Episode 128: Sebastian Cuellar – Mastering Discovery Calls

Sales is an industry full of never-ending opportunities to learn, grow in confidence, and discover your passions. Sebastian Cueller has even found that he has a true passion for cold-calling as it adds riveting negotiation and unpredictable entertainment to his day-to-day life.

In this episode of Tech Sales is for Hustlers, Sebastian, Virginia office Alum, discusses how his love for learning has been crucial to his sales career, while diving into the importance of mastering discovery skills in sales outreach, and reflecting on his unique experiences of selling to lawyers as an SDR.

Guest-At-A-Glance

💡 Name: Sebastian Cuellar 

💡Noteworthy: As a third-generation sales professional, Sebastian offers a unique perspective on the sales process, from cold calling to negotiation. His journey from working at a restaurant to tech sales provides an interesting backdrop to his sales insights.

💡 Sebastian’s story on our blog

💡 Where to find them: LinkedIn

Key Insights

The Power of Continuous Learning in Sales

Sebastian Cuellar emphasizes the importance of continuous learning in sales. He shares his love for learning and how it has helped him in his sales career. He believes that being curious and always willing to learn new things is crucial in sales. This is especially true in tech sales where products and technologies are constantly evolving. He also highlights the importance of being confident in your decisions and not being deterred by doubts.

The Art of Negotiation in Sales

Sebastian shares his experience of selling to lawyers, emphasizing the importance of negotiation in every sale. He explains that when selling to small law firms, you’re not just dealing with a business, but with individuals whose personal finances are at stake. This makes every sale a negotiation, requiring a deep understanding of the client’s needs and the ability to present your product as a solution to their problems.

The Challenges and Rewards of Cold Calling

Sebastian reveals his passion for cold calling, describing it as the most entertaining part of his job. Despite the challenges, he sees cold calling as an opportunity to connect with potential clients and present them with solutions that meet their needs. He also shares how his experience in cold calling has helped him improve his closing skills, emphasizing the importance of seizing every opportunity to make a deal happen.

Episode Highlights

The Importance of Discovery Calls 

Sebastian Cuellar discusses the importance of a solid discovery call in sales. He emphasizes that a well-executed discovery call can set the stage for a successful sales process. He believes that the rest of the sales process, including closing the deal, naturally extends from a good discovery call. 

“Sales is like having a really good discovery call and then falling forward. If that is all set up correctly, everything else kind of is a natural extension of a solid discovery call.”

Selling to Lawyers 

Sebastian shares his experience of selling to lawyers, emphasizing the importance of negotiation in every sale. He explains that when selling to small law firms, you’re not just dealing with a business, but with individuals whose personal finances are at stake. 

“In selling to lawyers, you have to be aware you are negotiating every single sale. And because of what we were selling in our quota, I had to close something like 18 deals a quarter.”

The Fun of Cold Calling 

Sebastian reveals his passion for cold calling, describing it as the most entertaining part of his job. Despite the challenges, he sees cold calling as an opportunity to connect with potential clients and present them with solutions that meet their needs. 

“The cold calling was like the really fun part for me. The note taking, the writing stuff, that part wasn’t fun, but the cold calling was really, really entertaining.”

Transcript:

Marc Gonyea: Sebastian Cueller in the house. 

Chris Corcoran: Sea Bass. Hey guys. Dude, it’s been a long time.

It has been, 

Sebastian Cuellar: think a little over 10 years at this point. Yeah. 

Chris Corcoran: First floor Courthouse Road. Yeah. Yeah. Interviewed there man. 

Marc Gonyea: And now we’re 

Sebastian Cuellar: the Big Apple. Yeah. No, we’re, 

Chris Corcoran: yeah. We’re Penn Station right next. Madison Square Gardens. A lot of 

Marc Gonyea: people like talking about coming up to New York, right. Or doing it here at JC and Lisa, you could have that song’s, [00:01:00] anything about. You actually wanna get into it.

You actually moved up here and did it, but Wanna come 

Sebastian Cuellar: Still doing it? Yeah, still doing it. Yeah. Actually, yeah. Have my office block from here, dude. All right. We’re on his turf. 

Marc Gonyea: That’s right. Before we get into it though, Uh huh, this would be good educational for Chris and I, but also for the audience. Tell everyone a little bit about yourself, meaning where you grew up.

Sure. 

Chris Corcoran: I grew up in Northern Virginia. Okay. 

what I like to do as a kid, I’ve, 

Sebastian Cuellar: liked everything. That’s my whole, my whole gimmick was a Was 

Chris Corcoran: your gimmick? My gimmick? Yeah. As a kid growing up was 

Sebastian Cuellar: I, yeah. I would like, like one thing move from one thing to the next, one thing to the next, one thing to the next.

‘Cause I’m just like, I love learning. Okay. And I really like the being in the starting new guy process. Part of the reason and how I think about this, like, that made my disposition really good for sales and also with memoryBlue because like you’re always like, you really always have to be learning. You have to be curious about everything.

Yes. It’s always just new. Right. So that 

Chris Corcoran: was my big thing. Like, if 

Sebastian Cuellar: you really wanted to like, pigeonhole me, I guess I did a lot of art. I like 

Chris Corcoran: to do math. I was just, I really thought I was gonna be a 

Sebastian Cuellar: scientist 

Chris Corcoran: Either scientist or graphic designer to let you know how far I went in two different directions.

Well, [00:02:00] speaking about that, what’s about grow? Was your dad in sales? Yes. I’m a third generation sales guy. Third gen. Ah, 

Marc Gonyea: dude, I remember notes. But tell us about a little bit about that. So did you grow up. Is that in the house too? The sales thing? Yes. While you’re, yes. So, so bringing out math and, and 

Chris Corcoran: doing pieces of art.

So my dad, so growing up, my dad said to me, he, he said, Sebastian, get a degree. So you never have to go into sales. Can’t remember. He was, he 

Sebastian Cuellar: was real, he was like, don’t get me wrong, like he loves what he does. He still does it to this day and he’s been at it for 

Chris Corcoran: like 35 years and he’s been selling restaurant supplies for 

Sebastian Cuellar: well over, oh man, at this point, 39 years.

He started when I was like one year old, so I don’t remember. And then his father did propane sales in El Salvador. Right? So growing up with it, I really remember my dad just, 

Chris Corcoran: I remember cuz he worked 

Sebastian Cuellar: from home and he was a field rep, right? Mm-hmm. So I remember he worked from home. He would have the calls with people and then some days, I mean, what made it so different was everyone remembers their mom being the one who went to bake sales at school.

Everyone remembers their mom being the one who like was there when they got home. For me, it was my dad. Because my dad, like sales let him, [00:03:00] like, he could just like what I’m doing right now, this is a workday for me. Yep. Um, I stay later at the office. I have other things. It has fuzzy edges, so I really 

Chris Corcoran: Yeah, I really grew up my, I grew up my whole life.

Just 

Sebastian Cuellar: like my dad was talking about either like, oh yeah, this is this customer here, or he would talk about what he had at a recent conference or anything like that. And I think it was all with the idea that I would like how hard it was and I think I absorbed part of that ’cause I really, really, really, really fought going into sales for a very 

Chris Corcoran: long time.

We’re gonna get into that. So we’re just gonna get into high school. Speaking of people, the pride. Yeah. Thomas 

Sebastian Cuellar: Jefferson High School for Science and Technology or T J H S 

Chris Corcoran: S T. Arguably tj, I mean, 

Marc Gonyea: guys from Virginia. Yeah. Arguably the best high school in the country. 

Chris Corcoran: Arguably. Yeah. They, they do fight that; that is a whole thing, right?

Yeah. Um, I think there’s a US consumer reports or something. I don’t know. Some newspaper does 

Sebastian Cuellar: have them as number one. Yeah. Pretty consistently. Uh, their sister school appears. Stuyvesant. So anybody in New York area, there is stuyvesant. They’re the sister school. Yeah. We pumped that school, right? Yeah.

They, they, they do, 

Chris Corcoran: uh, we, I wanna say weed I got with there. [00:04:00] We, yeah. No, it’s, all 

Sebastian Cuellar: those things. The math decathlons, the, all the science stuff. And so George, for people who don’t know, Thomas Jefferson is a governor’s school in Northern Virginia, meaning you have to take the equivalent of like a SATs to go in.

You have to have an essay paper and they interview your teachers. Only 200 people are selected per class. and it’s like the 

Chris Corcoran: best way to describe it is, is the striver parents are like priming their kids from like second grade to go to this high school. Yes. Because the network. Shout out to Cooper Middle School.

Yeah, there you go. 

Sebastian Cuellar: So that, that’s where you get, I mean there’s a lot of entrepreneurs. Um, yeah. the founder of Robinhood is a year below me. Wow. Yeah. 

Chris Corcoran: yeah. My network is kind of weird. Yeah. I, I actually didn’t know Vlad, at all, but yeah. Yeah. 

Marc Gonyea: I was just these guys, 24 hour training going on now.

Yeah, yesterday. Oh really? Yeah. Damn. Well, let’s go back to that. That’s what people need to do. They need to go out, eat and drink and then come home and buy some options. Christmas on margin nonetheless. All. Alright, so let’s talk. So you were fighting the sales thing? Yeah. That’s why I brought up Thomas 

Chris Corcoran: Jefferson.

Tj. Yeah, I went to TJ affectionately, as you know, I [00:05:00] call it 

Marc Gonyea: probably not 

Sebastian Cuellar: a lot of salespeople coming out of tj. Not, not many. there’s the running gag. Uh, you don’t, nobody goes into sales. You end up in sales. 

Chris Corcoran: running gag. Yeah. I’m still trying to get outta that gag. Yeah. It’s like, it’s, it’s a love hate relationship.

I, I don’t think I’ve 

Sebastian Cuellar: known any salesperson who doesn’t have once every four years is like, I shouldn’t be doing this. But then you’re like, you start looking at other jobs and you’re like, I’m gonna make half the money or a third of the money I’m making now. I was like, do, like, okay. No, like also I’m gonna be bad at that.

Chris Corcoran: Like I’m pretty good at this. Like, it’s just all you So you were 

Marc Gonyea: fighting it? Yeah, I was fighting it. When you were at tj, what’d you 

Chris Corcoran: think you wanted to be? be a scientist. I wanna go into science. Yeah. Right. So I wanna be a scientist. I, I think chemistry was like the thing I really liked.

I had a real disposition for at least I thought. So that’s an important point. and then when I got to George Mason 

Sebastian Cuellar: University, I went into economics. So I really loved economics. I liked the market 

Chris Corcoran: studies, I liked the statistical analysis, like that type of 

Marc Gonyea: stuff. That’s like the best thing that Mason they got going 

Chris Corcoran: on.

Yeah. They have, they, they had three Noble prize winners or two at whatever the 

Sebastian Cuellar: point I was there. Yeah. Yep, yep. 

Chris Corcoran: And so that was like a big thing for me was how do [00:06:00] I, well, well, I went there. I wanted economics as it was one thing they were best at. 

Sebastian Cuellar: Yep. And then I got out of there and through like family connections, 

Chris Corcoran: I was able to get a really, really low entry level economics job.

And this is where like you could kind of see like I was 

Sebastian Cuellar: becoming a sales guy. I got written up there for talking too much. Love that. Okay. 

