How to Break Into Tech Sales Before You Even Graduate — Episode 9

0:00 From Academic Setback to Personal Growth Hey guys, welcome to another episode of Behind the Quota. And today we have a very special guest. We are joined with Luca. Luca is actually currently a student, but not any student, a student that is currently the President of the Sales Club in Ivy School of Business at Western and currently ASDR intern at IBM. 0:24 So Lucas set himself up for success before even graduating and has spearheaded a career within tech sales. Luca, it's very nice having you here on the podcast. For the viewer that doesn't know you, you know, who are you? 0:40 What are you currently doing? Why are you here? 0:43 Speaker 2 OK. So I'm a student, you know, Sharif would know Ivy or Richard Ivy School of Business at Western University and I'm doing an internship at IBM this year in software sales. So I'm working as an SDR there. 0:58 So that's a little bit more about me, where my background is and I'm looking to start and build a career in sales. 1:05 Speaker 1 Yeah. And as well as that, you're you're a very big fan of this career path. And it's, it's something that's been on your radar now, even still as a student. You haven't even graduated yet. Most folks start thinking about this after they've graduated, when they're in the job market. 1:23 But you're really taking this extremely seriously to the point where you've already premeditated the career path and now you're working towards that in multiple different ways. Yeah. One of which is you're the founder of the Sales Club at West. 1:38 Current president. Current president. Current president. Yeah. Just I guess if you'd like to share a little bit more about your thought process about sales and why have you stumbled upon this? 1:50 Speaker 2 100% So you know, I came Western and I was a Health Science guy. I want to be a physiotherapist and that was my goal. But the dream was quickly trashed because I failed out pretty badly first year. So I bombed out first year and I spent the summer, you know, looking into what career might be right for me. 2:08 So kind of like a personal inventory, you know, what am I good at? What are my skills? How am I going to make a way for myself in terms of a career? And I stumbled upon it was enterprise serials, specifically enterprise software sales. So those two next years were spent trying to get my school right. 2:27 I switched into business and got an Ivy in the third year. And last year was a big summer for me in terms of networking. That's really what I centered a lot of my how do you say efforts on was network, network, network. 2:44 You need to get an internship so you can build the skills that'll allow you to jump into a sales career and hit the ground running. So that was my my thought process as to why I wanted to go on sales and where I want to go with it. 3:00 Speaker 3 So let's. OK, I want to just dig deeper. So what happened in first year? Yeah. 3:04 Speaker 2 Oh, what happened? 3:05 Speaker 3 Because I like I. 3:06 Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 3:07 Speaker 3 Your your LinkedIn post like your story's very would be very inspiring to anyone who who just started university. Why would you say like, I don't know if you underperformed or like maybe just how science wasn't your thing, but what happened there? 3:20 Speaker 2 You know what, I I fell in my face, right? And I think that happens a lot of people. I moved from Windsor and I moved to to London, which isn't too far. But being away from home for the first time ever, I'm sure everybody understands that. It was a little weird. It was a lot for a student. So I didn't really go to class very much. 3:38 I don't know, I just wasn't very driven. But I'm very grateful for that period of my life because I fell flat on my face really badly. I wasn't prepared for university at all. And it made me look at myself and go like, man, you got to do something. 3:56 You got to make something of yourself. You got to come back. You got to bounce back. Because if you don't, you know, there's no, what do you say? There's like a movie term, you know, Deus Ex machina, you know, something that comes in at the end of the movie and save someone. At the end of the day, no one was coming to save me. 4:13 I had to do it myself. And that was a little bit more where my mindset was, was I had to pull myself out of the gutter. And I'm very grateful for that experience and my first year at university. 4:25 Speaker 3 Was there a moment that you made you have that switch? Because some people can get stuck into that loop where they're underperforming one year and then you know what? I'm underperforming the second year. And they never make something out of themselves. But you clearly had that vision. Even if you yeah, you might have not done well first year, you were like wise enough to realize I can't keep repeating that. 4:47 Speaker 2 Be honest with you, I I don't really know there was a specific moment or why I did it. I'd never really been a good student or particularly driven before that. I think the whole year in general was just really tough for me for a multitude of reasons. 5:06 But looking back on it now, actually, you know what there was kind of there was a specific instance. So it was that summer of that first year I'd taken this course. It's a first year math course, Math 1229. 5:22 Speaker 3 I know it, yeah. 5:23 Speaker 2 You know what I'm talking about. Yeah, it's probably the easiest course. Western first year, right? You take it as a bird. It's very simple. 5:30 Speaker 3 29 of. 5:31 Speaker 2 Course, those two pairs, right, all the business kids take them, all the businesses kill them and do really well on them. I remember getting my grades back for that semester. I got a 50 on the dot. Wow. Yeah, so I remember looking at myself and I told a friend about it and he's like, man, that's the easiest course, like. 5:50 Speaker 1 That's what are we doing, yeah. 5:51 Speaker 2 What Then I was like, what are you doing, man? You you got to focus. Like, yeah, it was that that that was probably a wake up call, but I don't think there was any profound like, realization I had. 6:05 Speaker 1 Revelation or something? 6:06 Speaker 2 And I think it happened over a period of time. Like I realized like, man, again, it, it's just things are not going to get better if you don't do something to get them better. So, you know, it was really nice and I'm grateful. I had like a lot of support in that time. 6:21 Like my family, my friends were awesome and they kind of helped me through that first year period. And that's a big reason while I was able to kind of pull myself out, not to say that, you know, I've done a bunch now, but you know. 6:34 How Athletics and Traits Led Luca to Sales What I mean for those who don't know, also Lucas, a wrestler. 6:38 Speaker 2 That's the. 6:39 Speaker 3 Western team, I think you you came last season second place at OUA. 6:43 Speaker 2 2nd place at OUA, Yeah. 6:44 Speaker 3 So you're like, you're a champion too. Like you, you did stuff all over SO. 6:49 Speaker 2 I try my best, Yeah. Wrestling, that's another part. Yeah, was that part? 6:54 Speaker 1 Of the process of like picking sales, did you feel like you had those transferable skills from doing wrestling that made you consider sales so. 7:02 Speaker 2 I got a little bit of a weird story with wrestling specifically. I played soccer my whole life and then I switched to football during high school. I did a little bit of Muay Thai down in London, Muay Thai in a little bit, 1st and 2nd year, right? But periodically on and off. So I've been an athlete my whole life and I think that's something that led me to pick a career in sales because there's always that competitive edge that athletes have. 7:27 But other than that competitive edge, there's a lot of benefit in terms of they know how to work in a team, they know how to motivate other people. And then yeah, that competitive part is gigantic thing too. So all that to say, coming back to your question, I joined wrestling in my third year in university, so I've been doing it for about a little under 2 years right now. 7:51 And yeah, it was one of the best choice I've ever made, to be honest with you. It just gave me an how do you say not output? That's not the right word, an outlet, an outlet. That's that's the right word, an outlet to compete, but to, you know, motivate my other team mates and build myself, work on myself. 8:13 So it was a really good thing. And competing and wrestling is one of the hardest things I've ever done. So, you know, I'm a big proponent of like doing hard stuff. And yeah, when you're stepping out on the mat, especially for the first time, which was, you know, a little of under two years ago, it's like terrifying. 8:29 You're nervous, you're nervous, you're nervous. But what does a cold call look like after that? You know, if you've done hard stuff like that, it's it's very easy to do things that don't look as hard in comparison. 8:40 Speaker 1 Exactly. And I and I, I'm a very avid believer of pick your heart. Yeah, doing hard things is hard, like you said, like wrestling and being on the stage and competing and potentially even like the idea of losing a a match I'm sure is is the scariest thing even, right. 8:57 And then also not doing any of that and then facing the world with no hard experience is also hard. So it's like pick your heart, you want to you want to start off now or you want to start off later when you have no experience with that whatsoever. But I remember you said when you were thinking about sales, you evaluated a couple of traits that are within that made you come to the conclusion that, all right, this is the path I want to take. 9:22 I'm sure one of them was discipline and the fact that you did the wrestling and the competitive aspect of it. But was there anything else that you felt made you ready for sales or a career in sales or a good fit for that career path? What and what were they? What was that thought process? 9:39 Speaker 2 You know, I'd, I'd always say like, I like talking to people. That's one big thing. I know that's not directly a correlator do big success in sales, but it's something I enjoy doing. And I'd worked in accounting before sales and my dad's an accountant, you know, love people that can do accounting. 9:57 It's awesome. It's amazing. It's an amazing career path. It's not for me, it's a little bit too much behind the desk and I prefer that interaction. So interaction with people makes me pretty happy. The other thing was competitiveness. I think a big merit to sales is a pay structure, right? 