Confessions of a Seller Podcast

The Playbook to Win in Any Market

• Confessions of a Seller • Season 1 • Episode 8

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Most companies think sales performance is about culture, motivation, or mindset.

It’s not. It’s incentives. Money drives behavior. Always.

The way you structure compensation defines how your team prioritizes pipeline, how they qualify, how they push deals forward — and how they perform.

This episode breaks down the reality of sales today, the personality traits and skills required to win, and how top performers actually think when incentives are on the table.

It also goes deep into what most companies get wrong: Overcomplicating performance while ignoring the one lever that actually moves behavior.

From how much top sellers really make, to how commissions shape pipeline execution, this is the hidden system behind every high-performing team.

You’ll also learn how AI is starting to reshape compensation, how to bring clarity into earnings, and how to influence seller behavior through incentives — not pressure.

In this episode, you’ll learn

• The real state of sales and what it takes to succeed today
• The personality traits of top-performing sellers
• How much top sellers actually make (and why)
• Why compensation plans drive behavior more than culture
• How to influence pipeline through incentives
• How to design better commission structures
• How AI is changing compensation and performance visibility

Partners supporting the show

Thanks to the partners supporting Confessions of a Seller.

🔗 Jason AI SDR by Reply
They’ve built one of the strongest multichannel outbound platforms in the market — taking teams from research to meeting booked in one system, enabling modern Allbound execution.

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🔗 Remuner
Remuner is an AI-powered incentive compensation platform that helps companies align performance with earnings, automate commissions, and give sellers full visibility into how their work translates into money.

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SPEAKER_01

Being a seller is a beautiful profession. And how to get into tech sales, we will highlight that in this episode, in combination with um selling into different cultures. So really a lot of hot topics we would like to cover today. But before we get into that, Alan, I want to highlight our uh fantastic partner who is our main sponsor, Reply.io, who is an all-in-one solution for us for sellers who makes our life much easier. Much easier. Thanks a lot for reply sponsoring us. And um, Ellen, let's jump straight into the topic today. You are uh a real seller, a modern seller, let's say it like that. Let's put it in that way, man. Um, I'm an enterprise seller. So I think there are many reasons why we choose this profession, right? But for our audience out there, maybe some young people who still don't know in which direction they would like to go, what do you would recommend them and how could they actually enter the tech sales space?

SPEAKER_00

That's a good question. And we always say the same, right? Like there is a beauty uh around sales, and and to be honest, there are not everything that shines gold. This is what we say. And as a seller, um, this FOMO, mainly in tech sales, and you can correct me, Kevin. You you know the game as well. In tech sales uh and B2B, there's like a hype, there's like a FOMO of jumping in there, like breaking into tech sales. I will make a lot of money, this will be easy, I will jump into Salesforce, and from there I will be account executive and sales manager and go through the ladder. There are some things that we need to take into consideration. So the best advice that I can give to anyone that is listening or saying, hey, maybe this is the path, is that it's not an easy role, it's not an easy job, it's not for everyone. In my personal case, and I want your opinion as well. I think that I was meant to be. You have always this question that it's it's born or uh you are born sales or you are made of. Um I think that in in my case, I kind of have both of them at the same time. Uh, but there are some pros and cons, right? It's uh it's a really tough job in terms of a lot of objections, a lot of rejections, a lot of people saying no to you and you trying to convince them to buy something that they might not know or need or want. And on the other side, the the upsides of this, right? That is the only, I think that is the one and only uh skill, if not basically profession or role, that we are being paid twice, yeah, right? Yeah for doing our job. And because we are doing our job, we are paying, we are getting paid some commissions. And if you do uh your job good, you pay and you're getting paid a good commission. Exactly. So but but what do you see about this this world of tech sales, what's happening right now? Um, and how do you, or what do you recommend to these people saying, hey, if you are in sales, do this, or if you are willing to jump in sales, do that.

SPEAKER_01

I actually helped already a couple of people entering the tech sales space. Okay. So um before I became more active on LinkedIn, I thought like, okay, how could I help my audience or the small audience I had at this time getting into the tech sales space? And what did you do? It's something, you know, like if you want to get into tech sales, uh you need to sell yourself into tech sales. If you, for example, want to have a role, you apply for a role in the traditional way, I think it's it's an old-fashioned way.

SPEAKER_00

What is the traditional way to do it?

