Born in Puerto Rico and raised in the Bronx New York, Eddie Baez was a top-performing sales consultant at IBISWorld industry research, a leading provider of industry intelligence in the US. While at IBISWorld, Eddie achieved the top sales performer of the year award for 3 consecutive years. Currently Eddie is the CEO & Co-Founder for Career Pipe PBC.
Growing up, Eddie experienced firsthand the difficulties of learning the essential skills required for professional B2B sales and the lack of mentors that looked like him in the sales community.
In 2019, Eddie set out to build a top-performing sales program for junior sales talent with his business partner, Scott Hanrahan. They formulated the idea after attending an Enterprise Sales Forum Meetup group in New York. Eddie and Scott realized that there was an enormous gap in the market for junior sales talent with less than 5% of colleges in the US offering a formal sales curriculum.
As a first-generation college graduate himself, Eddie is strongly invested in paying his success forward through the Career Pipe mission. As a social enterprise, Career Pipe’s goal is to lead underserved young adults to financial independence by training them to become the best sales professionals in the US. For now, they are focusing their efforts in NYC.
We reached out to Eddie to learn more about his founder’s journey, Career Pipe, and the work that lies ahead in building diverse teams and inclusive sales cultures.
CFW: Tell us a bit more about what inspired you to start Career Pipe.
EB: When I started my sales career, I didn’t have a single person within my family or immediate circle of friends that held professional sales roles. In middle school, my counselor had suggested the career path because they felt that I had the gift of gab. I took my counselor seriously and, after college, I started my first sales job.
The first year was rough. It felt like I was making a million mistakes. I turned to outside resources for assistance, and eventually I picked up a sales book from our office library. I realized something simple - that I could learn how to be a great salesperson simply by reading and studying the work of successful people and applying those lessons with discipline and diligence. A couple of folks at my company noticed my determination and decided to invest in my professional career as my mentors, which helped me find my “sales identity.”
There is no archetype for sales. However, most of the sales floors in the country are rather homogeneous. As someone who felt like they didn’t fit in, having confidence in my own voice and fighting imposter syndrome was a daily struggle.
After transitioning into my second sales role, I gained confidence in my sales voice and identity and finally found the guts to be ok with being different. It lit a fire under me, though: I figured if I could make it so that no one else had to feel like an outsider, that would be my greatest accomplishment. Fast forward to Career Pipe where Scott and I developed a strategy to make that dream a reality. We decided to create a platform that would develop the next generation of sales professionals in a more inclusive way.
Career Pipe is for 21-year-old me, the Bronx Kid that wasn’t sure what to do after college. The same kid that would have never found out enterprise sales would be his life’s calling if he hadn’t been so lucky. We educate new college graduates of all backgrounds on this field so that, if they want, they can begin on a career path in sales with intentionality.
CFW: What is Career Pipe focused on now, and what’s your vision for the future?
EB: Career Pipe is currently focused on building new relationships with NYC sales teams that are looking for top performing entry level sales professionals. With the renewed spark of DE&I initiatives across the country and the enormous gap in the NYC marketplace, we want to fill as many of those open roles as possible with fresh and diverse sales talent.
The big picture vision is to replicate the success of our program in NYC across other metropolitan areas while building excitement about sales as a career path for young students. Ultimately, we want to imbue students with the confidence to intentionally pursue a career in sales with a program that will demystify the profession and grant our graduates a path towards financial independence and more comfortable lifestyles for them and their families.
CFW: What services does Career Pipe offer to companies?
EB: Career Pipe provides sales teams with salespeople who have been screened for and trained in the hard and soft skills necessary for success in an entry level role. Our Career Pipe scholars are recent graduates and young alumni, primarily financial aid recipients from CUNY & SUNY schools. 60% of our scholars identify as people of color and 62% identify as women.
By working with Career Pipe, clients can expect to achieve expanded workforce demographic diversity, decreased cost to hire and train, and increased employee satisfaction and retention rates. We provide these benefits by taking the time to personally screen candidates for grit, coachability, elevated commitment to the sales track, and a passion for working with people. Once they are accepted into our program, candidates undergo a rigorous 5-week course aimed at teaching them the sales skills, like tech stack knowledge and cold call training, that they will need to be ready to go on day 1.
CFW: What do you love about running Career Pipe?