Marc Gonyea: While this, pause for a second, while this is happening, your dad’s like, yeah, you, you’re not going into sales, right. Sales is not even like Yeah, they were, 

Chris Corcoran: they literally, tj, 

Marc Gonyea: he’s at George Mason, 

Chris Corcoran: like the, one of the top schools that coaches for econ.

Yeah. My mom. My mom literally 

Sebastian Cuellar: cried when I got my first, my offer for this economics job. Yeah. She, she legitimately cried. She was like, and it was like really, really, really, really bad money. Like very bad. Yeah. And like the base salary 

Chris Corcoran: at memoryBlue at the time I was there was higher. Yep. I remember, I remember base salary.

But why was she crying? She, because it was like I was, I won, I was the first one in our family to go to college. Mm-hmm. I graduated from college and now I was doing a 

Sebastian Cuellar: job using my college 

Chris Corcoran: degree, which to a parent, an immigrant parent Yep. Is like a 

Sebastian Cuellar: huge thing. Yeah. Like [00:07:00] any parent really, but my parents who like 

Chris Corcoran: moved to the United States, like worked hard, put their kid through this stuff.

this is like, this was it, this was like the dream. I had arrived. I’m working in an office. Yeah. 

Sebastian Cuellar: Silver Spring, 

Chris Corcoran: Maryland. It was where my office was. Yeah. And we lived in Woodbridge, Virginia, where if anybody knows that area, that’s a two hour commute back then. Today it’s probably worse.

But that was a two hour commute every single day, back 

Sebastian Cuellar: and forth. For no money, for like, nothing, 

Chris Corcoran: dude. Like so you 

Marc Gonyea: got into that role. Mm-hmm. Which is, by the way, those jobs are like impossible to get. 

Chris Corcoran: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Impossible to get. Yeah. And you landed one, I landed one. And then 

Marc Gonyea: what was that 

Chris Corcoran: like? Uh, it was awful.

Sebastian Cuellar: I really was there way longer than I need to be and I didn’t even, wasn’t even there for a year. cuz he just, the most important part is you gotta think about your disposition, right? Like, I’ve always considered myself a bright 

Chris Corcoran: guy. I mean, I went, I went to TJ and they really 

Sebastian Cuellar: pump you up with that, right?

You really consider yourself smart. 

Chris Corcoran: You gotta realize being smart. Well you are. Thanks, keep going. I appreciate that. You are really smart. And the thing I would 

Sebastian Cuellar: say to anybody who’s like, you gotta remember being smart is like a card in your deck, right? Mm-hmm. It doesn’t show up every hand. You can’t play it every single hand.

It’s not [00:08:00] meaningful every single hand. and eventually as you even get older and everyone’s experience that starts catching up, 

Chris Corcoran: it becomes more and more of like a party trick. I’ve really found it to be, you’re gonna fall behind grinders. You’re gonna fall behind.

Sebastian Cuellar: people who are just really dedicated to do something. So more important than like, here’s the skills I have is like, how 

Chris Corcoran: do I want to work every day? How do 

Sebastian Cuellar: I want my life to be? Do I wanna 

Chris Corcoran: be talking to people? Let’s go back for that. Yeah. What do you mean you fall behind a grinder? So there’s a, okay.

I worked with a guy who he himself would proclaim like the dude. he did graduate college. He himself though, had very serious memory problems. Like, great guy, I love him. Yeah. Very serious memory 

Sebastian Cuellar: problems. We started the exact same week at one of our jobs, 

Chris Corcoran: and we tried to keep this as vague 

Sebastian Cuellar: as possible.

Yeah, fine. He, he would eat the same meal every day. Say hi to me the same way every single day. Every single time you see my breakfast says, Ooh, 

Chris Corcoran: that looks good. And like, comment on 

Sebastian Cuellar: that. I’m gonna have to try that someday. He never tried it the years I worked there. He never tried. It, never, never deviated from his plan.

he had, from what I understand, he had like memory issues, [00:09:00] couldn’t hear well. Mm-hmm. He printed out his script and was using his script. 

Chris Corcoran: Probably, 

Sebastian Cuellar: I don’t know how long use it every single day. and 

Chris Corcoran: this guy was like in his forties. Very, very nice guy. He, he kicked my ass a lot of quarters, man. 

Sebastian Cuellar: Yeah.

And this, because he just didn’t get up from a seat. He worked he went to where he needed to be. I see. And he went to the bathroom if he had to. I think he gave himself that much. And he came back and he just worked. And I think he couldn’t really remember too many features.

He had his demo. Yeah. He couldn’t really remember features, but he just was able, and the way the product was, was also geared towards him really well. Wasn’t extremely 

Chris Corcoran: complicated. so you’re 

Marc Gonyea: saying like the intelligence card is the card, 

Chris Corcoran: you, it’s 

Sebastian Cuellar: got me this current role. Mm-hmm. Okay. And it’s handy for like, what I’m currently doing, but what it really is, it’s more about the disposition because like if you ask me what I do, I 

Chris Corcoran: say I’m a sales guy.

I don’t say I’m in like I do if you ask for specifics. But I do say I’m in information 

Sebastian Cuellar: systems, assurance, security, and auditing. Right. which is like the long term for what I sell, which is like, it is a niche within a niche. It’s really, really, really obscure. That’s what like, being smart would let me sell.

But it’s not, do I need to, like [00:10:00] how often does it turn up? It hurt and turned up once I learned all material, but anybody else who comes in works with us, they’re 

Chris Corcoran: caught up with 

Sebastian Cuellar: me. I mean, they can catch up really fast because like 

Chris Corcoran: we’ve digested, I was the first 

Sebastian Cuellar: sales hire here, by the way. Got it. so I’ve digested a lot of the stuff.

We turned it into more learnable learning bites. It’s, it’s something we make, we built out intentionally to be much 

Chris Corcoran: more approachable for people. You got it. I got it. All right, 

Marc Gonyea: so let’s go back to this. You were in the econ job. Yeah. Highly sought after, a tough job to get and you were like, oh, didn’t like it.

Got written 

Chris Corcoran: up for talking to much , got written up for talking too much . What happened next? 

Sebastian Cuellar: yeah, so that point I was like, I cannot do this. I do not want to do this. 

Chris Corcoran: and I, I basically just 

Sebastian Cuellar: quit. No job lined up nothing. And 

Chris Corcoran: I had What your mom, what’s your mom say? My parents were like kind of confused. Yeah.

They, to them, 

Sebastian Cuellar: like they don’t, my dad had the same job for 25 years. Yeah. And to them quitting was like, what do you mean you’re quitting? Like, did they fire you? Like, just tell us if they fired you. And I’m like, no, I’m, I’m quitting. I’m going away 

Chris Corcoran: from the job. because I don’t want them to pay me anymore cuz I, yeah, 

Sebastian Cuellar: I don’t wanna do this, so I don’t want their money, so I [00:11:00] don’t. Like, and it was confusing for my mom.

My dad was also really confused. and I went out and I did that thing and I was like, you know what? I’m young, I got the job before I can go get another one. I was like, I can go get another economist job. And I was like, I’ll just go be a bartender, I’ll go be a waiter. so I did that. I was a bartender, bouncer, a waiter, barback just did the whole like, whole night thing.

That was my early twenties. Right. eventually that does wear thin and you’re just like, yeah, it’d be nice to have like health insurance. It’d be cool. Like cuz once you get 25, that’s gone. 

Chris Corcoran: Yep. And it was like, it’d be cool to have health insurance. Maybe 

Sebastian Cuellar: owning a house someday would be neat. 

Chris Corcoran: It would be cool to have health insurance.

Marc Gonyea: Well, 

Chris Corcoran: yeah, I’m gonna be healthy forever. What are you talking about? Buy a house? Buy a house 

Sebastian Cuellar: was maybe like, like, I don’t know. My, I would get my house from my parents someday eventually. 

Chris Corcoran: Right? Yeah. Right, right. They have to live somewhere. and yeah. So 

Sebastian Cuellar: eventually the, the thing was, and this is important to contextualize this.

This was 2008. That I left my job. Wow. Yeah. [00:12:00] Before the market crashed. Okay. Right before. Right before, yeah. And so as soon as I’m like, I’ll get some job, all the jobs went away. Yeah. There were no jobs. And so now I’m competing with people who were like trying to be bankers, you know, as an example, also trying to wait tables, also being bouncers and bar backs and things like that.

So here I am. I went at that point, I moved out to North Carolina and it really humbles you. One, it’s important to humble yourself cuz you, again, you get really big britches going to college, you may not. If you’re in an area where everyone gets degrees. I was in an area that not everybody got degrees.

I was the only guy in the store 

Chris Corcoran: I worked at. I worked 

Sebastian Cuellar: at a restaurant. I was that only guy at that restaurant who worked there who had a degree. Yeah. The only person. And that helped me absolutely nothing, did not help me in the slightest. What helped me was the fact I like to talk to 

Chris Corcoran: people, um, was the fact that I was, chatty.

The fact that I was curious about people, the fact that I was curious 

Sebastian Cuellar: about like what type of liquor we used, what type of came from the distributors, things like that. I was just always wanted to learn stuff. That’s what really helped me out and that’s how I survived. Like, [00:13:00] I would get consistently promoted, you know, I was, think I was being trained for a key position when I left, 

Chris Corcoran: is like mini manager allowed to close up and all that stuff.

Yeah. And, 

Sebastian Cuellar: yeah, but eventually I was like, you know, I, I can’t do this cuz it’s kind of dead end. Like, it does pay wonderfully once you get above a certain area. But like, I, I just did not feel, I was like stretching my legs out enough. It was very, 

Chris Corcoran: very. Controlled job. Right. So what happened next was Dustin deal?

No, it’s Dustin deal. We haven’t arrived to him yet. 

Sebastian Cuellar: was a guy named William. William, was a private investigator, sat at my table. This is like out of a movie too. I remember. William sat 

Chris Corcoran: at my table. I had another table that 

Sebastian Cuellar: was like getting like real rowdy or like, they looked like they were gonna turn on me, 

Chris Corcoran: right?

Yeah. So you just sometimes have a table that just gets mad at you. and I, settled it. I talked to them through 

Sebastian Cuellar: it and it’s like, Hey man, here’s a, and I remember this guy was like, this drink is too weak. And I was like, sir, you got it with the best quality tequila. And he goes, it’s, it’s too 

Chris Corcoran: weak.

It’s like, sir, with 

Sebastian Cuellar: all due respect, I think you’re confusing the weakness for smoothness. Mm-hmm. Like, it’s very, [00:14:00] very smooth and that’s why you’re not tasting that burn is cheapness. And that’s why. And he is like, 

Chris Corcoran: okay, then gimme two more. I was like, great, great. And it worked. I was like, cool. That worked.

Yeah. and yeah. And so I ended up in sales, but that, that comes later. But here, this guy was like, how did you do that? You just tucked this guy down. And we ended up 

Sebastian Cuellar: talking. He’s like, what are you doing here? And I told him my life story, kind of where I was at that point. And he gives me a, a job offer for, or interview, offers me an interview for be a private investigator.

So I was a private investigator, and again, cannot stress this enough. You have to know your disposition and the disposition required for the role you wanna go into. Hmm. So, being a private investigator, that job was cool to tell stories about. It was not cool to do. It was like, you would wake up in the morning, you have to be at the person’s house.

