From Burnout to Success: Daniel Palacios' Sales Journey and Game-Changing Sales Leadership Strategy

Celeste Berke [00:00:03]:

Hello. Hello. It is celeste. I am here with Daniel Palacios. Super excited to get to talk to him. Fun fact, daniel and I met through a training he attended. A new training. Well, it was a revamped training under the ASG umbrella for Gap, selling all for sales leaders. And what's really interesting, this was before I was certified partner. So I was peeping in on the class, watching Keenan, and Daniel stood out because he kept engaging in conversation, and it stuck with me many months later. And so, you know, here's someone who's selling in which, you know, most of us here in the States, we don't even think of other countries and doing deals in other countries, but here's someone who's selling into the Latin America space. And I'm so excited to introduce Daniel. I want to start off by having him share a little bit about his role and the company where he is right now.

Daniel Palacios [00:00:59]:

Thank you, Celeste. It's an honor being here. So, as you mentioned, my name is Daniel Palacios. I've been in sales for the last ten years. I currently work for Deal is the fastest growing startup in the history of software, basically, and I'm leading the Latin American team. We cover from Mexico to Argentina, excluding Brazil, and I've been in leadership roles for the past three years.

Celeste Berke [00:01:25]:

Awesome. And obviously bilingual. Do you speak more than two languages?

Daniel Palacios [00:01:29]:

I do. I also speak Portuguese, so it's Spanish, my first language. Then I learned the English. My dad and my mom were very keen for my brother and myself to learn English. Okay. So when I was applying to the sales manager role, I wanted to differentiate myself from other candidates, and I knew that the other candidates didn't speak Portuguese, so I started learning Portuguese, and my classes were in six in the morning, so it didn't mess with my golden hours for prospecting.

Celeste Berke [00:02:00]:

Oh, wow. I mean, that's totally unique, right? You saw that there was a gap. We talk a lot about how do you identify the gap? So for you advancing your career, there was a gap in gaining another language, so that's so awesome. I'm so impressed. Three languages, so that's what trilingual?

Daniel Palacios [00:02:19]:

Exactly.

Celeste Berke [00:02:22]:

Excellent. Okay, so you're based in Bogota, you work for Deal, you used to work at HubSpot. What made that transition to Deal?

Daniel Palacios [00:02:30]:

That transition to Deel happened to, I would say, one of the times that I wasn't in my full space. I did had a mental breakdown. I had to reach out for help. I was with my psychologist, and she gave me a lot of guidance, and mental health is not a priority for me. I used to work, I don't know, 1214, 16 hours a day, and I knew it wasn't sustainable. So one of the things that I needed is a change. HubSpot is a great company. I owe a lot of things to HubSpot. When I moved back from Canada, I was living in canada when I joined HubSpot. So I moved from Canada to Colombia, where I was born and raised, and HubSpot gave me that chance. I was nine months, basically without work when we came back. So HubSpot gave me that shot to become their first account executive. It was two of us. So I was one of the first two account executives that opened the Latin American office. And then they gave me the first shot to be the first team lead based here, the first sales manager based here. So I'm very thankful to have so, but I was in a time that it wasn't the good company for me. My dad has a saying that not every kid is for every school, and not every school is for every kid. So I had to make a change, and Deal reached out to me. I met their leadership. It was amazing. It was a different stage where the company was at, and they gave me something that I need at that point in time, which was a little bit less stress, less workload, to be able to come to my full potential again.

Celeste Berke [00:04:03]:

Yeah, and thank you so much for sharing. I think so many people in sales can relate to this burnout factor. I mean, I had it right around age 40 when I was in corporate. And you're trying to juggle all the things and you realize, like, this isn't sustainable, my quality of life, and you have to balance that. And I think really leaning into that, asking for help, asking for resources, just like a team would ask. So that's a whole nother topic on mental health and sales and the burnout factor. But I want to ask you today something that was really interesting and stood out to me was you're building a team, this Latin American team, and you stood out as a sales leader. And often when people kind of are rising up as a sales leader, there's something that they do or something that they stand by that sets them apart. I like to call it the sales edge. So you and I were chatting earlier about this. I'd love to know what is really unique about your process that you've had with people you've coached and or mentored.