10:14 If you are getting salaried, right, but let's say your salary is $50,000 and you know you got 25,000 in Commission. You really decide what you're getting paid. And that's a big proponent picking sales over other careers where you're sitting behind a desk you're getting paid to. 10:36 You're getting paid hourly, not based on performance, right? You do 10 filings in one day, your pay doesn't change if you do 15 or 16, right? You're kind of dependent on promotions, right. So when I looked at sales, I said I'm competitive and Commission based structure would be something that would motivate me to do my best. 10:59 And I think I'm really happy when I do my best everyday day in, day out. So it's just at the end of the day, it might have been a proponent of luck too when I was picking my career. But in saying that, there's a lot of benefits to a sales career and it's something that matches who I am. 11:20 So when I was thinking about it, I was trying to align my career to my strengths. That's pretty much the end of it, right? 11:28 Cal Newport's Influence on Luca's Academic Success So once you started second year, are you transferred over from Health Science into business? What now changed? So you had that first year experience where everything went terribly. What did you have to fix? So that second year became a lot better? And obviously we know that in order to get into IV, you need to have a high GPA and high grades. 11:48 So you must have really turned things around. 11:50 Speaker 2 It was that it was a good summer. That's kind of where it started. I read a lot during the summer and I work. I just tried to stack my schedule because I was really upset with how the whole year went. It's kind of mad at myself too. So I was like, all right, you need to do everything possible to turn back, to get back, right? 12:09 So I think I stacked my schedule. I was working something like 4 different jobs. I was working, I was AI, was a go Kart guy, and all of them were in Windsor. I was like a go Kart attendant. I was a bartender. I work at the county, at my dad's office, and then I worked at like a shipping receiving plan for health supplies. 12:30 And yeah, all those jobs is just packed. My schedule. Packed my schedule. That's why I learned like, oh, man, I really like a packed schedule. You know, it really feels good to go in and work all day. You know, it's just something that, yeah, it's something that gets me, makes me happy, makes me smile, right. 12:47 When I wasn't working, I was reading. I was trying to learn skills. So, you know, there was a time where I put the Python book, I was trying to learn how to code a bunch of different skills and random books. I was just exploring, right. 13:05 And again, I figured out I, I kind of want to go into sales, but I also read a lot of books on how to study. That was a big thing. So how to study and how to learn. So I set up a little bit more of a learning process that I did two things because I knew how to learn, I knew how to study and almost like game the system when it comes to how university structured how to study for exams. 13:30 Basically, honestly, it wasn't too crazy. It was just active recall and start studying two weeks out. That was pretty much it. That's all I did for my exams. And then the other part of that is discipline. I learned that all in the summer through practice and just doing it every day. 13:48 And I came into next year with that discipline and an understanding of how to study. So that's when I could start really jacking my grades up, right? So it's a little bit more about how I came back and how I approach that next year. 14:01 Speaker 3 Nice, what books did you read just out of curiosity? For For like any student that's listening to. 14:06 Speaker 2 This one of my favourites was How to Become a Straight A Student by Cal Newport. 14:11 Speaker 1 Oh, Cal Newport is a great, great author. Yeah. 14:15 Speaker 2 You know that. Yeah. That was definitely a good one. He's got another book that I read. Deep Work was it? I didn't read Deep Work. I read so good. They can't ignore. You ever try that one? That was a good one. Yeah. And they have, there's an excerpt in there, you know, and it's basically boils down to shouldn't pick your career on what you love, what you enjoy. 14:37 You should pick it on what you're good at. Exactly. So that fed into the skills based inventory that I took that summer and. 14:45 Speaker 3 That is a big feature. 14:45 Speaker 1 Then but that, that every single episode we've had in the like in the past, I've always brought it up that passion follows competency. Yeah, you get competent at something 1st and then passion will follow. 14:56 Speaker 2 100%. 14:57 Speaker 1 Actually, I remember in that one of those book, in one of his books, he mentions about how he thinks Steve Jobs was lying about he, Steve Jobs comes out on on on the conference and says, Hey, you guys need to follow your passion. And he's like, this guy was never really passionate about what he was doing. He just stumbled on it and got good at it and then now thought that it was his passion. 15:15 But in reality, it's, it's not really that, it's just the fact that he got good at it. And that's why he's now considering this his passion, his preaching to follow your passions. 15:24 Speaker 2 I'd agree. I think that's, I think, you know, people like things that are good at the competent at they're good at right. There's a lot of recognition that comes with it and like, you know, like empowerment that you feel good if you're good at something. So I, I think that's definitely a good point A. 15:40 Speaker 1 100% I mean, like, look at kids, kids when you're like when you're raising a kid, it's always a positive loop where it's like you, you give them, you know, you compliment them, you praise them and then they feel good about themselves and they continue doing what they're doing. And it just kind of it's a rabbit hole where it's like, all right, all of a sudden. 15:59 For example, when I was a kid and I used to be really good at math because I used to always get praised for like my grades, my mom said, oh, good job, you got such a high grade in math. And so I then took it upon myself that I had this image of what other people perceived me as a good mathematician. 16:17 So I had to keep upholding that and I got passionate about that. And then there was a time where I started getting bad grades at math and I wasn't getting that positive feedback. And then I now math is one of my worst subjects in university because there you go. 16:33 You can see where it's like, I started getting worse because it started getting harder. And then it snowballed out of nowhere because I wouldn't get the praise that I got before. So I lost the passion and then it just plummeted and I'm like ah fuck, I got to do calculus now. 16:47 Speaker 2 Yeah, I get what you're saying. 16:50 Leveraging Sales Clubs and Coffee Chats for Success And so when did you start getting into the sales club at at Western and how how was your journey into becoming the president and why did you even choose to get into that? 17:04 Speaker 2 So you know Ivy sales club I applied to when I joined the Ivy. They do, you know, they got your president, you got your VPS, and then you got your directors, right? Typically your directors are your third year Ivy students. So I applied for one of those roles and I ended up helping set up the Ivy Sales Summit, which is we bring in, you know, 8 to 10 speakers and we rent out BMO Auditorium. 17:31 It's like space for like 800 people, right? Giant place. And we have speakers across four different, different panels, right? You get your technology or software, you have your finance, you have your pharma, and then you have your CPG and services panel. 17:47 So I helped to organize that. And this was last year, last school year, 2026 or 20252026. And helping that out was was really awesome. It was really cool. It was a great experience. We had a great turn out and a lot of great companies came to speak at that event. 18:05 Anyways, I knew I wanted to be president before. Like that was all my of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I got to know the presidents pretty well last year and we did a couple sales competitions together, all that kind of stuff. So in saying that, I put my name in the hat and I ended up getting here and my Co Prez is pretty equally as hyped up about this as I am. 18:28 So we're planning a big year for the club, we'll tell you that. 18:30 Speaker 3 How was the conference and how was planning it? Like who did you guys have this year just to talk to me about it? 18:36 Speaker 2 So planning it was pretty cool because it's just been one I was doing in the summer. That summer it would have been summer 2025. I'd spent it reaching out to companies that I was interested in working on. So I did a bunch IBM, obviously, Shopify, Snowflake, AWS, and there's a ton more just to name a few. 19:02 So planning for this conference was, hey, you got to bring these people in. So all I did was leverage the network I built during that coffee chat and I, I sent a bunch of messages to connects, right? Typically I sent them to senior account executives and if they can get me in contact like higher level people than that, that was awesome. 19:22 But if they couldn't, you know, senior executive, that's, that's huge, right? So that's all I did basically to plan. And then everybody else handled logistics and yeah, we, we had a good turn out, good amount of speakers and we're, we're looking to make it even bigger this year. 19:37 Speaker 3 Nice. So that's really wise of you to like start networking even before you get into Ivy. And a lot of students, I guess at Ivy because they're high performance, they do that. But some students and let's that are going into Ivy or even like not at Target schools. 19:53 What would you say is like a piece of advice you give to them when it comes to networking? And who did like, were you pushed into networking? How did you find out that? OK, in order for me to stand out as Luca, I need to like, start talking to these people way in advance before I even get into Business School. 20:10 Speaker 2 Man I thought it was about grades in in second and third year. I thought, you know what if I just have my have my 4 point O, they'll hire me 100%. I quickly figured out that this is not the case, you know, and I can only speak on sales. 20:27 I can't speak on any other industry, but it just wasn't the case that they'll hire you straight off grades. You need skills, you need extracurriculars and specifically in sales, I think you need that networking ability and interview skills. 