SPEAKER_01

The traditional way is let's say you go on LinkedIn, you see a SDR position, and you click on apply. And you fill out the formula. And you fill out the formula, and you wait. Instead of doing this, do in your investigation work. What I mean with that, look, find out who's the hiring manager. Get in touch with certain salespeople in their organization. Already working in those roles. We're working and say, look, one trick I I told the people who wanted to get into sex say, hey, most likely your your company has like a referral bonus. Um, would you mind to jump with me on a quick call to find out some information about your company, about the culture, what are some trickier words I need to use, maybe. And then you can refer me and you get a bonus out of it.

SPEAKER_00

It's a win-win situation. It's a good strategy. So basically, what's the strategy? One of the strategies that we're going to share, it's basically how you would describe this.

SPEAKER_01

So to get into tech sales, one of the win-win strategies is sell you inside of the company. Cool. So it means contact people in the organization and try to, you know, find the right ways, right doors to the final decision maker who will potentially hire you. Right. So if you find out, okay, this is the final decision maker, the job is not done yet. So what I said to them then, try to connect them on LinkedIn, become a friend or connection with this person, and then do a cold outreach. To them, not to the company.

SPEAKER_00

To them, to your potential future colleagues.

SPEAKER_01

To the potent no, to your potential future manager.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, nice.

SPEAKER_01

Give them a cold call, then uh they ask me, okay, but how can I get the number? Well, you can find the number with different tools like um data providers out there. Uh-huh. Um, many of them never heard about how a data provider works, but I explained them. So then they said, okay, I told them, pick up the phone, give them a cold call, say, hey, I'm calling you out of the blue. I saw you have this open job position. I'm a bit tired of the traditional way of going with HR. I thought I'd just give you a cold call and explain you in 10 seconds or 30 seconds why I would be a good candidate for this role. Right? Again.

SPEAKER_00

You're breaking the pattern.

SPEAKER_01

You break the pattern, get into you know, selling mute, you sell yourself into the role, which you usually then have to be um evaluated through all the CVs they receive. Be evaluated from the HR department, you get a shortcut, you go to the sales manager, the sales manager takes your CV, put it on the top of the HR people and say, I want to interview this person. Exactly. If you don't want to call call them, record a short video, send them over a short video and say, hey, uh exactly what you're talking about I told you by phone, try to do that by video.

SPEAKER_00

So basically, you are saying that in order to break into tech sales, one of the best ways to apply, if you're willing to apply to a company, would be basically doing exactly the opposite as everyone is doing it right now. But I mean, the bar is low at some point. But it's basically, hey, if everyone is just applying, go and apply, but find the right decision maker, either the hiring manager, uh, your potential manager, if it's a different person, and either reach out to them directly via email, via phone, explain the reason why you're calling, explain why you might be the right fit, send the video, send uh a value added, make sure that you understand why your skills or potential skills could be the best decision ever to have inside the company, like being different, right? You have to be different, right?

SPEAKER_01

Otherwise, it's it will be just a number of CVs on the on a pile of papers or in uh in a in a CVs.

SPEAKER_00

It's not representative anymore, to be honest.

SPEAKER_01

I mean, if if if they say see already skills before the interview even started, who doesn't want to hire such a person, right?

SPEAKER_00

Because in sales, that's what they want.

SPEAKER_01

We are looking nowadays for people who are able to break the pattern and they're thinking outside the box. And this is one way how to do that. I had one case, pretty interesting one, uh person who was really open to try different stuff. And he said, I asked him, okay, what is your goal? And he said, I want to have a remote job. Sales is perfect, a perfect profession. Yeah, you can't, it doesn't matter if you see sit on Bahamas or Sales. Perfect for that in India, or if you are somewhere and you cover, you just wake up a little bit early. I have like a sales guy now, one of my SDRs, he's in Thailand. He just um starts midday and finishes a little bit later, but he can do the shop in Thailand or if it's instead of sitting in Germany, right? So it's a beautiful profession in that sense. But the person I was coaching said to me, I want to live six months in Japan and have like a good paid job. Uh and I need a company who allows me to do remote work. Never worked in SCR position, and we made a plan how he should apply, how this person get this short.

SPEAKER_00

Cut through the noise, basically.

SPEAKER_01

And from having no job to getting this job remote in a uh big multi billion company from the US, he moved to Japan and did his job from there, right? Dream dream accomplished was actually quite rewarding as well for me that the framework I you put into practice. I put it in practice. Not that I developed it, but I I I took some pieces of about my interviews I had and um my experience in sales and then applied it to a real case scenario.

