Episode 51: Ruben Rosado – Consistency is Key
Can a person be a YouTube star, a dynamic salesperson, and a pro that absolutely thrives on overcoming obstacles all at once? Ruben Rosado has done it all, and he continues to push the boundaries at his current position as an Account Executive at Confluent.
A Finalist for the memoryBlue 2021 Alumni of the Year Award, Ruben developed transferable skills early on by selling timeshares and honing his sales craft through the school of hard knocks. That experience, and those skills, helped him take off quickly at memoryBlue and he isn’t looking back.
In this episode of Tech Sales is for Hustlers, Ruben shares why he believes in the power of discipline, what self-improvement means to him, and how his early experience using YouTube for entrepreneurial goals transformed his mindset before he ever entered the professional world.
Guest-At-A-Glance
Name: Ruben Rosado
What he does: Ruben is the Account Executive at Confluent
Company: Confluent
Noteworthy: Ruben Rosado, a 2021 memoryBlue Alumni of the Year Finalist, sold his first car on Craigslist when he was 16 years old. He decided to do it because he knew the 4×4 truck had a high value in New York at that time.
Where to find Ruben: LinkedIn
Key Insights
⚡ You got to work with the customer and understand their budget to offer them the best deal. Ruben has learned a lot from his timeshare selling experience, especially when it comes to customer relationships. “Sometimes you gotta get those no’s out of the way and keep trying because you never know what might work. And that was the first deal I had where I truly saw that you got to work with the customer, understand what their budget is, and get a better understanding of how you can make it special for them.”
⚡ Sales are an emotional rollercoaster. Sales is a game with lots of ups and downs. To stay in the game, one must keep goals in mind. “The bigger the picture, the more ups and downs there will be. I always say consistency is key because it’s going to pay off. You never know what’s going to happen. You got to continue.”
⚡ It takes a couple of wake-up calls to realize you need discipline. Ruben firmly believes in discipline and the importance of being well-prepared to accomplish goals. “Discipline is something that’s within you. You can be motivated as much as you want, but if you don’t put your foot down and focus and do what you need to do and do it well, you’re going to see yourself fall.”
Episode Highlights
Ruben Rosado – YouTube Star, Vehicle Trader, and Mastermind Salesperson
“I feel like I’ve been selling my entire life. I wasn’t out there selling lemonade and stuff as a kid, but I was helping my dad work on cars. And when he gave me my first truck, I went ahead and quickly sold it on Craigslist because I knew the value of a 4×4 in New York was pretty high.
I used to watch tech reviews and gadget reviews online. And I was passionate about iPhone cases, and I enjoyed watching people review these products. And I was passionate about being able to find the best technology for the money. So, I was like, ‘Hey, I think I can do that.’ And I picked it up as a hobby. I recorded my own videos, started posting them, and a couple of hundred views here and there. And then, one day, I started doing videos on how to jailbreak your iPhone.”
I Have Many Superpowers, and Customer Stories are One of Them
“My superpower might’ve been being able to absorb what was working for others quickly and having a consistent outreach when I was working in the memoryBlue office. I’m talking to the top people at Couchbase so I can figure out what resonates with the prospects and what’s landing their meetings. And that’s where I spent all my time, and I knew I’m not the most technical person. So I would say my power was leaning more towards the customer stories.”
There’s Ups and Downs in Sales, But We Must Take Advantage of the Given Opportunities
“Everyone knows sales is an emotional rollercoaster, but it was pretty awesome to see myself be able to take advantage of an opportunity given to me and start closing.
So, you want to keep the goal in mind because it’s going to pay off. You never know who’s going to respond to your emails or pick up the phone. It would suck for you not to make that one phone call because if you are down in the dumps that day, that one phone call could be the opportunity that sets you up for the quarter or the year.”
Selling Timeshares vs. Selling Technology
“Selling data or technology and selling timeshares are similar. They both have a budget, and they’re different in the size of that budget. And in selling timeshares, you’re dealing with family. You’re dealing with people. You’re still dealing with people when you’re selling technology, but you can get a bigger picture in the sense where, if you’re selling a solution, it’s going to fix a person’s problem.
If you are selling technology, that can help make a person’s day a lot easier. And if I’m selling timeshares, I can go ahead and show you a way that we can lock in these vacations for the rest of your life. And after this trip is done, you don’t have to go and light your luggage on fire.”
Introducing the MEDDIC Methodology to Improve Sales Process
“In MEDDIC, you’re looking at the sales process. That’s going to be your metrics, economic buyer, decision criteria, decision process, identifying pain, and your Champion. It helps you frame where you’re taking this deal and make sure that you’re on track, qualifying in, and qualifying out certain people you talk to.
There’s going to be folks that you get on the phone as an SDR, and you’re like, ‘Oh man, this guy just gave me so much information,’ or ‘This lady is giving me all the goods here. It sounds like she’s going to be the Champion for us to close a deal.’ And then you find out that he or she might be so low down the totem pole that they don’t have the pole you need to get a deal done. And so, you have to qualify out certain people so that, when you’re spending your time with the right folks that are going to get this deal across the line, that moves things forward. You’re not just spinning your wheels somewhere that you’re not going to get the solution in play.”
Discipline is a Step Forward Towards Becoming a Sales Professional
“When you want to find out what you can do to improve as a sales professional, you’ll quickly find out that your sales process might not be as good as you think it is. But there’s everything on the Internet. I’m scanning through the top articles trying to do a lot of self-improvement in both personal and business life. If I can find a way to help me move deals along faster and take these nine-month sales cycles down to seven months, that’s going to allow me to get more deals within a year.
And I feel like you could have a lot of times where you see yourself failing. And I think it takes a couple of wake-up calls for you to realize you need to be disciplined. And it takes those hard lessons for you to have that wake-up call and know that it’s time to focus and get disciplined.”
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Chris Corcoran: [00:00:00] Ruben Rosado, memoryBlue alumni of the year finalist, coming at us live and direct from Austin, Texas by way of the Bronx, where the weak are killed and eaten.
[00:00:15] Marc Gonyea: [00:00:15] Ruben, a little bit more about you. So you’re currently an account executive of Confluent, and a lot of people don’t know this, I consider you the only YouTube star that I know, we’ll talk about that too.
[00:00:30] Welcome. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining us.
[00:00:33] Ruben Rosado: [00:00:33] Hey, thanks guys. Pleasure to see you all again. And thanks for having me.
[00:00:37] Marc Goneya: [00:00:37] We’re thrilled to have you, it’s been a little while since you left and you were only with us for a short moment in time, six, seven months, but we’ll get into that, but before we get into it tell us a little bit about yourself. Share a little bit about where you’re from, what you were like a kid, high school, college, let’s talk
[00:00:52] Marc Gonyea: [00:00:52] about that, so people get
[00:00:53] Marc Goneya: [00:00:53] to know you.
[00:00:54] Ruben Rosado: [00:00:54] For sure. I think it was even less than six, seven months. I want to say it was five, quick launch [00:01:00] pad to my career, but cherished the days there. But yeah, about me, originally, as you said, from the Bronx, New York, came out of Austin, Texas, I was 16, but growing up in New York, really tight-knit family, Chris makes a joke about creating my own Bronx tale,
[00:01:13] and you’re pretty spot on. My dad was a bus operator for MTA for 30 years. My mother worked for some agency, still to this day not exactly sure whether it was insurance or what have you, but, yeah, my dad really raised me, was a hard working kind of guy, grew up working on cars and helping him out in the garage as much as possible.
[00:01:35] It’s funny, I feel like I’ve always been selling my entire life. I wasn’t really out there selling lemonade and stuff as a kid, but I was helping my dad work on cars, and when he gave me my first truck, I went ahead and quickly sold it on Craigslist because I knew the value of a four-by-four in New York was pretty high,
[00:01:56] and I wanted to work my way like that guy that worked from a pencil to a [00:02:00] porch. I went ahead and traded that Nissan Extera beat-up for a BMW 3 Series, I worked that out and got that thing to 175,000 miles before I traded that for another car that I liked because I wanted something faster and I’ve gone through five or six cars in high school,
[00:02:17] just working with the money I was making from working in retail and that I got from my YouTube little shindig I had going since my Fresh Junior High School.
[00:02:27] Marc Goneya: [00:02:27] Hold on.
[00:02:27] Marc Gonyea: [00:02:27] This is awesome. I wanna know about this.
[00:02:29] Marc Goneya: [00:02:29] How old were you when you
[00:02:30] Marc Gonyea: [00:02:30] got a car?