20:42 So I would say that, you know, you asked about advice for people that you know, maybe aren't. I would say don't even worry about the school you go to keep above an 80. I think, don't you know, maybe don't go under that in terms of average, but keep your grades, OK, right. 21:00 And don't worry about your school and then try your sell yourself into the position right? 21:05 Speaker 3 What does that mean? 21:07 Speaker 2 When I'm saying that I, I mean, you should approach it as you think an SDR would approach trying to get into a big account, right? So what I did was I always contact the previous interns, right? And I said, hey, you know, I coffee chat them, I talk to them about their experience and always ask at the end, like, is there anybody else you, you think I should talk to, right? 21:30 And then I, I kind of just got referred through the circle, right, because you know, you're going to get, you're going to respond to referral generally, right. If someone says, you know, I'd open my LinkedIn and I did everything through LinkedIn. I wasn't really, I planned the cold call. I had like a list of people. 21:47 I wanted the cold call for jobs. And then I got my offer, right? So I was like, oh, networking is done. Let's let's just focus on wrestling right now. But going back to what I was saying, it is important to sell yourself in those coffee chats, right? 22:08 And. 22:09 Speaker 1 What are you exactly selling in those? I know you're saying you're selling yourself, but what is the final outcome that you'd want to get out of it? Like them to like you enough to then refer you to the next person for you to chat with? Is that the the goal, or what exactly is the goal when you're trying to sell yourself? 22:25 Speaker 2 I would say the goal is to build those relationships, right? And additionally to get more information about the internship or the company, right? Because a lot of these chats you'll have with people is you'll figure out more information. 22:42 And I figured out a lot about IBM through these chats, right? So I'd ask, you know, specific questions like what sets of high performer part, you know, why did you go to IBM or whatever company I was coffee chatting and they'll tell you. And I feel like you can get a good grasp of the company's culture and whether you'd be a good fit there by talking to people about these things. 23:03 And the other thing I said was building these relationships, right? Because now all these people like coffee chatted, they know me, we've talked and I keep them updated with what I'm currently working on through my LinkedIn feed or through messaging them. And I was given some advice early on in this whole networking journey is that your network is incredibly, incredibly important because two years down the line, maybe you're working some economic crash hits and you get laid off or whatever, something like that. 23:34 You would lean back on that network and it's going to help you open doors, get into opportunities you never thought were possible. And I think there's just so much benefit there, along with curiosity and figuring out more about how to succeed as a seller and what different companies were like, right? 23:52 So yeah, that that's more what I was expecting to get out of it. And then from there, you know, you fall in love with the company's culture, you know, all the people at the company, and you believe you could be a good fit for the role. Like it just makes sense to hire you, you know what I mean? 24:08 But you should only really you're only going to jump at that company if you know enough about them to trust and know that the company is going to be a good fit for you. So that's what I would say and we're. 24:21 Speaker 3 Sorry, we're big preachers also here. Like when we were giving advice in our first couple of episodes where when you have coffee chats, you're vetting the person in front of you just as much as they are vetting you in a way where you want to learn about them. Like you're not like overselling yourself to the point where you want to get hire me, hire me, hire me. 24:41 You're also want to find out about their culture. Would you say that's also a mindset that you had? Like you're just curious to learn more rather than like overly selling yourself. 24:51 Speaker 2 I don't even think I touched selling myself. When I was on coffee chats with people, it wasn't really about me and my story. It was about them and any questions I had about them, any questions I had about their company and I just wanted to learn more. 25:08 So I think that's the mindset go in learning. And another piece of advice I got early on was, you know, you shouldn't really be talking at all in these coffee chats. It should be like a 9010 split. You ask some questions, talk, you know, learn, ask some deeper questions and get to know the person. 25:28 Because at the end of the day, you both benefit from an interaction like that. And I don't know people. Some people don't really like coffee chats. I really like coffee chats. It's good to meet people. 25:38 Speaker 1 Are they virtual chats or are you actually meeting them at? 25:40 Speaker 2 All, all virtual. All virtual, all virtual. Because yeah. 25:44 Speaker 3 Really loved them man. We don't. 25:46 Speaker 2 Yeah, it's not. Yeah, not. 25:49 Speaker 1 Really 'cause I feel as well as well like this is from a book that I've read that's called Never Eat Alone. I highly recommend it. OK, but it's always that whenever you're you're going to network with somebody, one of the most important things you should aim to do is do something upfront for the person that they can get value out of it. 26:09 Like for example, even like inviting them or giving them a platform to come speak in one of your events, things like that, that makes them feel like, all right, this other person that you know has something to even though it might not really be of so much value to me, but it's valuable enough for me to build my network, build my connection. 26:28 So it's like usually leading with something like that. Do you ever give something upfront during those coffee chats, those networking attempts to? 26:37 Speaker 2 Be honest with you, I didn't have anything to offer at this point. And it was the summer I, I hadn't even touched the Ivy really. I did primarily my coffee chats in like August, right? I wanted to start a little ahead of the curve, August and September of 2025. 26:53 And yeah, I didn't have anything really to offer, you know, just good attitude and like, curiosity with a person. That's it. 27:02 Speaker 1 That's that's already a lot to offer. You know why? Because a lot of folks, there's two reasons they might choose to take a coffee chat and it's either one they were trying to invest in the youth for the future. In a sense, it's like they're investing in this stock. This person is really hungry. They're doing the right things to come talk to me. 27:17 You know, they are the future. So by me having a coffee chat with them, I'm tapped in with the future generation that are going to lead. So that's one thing that they potentially might get out of it. So just for the folks that are watching that are wondering, you know, how can I angle this? And then second of all as well, if they're paying it forward, maybe somebody's helped them in the past, right? 27:38 Yeah. So it's like, oh, you know, it's like I'm paying it forward to make to to feel good about myself, to like have that good energy surrounding me, things like that. But what are your thoughts on on those two? 27:49 Speaker 2 Yeah, I 100% agree. 27:50 Why Extracurriculars Matter for Tech Sales Careers I I've heard that same sentiment in terms of paying it forward. That is a big one, people. You know, that's how you get into companies, I think in sales, right? If someone's going to give you a shot for a coffee chat, you're going to pay it forward, in my opinion. And I don't know, I think sales people generally just like coffee chats. 28:09 Yeah. You know, speaking for myself, I'm very biased obviously, because, you know, it's my opinion regardless, I enjoy it and it is good to give back to people. It makes you feel happy, makes you feel good. Win, win for everybody. And yeah, that pay it forward, no. 28:26 Speaker 3 And Luca, just so obviously to get into IV, it's hard and it's like you have to have like a good extracurriculars and good grades. So you fix that great part by reading books, finally learning how to learn, all that sort of stuff. 28:42 What else were you doing outside of just your typical classes that made you a stand out applicant in order to get into Business School? 28:50 Speaker 2 Yeah. So generally it's those two extracurriculars. I'll focus on those two. There were a couple other, you know, miscellaneous like jobs. I put in those like 5 extra. For those who don't know, when you're applying Ivy, it's based on your grade point average, how you do in a certain class, 2 main extracurriculars, and then you can add up to 5 little extracurriculars. 29:15 So generally I'll focus on those main two extra killers. This is when I joined wrestling and you know, I didn't join wrestling to get into Ivy. That wasn't the intention. I joined wrestling because a friend of mine was on the team last year and he said it was the most fun thing he's ever done. 29:31 He ended up quitting because he tore his shoulder, but regardless, I outlasted him. If he ever watches us, I'm Trill get a kick out. But I ended up joining because of that because I wanted to have fun. So that was one of my extracurriculars and that was a big thing because they generally look for leadership on those 2 is what I've heard. 29:53 And, you know, doing a varsity sport has a lot to do with building that leadership, specifically in my now role as like, I'm like a Wellness lead in the team. So what I do is I, I try to take the new recruits under my wing and help them out, make sure everything's good with their schooling, make sure everything's good with, you know, struggling through first year as I did, I'm sure many other people did. 30:21 But being a leader on the team was really my goal during that. And then taking it seriously, making every practice because some people, you know, they'll fade in and out depending on exams or something. I tried to make it a point to make five days a week when it was good. 30:40 And then during exams, sometimes I'd go down to three, but I still was there trying to learn the other extracurricular I did, and this one's been awesome. This one was like super, super rewarding, super great time softening. OK, you'd understand obviously what that is softening. 