SPEAKER_00

So in two lines, so we recap all this. Yeah. What would be the two, three, or four-step process that you would do or recommend someone doing if they want to break up or break into tech sales? Sorry.

SPEAKER_01

First of all, um get in touch with the people inside of the organization who have a similar role you're applying to. Okay. Ask them for feedback or information which can help you to, for example, getting to the hiring manager or helping you to get as many information as an exchange. Maybe they put uh your referral and they get paid for that, right? So it's a win-win situation. After that, um, if you have the information about the hiring manager, reach out directly to the hiring manager, give them a quote call, best case. Second, if not, send a video. Record yourself in a 30 seconds and pitch why you are the person for this role, right? When you get to the interview, you ask the person, the hiring manager, what are the three main attributes that a salesperson should have to fulfill the role you're hiring? And they say, okay, it has to be eager, hungry, uh, etc. etc. So take these points, don't comment it, write it down, and then after the interview, write a follow-up email and explain really shortly why you fulfill actually those three points using their words. Using the his words. That's perfect. That's the perfect framework. Automatically you mirror the behavior or the answers from the from the person, and he feels comfortable and he thinks, okay, nice follow-up. Let's move forward. He refers to the points which I mentioned.

SPEAKER_00

That's awesome, man. That's awesome. Now, I want to understand and what do you think about because we are always saying sales is beautiful, you need to jump into sales. But to be honest, sales is a bastard profession, so to speak. It is based on merit for sure, because we need to sell.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

But what are the things that you are seeing out there, or that you can also we can discuss here that, hey guys, this is not for everyone, and we are always saying the beauty about it, but there are some things that we need to take into consideration if we are willing to jump into sexual. Yeah. You have to have a thick skin. Okay, I love it.

SPEAKER_01

Why? Because you get so many rejections on a daily base. You have a deal, you worked for six months, and then they say, sorry, we decide for another provider, right? That's it's like a really tough, tough, tough, tough job. And um, not many people are made for that because it's really you take it better, exactly. Exactly. So that's I think thick skin.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. What would you say? Um, I think that basically there are a couple of things that um mainly in the B2B tech sales and tech space, what we are seeing is that it's a different type of selling that we are used to do or or to get or to receive as a service when we go to buy a car, for example, or buy a motorbike, right? That type of sales is different. And we are always saying helping is the new selling in B2B tech space because we are trying to be more consultative and a trusted advisor, etc. The reality is you will be slammed in your face, right? You will try to put your best face and your best mood into whatever it is, the scenario, yeah, and you will be slammed by any multi-stakeholder complex deal. You will be ghosted, you will be rejected, uh like never before.

SPEAKER_02

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

Uh on the other side, that it will give you, and I think this is personally something that happened to me, but it happens to everyone that that that I know that been in sales for a long time. Yeah. The skill of knowing and understanding how to read a room, how to understand verbal and non-verbal communication, how to make a pause, how to make silence, when to make silence, when to mirror you, match you, use your own tone, your own way of sitting, how to develop these soft and hard skills in terms of sales are the most important and revenue, if we want to call it, uh, for the future skills that you can ever develop. Because if at some point then you become a doctor because you want to study medicine in your 30s, yeah, or you want to open uh whatever shop in the street, you need to learn how to sell. Without sales, there's no uh business whatsoever.

SPEAKER_01

What you learn in in the profession of sales, you can never learn in any university.

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01

Doesn't matter if you go to Harvard or if you go to, you know, it's really a profession which you'd learn the skills on a daily basis. And I could give you a great example, how a good seller sold to me recently. Um, I'm selling currently um uh at my house, and I got like 10 cold calls a day from real estate agents, and they were like, uh, we saw your house, and we have some potential buyer already um who are interested. And it's a trick. Like you know that. I knew I knew that. And I was like, okay, interesting. But um, yeah, you want to earn money for with that, right? Yeah, 5% commission of the price of the house when we sell it for you. And I for me, at the beginning, when I wanted to sell the house, I thought I'm a seller, I can sell my house by myself. I don't need a real estate agent. Um, but then I got a call from someone. Uh he called me and said, Yeah, hey, um, I'm uh calling for your house. I said, Yeah, most likely you get like 10 calls a day. Yes, it's true. I get 10 calls a day. Everyone offers 5%, uh, wants 5% of your uh selling house. Yeah, it's correct. I just ask for 1%. I was like, okay, now you got me. So tell me more. Yeah, we sold a house in the same street like yours. You can go to our website, check it. Relevant information. Relevant information, which triggered me. And pattern interruption. Pattern interruption. And I was like, okay, tell me more about it. And then I was like, okay, yeah, that sounds interesting. Let's have a chat, you know. And it's this that's the interesting beauty, you know, because people think like, nah, but it's uh cold calling is that that doesn't work. Yeah no, if you have the right trigger words which solves the pain of the of the prospect on the other hand, you've got them on the other side.