[00:02:31] Sixteen and a half
[00:02:31] Marc Goneya: [00:02:31] or
[00:02:32] Marc Gonyea: [00:02:32] something? half?
[00:02:34] Ruben Rosado: [00:02:34] Around there. I think I want to say it was probably sixteen and a half.
[00:02:37] Marc Goneya: [00:02:37] Your old
[00:02:38] Marc Gonyea: [00:02:38] man, blessed you with a Nissan Xterra, and you were living in the bright lights of the New York City area.
[00:02:43] Ruben Rosado: [00:02:43] Fortunately, for my sister and I, my parents worked their butt off and got us out of the hood and to a lower Westchester, but that was the suburb of Kingsbridge, north Bronx and moved up to Cortlandt Manor by Peekskill, so just a little further north, along the Hudson river.
[00:02:58] Marc Goneya: [00:02:58] So when you were doing this car [00:03:00] thing, did you know you’re in sales, so to speak, or you just looked at
[00:03:03] it as like, “I’m just trying to improve my ride.”
[00:03:06] Ruben Rosado: [00:03:06] I was like, “I’m trying to improve my ride. I don’t have many funds, but I know what the market’s calling for.” I honestly was doing outbound before I even knew it ’cause I had no joke, like 40 different listings of cars on Craigslist all over. I traveled down Virginia for cars,
[00:03:22] I went to Philly for cars, and I’m just trying to see who would be interested in trading their vehicle from mine, and I’ll put 800 bucks on top here, and I had a 1000 dollars that I put on top there and just willing to deal in a bit, to be honest. Some deals worked out better than others, but I was able to work my way up to a Mustang that I had on coilovers and supercharged,
[00:03:42] and I sold that to help go to college, and through college I had a few cars as well that I traded in
[00:03:48] Chris Corcoran: [00:03:48] Ruben, how’d you learn how to do this? This is just the street smarts of the Bronx or how’d you
[00:03:53] learn how to do wheel and deal?
[00:03:55] Ruben Rosado: [00:03:55] There was definitely a car community in my school and my area [00:04:00] and my dad always taught me how to work on cars and he was purchasing vehicles off of Craigslist, so once I saw how that works and the opportunity to, if you get something for a steal below the value of it and you place it for maybe a grand or $2,000 more than what you purchase it for, that’s a quick profit, or that can go towards next car, so that’s how I was doing it. Make a couple of cosmetic modifications here and there to make it look like it was worth more than what it was and slowly work my way up to the car that really fit me more than just a beautiful truck.
[00:04:36] And when did the YouTube
[00:04:37] Marc Gonyea: [00:04:37] thing get going? Is that
[00:04:39] Marc Goneya: [00:04:39] in
[00:04:39] conjunction with this or unison or what?
[00:04:42] Ruben Rosado: [00:04:42] Honestly, it was actually before I got my license, before I even got my permit. It’s one of the things I regret, honestly, more than Chris to this day because how YouTube and TikTok, but that the whole content creators space is huge, I have a lot of stuff for for people that do that.
[00:04:56] But I would say it was in 2008 or 2009 that I [00:05:00] started and not having a lot of money again when I had my 75 bucks or my 50 bucks to buy a pair of headphones or a iPhone case even, I want to make sure I put the best case on my phone because I put all my money into that iPhone 3G or whatever,
[00:05:15] the ones that didn’t even have video recording, so I used to always watch tech reviews and gadget reviews online and I really was passionate about iPhone cases, but really enjoyed watching people review these products and I was passionate about being able to find the best technology for the money.
[00:05:33] I wanted to have the best bang for my buck or the top product or basically the top product I could afford, so actually got to a point where I was like, “Hey, I think I can do that. Let me pick it up as a hobby.” And I picked it up as a hobby, borrowing my parents a little JVC camera and I recorded my own videos, started posting them, a couple of hundred views here and there,
[00:05:51] and then one day I think I started doing “How to jailbreak your iPhone”. Hopefully it’s not, get in trouble for that, but started recording “How to jailbreak your iPhone” [00:06:00] and then I had a video that was on the Beats By Dre that had 250,000 views and what I realized is that I honestly came across the idea of like, “Okay, if I’m like the first one to the internet with this review on a product that everyone’s excited about, that’s going to help my views get up.”
[00:06:14] Over time I was working away and I started seeing a 100,000 views here, 300,000 views here and I’m like, “Okay, this is great,” so now I’m that guy that’s waiting in line for the newest iPhone to come out because I want to be the first one with an unboxing video. I want to be the first one with this case for it.
[00:06:29] Honestly, I enjoyed it too. It was a little hobby. Never showed my face on any of the videos because I was a jock in high school and I was afraid I would get bullied for being a nerd, and that’s another one of my biggest regrets.
[00:06:43] Marc Goneya: [00:06:43] Wait. You didn’t show your face because you thought people were going to
[00:06:47] Marc Gonyea: [00:06:47] crush you at school
[00:06:49] because you were
[00:06:49] Marc Goneya: [00:06:49] an athlete?
[00:06:50] Ruben Rosado: [00:06:50] Yeah, pretty much, and I regret that because the ones that were very successful had a good relationship with their viewers. They were able to connect with their viewers by making it more real and seeing [00:07:00] like, “Hey, this is who I am. This is what I do.” I saw those people go on to a 100,000+ subscribers, 500,000 subscribers,
[00:07:06] I think I just checked the other day, actually, I still have 4,000 subscribers and I haven’t posted anything in a decade or two. Yeah, so, I actually was able to partner with Google AdSense way back when, so every time someone clicked on an ad I’ll get 5 cents, so I started getting more creative in my videos and it was pretty cool to see me, a 15-year-old, I think I started, I was 14 years old,
[00:07:30] and being able to reach out to these companies and say, “Hey, this is my audience, this is the market I talked to. I can help you get more traffic to your site, more potential customers if you go and partner with me on a giveaway, or if you go and send me some free products.”
[00:07:42] Honestly I wanted some free products and I got some partnerships. I got free headphones from some pretty well known companies, Griffin Technology, Belkin, Prada Labs, and I was like, I didn’t know at the time, but now looking back on it, like talking to you guys, literally it was like cold, outbound, outreach.
[00:07:59] That was cool [00:08:00] outreach. I’m reaching out to these people, I must’ve got their emails or something for the website, like “About us” or “Contact” or “info@xcompany.com”, and I was showing them like, “Here’s my latest three videos, what they did with views, here’s my channel, here’s what I have to offer.
[00:08:16] What can we partner on?” Some would just give me a discount code, someone actually sent me free products, and that was like, when I really was like, “Okay, I’m doing something cool here, and I want to keep doing this.” Unfortunately, when I went to college, it died out completely, so that’s definitely a regret of mine, but I think it was a good experience.
[00:08:32] I learned a lot from it.
[00:08:34]Marc Goneya: [00:08:34] What drove you to do that? Why did you do that? Because this is a great thing, but most people, 14, 15, 16, most people don’t start doing YouTube reviews and like hawking cars
[00:08:44] Marc Gonyea: [00:08:44] or upselling cars, and
[00:08:45] Marc Goneya: [00:08:45] like, where did that come
[00:08:47] from? Is this you?
[00:08:47] Or what?
[00:08:48]Ruben Rosado: [00:08:48] Maybe it’s me, but you never saw someone do something and you’re like, “Oh, man, I can do that,” or “I can do that better.” I had friends that were older than me that were able to trade their cars on Craigslist, and I was like, “I [00:09:00] can do that too.” I was watching these YouTube videos and I was like, “Man, I can do that.”
[00:09:04] And I’m thinking I’ll bring a young hip take to it because a couple of people I was watching on YouTube were a little bit older, so I thought I can do it. Right, I was like, “If these people can do it, I can do it maybe better.” Yeah.
[00:09:14] Marc Goneya: [00:09:14] right. So, you went to college and what were you like in college?
[00:09:17] Marc Gonyea: [00:09:17] Where did you go to school? What was you major
[00:09:18] Marc Goneya: [00:09:18] in?
[00:09:18] Ruben Rosado: [00:09:18] Yeah, I went to Coastal Carolina
[00:09:20] University. You guys might know we won the baseball world series a few years while back now, but just this past football season, we beat BYU, we were undefeated. It was Mullets versus Mormons. That was a big game, but yeah, Coastal Carolina, nobody in my family had ever been to South Carolina before,
[00:09:39] and for me it was like, “Am I going to spend $30,000 to go to some upstate, basically Canada school and freeze my butt off? Or am I going to be by the beach and get a good education at the same time?” so went down to South Carolina and Coastal Carolina was an amazing time. At Coastal I was majoring in business administration and business management,
[00:09:59] and [00:10:00] funny enough, after my sophomore year I had a good friend, Conor Kennedy who was telling me how his brother made 35,000 in the summer selling timeshares and I’m like, “I need some money, that sounds pretty good to me, and luckily he and I both landed interviews at Wyndham, Vacation Ownership, if you guys have ever seen Wyndham Hotel.
