155: Leon Baumann is a True Client Champion at Dell Technologies

0:08 Scott Ingram: You're listening to the Sales Success Stories podcast, where we deconstruct world-class sales performers to provide insights and strategies to help you improve. To learn more, visit us at top1.fm. Here's your host, Scott Ingram.

0:24 Scott Ingram: Today on the Sales Success Stories podcast, my guest is Leon Baumann. Leon is a Senior Account Executive and Client Champion at Dell Technologies. Welcome to the show, Leon.

0:34 Leon Baumann: Thank you very much, Scott. Great to be here.

0:35 Scott Ingram: I'm so looking forward to digging into this. You sent me, I think it was 14 pages of notes. So, we've got lots of depth that we're gonna go into. I know this is gonna be a blast. I know we'll come back to this, but I wanted to just upfront give a shout out to John Westman, who introduced us. And again, he's gonna come up as a topic here, but let's kick things off first, like we always do, with some immediate value and talk through the top 3 things that you believe have contributed the most to your success in sales. What are those?

1:07 Leon Baumann: Sure, Scott. And I can't wait to tell a story later about preparedness. You talked about that 14 pages of notes that goes back to like 30 years ago in terms of preparedness. But the top 3 reasons that I think I've been successful in my career is first and foremost, my focus on the customer and putting the customer at the center of everything that I'm trying to do across my team. And on a day-to-day basis, thinking of them first. And then second, since I am a part of a very large company, I am a part of a very large sales team. So I've got to focus on my team almost just as much as I focus on my customer in terms of getting the most from what we can collectively do together. And then there's myself, you know, how do I best focus on getting the best of myself on a day-to-day basis? So I think those are the 3 kind of categories: customer, team, and then myself.

1:54 Scott Ingram: Nice, nice. And I want to go into each of these in some more detail, but you remind me of a conversation that I had with Carson Heady on the podcast, and he talked about the same thing sort of being the golden triangle, right? And just balancing those interests, like finding that sweet spot between, you know, how do I help the customer win? How do I make sure that it's good business for my organization? And how do I make sure that I'm getting what I need out of the relationship? So, I think, I think that might apply here, but I think you put focus on the customer at the top of the list for the reason. You want to talk about that?

2:25 Leon Baumann: Yeah, yeah, certainly. And it actually is a little bit twist on that golden triangle. When I think about myself, I think about what I need from myself versus what I can give to myself. And I don't know if there's a nuance there to what you're referring to, but that's certainly the myself aspect of what I was saying as a third is, you know, and we'll talk about it a little bit more in terms of that reliance on self. But just as a point of clarification, at least of how I'm thinking about it.

2:48 Scott Ingram: Yeah, love it.

2:49 Leon Baumann: All right.

2:49 Scott Ingram: Focus on the customer.

2:50 Leon Baumann: Focus on the customer. Yeah. So I'll probably talk a lot about this today, but I have found success through putting focus on my customer's success over my own and looking for every possible way to personalize that focus on success within my customer. We'll talk later about style and I'll bring one of those elements up now, but I think this is the second T in the Challenger Methodology of TQIC. Tailor and Take Control. The tailor element is the personalization element, as well as what we'll talk about is the client champion and what John Westman's doing. We need to realize that we're not companies selling to companies. And I know, you know, you've had guests talk about this before, that even in a B2B world, we're really people selling to people. So it's a people-to-people world. Of course, I represent a large company with a broad set of solutions, and I focus on a couple of very large companies that, you know, have very large appetite for technology, which is great. But at the end of the day, I need to tailor my approach to the specific person that I'm working with inside that company. And what can I do to help that individual be successful? And if they can be successful and I can help them, then, you know, ultimately that was going to lead to my success. So I think that's part of the approach of what I try to think about in my customer success over my own. In fact, I remember a project that I did with a customer. That, you know, the executive at the time, I was kind of in the hot seat, but, you know, years and years later, we're still good friends. We started a deployment that was kind of shaky. We went too fast in the beginning. We both knew it, both, you know, Dell and my customer knew that we were trying to go too fast, but they had a very accelerated timeline to get started. So we jumped in and there were a number of times almost every morning as we're going through that deployment that I would be in my customer's office and we'd be going through what happened the night before. And we kept trying to get better and better and better, but it was when I realized that the best thing for me was instead of focusing on what Dell or my customer was able to get out of the deployments the night before, it was what could I be doing to help that executive field questions from his peers across the business? And it was, how do I get him to be successful through all of this? That I think turned it for me. And then, years down the road, we kept doing more and more business together, that deployment kind of smoothed out and we didn't have to meet every morning to go through the previous night's deployments. So that, again, talking about it before, but that focus on the customer success is a big part of what I've done in my career. And I think every time I do that, the results speak for themselves.

