. Did I get that right Jeff?
Jeff Zelaya: You got it Scott.
Scott Ingram: Awesome, welcome to the show
Jeff Zelaya: Thank you, thanks for having me.
Scott Ingram: So what we do here is I asked Jeff to try and boil down what he believes is the 3 things that have helped achieve such significant sales success. So Jack how do you want to tackle your top 3?
Jeff Zelaya: Let’s take it from the top.
Scott Ingram: Cool go for it.
Jeff Zelaya: Alright the first one that I put as a bullet point and something that is important to me and actually it’s at the core of what [Inaudible] 00:01:02 does is about personalising.
And personalisation as a whole and it’s something that people in sales have to do a better job at because I mean you and I Scott, we probably got those sales emails where we know, we are probably one out of 300 people that are getting that same email that day and I ignore that and I send it right to my spam and junk and you did it and you didn’t spend the time to get to know me and you are asking for a demo, you are asking for a top time to meet with me so personalising just your whole sales proses from the prospecting to when that person is in the sales cycle to even after you close the deal is key to differentiating yourself as a top producer, as a really quality sales person so we are going to dive into that and talk about how we do it here at Tribilio.
I have done it and what works and what doesn’t. so that is definably one area that we are going to cover. The other area is about transparency and how important it is because sales people
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Have gotten over the years a bad wrap for just you know being pushy and having ulterior motives and you know and we all know about the ulterior typical sales person and I think the great sales people are changing.
We are shifting that paradigm to be more transparent of our proses although we are trying to sell and everything happens when the sale is made. It’s still important to be transparent about the proses because doing that you earn trust.
So that is something else we are going to talk about is how to build trust in a relationship in a prospect with someone that you are working on a deal with and how that will help you accelerate the sales cycle.
So we are going to talk about that and the last piece which I hope to discuss with you Scott in detail and I know you are a fan of technology and how amazing today as sales people. We have all these great tools that just help us become more efficient and productive at the same time and if we are not using these tools in the right way they could just be a burden on your schedule and just adding things on top of things that are broken.
So we want to make sure that we embrace technology and we use it in a way that makes us actually more efficient so that we can focus on the things that really matter.
Scott Ingram: Awesome, great list fort digging into this. So the list is personalisation, trust and technology. So starting with the personalisation, I think the most natural place to go is, what is that like in the real world, what is that mean in your proses. How does that manifest?
Jeff Zelaya: Excellent, so first understand how we use personalisation. I want us to look at what is not personalisation. So like I said earlier, we are just mundane with emails all the time, phone calls and here as the sales manager I have gotten many calls
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I actually now give people coaching advice in sales and before [Inaudible] 00:04:02, you probably don’t want to hear advice form me, but I take my profession very seriously.
So when I get a chance to coach someone on improving their proses so that they could get better, I jump on it. And part of where people are dropping the ball is that they are not spending enough time to really know their target; you know who someone that they should be going after is?
So I think it starts there as at the top of the funnel, what makes a good client, what makes a good customer for your organisation for your business and getting to know that profile in detail and you should b able to tell me what an ideal customer is.
What does that look like for you and if you cannot answer that question, we have a problem. Because you just don’t want to be calling people at random and code calling you know and just using a generic strep or template to get a good sales proses moving when you haven’t paid your dues and when I say pay your dues again understanding who you are going after.
Whether it’s a target account or a certain persona or their behaviours, where’re they live, what they are interested in and what their goal are and just putting yourself in their shoes and that is part one. Then part two is going down to that individual.
I want to get some time from Scott, you know what would be the best time to know more about Scott so I could then tailor whether its an email message, whether it’s a phone call, whether its social media. How can I tailor my message to really intrigue you and to you know perk up your ears and you know in that way I can get a chance to you know to whatever it is that I’m selling.
And at the same time I’m doing the pitching
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You know I’m doing that with the prospect in mind because I’m reaching out to you for a reason and this is the reason why and it should be to add value. You know it’s should align to what a person cares about, it should be in a way that really helps them to expand or grow their business.
I think that is where the personalisation proses begin. You know number one understanding what the targets look like and putting yourself in their shoes and then going down to that actual individual and getting to know more about the person that you are reaching out to.
They are not just another number but they are a real person and what is that real person interested in looking at you to get your attention. You know what do they care about and I think if you take the time to really research that individual and if you really spend a couple of minutes of what it takes to tailor these emails to tailor your phone outreach, to make sure you are going after the right folks.
It will make a world of difference in your ability get the meeting scheduled, to get those first sales call so I think that is where the personalisation proses begins
Scott Ingram: Si what I heard is avoid the spray and pray and get really focus on who is on the other end and who am I reaching out so that you are more efficient and more effective and them to me it sounded like extreme empathy.
How do I put myself in their shoes and think about how they are thinking and think what are they worrying about and think about those solutions and come at them that way right
Jeff Zelaya: Yes and again to personalise a message for the audience and listening to this show, I’m in the sass, be to be space where we are selling solutions that are thousands and thousands of dollars and hundreds and thousands of dollars and spend that time to do that and you may
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In your type of business and I think that most of the listeners aren’t and I think you could relate to what are saying, so yeas that [Inaudible] 00:08:12
Scott Ingram: Awesome, let’s talk about the building trust piece
Jeff Zelaya: Yeah, ok so I think by personalising your outreach that is one aspect of how you built trust. Because when you are reaching out with a very personalised trust, that person you are reaching out to know wow Jeff just spent the extra minute of time to get to know me. And also the outreach, you are not going there with a self-seeking or self-serving attitude.
It’s really more focused on super empathy and getting to know how you can add value or adding value to that conversation from the start. And the way we do it here at Triblio is to maybe point out you know things that they could be doing better, you know challenging that prospect who look at ways to prove what they are currently doing.
You know providing research, providing statistics that help them do their job better like providing them with ideas to think out of what they are currently doing and to look for ways that they could improve their proses and in this case they are marketing.