More than likely before they wake up. If you figure out what time, if you go there one morning, 5:00 AM you arrive and their car’s not there, you have to show up at four a.m. the next day. Right. You gotta beat the person at their own life. Yeah. It’s part of it. 

Chris Corcoran: You have to try to fit in and it’s, this was for [00:15:00] insurance fraud and mortgage fraud.

Sebastian Cuellar: Insurance and fidelity. Like one or two fidelity 

Chris Corcoran: cases. Insurance fraud required 

Sebastian Cuellar: me to fill in the person doing something that was showing that they’re getting workman’s comp illegally. the other fidelity is cheating spouses and mortgage and fraud was actually my favorite cuz you just went in and you interview the person.

And that was my favorite part. Sit down, 

Chris Corcoran: interview somebody and talk about like their experience 

Sebastian Cuellar: with like getting like swindled on the house that they bought. So they had bought 

Chris Corcoran: a house, they lost that house and my job was to prove 

Sebastian Cuellar: that the bank did not do due diligence. Huh. So I sat there and 

Chris Corcoran: eventually the thing I had to do is have them sit and, sign a 

Sebastian Cuellar: tax release.

And so that was part of it. I had to talk to ’em for a long time, interview them. Mm-hmm. At the end of interview, he was like, look, last thing we need is if you can sign this tax release, this would be great. And we would put the banks in their place. Some people were like, no, 

Chris Corcoran: I don’t wanna do that cuz that’s a privacy thing.

Other people 

Sebastian Cuellar: were like, let’s get those bastards. Yeah. You know, and it was, you know, here, and that was my favorite part of the job. Closing, closing, closing the deal. Closing the deal, right? Yeah. Just sign, right sign on the dotted line. Right. [00:16:00] And it was funny because like all these things were pointing me towards sales and I just remember I had gotten really, really, really depressed.

there the extra money that you make, you make good money if you’re willing to work overtime, okay. And you have to work overtime. The other problem is you don’t know when you’re working. So I define that job as having, variable work hours, extremely hard edges, right? You are on or you are off and you have no control as to when that happens.

Chris Corcoran: So, the case, 

Sebastian Cuellar: once you’re off the case, you’re off the case. You’re not thinking about it. But I remember the moment that I 

was 

Chris Corcoran: like, I hate this. 

Sebastian Cuellar: Was I was at a wedding, 

Chris Corcoran: and I was, you know, I remember I was at a wedding 

Sebastian Cuellar: and we were having drinks and I was like having a drink and immediately I get a text.

It’s like you got a case tomorrow morning, you have to be in Long Island. Like tomorrow morning. This was, I was living in Virginia at this point. Long Island is a hell of a commute. that’s like a, I don’t know man, like a five and a half, six hour commute from where I was at the time.

So I had to be, that means I had to leave that party right then and there to like have any sleep. Be up at 3:00 AM to be at that door at 8:00 

Chris Corcoran: AM at best. And you have to pump gas before you get to the site. So you don’t have to time 

Sebastian Cuellar: that [00:17:00] into, cuz if you don’t know where you’re gonna pump gas. So it would sit down meticulously, plan everything out and get to that site.

And then you have to sit in a car. Maybe you could 

Chris Corcoran: crack open one of the windows, A car is completely off 

Sebastian Cuellar: and you just wait and hope that person walks out their front door. Thankfully, pre pandemic 

Chris Corcoran: people did go outside. 

Sebastian Cuellar: but yeah, that was the moment I realized like, I need to do something else. And like 

Chris Corcoran: I.

Out 

Sebastian Cuellar: of the sky. This is where we enter em, enter memoryBlue and Dustin deal. All right. Good 

Marc Gonyea: deal. Dustin deal. Yeah. So how did, he find you or how’d you find him? 

Sebastian Cuellar: He found me, and it was actually, 

Chris Corcoran: I don’t know if this was a, to this day, I dunno if it was 

Sebastian Cuellar: a pitch, if it was him being like, really clever selling me probably, probably knowing him.

Probably. Dude, that guy. Yeah. he called me, he is like, yeah, I’m done with my quota for the month. I just like, I saw your a private investigator. I just wanna chat. I mean, I’ve never talked to a private investigator before. And I was like, sure, let’s just chat. What’s your, he’s like, what’s your day like?

And I tell him what I’m doing. He’s like, what do you like about it? And now I’m talking it through, I think it’s a sales, it’s a what 

Chris Corcoran: do you like about it? Like, what do you dislike about it? Yeah. And I was like, man, I don’t get to do this. He goes just like, man, I was like, that’s cool. Have you ever considered [00:18:00] textiles though?

And I mean, at this point, like, it was just, we’re just shooting the breeze. Cause 

Sebastian Cuellar: I’m in a car waiting for someone to leave the house 

Chris Corcoran: shooting the breeze. I have about in that 

Sebastian Cuellar: time, he’s like, he, he really just turns my mind, dude, consider this 

Chris Corcoran: like, I mean, look. You’re probably happy where you are, you know, 

Sebastian Cuellar: probably having a bad day.

He, he reverse sold me, man. Yep. yeah, he was really good. Now I think about it, I’m pretty sure, oh yeah, he, he sold me, but I remember really, really hard that like, I was like, this sounds really good. And then he didn’t make my, he missed my next call. That was the, through the interview and I, I hunted him down and I made sure he, he gave me my next call.

and then the, I was like, you know, this is sales. I think doggedness would matter. 

Chris Corcoran: and I had to do the personality test. And that, that part I was like, I could, 

Sebastian Cuellar: I didn’t game it. I just went through the test and it was like, yeah, this is something I really wanna do. Tech sales, right.

Seems like, like this really kind of seems up my alley. So 

yeah, 

Chris Corcoran: the next part was, first interview with, I don’t remember if it was Mark, was Mark or with Chris with which one you, with which one 

Sebastian Cuellar: of you. but I remember I met each one of you individually and then there was a third interview.

The famous third interview. Famous [00:19:00] third interview, which is, yeah, that with me. Yeah. That was gonna be with you. That good? The famous third interview. So I dunno if it’s still done this way, but the third interview at the time was the role play. Yep. So, 

Chris Corcoran: still is done this way. Good. yeah, it’s cases. 

Sebastian Cuellar: so the role play part of the interview, 

Chris Corcoran: I really, I remember 

Sebastian Cuellar: like I got dressed up in a suit that morning.

I was like, okay, good to go. I had planned out everything. I knew exactly the time I was leaving my site and I was like, you know what, like no matter what happens, I’m gonna leave the site. If the person leaves, I’m just gonna ignore it and go. cause I really did wanted to make this. I started driving 

Chris Corcoran: on the, 

Sebastian Cuellar: cuz that was like one part of Maryland and I had to get to, 

Chris Corcoran: Tyson’s Corner.

Mm-hmm. Courthouse Road. Right. And it was in one part of Maryland. And I remember 

Sebastian Cuellar: that this car that they gave me was a complete, can I curse? Yes. Complete piece of shit. 

Chris Corcoran: Yes. Complete piece of shit. I had to rebuild this thing like, like god knows how many times and I don’t know why this time was 

Sebastian Cuellar: like, one of the times I thought it was gonna get me where I wanted to go.

every single time we had a vehicle that wasn’t a rental, that the, they’ll give you an example. Rentals were like, better, [00:20:00] man. I was pumped to get a rental, this van that I had that like, it was just, it was 

Chris Corcoran: terrible. So I am driving and the thing like decides to die on me and I feel like my heart’s sink.

I’m like, it should be okay. I feel my heart’s sink. But then, you know, you tuck yourself up and you’re driving to the office. I’m driving for to my interview. Interview, 

Sebastian Cuellar: yeah. Who’s the interview? Final one. And I feel like my heart sync and I’m like, I talk myself, I give myself back up, you know, self-talk.

It’s like, no, you, Sebastian, you have, you have a plan B, you have a plan 

Chris Corcoran: C. 

Sebastian Cuellar: You can, this is pre, I think this is pre Uber. Uber wasn’t a very big deal. I definitely didn’t have cash. Uber. Yeah, yeah. 

Chris Corcoran: Yeah. I just remembered like, okay, I figure out a way, 

Sebastian Cuellar: get there, but let’s let Dustin know.

I always come Dustin deal in my head. Let’s let Dustin know so that they, they can warn the guys and I say, Hey, can you let them know that I’m, I’m running behind and I might need to reschedule. Yeah. 

Chris Corcoran: Because blah, blah, blah. And he’s like, all right, I, I’ll go check with them, but this isn’t good, man. And I was like, surprised to 

Sebastian Cuellar: hear that.

Yeah. Because I think every, almost every other job they’re going for, like a lot of 

Chris Corcoran: other jobs, they’re like, yeah, yeah, whatever. and [00:21:00] then you come back, Sebastian. so. I know you’re saying you have a flat tire and stuff. we’ve had a lot of people have a lot of accidents this week, 

Sebastian Cuellar: man.

Alright. A lot of problems. And, uh, I like, no, it’s just a policy right now, man. And I was like, man, look, if you can get here, we will give you the interview, 

Chris Corcoran: but if you can’t, we’re gonna have to part ways. Yeah. 

Marc Gonyea: I I must have been had a bad day or something. Cause that’s something normally I would always roll.

But, you, 

Chris Corcoran: you, Dustin 

Sebastian Cuellar: cleared it up later and you did explain it later. Like 

Chris Corcoran: Sebastian, we literally had like four people Yeah. Before you do these, pull the same shit. Yeah. Yeah. And I was like, I wasn’t pulling shit pull shit. So you ended up getting into the office? I ended up getting to the office.

So, um, how didn’t see what this 

Marc Gonyea: guy’s about and describe what, how your physical 

Chris Corcoran: appearance. Physical appearance. I had my sleeves rolled up completely. Right. I didn’t have a suit, coat, 

Sebastian Cuellar: any on cause it was too hot. I didn’t have it on anymore. And I 

Chris Corcoran: had my, I was to my wrists in grease cause I had to change the tires of the vehicle. I had to change at least one of the tires and then I 

Sebastian Cuellar: had to, try to jump the battery but nobody would stop.

And eventually tow truck picked me up. Pick me up. But at this point, 

Chris Corcoran: I was covered in Greece. I was like, look, take me to Courthouse Road. [00:22:00] Yeah. I told Dustin, like, Dustin, how long is Mark gonna be there? He’s like, guy usually said this at six 30. Yeah. Um, and I’m like, if he’s there, like when they’re in there, can 

Sebastian Cuellar: I, I’m doing everything.

Show up. Can we do this? And then he is like, 

Chris Corcoran: all right. And I remember 

Sebastian Cuellar: it was, 

Chris Corcoran: it was Dustin, I think, I think you were on the side. But the story I got told was like, someone says, Hey, mark, like, knock in your door. Hey Mark, 

Sebastian Cuellar: there’s a tow truck in the parking lot. And 

Chris Corcoran: dude, I was, yeah. I was sweaty. I was covered in grease.

I felt 

Sebastian Cuellar: a, I didn’t have any of my shirt, thank God. because 

Chris Corcoran: for me, I don’t know. That was, that was like a, a psychological thing, I guess. Yeah, yeah. At that point. And I was like, can I just get a glass of water? And you’re like, sure. Sure. And then we went through the call. 