5:25 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So interesting. I mean, one of the things that stood out for me in the first conversation that I had with John Westman and some of the work that he's doing is He sort of saw this theme. I mean, we're doing a lot of complementary work. He's also really looking at very, very strong top performers and the commonalities. And he kind of called out this, you know, they have long-lasting personal relationships with customers that they maybe haven't done business with in years. And what's ironic here, just before you and I got on this call, I talked with a friend of mine who's a former executive of a client that we did tons and tons of work with. With years ago. And all it is, it's just a friendship at this point because of that level of trust and because of just everything that we've built together over years.

6:07 Leon Baumann: Yeah, I totally agree. In a similar sense, you know, that specific customer that I'm referencing, I had the opportunity to meet his son and become a mentor to his son who wants to get into sales. He's in college right now. And I had an opportunity to catch up with his son yesterday on, you know, some of the things that he's looking for in his upcoming internship and interviewing for internships. You know, it's the holiday season. I've had a ton of back and forth texts with, you know, customers that I haven't worked with in a long time. But, you know, hey, thinking of you. Happy holidays. Or they're reaching out to me saying, how's the family? So, yeah, when you work that intensely with people and you treat them well and make them feel like, you know, they're important because they are, you know, the best part about it is the friendships that come from it even more than the business outcomes.

6:50 Scott Ingram: Brilliant. Well, I'm probably most excited to dig into your second point, which is focus on the team. Talk about that. What does that mean?

6:56 Leon Baumann: Yeah. So again, I work in a company of over 150,000 people, right? Over $100 billion in business on an annual basis or annual revenue. And, you know, I only have 2 accounts, very large accounts, but at any point in time, my team could consist of, you know, 20 to 100 people in terms of what we're trying to do for those customers. So focusing in, we mentioned John Westman before, a big part of the Client Champion. Kind of movement is focused on trust. So, you know, being able to bring trust to your relationship with your customers and offering trust with the expectation that by offering trust, you know, you'll get trust in return. Team selling is very much focused on trust. It's, you know, being able to trust in your people, knowing that they can trust you, that you're going to do everything that you can to help them be successful. I mean, I may be the quarterback to my account as the account executive, But I can't score a single touchdown unless my linemen, my running backs, my receivers are all just as invested as I am in my customer success. And at times that takes a lot of inspiration to get their attention and to maintain their focus on my accounts, knowing that they get pulled into, you know, a lot of other AEs' accounts as well. But, you know, my success is based upon their commitment to me and what I'm doing for my customers. So it's kind of an interesting and exciting opportunity to, you know, lead a group of people without any of them working for you.

8:22 Scott Ingram: Yeah. And we are going to come back to this topic because this is something I've observed here in the last year or so, that this is such a core ingredient to real enterprise sales success. And there's just not a lot of resources or conversation about it. So I'm going to put a pin in that. Let's talk about kind of this last piece of focusing on yourself.

8:40 Leon Baumann: Yeah. So again, it's really self-reliance that I'm referring to. And it's not arrogance, but confidence. I think a big part of it is recognizing that to be successful in sales, no matter what, you need to have a growth mindset with this idea of I'm never going to stop getting better at what I'm doing. I'm never going to stop learning and, you know, having a love for learning. I remember back in college, I was very focused on getting good grades only to get a good job. And it wasn't… I wasn't in college to like learn. I was a mechanical engineering degree. And I didn't necessarily love learning at the time. I just wanted to get what I needed to be able to get good grades in that class and go down to a good job. But then, after college, I started to get more interested in learning when I was in my professional world. And I thought about going back to get my MBA in a full-time program. But I got some recommendations from a mentor of mine that said, what do you want to do with that MBA? Is it really worth the investment? I'm sure it could have been, but I took a path of instead just trying to learn and grow every day by reading books and taking training when I could be available. But that idea of growth mindset to never stop getting better, I mean, I equate it back to when I was younger and I was passionate about football and I just never stopped working on trying to get faster or stronger or better. And then now equating that kind of sports method or metaphor over into sales, I think they very much align that for us to be successful in sales, we need to think about ourselves as a professional athlete that spends time every day, whether you're a golfer perfecting your swing or an athlete or a basketball player working on their shot. We need to work on what it takes to be attentive to our customers, understanding our customers, in engaging in that process to truly be a student of what our customers are trying to do and what our profession means. So that growth mindset is the first part of kind of focus on self. And then, as I mentioned before, personal confidence. I attribute a lot of my personal confidence to the summer I spent in Fort Knox, Kentucky, in between my senior year in high school and my freshman year in college in basic training, just 17 years old. Thrown in the middle of something that I wasn't familiar with at all, became in charge of our entire platoon. For those of you that have been in the military, you know what I mean. You get very little sleep. It's constant stress and pressure. You're always getting yelled at by your drill sergeants. But I had to realize at that time, being 17 years old, that I needed to be accountable to myself and accountable to my platoon. And even though I wasn't able to continue on in service because of a football injury, I realized in that 12 weeks that there'd be very little things in life that I couldn't get through because of what I was able to get through in that summer. And I carried this into my college career in terms of being able to study and time management and leadership opportunities. I've since carried it into my professional career. And I think it's done a lot for me in terms of stress management and being able to get through tough situations. And it gave a lot to me, but it also gave me a tremendous amount of respect and appreciation for all of those that have served in our armed forces and really appreciate what they go through for us. I've only got a little taste and it did great things for me in terms of truly being able to rely upon myself no matter what.

