PODCAST 130: Turning Junior-level Talent into Top Sales Professionals with Eddie Baez

Today on the show, we’ve got Eddie Baez, the co-founder of Career Pipe, a recruiting agency and SDR training program for underrepresented groups and minorities primarily in New York City. Eddie is bringing B2B sales to a group of people that may not be as aware of it. He finds people that aren’t aware of what is possible in a sales career, puts them through a six-week training program, and places them in companies looking to hire. Eddie sells market research as a senior business development consultant at IBISWorld.

If you missed episode 129, check it out here: The Keys to Building and Scaling a Company from Scratch with Vishal Sunak

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Show Agenda and Timestamps

  1. Show Introduction [00:09]
  2. Who is Eddie Baez and what is Career Pipe? [02:50]
  3. Steps to getting Career Pipe off the ground [9:34]
  4. Details on Career Pipe’s training program [13:59]
  5. The biggest surprise about starting your own company [17:55]
  6. Improving the representation of underrepresented groups [20:49]
  7. How Eddie juggles it all [26:39]
  8. Sam’s Corner [32:14]

Show Introduction [00:09]

Sam Jacobs: Today on the show, we’ve got Eddie Baez, the co-founder of Career Pipe, a recruiting agency and SDR training program for underrepresented groups and minorities primarily in New York City. Eddie is bringing B2B sales to a group of people that may not be as aware of it. He finds people that aren’t aware of what is possible in a sales career, puts them through a six-week training program, and places them in companies looking to hire. Eddie sells market research as a senior business development consultant at IBISWorld.

This episode is sponsored by Outreach, the number one sales engagement platform. Outreach revolutionizes customer engagement by moving away from siloed conversations to a streamlined and customer-centric journey. Leveraging the next generation of artificial intelligence, the platform allows sales reps to deliver consistent, relevant, and responsible communication for each prospect every time, enabling personalization at scale previously unthinkable.

Meanwhile, in our conversation with Eddie, we try to embrace some of the same concepts when it comes to Revenue Collective. So if you’re black, indigenous or a person of color, if you’re BIPOC, we’ve got Revenue Collective of Color, a community specifically designed for you as part of the broader Revenue Collective. We have events and do all kinds of different, interesting things. We’ve hosted podcasts through that community and we’re always looking for great new members to join. So go to revenuecollective.com and click apply now.

Now, without further ado, let’s listen to this interview with Eddie Baez.

Who is Eddie Baez and what is Career Pipe? [02:50]

Sam Jacobs: Hey everybody, it’s Sam Jacobs. Welcome to the Sales Hacker podcast. Today on the show, we’re excited to have Eduardo (Eddie) Baez. Eddie is the CEO and co-founder of a really interesting company called Career Pipe, which he’s going to tell us all about, and he’s also a senior business development consultant at IBISWorld. He’s an account executive on one hand, closing deals and building pipelines and doing all of the things that we talk about all the time. He’s also building his own company, and he’s an entrepreneur.

I’ll read you just a little bit of his bio. Growing up, Eddie experienced firsthand the difficulties of learning the essential skills required for professional B2B sales and the lack of mentors that resembled him in the sales community. Given this experience, Eddie began his mission to build a top performing sales program for junior sales talent with his business partner Scott Hanrahan in 2018. Career Pipe’s mission is to provide underserved and minority young adults a roadmap to financial independence by training them to become the best sales professionals in New York City, and placing them in their first sales roles. Eddie, welcome to the show.

Eddie Baez: Thank you so much, Sam. Thank you for having me here.

Sam Jacobs: We’re excited to have you. In your words, as the CEO and co-founder of Career Pipe, tell us what it is that Career Pipe does.

Eddie Baez: This was a passion project of mine and Scott’s. We met at the Enterprise Sales Forum a couple of years back. We both decided that there was definitely something lacking in the sales community and that was just a broader mix of backgrounds, and we wanted to figure out how to best create a more inclusive environment with more diverse folks to add their perspective to the game. And in conversations we basically figured out, “Hey, why don’t we just grassroots it here in New York.” And shortly after we just started putting in the work, and suddenly I had a nine to five and a six to 10, and the passion project has been probably one of the most rewarding things that I’ve personally worked on. We’re helping students here in New York, super local, to find their first sales jobs, and we’re training them to be the top sales talent in overarching goal of helping them create financial independence through these careers.