SPEAKER_00

You got them. You got them, you got them. And that leads me to another topic that is salaries, yeah, right? And and money, and how much money we can get, where, how, uh, commission, non-commission, uh, all this stuff. So, what do you think about this? And well, I have my opinion as well, and there are some frameworks that I always use as a as a as a framework lover. Yeah, but I would like to to put this over the table.

SPEAKER_01

I think salary-wise, many uh students, when they come out fresh of the business school, they want to be become a consultant or whatever. It's it's okay, right? But many of the people from my business school were saying, okay, but but what are you gonna do? Yeah, I'm gonna work in in sales, telesales. Yeah. But then the first thing they think is like, oh, there you you were gonna work in a in a call center. Oh what? I said, No, not directly. We have a beautiful office in the beach of Barcelona where I started my sales career as an STR. So, but what I then how fast I increased my salary in the first couple of years, I think the the consultant in uh one of the big four will never get into that point to to such a point, right? Or I made a comparison between a pilot versus a salesperson who reaches faster than 250k mark. It's the salesperson. You can not even the IT guys. Not even the IT guys. You can if you're good in sale, you can get really fast to a really good amount of figures at least. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So it's great if you want to make money. So salary-wise, I think it's it I love it. And like you said, you get paid twice. Exactly. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00

What what is your your opinion about it, Alan? What I I do believe that there is a there is a gap in the understanding of how your salary should be or how you should be compensated. Yeah. Sales is about retribution on how much revenue you bring to the company, right? So it's like an exchange of services. I will pay you for you to bring more revenue to my company, recurrent revenue, and in exchange I will give you that money. On top of that, if you hit some level of quotas that I will put on on top of what you have to do, you will get an accelerator or whatever it is that we define as a commission, that you will get more money. The thing is, as we were talking at the beginning, one of the cons that you need to have the thick skin, you need to be ready for constant rejection, objections, and basically people saying and slamming faces in your door, doors in your faces, better said. Yeah. But basically what happens here is that if you are developing those skills and you're ready to go through that, money will come.

SPEAKER_02

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

The second challenge that I see, and this is more company-wise, and I would like to introduce this topic, yeah, it's compensation plans. Yeah. Before we jump into more uh sales strategies about cultural differences and so on, compensation plans is a big topic. Oh, yeah, it's a pain. It's a pain. It's a pain. You as a seller, me as a seller, every seller that is listening out there, they know that hey, I don't understand what the compensation plan looks like, how it's structured, how it's measured, how my manager is paying me or the company is paying me. It's really important that every seller, going back to if you want to break into tech sales, the first thing that you need to ask in an interview is okay, besides salary-wise, yeah, how the compensation is structured.

SPEAKER_01

You have to ask the question to the hiring manager, if you're in front of him, can you please explain me the compensation plan? Absolutely. If they are not able to explain it, it's not a good sign.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, if they don't know it, they you don't trust them. Yeah, right. And there is a rule that we will disclose in some other episodes as well. Yeah. Uh, but it's a really fun rule uh from a friend of us from the house that says it's the gene tonic rule. Right? And we just learned that. Can you please explain for the audience the gin tonic rule? The gene tonic compensation plan rule is basically uh says that if you cannot explain your compensation plan after you drink or drunk three gin tonics, you're screwed. So the idea here to understand for every seller is that first, in every interview or in every new role that we are applying, ask how your salary will be structured, both based and also uh compensation or commission or variable. How do they call it combined? Um there's the OTE? OTE, yeah, OTE is basically the both combined based and uh variable or commission based. It's on target earnings on target earnings earnings. Correct. On target earnings are basically when you're saying or when we are seeing this OTE 150K. That doesn't mean that you will get there, but it's a possibility if you get your 60, 70, 80k based salary and your another 50% in commissions, right? So first thing to ask. Second thing, it's understanding how the company structure that internally and how is that aligned to the business goals and how is that being paid. By the way, now that we mentioned that, it's a must to mention Remuner. Remuner is a it's another partner of the house as well. They are partnering these episodes and in this podcast, and basically they are a solution solving this huge problem. They are helping companies understand how to structure, how to deliver, and in order, and first of all, how to be more transparent within their compensation plans, not only to save a lot of amount of hours for the people in finance, in RevOps, and the ones that are designing and checking this, but also mistakes, millions of dollars paid just because they are managing this in spreadsheets, and they are giving also the trust for the seller that don't have to be with posit in the computer understanding how to calculate your commissions, right?