12:06 Scott Ingram: Yeah, great, great stuff. So let's contextualize this a little bit and just talk about what is your role? I mean, you hinted at it a little bit, but really kind of walk us through what, like, what is that day-to-day? And then also kind of quantify your results for folks who may be coming to the podcast as new listeners. I only interview number 1 and top 1% level individual contributors. I know that's a little bit tough to quantify in an organization as complex as Dell, but talk us through all of that.

12:34 Leon Baumann: Sure. So as you mentioned, Enterprise Account Executive for Dell Technologies. I've been in technology sales. I'm a bit of an old man. I've been in technology sales for 23 years and 25 years in sales in general. I actually got in sales right out of college. In college, it wasn't a business degree or a sales degree. But it came out with a mechanical engineering degree. And today I lead a very large team of great salespeople and technical resources that, you know, I get to help me focus on my customer to drive opportunities and help them be successful in what they need to do through their use of technology. I think I got to the top not just in the last year and in the last half, but over a sustained period of time. And we can talk about that for doing all the things that I talked about before, right? Focus on customer, focus on team, focus on myself. But most importantly, and one of my senior vice presidents talks about this and I love it, do the right thing every day and good things will happen. So, you know, every single day, what can I do to make sure that it's the right thing for my customer, knowing that the more of those things that stack up, good things will come? As I mentioned before, focusing on my customer success over my own. And then, you know, the foundation of trust, both with my customer and my team, I think is, you know, talked about it before, but, you know, you can't undervalue trust in our role, whether it's, again, engaging with your customer or engaging with your team. So that's kind of what about my role and how I got to number 1 over the years. I wouldn't say that I'm number 1. As you mentioned, we've got, you know, probably over 35,000 sellers inside of Dell. So I've been successful. I don't know if I'd qualify for your show as being number 1, but I've certainly been successful. And in fact, over the last 6 years since I came from EMC during the merger versus the Dell side, but since the last 6 years since we came together to be Dell Technologies, I've been fortunate to average over 140% of my quota in those years. And last year finished up a little bit over 200%. And we're just about now going to wrap up our year, our current year next month in January. And things look like it should be pretty good this year. So in some context to that, my team and I delivered about $130 million to the business last fiscal year. And in the last few years have delivered over half a billion dollars to the business. So big accounts, big company, big projects, and it's been a lot of fun to be a part of it.

14:58 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

14:58 Leon Baumann: Yeah.

14:59 Scott Ingram: Big results and consistent results. I mean, that's the other thing that I kind of look for. It's really funny. It also kind of speaks to the generosity in this community. I had somebody that had previously been on the podcast refer me to the new number 1. Who he ended up finishing number 2 by a little bit, was like, hey Scott, you got to talk to this guy. I'm like, yeah, but you did it for 2 or 3 years in a row and this is his first time. So for me, it's not just that, hey, you won the sales lottery and you had one great year. It's pretty… it's stringing together successive years and consistently overperforming. I mean, that's what I want to learn from, right? You know, maybe I'll find some people, maybe we'll have a sales lottery episode where I can talk to people about, hey, how do you get lucky?

15:43 Leon Baumann: Right, the one-hit wonders.

15:44 Scott Ingram: Yeah, but I don't think it's replicable, right? Because that's why they are the one-hit wonders. I would much rather be U2 versus the, you know, shoot, Dexys Midnight Runners. Yeah, exactly, exactly. I had multiple one-hit wonders running through my head and they got all muddled.

15:59 Leon Baumann: So yeah, well, and to that point, I mean, like you, Scott, I, you know, every year you start over again at zero. I think it was a Yogi Berra or Babe Ruth quote that was, you know, yesterday's home runs don't win today's games. So we always need to be thinking about what to do next and how to better support our customer, you know, deliver something for our customer. And, you know, the more games that you can string home runs together, you know, you can end up being a Babe Ruth. But, you know, going out and hit one shot out of the park, it might be exciting for that moment, but you've got to come out and, you know, do the same thing the next night.