Sam Jacobs: That’s fantastic. And these are college students, college grads, high school students? What age demographic are you targeting?

Eddie Baez: We work with college grads. We’re targeting seniors in college who are looking for their first sales roles and they have to be Pell eligible students. And the reason we made that a requirement is because we actually pulled up some statistics and found that a majority of the folks that are Pell eligible who are receiving financial aid also tend to come from very diverse backgrounds. A lot of them — I believe it was 62% — identify as women as well. So we wanted to definitely make sure that we brought both of those demographics in bigger numbers.

Sam Jacobs: That’s awesome. Let’s dive a little bit into your background. Tell us about IBISWorld and what you do there.

Eddie Baez: I’ve been there six years. I was the top performing rep three years in a row. I was a client relationship manager of the year, was the award that I was designated for, and recently have moved into a hunter role. Prior to that it was very hybrid. And in the time that I’ve been selling industry research, which is basically seat-based licenses to a platform of market research. I’ve been met with a lot of success, I’m very humbled and very grateful to have been working there. And at this point, I play somewhat of a player coach role where I definitely am still an individual contributor, still responsible for quotas, but I also simultaneously help with ongoing professional development and training, which is probably second to Career Pipe the thing I’m most excited about always.

Sam Jacobs: What’s the origin story? How did Career Pipe become a reality for you?

Eddie Baez: I am from the boogie down Bronx, super proud of it, and I went to a middle school and high school called Frederick Douglass Academy. While I was there, our principal was basically responsible for the scholar ambassador program which he handpicked me for. We were basically tasked with helping bring more parents and students into the school, and after a couple of conversations, he was like, “Man, you definitely have the gift of gab. Have you ever thought about a career in sales?” And immediately… And I tell everybody this, like I think Macy’s, or I think retail, and I was like, “What do you mean? Like retail?” And he was like, “No, there is a whole nother world of business to business sales, and the whole economy runs on sales.”

So he was like, “Just consider it.” Fast forward, met my now fiance at a Manhattan college and that really stuck and resonated with me. So right after college, I wanted to take a break and my fiance was like, “Absolutely not. If you want to be my boyfriend, you should start thinking about a job.” So what greater motivator, right?

Sam Jacobs: Get your ass out of here and get a job.

Eddie Baez: Yeah, so I did just that. And my first role was at NCR. She had actually interned there at one point and I was like, “You know what, let me give it a shot.” It was hospitality, selling POS terminals to restaurants and I did both outside door to door sales and I did inside sales, and of the two, fell in love with inside sales.

Sam Jacobs: What did you fall in love with about it?

Eddie Baez: First of all, I know we’re not in person, but the 70 blocks a day, the 100 blocks a day going door to door and getting all that rejection in person is a whole different beast to getting it on the phone. I like to tell people when you’re on the phone at least you have the idea and the notion that you could just hang up the phone, they go their separate way, you go your own and that’s that. But with in-person the rejection is pretty instant, pretty real, and in your face. So that’s pretty much the biggest one.

Sam Jacobs: It’s also less efficient. You have like 20 minutes before you get to your next meeting to absorb all that rejection.

Eddie Baez: I was in the best shape of my life, I’ll tell you that much.

Sam Jacobs: Not now during COVID? What kind of shape are you in now?

Eddie Baez: Oh no, I definitely put on the COVID-19. I definitely did, and I actually had to get a trainer. It worked out at first, then he moved, so here we are again. But I’m trying.

Sam Jacobs: So after NCR, is that when you went to IBISWorld?

Eddie Baez: Well, two and a half years in, I decided to make a career transition, and that’s when I really first started loving sales. I remember going through the interview process and I was like, “I don’t know if this is it for me, selling research and economics.” It felt like school all over again. And it’s funny, I tell a lot of folks that if you’re in the interview process, don’t judge a book by its cover, because I fell in love with the place. I’ve been here six years and it was probably the first organization that really taught me how to sell outside of NCR. They have a great sales training program but they really took a customized approach to my learning, and that’s what I love most about joining the team.

Steps to getting Career Pipe off the ground [9:34]

Sam Jacobs: How hard was it for you when you were thinking about getting Career Pipe off the ground? What were the steps that you took at the beginning to actually get Career Pipe off the ground?