Sebastian Cuellar: I very vaguely remember it.

I remember like, I had a sheet music at the time. Yep. And like go through the sheet music. And then I went through the question parts and you know, it went, it went well. And then I remember 

Chris Corcoran: afterwards we, we talked, but I was like, That, that literally 

Sebastian Cuellar: could have gone in any direction, cuz it was that dude, I didn’t call him that tow truck just saw me the inside of the road and like, thought he would get some money.

He had, he had nobody on the back saw me on the side of the road and wanted to get some extra cash. Wow. 

Marc Gonyea: Yeah. You [00:23:00] restored my faith in people’s excuses. 

Sebastian Cuellar: That’s great. Yeah, we 

Marc Gonyea: talk about this whole story on the, on the, on the memory blue blog, how a tow truck pulled a sales career the extra mile. So we’ll have link that in the show notes.

Yeah. Heck yeah. Alright, so you got into the role? Yeah, 

Chris Corcoran: let’s talk about it. I, okay, so this was og, this first sales, first sales job ever. And this was og 

Sebastian Cuellar: uh, I, like, I know there’s an OOG anymore because, there’s, there’s even more original, 

Chris Corcoran: not og 

Marc Gonyea: like our first real, real, I mean after Door Avenue, 

Sebastian Cuellar: I guess.

Yeah. Yeah. and 

Chris Corcoran: my favorite part about the job was 

Sebastian Cuellar: actually the cold calling, ironically, which is like, as I’ve been hinting at before, like it comes full, the cold calling was like the really fun part for me. The note taking, the writing stuff, that part wasn’t fun, but the cold calling was like really, really entertaining.

And I just remember that we’d have the, that you guys would, would jump in on calls and I, you would like, Hey, gotta give you notes of the calls. Like you didn’t know if one of you guys was ghosting us. Yeah. Hey call. So I remember that part. The part I really remember though was [00:24:00] that the new guy teaches the new guy, the last new guy teaches the next new guy and God, I 

Chris Corcoran: wish I remembered his name.

He was a marine guy. Door. Alex 

Sebastian Cuellar: Rucha from my, from my era, he, he had gotten hired right before me. He was a Marine, so he gotta talk to me like in a very 

Chris Corcoran: marine style. He was like, use this pen for this, use this for this. Ask if you have any questions. James. 

Sebastian Cuellar: James. James. James something. James Brooks.

James Brooks. Yes, absolutely. 

Chris Corcoran: Yeah. Yeah. James Brooks, a hundred percent man. Yeah. He a captain in the Marines. Yeah, he was a captain in the Marine Corps. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And it was just use this pen for this, use this for this. Erase it if you’re done, asking if you have any questions. That was my full, that was my full 

Sebastian Cuellar: education.

Like, cool. 

Chris Corcoran: And I was like, I remember the next person. I really went out of the vial to like show where they got the information and like that for him. He was just like, just ask me if you have anything. Like, that’s it. so yeah, I was in his cohort 

Sebastian Cuellar: and I really remember 

Chris Corcoran: the cool calling was a lot of fun.

And I remember the, the other part was, People have a 

Sebastian Cuellar: hard time wrapping their heads around with that, you would have two different customers. Mm-hmm. You’d have two different clients and that could change in a month. And [00:25:00] then you have to sell a new product the next month. Yep. So, just force you to think about your fundamentals.

Like what are the parts of sales that aren’t about the features and products? What are the parts of sales that is like going to help you close deals? Because, and I believe it’s to this day, now, 

Chris Corcoran: you know, full closing role, sales 

Sebastian Cuellar: is like having a really good discovery call and then falling forward.

Mm-hmm. Like if you, if that is all set 

Chris Corcoran: up correctly, like, correctly, like, that’s why there’s, uh, an emphasis on this. If that’s set up all correctly, everything up to the clo, everything else 

Sebastian Cuellar: kind of is a natural extension of a solid discovery call. and even, even up to like the closing will have its own like things, but that’s gonna be unique to your industry.

That’s gonna be different to your industry. 

Chris Corcoran: The demo’s gonna be unique to your industry. But solid, fun, solid discovery skills are just, are

Sebastian Cuellar: literally I the 

Chris Corcoran: whole year. I remember looking forward to classroom on Wednesdays because we would just cover like the same fundamentals 

Sebastian Cuellar: again. And I’m all about like, just stronger and stronger and stronger fundamentals.

Like you cannot get strong enough on, I still listen to sales material. I don’t think you can get strong enough on your 

Chris Corcoran: discovery skills. 

Marc Gonyea: Just a passion. We have a [00:26:00] fleet of SDRs now. Yeah. 

Chris Corcoran: Yeah. Wild. Yeah. 

Marc Gonyea: Wild, right? Yeah. How many 

Chris Corcoran: people were there when you worked there? between 20 and 30 tops. Yeah.

Smaller. 

Marc Gonyea: And we have SDRs all the time to tell us they know it all. I’m seven, I’m eight months in. I know what I’m doing. 

Chris Corcoran: Zero shot. What do you mean zero 

Sebastian Cuellar: shot? you know, like 

Chris Corcoran: at that point I don’t even think if we wanna use martial arts 

Sebastian Cuellar: as like a parallel. Mm-hmm. At that point I’d say maybe you are, maybe you’re like a middle belt, like a purple belt, something like that, right?

Yep. And it’s just one of those things like you’ve touched everything, but you don’t know anything, right? Yeah. It’s like, yeah, cool. You understand how to do this? You understand how to do this, but believe me, you do not know everything. I mean, I still have, I literally got my CRO involved in a call this week and I was like, I have closed around 600 deals in my life, and I’ve never had this happen.

And I had to like walk him through it. 

Chris Corcoran: And he was like, I’ve, and he’s much older. He’s 

Sebastian Cuellar: not much older. He’s older than me. And he was just like, I’ve never had that happen. Like, 

Chris Corcoran: yeah. I was like, so you’re always gonna, like, that’s the cool part if you like that, 

Sebastian Cuellar: it’s like you’re gonna always find something you’ve never seen before.

Yeah. And it’s could be [00:27:00] frustrating. Or if you’re the person who finds that exciting of like, I have no idea how this deal’s gonna go down. And sometimes like 

Chris Corcoran: sports, right? Sometimes you, you’re gonna 

Sebastian Cuellar: lose a deal that you was like, you should have won. And sometimes you’re gonna win a deal.

You had no business winning. And if you can just, you know, like some do, some don’t. Who cares? Who’s next? Like 

Chris Corcoran: Chris says, there you go. 

Sebastian Cuellar: Wow. That’s my mantra. I teach that to SDRs today, coming outta the archives. Wow. 

Chris Corcoran: You did make corporates in year. Yeah. Wow. That I remember. completely distinctly remember saying that to like, Hey, this guy, uh, the meaningful theory, 

Sebastian Cuellar: which I do, he’s like, some do, some don’t.

Who cares? Who’s next? Like, I was like, just looked up to me, said that, and then went back to like, type away the laptop and I was like, 

Chris Corcoran: stuck with me for the rest of my life, man. But Discovery, yeah. Discovery’s the name of the game. I, I honestly feel that’s a huge, 

Sebastian Cuellar: that Eddie’s immense discovery is the name of the game for it, because, People are gonna always ask you questions you don’t know the answer to.

And I was the, remember in the interview with you, mark, you said like, you are always gonna be selling to a space where the person you’re selling knows more about it than you do. Yeah. 

Chris Corcoran: Good tight. [00:28:00] Yeah. I, to me, like everything you guys said was like, was I, I just treated as drops from heaven, man. I was like, I gotta remember this forever, because I’m not trying 

Sebastian Cuellar: to put you good up either.

It’s just like if you had been wrong about something, and I’m sure I just forgot the 

Chris Corcoran: stuff you were really wrong about. Yeah, there you go. Awesome. Yeah, my kids don’t remember all the shit 

that 

Marc Gonyea: I’m 

Chris Corcoran: wrong. Yeah. And all the misdeeds right. Remembers the good stuff. I’ll leave that to your families. Um, I really remember, it’s like there’s always a moment.

It’s like, yeah, I got warned about this. I’m like, this was something that they said in year one and now it’s turning up in year three. Like I remember one time, Hey, the guy says that they’re a guy, they’re not the guy. 

Sebastian Cuellar: They said, they’re not the guy, they’re the 

Chris Corcoran: guy. And that was Mark, right? I was like, that comes up all the time still.

So Sebastian, you’re in this world doing it. Yeah. What are your parents thinking? my parents were actually really one, I had, they were really happy because at this point I was able to like, contribute 

Sebastian Cuellar: back to the family, right? Yeah. Mm-hmm. So 

Chris Corcoran: like, if it was like take, I paid for the first time, paid for dinners for my, my parents.

I was doing really, really well. I got, I remember I won like three quarters. I hit present [00:29:00] like three of the four out of like the 

Sebastian Cuellar: five quarters in total. I was, I was working, I hit like number one or something. Like, it was really, really, 

Chris Corcoran: I was always You were crushing it. Yeah. It was fun. Three K holiday restaurant parents.

Yeah. And so I remember, yeah. And so I remember like, my parents were so pumped. Yep. They were 

Sebastian Cuellar: literal. Like, it was like, you know, my dad’s like, you know, it wasn’t what I wish for you, but I remember like, this was. The first time I could like, sit down with my dad and he like completely got what I did. Yeah.

Like he just got it. Like he didn’t, he didn’t understand the product. Like the products were always different and changing, like, you know, and even what I do today, like I can 

Chris Corcoran: explain it and 

Sebastian Cuellar: it’s just, it’s very, very, it’s, I, I don’t even like explaining it to like, people at parties who like are in technology.

Yeah. but we could sit down and we we could completely commiserate. I for the like, and you know, my dad and I are very different personalities except in one way we’re both very chatty. we both like talking to people. We both feel energized by talking to 

Chris Corcoran: people. 

Sebastian Cuellar: And I know there’s a lot of incredibly good and I see them every day like AEs, SDRs that are like very introverted.

For me, it’s, [00:30:00] I like having a conversation with a stranger is more fun than having a conversation with like, Somebody, you know, like, somebody like, you know, somebody you know really well. Cause sometimes you don’t know what that you, I don’t know. I, I like novelty. Right? You don’t know where the day’s gonna take you.

You don’t know what 

Chris Corcoran: the call’s gonna take you. Yeah. You gotta be ready to ride it. And that’s fun. Yeah. That’s a lot of fun. And I 

Marc Gonyea: like how you call out too. You can be an introvert 

Chris Corcoran: to be good at this stuff. Mm-hmm. Oh no. That means Sandler was an introvert. he hates people. Sandler, the Sandler sales methodology.

Yes. Yes. Yeah, that’s right. David. Yeah. David Sandler. He talks about it in his, tape. So again, I, I’ve read and listened to everything. 

Sebastian Cuellar: You have to I kept it doing that. Yep. And he was real serious about the fact that he just didn’t even want to be in sales. Yeah. Ever. And I feel like that’s like, that’s like a running theme.

and. He said like, I, he wasn’t an intro extrovert, didn’t like talking to people, but I think the part of it being an introvert and not being a sales is cuz like you wanna be more efficient in your conversations 

Chris Corcoran: actually. Yeah. Whereas I will get off topic, we’ll talk about boats and Yeah. We’ll talk about like, we’ll talk about scotch, like whatever.