30:58 For those who don't know, it's like at other universities, they call them like Ras. Well, not Ras, sorry. Let me take that back. It's like an orientation coordinator. So what you're doing is you're welcoming the new first year students and you're making their transition to university as smooth as possible, as fun as possible. 31:19 You're really bringing the energy. So you have a team like 40 people. We had a team of 40 people. I was a soft for soggy and Maitland Hall, which was awesome because it was there when I was in residence. And that was an awesome time because I got to take some first years under my wing and help them out. 31:39 So big thing I did in that role was I made like a first year survival guide. That's what it was called. It was just a one note binder, but it was everything I did in my first year to like focus and turn my grades around. And then I'd sent that to all the kids on my floor. 31:55 So I hope they got a lot out of that. I pray. But the connections from softening in that team, that was awesome. But those are the two things that are the 2 main things I did. So outside of outside of grades during that year to or during that one year, what would have been third year where I did those things. 32:17 So yeah, it was it was a good time. And I'm back as a a soft, it's like an Ivy soft owl. I'm back as that come this year. So that'll be super fun. 32:30 Speaker 3 And I can attest to the trainer because I, I trained with you for like 2 months or like. 32:33 Speaker 2 Last month, yeah. 32:35 Speaker 3 Man, I wish I knew that anyone can join the wrestling team because I didn't know that. I thought I was like, because I grew up abroad. I grew up in Saudi Arabia, so my vision of like varsity wrestling, I'm like these guys have been wrestling since they were 3-4 years old. And then I came to practice. I'm like, oh, there's actually people that just started or they were doing jiu jitsu before and things like that because that's what that was my sport, jiu jitsu. 32:58 But then when I come, I'd always see you there. 33:00 Speaker 2 Yeah, I'm super grateful for that, man. It was like the opportunity to walk on and I'm really glad they take walk ONS because I think it's a testament to the training and development that the western team has. Like the coaching staff of men. 33:15 They do such a good job like building people from square 1 and it's totally a get what you give thing. If you go there with an open mind, curiosity and you want to learn, they will teach you constantly because everyday I come to practice and I didn't know my coach to hell because I'd ask him all the time. 33:34 Like hey man, how do I fix this? Like I'm to this day I'm still on them like that because I want to learn because I want to get better and I want to develop. So it's totally a get what you give thing with that team and it's been one of the best choices I ever made in my life. 33:50 Speaker 1 It's great. And I actually, I want to also highlight the fact that you're doing those extracurricular activities. We actually had my manager at Ripling right now come to one of our previous episodes and he said that when I'm looking at applicants for roles in sales and tech sales and software sales, one of the most important things I look at in a resume. 34:12 He said he does not look at anything on a resume except those this section, which is extracurricular activities. Interesting, which is because these are things that you are not required to do that you are choosing to do voluntarily. 34:28 And that says a lot about the character and the kind of person you are because when you're doing the role, of course, selling is going to be what's expected of you. But it's those things that you choose to do that you weren't required to do that actually set you apart as a top performer. And the fact that you're having these reps in early in your before you even started your career, you're still a student. 34:47 And then that's something that I want the viewers to realize like we're we. He is a current student who is a BDR intern in IBM. So that he's already like so far ahead of what folks are, you know, have even started to think about doing. 35:04 So that's something I wanted to drive in terms of doing these extracurricular activities. But do you think that not only has helped you get into Ivy, but also IBM just kind of if you can share a little bit more about? 35:18 Speaker 2 You know, in, in, in, in the coffee, you go back to the extracurriculars you're talking about. I feel that a lot of the people that I coffeeshotted were in sports or at one point in their life, they weren't either varsity sports or played sports when they were younger. 35:34 So I think sports is a massive extracurricular and I think it translates, you know, we talked about a little bit earlier, I think it translates gas and sales 100%. So I do think they look at that extracurricular side and there's so many extracurriculars out there, be it clubs or sofhing or varsity sports that it shows you're a well-rounded person. 36:02 And you know, I did them because I like having my schedule packed. I like you know, how am I being spread thin I guess is a good way to put it because keeps things fast, keeps things interesting. 36:12 Speaker 1 You feel more purposeful. 36:14 Speaker 2 Yeah, man, I wake up like I'm if I got like a lot to do on my plate, like I'm happy, you know what I mean? If I just have like 8 hours to do nothing, I go a little nuts, I lose my mind a little bit. So I really like to be fast and just have a lot going on. 36:29 So maybe that's just me, but I think extracurricular is for anyone going to sales are super important thing and it doesn't have to be like varsity sports or anything. Just go do like a like an intramural league. Those are super cool. So something to keep you busy. 36:46 And another point I wanted to make on that is one thing I heard in echoed and a lot of my coffee chats was people in sales like to hire those that are really good at multitasking. So if you show that you have a lot on your plate and you're juggling a bunch of things at the same time, that's seen as an asset in my opinion. 37:10 Luca's Strategies for Juggling a Packed Schedule I don't know. I agree with that. It's it's factual, Yeah. 37:14 Speaker 3 I also wanted to ask, so you had all these things going on in your life. How was dealing with time like for you? Like, I'm sure that must be like one of your biggest strengths. If you're able to do all of that stuff. Yeah, and still performing everything, then you must be good at time management. 37:32 What how do you manage your time? How do you manage your day, your week, your month, your semester, things like that? 37:37 Speaker 2 Well, you got to be organized and that's go back to Cal Newport in the Grade A student. He's got a calendar format. Basically, you have your running calendar at the end of each day, you kind of look at it and you take to do's during the day. 37:53 So let's say I go to class, my professor says have this paper by Wednesday something. Regardless, at the end of the day, I go back, I look at my note and then I translate that running to do to a day, right. So OK, I got a paper doing the 12th. 38:08 I'm going to translate that. I'm going to do 3 days of work from 3rd to the 6th. You get what I'm trying to say so that that that I really like time blocking. It used to be a big time blocker. That was a that was a good thing. And then and I just use my calendar app for that. 38:25 Like I just throw you'll be here doing this then and then, you know, whatever time, right, It kind of absent flows, like I don't do that everyday, you know, but the other point to that is I think it's just kind of who I am, right? 38:46 I mentioned it a little bit. I like being packed. I like having my schedule like that. So I think it's a process too, because you don't just start out organized. You don't start out being able to work a whole day. 39:03 You have to. And my dad says all the time when you start working 9:00 to 5:00, it's going to take you like a year to get used to it because it, it just hits you and you're not used to working 8 hours a day, right? So it takes a toll on you, but you would just. 39:19 And the other, you know, the last point I want to make on that is obviously I wasn't like that in first year. You know, I had no idea what I was doing. I had all the time in the world and, you know, didn't spend it well, right? So I had that summer to really build up my tolerance and I've just become more and more efficient through the years. 39:38 Second year, oh man, I was just in the books the whole time, right? I which is trying my best to survive school, I guess. And even though I had efficient study methods, I wasn't perfect with them. But like compare that to this year, the amount I spent on school. 39:55 And granted, once you get into Ivy, it's not the hardest program in the world, but the amount of time I spent on school is just negligible compared to my other stuff and compared to year 1. So yeah, a lot of different things to it, but I say if you're going to. 40:10 Try to become more organized and try to become more time efficient. You just got to put the reps in and try in day in, day out, right? You're going. 40:19 Speaker 1 To be consistent like. 40:20 Speaker 2 100% and you're going to stumble like there are there were days. 40:25 Speaker 3 And I actually heard something from one of your podcasts. I, I told you I was listening to earlier. I think the human brain just does well when it knows what it has to do, like in terms of the capacity. But that is something that is really important. Like if you can plan your day ahead where you know you're going to be so busy, but you're expecting you're going to be so busy, you're not just, things aren't just being thrown at you. 40:49 You can manipulate your mind to like show up up very very well at everything. 40:55 Speaker 2 That's something I 100% agree with. It was, there was a study done on it with rats and all the studies are done with rats, apparently. I don't know how it really works. And the translation to humans, I don't know that much about science like that. We're business kids. 41:11 But you know, they had a rat who knew it was about to be shocked, right? And they measured the stress level in that shock. And you know, they knew it was going to be shocked, and they compared it to a rat that had random intervals of shocking, right? 