Eddie Baez: A lot of it was having open dialogue with our VPs, all of our senior management, even the CEO at some point. We had a conversation and I had mentioned to them that I was working on this passion project, and that it would be coming up in my social media, it would be coming up in conversation. But one thing I made very, very clear and I still hold true to this, is that it would never interfere with the work. And at noon, during my lunch hours, I get an hour, that’s my prospecting time, that’s my time to be on social trying to connect with folks. Prior to the pandemic I was hitting the beat with any and all networking opportunities I could find. So I was probably going to three or four events a week. The burnout was real, but I can’t begin to tell you what kind of impact that had on our pipeline, just doing all that in-person, face-to-face and meeting literally the movers and the shakers in the industry was probably the best experience I’ve had in months, prior to COVID.

Sam Jacobs: So tell me and let’s dive into Career Pipe a little bit. How do you source the candidates that are going to be interested in going through your training program?

Eddie Baez: We were doing that in person. I went to quite a few events where there were college recruitment agents and folks working in the career development office for the campuses here in the city. We’re only local so we’re only focused on community colleges and universities in the New York area.

We were looking for job fairs, we were looking anywhere where career development would be, and then we’d basically broker introductions and it would go from there. We also tried Handshake at one point. Handshake is a college database for roles. That didn’t prove too favorable. And outside of that, we’ve been going on social through LinkedIn, basically going to alumni networks and basically job chat boards and things like that where the students are looking, and we’ve delegated a lot of that to some of the advisors on the board. So we’ve been doing that.

Sam Jacobs: So what’s the reception been? Is sales new to your students? Do they think sales means working at Macy’s as opposed to selling multi-million dollar software licenses?

Eddie Baez: We had a mixed bag. I think a lot of people still didn’t think of sales as a noble profession. And that was a secondary theme that we wanted to tackle. We wanted to just reshape the image of sales as soon and as early in their career as humanly possible. So part of those info sessions that we were hosting at Baruch, at New Jersey City University, we basically would sit there, and part of the segment was talking about what is sales and what is it today?

Making sure that they knew the distinction between a retail salesperson and enterprises account rep. So that was part of it. And definitely had some students who were completely turned off, even though they made it to the info session they were like, “Yeah, this isn’t for me.” And then surprisingly we actually had quite a few students who not only knew about enterprise sales, but had really done their homework. And they were shocking us with how much information they knew about the program and the community as a whole.

Sam Jacobs: Wow. Let’s say you’ve got these interested students, is it that you’ve designed the training program with Scott, the two of you on your own?

Eddie Baez: No. So actually I have a mentor who has probably been in my professional career since I started at IBISWorld and is the person I think of every time I think of sales training. The gentleman has over 40 years of sales training experience and he helped us to develop and really codify a curriculum that takes them through an entire sales cycle and pipeline and how to manage it. We broke it down, looked at the archetypes, and basically built an entire curriculum that took about six weeks to train them on.

Details on Career Pipe’s training program [13:59]

Sam Jacobs: So it’s a six week program, give us some more details.

Eddie Baez: we would actually meet on the weekends. Saturdays were dedicated to Career Pipe. It was a 3 – 3 ½ hour session. A lot of it was exercise intensive, so we would basically teach the concepts and then immediately apply to get them work ready day one. We would go through a whole host of different mock scenarios, and after they’ve done the actual coursework and gone through me basically talking at them about sales for 3 ½ hours, the last week we’re focused very heavily on mock calls. We really wanted to make sure that they were prepared. And one of the things that differentiates us is the fact that we do a lot of the hands-on training and mock calling because we want to make sure that the workplace readiness begins even before they step foot into the interview. And then we also focus on LinkedIn and interview training and prep.

Sam Jacobs: What have you learned about how people absorb information? What’s been surprising or interesting to you now that you’ve been a teacher for some period of time?

Eddie Baez: The biggest thing was how eager and hungry they were. It reminded me a lot of when I started, and the lights going off like, “I didn’t even know this was a whole curriculum and that there were techniques.” Less than 5% of colleges and universities actually teach a formal sales program, all the eureka and aha moments were probably the most fun, but just hearing some of the questions from somebody who is not in this world, in the sales community, and just fresh pair of eyes I think was to me the most interesting. That there were things like negotiation tactics or certain prospecting techniques that they just couldn’t conceptualize at first, and then that transitioned into actually understanding. That to me I think was the most interesting.