Daniel Palacios [00:05:05]:

I would say my sales edge is onboarding, setting people for success. And in my opinion, you have three types of reps that you will encounter. You have a rep that's already a top performer, which is what you do with this person. I had one in the past. She was 130 plus percent rep. So how can you wow. Make in particular her the best version of herself? So she was even a better salesperson than I was. So I look in the mirror and say, how can I best support her? So I told her what type of goals you want to achieve? And this was during my time at this P club at most companies have, but HubSpot had this Founders Club. So I told her, why don't you hit for thought? She told me I didn't thought about it. You could do. So I help her design the plan and my goal or my support with her was keeping her accountable and giving them basically the math to know how much she needed to achieve and anything that was not revenue related, I will take it on my plate. Everything internal. All that bureaucracy that companies start to when they get bigger so she can focus on selling and thank God she achieved that. So that's one type of red you're going to face. The other one is a rep. That it's. 100% rep, 110% rep. How can you make that rep better? Then I also had one rep like that and I pushed him. He got to 130 and in my experience, he's one of the most consistent reps I've met when he and I work. He was 28 months in a row hitting quota. We had a monthly quota, which is in my opinion, something really impressive. So that's the second type of rep that you face. And third one is the ones that are below 100% or struggling reps. We can call it two, so let's say below 100%, like they're 90. Can you challenge them? They basically are at the number. How can you support them to either become 100% plus reps or top performers or they want to go into different roles. So you have to have that honest conversation. I always help people transition. At HubSpot, I had two reps on my team that were promoted to managers at Deal. I have had three reps that have been promoted internally. One went to onboarding. He wanted to be an onboarding manager, so I helped him be. He was my first top performer here at Deal. Then I had my second top performer. She wanted to go to account management because she wanted to sell more install based deals and have longer relationships with customers. And then my third top performer here at Deal, he moved a couple of months ago into mid market in account management because he wanted to move into a higher segment. Or I usually work in SMB. He wanted to move into mid market, so I help him. And basically my team is brand new. So I'm in a position where I onboard people, in my opinion, is one of the skills that reps that have worked with me tell me that I onboard really well people and I give them the tools to be successful. So that will be my edge, onboarding people. But I've done the other two as well, like having 100% rep moving to 130 and 130 rep moved to, I think she did like 180 or 200. It was really off the charts. So onboarding? Yes, go ahead.

Celeste Berke [00:08:32]:

That sounds like as a leader, you are looking at each individual, right, not what's in it for them, and then you're willing to take part in how do I help you get there? Let's make a plan. Let's personalize the plan. So for each individual, it's really a carved out niche plan versus one plan for everybody.

Daniel Palacios [00:08:52]:

Oh, 100%, you have to do one plan per person. I think it's cookie cutter approach. You cannot do that because every person is unique. Every person has different skills and abilities, and you have to put them in a position where they can excel. And in my opinion, it's a two by two matrix. We saw this in the trainings, skill versus will. It's a skill and behaviors. And I told Kenan the behaviors have to be a skill or will. Do they have the skill or they have the will to do it? If they don't have the will, they don't have the behaviors. It's a really complicated situation. But if they have the will and they lack the skill, it's on me as a sales leader to give that person what that person needs to be successful. Even if I don't have it. I always look around and connect with people because I know I won't know everything.

Celeste Berke [00:09:46]:

That's so awesome. And then being humble enough to say, hey, I may have hired someone who has a different skill set than I do. Maybe they excel in sales in a place where I don't, but I can still find them resources or plug them in so that they can keep up leveling and eventually move on. So I think that's swallowing your ego and your pride and saying, hey, I can help you, even though you might be further along the path than me. Let me tap into my resource 100%.

Daniel Palacios [00:10:14]:

I connect people with other people that can help them better than I can, because I know what I know and I know what I don't know and what I don't know. I usually have some people that's something I encourage my reps. Always have a board of directors. This was advice given to me. Have a board of directors for yourself so you can know who you can reach out to for specific advice. It could be how to sell complex large deals. It could be how to prospect better. It could be how to transition within. You have to have those kind of people in your network to support them, to support you.

Celeste Berke [00:10:51]:

Oh, I love that. A board of directors for your own self, right? Like you're your company, and you have a board of directors, people you can go to to help upskill you and move you along and just get feedback from. That's amazing. And then you also shared with me that anybody that you do coach, train, or have on your team, you ask them for a recommendation.

Daniel Palacios [00:11:10]:

I do ask them. I think it's more than 50 recommendations on LinkedIn that people have written over time. When I was selling, I told customers to write my recommendations. Now that I'm in leadership position, the reps that I've coached or people that have approached me to write something that I have impacted them during our time working together.

Celeste Berke [00:11:35]:

Yeah. So that's a note out there from Daniel to all the sales leaders. If you are not asking team members to write a recommendation from you, you are missing out on that social proof. He is proof of having over 50 recommendations on his social media, on LinkedIn that are a true testament to a sales leadership. So bravo to you. I think that's probably an untapped gold mine for many sales leaders who are sleeping on that.