[00:10:16] Marc Goneya: [00:10:16] course.
[00:10:17] Ruben Rosado: [00:10:17] Yeah, and we landed a job there, sophomores in college, at the corporate center down at Myrtle Beach, selling timeshares and that uh, definitely was like my first real sales gig, and it’s where I met fellow memoryBlue alum, Aaron Bravo. He was in my training class.
[00:10:34] Marc Goneya: [00:10:34] You said
[00:10:34] Bravo? Bravo.
[00:10:37] Ruben Rosado: [00:10:37] Yeah. Aaron Bravo. Funny enough, he was sitting next to me in training class. Other fellow, Puerto Rican, he came from a University of Florida. His dad, owns like, still is today a high, high up, I want to say a VP of marketing at a Wyndham and his parents were living in Myrtle Beach, so he did his internship there and met him and we became best friends pretty quickly.
[00:10:58] His parents became my, they [00:11:00] kind of adopted me. I didn’t have any family in South Carolina, so they took me in and really grateful for them. They’ve been amazing still to this day. And yeah, that was my first real opportunity to learn how to build rapport quickly and overcome objections.
[00:11:13] I had two hours with a family. Let me get all the discovery questions in. Let me understand some pain points, if you want to say that, okay, a pain point might be that your kids know what to Disneyland or don’t have enough time to go vacation or maybe trying to figure out where I can attach this
[00:11:31] timeshare, this $50,000 commitment to vacation for the rest of your life within their budget. So it was awesome. I realized that I wanted to move from selling to families to selling to businesses. After college is how I
[00:11:43] Marc Goneya: [00:11:43] well, hold on,
[00:11:44] you did timeshares two summers in a
[00:11:46] row.
[00:11:46] Ruben Rosado: [00:11:46] Yeah, yeah. first summer was good.
[00:11:48] Second summer, I feel like it was a little bit of a hit and miss. I’m pretty blunt and transparent, and I’m a big believer in ‘you got to believe in the product you’re selling’, and while definitely works for some [00:12:00] people, for some people it makes of sense, others I didn’t really see fitting their budget and see really benefiting their family,
[00:12:05] so I had a hard time selling it. There was time though that I’ll never forget, I had a family and there were a little bit of a language barrier, like, I am Puerto Rican, but unfortunately I’m not fluent in Spanish, I blame my family for it, but anyways, I remember they were just, “No, no, no,” for two hours,
[00:12:22] and I wasn’t really trying to be that pushy and the wife didn’t speak a lick of English, she left, took the kid to the car and he was like, “Can I go now?” And we had a whole process, I won’t get too deep into it, but basically, I go back to my manager, I’m like, “Hey, what can we show them?
[00:12:38] Give me something to show them, last chance, effort.” Just a shot in the dark, I hyped it up and made this a pretty big deal and I showed them a price that was like a last, I didn’t really think it was gonna work, it was still out of his budget from what I understood in the conversation prior,
[00:12:51] but after taking notes for two hours, I showed him this one price and he said, “Yeah, I can do that. That actually really works, let’s do it.” And I was like, “Oh my gosh.” [00:13:00] Sometimes you really just gotta get those “no’s” out of the way and keep trying ’cause you never know what actually might work. That was the deal I had where I truly saw that,
[00:13:08] okay, like, you just gotta work with the customer, understand what their budget is, get a better understanding and how you can make it special for them, and I think in that offer, I gave him was like a free trip to Disney as well, and we got his wife back up, did the whole spiel to the whole deal, and that was a cool one for sure.
[00:13:27] Marc Goneya: [00:13:27] What’d you learn the most in that and move on from it? What’d you learn in that role? Was it what you just said? Was it something else ’cause you did it for two summers? A lot of people don’t go back to that. Good question, Mark. Couple of friends that are still working there today and have been doing, yeah, and they’re just
[00:13:40] Ruben Rosado: [00:13:40] beasts, they’re so good at their job, and they’re able to somehow, even with today’s conditions, be able to still thrive in that space.
[00:13:49] But for me, I think the biggest thing I was able to learn off the bat was how to quickly build rapport, like I said, like being able to really get the walls broken [00:14:00] down a bit and get on the same level with them and build that level of trust quickly and being able to uncover areas that would hit the right buttons, right?
[00:14:12] The right pain buttons, direct pain points, or trigger them to really see the value of what you’re selling and create a sense of urgency. Uh that’s what it did for me, was being able to build rapport quickly, overcome objections and create urgency because you only had them there for two hours, right?
[00:14:27] They come in because they got a phone call or a cold call, or they came across a mall and they wanted free tickets to a show, or they wanted a discount on their trip to Myrtle Beach and then they come see me and I sit down with them and I show them a few properties, bring them back and I got two hours to try and make something happen.
[00:14:45] Marc Goneya: [00:14:45] Interesting. It’s
[00:14:46] fascinating. So
[00:14:47] Marc Gonyea: [00:14:47] you were back to school and
[00:14:48] Marc Goneya: [00:14:48] you were saying, so did you realize you wanted to go into sales? You said you wanted to
[00:14:52] Marc Gonyea: [00:14:52] transition to your senior
[00:14:54] Marc Goneya: [00:14:54] college, like, what do
[00:14:54] Marc Gonyea: [00:14:54] you think you’re to do?
[00:14:56] Ruben Rosado: [00:14:56] Along with selling Wyndham, I was also a key holder of [00:15:00] this liquor store Bootleggers and a local college liquor store, and so that’s another sales, retail sales there, but I knew after college I either want to go back to New York city and try to get my foot in the door out.
[00:15:13] I was looking at like, I had some friends that were in pharmaceutical sales, I had some friends looking into Stryker and medical device sales and stuff, and I just knew I wanted to get into a business that I can really grow with, a corporation that I can grow with, but after a few conversations with some friends of mine, including Aaron telling me, “Man, you need to get into tech sales.
[00:15:31] That’s where it’s going to be. Data’s in the new oil, the whole spiel you hear, “that’s where we’re going to be, we’ll go and make a name for ourselves, and that’s where the future’s going. And that’s where we’re going to be able to…”
[00:15:40] Marc Goneya: [00:15:40] Did you say, did
[00:15:42] Marc Gonyea: [00:15:42] you say, progress in data is the new oil?
[00:15:44] Ruben Rosado: [00:15:44] Basically yeah.
[00:15:45] Marc Gonyea: [00:15:45] Damien,
[00:15:46] Ruben Rosado: [00:15:46] He and I were both thinking along the same lines. There were like, “That’s where we’re going to strike gold.” He had already been working in memoryBlue actually for, I want to say, maybe four months at the time now, like two, yeah, maybe three, three months at the time,
[00:15:59] and he’s like, “You ever [00:16:00] been to Austin, Texas?’ I’m like, “No, I’ve never been to Texas. The furthest west I’ve ever been was Ohio. I got a couple of interviews and then next thing I know I’m flying out to Austin for a interview at memoryBlue to meet a Nimit Bhatt and companies, and I got the job.
[00:16:16] I think I moved out to Austin two weeks after graduating, once I got the job at memory Blue.
[00:16:24] Marc Goneya: [00:16:24] Excellent. Excellent. So you’re down in Austin doing your thing. It’s ironic that data is the new oil and you’re in Texas. What was it like then? Do you remember? What was it when you first started? ‘Cause there’s like, we’re talking 2017 or 16, right? Fall of, or, yeah, like, September I started, I remember I got the job in August, I came down in September. I remember I moved out here, I was staying at Bravo’s place. I was sleeping on their couch for a few weeks, trying to figure out where I was gonna move into, and luckily his house that he was with, I think there was four other guys there and it was just five minutes from the office,
[00:16:57] Ruben Rosado: [00:16:57] so it was kind of perfect. And it’d be befriending [00:17:00] the other roommates and they’re like, “Man, you should just move in.” And they had an extra bedroom. It was inside the laundry room, really small, didn’t cost me anything, so I was like, “Let’s rock and roll. Let’s do it. Something for the meantime, until I get some money under my belt, my pockets, I can move back downtown,
[00:17:13] ’cause I want that city atmosphere.” What’d
[00:17:15] Marc Gonyea: [00:17:15] you
[00:17:15] think of Austin?