That is one way we built trust because most sales people will go out there and say hey it’s about me, it’s about my product, it’s about my company and what I do and that is one way you actually taking away the trust because you are just sounding like everyone else but if you are able to add value and look for ways that you are immediately could help them in area’s and it doesn’t have to be what you sell.
It can be other ideas. You know bringing them sometimes information that they don’t know or competitive intelligence that
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Would help them point out certain things that are happening in the news factor and business and providing that value up front without asking for everything in return is one of the key ways that I build trust with my prospects.
Scott Ingram: Oh that is awesome. So for the last piece we are going to talk about technology and that is something that you and I have definably spent some time on and talked about and compared out sales techs stats, and exited to dig into that but giving that we are talking about sales technology this is opportune time to quickly thank our finding sponsor [Inaudible] 00:10:44 is a modern sales platform that leverages relationship strength that help you find and keep your best customers.
Something that I have been using myself since my real early data proses and they continue to add a lot more value to that solution. So if you value relationships the way I do, then you need Nudge. You can sign up for free at neednedge.com that is neednudge.com.
So Jeff talk about technology.
Jeff Zelaya: Oh I am a technology geek and I and I love all types of tools. I was bought up in millennial technology, in social media, so you can bet your butt that is probably my toolbox right we are using [Inaudible] 00:11:25 tools and platforms like LinkedIn sales navigator, we are using Twitter, we are using sales right for you
COM is the blood vessels of a sales person so that is very important to us but we also using some cruel technology like outreach OL which has helped us scale personalization via email and gain inelegance on what the emails actually resonating and processing and what isn’t and to help at the same time scale, but keeping it personal our Kadence, our sales Kadence
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Sales proses.
So that is one of the tools that we are leveraging today and its very beneficial to us. And of course data, we need the right people and the right information and that is part of our proses here. So we are using discover of word as one of our partners to get that type of data and information on the appropriate prospects, phone numbers and emails and roles in the departments [Inaudible] 00:12:26 also.
So that is part of our google docs Triblio, unplugging my company but also some really cool things out and giving intelligence account to go after so that you are not wasting your time going after code accounts so that you are actually spending time on the accounts that are engaging with you right now. So that is something that we leverage at Tribilio.
But those are my core tech stack and then we have other tools that we talk about over the individual that the individual become more efficient and effective with their own life and in term become a better sales person.
Scott Ingram: Awesome yeah and you are the king of that so I look forward to circling back to that piece but now let’s just get in to a little bit of the context so maybe talk about your role in how you got to be number on end to be clear your title as sales manager, but you are an individual contributor for a guy who has had some pretty good success right
Jeff Zelaya: Yes, I will actually tell you the story on how I got slide into Triblio. So Triblio is a startuper, a couple of years old. I was the first sales higher for the start up. I teamed up with some amazing co-founders or co-founders are former [Inaudible] 00:13:48 executives.
And after Allocate was acquired Oracle, we transitioned to start Triblio and I worked in the very early days alongside the CEO, the CMO selling to your initial prospects.
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It was a very difficult, for me it was very new because I came from a more established enterprise, software sale and they already had a proses built.
They already had all the content that you needed. They had marketing and they had that down to a science. I left because I wanted to grow and accelerate my professional development and my career growth and the former CMO at that previous company became one of the co-founders for that company.
He knew about me, he learned about me from that previous company. Saw me excel, especially when it came to social selling and he felt that, he simply attributes to bring as he built up the sales team for Triblio. So I became the first sales higher and in the first couple of months I was exploring you know what is the best way to position Triblio and just sell and creating the sales proses.
It was very challenging; I mean I had a lot of sleepless nights. You know pulling hair because I was sometimes very frustrated because you are selling a dream. I mean essentially that is what it is. At that time not allow tangible things to show, it was results and case studies. We were creating a lot of stuff on the fly.
It was not just a sales roll but it was a little bit of marketing, a little bit of customer success and a little bit of IT and you knows a lot of different hats that I wore. Now as time went on I developed our customer success stories became a lot stronger and our sales prospects also became more defined and it’s easy to brag about being the number one sales person when I’m the only sales person at Triblio.
However that has changed over the past few months because our proses has become predictable and now we are starting to scale.
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To the point where we are bringing on executives, we’ve got a BBR team, we’ve got CL’s leadership so that I’m working directly with the chief sales office for us to start scaling our start-up and get ready for the next level of growth for our company.
And it’s been very exciting for me personally because I went form this enterprise where everything you know is already laid out for you where I had to create a lot of that and experiment with all of these different processes.
Think about what works and it gets very frustrating in time to see how far we have come and it’s rewarding and the stage that we are at, I’m very excited to get to that next step in our growth and it’s been quite a journey for us but you know the numbers don’t lie.
I have been able to double my sales every year since I started at Triblio and now I’m going on my 3rd year at Triblio and have actually closed more deals in revenue this past quarter I did then when you know my second half of last year.
And today a couple weeks from the quarter, you know 3 weeks from the quarter, 20 days to be exact and I‘m already at my number. It feels amazing ot be at my goal and I mean that sales accelerator bonus territory where every deal that comes in, every extra revenue incremental bonus in that and adding into my bottom line.
So that has been great and very rewarding at the place that we are at. I worked very hard to get here and now I want to be able to create opportunities for hungry sales peoples on our team.
Scott Ingram: Yeah such a great stretch, that is why I wanted to connect with you because you have gone from a really pure start-up sales role where you got that early traction where you have been growing and growing and seeing really
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Significant expansion that has been through that hole and journey and really excelling in the path, it’s been fun to watch.
But let’s go back and dig a little more into your history. I know you were into the enterprises sales side but how did you get into sales and how did this all start for you.