Yeah. And I, I don’t care what it is, I don’t, I don’t need to know anything about it. I learned to like [00:31:00] baseball. Yeah. To be better at sales. Yeah. Because I, I, cuz I was in an area that was pretty baseball, historic and rich. 

Sebastian Cuellar: Right? Yep. So like, yeah. It’s, that 

Chris Corcoran: was the part that was really fun. I’m sure at the time if you’d asked me if I felt this fun, I felt it was a lot of pressure. I felt stressful today. I’m sure I’ll look back in retrospect and say, this is a lot of fun. I’m not talking about this, this podcast, the podcast I’m talking about like my current work. Right. There’s a lot of pressure.

It’s lot stress. Yeah. I’m a founding 

Sebastian Cuellar: AE at NSD. At a, at a company. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Thoropass at a company. So I was the 

Chris Corcoran: first sales hire. I’m still there three years later. Wow. Yeah, it was, and yeah, that was crazy. But yeah, we’ll get to that. We’ll 

Marc Gonyea: get to that. So just real quick before we move on from memory Blue World.

Yeah. who were you working with? who were your contemporaries back there? You 

Chris Corcoran: remember? Thaddeus Walsh. Walsh. Racha Mossi. Oh Mossi, Tommy Gasman. The Gasman. 

Sebastian Cuellar: Yeah. geez. I remember 

Chris Corcoran: a lot of initials, man. Who gave you run for your money? Tiana was good. Tko? Yeah. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah, she, uh, and I was like, man, she’s recruiting people, she’s selling jobs.

I’m out here trying to get switches in [00:32:00] people’s houses at these people’s buildings, man. Like, I was like, I, that was really brutal too. I, I, I won. Treated. Have we had, we had her treatment memory client, 

Marc Gonyea: right? Yeah. And you put her into the comp plan? Mm-hmm. I 

Chris Corcoran: think so. Yeah. Yeah. I was competing against her.

Yeah. It was wealth. Yeah. She treated memorably as the quant client. who else was really, really sick? I actually, hon honestly, it was just Tina’s the first time I remember. Okay. That’s a lot of people. 

Marc Gonyea: Alright, so then did that crystallize this job that you wanted to go into sales? Yeah. Yeah. 

Chris Corcoran: And, and talk about this.

How about the journey? Yeah. At one point, once I was 

Sebastian Cuellar: in 

Chris Corcoran: memory blue, I, I don’t think, I mean, I was done for it. There was no turning back. Like one, like it took 

Sebastian Cuellar: immediate spike to 

Chris Corcoran: my income. Like, it’s like, this is the part I I sales, I’m like, your income just goes from 

Sebastian Cuellar: like, Even today, like I said, every three years you feel like you wanna leave every three years in sales, 

Chris Corcoran: you feel like you wanna leave sales.

That’s a normal thing. It’s, it’s so normal. You’re like, maybe I could do something else. 

Sebastian Cuellar: I’m smart. I know all this stuff. And then you start looking at jobs and then you’re like, I’m gonna cut my income by half or by a third. And I’m not exaggerating when I say you look at the highest paying jobs Yeah.

Out there that you can get [00:33:00] hired at. Because those other jobs that pay more are like internal promotions and like C-level 

Chris Corcoran: C-level stuff. Yeah. You got 

Marc Gonyea: Chris got you Chris designs on the comp plans to this day. Yeah. And he decides comp plans that reward people who are doing really well. Yeah. Right.

Yeah. So you gotta do this job. Remember you used to write the job descriptions and about how much money you can make. Mm-hmm. And people can make a lot of money. You get Sebastian into his job and he starts crushing your comp plan that you wrote. The goal of letting people who were overperforming over earn.

Chris Corcoran: Yeah. Mm-hmm. It was sick and it kind of hooked you. 

Sebastian Cuellar: Yeah. No it was awesome. It was, it was. Well that was cool cuz it was also like I was doing well at it. I was trying really hard, but it was fun to try hard. Yeah. 

Chris Corcoran: Um,

Sebastian Cuellar: it was fun to learn. And that really helped. Well you 

Marc Gonyea: have, you have curiosity thing going.

Yeah. Which, such a superpower, but you just, you just can’t 

Sebastian Cuellar: get 

Chris Corcoran: enough of it. Yeah. I, couldn’t stop 

Sebastian Cuellar: learning about it. So like, every single time we had the book reports, I wanted to learn a little bit more about that. It just kind of hit me as a, like, I, like 

Chris Corcoran: I’m flattered you call it superpower cuz it seems frustrating 

Sebastian Cuellar: other people.

Cause like, oh, you were into this like three weeks ago. What happened to that? And I was like, 

Chris Corcoran: uh, I found something else. Went to something else. [00:34:00] People don 

Marc Gonyea: you process information more quickly than love 

Chris Corcoran: person. Thanks. But I love, I just love Thomas Jefferson. You’re 

Marc Gonyea: smart dude, man. Like it is a little different for you.

 [00:35:00] so the memory blew 

Chris Corcoran: mindSHIFT. Mm-hmm. So I went to after, leaving. Yeah. So I went to, I went, actually took another SDR 

Sebastian Cuellar: role. Okay. After leaving memoryBlue. That’s right. And I was an SDR still for four more years. And the advice I’d give someone is like, it does matter where you go to get that AE thing, but it also needs to have like, be set up for you to succeed.

Right. Because I, I looked at other AE positions and just none of them were kind of what I wanted or in the space I wanted to go into. And also, if I hadn’t gone into mindSHIFT, it wouldn’t, I wouldn’t be here where I am today. I wouldn’t be in New York City. Cuz mindSHIFT got me up here. So shout out Ricoh, shout out mindSHIFT.

Chris Corcoran: so you would, my 

Marc Gonyea: you were an SDR for how much 

Chris Corcoran: longer? Four more years. Man. Let’s talk about that. Yeah. Because some people think 

Marc Gonyea: that’s like, 

Chris Corcoran: you failed Right. A 

Sebastian Cuellar: death sentence. Yeah. it theoretically can be. lemme talk about my first day there so you can kinda understand. Yes. The mood. [00:36:00] First day.

Um,my peer, the guy, the old man of the shop was a guy, a guy named Tommy. And I remember Tommy says, Hey, what territory they give you? And like, like in jail, man, like, it’s like his tone was like, we were in jail together. Mm-hmm. And I was like, they gave me the Midwest. He goes, he opens up his drawer.

And it’s completely filled up with name tag. Those are all the other guys that were in the Midwest 

Chris Corcoran: and closes 

Sebastian Cuellar: the door. He goes, good luck. Like I sit down at my desk and it looked like somebody had stepped out to lunch and they gave me at someone’s desk. Like, it was like enemy at the gates, like, pick up the gun of the guy 

Chris Corcoran: who dies before you, man.

And I was like, oh my God. What? 

Sebastian Cuellar: Like, I was like, and it was funny because my, and I was thankfully right this time, but in the 

Chris Corcoran: future I’ve learned that that’s not the case. I was like, you probably sucked. It was really, at this time I was right. Those 

Sebastian Cuellar: guys did suck. Yeah. And I was good and I did well there, but, but that was a thing that was like, 

Chris Corcoran: that was my introduction to 

Sebastian Cuellar: outside of memory blue was like, okay.

Was be at the spot. And it was incredibly hard. We had, so to give you an idea how hard the sales were there, there was a dude I worked with [00:37:00] who legitimately forecasted $0. Dude kept his job for like a year. Like, he had one whole quarter forecasted, I’m gonna get $0 for this company, you know? And I’m like, but I’m working hard.

I have some, he was forecasting absolutely nothing, 

Chris Corcoran: not even upside. and 

Sebastian Cuellar: it was like every single deal I gave, the dude was like, it was like giving a fumble artist, dude was, it was like, I was 

Chris Corcoran: like, here’s an opportunity. And he was like, upside. He just spiked it at the, he spiked it as soon as I handed it to him.

Like the dude, 

Sebastian Cuellar: it was really harsh. So I wasn’t getting that bonus, but I was getting the money for, for like getting 

Chris Corcoran: meetings and like, and the cool, the, the important 

Sebastian Cuellar: part is, is like everybody knows that guy’s that guy. so, like, they weren’t like, you’re deal, they weren’t like, your leads are shit.

They were like, they were like, yeah, we, we know you’re giving him, we know you’re giving it to that guy. We know you’re, and you know what? It’s okay. you have a 

Chris Corcoran: couple other states, other territories, like just 

Sebastian Cuellar: work. The other ones a little bit more. But I just really remember that that was the, the curse of the Midwest.

And I tell people today, I was selling the Minnesota, so there’s dude, I was, uh, the dude who was [00:38:00] making the most. was selling into dc This guy’s second most was selling into New York, and then West Coast was next, and then Midwest was like whatever was left over. So like, not true. Midwest, like, you know, certain states aren’t actually Midwest.

Like I didn’t get Texas either. That was, they actually had a whole 

Chris Corcoran: s d r branch 

Sebastian Cuellar: in Texas. So I had the Midwest and I was number two after DC and the DC guy was the old man of the shop. He was the guy who opened up and like had watched everybody get fired at the cool org. The Grim Reaper? Yeah, the grim Reaper man.

He, he, and it was this whole thing, 

Chris Corcoran: anytime someone got laid off or fired, he pulled their written name 

Sebastian Cuellar: tag and threw it into his desk. And eventually, 

Chris Corcoran: I was there for four years, man. 

Sebastian Cuellar: And I, we went, I went through like in, it feels like 16 rounds of layoffs, but I was 

Chris Corcoran: in, I, it 

Sebastian Cuellar: was for sure three rounds of layoffs where Ricoh liquidated their entire sales department.

Rico, a 10,000 person company liquidated every single person who had sales in their title other than the select few. And the only two people who survived were me and Tommy. So a [00:39:00] Midwest 

Chris Corcoran: guy and the Virginia Guy, were the only two people that they said we’re gonna move forward. And these guys are the only it.

Like, this is the only thing we’re gonna put all of our, 

Sebastian Cuellar: of the service sales lead part into, yeah. 

Chris Corcoran: And then And how did you get promoted? Never did. That’s why I left. Oh, you never got promoted. Four years. And so you were at mindSHIFT. Four years. Does 

Sebastian Cuellar: Ricoh? mindSHIFT? Ricoh acquired us.

Okay. And what, what, what does mindSHIFT do, just to. mindSHIFT is managed services provider. So it is service sales, which hard to differentiate. Incredibly hard to differentiate. That’s talent business. Yeah, It is. A hundred percent. It is. Anytime I 

Chris Corcoran: told someone I was, yeah, I sell for an msp.

They’re like, they’re actually just like yours. Like, dude, that’s the trenches. I was like, yeah. And like, what’s your church in 

Sebastian Cuellar: Midwest? They opened the file 

Chris Corcoran: door. Yeah. Yeah, dude. that was the part that got so, so 

Sebastian Cuellar: like, it, 

Chris Corcoran: it, it, I mean it’s kind of crucible at that point. Yeah. And you just gotta keep your chin up.

And the cool part is the place was real, real merciful. Like you could have really, you 

Sebastian Cuellar: could have down shifts and they weren’t gonna like, you gotta replace it. Like they knew that they, like it was a hard [00:40:00] sell. Yeah. They knew that if you got. Like a deal here or there. Like that was, that was 

Chris Corcoran: great. That was more than paid for because, cuz here we got, I got transferred to New York.