[00:17:16] Marc Goneya: [00:17:16] You were down there.
[00:17:17]Ruben Rosado: [00:17:17] I loved it. I loved the weather. I love the the culture here. You can tell it’s a young business-minded, young business professional culture. You can tell there’s basically a draft pool from UT, right? So all the kids that graduated from UT, they either stay in Austin for their jobs or they go elsewhere,
[00:17:32] but I feel like when I came to Austin, Texas, obviously was a big culture shock from New York City, but me going to school in South Carolina, I kind of already got taste of like the Southern hospitality and how things are a bit different than melting pot of the South Central or the Central US, where you did have people from all over.
[00:17:49] Not too many actually Austin, Texas, been there for 20 years, whatever. So it felt like a little bit of melting pot. I enjoyed it, but in comparison to New York city it feels like a small town.
[00:17:59] Marc Gonyea: [00:17:59] And your family, [00:18:00] don’t you have
[00:18:00] family down
[00:18:00] Marc Goneya: [00:18:00] there
[00:18:00] Marc Gonyea: [00:18:00] now, too? Were you’re the first Rosado down down,
[00:18:02] Ruben Rosado: [00:18:02] Was first Rosado down here and crazy enough, I never expected my parents to move out here, but in 2020, my sister moved here from Queens. She had a place in Historia and the year prior, I took her out for a birthday here, gave her an amazing weekend. She made some good friends with my friends and she’s like, “I’m going to move to Austin someday.”
[00:18:21] I was like, “Yeah sure, Steph.” And then she, sure enough, she moved here and thank God she did because she got here just a month or so before COVID really took over and shut down New York city. She moved here in January 2020, and my parents ended up moving here in May of 2020, because they were like, “Oh, my gosh, you know that the babies are together in the same city.”
[00:18:42] I haven’t lived in the same state as my parents in eight or nine years, so I had the whole family here. It feels great. I would have never thought I’d be here now going on five years, but this definitely feels like home. All right. So you’re
[00:18:53] Marc Gonyea: [00:18:53] at memoryBlue doing
[00:18:54] Marc Goneya: [00:18:54] your thing.
[00:18:55] Ruben Rosado: [00:18:55] Yeah. Walking that office. At that time, gosh, I don’t know what was it, like 15 [00:19:00] employees maybe? It was just two, it was Nimit and the other guy’s name was Will. It was interesting. I started on PPM and I want to say, I was put on, like, an Oracle, it was a connected, attached storage system,
[00:19:11] so I was trying to sell it I was really getting thrown into the ocean with the sharks and trying to learn a new technology on a PPM-Oracle, then also doing a PPM for Data Canopy, and I want to say there was a Fortinet one that I was doing as well, but just trying to get my dials in, smile and dial, your hand jammed and a hundred dollars a day for sure,
[00:19:31] and just dialing away
[00:19:34] old school, no power dialer.
[00:19:37] I’m sure you guys have so much more tools than we had, but for me, looking back now, man, I really did that. Just dealing with it, just dialing through and trying to be consistent day in and day out and watching everybody else that had accounts do pretty successful on it.
[00:19:51] Pretty tough, I’m selling in the federal space, selling to the DMV for Oracle and I quickly realized not everyone likes Oracle. So
[00:19:59] definitely [00:20:00] interesting times and luckily I got put onto an account Couchbase in November, at
[00:20:06] the end of November.
[00:20:07]Marc Goneya: [00:20:07] What was it like? The way it goes is, we were trying to identify people who we thought had high potential who came in and looked like the right impression, and I’m sure your Bravo did a good job of
[00:20:17] Marc Gonyea: [00:20:17] pumping you up and Nimit took one look at you, in two summers
[00:20:19] Marc Goneya: [00:20:19] of
[00:20:20] Marc Gonyea: [00:20:20] selling, hocking timeshares,
[00:20:21] Marc Goneya: [00:20:21] like this guy.
[00:20:22] I don’t even know until we do the prep for this about the YouTube and the cars, I didn’t know until we got on the podcast. That’s why we probably pushed you into the deep end ’cause you’ve got some experience before and some perspective, so then it sounds like Nimit puts
[00:20:34] Marc Gonyea: [00:20:34] you in the Couchbase, but so
[00:20:36] Marc Goneya: [00:20:36] when you were coming up in Couchbase and
[00:20:38] Marc Gonyea: [00:20:38] doing this PPM stuff,
[00:20:39] Marc Goneya: [00:20:39] who else did you
[00:20:39] work with
[00:20:40] Marc Gonyea: [00:20:40] down there in that Austin
[00:20:41] Marc Goneya: [00:20:41] office?
[00:20:41] Ruben Rosado: [00:20:41] My crew is probably myself, Bravo, Blake Irwin,
[00:20:45] John Campbell and Saxton, and Tim was there as well, Holly, I’m forgetting her name
[00:20:51] That’s
[00:20:51] Marc Gonyea: [00:20:51] all right.
[00:20:52] They will get upset.
[00:20:52] Ruben Rosado: [00:20:52] Sorry. know who you are.
[00:20:56] Know who you are.
[00:20:56] Yeah, great team
[00:20:57] there.
[00:20:57] I really loved the culture, honestly. We were doing [00:21:00] events, it really helped me get a good friend group here in Austin being new, not knowing anybody besides Bravo and my roommates at a time. The state of the elephant and was the first Friday, first Thursday, forgive me.
[00:21:11] Yeah,
[00:21:13] Chris Corcoran: [00:21:13] although Austin crew may have started on Thursday, just do the old Texas two-step.
[00:21:18] Ruben Rosado: [00:21:18] First Friday but we did our Texas two-step on Thursdays, two-step Thursday. we No, I love that time there, and it was crazy seeing how quick the office in Austin really grew, and I was only a memoryBlue employee for four months and change, now that I think about it because I got put on the Couchbase account at the end of November and quickly got brought up to speed. I had December, January and January is when they were making me an offer because year starts February 1st, and fortunately for Blake Irwin and myself, we got hired out February 1st, became the first two Austin, Texas based SDRs for Couchbase.
[00:21:59] Yeah.
[00:22:00] [00:22:00] Chris Corcoran: [00:22:00] Wow.
[00:22:01] Ruben Rosado: [00:22:01] Cool.
[00:22:03] Chris Corcoran: [00:22:03] Blazing a trail because there’s been over 20 who followed in your footsteps.
[00:22:08] Ruben Rosado: [00:22:08] Awesome to see that number increase, quarter after quarter, and even some of the folks that I brought on to memoryBlue now work at Couchbase, followed a similar path and created the path of their own with Nick Foley being a county executive there for going on a second or third year,
[00:22:24] and Steven Labay when it went there and took the manager route and is now a BDR manager for over two years. Really happy to see fellow Shawn and Cleris from Coastal Carolina joined me down in Austin, Texas, and take a chance on me and now be successful in their own path and just crushing it,
[00:22:41] and awesome to see memoryBlue growing as well.
[00:22:46] Marc Goneya: [00:22:46] What did you learn, what did you develop? What was your thing when you
[00:22:49] Marc Gonyea: [00:22:49] were an SDR with us
[00:22:50] Marc Goneya: [00:22:50] and at Couchbase, what was like, what were you really good at? What was your
[00:22:53] superpower?
[00:22:53] Ruben Rosado: [00:22:53] My super power man, oh, there’s just so many. No,
[00:22:58] Marc Goneya: [00:22:58] Must be
[00:22:58] nice.
