Building Sales Teams in Mexico: Mario Oliveros Figueroa on LATAM Talent & Cross-Border Selling

Welcome everyone to another episode of the Nearshore Cafe podcast. I'm Brian Samson, your host, and this podcast is sponsored by Plug Technologies, PLUGG.tech. Great way to connect talent from all over Latin America. With growing US companies. If you are interested in hearing about how to build sales teams, how to sell in Latin America, and just a really interesting executive story, this is going to be a fantastic show for you. We've got Mario Oliveras. Mario, welcome to the show. We're so happy to have you.

Brian, thank you so much for this opportunity. I'm happy to be here and We can tell some stories about Latin America, business, people, everything that you need.

Amazing. And Mario, if I had it right, you are the global director of Latin America for NIAMO. Is that correct?

That's correct. This opportunity that NIAMO is one of the largest companies around the federal services, and we are in charge to building the strategy and the teams, the most important thing. Across Latin America. For us, it's a very good challenge in order to create this amazing team.

Amazing. I can't wait to dive deeper. So that's where you are now, but there's a whole story that goes into how it all happened. You know, I know you did school in Monterrey. I believe you're in Mexico City today. Where, where, where did it all start? Where were you born? You know, kind of give us, give us some insight into your, your early life and career.

Sure. Of course. Well, this is a, I believe this is a good story because my DNA, it's in sales. So everything related with my professional career, it's, it's in sales, hunting sales and building sales. So yes, I was born here in Mexico City. I am right now in Mexico City. I studied in Monterrey and Mexico City between those cities. I believe the most impactful for me was when I discovered the sales professional skills that I delivered and obviously trying to get the knowledge after the school. And my first, I believe my first challenge in order to present something to a company was 15 years ago, 16 years ago, working for different companies. And obviously after the school, you know, you don't have, I believe, the 100% experience. Tools, skills you need to develop, right? But I remember that I was a pretty good negotiator in school. So for me, it was like trying to develop and adapt that model in the school with my friends, with the people that I play, used to play football, negotiating with everybody. So trying to convince them to do and make some decisions and trying to be be the one who managed those parts. So yeah, I believe that's the initial skill or the initial career that I have it right now.

I love it. And you know, for those that maybe haven't been to interior Mexico, you know, where most of the people live, Monterrey, Mexico City, give some insight, I think, into just like the general culture, you know, of negotiating when you go to the markets, you know, Like, is this, is this a skill that most people tend to have because there's bartering, haggling?

Yeah. One of, I believe one of the most important points that you need to have in mind as a company, first of all, and after that, as a business people who are going to introduce something in Mexico, it's to know the culture. It's to know the people because especially in Mexico, and obviously we can talk about later about Central and South America and with those examples. Mexico has different type of cultures, right? Maybe we can split the 3 main cities that we consider as our business cities or clusters that we call in Mexico, Mexico in the center, Monterrey in the north of the country, and Guadalajara in the eastern part. So we call this like a sales triangle, right? So you need to be aware that you need to develop a relationship with all the companies, the procurement people, the salespeople. Mexico indeed has a good relationship with the providers and everything it's established like, you know, first of all, they need to trust, they need to know you, they need to see that obviously you have something to sell, but you need to understand what kind of sports maybe are good and aligned with our contacts, what is happening in the region, cultural sports. So you need to be more close with the people. So different kind of behaviors that we have in Mexico, in Mexico City, for example, we have the financial cluster. So everything is a little bit more like a bit more formal versus in the north of the country. In the north of the country are more free to open, to receive you in their offices, maybe with a tiny chat or coffee or something like that. In Mexico City, for example, you need to schedule a meeting, a little bit more formal. The dress code, sometimes it's a little bit more formal too. So This is a kind of examples that you maybe need to know when you are negotiating and trying to be here in Mexico.

Yeah, that's interesting. And I can certainly validate that. When I was in Mexico City, I felt like there were a lot more suits and especially in more of the business districts, Condesa and so forth.