SPEAKER_01

And yeah, and they have a really cool feature. You can actually chat with uh Remu Rem Remu. Remu. And uh Remu AI agent. Remu is your AI agent, and you can ask Remu, okay, Remu, let's say I will close this deal, multi-year contract. How much money I will make money will I earn when I do a multi-year contract, right? Um, Remu gives you the right answer, which which again motivates and drives the behavior of what should I do as a seller, right? 100%.

SPEAKER_00

Basically, uh another example that we were testing within the tool is like, hey, I want to make 3K. You can even sell or say exactly what are your goals. Like I want to go to Thailand, right, in the in three months from now, next summer, whatever, and I want to make 3K. How or what should I do in order to get those 3K extra in commission? And as it's connected to all your tech stack, CRM, and data entry points, it will say, hey, you have all these deals open. This is with more priority, this is the one that could be uh sell faster, these are the ones that will give you more commission. So having this into consideration that there are tools like the ones uh Remuner, that on top of that, they are partnered here, and you can check them out in the description and all the details. Um, how do you see um using this information on the benefit of your own behavior as a seller? I think if you have the transparency, right?

SPEAKER_01

Um and transparency and as well the peace of mind that peace of mind is a good word, man. That your commission is gonna be 100% correct, and you don't need to sit there for let's say four hours every month every month and calculating by yourself how much commission you actually should get.

SPEAKER_00

You're not even sure any you're never sure 100%.

SPEAKER_01

Never, but if you have this peace of mind, I think it's uh it's it's a game changer because you can focus on selling and focus. On doing your job instead of calculating. I think I speak for every seller out there. Every seller has somewhere a paper where he calculated the commission they should get in the next month or the next quarter or the next couple of months. And even making their own forecast, okay, if I close this, this is the money. They're already planning the money, what they potentially gonna earn and for what they're gonna spend it, right? It's just crazy. I think it's a game changer, and uh I think uh their word which uh comes to my mind is really peace of mind. It's like you can be relaxed and let Remuner handle all this uh complex deal breakers in your head.

SPEAKER_00

Exactly. So, man, in order to jump into a next topic that is uh I think that is something that most audience is asking for us to talk, that it's how to sell to different regions, territories because of the cultural differences and so on. Before getting there, let me let me make a quick recap, please. If that if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

That it's okay, sales is a beautiful profession. Um, it has their cons and pros from salary-wise to being constantly rejected by by prospects, by customers, by different scenarios. But if you want to jump into break into or if you want to uh break into tech sales B2B, uh there's never a better opportunity than doing it right now because of the evolution of AI and so on. Yeah. If you want to follow a framework, what you have to do is what Kevin was saying before, that it's following and disrupting the pattern or interrupting the pattern of how you apply to a process, uh interviewing process. And on the other side, when we are jumping into that, understand how you're going to make money. And that you can make a lot of money if you are aligned with the with the compensation plans and the salary and what are the behaviors that you're going to take into that.

SPEAKER_01

Okay. Let's jump to another one. Lellen. Let's talk. Yeah. You are from you're from Argentina. Yes. Right? You live here in Spain since quite a while now. I'm from Germany. Yeah. Do you think I could sell with my German style to an Argentinian?

SPEAKER_00

The answer would be yes. There are some nuances. Um, and I think that this is um like transversal to every single cultural gap or region. That means that for sure an Argentinian guy would prefer another Argentinian, a Brazilian, another Brazilian, a German, another German. Uh, and that's why territories are made. You are tackling the DAC region, and that makes more sense than tackling the APAC region or the US region, and so on and so forth. That doesn't mean that we cannot sell into different uh markets, but there are things that we need to understand. There are cultural changes, way of selling, way of speaking, way of uh understanding the evolution of whatever the solution that we're um tackling. And that's the first answer that I have on top of different frameworks that I have as an idea and stats about sales.