[00:23:00] [00:23:00] Ruben Rosado: [00:23:00] No. I want to say, might’ve been when I was working in the memoryBlue office is being able to absorb what was working for others really quickly and just having a consistent outreach. And once I had my plan in play, like, me and Blake got brought on and quickly, I’m just talking to the top people at Couchbase that I can just figure out what messaging is really sticking, what resonates with the prospects,
[00:23:24] what’s meetings and if you can bring it down to the top documents and white papers I need to focus on, and that’s where I spend all my time and I knew I’m not the most technical person, so I would say, my superpower was leaning more towards on the customer stories, right,
[00:23:40] the use cases, so that I could easily wrap my mind around and whether it be okay, these are the top use cases in the FinTech financial service vertical, these are the top in healthcare, and when I’m doing my outbound and I’m calling in to those healthcare companies, I have X, Y, and Z customers that I can quickly give a little pitch [00:24:00] on,
[00:24:00] and that I know will resonate with the prospect. So I think that helped me do well, but in all honesty, I had a pretty tough patch in Couchbase and I had a lot of turnover with my AEs that I was supporting where, and we can maybe dive into this, but I was,
[00:24:16] me and Blake started at the same time and Blake crushed it. Blake hit like 95% to 99% of his number. I want to say it was almost a 100% of his number. I know he was just shy of hitting quota and I probably did 68%. I think it was the high sixties, and it was, say it again…
[00:24:37] Yeah, definitely not on the chopping block, but I would go into work a little afraid sometimes. I’m like, “Man, I’m doing everything I can, I’m learning some serious opportunities.” I cracked us into American Express, which ended up being an 800K opportunity, which now, today, or at least when I left Couchbase they had over 75 applications
[00:24:55] running. So I had one state, I had one rep [00:25:00] and he was absolute bad-ass. He was probably one of the top reps in the company, but he was so well ingrained into his accounts. He was just already, knew everybody at Disney, knew everybody at American Express, and those were his key accounts that he didn’t really need,
[00:25:14] not that he didn’t need me, obviously, we need new logos, but meanwhile have the reps that they were aligned with are like, “Hey, I know this person here, there’s a meeting. I know this person, here’s a meeting.” And I’m struggling calling into Southern California and clients like these, kinda more patches for a NoSQL database,
[00:25:28] and then have them just getting turnover as well, so it was a little bit harder to patch, but I bring this up because for anyone listening to that, it’s a BDR. I had a tough start, but moving into my ISR role, they took a chance on me, and I got promoted along with Blake to a junior ISR where we had a patch and we had a cover just
[00:25:49] a certain threshold have you, but I took that on and I went with it. Once I got put into a closing role, I was able to close $130,000 by, I think, by the [00:26:00] summertime, and I had more than, the second person closer to me was not even 35,000 closed, so I walked the gates swinging once they gave me an opportunity to really put my skillset to to use. I was taking the meetings I had, I took all the experience I had from outbound and creating meetings and now doing it for myself, along with whatever the BDR could bring to our team,
[00:26:21] but it was really just, you’re always a BDR for yourself, right? No matter what. I was just to set myself meetings and leverage the expertise that I already built in a year and a half as a BDR and I was able to not only hit 130,000 by, I want to say it was June with the fiscal year starting in February, but that landed me a promotion that August the same summer, once a senior ISR left and I got promoted to a different territory and I had the West Coast and I took that and I ran with it,
[00:26:50] now being ISR with a junior ISR below me and I laid in a quarter-million-dollar deal with a boom in IOT Unicorn, and I hit my number first year [00:27:00] as an ISR at Couchbase, so that just showed me there’s ups and downs, for sure. Everyone knows sales is an emotional roller coaster, but it was pretty to see myself be able to take advantage of a opportunity given to me and really take the reins of AE role and just start closing.
[00:27:17]Marc Goneya: [00:27:17] Let’s put a bow on that. You’re not talking about listening to prep, honestly, when you’re having those terrible days, when you’re getting 68% of the quota and your buddy is getting 9,500, why is that so
[00:27:28] Marc Gonyea: [00:27:28] valuable? Let’s just speak to
[00:27:29] Marc Goneya: [00:27:29] the people again, because we
[00:27:30] Marc Gonyea: [00:27:30] have these SDRs working at memoryBlue on one these campaigns,
[00:27:32] Marc Goneya: [00:27:32] and they’re going through ups and they’re going through downs,
[00:27:34] like, we tell them, but they don’t listen as much to their DMs
[00:27:38] Marc Gonyea: [00:27:38] or their MBs as much
[00:27:39] Marc Goneya: [00:27:39] as they probably should, like, why is that so valuable to
[00:27:43] Marc Gonyea: [00:27:43] you as an
[00:27:44] SDR longer term?
[00:27:46] Ruben Rosado: [00:27:46] Yeah. You really want to keep the goal in mind, right? The bigger picture, and there’s going to be ups and downs, but as long as you’re consistent, I always say consistency is key because it’s going to pay off. You’re [00:28:00] building the foundation for yourself for the year
[00:28:03] and you just never know who’s going to finally respond to when your emails or finally pick up the phone and it would suck for you to not make that one phone call ’cause you’re down in the dumps that day, but that one phone call could be the opportunity that sets you up for the quarter or sets you up for the year,
[00:28:20] so you just never know what’s going to happen, you got to continue. Once you have a good plan in play, a good strategy in play that has been for other reps, you got to stick to it and just be consistent day in and day out because it will pay off. Your mentality reminds me of what the Bronx Bomber once famously said,
[00:28:36] Hit us with it Chris.
[00:28:39] Chris Corcoran: [00:28:39] “It’s hard to stop a person who doesn’t quit first.”
[00:28:42] Ruben Rosado: [00:28:42] Exactly. If all else fails, just don’t give up.
[00:28:46] Chris Corcoran: [00:28:46] Yeah, exactly. So, talk to the listeners a little bit about, I guess, first, the biggest difference between selling data or technology and selling timeshares. How are they similar? How are they different?
[00:28:56]Ruben Rosado: [00:28:56] They’re similar. They both have a budget and they’re [00:29:00] different in the size of that budget. I would say, from selling timeshares, like I said before, you’re dealing with family, you’re dealing with people and you’re still dealing with people when you’re selling a technology, but you can get more bigger picture in the sense where, if you’re selling a solution, it’s going to hopefully fix a person’s problem,
[00:29:20] it’s going to make a engineer or a DevOps gentleman or lady be able to have a little bit of less burden on them, not have such a hard time maybe managing this technology because you give them a solution. That’s a fully managed solution or a hosted, whether it’s a deep ass offering or just a cloud, fully managed service that we have today for many companies.
[00:29:39] So that can help make that person’s day to day a lot easier. You’re selling timeshares, I can basically go ahead and show you a way that we can lock in these vacations for the rest of your life. You’re going in, you’re on vacation with it right now, after this trip’s done, you don’t have to go and light your luggage on fire,
[00:29:55] you’re gonna still take trips. So there’s an ROI story there, or a total cost [00:30:00] of ownership story, TCO story, it’s like, “Hey, how many vacations have you taken in the last 10 years? How much do you spend on your average vacation?” That’s a cost, right? What you spend the last 10 years could cover you for vacations for rest of your life and can take care of your kids as well, to let them have a trip,
[00:30:16] guaranteed every year for the rest of their life because it’s deeded or willable of those timeshares, so, I’m probably rambling here, but I’m trying to think of a way that it’s in comparison to one another and they’re definitely relatable because you still have a TCO pitch
[00:30:30] you can give, you still have a way to describe that’s going to make it easier on you, like a flexibility or develop with ease or, I can travel with ease knowing that you have vacations every year. That’s very insightful. Let’s talk a little bit about the most challenged jump, whether it be from selling timeshares, business to consumer, to becoming an SDR, doing high-tech, then from an SDR to an ISR, then ISR to field, what was the biggest leap, challenge for you?
[00:30:59] Yeah, [00:31:00] I think the biggest challenge is going from, “Hey, I’m an SDR, I’m just focused on getting that meeting, that initial meeting and I’m handing it off, and now I’ve got to repeat that and repeat that, and hopefully if I can schedule 15 meetings a month of those 15, 13 happen of those 13, 10 should be opportunities,
[00:31:16] if I’m doing my job, right, that little waterfall method, but you’re really focused on one thing and one thing only, and that’s that first stage, moving into stage one or stage two, when you’re an AE, when you’re a ISR, what have you, now you’re taking that initial meeting and you’re nurturing it, you’re developing it,
[00:31:33] you’re moving along the sales cycle to close and you quickly got to realize that there’s a lot more into it, and you got to bring in the right subject matter experts that can help solve a problem that they have that can maybe help provide a message that will resonate with them a bit, if you’re selling a more technical product, you gotta talk to the right stakeholders on what methodology you follow,
[00:31:56] if it’s MEDDIC-MEDDPIC, right? You’re always going after [00:32:00] BANT in the early conversations, but I think MEDDIC AND MEDDPIC definitely helps get your sale to close. That’s the biggest jump, just knowing that you’re going to have now stages two through nine or whatever it may be once you move into that closing role.
[00:32:14] Chris Corcoran: [00:32:14] Do you drop it down, some science? So, for our listeners in, for me personally,
[00:32:19] can you tell me what BANT, MEDDIC, MEDDPIC can you walk us through some of that stuff?
[00:32:23] Ruben Rosado: [00:32:23] Yeah. Budget, authority, need, timeline. MEDDIC, you’re looking at the sales process there that’s going to be your metrics, economic buyer, decision criteria, decision process, pain and champion, and then I think the P for MEDDPIC would be your paper process.