Jeff Zelaya: Wow so I have always been attracted to sales. It came from my first job. In high school, my senior year, actually going from my junior to senior year I went through this transformation where I lost a lot of weight. I went from this fat chubby kid to being the most diesel guy in the classroom or in the high school. I used that actually to become a personal trainer.
I sold the ability to become a personal trainer because at that time you had to be 18 and I was 17 and the guy, the manager there said hey if you come back on your 18th birthday and I’ll bring you on board. So I did exactly that I showed up on this [Inaudible] 00:19:13.
I showed up on my 18th birthday, pitched him and told him exactly why they should hire me as a personal trainer and they did. And I started training clients at this gym. And the way that it worked it was that you had to bring on your own clients.
So you really had to sell yourself right. You had to pitch these people that wanted to lose weight and build muscle. You had to convince them that they should work with you as opposed to the other trainers that were in the gym as opposed to you known on their own.
So that is where my love for sales started. At first it was more a passion for exercise and fitness and helping people changing their lives through weight loss or becoming healthier. But as I explored the different
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sales tactics and strategies I realized wow!
The better I get at selling these mythologies, the more clients I’m able to bring on board and to convince to work with us and my business just started growing. I came to the point that I was not able, my schedule got so packed that I was not able to train any clients on an individual basis but I was really selling on behalf of the personal trainers.
So my role shifted and I created this new role at the gym and that is where I realised I had this gift you know and I have the, I guess it was discovering this anomy that I have this gift, not only have this ability but I love it. Just the exhilaration of getting somebody to say yes we want to work out you know, we want to commit to this personal training program and pay the money to work with one of your trainers.
Just that rush of closing that deals and just knowing that these people would be on a better path for their health was a rush. So you know going through that. Experience that maybe but this is great but there are other opportunities that I could leverage this skill for and I actually got into my first insight sales job because of a client of mine.
So I was working with one of my early clients so I still train him all the time and he said you know he had a great job selling, marketing and consulting services for people who wanted to patent their idea or start their business. He was like man you are so good at this that you should maybe try selling what I sell and you know come check out what I do and see if you like it.
So I went to his office, it was inside this cubicles right line up in this building and it was very fishy
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but it was very legit business. I actually came to that building and it was payday.
So everyone had their checks in a manila folder with their checks inside and they were very eager to show what they made and they were very proud of that they were making. I saw the checks and I was like what! I could be making this and apply and having the same type of skills that I am now doing at the gym.
So I said OK you know let me try it. And I had the intention of doing it part time. And in the first week I got so many appointments that any other rep on the floor and they made more money than I did working 4 weeks at the gym that I just left the gym completely and said you know this is what I’m going to you know devote myself too.
So I started doing sales at this, it was like a call inside sales role and went from an appointment setter to actually closing deals, to closing small deals and then got to close the bigger deals and was one of the top sales person there in the span of a year.
Became one of the top producers and I really flourished in that role and I realised wow this is a rewarding career. And that business unfortunately did not attain. They went at that time it was economy issues and they did it strategically plan the business.
They had 4 sites to look into and that is when they went bankrupt. And I was in that position that I really knew that I loved sales but in order to maybe get the right job or the right path I needed to go back to school and I enrolled into
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Just a high school graduate, a year doing the personal training business, selling the services, transitioning to the inside sales role and you know without the next move but understood that I liked sales and I liked marketing because when I was a trainer I was creating a lot of the marketing materials to do the pitching and to promote our services so I knew I liked those aspects of business but wanted to have the degree to back it up and have more of the business knowledge knowledge that I lacked at that time so I enrolled at Florida international university and started my college career.
I crushed it during my college career because I was already out of high school for a year or two and I learned from the mistakes that everyone else had made while they were going to school, my friends. Also I was more focused as a student so I knew I had to reach the skill that I will learn and I already came to the professor with my agenda, this is what I want to get in the classroom.
I was very productive during my college years, I was a member of the American marketing association which the year that I was one of the executives members of that club that became the number one ranked organization in the country.
I also competed at the national level at the sales competition and won the first place for the university and college in the sales contest. It put us on the map and all the professors coming and saying what else can you do? We know you have these skills, what else we can do to help kids. To help our students to gain these skills?
So I started collaborating with the professors, building curriculum for sales and you know bringing ideas to them. We started a sales club at the university and that was my legacy.
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I left and that club is now as grown and how they do international competitions but I made an impact there and I graduated at the top of my class. I was recognised by the president of the University for being one of the one of the most outstanding students at my class, not just because I excelled academically but because I excelled with extra curriculum activities and I ended up graduating with 4 job offers.
At the time it was into as good and jobs were not as plentiful, I had 4 job offers waiting for me and guess what they were all in sales related and that was when I realised wow. I love sales it can be really very rewarding, it’s difficult.
It’s not for everybody but that is why I enjoyed it because not everyone can do this and I felt special knowing that I was good at sales and also what I really enjoyed about sales is that if you apply it to anything because if you use it in sports, in your sales for sports.
If you are interested in fashion, there are sales in fashion. If you are interested in like me marketing there is sales in marketing and technology so I felt there was a lot of options for what I could do with my career so that’s, I kind of went way back there Scott you know I took you to my college years but you know that is the story.
That is the background of how I really got into sales but at first I had the full offer. It was the one offer that really stood out to me that I jumped on was the opportunity to do sales for an agency, for a marketing agency. So I joined this company called Media Whizz and they were based in New York and I worked on the south floor in the office and I was selling from day one right out of college, I was selling to CMO’s, selling to CEO’s, high marketing executives
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at fortune one thousand companies and what made me unique was that part of what helped me succeed at maybe at some of the more seasoned sales reps did not have at that time was my background with social media.
So I really used that as a way to set myself apart and give myself an edge and I actually ended up when I was at my last agency, one of the top 3 sales reps, over a million dollars in revenue, a huge pipeline and they did not want to see me go but I eventual transitioned and moved up to Washington DC. But I had a great time at the agency that was like I built my foundation to do what I do now.