SPEAKER_01

We can sell to everyone, yeah, but the success rate might differ between me selling into a region where I'm not that familiar with and maybe not even understand their behavior or the culture, right? Correct. So, for example, in the DAC market, let's say Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, for them, the most important um uh topics before we get to, you know, like if the solution is actually uh able to be used is um okay, do you have this ISO certification?

SPEAKER_00

GDPR and certification.

SPEAKER_01

Is this GDPR compliant what you're here doing? You are so polite and so correct, man. So it's like if you are not really um have the checklist done, exactly it will be difficult. You know the processes. It will be difficult to, you know, getting to the next steps.

SPEAKER_00

Correct.

SPEAKER_01

And then um, of course, after you have potentially convinced the buyer the deal is not done, you still have to go through the procurement department, uh legal stuff, legal stuff, and uh finding like a mutual legal jurisdiction. Yeah, uh I lost a deal because one of our um uh potential buyers didn't want to accept the German law as jurisdiction. Yeah, in the contract. In the contract. And that was a must for them. And that was a must then they said, okay, let's maybe we can find a common ground. Yeah. And which country is the most common ground? Um, they wanted to go with Switzerland. Yeah, it's the same as them. Yeah, so they said, okay, let's go with Switzerland. We didn't accept Switzerland. I lost the 7k deal. Exactly. So it's for them, it's really important, like certain structures in the sales conversations. If you are too pushy, yeah, politeness, not being aggressive. If you're too aggressive, they close the doors automatically. If you send them 10 emails on give them 100 cold calls, um, they will uh potentially uh send you a letter from a lawyer because it's too aggressive.

SPEAKER_00

So would you say that if you want to sell in one market or the other, or depending on your company that you're working with, would you say that it's it's possible we agreed on that it's possible that you can sell to different markets if you have the at least the language barrier in, right? But it's more important the sales skills or understanding the behavior of that people in that market?

SPEAKER_01

I think that understanding the behavior of that those people in the market.

SPEAKER_00

So how they think, how they operate, how they move.

SPEAKER_01

Like if you're a fantastic seller uh in from the US and you want to sell to a Japanese, yeah, I think it's really tough.

SPEAKER_00

And I have my point of view with with that question as well. Um so yeah, tell me, please. Tell me your point of view. So I think that they are both connected. If you are really good at sales and you have a really understanding of the skill set or you have the skill set needed in order to perform in high complex deals in different regions or markets, that is this is not only hard skills, yeah, but also soft skills. That is understanding how you think, how you operate, how you move in certain environments, then you will be able. But it's a big chunk of the deal. Yeah, right. Understanding that, and let me put this into territories or regions, selling to US, I learned this from a former um university teacher that I had. And I think that was one of the most interesting things that I learned, uh related sales, right? Uh and he told me, hey, if you're selling to the US, time is money. And that's that's that's a real thing. Speed matters, speed, resolution, and if not, no hard feelings. If you cannot help me and I cannot give you anything, yeah, just shake hands and go away. Yeah, that's it. Don't take it personal. I took it personal for a long time, being a Latin guy.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

That if you say no to me after one and a half minutes of speaking, you are, I mean, what the hell? Yeah. Why are you so? Why are you exactly why are you so rude? Let's give some kisses and some hugs here first, and then we can see if this works. Then if you go to Latin America, Latin America is all about relationships. Yeah. And even more, I will tell you like the deal happens outside of the deal, meaning we need to go out, we need to get drunk. Yeah. I think that this goes all over the cultures, right? As well. But uh, we need to get drunk. I need to get to know your dog, your family, if the weather is good in your city, talk anything besides sales. Yeah. And then when I feel that I trust you, or whatever it's developed there, we jump into sales. The other way, uh, Europe, AIPAC, Japan, trust, confidence, excellence. Um, even the difference between Europe, US, Latin America, we have this culture in the West countries that is like the younger generation is coming with new and fresh ideas. And the olders, my dad, oh, he's 71 years old, he knows nothing. Yeah. In Japan, in in in in in these kind of countries, older people is wisdom, right? Right? It's respect. If you understand this, you understand how to crack the code of selling.

SPEAKER_01

I think the biggest like the complicated part actually is inside of the European Union because there's so many countries and everyone has their own culture, their own culture.

SPEAKER_00

They have a way of doing their own regulations, their own.