[00:32:39] Definitely, that helps you frame where you’re taking this deal along and making sure that you’re on track qualifying in, and also qualifying out certain people that you talk to.
[00:32:47] There’s going to be folks that you get on the phone as an SDR that you’re like, “Oh man, this guy just gave me so much information” or “This lady is giving me all the goods here. It sounds like she’s going to be the one that’s going to be the champion for us to close a deal,” [00:33:00] and then finds out that he or she might be so low down the totem pole that they don’t have the pole you need to get a deal done,
[00:33:06] and so, you got to sometimes qualify out certain people so that when you’re spending your time with the right folks that are actually going to get this deal across the line, that’s actually move things forward so you’re not just spinning your wheels somewhere that you’re not going to get the solution in play,
[00:33:20] you’re not going to get a POC kicked off, you’re not even gonna find out who the people are that are assigned this deal when it’s all said and done.
[00:33:28]Chris Corcoran: [00:33:28] How’d you learn all this stuff? These qualification criteria, the sales methodologies, talk to us a little bit about how you were exposed to them, how you learned them and how you apply
[00:33:37] Ruben Rosado: [00:33:37] Yeah. Hopefully listening out there, your company has a good enablement process. It’s going to need one with program. I know memoryBlue does, and there’s definitely some tools out there that you can do on your own, whether it’s sales books, any sales podcasts you find now you should be able to find someone that talks about MEDDIC.
[00:33:54] It’s a very popular process. You can search BANT on podcasts today. If you want to find a special [00:34:00] one-hour segment on how people use BANT to, excuse me, to qualify leads that, we have internet, right? Chris, we have no excuses today to get this methodology ingrained in our brains,
[00:34:14] but I would say, if you’re at a company, don’t be afraid to ask your enablement team to see what’s available for you to utilize. Fortunately for me, there’s a long, extensive list of tools and resources at my disposal to help, and at the same time just joined a company a few months ago,
[00:34:31] so I’m still wrapping my mind around the technology itself. There’s probably 80% of training that can dive into that I haven’t even really tapped into yet, so yeah, I would say there’s one guy, I’ll give you the name after that, one of the first at PWC, one of the first people that created MEDDIC and he goes and does sessions to help, make it relevant to your actual product and your solution and walk you through the whole MEDDIC process too.
[00:35:00] [00:35:00] Chris Corcoran: [00:35:00] So Ruben, you said it very profoundly, right? We have the internet. All this information is out there and you may have been exposed to it through your enablement team or through various methods, but just because it’s out there that doesn’t mean people learn it and apply it somewhere.
[00:35:14] You’ve done that. Where do you get that? I don’t know if you call it motivation, where you get that discipline, where you get that burning desire to succeed because I think that’s the critical differentiator between you and some of your contemporaries who have access to all the same stuff, but yet haven’t absorbed it and applied it?
[00:35:30] Ruben Rosado: [00:35:30] Yeah, I appreciate that, Chris. It’s nice. Very kind words. I’d like to think I always had a moment kinda hit me once I get into a new role, especially it’s like a new fire that gets lit under you and get a desire to want to find out what you can do to improve as a sales professional, and quickly you’ll find out that your sales process might not be as good as you think it is, or you don’t know as much as you think.
[00:35:54] So whether it be pinging your superiors on what you can do to become a better [00:36:00] sales professional, or pinging the top rep and say, “Hey, great job on that deal. Last quarter, great job with president’s club, what are some tips that you can give me?” And that’s something that I went and did at every job I’ve been at, is trying to not lean on that or not,
[00:36:14] I’ll call it lean on the top individuals, and try to be able to absorb whatever they did if they’re willing to share that with you to be successful, and then also for me, it’s just like, I want to go out there and like we said, there’s everything on the internet.
[00:36:27] I’m scanning through the top articles trying to do self improvement in both personal and business life. If I can find a way to help me move deals along faster and take this nine-months sales cycles down to seven months, that’s only gonna allow me to get more deals in within a year.
[00:36:44] The fiscal year’s always shorter than it’s than it seems, and there’s never enough time in the day and you’ll be surprised how quickly months go by and you look back and you realize, “Oh, wow, I got a pretty big size gap close in my number.” There’s pipeline. They always say to have three X or four X of [00:37:00] your number in pipeline
[00:37:01] and you always got to make sure that you have a healthy pipe to fill in deals because deals do slip, so I’m trying to just do whatever I can to improve my sales game, to make every conversation impactful that I have.
[00:37:15]Chris Corcoran: [00:37:15] I’m getting teenage Ruben vibes, “Hey, I see you selling your car. I can do that better than you.” “Hey, I see your product review video. I can do it better than you,” and you see these people selling, “Hey, I can do that better than you.” And you just figure it out. You study the top performers and then put the “Ruben twist” on it and then outwork them.
[00:37:33] Ruben Rosado: [00:37:33] Exactly. I think we all have a little niche or something special about each one of us that we can apply to give us a leg up or to on somebody else’s accomplishments. I’m not saying I can go do the job of an engineer right now, but for me being in a sales role and I have access to what they did to get that deal done, I can apply that to my own opportunities and I can put my twist on it and take the experience that I have.
[00:37:59] And [00:38:00] before I had that experience, I could go and be outgoing Ruben, and just ask everybody that I know that has been successful and take all those learnings and insight from every individual that’s been successful and take the best, the top best practices from each and start implementing it into my own the game and just seeing how I can try to do what they did, but faster.
[00:38:20] That was my goal. I worked my way up from a BDR to the enterprise rep and I was the youngest enterprise rep before leaving that company. That was my goal. I want to move up the chain as fast as possible. And now we’re met today, I’m pretty comfortable, not comfortable, never comfortable, that’s where it gets dangerous, but I’m pretty happy with the space that I’m in right now and I want to improve on my game in that space before moving up to the next role, but whereas before, I just want to get to the next role as fast as possible. So I still have that desire in me, but I want to make sure that I squeeze as much as I can out of this current space that I’m in before moving up the ranks.
[00:38:54]Marc Goneya: [00:38:54] Let us in on a little everything you’ve been working on developing, tell us a little bit about your most memorable [00:39:00] win
[00:39:00] as a rep.
[00:39:01] Ruben Rosado: [00:39:01] Oh man. It’s usually the biggest one, right? It depends, ’cause there’s two that stand out to me. I was fortunate to cover a large patch at one point, so I had a variety of different years; I had one year where I had a small territory, relatively small territory. I hit my number off of that.
[00:39:21] The next year I went and I had a much larger territory. I had 32 states in my ownership, but yeah, it didn’t hit my number that year. Even with 32 states, I had the highest renewal number. That was the year that I learned about how to handle a book of business and keep that retention rate high and try to get a hundred percent retention rate plus some with expansion.
[00:39:42] So that was the year that I really learned how to land and expand or at least just expand, Saying that things Ryan Serhant, if you guys ever watch Million Dollar Listing, as he says, “Expansion, always in all ways.” So that year that I had that big book-of-business renewals, I’m figuring out how can I expand that?
[00:40:00] [00:39:59] Whether it be new use cases, new projects, different departments work with, or if I’m going to load the car with everything I can with professional services, training, and education, so trying to expand always, in all ways, right? But after that, having 32 states, I got shrunk down to a strategic role coming the Pacific Northwest,
[00:40:18] and that’s where I had to get really strategic in my approach with the top Boomi accounts and trying to figure out how I can hit my number ’cause I don’t have really a big number that year off of just the Pacific Northwest, and I’ve found out that Utah had a lot of, Silicon Slopes, a lot of tech-forward innovators, and that year, covering that patch, I was able to close a 1.5 plus million dollar deal.
[00:40:41] I got an award Louisville Slugger right here, that’s big hitter award for one of deals in company, for that was awesome. But I would say the one that was most memorable for me was this Unicorn IOT company, like, my first year as an ISR and we had a new solution, it was a managed [00:41:00] offering and I was the first person to close a deal for that solution,
[00:41:04] and it was the largest one that year 250K and that would be my most memorable because I remember having conversations with the CTO and just thinking that it was going to fail. I thought this was going to not come in at all and I ended up closing that deal last day of the year, January 31st because our fiscal year ends January 31st, last day of the year at 6:00 PM,
[00:41:25] got some gray hairs on that one. And I actually, I met that company in person, which I really think helps accelerate deals and move them down to the finish line for sure, being able to come in person and meet them, definitely helps with building rapport and trust, and unfortunately with COVID, weren’t able to do that, but just last year, even during COVID was able to pull a $1.5 million deal with the company that I was covering for two years,
[00:41:52] and it was just awesome to see like, “Hey, I had a plan when I got this account in my ownership, small $130,000 spend [00:42:00] per year uh, from 130K annual spend to just under 300,000, and before that was in the first year, in the second year, I moved them from that ACV to, at the end of the contrast, starting $900,000 a year.