So like every job, every move that I have made has helped me be successful today. It shaped me as a sale professional and I embodied that in everything that I do now and creating our sales proses here at Tribilio and helping our team succeed in closing deals.
Scott Ingram: Yes so I have 2 related questions to follow that up. you know one is I think there is very few straight line career paths in sales these days right so I kind of thinking about is there anything you would have done differently if you were starting that proses over again today knowing what you know now and if maybe if you can work in now, there is a lot of folks that are probably in insight sales interested in making the transition to an outside role, an enterprise role and whatever that may be and I think a lot of people stop there.
That can be a pigeon hole place. So what are your thoughts on that especially on the team at Tripilio?
Jeff Zelaya: Yes so something that I personally did well at, of course I always think that I could do this better is that you always work on building your brand. So no matter what company you work for no matter what you are selling.
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Always work on building your personal brand and getting known for whatever it is that you want to be known for.
So that is something that I did at that time. I always think I could do this and I could do this and adding stuff to it but working on building your personal brand and the reason I say that is because you can take that personal brand anywhere.
And you could transition, going from an inside sales and those personal brands will reflect that for all these to become an inside rep or an enterprise rep, you could built that through what you create for your personal brand. It’s easy to transition because google is your name and you are already creating content, although you are working in sales you are creating content or talking about outside sales while your next employer will see that and know hey he has a passion for that and he has experience for that.
It will be a lot easier to transition into that new role and they will be more trusting of you. I think that would be one of the pieces of advice that I would give to any college student or to anyone that is looking to change or to take their career into a different path is to don’t wait for that job to open for you and to start talking about that new role to start talking about it today.
You do that through social media, through LinkedIn, through networking events through creating your blog, your website. Writing your articles about it but I think that is the piece of advice that will be very, its critical to anyone that is thinking about switching careers or you know just wants to be in a position where they could easily transition and go to a new opportunity without having a lot of challenges presenting themselves along the path
Scott Ingram: Yeah so all things you have done along the way, ant that is great. And Jeff out of all your accomplishments along the way, which are you most proud of?
Jeff Zelaya: That is a great question.
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There are a lot of things that I feel really good about personally. I feel accomplished with, I would say the one that really stands out is, you know and it’s not really sales related. It’s when I was FYU and I was recognised as the head graduate so they only give that to 2 students in the entire graduate students over 1000.
And the reason that that means a lot ot me, when I graduated high school I didn’t graduate on time. So my friends have gone to school from elementary to middle school to high school and we are supposed to walk off the stage together and celebrate this milestone together.
I did not end up walking with them and the reason for that is that in my senior year I got realised Scott. I came down with a really bad case Senioritis. And i was absent more days then I was actually showing up to class. And all of my other teachers, because they kind of knew who I was and I had charisma, and they would be just to let him slide and we will get him to walk the stage, my English teacher, Miss Hemmings which I would never forget to this day and she says Jeff if I ask you, it’s not the goal and I don’t believe you know passing you based on what you are telling me now.
You have got to earn it, and I’m sorry you didn’t earn it and because of that my graduating, you know it was late in summer so I had to go back and retake that English class in order to graduate high school. That made my mom very upset because my mom you know, immigrant parents, they came here switching for a better opportunity for myself and something that they were always focused on you know education, education, education like there was an opportunity for you and it was heart-breaking to tell my mom, hey mom I’m not going to be a graduate and
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Graduating with the rest of my class mates you know, this is not going to happen. It broke her heart.
And you know it was from that time period, she just never kind of forgave me for it. So going back to college and not just graduating with my class and college but being recognised like you know and I stood up in front of the thousands of people but also my family, my mom, my step dad and my brother and sister, they were all present and they all got a chance to tell me that we were all being recognised at this commencement ceremony and that stands out to me because what she felt there it was redemption for me.
I know that it made her so happy that it doesn’t matter how you start you could always change, you could always improve. So that for me is one of the accomplishments that I’m most proud of
Scott Ingram: So that is good, that is sort of a sales redemption, a good story. I will leave you there on the couch and maybe you could put us in the place where you know you were struggling the most, the most challenge at any point in your career
Jeff Zelaya: yeah you know most presently here I think I have a lot of those milestones that I’m proud of. Probably the one that I’m most proud of is how far we have come in that first half of this year. I look at the number and I look at the revenue and I accomplish more in this first half of this year than I did in all of last year.
And that means so much to me because I know the challenges that it took to get here right. Our first year first half of the year of Trivlio it was a very difficult sale. I know we were just selling this dream, there wasn’t any success stories yet. You know we did not really have a process defined
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And now we have all this process and they have fallen into place and you know we are now in a point where we are just now that we are assign more wood to this fire that we were already as a burning you know very brightly.
I think I’m out of that because we essentially started with nothing and now we have something amazing.
Scott Ingram: Do you have a specific morning routine you go through
Jeff Zelaya: Oh yes, I’m a big believer in the morning routines. Like today I was up at 5 in the morning and I texted my chief sales operator and we hold each other accountable you know for being up at 5 o clock in the morning at least 4 days during our work week and we are texting at 4 am hey I’m up are you up?
And we will text pictures and typically this is what my morning looks like. I get up and the first 5 minutes I’m just like on my phone to open my eyes a bit you know just to get my brain going a bit. I would read some emails or an article or go on social media and then right away I have my closed laid out so the night before, my morning routine starts the night before I typically review my calendar for the upcoming day.
You know this is what the meetings I have had and this is what I should be expecting tomorrow. I also lay out my gym wear so I have my shorts and shirt and shoes ready to go right by the door so I have no excuse. I could find my way to that easily, out that on and I’m out the door. My day starts with an hour or a half workout session which included the first 5 to 10 minutes I’m praying and I’m also expressing gratitude for what I have you know my family, my health, my career and my finances.