Reforma. Yeah, yeah, right.

Reforma, yeah, a lot more suits, a lot more business people. And then more recently when I was in Monterrey, and Monterrey is a little warmer too, so maybe more, you know, polo shirts and slacks.

Yeah. And also maybe another, another point that you need to have in mind when you are here to, to, to do business is the traffic. It's amazing that you are going to spend a lot of time in Mexico City, for example, obviously not in the same proportion in Monterrey or Guadalajara. But in Mexico City, especially speaking, you can have one meeting in the east side, we call Santa Fe, or in the center that we call right now Reforma. It's only 6 kilometers and you can maybe spend 2 hours between 2 meetings, right? So you need to be, obviously you need to be very coordinated in that part because you need to plan, you need to be there, you need to know the city. And sometimes when I receive some foreign colleagues or, or customers or prospects here in Mexico City, and we need to move for another part of the city, they don't believe when I said we need to be 2 hours before. Like, uh, if you are going to take a plane, it's the same. You need to be aware 2 hours because we need to transport and we need to do something to do like that. So yeah, for them, it's sometimes it's crazy.

That's so funny. I, um, regret that I didn't have a chance to do the subway. When I was in Mexico City, but I've heard that it's quite good, quite famous. Is it used by everyone? Like, is that part of the way people get to meetings or is it usually by car?

No, it depends obviously in which part or your office, because everybody is, I believe it's a good way and good transport. Maybe we need more efficiency and that, but sometimes if you need to cross some, I don't know, 20 kilometers or something like that, maybe it's a good option because you are going to spend less time versus than by car, right? So everybody, students, people at the office, uh, everybody allows to use the subway. Sometimes it'll be, you know, a lot of people going forward right now. Right now it's complicated because, you know, we are going to be host of the World Cup. Soccer World Cup. So they are making some arrangements of that. So this is crazy right now because we are trying to do something, trying to be better and functionally better for everybody who is going to be here in Mexico.

Yeah, I, uh, you know, my, my recent visit to Monterrey, it felt like everything was under construction in a big hurry for the World Cup.

Yeah, exactly. Almost the 3 cities that I mentioned, Mexico, Guadalajara, and Monterrey, Those cities are under construction, airports, roads, subways, everything. So, you know, if, if in the past we're crazy, right now it's complicated. You don't, you don't need to see these right now.

Yeah. Uh, tell us more about, about Guadalajara. What should people know about it that have never been?

Yeah, sure. Guadalajara, culturally speaking, they are famous, you know, mariachi. We call the land of mariachi, a land of tequila. So there are a good, a good sound that we produce tequila. Mariachi is, it's one of the, one of the biggest and famous part of our culture. And also in the business side, we have the, the technical corridor, or we have a lot of international companies, technology speaking, based on Guadalajara. So we have like this this particular behavior or that.

Yeah. Now, if I had it right, you went to the Technical University in Monterrey, which is world famous. And from my understanding, most people that go there are setting off for a technical career. Here you are as a sales leader. Tell us more about, about that. What, what got you into that school? Did you have another path in your mind that you were going to take as your career?

Yeah, sure. That's a good point because I understood when I was finishing the school, I developed some skills, but not technical skills, right? So one of my, my, my first jobs that I had was in technology. So I needed to learn because I wasn't an engineer. So I had a good, very good colleagues, engineers. So I am trying to learn about that part, you know, the technical part embedded with the sales part. So. From my perspective and talking with some colleagues, sometimes it's better for a salespeople trying to get better knowledge and trying to be aware of that technology. Everything is happening so fast. So you need to be there. You need to be aware of that. When you are, where you are working with colleagues, and for example, you are going to make some demo or something like that, if you understand 100%, it's going to be easier for you because sometimes maybe some engineers, not everybody, doesn't, doesn't have the skills to sell, right? So you need to be like, this mix is very interesting. So that was my experience. Right now, obviously, this way that we sell right now, it's totally different 3 years ago, 6 years ago, 8 years ago, because we didn't have AI, right? Today, today is fantastic because we can track everything about cold calling, outbound, inbound, everything related with the messages. So right now, data and business and this combination, it's very interesting for the people that are in the sales world because you have more information. You are having better engagement with the companies. Information and you are going to plan, in my perspective, a better way to do this approach for companies.