41:26 The rat who was random, who didn't know, who didn't expect what was about to happen was the stress level. And the stress response was elevated out of control. It was doing horribly. And the other one was able to cope with it because I knew when the stressor was about to hit. 41:43 And I guess the take away from that is exactly what you said is when you expect things to happen, when you know things are going to happen, it's really easy to push through. But if you don't, if you don't understand like it's going to hit you like a rock. 42:00 So, you know, I compare it to a lot of my buddies are going to investment banking in the City. And you know, there's some people that take it well, some people that don't. Some people just figured out about the horrible hours that they're having to work, and some kids knew about it for years, so they're taking it and hitting it in stride. 42:17 So yeah, I think that expectation, kind of understanding your day before it happens is is is a big thing why I like to work like that. 42:26 Speaker 1 I had a question as well. I like this podcast is really about, you know, students, recent graduates, people who are wanting to break into tech sales and you know, the journeys, what are the right things to do? But and then the day we're humans, right? And of course, and we're we want to have fun. 42:42 So we talk about being top performer, things that need to be done in order to be the top performer. But in such a packed schedules and with such ambition that you come with, how do you do you have fun? What is it like? Because again, we want to paint a very realistic picture to the viewer where it's not just all right, work, work, work. 43:02 And yeah, yeah, yeah. So how how does fun look like with Luca? 43:06 Speaker 2 I'll like, I'll run you through maybe an IV day. Yeah, 8:00 to 1:00. We got class right. Obviously class is a good time. I'm an HBA one, right? So how it works is you have a section, you have 80 people in your section and you sit in the same class all year, which is really cool. 43:24 It's a really great way to bond, right? So you bond over a lot of shared things. You know, maybe it's the class isn't really like as a teacher, right? And you know, they'll joke about that, right? Don't you know, don't tell my teachers, I guess is what I'm trying to say. But you know, there there's there's a sense of community there. 43:43 So I find a lot of enjoyment out of that, you know, maybe not necessarily class part, but those 20 minute breaks where you kind of get to know your section, you get to know these people. So 8 to 1's class and it is work. Realistically it's class, but you get to know the people in your section. 44:00 And I think, I guess what I'm trying to say at the end of the day, after that, I would stay at the library and study. And you know, again, I'd take my breaks, I'd go talk to my friends and then I go to wrestling. And then at the same time, when I'm wrestling, I'm talking to my friends, I'm hanging out with my friends. 44:21 After that, I'd go study a little bit more, maybe study with a friend, right, and talk between the breaks and then I go work out. And that's something I just enjoy doing, right? You know, I don't see that as work. I just like doing it. But the overarching thing that I was trying to say is yes, I, I do work a lot. 44:38 I try to work a lot and I think it's really good to work a lot. It makes me feel purposeful. But every time in these little work environments and these, these areas, be it class, wrestling or studying, I always got a few buddies and I'm trying to, you know, chop it up with them, hang out with them during these times. 44:57 So that's what really makes me feel like it's not really work. It's just I'm hanging out with my friends. 45:03 Speaker 3 You're doing important things with people you enjoy being around. 45:06 Speaker 2 Pretty much that's, that's, that's a good way to sum it up, I would say. And you know, I think I get a lot done doing that and it doesn't really stress me out. It doesn't really make me feel, I don't know, upset, overwhelmed, right? I I'm just, there's always parts where there's community and I think if you build your community, you find your people, you'll, you'll enjoy it anywhere, enjoy whatever you're doing right. 45:29 Speaker 3 I think we're like, I can really attest to that because when I when we first started this, this was taking up a lot of time from us. But I think the fact that I was doing with Hassan and the fact that I just, we would have these conversations anyway. So like I enjoy being around him, it just lets time pass. 45:45 Like it doesn't feel like work anymore. 45:47 Speaker 2 There you go. Yeah. 45:48 Speaker 1 Exactly, and it goes back to like doing something you truly enjoy, not because you want it to be on your resume, but because you actually enjoy it and the added is it ends up on your resume. Right. But of course, a lot of folks I feel like getting into and I me personally, when I was in university, I was a very anti extracurriculars kind of guy. 46:08 I just wanted to really have fun with my friends do degenerate stuff. I'll be honest, right. And so for me, it's like, Oh, I'll just deal with getting a job when I get there. And I used to be my extracurriculars was just starting side quest businesses. 46:26 Like I started my street wear brand, I started some clothing stuff, I managed some hip hop artists on the side. A lot of folks don't even know this stuff, but I didn't even view that as extracurricular. So I wouldn't even add it on my resume because I thought that was fun. But now looking back at it, like actually, these were my extracurricular percent, you know, it's just that I and that's how it should be, where it's just The thing is so much fun for you that you don't even feel like you deserve to add as an extracurricular because it's just too much. 46:54 Speaker 2 No, I, I, I see where you're coming from. And to be, to be fair, you know, I, you know, you said you just finally have fun University. I there's a time and place for that. And I got to learn a little bit more into it, you know, especially during like second and my second and third year, like I was a little bit, you know, I didn't really want to go out kind of thing, but I've started to learn a little bit more into that, especially since going out to Ivy. 47:18 And I think it's good to be balanced. You know, it makes you more social and as an added benefit, I think if you're going out, you know, let's say twice a week, it's going to make you better in sales, you know, so. 47:30 Speaker 1 A lot of these really deep connections you make is off of a drink, some in at a bar or something where. 47:36 Speaker 2 You're 100%, yeah. 47:37 Speaker 1 Talking shit like making jokes, watching a sports game together, right? It it, that's why it's like there's a connotation around the overly performative people who are just like work, work, work, work. And it's just like they get lost in in that, that they forget their real identity and who they are and as a person and how they interact with people on a normal social basis rather than like, oh, we got to work together to achieve this or that. 48:06 Speaker 2 I'd agree you need some balance. 48:07 Speaker 1 Absolutely. 48:08 How to Secure a Tech Sales Internship Early All right, So now bringing this back into tech sales, you're like we've mentioned multiple times on today's episode, you're currently a student, you're in your final year, but this summer you're working as an SDR or BDR intern at IBM. 48:24 Yeah. So for the students out there that know for sure that this is the career path they want to take, can you share a little bit more about why you've done that? Why have you not just waited to graduate to get into it? What is the pros? And yeah. 48:37 Speaker 2 So if I had to redo it, I'd start looking for internships a lot sooner, you know, And I think there's a lot of good opportunities, you know, specifically for people out London or in London, you know, you can do like door to door, right? 48:53 I wanted to do door to door. Parents wouldn't let me, you know, so. 48:56 Speaker 1 Why, if you want me to ask? 48:58 Speaker 2 They, there was, there was a lot of reasons I had like I did different jobs. I worked on accounting before this, right? So it was a little bit more stable. They didn't really like the Commission structure kind of thing, right? Which is completely fair. I totally understand. And it would have been like, I'm moving away. 49:15 I wasn't in Windsor, you know. So listen, I wanted to stay with my family for that. So it was it was good, it was good. It was it was a good choice at the end of the day. But if I was going to completely just go into sales, try and get the best job, best internship possible, I would have done that during my first or second year summer and just kill it. 49:37 Just go out there and really, really try to how do you say, how do you treat it like you're trying to win everyday and you're trying to escape the guy that is behind you coming to get you in terms of how many people he sold or how many products he sold? 49:57 Yeah, there's a bunch of different like door to door companies. You know, they were crewed at Western, that kind of thing. Another one's like student works. That would probably be a cool experience. I kind of regret not taking that one. Other than that, I would say keep your grades at like an 80. 50:16 You know, try and keep it. Don't be like so you can list like 3.7 because 3.7 is a solid GPAI think you can do well under that. You know, no shame or nothing to people who aren't, you know, doing better in school than that. 50:33 But I would say that an 80 is a good realistic grade point average to keep. And apart from that, we talked about stacking extracurriculars. You should 100% be doing that. Even better if you can make them sales focused. 50:50 There wasn't a Western sales club in my first two years of school, so I never really joined it. It got founded in the third year that I was in school, but by that time I was already going to Ivy, so I just applied to sales club. But join your sales club. I think that's a giant thing because that's going to allow you to build those network connections with the people that your club partners with. 51:15 Other than that, after you get the experience, after you have a little bit to show, you know, maybe you sold pots and pans all summer during year one. Year 2, you have a little bit to show. Start networking as soon as possible and do it when students aren't networking. 51:34 You know those summer months are a great time because no one's inbox is getting spammed with students trying to request coffee chats. So buy LinkedIn premium, make your profile super cool or not even super cool. 51:51 Just make it so people would want to engage with you. A lot of people, we talked about it, why they accept these coffee chats? Like if I was in a position of some of these people, you know, let's say like an account executive and I saw like a year one or year two student reaching out to me, I'd love the drive, I'd love the ambition and that would be super cool. 52:13 So there's been situations like we did hiring for the club and a student who wasn't even in my IV yet, a student, like a first year student reached out and applied to our club to be a director or to be AVP. And we were like, listen, like we can't put you on as AVP, but we're probably going to take care as a director because we love the ambition and you're ahead of the curve. 