So I express gratitude for that. You know I also pray for
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Visualizing things that I want to accomplish that day and I want to accomplish that quarter and that year. Think about those goals and I also go into my cardio workout.
Start with running and warm up and then go into half an hour of running. And like this morning I did a 3 mile run quickly. That is what I do in the morning, sometimes a little longer maybe if I have an early morning meeting scheduled I would go a little longer and maybe switch it up with some weight training so depending on the day some weight training and cardio.
But you know the routine looks like expressing gratitude, prayer, visualization and my to do list for that day you know what it should look like, going onto my workout and then wrapping up with up… and as soon as a finish that I transition to eating my from.
To those who are not familiar with that and what it mean. If you ate a frog this morning Scot, your day after that looks pretty good right because I don’t think anything worse than that could happen to eat a frog. What that means for me is that I try to do that task or that project that email or that phone call, that I really don’t want to do I might just push it off, but I know it is important for me to do so I try to get that knock out of my list immediately.
So that is typically of what my morning routine would consist of.
Scott Ingram: What was this morning’s frog?
Jeff Zelaya: This morning’s frog was to get you the bullet points for this conversation. I was like man I can’t believe I forget that because I had to get that and I also had an important email follow up that I wanted to do for this prospect that is going to disappear on me a little bit so I have to hammer on them, so creating that email to send them was part of my morning routine
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Scott Ingram: Cool and then are there other routines or habits that are key to your success maybe later in the day. We talked about the morning but maybe how you structure the rest of your day
Jeff Zelaya: Yeah I’m a big believer in also having an alarm set up throughout the day. In the morning I use that as well, set up different check points for me throughout the day so I would say hey 12 o clock I have the midday goal check.
So look at my goals and how productive have I been so that is a question that pops up on my phone finally to look at my game plan to make sure I’m still on the plan. I also have a reminder to call up my sons on Facetime to spend some time with them you know I’m a working dad.
I want to send as much time with him just to see how he is doing and I have reminders to do that. I set up reminders to do that during the day but you know they remind me throughout the day at the appropriate times. You know occasionally I would do like midday or around 2 o clock I slip out of the office and I would go for a walk.
You know I live here in DC but my office is in Reston and we have in the back yard is a forest that is a beautiful, actually it’s a federal preserved forest and I go back there and do a walk and you know some meditation and affirmations throughout that time but it’s a great way to break up your day so when I come back I usually come back energised and I would do like phone time after I come back from that walk and that would include in my day.
I try to get out of the office no later than 6, of course it doesn’t happen every day but sometimes you got to work late. I try by 6 to get home and have dinner with the family that is very important to me. Family time and getting to spend time together and just hang out with my wife and son
[00:42:00]
And we do that in the evening and if I have extra work to do it when they are asleep like last night I dint have a huge work load so instead I went for a 6 mile run at 10 o clock at night.
I do things like that just to stay very active and I find that by exercising I actually have a lot more energy throughout my day and energy is important in sales because you got to pass on energy through enthusiasm. You have got to make your energy contagious because you are motivating these people to move.
It might be easy to stay where they are at. It’s easy to be at a place and it’s easy not to do anything but I have to transfer my energy over to them sometimes just to give them my voice you know for them to get going so that energy is key for us sales people to be able to harness and use that throughout our day so the more energy you have I think the better you will be at selling so exercise has helped me maintaining and increase my energy and as well as eating healthy.
Thank God to have a wife that cooks for me, so I don’t have to worry about going out to eat. Eating with a prospect, or with a client, or with our teammates here. So I have lunch here with my snacks and you know that is what a day would look like for me
Scott Ingram: Nice, the energy thing is so interesting, having done alto of research around this and it’s really counter intuitive. The idea you would think you got so much energy for the day so I want to apply that to my selling effort and I’m going to apply that in the office maybe a little bit with my family but the flip side is true.
You actually get more energy if you spend some energy in workout or go for a run or go for a walk and obviously if you pay attention to all of the points that Jeff is walking, running during the day, that is obviously the reason why I usually at the top of the charts on my fitness
[00:44:00]
With my friends but then Jeff came along and he has obliterated that.
Jeff I’m surprised you haven’t bought it up, can you talk a little more about your tracking mechanism because fitness is a part of that but you have got this really great system that I think has, I mean particularly in the last year, year and a half as I kind of watched you do it and execute it has made a huge difference, can you talk about that?
Jeff Zelaya: Jip so Peter Trucker says if you want to, if you can’t, if you can’t measure it you can’t manage it. You know I have gaols set for me for this year and one of those goals is around fitness. It was very difficult kind of to monitor on how I’m doing on the fitness level.
So looked at the fit bit that was popping up on my radar, my wife actually got it for me for my birthday and at the beginning of the year I was armed with my fit bit and wow it was, it just made a huge difference in my overall health and fitness level by having the data now where I’m at.
I think a lot of us tend to overestimate at how active we are or how may steps we take. So the first couple of weeks I had the fit bit I was like what? That’s it! I’m not doing the daily recommended steps that the heart association recommends that you do.
I felt really out of shape and I felt it as well you know going up a flight of stairs and breathing heavy and it just gave me the data to know now ok this is where I’m at and this is where I’m starting. If I want to end up here and lose my 15 pounds this year, this is what I need to do.
This is how many calories that I would need but more importantly this is the activity level that I have to. So of course you know we can’t double that over nothing that you need or from one month to the next but I found ways to gradually increase that over time.
So kind of in their sales proses right, that’s
[00:46:00]
That’s how we got better here at Trivlio, we started selling and really keeping track of activity and the relation with that activity is results and you know discovering those patterns.
So the same thing was sure of when I got the fit bit was that during the weekends I’m not very active but during the week you know if I get up at 5 I usually get over weight and I usually get my 10 000 steps in no problem.