Yeah. I'd love to get in, get deeper into that in a second. Before I, before I go there, I'd love to get your perspective on building sales teams, how you hire, and then also kind of put it all together as we talked about the big 3 cities, you know, what kind of sales talent between, you know, SDRs and software selling and things like that, you know, how you might build the team and what should we know about some of these cities in terms of talent?

Yeah, good question. So for example, in my experience building the teams, sales teams here in Mexico, talking about only in Mexico, sometimes we found very good talent, technical talent, for example, in Guadalajara, in that part of the the country. In the north, maybe it's going to be a little bit more aligned with nearshoring, with cross-border, because they are very close to US, right? So they have a better engagement with the culture. And also the language, sometimes it's better in the north of the region, because they are very, very close to US, they have family in US, they are back and forth with US and Mexico. So they have like that style. So sometimes you need to improve some skills for the center and the eastern region of the country in terms of that. But on the other hand, you can find a very good talent in three of these big cities that we have. And obviously I am not saying the other part of the country is not aware about the good talent. Yes. But in my experience, in the companies that I've been working, and obviously in the hiring process, recruiting process, we find very good talent in this triangle that I mentioned. So these are the skills that maybe we can find and also the people that we prefer to do this hiring process.

Yeah. You know, in the US for many, many years, we kind of had this SDR, would do the outreach, kind of book the meeting. And then we have the, uh, you know, account executive maybe paired with a sales engineer. And then, you know, if you need the big gun, you bring in, you know, the executive, you know, later. When you're selling in with a team in Mexico to Mexico clients, do you build it in a similar way? Um, and then maybe you could also talk about what the sales structure used to look like. And then now with AI, what it might look like today.

Yeah, sure. Sometimes, um, depends on the project, but maybe we can have like, uh, one experience that I have when we introduce a specific technology in Mexico, they go, go-to-market strategy. We needed to put it in, in, I believe in 3 levels. We need to get the awareness of the brand, right? Because it's a new brand or a new technology is going to be in Mexico. We need, we need people to develop and have a lot of contacts in order to have many connections and promote organically speaking, right? Because sometimes you need to invest with marketing efforts, but you need to build the basis that you are going to settle down the sales team. SDR, BDR, account executive, BDM sometimes. Because you need it sometimes to decide if you are going to approach and your ICP, your ideal customer profile, is going to be small and medium, maybe you are going to attack with these first two figures that I mentioned. And if you are going to attack a business and top companies, maybe you can have those resources in the top of the pyramid, maybe people with a little bit more experience, maybe people with more networking, making business maybe from the past. So my recommendation is trying to have this balance between, right? Because you need openers, you need like people who run the whole process, the sales process, and also you have specialists in the top that maybe you can assign on specific projects. And specific accounts. And also you have, I believe, the balance that you needed.

Yeah. And how about some of the sales tools? You know, the common ones I hear about in the US, HubSpot, GoHighLevel, Salesforce, of course. Are there ones that you prefer and maybe how do you think about that? Or is there maybe like an internal company, domestic company in Mexico that's a competitor to those?