52:37 You're earlier than all your peers. So I would say start networking early and as much as possible. And then the final thing is sell yourself into the job and it's going to be tough to find out which companies are hiring specifically internships. 52:54 Speaker 3 It's hard to get a BDR intern. 52:56 Speaker 2 It's hard to get a BDR internship. Yeah, that was a big worry of mine. So when I did it, I looked through all the companies that have posted these internships or I'd look up like BDR internship or sales internship. And then I just scroll through the people on LinkedIn and by that I could kind of match a few companies that did internships. 53:17 So build the list Rep who's an awesome, awesome tool. I would say more for full time because it doesn't really show anything about internships, but build that list of companies that has internships and network with them constantly. 53:32 Just try and get in as much as you can. Build out a cold messaging framework. Send, I don't know, 20 a day and just try to have as much conversation as you can with people before you start applying to the jobs. 53:49 And then it's as easy as getting a referral. You know, you talk to someone, you coffee chatted seven months ago and kept in touch, you know, somewhat regularly between that interval. It's likely that they'll be like, OK, yeah, no problem, I'll refer you. 54:05 Right. Especially if you show that initiative and drive and then you have something to show for in your resume. Like if you were the best pot and pan seller on door to door that shows distinguish or that distinguishes you from others and that shows initiative and that you'd actually be successful in a sales role. 54:23 Get that internship. And then the next chapter, I guess your final year, I have no idea because I have not hit that yet. So. 54:34 Speaker 3 How did you create that list and what criteria were you using to create that list? For example, Hassan was telling us in a in an earlier episode when he was looking to move companies, he had like Rev view on one monitor and then like an Excel sheet on the other monitor. And he's looking at salaries, he's looking at Rev view score, looking at all that sort of stuff. 54:52 When you were creating your shortlist for companies to apply for, what criteria we're using? 54:59 Speaker 2 So I applied to internships. It's going to be a little bit different than, you know, full time. I would say start with companies that are hiring. That's the key point. If they don't have ABDR internship or SDR internship, they're not going to take you as an intern. 55:15 It's complicated to set up the whole internship progress or process and it's a difficult one. But find companies that are hiring and I don't think it matters the company to be honest with you. So throw in as many as you can and then the other piece of criteria from there after you've made your list, you're going to realize that because I started reaching out to companies that were a little bit smaller at first that did have internships. 55:49 And I find that the ones that are smaller or even ones that I shouldn't say smaller companies, companies that you reach out to 20 people at their company and like one response, you know, companies like that. 56:08 I didn't really, I didn't really see the benefit in trying to further network with them depending on, you know, who it was. So there were a couple companies at the start, like I found their people just wouldn't reach out to me even though I sent them, you know, a same or similar message that I sent people at another company. 56:26 So I find that the one, the companies that were more willing, their people were more willing to kind of give back to, you know, talk to me a little bit. Those are the ones I wanted to get into. So, you know, I guess I would say that the companies that respond and you like the people you're talking to, you feel like you're aligned with, those are the ones that you should give more, more gas to, I guess try to talk more with these people. 56:56 And yeah, that that's. 56:58 Speaker 1 They're just more grateful individuals who are in a happy spot at a nice company that they enjoy and they feel like they maybe want to they they forward more than the others that are maybe in smaller startups who are just like, I can't wait to get my myself kind of thing. 57:14 Speaker 2 It's possible. I think there's a nuance there. You know, I, I don't want to say smaller, I did say smaller, but I want to kind of take a. 57:20 Speaker 1 Company can be small like in in the transition to becoming a bigger company, right, right, right. And usually these folks as well, I think when with smaller organizations, they tend to be busier, spread more thing and wear more hats. They they value their time a little bit more than folks who are maybe in larger organizations like AWS, where maybe they have more openings in their day or they feel more content with what they're doing. 57:47 Speaker 2 Right, right. I yeah, I don't want to say smaller. I want to say that it kind of turns me off as a job looker or if I'm seeking an internship, if the people at your company are impossible to reach, right? 58:06 So that, that that's what I would say. And obviously, again, there's nuances to that. Maybe it's a giant company. It's super hard to get in and that's why they can't because they have so many people trying to reach to you. And maybe in that case, your outreach needs to get better there. 58:21 There's definitely nuance there. I would say that generally it would be nice to get a response, you know, as as a job seeker. So I guess if any companies are hiring and they're looking to hire a bunch of people, tell your people to accept coffees as as. 58:44 I know that's rich coming from me, but do. 58:47 Speaker 1 You think, do you think it's very like if you had to throw out a number and I know you probably don't have like the actual factual number, but out of every 100 like messages or LinkedIn in mails or you send or whatever it is emails you send, how many of them are responding back and accepting a coffee chat? 59:08 Speaker 2 Honestly, quite a few I'd be honest with you. Like maybe I'd ballpark it from like one out of five to like, it's like 20%. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 59:19 Speaker 1 That's pretty good. I mean, it's like I loved the plan that you set where you created. I'm all about creating shortlists and bounties of like these are the these are the companies I want to apply for. So I think the very good first step for students who are looking to getting into sales is, like you said, finding these organizations who do have those internship programs because what's the point of, you know, trying to get an internship out of a company that doesn't provide those internships? 59:47 Speaker 2 You know, when I, when I started that I wanted to do sales of Shopify, that was one of my big companies I wanted to go to and I'd done talked with like 7 or 8 other people and then I figured out they didn't have an internship program, but they did a couple of years ago, they stopped the sales internship program. 1:00:06 So. And that's not to say I didn't enjoy my coffee chats to shop 5 people, you know? It's not to say I wouldn't go there in the future kind of thing, but you know it, it took a little bit of the time where I could have been focusing on other companies because my goal was an internship at that time. 1:00:24 Speaker 3 Yeah, but I'm sure these connections help you in the future. You never know what what would happen to my graduate and be like Shopify opened up something and. 1:00:32 Speaker 2 You I'm still grateful and you know when I mentioned the sponsorship conference, we have Shopify speak at that or the not the sponsorship conference, the Ivy sales summit, we have Shopify speak that or speak at that. So those connections are great. And I'm not saying at all that, you know, it wasn't great to have those kind of cats because it 100% was. 1:00:53 And yeah, it was. It was a good time. 1:00:55 Elevating Tech Sales: Beyond Traditional Business Paths And one thing you were doing also, Luca, was you were entering into sales competitions. I saw that on your link then. So you did the snowflake, I think, with Ted Rogers. Yes, yes. So I'm sure that definitely benefited you, having your name out there, going there and performing well. 1:01:11 What was that like? 1:01:12 Speaker 2 Yeah. So wanted to been to a couple sales competitions and you know specifically TMU, Ted Rogers School of Management, they throw on the Canadian University sales competition. 1:01:29 So they invite a bunch of universities sales clubs to compete at this and it's a super cool event, super cool companies that come there and sponsor, you know, one of them was owner.com and they've been doing some cool, cool work in terms of developing young talent. 1:01:48 So they sponsored, they were a big sponsor there. And the case in terms of the, there was a couple different events. The case there was an event, there was a speed cell, which I did, which was you go in there and you pitch yourself for 60 seconds. 1:02:07 And then there was also the discovery call like I don't know. 1:02:14 Speaker 1 Like a mock this. 1:02:14 Speaker 2 Guy it was. It was like a mock closing meeting. Like that was the, I don't know exactly what to describe it as, but it was all using owner's product, right? So you had to develop your script and go through a little bit of discovery all the way to closing in like a 15 minute meeting, right? 1:02:33 So that was really awesome. And I encourage, I kind of miss this in my like, you know, explaining it's a little bit covered in the club banner. Join a club, do their events, do their sales competitions. The other competition that we did was a Snowflake sales competition and we'll be doing that again next year. 1:02:52 Obviously we'll be doing the Canadian university Cusk, but we'll be doing that sales competition next year too. At Ivy. The Snowflake sales competition was very similar to the thing I don't know or the thing at the Canadian university sales comp where it was a meeting where you discovery it was a final meeting to closing. 