If I’m at 10 000 steps at lunch time, I could probably do 20 000 steps a day. Just seeing those patterns I started realising ok this is what I need to improve upon, this is what I do to get better.
Also the competitive atmosphere of fit bit got me going. Like you know the breathing and seeing you Scott at the top of the charts as a sales person just innate this desire to be the best right.
If you are in sales, you want to be the best, you want to be number one. I don’t want to be at the bottom, I don’t want to be in the middle. I want to be number one. That drive, that competitive factor helped me also. It pushed me to go for an extra walk that night or go for an extra run you know to get myself going when I really didn’t want to.
It was easier to not do anything so that helped also drive me and just the community around that helps push us to become better. That is really one of the mechanisms that I use you know to increase my steps, to increase my activity to become more fit and I apply that to other things in my life so there are other habits that I wanted to create.
One of those habits was in professional developments so spending time reading and listening to podcast like this I think is key. We have a lot of down time especially like communicating or doing mundane activities at the office where we could make it more productive by listening to a podcast and listening to an interview or reading a book.
[00:48:00]
So I started creating habits or a wish list of habits that I wanted to create and by creating these habits, I knew that I would be able to achieve a certain outcome as a result.
You know I may not be able to get that result or control that result. But what I could control is the activity, so setting time throughout my day creating those habits where I would spend you know 10 minutes just reading. I would be reminded by this app that I use that is called, and I will tell you right now the name of it, it is habit list.
And I use that as a way to keep track of my habits so right now I’m looking at my habit list, I have here read 15 minutes and right next ot it is a number. That number is how many times I have done that and how many times I have been able to keep that habit going. I have here at least reading to my son 15 minutes. I have weight training 20 minutes.
I have calling a friend you know keeping my personal relationships nourished in my personal relationships. I have that on my list that affirmation timpanist is part of my list so I have all of these habits.
I know if I create all of these habits and if I upkeep these habits, they will eventually help me achieve that desired result or gaol at the end of the year so that is something else that has helped me and has kept me on track.
Again to be successful is not just about hitting your sales revenue number this year, that is also a part of it but I also want to be successful personally, I want to be successful spiritually, I want to be successful as a family man as a man you know as a a leader of my family.
I figured out all these different habits that would help me accomplish this ultimate gaol and that has been a huge help for me you know.
[00:50:00]
I have a spread sheet where I call it my life dash board and I’m tracking all these numbers.
I’m tracking how good, I was tracking at how good was I at keeping this habit and why didn’t I keep it and just in doing that I do a quarterly check in half way into the quarter I go and say how can I still get that number or get to that gaol.
And I do this not by myself but also as my wife as my countably partner, my boss here Shaun and [Inaudible] 00:50:32 chief officer, he holds me accountable for my professional gaols at Triblio and it has helped me again accountability partners, having these apps like the fit bit app and having habit list which reminds me daily of these habits that I want to create it has been so useful in getting better and becoming a better Jeff.
Scott Ingram: Yeah that is awesome and Jeff shared his life dashboard with me. Maybe Jeff that is something we can talk about putting in the sales success community that we are building.
I think it will be a nice gift, maybe not populated but that people can have a template.
Jeff Zelaya: Of course we could create a template so that they could go easily in there and start mapping out their lives and the lives that they want to create. It’s easy, I break it down into financial, into personal and family, into career. So those are my categories and of course fitness and you will see how I structure that in my template, so yeah I would be more than happy to do that with our community.
Scott Ingram: Awesome, so stay tuned until the end of the show and we well give you details on how to get exclusive invite to that community and apparently Jeff’s tracker.
So Jeff talk about, you mentioned you listen to some podcast and you are reading, what does your information diet look like? What are some of those things that you are consuming that you found the most value from
Jeff Zelaya: So I’m an Audible subscriber and I love audible
[00:52:00]
It helps me consume books. I don’t have a lot of time to sit down and read like I used to and maybe once in a while I could, it’s more difficult for me to read books. It’s a lot easier for me to listen to books and that has been very helpful.
I have used Audible; I get recommended books and put them in my Audible que every month or every couple of weeks, I have this new book to listen to so that has been very useful for me. Podcast, oh my God, they are free. You don’t have to pay to listen to some awesome content that is on this Podcasts.
Scott you have done many Podcasts, you have interviewed some amazing people and people that are listening today and you can go back and listen to those episodes and you can get a lot of value for free by listening to these podcasts.
So I think that is something else and I used to take advantage of it more in the past. I kind of go in cycles with the podcasts and so I want to get back into it. Audible, I have certain books that I want to complete so that has been eating up most of my sitting time but beyond that I also minimize kind of like watching TV. I’m not a big TV watcher like on Binge on Narcos
Jeff Zelaya: Some of the guys got me on that, it’s not good. I mean it is good and that is the problem. You know I do that on my wife, that is our time together, you know we watch some TV but I really try to minimise my TV time. I would rather do more productive things like working out or listening to Audible or walking on the treadmill or walking outside so.
You can multitask with listening so I prefer that as opposed to watching and it takes up a lot
[00:54:00]
More of my senses and a lot more that you got to focus on that and you can’t really multitask while watching the show and in reading the same thing there.
I like to, I prefer the listening route and what I tend to do after a chapter of listening, I go back and take notes. I have an archive of all my sales notes. I break it up into categories but like notes for professional development an notes on, I have one on becoming a better dad.
So I take notes and listen to a chapter and what did I get from that, any titbits that I gained, that I got from that content, I just go back and I wright it and I use google keep as a way of tracking that stuff. You could use Evernote or any other app that keeps your notes but I use google keep and I can review these notes like my cliff notes for my books.