Sebastian Cuellar: Right. Eventually when it was just me and the other dude I got moved to New York 

Chris Corcoran: and in New York, I 

Sebastian Cuellar: talked them into moving me here. Okay. Right? Yeah. So they had never had anybody selling into New York that had success. Okay. It is like a whole thing, 

Chris Corcoran: right? Yeah. It’s like, and I don’t know if it’s, if you feel that way there.

I sell mostly New York now 

Sebastian Cuellar: And my belief then, and my belief now is that the, like, and this is, I, I am by no means like a 

Chris Corcoran: jingoistic person. I do believe our country is great, but I’m not one of those dudes who’s like, America’s the 

Sebastian Cuellar: best at everything. America does 

Chris Corcoran: have the winning edge on marketing and sales.

For like the rest of the world. I have sold in Europe, I have sold in Latin America. I did it for you guys. Mm-hmm. and it 

Sebastian Cuellar: just, our sales technique is just really, really good. Like, I think 

Chris Corcoran: UK also comes close, they think about it, but I think it’s because there’s very free exchange 

Sebastian Cuellar: between us and them.

And I know this because like I would listen to other people’s calls and sales [00:41:00] fundamentals and go down and I worked for international orgs and I think 

Chris Corcoran: of the United States, the two strongest, hardest sales areas. What would you say the hardest place to sell in the entire United States would be? Well, New York.

Yeah. Yeah. Nice place. Yeah. And honestly, fun fact, the thing that’s always informed my 

Sebastian Cuellar: moving forward is, is the book The Dip, which again, was recommended by you guys. and then my main point of the dip was like, go towards where things get harder, but they get harder for you at a slower rate than they do 

Chris Corcoran: for everybody else.

So like, if it’s. Close to impossible for you, but you know, it’s impossible for everybody else. 

Sebastian Cuellar: That’s where you’re gonna make your most money. Like that’s where you’re gonna succeed the most. You still have 

Chris Corcoran: everyone read. They should. Yeah. It, I think it, it’s important because it That’s a great point though, to steal that.

Yeah. It, it’s incredibly, I think it was great cause when you had to read it, 

Sebastian Cuellar: when you had us read it, it was, it is divisive cuz some of people were like, man, may, maybe they don’t want us in sales and I didn’t read it that way. Yeah. Maybe I should quit. Yeah. Yeah. It’s like if you’re thinking like, maybe I should quit, I mean, don’t give yourself a [00:42:00] chance try to understand why you were feeling that at that time.

Is it 

Chris Corcoran: the context of that moment for you, but. Yeah, let yourself like really reflect 

Sebastian Cuellar: on, is this one, is it challenging for you? If it’s not challenging for you, why not? How can you add more challenge and is that gonna push you in direction you want to? Is that thing that’s gonna make it more challenging, challenging for some everyone else worse than you?

Because that’s, for me, that was a thing. Always go towards a direction that is just going 

Chris Corcoran: to be challenging for you. So I literally, when I found out I could move in New York and sell in New York, this MSP was very, very hard. Like the hardest sale and the hardest town and the hardest country at selling things.

And so I took the opportunity. I was like, you know what, let’s do this. Cause I, I’m pretty sure just having that little bit of an edge here is enough cuz it’s, it’s a, it is more than everybody else cuz it’s close to impossible for other others. Right. What job was this? mindSHIFT

Marc Gonyea: This is still mindSHIFT.

Still mindSHIFT. Still mindSHIFT. That’s what I thought I was making sure. Yeah. Yep. Okay. 

Chris Corcoran: So mindSHIFT. that was it. And then after four years, that’s the part where people think like, yeah. And if you’re 

Sebastian Cuellar: an sdr, after, after like you, you’ve failed. And they’re like, I’ll tell you, it still taught me [00:43:00] a lot.

Taught me a whole, 

Chris Corcoran: whole lot. Absolutely. What’d you learn? So one of the major, one of the major things is 

Sebastian Cuellar: you like, 

Chris Corcoran: you gotta look at successful people in 

Sebastian Cuellar: sales. Like, one thing you don’t have at memory blue is like those seasoned guys, like I’m talking sales guys in their fifties, the show ponies. Yeah. You the guys who like have the house with the, with the waterfall.

Yeah. Right. Like Right. You go 

Chris Corcoran: to their house, they have a waterfall, you bring ’em a bottle of scotch 

Sebastian Cuellar: that costs you a hundred bucks to like, you know, Hey, thanks for everybody to my house. And then they put it in a drawer of like 90 others of those, like, I’m talking And this guy’s like an independent contributor doesn’t manage a single person, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Those dudes 

Chris Corcoran: find that guy, figure out why he’s great. Yeah. Like in, 

Sebastian Cuellar: in my case, like one, like his name is John Stewart. Not no relation to comedian John Stewart is incredible sales guy. Yep. Incredibly good sales guy. And he figured out one, he was brilliant. He was really, really smart. And then two, he just figured out 

Chris Corcoran: how to work his own game.

Sebastian Cuellar: And I think that was the thing that really taught me. He taught me a lot. John is very quiet. I think he would, everyone argues he’s an introvert. Mm-hmm. So our personalities did [00:44:00] not, were not like aligned, but we did mesh, we did get along. Mm-hmm. We 

Chris Corcoran: did not have similar personalities at all. 

Sebastian Cuellar: And what it taught me, he just taught me how to, you have to work in 

Chris Corcoran: angles sometimes.

And it’s like, you can be really, really great at sales and have great fundamentals. That’s, that’s table stakes at this point. like a really career. What it really taught me though, is like, if you can figure out how to sell a certain thing better than everybody else, if you can figure out how to find that niche that’s a little more complicated, 

Sebastian Cuellar: you can do really good job.

And then the, the, like, that’s where you’re gonna make like, silly money. Like that’s where the money 

Chris Corcoran: goes. Like really great sales job to like really, really, really, really, really good. The other parts about it were like, I mean, 

Sebastian Cuellar: He didn’t sweat a deal. Like I never saw him like, lose a deal and, and feel like panicked or feel upset.

I can go 

Chris Corcoran: longer, by the way. No, you’re good. Okay. No, no, no. You’re good. Yeah. So 

Sebastian Cuellar: I, I never saw him like get stressed out about anything and that 

Chris Corcoran: really, he just, you know, in fact, if anything, he’s calming me down most of the time Cause I get stressed out a lot 

Sebastian Cuellar: and, you know, it’s just my, I know my personality.

I’m emotional. I know that about myself. Accept that about yourself. You have to accept who you are. Yes. And sales forces you 

Chris Corcoran: to confront yourself a [00:45:00] lot. Yes. There’s a lot of 

Marc Gonyea: self-doubt and Yeah. Self-examination. Yeah. Particularly cause there’s a lot of losing. 

Chris Corcoran: There is. Yeah. You, you’re gonna take Ls, dude, you’re 

Sebastian Cuellar: industry standard.

You’re taking, you’re taking Ls at 70%, like 70, 

Chris Corcoran: like you’re gonna lose 

Sebastian Cuellar: two-thirds of the deals that come in their inbox. And a lot of these guys, you’re 

Chris Corcoran: gonna lose the one yard line. Yeah. You know? Yeah. And that’s feels awful. And you can, you’re gonna have slumps, you 

Sebastian Cuellar: know, and you’re gonna have, but you.

You’re gonna have 

Chris Corcoran: great moments too. You’re just biting your 

Marc Gonyea: time, man. Yeah. Like you were learning a ton. Yeah. Biding your time is probably more of a negative thing, like you’re just waiting, but you were just learning all 

Chris Corcoran: this stuff. Yeah, was learning there. I also, 

Sebastian Cuellar: it was incredibly hard space to sell in.

Yeah. So it really taught me how to get, I mean, it, it took all the fat off my game. Like 

Chris Corcoran: it just took the nice, fluffy, 

Sebastian Cuellar: controlled environment and just boiled it down to be absolutely. Razor’s edge, like, cool call, cold call, cold call, 

Chris Corcoran: future. this is 

Sebastian Cuellar: like a flash forward, a member of the future.

When I was an SDR manager and I was an SDR manager for a short stint, they’re 

Chris Corcoran: like, yeah, well, you know, how do you know how to cold call? Do this stuff. It’s [00:46:00] like, watch this. I pick up the phone and it, it was out of a movie and I’m not exaggerating. Pick up 

Sebastian Cuellar: the phone call a guy, doesn’t answer, put it back.

He calls me back and I book a meeting on the very first call and I’m like, and I looked at him and says, the only difference between me and you is I’ve done this 10,000 times. 

Chris Corcoran: And it was like literally I won the whole room. That at that moment they’re like, how did you do that? I was like, done this 10,000 times.

Like that’s how to do, I did it 10,000 times. I structured and that was the thing, 

Sebastian Cuellar: and it was like, I just kept it doing it and doing it and doing it. So you get to the point. When you pick up the phone, you can 

Chris Corcoran: make a call and it’s not a 

Sebastian Cuellar: hundred percent. That was like, that was something I, 

Chris Corcoran: that’s a movie shit, but Right.

But like you’re, 

Sebastian Cuellar: if you’re talking to somebody and they’re have any interest at all, you’re gonna get that meeting. it’s, you’re never gonna fumble a call. Like that’s just, it’s like fumbling in nfl. Sure it’s gonna happen. Yep. But like, that’s not what you get paid to do. And nobody, everyone’s 

Chris Corcoran: shocked when that happens.

People have heart attacks when that happens to you. Yeah. Yeah. 

Sebastian Cuellar: That’s, that’s what it’s like. 

Marc Gonyea: So you, so Mind Shift, you’re, you’re there for four years. Mm-hmm. You get moved up to New York City, what I guess inspired you to leave and where’d 

Sebastian Cuellar: you go? 

Chris Corcoran: so what 

Sebastian Cuellar: inspired me to leave [00:47:00] was basically the fact that I was four years in, and not only was I not promoted, the dude, the old man of the shop also wasn’t promoted.

So you knew 

Chris Corcoran: was 

Marc Gonyea: keep in that role for as long as you were gonna 

Chris Corcoran: do it. Exactly. 

Sebastian Cuellar: They had no interest in moving anybody up. The other dude had been promised for like a decade at this point that he was gonna get moved up. And he, he, he did. He eventually did. Oh, he did? He made it.

He’s, he made it. But we have very different personalities. Okay. he’s a guy, like, 

Chris Corcoran: there’s two types of Right. I will look for something more 

Sebastian Cuellar: complicated that like, can I win bigger than my current loss? Which is like, I, 

Chris Corcoran: I think, thank goodness 

Sebastian Cuellar: I don’t gamble. I do gamble, but thank goodness I don’t treat money this way, but I do treat my life this way.

If I take an L I always try to double down and come back. Yeah. Always. And some people just work through everything and like, I’ll come out the other side. I can’t do it that way. Does it? It feels too passive. Not proactive enough. But both are solid. Both are sustainable and doable methodologies. In my case, I was like, I can’t do this man for, six more years.

I mean, I’m after you man. Like if I get a job before you, you’re like, you’ll kill me. And rightfully, and at that point I just opened up and [00:48:00] started taking calls and I remember there was like, and this part was so stupid. Recruiters were like, oh, you’ve only done service sales. Well, we need someone who’s done SaaS sales.