1:03:15 Little bit different because you know, owner caters to small business owners. And then Snowflake is a little bit more enterprise, but very cool experiences and we ended up doing pretty well. We got second in both. 1:03:31 There's a big yeah, yeah, yeah. It was super fun. So I'll be doing it again. I don't know how it's going to work as president of the club. So for the spill Snowflake 1, I don't know if I. 1:03:41 Speaker 3 Can guys? 1:03:42 Speaker 2 Conflict of interest. Yeah, conflict of interest. But it'll be fun to throw it, I'll tell you that. With such cool and interesting company. 1:03:50 Speaker 1 Can I do it? And I'm just kidding. 1:03:52 Speaker 2 Amen. Have ripling. 1:03:54 Speaker 1 I honestly, I was thinking about this. I'm going to chat with folks internally and see if like we can try to get Rippling involved as much as possible with this. 1:04:01 Speaker 2 If if you guys, because you know, Ivy's got some, obviously, you know, like Ivy does have a lot of financing consultants, but at the end of the day, the presentation skills, the network you build and the way you present yourself at Ivy, the way they build people in terms of those aspects is incredible. 1:04:27 And I think it's like so. 1:04:28 Speaker 3 Transferable. 1:04:29 Speaker 2 It's it's, it's, it's, it's incredible, right? Just the transformation. I've seen some people walking in Ivy to coming out of this last year, right? And the confidence that it kind of brings is incredible. And I think we have some of the best sales talent in Canada. 1:04:45 So Rippling. Yeah, Send them our way. Hey, was you as president? 1:04:48 Speaker 3 Because honestly, I was gonna like, that's one thing we're, I wanted to discuss with you too, because at Business School it's so focused on getting into IB and getting into consulting that it's almost like no one talks about tech sales. I don't know if you had the same experience, but like in my, I didn't hear about tech sales until like one or two months into it. 1:05:06 But that's just because I was so focused on consulting at the beginning, of course. 1:05:09 Speaker 1 The tunnel vision into like consulting tunnel. 1:05:12 Speaker 3 And that's, yeah, I feel like now the notion is kind of like changing where people are strong seeing it now as like such as a lucrative career as both of these things, both as consulting and IB. 1:05:23 Speaker 2 So that's, that's some we're trying to change, especially because there's a lot of different reasons why people don't consider tech sales. And I talked about it. So after the Snowflake sales come, we kind of went out to the spoke, right? 1:05:40 It's it's like a campus bar kind of thing. One of the spoke had a couple beers after it with the judges and employees from Snowflake that came down and helped us out. I had a conversation with one of the account executives there and on how to portray sales as a career that people in Ivy should want to get into and should strongly desire, along with investment banking and consulting. 1:06:06 Because one thing, we have a couple different ways you want to accomplish that. First, we want to get as many people in this club as possible. We want to build it into a social experience in HBA 2, right? And we did that by hiring some of the most outgoing and personable people on our VP team. 1:06:27 So we want to do that first. That's going to get a bunch of eyes on the club. A part part of that is building our marketing and social media presence. So that's something we're doing this summer. And the other parts of it were, and we talked about this specifically with the Snowflake account exec, is people need to see their perspective needs to be changed on sales. 1:06:51 They need to understand that it's not sleazy profession, right? That's always the perception is you see like a greasy car salesman selling you a lemon kind of thing, right? So we need to change people's ideals on that. 1:07:06 And I think a way I can do that as president of the club is portray sales in a similar vein to consulting. Because at the end of the day, sales has changed so much from that sleazy ideal to now we are business people trying to solve a problem that your business may not understand that it has, right? 1:07:30 So that's part of it, definitely. And then the final aspect to it is we need to be able to understand that you're generally going to make more than consultants, right? Investment banking's the hours they make, you know. 1:07:44 Speaker 1 You're making more than both of them. 1:07:47 Speaker 2 If you consider hourly, hourly, yeah, 100 percent, 100% you can make and, you know, Rep who is a great indicator. Some of these people working at these companies, you're like 27 sitting on the account executive, you're making upwards of like 304 hundred, $500,000 a year, I know. 1:08:06 Speaker 1 Folks are making over a million a year. 1:08:09 Speaker 3 We've had people. 1:08:10 Speaker 1 Making over a million a year exactly. I I know like at rippling again, I don't want to, but like those numbers you said are extremely attainable. Like there it's not an even more than that. A lot of folks don't know that you can really make as much as doctors more than doctors in tech sales. 1:08:32 It just really going to depend on the timing and the organization you're selling for. Because if you join a organization that is stagnated in terms of growth, let's say you join something that is already saturated the market like a sales force, there's less room to, you know, make a lot of money there because pretty much 80% of the organizations are using Salesforce. 1:08:53 So there's. 1:08:53 Speaker 2 CRF 100%. 1:08:55 Speaker 1 Versus if you join the new booming company that is like a like a series D or Series E that is innovating crazy, then it's like, all right, you're at the right place at the right time. You can make profound amount of money. 1:09:09 Speaker 2 100% timing, I think that's a gigantic factor. But going back to, you know, what we're talking about in terms of how are we going to promote sales, yeah, that's a huge thing. Hourly, you're getting paid 100 times better. 1:09:26 Speaker 3 Work life balance work life. 1:09:27 Speaker 2 Balance 100%, especially when you compare to I banking like wow, it's incredible. Some of the hours is working. All power to you if you love that, but if you want a career where you're making incredible money, you're talking to people, you're building your communication skills, and you are compensated directly for how much you work, sales is where it's at, in my opinion. 1:09:53 Speaker 1 It's a career in personal development as well, 100%. Like every year you spend in tech sales as a year, you're becoming sharper, you're becoming better at time management, at organization, at communication. Like there's so many different things you're improving on constantly because not every single day is the same. 1:10:09 Yeah. 1:10:10 Speaker 2 It's always different and that's, that's, that's something I really enjoy about IBM. So far I've been there a week. Full transparency. I started on Monday, it's currently Saturday and we did a lot of onboarding tasks, but they focus so much and I heard this through every coffee Chan. 1:10:29 It's a big reason why I picked work there. They focus so much on learning and development. It's, and even at the higher senior level, you're required to do 40 hours of learning, right every year, right on their platform, like learning about new products, learning about more about sales, but you are required to do more that and more because they want their people continuously learning and iterating and figuring out how can I be a better seller? 1:11:02 And I think that growth mindset, they call it think right, that growth mindset is an incredibly fulfilling thing, right. So yeah, that's that's my thoughts. 1:11:18 Luca's Vision for the Club and Advanced Networking You spoke about hiring VPS that are like more sociable. You're trying to get the club to be more personable with everyone. Yeah. Other than that, what we what are your strategies for the coming year that would help increase the participation in the club and the amount of people that are interested in tech sales? 1:11:36 Speaker 2 So what we talked about in terms of marketing sales as a career and then also catering to people. And Ivy, obviously we talked about there's consulting and investment bank here to career paths, but we're considering people that want to go into those career paths. 1:11:54 And we're going to cater to the skills that they want to build, which we believe sales skills are some of the most important skills in any career, spanning across any discipline in any industry. The ability to sell yourself, the ability to talk to people, charismatic, all that kind of stuff is something that we want to work into the club and teach to our members. 1:12:20 Speaker 3 And even people, sorry to interrupt you, even people on the other side of kind of the charismatic personal side, like maybe people that are more introverted, yeah, there is still a career for them in sales when it comes to sales operations. And yeah, yeah, sales engineering, but that is still sales. 1:12:36 You're still working in sales? 1:12:37 Speaker 1 Yeah. You're still in department. Yeah. 1:12:39 Speaker 3 Yeah, you don't always have to be like the most sociable, extroverted person, not at all agree to be in sales. 1:12:45 Speaker 2 Yeah, everybody's got their. We talked a little bit about the set orientation. It's everyone's got their style and there's no one-size-fits-all in sales, right? And it's really about you. So you don't have to be charismatic, super charismatic, you don't have to be super outgoing. 1:13:02 You can be introverted and there's there's a spot for you. And I think it's definitely something more people should look into. So going back to how we're thinking about promoting our club, we mentioned we do the Ivy Sales Summit. 1:13:21 So this year we're we're going big, we're going bold. So we're trying to do 2 Ivy sales summits. So we're doubling from what we did last year. We're trying to do a sales career focused one, right, which is the same as last year. We're going to have those four panels, bunch of different speakers talk about sales careers in their specific field and company. 1:13:41 Then we're going to have more of an internal sales people. So my Co founder floated this idea. Let's say we got a top executive at we'll throw a name out there, let's say PwC, right? 1:13:56 We're going to bring in an executive from that company and they're going to talk about the importance of sales and selling themselves throughout their career. And hopefully that event is going to cater more towards people who aren't necessarily looking to go to a traditional sales role, but are going through roles that do require some level of competence at sales. 