[00:42:16] That was the biggest one for me, and it was one, like, “I don’t want them all my eggs in this basket, but I’m going to make sure I do what I need to continuously improve my relationship there and get them to buy in on what we were selling, but also because I know it provides them the value that they need and it’s going to help them save money because they’re spending a ton on Microsoft,” and we were able to not only help them save money, but improve their performance for certain projects.
[00:42:41] And really just, we’ve got such a good relationship there, texting basis with the guys there and just really awesome team to work with and they’re probably gonna continue to grow now with whoever is
[00:42:51] managing that account today, so that was definitely my biggest win for me,
[00:42:55] being able to win 600,000 plus of net new business [00:43:00] and get them on a deal
[00:43:01] that’s going to be beneficial to both parties.
[00:43:06] Marc Goneya: [00:43:06] Everybody remembers their losses,
[00:43:09] Marc Gonyea: [00:43:09] like the Trae Young shot
[00:43:10] recently, you get to kiss the Knicks, what’s a loss of yours that pains
[00:43:14] Marc Goneya: [00:43:14] you?
[00:43:14] Ruben Rosado: [00:43:14] First of all, it’s still a sore subject. The loss on Sunday and we play tomorrow. So I’m hoping Trae young isn’t on fire, like he was. I hope the Knicks can step it up because we can’t afford to lose at home.
[00:43:25] Marc Goneya: [00:43:25] No.
[00:43:26]Ruben Rosado: [00:43:26] Man, there’s been a couple deals that definitely stung. I think as a rep, when you come into a new patch, the ones that hurt, the ones that are definitely hurt are when you take over an account and before you can even start working with them, you find out it’s gonna be a churn. Those always sting. I don’t know if that’s from any reps, just like you get excited about this account
[00:43:46] you got to work with. And then as you get introduction set up, they quickly tell you, “Hey yeah, pleasure to meet you, but we decided to move off and we already put a lot of resources towards this new solution that’s going to be better for us.” And now you’re just trying to do whatever you can [00:44:00] to figure out, “Hey, is it a feature function?
[00:44:02] Is it
[00:44:02] pricing?
[00:44:02] Why? Did we miss the bill here?” Now you’re just playing like therapists
[00:44:06] and how you can save this relationship, but those always sting. But for me, there was one opportunity that, you guys, Zelle. I think Chase QuickPay does Zelle. I know.
[00:44:18] Marc Gonyea: [00:44:18] Bank of A lot of financial institutions use Zelle.
[00:44:21] Ruben Rosado: [00:44:21] It’s probably one of the biggest next to Venmo and the company behind that early warning services. I was moving along well with them, net new logo for the company having conversations and kicked off a POC. Right before I went on vacation, I went to Europe for the first time for my birthday, and I remember talking to one of the VPs there,
[00:44:42] had a great conversation. He’s like, “Hey, enjoy your time in Italy. Check out these places, let me know how your vacation is.” And I’m like, “Great. I’ll talk to you when I get back.” I even shot him an email, I was like, “Hey, I got bit by the travel bug. When can we come out to Arizona to meet and come back from vacation?”
[00:44:59] And I don’t [00:45:00] know what happened, but just the mood changed so quickly, and there was a, I believe there was probably a couple chief architects there that had more experience with another solution, and it was one that they were already using and they decided to just lean on those expertise and stick with what they had,
[00:45:16] we ended up losing that deal there and it was going to be a pretty sizeable, it was like one that I found and it was especially special to me because as a BDR, I found that opportunity for a rep and nothing happened. This was in 2017, and now I’m an AE covering that same patch and I’m picking back up where we left, meeting new people and a couple of folks from a customer actually joined that company,
[00:45:41] so I’m like, “Great, reach out to this guy. This is someone that knows our technology, knows how we operate, knows the value we can provide, and he can probably help me broker a conversation to the people I need to speak with.” And got while moving, and then boom, just felt like the rug got pulled from underneath me,
[00:45:58] and it wasn’t much I can do [00:46:00] because Couchbase is a brick data platform that does a lot, but there’s one use case where it does it well, but there’s another product that does it better because that’s all they focus on. And it’s that use case that we lost on, so that
[00:46:13] one
[00:46:13] stung, because that would have been probably a
[00:46:14] 500K
[00:46:15] net new business deal.
[00:46:16] Was still relatively
[00:46:17] new into the role. So I would have
[00:46:19] been like, “Big shot, hot shot. If I would have closed that one.” Yeah, think so for sure.
[00:46:25]Marc Goneya: [00:46:25] As you’ve been progressing, when you were at Couchbase for four and a
[00:46:28] half
[00:46:28] years, and I’m sure along the way you saw people leave all
[00:46:31] the
[00:46:31] time, you eventually made a
[00:46:36] Marc Gonyea: [00:46:36] move four-and-a-half-year tenure,
[00:46:38] Marc Goneya: [00:46:38] right, corcoran at a technology company in sales, that is like way above the average. That’s somebody who
[00:46:43] Marc Gonyea: [00:46:43] moves, thinks strategically
[00:46:45] Marc Goneya: [00:46:45] and moves with some intent. Two-part question. Why do you think some people, we see this, like, we see some folks who
[00:46:52] Marc Gonyea: [00:46:52] leave memoryBlue, they
[00:46:53] Marc Goneya: [00:46:53] get going with their career and they jump pretty quickly to another gig.
[00:46:57] So what, and sometimes it does, a lot of [00:47:00] times it does not, powerful move, strong move to do you know? What, why do you think
[00:47:05] Marc Gonyea: [00:47:05] that happens? Why did
[00:47:06] Marc Goneya: [00:47:06] you not do that? And then what type of decision did you make to go
[00:47:09] Marc Gonyea: [00:47:09] when you were to go, leave to go to Confluence or Confluent?
[00:47:12] Ruben Rosado: [00:47:12] Yeah. it’s Confluent. It sounds like
[00:47:14] cone. Yeah, but Confluent. Yeah. And it was a special situation where I was moving up, I saw my career roadmap, a roadmap to success, and I was moving along pretty well at a good rate where I felt like I was getting comfortable, boom,
[00:47:30] I got pulled into a new patch and a new role and it was time to prove myself again, and then the promotions definitely helped me stay, but had a great manager shout-out to Mongiello, he and I were very well aligned, he had my best interest at heart and I loved working for him.
[00:47:46] The team at Couchbase, the whole team at Couchbase was great. Nothing bad to say about them. I feel might bounce around companies because it could be maybe not all that they thought it was going to be when they made the switch, maybe the recruiter did a great job and [00:48:00] the interviews went really well,
[00:48:01] and then they get into this company and maybe the territory is not what it was. Maybe the book of business wasn’t what it was. The management might be tough, micromanaging them and that’s not how they operate so they make a move or sometimes you see they get into a role that they’re maybe not ready for, and they’re not so successful,
[00:48:16] and they have to make a switch somewhere else before they get the boot. Every company is so different. It’s really refreshing to see companies that will invest the time in you to let you ramp up and make a name for yourself and be a revenue generating member of the team, but some companies are pretty cutthroat.
[00:48:30] So it’s definitely is discouraging when you
[00:48:33] see folks bounce from seven months here, six months there, even when I see do let go nine months here, it’s like, “Couldn’t make it a year? But it happens. It’s for sure.
[00:48:43] Marc Goneya: [00:48:43] Yeah.
[00:48:44] Ruben Rosado: [00:48:44] Me, I honestly, I’ve been blinded by this wherever, like, I was happy at Couchbase, I would’ve stayed, but I wanted to get a certain role that I felt like I was passed on,
[00:48:54] and for me, I just decided, “Okay, well, I think it’s time for me to start [00:49:00] taking some…” and I didn’t even apply anywhere else. There was somebody that was really adamant about working with, and she was a bad-ass in her prior companies and was at Confluent and reached out to me and we chatted,
[00:49:12] and once I learned more about the solution there, I was like, “Wow, I really see that product. I really see CAFTA and a lot of my prospects,” I know they have a huge ownership of the market and they’re booming. If I can hop on that roller coaster, if I can hop on that rocket, go straight to the moon, now’s the time.