Daniel Palacios [00:11:59]:

Yes.

Celeste Berke [00:12:01]:

We also talk about a sales myth, and I know you're huge on onboarding. So many companies keenan actually posted about this today, like, stop focusing solely on onboarding for your product. So I think there's a myth to be busted here of people can learn the product. And I'd love for you to say what you then do after teams come back and they've learned all they can about the product, how do you work with them and bust that myth that.

Daniel Palacios [00:12:29]:

It'S like product first, product first will happen? Because it's what most companies have on their onboarding. Like, they teach you their product. You have to know what you sell. It's not something you cannot go your life without knowing the product you sell. But it's not the only thing that you should learn. When I onboard people, the first thing that I have them do, it's a problem identification chart. So you're very familiar with that. I stole that from Keenan. And they do it on their own. They do it during the first couple of days, and they could get it right or wrong. It doesn't matter. It's the exercise of thinking in the shoes of your prospect. What can they experience? Because I always tell my team, when you ask a person to imagine themselves, their company, using your software, it's a heavy lift. Like, it's really heavy because you're putting them to imagine a world that is completely unknown. When you ask them of a problem, they can relate. And if you can relate, it's easier for you to connect the dots. Because if I tell you, hey, you face X, Y, and Z problem, they will say, oh, yeah, I experienced it daily, monthly, whatever. But it's very easy to relate to something that you have already lived than to imagine something that it's completely new to you. So that's the first thing that I tell my team, do a problem identification chart. They start doing it, they bring it to me. We review it together, we have a conversation. Then I told them, go back to the team. Not only my team, I currently have another sales manager in LATM. So I encourage my reps to go to the other reps as well. And then if you want to go to the US reps or the EMEA reps or APEC reps, you can do that as well. It's a matter of how much you want to see across GEOS. The problem that our prospects face, even though we sell the same product, sometimes the use case varies. So they start to build that and they realize how it becomes an easier way to speak with the prospects. Because you're speaking in their world. When you speak about your product or service, you're going to speak on your own world. It's easier because you're in control. It's rare that your prospect knows more of your product than you do. But when you're speaking about their problems, you're in your prospect world, so they're going to know more about their reality than you. And they could tell you, no, that's wrong. And people don't like being wrong, but that's how you get to learn more and more about their world and be more curious and actually really help at the end of day how they can leverage with their existing reality or product or service.

Celeste Berke [00:15:16]:

And how long have you been taking that problem? Like that problem identification chart and using it with your team and a problem focus? Like, when was that shift for you?

Daniel Palacios [00:15:27]:

I read the book. The first thing is I read the book, I think it was 2019 when it popped up.

Celeste Berke [00:15:34]:

Oh, wow.

Daniel Palacios [00:15:35]:

And I really got in love with the methodology and starting doing this not only for myself, but then when I became a manager first time, I started doing it for my team as well. So it was around 2019 when I read the book. Then I started following Keenan. I started doing a couple of courses that he published online and I asked him twice to send me a signed book. And he says, no, I have to go to the mail thing and have it shipped. It's really complicated.

Celeste Berke [00:16:05]:

We don't have books. I have a book here. I'm sure I could snag you one. We're going to have some at Saster so I could probably get a sign.

Daniel Palacios [00:16:14]:

I appreciate that. So I've been asking it will be a dream come true.

Celeste Berke [00:16:18]:

He's the person that okay, I'm going to write that down.

Daniel Palacios [00:16:21]:

It's one of the person that I admire a lot because it changed my perspective on how to do selling.

Celeste Berke [00:16:30]:

Yeah, and it sounds like from what you've been working on with your teams and obviously from your recommendations, that you really do take this approach of, yes, you have to learn about the product, but how do we learn about the problems that our customers are facing? And it's such a different way. Teams often feel like, oh, I never thought this in depth because typically they look at it as a transaction. So I can say you're one of those sales leader unicorns. And that's why I wanted to have you on here so you could share a little bit about what's unique in the way that you approach your team as far as the sales edge and then busting that myth that yes, it's all about product. Product is important, but if we're not speaking the language of our customer and understanding what their problems are, we're just another person selling a product. We were chatting earlier. We both have little kids. I mean, they're still kind of toddler, I think they still call them. We're both in that same boat of having little ones at home and working. But I truly appreciate you sharing your information with us today. I'm going to encourage everybody to go to your profile and check out those recommendations. I think that's something that's really unique that you're doing, and it is hard to humbly brag about yourself, but when other people are doing it, it's nice to read that and really see the impact that you're having and also send your customers there as well so they can get a feel for the team environment. It's like to work with you, not just coming from your own mouth. So I appreciate your time today. Thank you so much.