SPEAKER_01

For example, if if if you sell to France and you don't speak the language, you're screwed. It's almost impossible. It's almost impossible. And they if if they, for example, if you want to sell to them directly, but they work with partners, so you need to convince the partner to get you into this company, right? It's yeah, if you don't have your marketing material in their local language, you're missing part of the game. Yeah. So it's really important in France, for example, to have someone who speaks the language. And I think it's for many other countries inside of Europe, Spain, Italy, exactly the same. Um, Germany as well, they prefer it as well. Except I would say Nordics. Yeah, they're open. Yeah, you can speak English, and everyone speaks English there. And they speak really good. Yeah. So the only part which is important there in the Nordics, everyone is allowed to say something.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So everyone has uh their own point of view and perspective. Everyone is allowed to say something and bring their point in. So there are multiple people you should involve in their conversation. So it's that's the difficult part, right? Every single country in the European Union has their nuances how they want to be sold to. Sure, sure. Yeah, absolutely. That's the interesting part. And what I what I like as well in sales, right?

SPEAKER_00

It's beautiful, man. It's not one plus one is two.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. You need to really understand the psychology, the way how you need to sell. And it's interesting because many people, when they hear sales, they said, Oh my god. This guy is going to scan me. This guy who tried to call me and sell the whatever the phone contract. The phone contract. Yeah. That's the problem. It's not that case. Um, so it's really a strategic way. Yeah. Um, if you are in tech sales, how do you how to convince uh the potential buyer uh on that side.

SPEAKER_00

What would be the three skills for a seller to develop right now in order to become a global top performer?

SPEAKER_01

That's a good question. Three words. Yeah. Um resist to being resistant. Is it a resilience? Resilience. Resilient. Resilient. Resilient could be. To be resilient, um, to be um hardworking. Okay.

SPEAKER_00

Those are more personality traits. Yeah, more personality traits. But let's do it, let's do it. Yeah. The three I I can give you the skills. So let's go back. So the three personality traits. So the three personality traits that you must develop by practice or learning.

SPEAKER_01

Become a top seller. Being resilient and um uh connect the dots. It's really important. Okay, connecting smart analysis. But let's say a better listener. Okay, active listener. Active listener. Okay, so basically again, uh resilient. Resilient, active listener, and hardworking.

SPEAKER_00

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

And you, you, Alan, what are the three skills top performers should have?

SPEAKER_00

Um definitely objection handling. Good one. Yeah. 100% objection handling. Understand when they are saying something to you, what does it really mean? And not just the like reading between lines and handling that potential objection. The second is negotiation, meaning trying to be as good as possible when communicating.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And there are techniques to do this: mirroring technique, matching techniques, even um the post technique, even the no technique. Really powerful. There are really different ways of using strategies to be a good negotiator and make them feel that what you're saying makes sense. And lastly, if we can connect the personality trait active listening to uh a skill as well, because I think that it's something that you develop over time. Yeah. It's basically being conscious that you need to, whenever the conversation goes, besides the specific nuances, you need to listen more than you talk. Yeah. And meaning understanding what they are telling you, so you use that information to negotiate better, to handle objections better. So it's a kind of a combination of three.

SPEAKER_01

Now, can you repeat that in 30 seconds? Absolutely. I love this. You know, it's I love this checkpoint. Yeah, yeah, because sometimes, you know, uh I catch myself quite often in certain podcasts where they explain something and then I forgot what they actually said. So if you put it in 30 seconds, then it's we're repeating it and it gets back into the brain. What should I repeat? What's the question there? Top three skills uh top performer should have in 2026.

SPEAKER_00

Negotiation skills, active listening skills, and most important, objection handling skills.

SPEAKER_01

Perfect. I think Alan, it's it's it's time again. Okay.

SPEAKER_00

Let's jump into the next topic.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so the next topic, I think some listeners who listen to a couple of already know, but we always like to explain. We have here our confession of our seller cards, which are divided by categories. Okay. And each category has one question. And uh one of each uh of us has to answer this question with yes or no. Okay. And why? It's a ping-pong. Yeah, we play here some ping-pong. Okay, let's uh let's start. First question is AI and go to market. Okay. Um, AI prospecting beats manual research.

SPEAKER_00

100% yes. At least in in nowadays, and this will be even more in the future. And this doesn't mean that the human brain can jump in and understand signals or identify some topics when prospecting, but AI already uh is doing it for on our behalf. So nothing will change my mind. In fact, this is something that I thought the opposite five years ago, and right now it changed my mind because I see the results. So 100% AI is the tool that we need to use to prospect uh better than ourselves. I agree with you. Should I? Yeah. So we have AI and go to market as well. This is a good one. Um, an easy one, I said, but modern sellers must not should must understand data and AI. 100% yes.