16:36 Scott Ingram: Yeah. And here we are, right? So, I'm, as we release this episode, I'll be at zero. You'll be a month away from your zero reset. I know a lot are on kind of that February 1 fiscal year. So, here we are starting again and it's okay. Like, let's get ready, kind of game on. I want to come back to, you talked about, as you were describing your role, this idea of, you know, you're leading large numbers of people, but the reality is None of those people report to you. And like I kind of alluded to before, I had this epiphany here over the course of the last year that of these top-performing enterprise sellers that I interview, so much of the work is this internal work. It's the internal team selling. And there's just, there's not really, although you mentioned one that I'll let you talk about, there's not really a book about that. There's not a lot of content. There's a lot of, we all had to figure this out on our own. What have you figured out? Like, what is your approach? How do you manage all of that internal work with dozens or hundreds of people who don't report to you?

17:46 Leon Baumann: Yeah. Yeah. And we talked about it a little bit before, but I will make a reference and a call-out and a recommendation for a book called Leading Without Authority. By Keith Ferrazzi. I read it earlier this year, and it's not necessarily about leading a sales team, but it's about working with people that don't work for you and, you know, trying to get them to have a common set of goals. And maybe they start with a conflicting set of goals, but how do you, you know, align to them to create a greater outcome by working together? I think that's a big part of what we do in large enterprise in team selling is getting the people around us to have a common perspective on what we need to be doing and how we need to be doing it. And of course, for me, it's all about how do we best help the customer. So I need as many people around me thinking the same way about those same customers. And it's, you know, it's a lot of organization. I think I contribute some of this back to my mechanical engineering degree is, you know, being a process-oriented person so that my team can recognize a consistent process of working with me. In my accounts. It's aggressive communication, and I don't mean aggressive in a bad way, but by trying to overcommunicate in terms of what's going on so that people are always informed. I have a team call on each one of my accounts every week with a very consistent process of updates of what's going on within the projects and the campaigns and the initiatives that we need to be responsible for. And everybody on my team knows that, you know, whether it's Tuesday morning or Thursday morning, You know, they're going to get the updates at that point in time, but they're also going to be expected to contribute at that point in time in terms of some of the activities that they have responsibility for. It's that trust factor that I mentioned before. And everyone on my team knows, even though I might push them at times out of their comfort zone or ask them to do something that, you know, they might not have the time to do in the timeframe that we need it, they also know they could rely on me in much of the same way. If and when they ever need something from me. So it's, you know, it's building that relationship. It's communicating as much as possible, and it's having a consistent kind of goal of helping the customer and recognizing that that's what our role is, is to help our customer. That I think has helped me.

20:03 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Well, you've talked about your engineering background. Let's flesh out the origin story a little bit more. How did you make that leap and get into sales initially?

20:13 Leon Baumann: I think it was a realization that I didn't want to be an engineer. Growing up, I loved the idea of what engineering meant, being able to build things and kind of create a way of the world working. But while I was in college, I had the opportunity, a fantastic opportunity to have 3 great internships. But I think all of them taught me why I didn't want to be an engineer. So my first one, I got to work for a summer at GE Aircraft Engines. But I spent like all summer in a lab running tests to understand the hardness and quality of different metal alloys that could be used within the engine. So, I know not all engineering is spending hours and hours in a lab testing metals, but that was my experience. And then, I spent a summer with Ford as an internship driving Explorers and F-150s with a computer connected to the transmission trying to figure out what pressures were required under what conditions to deliver a smooth shifting experience. To the driver, spending hours on the test track over in Dearborn, Michigan, and weeks in the desert of Western Arizona in high temperatures, seeing how that transmission responded. But probably the most exhilarating, my final experience as an engineer-to-be, was the summer I spent with 3M working on innovative ideas on how to get glue and sand onto paper as fast as possible while delivering the right quality and cost levels. Scott, I spent a whole summer making sandpaper, which while it sounds exciting, great, sounds exciting. You know, I got to work with great people, so that was a good part of it. But I realized that I needed to do something in a career that brought me closer to kind of the business, working with people. And I quickly realized that I needed to be in a pay-for-performance comp model because I felt that especially through college, I'd outwork my peers. And I kind of had a selfish perspective that I was… if I was going to be outworking my peers, I wanted to be compensated appropriately. And I found sales as an opportunity to do that. So coming out of college, I instead went into a technical sales role. So working with engineers, helping them build machines with my products. It was with the Cutler Hammer division of Eaton, and they had a great training program led by who's now the senior vice president of sales for Eaton. Super smart woman. Certainly one of my best early influences on the idea of sales. And I learned a lot, but I was in the late '90s in the world of operational technology, not information technology. And IT was growing rapidly in the late '90s. And I realized it was a field that I wanted to be in instead of kind of that engineering operational manufacturing background that I had spent some time in school on. So in late '99, I found an opportunity to go work for EMC and I started in tech sales then in early 2000. So it was an exciting opportunity to get into sales a long time ago. It was certainly something I thought about coming out of school versus going into school. But if I really go in the Wayback Machine, my first opportunity in sales was probably when I was 12. I had a paper route. I would sell subscriptions to try to grow my business and grow my route. In fact, I remember my first sales contest. I think I was probably like 13 years old. And if I sold enough new subscriptions to the Wisconsin State Journal, I could win a ticket to a Brewers game in Milwaukee. It was my first Brewers game that I ever got to go to. So I realized at a young age that working hard and setting goals and sometimes getting reward for growing your business would be pretty cool.