Sam Jacobs: What’s the latest and greatest learnings about getting somebody’s attention and translating that into a meeting?

Eddie Baez: I’m very old school in that regard, and I’m not shy to talk about it. I do employ social selling, I have cadences, I have all that. In the world of COVID, what I have learned is that you need to increase numbers and that’s just a non negotiable, and what I’ve learned in teaching them and also in working with a lot of folks who were providing mentorship for the students is that you have to go back to basics. And a lot of people can’t do a lot of the fundamentals right, specifically around those initial introductions and making it personalized, making sure that you are being present in the conversation and not just reading off a script.

People were having a tough time differentiating themselves. That’s one area that we really try to hit home with the students, was making sure that they understood what’s in it for the person that you’re speaking to, and what makes you different from the thousands of calls they pick up every day.

Sam Jacobs: How do you help them be different?

Eddie Baez: In the program, we took them through actual calls that I’ve done, and basically provided examples of showing them how to incorporate research and social media. So LinkedIn, Facebook, anything that they could find that provided them a platform to be on common ground with the person, they were calling and prospecting.

We basically taught them how to take a unique one to one approach. They would connect with the person on LinkedIn, they would mock calls and introduce short tidbits and reasons why they were calling that were related to actionable things that the person would need or want.

The biggest surprise about starting your own company [17:55]

Sam Jacobs: What’s been the biggest surprise about starting your own company?

Eddie Baez: The biggest surprise is the positive reception. At first, trying to sell something as we all know to somebody who’s never heard the concept before, it tends to be rather difficult when it’s all cold. But because there’s a social enterprise element tied to it, I find that in working on the Career Pipe project a lot of folks have been extremely warm and inviting to it. I also think it lends itself to the times and the goal of trying to diversify sales floors now more than ever. And that was actually quite a bit of a surprise when you’re used to getting a lot of cold reception, so I think that was the most surprising.

And if anything, I would tell the audience members to think about the economy in the we-first mindset, and how can you turn whatever concept you have right now into a social enterprise. How does it impact not only the people that you’re trying to serve but the broader community. And that to me was the biggest thing I’ve learned.

Sam Jacobs: How did you respond and what’s been the impact for you personally when it comes to COVID?

Eddie Baez: We were at a complete standstill the first couple of weeks. Everybody very quickly took flight and we were left with literally no one. We went from a pretty strong pipeline of folks who were very passionate about diversifying their recruitment practices, and suddenly turned up with a big donut. People like TripActions had furloughed hundreds, if not thousands, of employees, and we were having a really tough time trying to find folks. After a couple of weeks and things started to settle, a little bit of the ambiguity started to dissipate.

We ended up finding a few folks who were still hiring. The current events, the social unrest and in the murder of George Floyd definitely had a hand to play in that as well. I would definitely say that it sparked a consciousness that I think people didn’t really have before in the same way, and I think it really put a spotlight on the need to diversify and the need to really diversify not only the talent pool, but the ways that you’re actually going about sourcing the talent.

Improving the representation of underrepresented groups [20:49]

Sam Jacobs: What’s your take on what we need to do to improve the representation of underrepresented groups?

Eddie Baez: iI takes a community, and I don’t want to be polarizing here, but I think it’s everyone’s responsibility. I definitely think that it’s not entirely lacking the pipeline, but I can totally see how there is a pipeline issue. Mainly because very few institutions actually teach a formal sales curriculum, and it’s also cultural. So when I was growing up, like you mentioned before in my bio, I really didn’t have many folks that I could look to who did enterprise sales or had any kind of formal sales training.

I was literally going into it in the dark. Whereas I see a lot of folks that I work with now who have uncles, cousins, there’s always somebody in the family who’s done some sort of sales professionally.

And so we’re trying to address that by actually changing the narrative and providing a curriculum that is an extension of what they’re getting taught in school. So we don’t charge the students, we don’t charge the institutions at all. The way that we monetize is actually a recruitment model wherein we actually work with corporates to place and there would be a placement fee. So that’s part of it, is creating less barriers to entry for students and institutions to partner with us and really provide a pathway for students to learn about sales in a safe and cost-effective environment.