1:14:19 And then the final part, we really want to throw a lot of socials, right? We got huge, huge plans in terms of our sponsorship budget. So we're launching. It's basically what I'm doing at my day job at IBMSDR. 1:14:35 I'm just being an SDR for Ivy Sales Club as well in terms of bringing in sponsors for the club. And then we're going to use that sponsorship budget on building a community, right. 1:14:50 So we'll have our career focused events, but we'll also have bar nights. We'll also have times where we can just all hang out, we can rent a space, stuff like that. So that's the two things, right? 1:15:06 Get a bunch of people into the club, hold our events that cater both towards people going to sales and people that need sales skills, and then build a community through those awesome events with the budget that we're looking to amass during this during the summer. 1:15:22 Speaker 1 I had a question for students and I've, I've seen this in the past where whenever there's like a spokesperson that you've invited, let's say you're inviting somebody from PwC, like a executive, like you mentioned, a lot of folks get fixated on, oh, I need to talk to them. 1:15:39 I need to network with them so that way they can help me. And then they end up like pretty much forcing their way into a conversation with that person after that person's finishes their speech. And it just turns very awkward, turns very like a little bit too forced. 1:15:57 What are your thoughts on when you invite these speakers? How do you think the students should best interact with the speaker to get the most out of that interaction out of that? 1:16:07 Speaker 2 It goes back to, you know, I'm a big fan of curiosity in terms of those conversations. People love to express themselves, love to be asked about themselves, right? So you can go up to an executive and ask them like, you know, basically, hey, how do I get a job at your firm? 1:16:24 You know, what should I look out for? It's a terrible question. Horribly. It doesn't make any sense, right? I would recommend, let's say I'm at the sales summit. I'm an HPA, one student. I really want to, you know, get a job at I don't know, let's let's throw rippling up there. 1:16:40 There's an account executive or rippling. He's talking and I noticed something in his speech that made me think or made me think a follow up question. I called pulling threads, right, talking about something and then there's a little thread. Oh, you know, so think of things that you can ask this person while they're doing their thing. 1:16:59 And then I'm a big, you know, I think you totally should go walk up to them after, you know, kind of thank them for their time and then ask that follow up question. Keep it brief. You don't have to ask the company, just ask a simple follow up question and it shows you were paying attention, shows you want to learn more, shows you're curious and you have that initiative. 1:17:18 The other thing I would recommend is, you know, ask the same question, like is there anybody in your company you recommend to reach out to or you send them a LinkedIn quest after? So a connector quest and you send a little note. Hey, we talked after the Ivy Sales Summit and was wondering if you wanted to hop on a 15 minute chat, you know, talk a little bit more about your company, about the industry. 1:17:41 Speaker 1 Yeah. And I think it's very important as well. We always talk about pattern disrupt because I'm sure if you know, let's say there's fifty students in that summit that watch this and all of them pulled a thread from the conversation and asked the question. Yeah, that's really good to get the conversation started. 1:17:59 But I think maybe doing things that set you apart, maybe you have a very unique looking business card that took him by surprise. You had that business card. Or maybe you send a video after you've met with them and said, hey, this was me. That way he can put a face to the name, remember. 1:18:16 Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 1:18:16 Speaker 1 Small things like that I feel like can take a take you a long way in terms of setting you apart from those 50 individuals. 1:18:22 Speaker 2 No, I would agree. 1:18:23 Speaker 1 Because a lot of folks when they write their resumes, and this is a really good resume tip, is they talk about what they've done or what they've achieved. And I think whilst that's good to paint the picture, really what matters and what people are looking at is how do you compare to your peers in whatever thing that you are done right there? 1:18:45 Like you can, everybody can hit 100% of their quota, but where do you stand as Luca in this internship versus all the other interns you're in? Are you the first? Are you the second? Like that's what's most important. And so that's why it's really useful for you to set yourself apart from those 50 and then get that pattern disrupt and during these conferences, I would say. 1:19:08 Speaker 2 I think that's a great no, yeah. 1:19:09 Speaker 3 And I think also, sorry, center, having like real conversations with them, like doesn't have to be about sales or it doesn't have to be about getting a job. Like you hear Lucas speak, like go talk to him about like his wrestling season. How's that going? Or if you're a martial arts fan, go hit him up. If you like soccer, ask him what team you supports, things like that. 1:19:27 So A you're memorable, but B you just sound more like a human being. Like you're not just a robot that has a. 1:19:34 Speaker 2 Pretty planned. 1:19:34 Speaker 3 Conversation in his head for how he wants the interaction to go and if you don't take your boxes you're going to freak out. 1:19:42 Speaker 2 I would agree with both of the things you guys said. And you know, you guys are more senior in your careers than me, You totally understand. I I think that's a, that's a really good point on standing out because I agree 50 students ask you, they're all pulling threads. You, you got to stand out. You got to look out there, right. 1:19:58 So yeah. 1:20:00 Speaker 1 And there's something that you actually mentioned a couple minutes ago or earlier in the conversation about, you know, you might have a coffee chat with somebody and then it goes seven months before you reach out, not reach out to them, but before you actually ask them for a favor in terms of referral or something. 1:20:17 And I think that's very important to coffee chat, regardless of whether there's an opportunity open or not, because there's less strings attached. Like, for example, if I coincidentally reach out to someone when the opening is just went live and it's like, all right, like that's the only reason you've talked to me versus there's no strings attached. 1:20:36 There's no catch other than just having a genuine conversation. And then you nurture this person for a couple months until that opening comes up. It'll be much of A much easier if an ask it's a warm outreach rather than a cold outreach that you're doing right. 1:20:51 So I just wanted to, I, I've been kind of wanting to circle back to that point because I think that's a great thing to do for especially students who are looking to break in. So I. 1:21:00 Speaker 2 No, I, I, I'd agree with that, definitely encourage that behaviour and just, yeah, following up I, I, you know, periodically, like every couple of months, you know, hey, how's it going? Like it doesn't have to be a super formal message and just like I always like updating people on where I'm at. So let's say it's been, let's say I coffee chat in August, it's November and I'll kind of update like, hey, been doing this. 1:21:25 I did this, this, this that's relevant to the last time we talked, right? You know, we'll chat soon and you just have like a little chat. So for example, I did the Snowflake sales comp and I coffee chatted a bunch of people at Snowflake earlier on the year and I reached out to some of them like because I use some of the things that we talked about in that discovery hall or in the sales competition so. 1:21:48 Speaker 3 I like that you call it discovery call though. 1:21:50 Speaker 2 It's all is it like it's not really discover because they're closing at the end. I don't know. Regardless, I used some of the information that they got us and it's like an actual application. And I think people like to and it goes back to the whole give back thing. 1:22:06 They're like, oh, that's cool, you know, that's cool. I can actually help you, you know. So, yeah, I think that's a great, great point A. 1:22:14 Speaker 1 100% and something else that I I feel like you can also start doing which I feel would help you a lot yeah is the I'm I just thought about you message. So like, for example, you guys spoke about something during that coffee chat. 1:22:31 Yeah. And then maybe two months go by and be like, hey, I just thought of you so. And so. Yeah. How have you been? Or, or. I just thought I went across this billboard and remembered you. Yeah. So I thought I'd reach out. How have you been? Like, people love when others think about them in a very spontaneous manner. 1:22:52 It's like, wow, like, like I'm on that guy's mind or on that person's mind, you know, like I, I made an lasting impact for them to Remember Me randomly out of nowhere. Yeah. I think that makes a lot of people feel really good about themselves. And that's a message that I've used in the past as well. 1:23:08 Speaker 2 I'd agree, yeah. 1:23:10 Speaker 3 I feel like we can kind of wrap it up now. I feel like we discussed everything there is to to be talked about unless you have anything else to say, Luther. 1:23:18 Speaker 2 You know what let's see here. Ivy Sales Club. It's going to be awesome. Everybody in Ivy should join it. I'm. 1:23:27 Speaker 3 So excited. I'm so excited that you're the president and we got to speak to you about this because. 1:23:30 Speaker 2 You should come back and join it man it. 1:23:32 Speaker 1 Should be a good time. Brought another undergrad. 1:23:35 Speaker 2 One more thing, IBM is hiring a few interns so there should be a job posting. I think it's a September start so if you want to grab on, hop on a cool experience, go apply because I recommend it personally. You know, coffee chat. 1:23:50 Speaker 1 And ask Luca for a coffee. 1:23:51 Speaker 2 Chat. He'll coffee. Chat. Yeah, I'll reach out. I'll, I'll, I'll pay it forward, you know. 1:23:56 Speaker 3 Yeah, Luca, it was a pleasure having you here. I'm so glad we had to. We got to have this conversation with you and we look forward to see what you're going to do in your in your career and at the club and it was a a very lovely chat. 1:24:08 Speaker 2 Awesome. Thanks for amazing chat. Just go and knock the mic, you know?