23:51 Scott Ingram: Brilliant. So my first attempt didn't land, but what I was thinking was that that sandpaper job probably took a lot of grit. Sorry. You know, they say the pun is the lowest form of humor and I'm totally okay with that.

24:06 Leon Baumann: Oh, I love puns. My daughter is so good with puns. I love them.

24:11 Scott Ingram: Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, so within that context, right? So as you were making that transition and kind of that, those early stages of your career, knowing all that you know now, having all of this experience, if you were going back and starting over again, what would you do differently?

24:26 Leon Baumann: I think I would have started focusing on what I… you and I, you talk about it a lot, and I certainly think about it a lot, that sales is a craft. And, you know, something my class with John Westman that we referred to earlier was, you know, professional selling and sales management. I should have and would have, if I do it over again, focus with more energy in those early days, improving my craft and learning about the true profession of selling as a professional salesperson. I mean, I had read books early on, even had the opportunity to take some training, but it wasn't until the pandemic hit and my kids started virtual school when they closed the schools down that I realized that, you know, hey, I could go do that MBA type of thing that I wanted to do before. Not necessarily sign up for an MBA because I didn't want to take the time, but, you know, taking that virtual selling or that virtual learning opportunity and ended up taking classes from Wharton, Harvard, where I met John, and then Kellogg, all virtual, but, you know, classes very much focused on the profession of sales. And even though by the time I had already been selling for 20 years, there was so much that I learned from kind of that… I'm not going to call it academic, but to refer to it as an academic, academic approach to sales and helping customers and working with customers that, you know, if I would have done that 2 years into my career instead of 20 years into my career, I think I could have been a lot more successful. And I know, you know, I've had the exposure to a number of great college programs that are very much focused on B2B sales. And while I appreciate that foundation of mechanical engineering and the grit that making sandpaper contributed to my long-term career. I think if I would have done it over, I would have thought about, you know, trying to get more engaged from an academic perspective in the profession of sales earlier in my career, either through school or, you know, through some of the classes I've taken recently.

26:21 Scott Ingram: So how would you build that curriculum? Right. If so, you are at the beginning of your career, like, okay, like I'm going to make this investment. What are you doing? Because there's not a lot of like I mean, there are colleges now that do have professional selling programs. So, that's an opportunity. But if you're doing this the way that I would be inclined to do it, which is like, I'm going to build my own, I'm going to kind of structure my own adventure, like, what are those ingredients?

26:47 Leon Baumann: I think it is understanding what it takes to make you as an individual… you and I talked about this before, but you've had so many guests on and you ask you know, somewhat consistent questions, but they all have a different perspective. So within selling, you got to find what it is special about you that's going to appeal to your ability for your customers to want to do business with you. So I think it's, you know, a true understanding of yourself so that you can understand how to use what's best about you to work with other people. Because in sales, it's very much a personal relationship. And if you're not in sales to help people, then you're not going to be, you know, in it very long. So I think it's a little bit of, you know, what are some of the common ways to approach a customer? What are some of the common ways to, you know, their discovery questions and empathetic questions and, you know, inspiring questions and, you know, recognizing that we're here to help our customers. So being able to learn how to operate in that way, and I think there's actually a lot of psychology to it. Organizational psychology of what do our customers have to deal with pressures inside of their organizations. The Phoenix Project is recommended reading for anybody in IT sales to recognize what their customers go through on a day-to-day basis, especially if you've never worked in IT on the customer side of the house. So I think it'd be a curriculum focused on understanding what our customers' business is, what our customers' needs are, And then how do you relate to those people personally and understand the pressure that they're under and the objectives that they're trying to deliver so that you can be a big part of where they're going?

28:30 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So what I heard there was kind of self-discovery, right? Like really digging in and doing some personality work and things like that to understand yourself. There's some business component, right? Like understanding your customer and their business and their environment. And then the psychology element, like understanding the humans that you're going to be interacting with.

28:48 Leon Baumann: Right, right.

28:50 Scott Ingram: I like it.