It’s zero fee to enter. Then the second part of that is as sales professionals, as sales leaders, I definitely want to encourage folks to really amplify the channels. We do have a lot of programs like Career Pipe that are trying to bridge the gap and create those pathways. I encourage sales leaders to consider just amplifying their sales channels and really trying to look for new and creative ways to go about their diversity hiring efforts.

Sam Jacobs: What’s your take on companies that are trying to publicly project the fact that they seek to be allies with people of color, and whether or not you feel like it’s truly authentic or sincere?

Eddie Baez: I think it’s a mixed response because I know for a fact that there are quite a few companies that are sincere, where even prior to the events over the last few weeks have actually incorporated that into their sales culture and into their culture company-wide.

So I definitely think that there’s some sincerity for some folks. Others were just really wanting to capitalize on the social unrest and the civic mindedness that has spring boarded a lot of these companies into the conversation. It’s a mix of both. So at IBISWorld I basically raised my hand, I asked, “What are we doing to address George Floyd?” And we hadn’t traditionally done like an ERG or something similar of the type, and we had some pretty open candid conversations about that, and full circle we actually created an ERG and actually started weaving that into the company culture, and have even looked at HR hiring practices.

And it’s completely transformed the conversation around diversity hiring and created a lot more transparency. So it’s not lip service and I can personally attest to that. And I think that my question really is, and not to answer your question with the question, is where are the actions? It’s not just putting up a sign to show that you are there for solidarity and there to show empathy, but what are the actions that these companies are taking to not only diversify their teams, but also to create equal and equitable opportunities for folks from all backgrounds? What are you doing? Like how is the culture reflecting the sign? You put up a sign on LinkedIn, what are you doing to now enforce that paradigm?

How Eddie juggles it all [26:39]

Sam Jacobs: Eddie, I want to ask a few questions just about your day and how you organize it, and the discipline around it, because you’re working two jobs right now. I don’t know if you know this guy Dan Pink, a great author. He wrote this book about the science of perfect timing, and one of the things he talks about is how there are larks who are basically morning people and there are owls who are night people. And that really it doesn’t matter, you can be either one. Are you one of these people that thinks you have to be a morning person and wake up at 5:00 AM to get things done? Or do you think that it really is about just figuring out when are you optimal?

Eddie Baez: I think it’s definitely the latter. In my mind, all the greats, every book that you read, Masterkey, The Secret, Dan Pink, Atomic Habits, all those things, they always point to the most successful person in the room is the person who would wake up at 5:00 AM and just get stuff done from the minute they wake up.

Personally I find that I do my best work at night. I definitely consider myself a night owl. And if I could prospect at night and cold call people at night I would. But I definitely think that for my day to day, those are IbisWorld’s hours. I pour my heart and soul into making that work and making sure that I’m meeting my quota and my responsibilities.

And then like I said 6-10 is another set of golden hours. And I think when I first started, I didn’t really internalize or really fully I guess give myself to the process of like whatever I’m doing at IBISWorld, the same level ferocity that I put into my prospecting, into my blocking out time and all those responsibilities that I have to get done, if I don’t do that with Career Pipe it’s just going to be dead in the water.

So it took me a couple of months to adjust to that and really make that I guess full integration into a 6-10, and now I definitely try to get as much work done within those hours and try to be as respectful of that process as I am of my process with IBISWorld.

Sam Jacobs: That’s awesome. I love that you’ve discovered that additional measure of productivity. Eddie, we’re coming to the end of our time together. You sound like a voracious reader, you sound like an incredible networker, somebody that’s building relationships and connections. When you think about people that you think we should know about, what comes to mind?

Eddie Baez: Whenever I’m out of sorts. I always listen to Les Brown. Early on in my career, I found that a lot of the older generation sales professionals, the Zig Ziglars and those voices, always implored people to look for motivational speakers and people who really resonated with them. For me, that was Les Brown.

Even today I listened to it. And whenever I’m really straying away from my goals, I always make sure to put on at least five minutes of Les Brown, and that’ll pretty much get me into a whole different zone. So definitely encourage everyone to look for a motivational speaker or somebody that resonates with you in a very positive way.