Yeah, in my experience, I managed Salesforce, HubSpot. I believe those are the main tools that we use in order to manage the pipeline, manage the forecast funnel, administrate all the efforts that we have at contacts and that sales process. I love the tools that maybe we can use for the sales process because right now it's better to have that information in some place, right? Because you need to make decisions, you need to see what is happening, you need to see how is moving forward, why is not moving forward. So it's better to have this kind of tools because I recommend for all my team members and all the companies that I've been working, it doesn't, it doesn't have to be the biggest and the most expensive tool that you needed. You need to have one. Maybe we can start with one small and medium tool that we can buy, or maybe we can have our— right now we have different options with AI. So, but my recommendation is always to do this because it's better to have this follow-up for all the sales team members and obviously for myself.

Yeah. AI is, you know, as you said, very, very exciting, especially for sales. Tell us more about how you're thinking about it. And obviously, you know, the answer you might have today might be different tomorrow, but you know, uh, what are, what are some of the tools that you're using that you've seen your, your sales team use?

Yes. So we are, as a technological company, we have our proprietary AI tool for our colleagues and our customers. This is, this is one of the best options that we have, but in the market, We have found different AI tools like Claude, like other ones that maybe you can have to make the old presentations that we call right now the PowerPoint presentations. We call old right now, and you can manage everything with another in between video with between all the images with creating right now. I remember in the past, not too far, 3 years, 4 years ago, You spend maybe, if you are a very good PowerPoint profiler, you spend maybe 30 minutes or 45 minutes creating a deck for some company. Right now, you can do it in 3 minutes.

Yeah.

So it's totally different. You don't spend too much time on that, right? You have more time to dig and analyze everything about your customer or prospect. So you have a lot of options right now. And also if we, we move a little bit more for the inbound and outbound sales teams, you have this opportunity to create new pitches, new messages, testing A/B, uh, you can go and measure what is happening, what is this the best way to contact. So everything I believe it's around data, right? Everything's around data right now.

Yeah, that's amazing. We spent a lot of time on this call in Mexico and now, you know, the infrastructure. I want to shift to cross-border. Yamo, from my understanding, is an Indian-based company, and then you've also built teams kind of all over Latin America. So I'd love to get your take on, you know, where, you know, we're all kind of the same as people and where some of these cultural differences might be pretty different.

Yeah, totally. So we have this amazing project and the opportunity to hire and recruit people for all the Latin American countries because we have different kinds of teams, right? We have operations, we have support, we have sales, and we have a specialist compliance people in every single country in Latin America. Talking about salespeople, yes, it's different, the profile that we have. For example, when you mention and ask me, What are the conditions maybe, or maybe some advantages from Mexico North versus another? I can say, for example, right now we have a very good surprise in Argentina that people are very good technology speaking. They have very good labs, very good clusters in terms of technicians and everything, the technical skills. And in Colombia, very good. People in sales because, you know, Colombians are very good in terms of speaking, pitching, making relationships and everything related with that. For example, in Chile, we have people that are a little bit more aligned with the process because Chile is more formal, like Mexico, for example. Sometimes you need to be aware of that, all the sales process step by step. You need to build that. In Brazil, Brazil, it's a huge, a huge market. It's totally different versus other countries in Latin America, but it's interesting because they have everything. They have very good salespeople, pitching, technical people, but they have a very good spirit in order to have the best way to do everything very, very fast. So this is, this is a little bit different. And also, for example, in Central America, we have people that are this combination between big with Colombians and maybe with Argentinians that they are processing everything. And the recruiting and the hiring process, it's a little bit easier for us because they are very close to Mexico. The language sometimes it's similar versus some wording in Colombia, wording in Argentina, wording in Brazil that you need to obviously understand because sometimes Even though when you are interviewing somebody, sometimes you need to be careful to read some words. So you need to be aware of that.

Yeah. Obviously Mario, your English is fully advanced. When you're interviewing for your Latin America team, and I'm kind of interested because most people I talk to from Latin America, they'll say, you know, like certain countries have harder Spanish to understand than others and, you know, different pacing and so forth. And Do you tend to interview in English because it's like, you know, everyone's kind of starting from a different block, or do you all try to speak your own version of Spanish? And I'd love to get your take on that.