That is what I’m doing when it comes to professional development and then obviously like always following the right people on twitter and like you know you get great content there. I pay close attention to what my prospects are sharing and what they are talking about so I spend also of time reviewing those articles, those websites and the content that they share, so that is another part of my professional development
Scott Ingram: Nice, Jeff do you follow any particular sales methodology or philosophy
Jeff Zelaya: I don’t. I am aware of the challenge of sale, the maverick method, you got Sandler, you got all of these different schools of thought around sales but I think we need to do is you have to know them, learn them and then figure out which ones to take for your own,
[00:56:00]
For creating your own sales proses, making them compliment your sales structures and your sales skills or your sales strategies so I don’t think there is one that will solve all your sales problems, I think we could combine aspects of all these different aspects of ways of selling to kind of make your own.
Like really going back to the personalisation I feel you really have to understand how you sell and the kind of selling environment that you thrive in and for me it’s really less salesly, pushy, less about just smiling and dialling and more about nurturing and building relationships while providing the value and providing the relevance to the people’s that I’m reaching out to.
I think it is important to know about the different sales strategies but don’t think that one will solve all of your issues, you got to figure out what to take from that to and apply to your own and build your own method of closing deals and the result don’t lie.
Again track and see if its working for you but I believe that you should create your own method based on your sales environment
Scott Ingram: Yeah I mean there was a line or two in there that pretty distilled it to, but if you were to create a sort of tag line for your style, how would you describe how your sales style has evolved to?
Jeff Zelaya: I would say it’s personalized for my prospect. It’s the sales mythology for being personal and again applying whatever it is what my product is but personalising that for, again its account based sales, I think that encompasses it because when
[00:58:00]
I’m personalizing it I’m personalizing it for the individual, but that individual is working for a company and my message is very personalised for that particular account or company, so you could say its account based selling
Scott Ingram: Nice and that fits very well with the account based marketing place that you live. So that is awesome. From a motivation stand point you are out there, you are doing a lot and you are tracking a lot with your dashboard.
What lights that fire, I mean what motivates you to get up at 5 every day?
Jeff Zelaya: For me it’s about knowing your whys. I think that is a big quality that top producers have is that they know their why. And for me the why is first my family. Like my wife and my son. I want to be able to provide the best future for them.
I want to set an example for them and lead by example. When I wake up at 5 you know they see that and I think my wife, she pushes herself and by 5 she is going to push herself harder because she is motivated by the fact that I could be in bed but I decided to start my day at 5 because I want to be healthier or I’m going after this difficult gaol.
That is at the core of why I do what I do because I want to provide for my family. I want to make sure that they are well off and that they could experience in their life the best way that they can. We do a lot of traveling; we have a lot of different events that we go to.
We have a lot of different experiences as a family that are possible because I excel in selling. I’m closing deals and I am able to provide a certain level of income that helps us advance our lives and do things that we weren’t able to do before.
That is always motivating factor for me. The other one is just to be the best at what I do anything
[00:60:00]
I do I want to master it; I want to be the best when it comes to account based marketing.
I want Triblio to known for that because I want to beat my competitors became I believe that our product is better. I believe that our team is better and that that competitor is winning deals that I should be winning and it really pisses me off because I know that that client is missing out became they don’t have us and that is a driver for me.
I want to be able to help people accomplish their goals that are really the core of what I do. That is my mantra is to help people to reach their goal and help them to accomplish what they can and what they go after. I believe our product does that better than other solutions out there.
That is a driving force for me to continue to improve my sales proses so I can convey that in a better way and have that conviction when I’m talking to possible clients of ours or prospects you know that is something that motivates me and I believe there are a lot of stake holders and a lot of people that helped me get to where I am today, professors and friends and pass bosses and I want to make them proud you know Scott.
I want them to be happy. I want them to point to Jeff and have them say I had something to do with Jeff’s success and that again is a driving factor for me because I want to be in a position where I am proud of what I have accomplished you know I say I didn’t get here because of me and myself.
I got here because of the people that played a part in me developing to ram out today, I want, these are stake holders I call them in my success. I what to make them proud, I want to make them happy. And my team, the same thing here you know I want them to have more opportunities.
I want then to grow professionally so I do it for them.
[001:02:00]
But when I look at what motivates me helps me get up at 5 in the morning that is at the core of it. It’s not only closing the deal, its people that are my biggest motivating in the moving factor.
Scott Ingram: Yeah very cool. I’m glad I could service your rabbit in your early fit bit days now that you have fit the rabbit. It’s pretty awesome to see, you have 20000 steps in a week, a week or two ago and I think it’s just ridiculous so, awesome to watch. So Jeff is there something that you believe that the average sales rep think is crazy
Jeff Zelaya: I think life breeding and just doing more, what is fee to do on your job right, every sales job has roles and responsibilities and this is what is expected and required of you. I think the most sales people are afraid to go above and beyond that.
And when people do it they think it’s crazy and I think that is always something that I have done and I have pushed the limits right back before Triblio, and working at Focus Enterprise you know PR for a software company and what I was doing that was looked at as crazy is I used LinkedIn as a way to nurtured relationships.
A lot of the reps what they would do is if someone is not ready to buy, they tossed that lead away and I thought that was crazy. Right I kept those leads and I nurtured them through social, through Twitter, through LinkedIn and I was just staying in front of them and that gave me the edge.
Then when I closed more deals, I became the rookie of the year at Focus that closed you know I was almost 200% of my number and I got to presidents club within 6 months, in less than 6 months of joining the reservation which has never happened there previously you know they looked at me
[01:04:00]
Like I was crazy and I looked at them like they were crazy when they had thrown those leads away and I kept them so it just depends. You know later they just wanted to start learning form me like ok Jeff what are you doing. I know you are not crazy so we just need to start doing it.
So they wanted to start learning and I found they weren’t crazy doing that before because I think that is what makes sales people really good is that they figure out. They talk to the people who are doing it and they try and figure out how I can replicate that.
And when people aren’t doing that, then I feel like they are crazy. But then many people think it’s crazy to go and ask a top producer for their secrets because they feel they are going to be rejected, why would that person share with me and what works for them.