SPEAKER_01

Why? AI will be the superhero costume of every salesperson because if you know how to use AI during your sales process and during your prospecting, automatically it gives you a superpower which benefits you to other sales people who don't use it, right? So people who are not using it will sell less than people who are able and capable to understand AI and data behind AI. 100%. 100%. Go to the next one. Compensation. Okay, we were talking about it. Monthly or quarterly payouts for commissions.

SPEAKER_00

As a seller, I would prefer monthly for sure. Uh the reason behind is I was mainly selling SMBs mid-market with within one or two months sale cycle. Yeah. But I think that the compensation should be aligned to the type of deal that you're selling, the sales cycle, the average uh contract deal, and some other contextual analysis from the comp the company that will define what's better in order to drive the right behavior and incentivize in the right way. Great point. Yeah. And last one, I guess, right? Yeah. As well, compensation. Good. Let's go. Cap commissions or uncapped commissions. Uncapped commissions.

SPEAKER_01

Why? Technically speaking. Uncapped commissions motivates the seller behavior. Imagine you are in November, you hit 100%, or you hit, let's say, 150% of your quota, it's November. Why should you continue? If it is blocked and then if you get blocked, right? If it gets capped, you will push deals to the next year. Yeah, you push deals next to the next year, and then you perform the next year automatically better. Yeah. Um, from the beginning. So uh definitely uncapped. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. 100%. Makes sense. 100% agree with you. Yeah. Uh all right. So we are done with this. Uh cards are done. Um, I think that we were talking to make a quick recap. Yeah. We were talking about high-level wise sales. It's a it's a nice, beautiful, and potentially a good decision in terms of profession to jump in and to break into tech sales. Um, also, we were talking about multicultural differences and why it's important to understand the skills and the personality traits that we, as sellers, we need in order to perform. Compensation. Compensation. Really important. Um, gentonic rule.

SPEAKER_01

Gin tonic rule, trying to understand it and explaining. And um I think it's it's really important, you know, get an understanding from the hiring manager. He or she should explain you. Um if they don't, if they cannot explain you, red flag, be careful.

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely. So, in order to conclude, two more things that I want to mention and to highlight. Again, regarding compensation plans for every company, every team, every revenue sales team that is suffering or customer-facing uh people that is suffering within compensations and how to manage them, how to pay them, how to structure them. Check Remuner. Uh, all the details are in the description. You can check them out, or you can reach out to us so we can connect with them if you want. Um, they are killing it, basically. Yeah. On the other hand, thank you, Reply, again, um, for being uh the main partner of these episodes and this podcast and joining us and coming with us along this whole crazy journey that we jumped in. One thing about reply that I want to highlight, besides, we are going to talk about a lot of things regarding them and some cool stuff that they are launching, that it's exactly what you're showing.

SPEAKER_01

Having me here on uh we have here on our CoffeeMax Jason AI by reply.

SPEAKER_00

Exactly. This JSON AI is the new and the newest. And I think based on what we tested in different tools, because we test them a lot, uh, one of the most powerful AI SDRs out there. So from prospecting to meeting book in the middle, qualification, everything in between qualification, uh finding the right data from the right people at the right time, reaching out to them, yeah, finding intent signals. I mean, I don't want to sell it here, uh, but I feel emotional when we are prospecting using JSON alongside the other full sales engagement uh tech stack and solution that they are. Check them out. Um, click on the description below. All the information is there. Exactly. And important as well, we do that for you guys.

SPEAKER_01

So if you like those episodes we are recording here, um please hit the subscribe button. Um, it helps us to grow the channel. And um if you have questions, put them in the comments. If you want to have certain topics discussed in the next podcast episodes, again, put it in the in the comment section. We can um uh tailor our episodes around putting them.

SPEAKER_00

Put them in over the table. That's why we're here.

SPEAKER_01

It's confessions of a seller. Exactly. We have no scripts, so we recycle the topics uh you guys want to hear, and um that's that's why we're here.

SPEAKER_00

So we want to make it as tactical as possible, as useful as possible. Some topics will be more, some topics will be a little bit less. We are chit chatting and having fun here. Absolutely. Um, subscribe and reach out to Kevin on LinkedIn directly. Reach out to me. Um, if you need anything, we're here to help. So, yeah, until next episode. Perfect. Thanks.