28:50 Leon Baumann: Yeah. I mean, the business is important, but the great thing about sales, it's the human side of business. And so being able to, to be able to understand that. And again, as an engineer, I had little to no psychology classes, but so much of the reading I do now is around psychology of, you know, organizational psychology, probably more than anything. But yeah, understanding that from, you know, an early on phase of my career or even in college probably would have been a big boost.

29:15 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Is there a standout book on that topic or… oh yeah, that you've taken there?

29:19 Leon Baumann: Yeah, yeah. I mean, really anything by Adam Grant. If I could, you know, go back to school full-time and be an MBA student at Wharton and, you know, study under Adam Grant, that'd be incredible. Give and Take is, you know, certainly one of the first exposures that I had to Adam. But, you know, that idea of, you know, those that are most successful are those that, you know, give of their time more often than not. And don't look to be a taker or even in between, but simply giving out of the generosity of what they're trying to do to help others. So yeah, anything by Adam Grant is a recommended read to anybody that I talk to. I love his podcast. That's probably the second most listened to podcast on my playlist behind yours. So yeah, anything from Adam Grant is something I'd recommend to be able to understand people and how things work and how things happen inside of someone's head.

30:07 Scott Ingram: Brilliant. Brilliant. So, this just came to me. I didn't realize until we just started kind of our final prep for this conversation that you were a fan of the podcast. So, why did John have to introduce me to you and why didn't you raise your hand? And I'm asking this on behalf of the other people who are listening that probably need to step forward and go, okay, yay, I'm here. Like, why didn't that happen?

30:30 Leon Baumann: I really think, and it was hard for me just preparing for today, Scott. I'm used to asking questions. I'm not used to answering questions. I love asking questions and learning about other people versus, you know, to be a guest and to be on this side is, you know, sharing a lot about me and, you know, answering your questions versus asking you questions. And that's not what I'm used to. That's not what I do. I love learning, right? So I love listening to your podcast, but I didn't necessarily want to put or think of myself as the guy on the other side of the desk from you answering your questions because I'm normally the one asking questions. And I don't know if that makes any sense or not, but certainly going through the preparation of what I wanted to do for today and recognizing that, gosh, I don't think anyone's asked me this many questions before. So, John and what he's doing with the Client Movement or the Client Champion Movement and my opportunity to be in on it in the very early stages and learning so much from him and the other people that are involved. You know, and you're right, it's, you know, very much of a how do you learn from and take the characteristics and the things that the top sellers do, you know, and his focus is trying to make sure that if you do that, that you can, you know, wear that badge of a Client Champion and that you've been authenticated as someone who's proven those types of results. But it's, you know, I love, like I said, I love learning about what the great people do, but I never really thought of myself as, you know, someone that might be interesting for your listeners to hear from. And again, the idea that I'm, I'm used to asking questions more than I'm used to answering them.

32:09 Scott Ingram: Love it. Well, so I'm going to call this out because I know you're not the only one that fits this mold. There's somebody else listening to this right now, and, you know, we're just wrapping up a year. If you finished number 1 last year, especially if that's not your first time, like if you've been number 1 the last 2 or 3 years in a row, I need you to set your humility on a shelf for a minute and send me a note. And, you know, it's such an opportunity to kind of pay this forward. The other way I've always thought about it also, because Leon, I'm sure you get lots of people coming to you kind of asking for, hey, you know, how did you do it? I've always thought of this from the guest perspective as mentoring at scale, right? This is an opportunity to have one conversation with me very publicly that you can share with dozens or hundreds of other people who kind of come to you in And the way I use it, because I was on my own episode, I don't know, episode 62, I think is what it was. If you want to listen to my backstory, I create it as a hurdle. Like, hey, I'm happy to spend time with you. I would be glad to grab some time one-on-one. Listen to this first and then come back. And then it's like a weed-out class. Like 90% of those people don't ever come back. Perfect. That saved me a bunch of time.

33:17 Leon Baumann: Right, right. That's a good point. To your point of the mentoring, I do have the opportunity to have a number of relationships like that across Dell. I've been for the last couple of years a guest speaker, or I should say guest teacher in our new hire course as new sellers come into the organization. So that's, you know, opened me up to a lot of different people across the business that I wouldn't normally interact with. And then, you know, through that maintain relationships and they ask me questions all the time. And to your point, now that I think about it, I was asked to do some internal videos a couple of years ago about my sales process and how I manage my business. And, you know, for a while there, as people would come to me and say, hey, Leon, you know, I want to learn more about how you do what you do and, you know, how you operate within your team. I'd send them those videos and I'd say, okay, well, start here. And then, you know, when you have questions after you've listened to that, you know, 20 minutes or so, then, you know, let's schedule some time. So, yeah, it's a good point. And I never really thought about this podcast as an opportunity to do that at a much broader scale.