You know they come up with all these excuses and rationality, then when its false and maybe it’s not true
Scott Ingram: Yeah, so Jeff who is the most successful sales professional that you know personally. Who do you think of?
Jeff Zelaya: Wow, today the most successful sales person that I know. You know that is a tough one. I would say again and he is not listening to this, and don’t think I’m trying to kiss ass but my boss right now, John Cook who is our chief sales officer.
I have learned working with this guy maybe for 6 or 7 months now I have grown so much as a sales person that I must credit you know the best sales person based on how they have impacted me and how they have helped me grow, I would say that he is the number one in my life right now on my list.
Prior to him it was, you know the other one that stands out was my boss at my first inside sales job where I was like
[01:06:00]
The call centre that, you know that individual, his name is Frank Rose, I will never forget him. He was the one that helped me on my track of professional development right he would go above and beyond.
He would just excel at sales but he was always looking for ways to help us excel at life. To introduce me to other great sales people like Tony Robbins and Jeremy Rhone and Jesse Brown and Brian Tracy and Tony Hopkins. I learned from all these very successful motivational sales speakers and mentors and they have had a huge impact on me.
I wouldn’t have been introduced to them if it wasn’t for my manager and mentor, Frank Rose, my boss at my first in sight sales job. I would say he was another one, very influential in my career path.
Scott Ingram: Yeah great, great stuff. Still early days with this show and Jeff, I’m curious, what would you want to hear as I’m talking to other folks that are in different organisations that are obviously trying to with some variety here talking to reps that much larger organization in different types of sales roles?
What question would you have to them? What would you want to know about them and about their success and how they got there what I can incorporate.
Jeff Zelaya: So for me now things that I’m looking at and I want to learn my expanding on is that as our team grows, I want to be that manager that Frank Rose was and being what Shaun Cook is to me now. I want to be a better sales manager and make a better team as quickly growing.
So that is something that I want to get more skills and knowledge around. Also along with that comes hiring and recruiting and knowing what to look for and growing my sales team. What kind of structure in growing sales organization.
[01:08:00]
Those are the areas that I would love to learn more about and seeking knowledge and wisdom on and how to motivate these people and to help them to continue to grow professionally.
Those are probably the areas I would like to hear in your next guest talk about.
Scott Ingram: Nice and you realise this was a trap. I’m going to turn this around, I know Shaun Cook, and we go back to earlier days. What is it about those guys because you know obviously your manager in any sales role has a huge impact on that experience, positive or negative?
So of the great ones, what is it about them, their style or what they are doing that has the biggest impact on you. From the reps perspective.
Jeff Zelaya: Yes, well I feel number one is that they care. I think that I huge, you have a lot of managers that only cares about the result and they care about you hitting your number but they don’t show that they care about the individual and the stuff that I care about. So Shaun, one of the first things is he got to know me, what drives me and my family and just getting to know what buttons helps push me and what helps drive me.
He got to know that quite well. Of course it takes 2 rights. You have to openly share that with him and be transparent with him and at the same time he was very transparent with me. That trust got established very quickly early on and I think that was key to forming the kind of relationship where I was able to grow and still be able to take a risk and still be creative without fearing that you know like I’m going to be in trouble.
You know we were very transparent and had a lot of communication.
[01:10:00]
Over communication sometimes like waking each other up at 5 in the morning, that is a little extra and not everyone is open to doing that but it worked for me and I asked him for that to be accountable. You know taken feedback right.
I had ideas and he had ideas. I might not agree with some of those ideas but I was still able to present those ideas to him and why I objected do those ideas and he was open to it. It was you know what we will go with what you are saying.
I think that might be better, so just being open to feedback and be willing to change and to try things out. I think that is also important, you know it’s not just what I say I am right, it went both ways and we felt like an equal, although he got tons more experience and wisdom than me he was still open to learning himself and I think that went, it meant a lot to me. Is showed me the kind of person he is and because of that you know he just stands out as an excellent sales leader.
Scott Ingram: Awesome, well Jeff this has been rally great. I want to try and see if we can’t find a way to title together, this is probably the hardest question. If you were to distil this or distil your top 3 points if you will and create a challenge for the community that is listening to the show and you know maybe its something they do for a week, maybe it’s something they do for 2 weeks, what would that challenge look like?
Jeff Zelaya: Great, I think number one is to identify the areas that you want to improve upon and then start measuring those areas. Look at your entire, not just your sales activity, but overall your life. What habits do you have to create to become the sales person you ultimately want to become
[01:12:00]
And start looking and tracking the activity of those habits. I think that is a huge challenge and a lot of work to do but try to focus on creating 3 new habits. Think about what habits if you created would have the highest impact on you getting to your gaol.
For me it was getting up at 5 in the morning so that I can have more hours during my day and be more productive. That was one of the habits that I created, the other one was doing professional development at least 30 minutes a day reading, listening to podcasts and networking. Figure out your 3 habits.
Start working on creating and tracking those habits. That is one of the challenges I would give and the other one is focusing on making your sales proses more personalised. So figure out in your proses with a little extra time, personalising.
For me its talking more with who I reach out to, not just having a random list but I try to think of who would be the ideal client and I have developed a very personalised message for those individuals that I know would have a high chance of listening and getting you know perking someone’s ears up.
I would just figure out in my proses what I can add personalisation to that would help me deliver value better or that would help me communicate better with that individual, with that prospect or with that client. So those would be the 2 targets that I would challenge your audience with today.
Scott Ingram: Awesome Jeff thank you. I want you to know I really appreciate you and I appreciate your time on behalf of everybody that is has listened to this point. I hope they take your proses and takes some good notes because there is a lot, a lot in here to be thought about and to be shared and again
[01:14:00]
I really applicate you
Jeff Zelaya: Thank you Scott, thank you for having me as a guest, I appreciate you as well, thank you.