I’m like, SaaS sales is so much 

Chris Corcoran: easier. It’s so much, so much easier. And this guy, well, if you say so, and I’m like, okay, recruiter. And I, I, peace. I was like, I just remember 

Sebastian Cuellar: to this day, I, I really wish you remember that guy’s name, but it’s probably for the best that I don’t like. You’re an idiot.

You’re an idiot. You’re 

Chris Corcoran: the, you go 

Marc Gonyea: into detail though about that. Why is it 

Chris Corcoran: that, you know, service, 

Sebastian Cuellar: there’s no differentiation. It’s like, Hey, my guy’s better than those guys. That’s it. That’s what you have. The only how do you prove to someone your, 

Chris Corcoran: that your, your people that you’re talking about 

Sebastian Cuellar: are gonna be better than the people that they’re talking about.

Like, and like on top of that, you can’t give out reference calls. You can get, can’t give out online reviews. You can’t give a demo. This is a hundred percent pure selling. Yeah. Like it is just, let’s talk about this. It is, you build a relationship, you work with that person. you drag them as deep and deep down into like, enmeshment with you as possible.

Yeah. And you just work it as, as best as you can. You can talk about how you can like, [00:49:00] and this funny is we’re not like a zero to one type of service. Right. As in like, we’re not taking some service you’ve never had before. Now adding it cuz that could show you the benefits of that I’m taking a service.

You more than likely certainly have in offering you an alternative. It’s a one for one trade. Yeah. For most everybody. Yeah. How do you win those deals? Yeah. And the answer is like, you don’t very often, but when you do like you, it, it’s just like cards. 

Chris Corcoran: if, if you’re, if you have poker, if, if anyone plays poker, right, 

Sebastian Cuellar: you fold, there’s someone playing, playing hands, you fold.

But when you have the right cards, you’ve gotta make that, you’ve gotta make that pop big. So when you had the right cards in play, when you found somebody who actually hadn’t had an MSP or didn’t realize it was something they needed. And then you start talking them through it and then you start seeing that there’s real problems and stuff.

Like you gotta hunt for that. And that’s the thing is when you get the right, like you really, really had to focus and double 

Chris Corcoran: down on Yeah, dude, you’re professional man. 

Marc Gonyea: Yeah. That’s like veteran hitter knowing the situation. Corcoran. Mm-hmm. Hitch count, the outs, the force, whatever they’re trying to do to you and you’re like, oh, this is when I can win and I think I know what’s coming next.

[00:50:00] Yeah. Or I think I know what I need to do to prepare for what’s coming next. So you were pigeonholed Yeah. As a services 

Sebastian Cuellar: person who couldn’t sell a product. Yeah. So the next offer, yeah. Sort of like, so pigeonholed is the SDR services person who couldn’t sell a product Yeah. In New York City. And I just remember I gotta take next SAS sales job cuz SAS is all I heard and it’s what I saw online and that’s like, like it’s kind of the dream and I see a lot of people like it’s, it is, the people I work with today are all good.

Mm-hmm. Like all of them. I don’t, we don’t have a weak person on my sales team and I’m, I am. For sure would not say that if it wasn’t true. I am absolutely okay. Like saying like, that dude’s dog shit. Yeah, 

Chris Corcoran: yeah. 

Sebastian Cuellar: Like I’m completely comfortable saying that if someone truly is, we don’t, because we can’t, we have very, we can’t afford that type of 

Chris Corcoran: hire.

But I really remember 

Sebastian Cuellar: that like, it’s just hard, it was hard to sell myself like at that point. Right. And so I remember that I started talking to Law360. Okay. Anthony, who would soon be my [00:51:00] manager, was the guy who gave me an interview SaaS sales. Okay. First time. And then he goes, I was like, yeah.

So what’s the target market? You know, who is selling sass? Well, the company’s called Law360. Yep. And I was like, so lawyers? And he’s like, yeah. And I told my manager at the time, Pete Diamond, at mindSHIFT, I was leaving to go sell SaaS to lawyers. Mm-hmm. In New York City. Okay. And he was like, 

Chris Corcoran: that sounds like the worst job I’ve ever heard of.

Like selling to lawyers. I can’t believe that’s awful, man. Why 

Sebastian Cuellar: would you do that to yourself? Yeah. And I was like, I was like, 

Chris Corcoran: Because, like, you gotta take the AE 

Sebastian Cuellar: title. Yeah. Like, yep. And, and don’t get me wrong, like I had passed up other AE opportunities before this. Sure. But it, they weren’t the right like place to be at.

But at this point it was like I had to take the title because if I ran out the clock as an sdr, it would not be a thing. I could, would, it would be a lot. It gets consistently harder and harder to do. Yep. Yep. You don’t, like, you just gotta start signaling that you don’t wanna be a lifers day as a lifer.

Right, right, right. And so what, what do they do? And so Law360. So it’s, it’s basically, it’s effectively [00:52:00] an online newspaper for lawyers. So what is it different? Why? It’s like fashion. There’s, don’t they have a central Westlaw? Yeah. Like you think that Right. Westlaw. But that requires, like, that’s not cases happening today.

Those are closed cases. I see. So if someone’s like in a courthouse happening this afternoon. Yeah. Right. Law360 had journalists sitting there, like writing stuff down, and they would come give reports like that day. So they would go down into, and that’s like New York City where it’s, it’s very established.

We’re talking like Tennessee, Kentucky, like parts of the American, south and Southwest. They don’t even have an electronic system filing their cases. Mm-hmm. So they would be like a journalist whose job was to be out there. And there’s, of course there’s lawyers out there, right. Whose job to be out there to find interesting court cases and go into those courts and then talk about those and find those.

Because that way you can have precedent that goes like that way a lawyer, this is lawyers. It’s, it’s about any microscopic edge that they can have over somebody else as far as information goes they’re gonna take. Yep. I see. Yeah. So that job, and this is the one I tout, like really, like, I [00:53:00] had no closing skills at this point, and it was like, it was very lucky, honestly, that this job was the one I got.

And I would say that like, I mean, you create your own luck, but the particular I did not plan for. In selling to lawyers, you have to be aware you are negotiating every single sale. And because of what we were selling in our quota, I had to close something like 18 deals a quarter. It it a month, a 

Marc Gonyea: month, 18 deals a month.

Sebastian Cuellar: That’s one a day. Yeah. Like I. Wow. You had, like, I, I remember one time I hit and 22 deals in a month. And I’m like, I was like, congrats. I was like, I got a good, I mean I think it was maybe closer to 15, 16 like that, but it was like, it was, dude, it was so close to one a day.

It was like, at this point my memory pleads it all together. Yeah. It was a lot. small law, so I was selling the one, two attorney firms. Oh really? Yeah. Okay. And the thing with one, two attorney firms is, 1, 2, 3 or four attorneys, lawyers. Their business is their bank account.

Right. So the business is their bank account. That’s a distinction. It’s probably not gonna make sense to the SDRs. anybody who’s getting thinking about closing needs to realize it’s their money that they’re playing with. Yep. So, like I say, I’m charging you a thousand bucks a month. That’s not the same as telling a [00:54:00] company that they’re gonna charge him a thousand bucks a month.

Right. This is not only this guy is a professional negotiator. It’s a professional negotiator with his money. Mm-hmm. Like these dudes 

Chris Corcoran: wanted to kick the shit outta me every single call. 

Sebastian Cuellar: Yeah. Every single closing call. Like they wanted what I want when I had, but they wanted to negotiate the hell outta me, like for every single deal.

And the part that was so funny was our price was the price. And I put air quotes, you can’t, nobody can see. But our price was the price. We could change it almost however we wanted to because it was like, it was completely rubber stamped approval for any and all discounts. Okay. However, if you did that, you would have to go from closing like 12, 13, 14, $15, 15 deals a month to closing like 25, 22.

Right. It was unreal. And I, I, at one time, I, I did, like I said, I closed 22 deals in a month one time. And then that’s where I came up with my poker analogy. It’s like sometimes you have the nuts, sometimes you have great cards in hand. And this is the guy that when you quote him the price, you have to courageously give him double the price.

Mm-hmm. Like, I, actually would, I would put a premium on the deal. [00:55:00] For this dude. Mm-hmm. So I’m like, Hey man, here’s theprice. And cuz I knew he was gonna negotiate me down. He, and he was gonna come out closer to the real price. Yep. Which is the, the market value that we had, like, you know, people found.

So it was fair. And eventually, yeah. You realize that like, don’t be afraid of putting a premium on pricing. Don’t be afraid to negotiate. Like, negotiation is, like, the first half is discovery, second half is negotiation. It’s just like, look, how can we reach? We both want the same thing. You wanna stop shopping for a 

Chris Corcoran: product?

I wanna stop selling this product to you. Right. So 

Sebastian Cuellar: how do we, how do we make that happen? Deal fatigue. Yeah, exactly. 

Marc Gonyea: So the great thing about what you’re describing is 

Sebastian Cuellar: all those transactions, 

Marc Gonyea: all those sales cycles, all those closing opportunities, closed one closed lost. You just, just like seeing pitches and you’re, you’re seeing more per month, you’re seeing, 

Sebastian Cuellar: you know, 20 a month.

Yeah. 25 a month, 30 a month. That really helps accelerate your closing ability. Yeah. I’m sure. Yeah. You, like I said, you lose. Two thirds of the deals you go into. Mm-hmm. Two thirds of your ops Right. Are gonna be closed, lost here. This really taught me that like anybody gives you any, [00:56:00] any, any, any daylight, you’re gonna, you have to charge that daylight and try to make that deal happen somehow.

Mm-hmm. It’s not always gonna happen. Sure. But like, you know, dude, you get one or two more a quarter that’s can be very significant. Yep. That can add up, especially when you start having larger o os. Right. Right, and I think that that was like you said, and that’s what we currently, say. Look, when I was starting at 

Chris Corcoran: at Thoropass where I am now, what do you do now?

Okay, so 

Sebastian Cuellar: I sell an expert service platform. Mm-hmm. All right. So if you are in a startup and in your startup you wanna sell enterprise deals, everybody’s gone through this, and this is the part I say, there is one thing that’s totally bullshit about, sales books and they’re like, Hey, if you end a procurement, you suck as a sales guy, they all do that because at the end of the day, the answer is there is no.

It’s silver bullet for procurement. You can’t outsell procurement because procurement goes over the head of like, yeah. Any guy you’re selling to at an enterprise org. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I’m do that right now. Yeah, exactly. Like it goes over the head of that guy. Yeah. Goes into the, they, those guys are literally coming from the CFO who most of the time actually tends to [00:57:00] really 

Chris Corcoran: run orgs, right?

Yeah. So if you are trying to, if you’re a startup and you’re 

Sebastian Cuellar: trying to sell these companies, the, one of the parts of procurement that’s really brutal and difficult is the information security procurement piece. Especially if you’re in SaaS sales because you’re gonna touch their data and whatever.

Like you can either fill out a self-assessment questionnaire, but that’s not even worth the paper it’s printed on. Like, we know this after, like, I don’t know who conducted a study, but they did a study. Self-assessment questionnaires aren’t shit. Yeah, they really aren’t. you, anyone can say anything they want there.