34:19 Scott Ingram: Perfect. Perfect. All right. So I expect to hear from some more folks and we'll get some more interviews lined up with some great people. So Leon, we call the show Sales Success Stories. What's your favorite sales story?

34:30 Leon Baumann: Yeah, I think it goes back to a number of years ago. I mean, there's, if I think about different elements of my career, again, you know, 22+ years in tech sales, there's a lot of things that I've learned from, but one of my favorites was a few years ago in which I was able to see how what we did had a direct impact on what my customers did for their customers. And in the technology space, at least in my space, in the infrastructure space where I've been mostly, it's like selling things into a customer's data center. You don't necessarily see the relationship between what we're doing for them versus what they do on a day-to-day with their customers. But this was a very large transaction. It had exposure all the way up within their organization as well as mine. And I learned a lot from it because I really got to learn about their business and what it meant for them to deliver the right experience to their customers. So it was probably one of my favorite because it just translated a whole new way for how I operated with my customers to not think about necessarily my relationship with them, but more about their relationship with their customers. And what I could do to help them.

35:42 Scott Ingram: Love that. Love that. From an accomplishment perspective, again, 22 years, lots of success. What are you most proud of?

35:50 Leon Baumann: I think it's just the what I now have become or what I represent today. You know, if I think back, I came from a kind of a low to middle income family. Neither one of my parents had gone to college. And in the hometown that I grew up in, it was more the norm not to graduate and go to college versus graduate high school and go to college. But, you know, as one of the pioneers that did so, And through everything that I've done, I realized that hard work, confidence, and again, that thirst for learning, through those things, my opportunities could be limitless. And I've had the opportunity to build tremendous relationships with customers that, again, have now turned into lifelong friends and volumes and volumes of colleagues that have been coworkers that have now become friends. I'm most proud of the relationships that I've been able to develop over time and doing all that while still being able to have dinner with my family almost every night. I've got 2 kids and I try to be as involved as I can in their school or their sports activities. And I still get to spend time every day with my best friend, my wife of over 20 years. So I've accomplished a lot, but I've not been one that's been on the road. I've got so many peers that especially before the pandemic, they were, you know, gone Monday to Thursday almost every week. I haven't had to do that, and I've still, you know, turned into a pretty successful career by, you know, focusing on the people and, you know, what it meant to work with them and for them.

37:20 Scott Ingram: Yeah, so this absolutely jumped out at me when I was kind of looking through your notes, right? Is just the… like, clearly you've found a way to have some really good balance in your life, right? It's not… you're not killing yourself to make this happen. You're not sacrificing the relationships with your family to have the sales success. Can you talk more about that? And I know there's a piece here where you made a pretty interesting decision, like particularly around the travel component.

37:48 Leon Baumann: Yeah. Yeah. You know, I've had, I've made a very conscious decision to stay an individual contributor, turned down a number of either recommendations for promotion, requests for promotion, or you know, opportunities to go after a sales leadership role. But I always saw it as, you know, if I take that next step, it's going to probably… again, prior to the pandemic, when, you know, sales leadership included a tremendous amount of travel, I saw it as, you know, is this really something that I want to do? I like the idea of helping others. So I like that idea of sales leadership, of being able to help a team. But I didn't want to do so and sacrifice my ability to you know, be there with my kids growing up. You know, my daughter's a freshman in high school playing tennis. So, you know, I was able to get, I think, every one of her home matches in the fall. My son is in baseball. I've had the opportunity to coach him the last couple of years, you know, so that's like just as important to me, if not a lot more than my professional success. So to your point, the balance of being able to do what I need to do when I need to do it from a professional point of view, and do it as well as possible to be successful, but then recognize that, you know, in the evenings I get to spend time with my kids, you know, trying to remember how to do some really hard math that my daughter's now into and I haven't done, you know, 30 years, you know, or being a part of their lives on not just a, you know, regular basis but a daily basis has guided a lot of the decisions I've made professionally.

39:16 Scott Ingram: Yeah, well, why don't we unpack that in a bunch more detail just in terms of, you know, how are you structuring your days and structuring your week. And I know you're a fan of the show, so you know my favorite question to ask is, yeah, your alarm clock goes off, what time does that happen? And I want the blow-by-blow till your head hits the pillow.