No, practically we need to start in Spanish. And obviously, based on my experience, I know some words, some styles that you need to interview for Colombians, for Argentinians, for Chileans. For Brazilian people, but it's a must for our company right now to interview in English because the official communication language in Yamo, it's English because we have headquarters in India. Also, we have people here in Mexico to support Latin America, but our main headquarters are in India. Our founders are in India, for example. Also, we have an office in California. So this communication needs to be in English. And also, even though we have projects in Latin America, those companies have regional headquarters or central headquarters in Europe or US. So mainly where we are sharing, negotiating in Latin America, everything needs in English, for example. So that's why it's very important for our candidates and our colleagues to to speak a very good English.

Yeah. And I wanted to ask you a little bit about the, you know, Mexico versus India, you know, as there's, I'm sure a lot of similarities, but also some cultural differences. When you maybe have colleagues visit from India, or I don't know if you've had a chance to go to India, what are some things that kind of jump out as interesting observation?

Yeah, it's very interesting. I am not right now planning to visit India because it's, uh, we have a very full agenda and schedule, but we have similar, similar things in common. Spicy food for everyone. So they don't have, they don't have to struggle with the food here in Mexico and vice versa. So we have this very common, common. So, but mainly we have like a similar style. We have, we're very friendly. We're trying to pitch. And speech very, very fast and trying to do something very quick and negotiate. And obviously your best offer pricing, you need to discount. And so I believe those are similar, our cultures. So we are aligned on that. That's why I believe we have a very good match, not only with Mexico, I believe with some countries in Latin America, Colombia are similar with our culture in terms of what kind of behavior, food, and experiences and everything like that. So when, when, when our colleagues come here to Mexico and we can visit, join visits with customers or prospects, they are, they feel very comfortable because this is like a similar environment that they can experience.

That's great. That's great. As we start to wind down the show, I just want to have, talk about some, some fun stuff here. You've spent a lot of time in both Monterrey and Mexico City. For those who've never had a chance to visit, but maybe they're going for the first time, what is one food in each of those two cities that you, you have recommend you have to, you have to have it when you go?

Yeah, definitely Mexico City tacos. Obviously the tacos, you have a lot of presentations in every corner. You are going to find tacos. We, we made tacos and quesadillas for everything. So you can find hundreds of presentations, spicy food, different kinds of sauces. You can put everything in a tortilla. And so you can put anything that you want and we call tacos. So we, we are going to have tacos from beef, from seafood, from shrimps, some everything that you have in your mind. In Mexico City, I believe you can try the tacos. In the north of Monterrey, the city of Monterrey. My favorite food is, uh, you know, we call cabrito, you know, it's like a little goat. It's different. They, they cook different. The flavor is a little bit different. There's another thing that they use different kind of tortilla. They made with different flavors and a little bit soft in the flavor versus that Central Mexico. So this is a little bit different. Also in Monterrey, we have a very good people making barbecues, you know, like in US, like when you are going to the, to the stadium and you are going to the parking lot and everybody is, it's making and preparing barbecue. It's like a similar in Monterrey. Everybody, everyone is, uh, is loving to, to get their barbecue in-house or for friends or in events or something like that. It's a little bit different versus Mexico in that part.

I love it. I love the cross-cultural exposure we had today on the show, Mario. We're really lucky to have someone who's had such an eventful life on our podcast.

No, thank you very much for giving this opportunity and trying to talk about experience. I believe this is part of life, trying to share experiences and somebody can have similar experiences, or maybe they can try it. So hopefully we can see you soon and obviously talk about anything that you need.

Absolutely. This is the Nearshore Cafe podcast. Again, our guest today was Mario Oliveros, and our podcast is sponsored by Plug Technologies, plugg.tech. Great way to connect talent from all over Latin America to US companies. I'm Brian Samson, your host. We'll see you next time on the Nearshore Cafe podcast. Next week for a new episode featuring another special guest.