Fernando Lopez, MBA 06 – Transforming the Way We Think About Sales

The OneHaas alumni podcast is back for its seventh season and it’s kicking off with a special guest — Fernando Lopez, Sales Director at Conviva. 

Originally from Mexico City, Fernando moved to the U.S. during the first dot com boom as a software developer and engineer. But the idea of building a business has always run deep in Fernando’s family. After falling in love with the San Francisco area, he decided to pursue his MBA at Haas where he found his passion for sales. 

Fernando and host Sean Li chat about the art of sales, his experiences at tech giants like IBM and HP, why sales has historically been undertaught in business schools and how Fernando is working to change that. 

*OneHaas Alumni Podcast is a production of Haas School of Business and is produced by University FM.*

Episode Quotes:

The origin of his passion for engineering and building things

“I was told stories about me having like one of those musical boxes next to my crib and I would reach out and take it and start disassembling it and like trying to figure out how it worked. And I've always, still to this day, I like building things and like figuring out how they work.”

His advice for facing rejection in sales

“You can look at it from a mathematical point of view, right? Let's say your conversion rate on reaching out to people is 5%, right? That means you need to make 100 calls to get five people to engage with you. When you're going through them, you're going to get 95 rejections. You might as well just go through them. And don't take it personally, right? Like people are not rejecting you because of you. They're rejecting you because maybe they're busy.

Maybe they don't need what you're offering.”

One of the important lessons he’s learned in his career

“Many times, it is not about trying to convince someone what you say or so on…It's about asking the right question. And the same thing applies to leadership in many ways, right? Like, when you're trying to lead a team and you're giving them the answer, you're like, ‘Oh, this is how you should do it. Let me try to convince you this is the way.’ You're not as effective as when you ask the right questions and they figure it out. So to me, that’s really important in sales, in leadership, in life in general, right? Like trying to figure out not what's the right answer. Yeah, share that answer. What's the right question? So that whoever you're working with can figure out what's the right answer for them.”

The critical role of sales in business

“Not a lot of people go into sales right after business school. But I was sharing this with someone recently, eventually you do end up in sales. Like if you go into consulting and you make it to partner, you're in sales now. You know what I mean? If you make it to the C suite, like if you're the CEO, you're in sales.”

Show Links:

• LinkedIn Profile
• The Qualified Sales Leader: Proven Lessons from a Five Time CRO by John McMahon
• Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
• Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter by Liz Wiseman

Support this podcast at — https:/