EB: Career Pipe’s small class sizes help us connect with students one-on-one and ensure that they are grasping the materials. They also afford us the ability to connect with our scholars in an agile environment and enable them to constantly challenge each other in the classroom.
To be able to pay it forward is something I am immensely grateful for. Once you have accomplished your goals in sales, your role can very easily evolve into just working for a paycheck. At Career Pipe, I get the opportunity to help young adults to start building those goals and dreams, and I am able to guide them through their new careers. This is extremely rewarding work, and I am thrilled to be playing a small part in helping the next generation of sales professionals and leaders.
CFW: As an accomplished salesperson, you’ve won various company awards and have been featured in a variety of sales industry events. What makes you successful?
EB: What made me successful was the determination to become someone my family and friends could be proud of and to give myself and my loved ones the financial freedom that we lacked growing up. I grew up in a single parent home in NYC with a superhero mom that battled cancer and won, only to have to fight another battle, raising my brother and I. My mom has always been my cheerleader and has made every sacrifice imaginable to try and breathe life into my dreams, even at the expense of her own. That was a pretty common theme for a kid in the Bronx growing up in the ‘90s. Unfortunately, it is still a prevalent theme for many of the people from my community.
When I earned an opportunity to work at a large corporation, I was determined to not have my past dictate my future. I’ve learned that life is what you make it, and that, in sales, you get out what you put in. In the beginning it was about working hard — outworking the person next to me, and the person next to them. The real success came when I matched that unrelenting work ethic with the concept of working smart and driving towards my goals every day. In my opinion, success is both a mindset and a daily habit, and one I never allowed myself to neglect practicing. When you work like there is no plan B, destiny has no choice but to let you push forward.
CFW: There is a lot of DEI and ERG chatter in the marketplace today. Based on what you’re seeing in the market, are companies actually backing that talk up with financial investments to diversify their sales teams? What tends to be the reaction to your pitch?
EB: We have seen mixed results from different companies. However, the one trend we have seen to be constant throughout the process is that startups and midsized companies have more serious DEI initiatives than their larger counterparts. They have also been the market leaders in investment and follow through with hiring across the board. Though the larger enterprises have seemingly endless resources, we sometimes see a disparity between their desire to participate in DEI hiring initiatives and their willingness to execute on those goals. That being said, there are definitely large organizations that we have seen devote themselves fully at every level to attract, retain and build infrastructure to support diverse talent. Startups and Mid-sized companies just seem to be more agile with the execution. Almost everyone we talk to has nothing but positive things to say about the pitch, but the follow through sometimes gets lost in translation.
CFW: How far away are we from a future where sales teams look like the population at large?
EB: I am extremely optimistic about what the future holds, both for Career Pipe and for the sales community. We are constantly hearing from companies that their clients are looking to them to have more inclusive sales teams that resemble their staff and the communities they work with. Companies everywhere are looking to their vendors for guidance from sales professionals who understand their ecosystems and the diversity that exists in their own backyards. Internally, companies across all industries also benefit from greater team performance, innovation, creativity and problem-solving as their teams become more diverse and inclusive.
We have also observed a greater sense of urgency for building diverse teams in the wake of the civil unrest that transpired after the tragic murder of George Floyd last year, and the conversations around discrimination and inequality that have followed. This was an important moment in our country’s history and one that became paramount for Career Pipe. We began to see companies everywhere become more aware of their social responsibility towards their employees of color and to the various minority groups that work for or with them. I still think it will be at least 5-10 years before many companies truly adopt a diversity mindset and have their idealism matched by their actions and investments. Therefore, it is our unwavering commitment to see our mission through and do our best to usher in a new generation of sales professionals to build that future for sales teams everywhere.
CFW: This is your first startup. What was something about launching Career Pipe that was different from what you expected?
EB: I think the biggest shock for me was the number of people who were willing to help, volunteer and dedicate time to our mission. Within weeks of starting the company, we had people join our board, sign up to mentor the students, provide coaching and interview prep, and help us enhance our curriculum. Going into it, I never imagined that there would be this many amazing people dedicated and willing to help others to the degree that I’ve seen. Our Career Pipe team and volunteers are some of the best people I have had the honor and pleasure of working with!
To learn more about Career Pipe and their mission, visit their website here. If you’d like to connect with Eddie directly, please reach out to us at careersteam@cfwcareers.com, and we’ll make the connection.