[00:49:29] And I feel fortunate enough to say that I have two pre IPO companies on my resume that are going to do big things. So, for me, it felt like this is the right time for me to make a move that’s hopefully better for me as a sales professional, I never liked to be stagnant. I was getting stagnant at Couchbase towards the end of it,
[00:49:43] and once I got that role that I was really excited for, and so, this move that I’m in now really humbled me where I now need to put my BDR cap back on and build up this Greenfield patch. Coming from Couchbase where I was building up my pipeline, had my deals on a working had my [00:50:00] book of business, and I got comfortable there and knowing what I can bring in.
[00:50:03] And now it’s like, “Okay, I’m starting from the bottom, having zero pipelines
[00:50:06] what can
[00:50:06] I do to change this as fast as possible? So it’s definitely an exciting time,
[00:50:10] for that two part question, I think for a lot of
[00:50:12] people just dancing around, it could be a combination of things.
[00:50:20] Did I answer the second part there, Marc? Sorry.
[00:50:23] Marc Gonyea: [00:50:23] You did now you did monopolize their time.
[00:50:25] Chris Corcoran: [00:50:25] Yeah, Ruben. So a question for you. When we talk about motivation versus discipline, and I think that discipline is more important than motivation, I’m curious, how do you practice discipline?
[00:50:34] Ruben Rosado: [00:50:34] It’s tough. Especially in a city like Austin, Texas. How do I practice discipline, man? It’s almost something that’s like within you, and I feel like you could have a lot of times where you see yourself failing in being disciplined, and I think, personally, it takes a couple of wake up calls for you to realize, “Okay, I need to be disciplined.”
[00:50:53] You can be motivated as much as you want, but if you don’t just put your foot down and focus and do what you need to do the task [00:51:00] at hand and do it well, time and time again, you’re going to see yourself fall down a bit. And for me, there’s been a couple of times being honest, where I could have been more prepared for a meeting or maybe I didn’t do my best on something and looking back, it’s like, “Man, that could have been an opportunity that I missed.”
[00:51:15] Gotta find it offline, before a pitch for the San Francisco 49ers, but I remember coming back from that trip from San Francisco, like, “Man, I definitely could have prepared better for that.” And that’s a feeling where it’s just, it’s a shitty feeling and I never want to be in that position again. That was a few years back, and for me, I think it takes those hard lessons for you to just have that wake up call and know that it’s time to focus and get disciplined if you want to hit your goals.
[00:51:52]Marc Goneya: [00:51:52] You’re at a new company, Got a new patch. What do you want to hope to accomplish, the next three years, five
[00:51:58] Marc Gonyea: [00:51:58] years, we needn’t go any [00:52:00] farther than that, unless you want to but what do you see your career progressing?
[00:52:03]Ruben Rosado: [00:52:03] Hopefully in the near future, you or Chris are making some introductions to some of these accounts.
[00:52:09] Marc Goneya: [00:52:09] All right. Oh, yes. I’m going to put on the spot and not letting you get back.
[00:52:12] No, I’ll get that done. I’ll do it.
[00:52:14] Ruben Rosado: [00:52:14] So yeah, hopefully closing some deals with your buddies. In the near future, I definitely want to be a top performer in this role that I’m at now at Confluent, prove myself in this role,
[00:52:23] and hopefully when the opportunity presents itself for me to be promoted to the next role, I do need to get into that enterprise space and prove myself there as well. I haven’t had a chance to really do that yet since did leave Couchbase relatively early, even though it was four and a half years,
[00:52:37] so, still on my docket because for me I want to get to a position one day where I can have a team, be a team leader, be a director VP of Sales someday, right, or CRO. Yeah, for me, I like working with a team, I like mentoring folks, I still do and I hope to do mental more people down the road. So I would love to get into a managerial position when the time’s right and what I can say that, [00:53:00] “Hey, I carried a bag in that role and I was successful in it. And I, closed deals with these companies that you’re working with today, whether it was that a different company or the same one.”
[00:53:09] So that with some credibility. So, that’s the future for me, I think but I have friends that are kind of executives, have been at times like this for 25 years,
[00:53:21] and they’re still just successful at that and that’s all they’re going to do, and that might be the route
[00:53:26] for me to if it’s paying the bills and getting me where I want to, go, that’s always fun.
[00:53:30] That’s where I see myself next three, five plus years.
[00:53:36] Marc Goneya: [00:53:36] Nice. You got to get
[00:53:36] Marc Gonyea: [00:53:36] more Rosado’s to move
[00:53:37] Marc Goneya: [00:53:37] to Austin, too.
[00:53:39] Ruben Rosado: [00:53:39] Yeah,
[00:53:42] Marc Goneya: [00:53:42] And as we close it out, Ruben, what, knowing what you know
[00:53:45] Marc Gonyea: [00:53:45] now, Ruben Rosado, the night
[00:53:47] Marc Goneya: [00:53:47] before he started
[00:53:48] Marc Gonyea: [00:53:48] at memoryBlue, right,
[00:53:49] Marc Goneya: [00:53:49] before he got into tech sales, what advice would you have for that guy, knowing what you’ve, where you’ve gone and where you hope to go?
[00:53:57]Ruben Rosado: [00:53:57] “Buckle up. It’s going to be a hell of a ride.” [00:54:00] Aside from that, just, “Head and get to work really, ’cause it’s going to pay off.” Definitely had times where you question yourself, question your ability, question if you’re in the right space but everything worked out and once you get behind something that you believe in, a product you believe in, it is becomes a lot easier. Get behind a solution that is right for you, and that is actually right for its customers, that’s going to make this journey a lot easier. Sales is not an easy gig, but when you actually believe what you’re selling, it doesn’t feel like selling. It feels like more just consulting and helping the people.
[00:54:35]
[00:54:35] Marc Goneya: [00:54:35] All right.
[00:54:36] Chris Corcoran: [00:54:36] Some wisdom.
[00:54:37] Ruben Rosado: [00:54:37] I learned from the best. You and many others.
[00:54:40] Marc Goneya: [00:54:40] Very little from us, more from others.
[00:54:43] Chris Corcoran: [00:54:43] Yeah,
[00:54:44]Marc Goneya: [00:54:44] Nonetheless, we appreciate you posting today.
[00:54:47] I know you said you’re going to do it, and the alum of the year, that’s a huge, I know you didn’t win, but there’s a stiff field of competitors you don’t like. Yeah, there you go. He’s done a lot of great things and Chris and I are proud of the [00:55:00] fact that you worked for the company, no
[00:55:01] Marc Gonyea: [00:55:01] matter how
[00:55:01] Ruben Rosado: [00:55:01] short it I that. Thank you guys. Like I said before, just to kind of elaborate, but getting back to that feeling, right? Not winning alumni of the year, that stings.. I probably could’ve done a better job. Maybe I needed to tweak my application a little better, maybe I needed to put more effort into that resume or that application or the worksheet, whatever it was, the second part.
[00:55:24] That’s a learning lesson for me. I’m going to take that and use that as motivation to make sure it’s a clear cut, clear choice. That was auto is alumni of the year. So
[00:55:35] Marc Goneya: [00:55:35] Yeah. You know what? That’s probably a fair approach. I’m not that the reason why I say that is Matt Bright, the gentleman who
[00:55:41] won he was
[00:55:42] runner up or in the top three, two
[00:55:44] times prior to
[00:55:45] Ruben Rosado: [00:55:45] I saw that
[00:55:47]Marc Goneya: [00:55:47] It’s a stiff, but where field, and I’ll tell you, there’s at no point in my time
[00:55:50] Marc Gonyea: [00:55:50] before memoryBlue, I would
[00:55:51] Marc Goneya: [00:55:51] have even been voted a finalist, let alone, top three or even winning. So you’re way ahead of where I was.
[00:55:58] Ruben Rosado: [00:55:58] I appreciate that.
[00:56:01] [00:56:00] Marc Goneya: [00:56:01] All right, man. All right, We’ll be in touch. We’ll get those, I’ll get, there’s definitely the one
[00:56:04] Marc Gonyea: [00:56:04] introduction I owe you we’ll
[00:56:05] Marc Goneya: [00:56:05] get that shit done. and everything. I was always be closing.
[00:56:07] Marc Gonyea: [00:56:07] Right. Ruben,
[00:56:08] Marc Goneya: [00:56:08] podcast, he’s like, and I’ll get it. I will do that to talk to the guy, so we’ll…
[00:56:11] Ruben Rosado: [00:56:11] Awesome, Tech Sales.
[00:56:14] Chris Corcoran: [00:56:14] Very good Ruby.
[00:56:15] Ruben Rosado: [00:56:15] Thank you.