You can produce anything you want so it’s meaningless. So there’s an audit called 

Chris Corcoran: by the 

Sebastian Cuellar: ASCPA that’s called a SOC2. Any CPA can conduct a SOC2. And with that SOC2, they give you like a big report about how well you follow your policies. So they sit there and they audit you. They say they check the receipts.

Mm-hmm. So let’s say you say, Hey, when we onboarded, when we onboarded Sebastian, we gave him a computer. It’s like, great, find me the ticket in your change management that did that. Cool. Who approved that? Great. who approved his being added the payroll? Did you follow all the things in your policies?

So it’s basically you’re, you’re creating a package and then [00:58:00] there’s a group of auditors who prove that you’ve done all the stuff you’ve done. They write how they tested you, why I tested you sign their own name on it. and then this report is like, for a 10 person company is 70 pages long. It can get Wow.

incredibly long. Yeah. That report is what you slide in front of a procurement team. Yeah, because banks and this, it came from the banks originally. They do not want to go in and audit you themselves, but they want the results of that. So they tell you to pay for it. Okay. So if you wanna sell to a bank or any enterprise org at this point, cuz you can’t seriously do business with any of these big orgs, get through their procurement without having a SOC two audit.

Now that’s the setup. What do I sell? I help people get through that. Like okay, to sell a solution. Right? That is, can be a painful and complicated and mysterious thing for people. What we do at Thoropass is we give them a platform and we give them experts to help them and walk them the whole way through.

Because your company Memory Blue is totally different than calm the app on someone’s 

Chris Corcoran: phone. Yeah. So therefore your security requirements should probably be different, 

Sebastian Cuellar: right? Yeah. There’s plenty of companies out there who really wanna cookie cutter this and they go with Cookie cutter. Cookie cutter, and they would just [00:59:00] do checkbox, but that checkbox does not hold water for like your big serious companies.

How do I know 

Chris Corcoran: this? Because one of our founders was a procurement person. Okay. Was the head the managing director of procurement at Citibank. Okay. 

Sebastian Cuellar: She, she was there for 20 years. In the last seven years, she ran the whole team and she saw lots of good orgs that she wanted to buy, probably like startups out there and that she could not buy because they couldn’t get their shit together enough to go through an audit.

Marc Gonyea: And who do you sell to? Startups. Startups? Yeah. Okay. Those 

Sebastian Cuellar: are the guys. Got it. Any startup tries to, startups need to do business. They need those anchor accounts, right? Yeah. Mm-hmm. They try to do business anchor accounts and they’re completely inexperienced and they realize, oh great, this is good. They 

Chris Corcoran: have like a buyer, they’re, they’re 

Sebastian Cuellar: good to go and they’re great.

Let’s just get you their procurement, and then they just get their teeth knocked into procurement. Who do you sell to? Personas persona. That’s a funny thing. It can be. it’s so strange. Who can be in an org? Who is the person I talk to? Yeah. Right now I have a, I have you. I get Bet you love that. It’s awesome.

You can be anybody. Yeah. It’s so random. Like I have a chief revenue officer for one. I have another one works. Yeah. It’s head of product 

Chris Corcoran: for [01:00:00] another 

Sebastian Cuellar: one. I have a CEO for another one. Yeah. Like founders, sometimes founders are untitled. Yep. And it’s like, it could be anybody in an organization. It’s just cuz the problem is, it’s not always who feels the pain, but it’s who, who’s been told to take charge of it.

So that’s gonna change the deal or, or who’s carrying the ball. Yeah. Who’s carrying the ball? 

Chris Corcoran: So exciting. Yeah. It’s a fun, it’s a one, it’s a really fun sell. 

Sebastian Cuellar: again, how did you find this company? They found me this pandemic. Yeah. So I was at Law360 doing a lot of deals. I was an SDR manager for a very brief stint.

Yeah. Doing a lot of deals. Corporate, doing a lot of deals. So many, so many. so I was an SDR manager for a small stt. I really liked it, but I don’t like firing people. Mm-hmm. I don’t like telling people their time of the company’s over. Yeah. I don’t, like, I had 15 direct reports and I love spending time with my people and I just didn’t like, and it was just, it was kind of like a SDR mill, which there are out there.

Yeah. Yeah. 

Chris Corcoran: And like, this is law. This is at law. Yeah. Law. And like, you know, 

Sebastian Cuellar: all cards on the table. People can like say like, oh, an s is like you guys. No, it was not law. It was another company. I’m not gonna [01:01:00] name it. Oh, I see. I see it. But like, Ball cards on the table, like people would say sometimes like, oh, memory blue is like really harsh and really difficult, and stuff like that.

Yes. And there’s a lot of people there. It’s like, dude, it’s hard. Yeah. It’s for good, dude. It’s for your own good. Yeah. Right. Like at the end of the day, like if you’re there and you’re like, you don’t make the cut, like it’s probably for your own good man. Like it’s, yeah. Like it’s, I don’t think, and I’m, I’m not trying 

Chris Corcoran: to butter you guys up at all, and I say that I don’t have any reason to.

It’s been a while. It’s been a minute, right. Yeah. But 

Sebastian Cuellar: all the lessons you take out of there and all the things that you fail at and all the things that you do well, like do add up. And there’s a reason for them, right? If you’re getting on calls and you just can’t, if you can’t think 

Chris Corcoran: your way around, who 

Sebastian Cuellar: do I, should I target?

Like, like there’s so many different phases that you can make up ground in being quote unquote bad on sales. So many different areas that if you can’t figure out how to lean on your strengths to do that, and they do give you all the tools there to do it. And if you’re just deciding not to do that Or, you know, maybe this is, it’s not for you.

There’s something that, there’s some better way you 

Chris Corcoran: can contribute. So quit. Yeah. Take 

Marc Gonyea: your energy in 

Chris Corcoran: effort and go find [01:02:00] something 

Marc Gonyea: else. You’re going to be good at it. Right. Which, okay. You’ll be successful in the long term. It 

Chris Corcoran: might not be at this. Yeah. Like, you got the job to begin with. They saw 

Sebastian Cuellar: something in you.

Yep. You’re going to be successful. Like, it’s okay. And anybody, maybe also, maybe that’s not the environment you want. Maybe you wanna do some proposal writing. Like that could be another that’s, there’s a lot of other ways to be in sales other than being an ae. Right. And those things pay sick, like too, so don’t, yeah.

Yes. Don’t look about it. Yeah. so yeah. but I don’t like firing people. Yeah. I, I’m, I’m really, really softhearted, I didn’t like having to talk to people about things they did wrong. Yeah. I just, I, I like to be a cheerleader. I like to teach. Yeah. So, Like when it came up to, it really wasn’t my choice.

I got laid off because, there’s a, a thing, 2020 or 2019. 2020, yeah. Yeah. 2020 hit and they were like, yo, we’re liquidating the entire SD R team. And so without an SDR team, do you wanna be a manager still? I’m like, well, I don’t. They’re like, well, and like, well, trick 

Chris Corcoran: question. You’re not. So, 

Sebastian Cuellar: yeah, I found this job, and this was a really important part, was I met this job at the [01:03:00] same time I met my wife.

So there’s a lot. 

And 

Chris Corcoran: the picture I have on my phone right now that my wife sent me today, I don’t remember. We were just talking about, it’s like, What’s a 

Sebastian Cuellar: photograph of your significant other that like makes you feel really proud? Mm-hmm. And she sent me a picture of my first deal clothes at this company.

Oh, okay. We had a celebration dinner and she had a picture of us together. What badass. Yeah, she’s been with me the entire time and it was 

Chris Corcoran: just, it just stars aligned. Right. I’m 40 years old and there’s plenty of you out there who are 

Sebastian Cuellar: like, whatever age, and you’re like, man, I don’t think I’m gonna find the person 

Chris Corcoran: or it’s gonna be forever.

Dude, I gave up like 10 times before I’ve met my wife. I don’t think I even thought I was gonna get married ever. You know, I’m in New York City, I’ve a New York City wife. Like, and that’s the whole, that’s a rotting gag here, right? Where 

Sebastian Cuellar: it’s like, yeah, you’re in New York City, you can 

Chris Corcoran: be a bachelor forever. And it’s wonderful.

That’s a TV shows you. Right? But I, I gotta tell you, like, no, I met her and I was like, damn it. Game over. Hit the like, 

Sebastian Cuellar: hey, like, you know, dealer, no deal. Let’s, let’s deal. I’ll take the like No, I love her. I love her so much and I met her at the same time. I 

Chris Corcoran: met, I started 

Sebastian Cuellar: this run 

Chris Corcoran: right at.

Thoropass. 

Sebastian Cuellar: Founding 

Chris Corcoran: salesperson. Founding sales guy. Well, first a cohort of two. Wow. All right. Company here is [01:04:00] New York. New York. New York City. Thoropass. 

Sebastian Cuellar: Right? It’s great. 

Chris Corcoran: Well, 

Marc Gonyea: Sebastian man, we could go on. We have to, we, we might have to do a part two. Yeah. But we gotta we gotta close it out. Sure.

But, before we do, what would you have told yourself, knowing what you know now, what would you have told yourself the night before you started at Memory Blue?

Sebastian Cuellar: Be secure in your decision. Be confident in your decision. Because even if it hadn’t worked out, I would have landed on my feet. Like, salespeople. And I don’t think anybody identifies with their title more than I do. 

Chris Corcoran: I’ve seen myself as sales guy through and through, 

Sebastian Cuellar: but that happens to a lot of salespeople.

You’re not your identity, you’re not your job, you’re not the place, you’re working at it. You’re not your income. You’re not your wallet. You need to learn to value yourself. Yeah. And once you’ve learned to like value, because sales forces you to confront yourself a ton. Yeah. There’s identity role stuff, right?

Mm-hmm. Yeah. So once you’ve learned to do that stuff, once you’ve don’t worry. Like be confident in your decision because your decision led you all your life led you to this point because all your life led you to this point. Yes. [01:05:00] So go forward, do it what you can. Maybe maybe this is the victory you take, or maybe this is the lesson you take.

Mm-hmm. It’s either way, it all kind of, you know, all kind of goes in the same direction. You’re just gonna go forward with your life, you know? And what’s really important. And I think for a lot of people who are like considering working at Memory Blue 

Chris Corcoran: or going into sales or 

Sebastian Cuellar: doing this for the first time, I think it’s just really important.

Like, be confident in your decision. You’re gonna have doubts, you’re gonna be scared yourself. That’s good. You have doubts, that means you’re sane. If you have no doubts and you’ve never done sales before and you think you’re gonna do great, you will probably not be great. Yeah. If you’re not gonna listen to other people.

Yeah. So, yeah, that’s what I think it is. Be confident in your decision. Your doubts are fine. They don’t mean anything. Just sit down, work, go for it. Dude, 

Chris Corcoran: it’s been a while, man. 

Sebastian Cuellar: Very good. Too long. Lots of, for sure. Lots of cerebral wisdom. I tried the TJ shining through perspective. Appreciate 

Marc Gonyea: that. Very good.

It’s so self-aware, man. It’s refreshing. Thank you for your time today. 

Sebastian Cuellar: Appreciate you and congratulations. Great to see you too. Thank you very much. Yeah. I was unmarried last time I saw you guys didn’t have a house. Hey, you got both? Yeah. Doing it. 

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