One of the best books I ever read was The Greatest Salesman in the World, Og Mandino. I still read the 10 scrolls, I try to read them right before bed just to remember what are the things that I need to focus on and how do I keep my mindset positive.

And those have been some of the more fundamental, positive and uplifting people that have really changed my way of thinking towards sales. And I know that as far as the sales literature, it’s abundant, but I highly encourage anyone to read New Sales Simplified. But Les Brown and Og Mandino definitely resonated with me.

Sam Jacobs: You’re the first person that said either of those names on the podcast in two years of recording this, which is surprising. But Mazel Tov to you. Eddie, we got folks that are listening. They’re inspired by you, maybe they want to hire underrepresented folks, people of color, black people, and they can do that through Career Pipes.

So what’s the best way that they can get in touch if they want Career Pipe to assist them with their hiring needs and to ensure that there’s equality and equity in the world, how should they get in touch?

Eddie Baez: Absolutely. So we’re on LinkedIn, we do have a company page. You can call me directly. I’ll give you my cell phone, (718) 678-4490. I answer. Call me at midnight, I’ll pick up. I promise.

Sam’s Corner [32:14]

Sam Jacobs: Hey everybody, Sam’s Corner. Really enjoyed that conversation with Eddie. I was not personally familiar with Og Mandino, but this 10 scrolls concept is something I’m definitely going to check out, and I’m going to listen to more motivational talks from Les Brown because I wasn’t aware of him either.

I think that the work that Eddie is doing focusing specifically on New York is really important and interesting. I know that we at Revenue Collective are huge supporters of it. Eddie is a member of Revenue Collective and he’s a member of RCOC, Revenue Collective of Color.

The work that he’s doing is important because I talked about it with Brandon Myers who’s also an incredible chief revenue officer out in San Francisco. When he was in high school, the guidance counselor only presented three options. Become a cop, enlist in the army, or become a social worker.

There’s just a whole other world of enterprise sales. You can control your own destiny, you can make a tremendous amount of money, and you can learn one of the greatest professions in the world. The fact that Eddie is out there trying to teach people that may not have been aware about this opportunity I think is personally inspiring.

And I also like just in terms of what he was talking about, modern sales strategies, and he’s saying, “There’s no substitute for the traditional mechanisms.” He says he does use social selling, but he’s still picking up the phone and calling. He is still networking when it’s possible, certainly networking online as opposed to in person now. But I’m sure when in person as possible, he’ll be doing that as well.

And there’s nothing to replace just the numbers, activity levels. It’s true that the smartest, best salespeople can get more output from fewer activities, but what could they do with that same level of creativity, personalization, and empathy and curiosity with those high activity levels. In a world where buyers are maybe not buying or becoming more hesitant, I think it’s just critical that we embrace the ethos of hard work.

The other thing that he said is: Hey, he doesn’t believe that you have to be a morning person. He gets some of his best ideas and best work done in the evening.

You don’t have to conform to these old societal standards about what work is and what it is not. And I could particularly emphasize that given the remote work environment.

But I also find time to relax and unplug throughout the day. And that’s why I stopped talking about this concept of work life balance, and we talk about work life integration. But the main theme of Eddie’s talk is really about the importance of diversifying your sales floor, so people of all different shapes and sizes and backgrounds want to work there and feel included.

If you’re a company looking to hire people in New York, Career Pipe might be a great opportunity for you. By the way, Eddie didn’t pay me to say that. I just think that what he’s working on is an important thing. So we’re excited about it.

Don’t miss episode #131

Meanwhile, at the Revenue Collective, we’ve announced a hiring pledge that we’re asking our members to sign to make sure they increase the percentage of people they hire that are BIPOC. Or if there are no people on their team and thus increasing the percentage would still be zero, they commit to hiring at least one person by 2021.

We’re looking for tactical, actionable, measurable measures that companies and individuals can embrace to show that we are making progress. If that’s interesting to you, you can learn more at revenuecollective.com or you can email me, sam@revenuecollective.com. You can also find me on LinkedIn.

Thanks again to Outreach, revolutionizing customer engagement the world over, moving away from solid conversations. The journey is now streamlined and customer-centric. Check them out. I’ll talk to you next time.t

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