39:35 Leon Baumann: Sure. So I am very much an early morning person. You could say I started being an early morning person. I had my paper route when I was 12 years old, but then I kind of fell away from it. But I've become very much of an early morning person, really, to be able to, you know, early on in my career, spend time with my wife because she was a schoolteacher and she was into school early, home from school early, to bed early. So if I ever wanted to see her during the week when we were dating, I had to shift my late hours into the office at 7:00, 8:00, 9:00 at night into the early morning. So my alarm is normally going off at about 4:15, sometimes earlier depending upon what I need to do. I don't often anymore still find myself sleeping at 4:15. But that's kind of when I get started with my day. Immediately, a couple of glasses of water. I want to hydrate immediately and then grab a coffee and head up to my home office. I start by spending some time catching up on email. And I know a lot of your guests talk about eating the frog or have something like their most important thing to do right away in the morning. I, for years, covered a global account. So I'd get a lot of emails and communication coming in overnight from Europe or Asia, either from my own team or from the customer. So, you know, getting up at 4 o'clock, 4:15 in the morning was an easy way to get caught up on some of that overnight global activity. And even today that I don't have that same global account, I've got a lot of people that I work with that are on the West Coast. And being here in Central, you know, there's a lot of activity that still happens, you know, by the time I wrap up and go for dinner with the family at night, or, you know, have dinner with the family at night. So normally start out with some email. And then I have going into each week, I spend time on Fridays kind of going through what my schedule is going to be for the following week, what needs to be done when, and then what my kind of most important actions are every morning. So I come into a morning knowing these are the 3 or 4 things that I need to get done that morning before the day starts. And so, you know, after getting caught up on maybe some overnight email, I'll get into, you know, what the most important actions are for that day. It might be preparing an agenda for a meeting that I've got, a purpose-benefit check for how I'm going to open up a meeting that day. It might be something specific to a meeting that I had a day or two before, but I need to be prepared. So it's spending some time early in the morning doing what I need to do for myself to be prepared for that day's work or something that might be coming up within the next day or two that's got a lot of things to be prepared for. Get some exercise in probably 2 or 3 days a week in that early morning hours. In the spring, summer, and fall, it's either out on my bike if I can get the time or out for a run. And in the winter, it's in the gym. And then, I kind of break to shower and then take my daughter to school by 7:00. So, by 7:30 or so, I'm normally getting my formal day started. And that's a lot of team calls starting the early morning with team calls. Like I mentioned before, I run a call specific to each one of my customers once a week. And then on Friday mornings, my team has a call with me in terms of, you know, everything that they're doing to get me up to speed. And then I, again, on those Friday afternoons, I try to block out time during the day for some deep work where it makes sense of something that I need to be prepared for, you know, whether it's building out a discussion document or following up on something specific. So that's kind of a lot of what my day looks like. We mentioned before about preparedness, a story that I'd like to share about preparedness, if you don't mind.

42:59 Scott Ingram: I'm never opposed to stories on this show, Leon. Go for it.

43:02 Leon Baumann: All right, so that idea of preparedness, the fact that, you know, coming into today I had 14 pages of notes or whatever it was to think about how I wanted to respond to some of the questions they might have, I think it goes back to my junior year in college with Dr. Martin in thermodynamics. Not Dr. Martin the shoe, but Dr. Martin from University of Wisconsin. He said on the very first day, he said, look to your left and to your right. You're going to need both of these people if you ever want to pass this class. You need to learn how to work with them. And on average, at least one of them is going to fail. So not all 3 of you will make it through this class. So again, kind of from an early stage, it's how do I rely on other people and figure out how to work with them to make myself be successful? But the preparedness of it was he said, for every hour of class that you're with me, you should be spending at least 3 hours outside of class to prepare for class or to learn from, you know, what we talked about. So for that 3-credit class or 3 hours in the classroom every week, it was at least 9 or 10 hours outside. So, you know, what does my day consist of? Those early mornings, it's preparing for those opportunities to be with a customer. You know, if I'm with a customer 3 or 4 hours in a day, I'm probably spending maybe not 3 times as much, but maybe twice as much time outside of those customer interactions to make sure that they're the most impactful as possible, because I realize how precious my customers' time is and that I want to make the most of it to make the biggest impression in the short time that we have. So that's a lot of my day is, again, engaging with customers throughout the day, preparation in the morning, and then normally by, you know, 5 or 5:30, I'm trying to wrap things up. Catching up on the last bit of email from the day, making sure that I've got a plan for my most important actions the next morning. And then, you know, by 6 o'clock or so, it's heading downstairs and enjoying dinner with my family. My wife is certainly the chef of the family and normally has things prepared. And then I'm the cheap kitchen labor after cleaning up the kitchen and then, you know, spending a couple hours with the kids, either helping with homework or trying to remember how to do some complex math or Maybe watching some TV and then my head's normally hitting the pillow by about 9 o'clock at night.

45:10 Scott Ingram: Perfect. Perfect. Perfect. So, 2 things. One, you said that you find yourself waking up before 4:15. Is that a more recent thing? And this is like totally personal and selfish because I have found I've got like an internal alarm clock thing that's getting really aggressive and really annoying. And I'm up at like 3:30 or 4 every morning. I'm like, okay, this is too much. Like, I would like to continue sleeping, but it's over. And maybe I'm just too old. I don't know what my deal is, but what's going on there?

45:36 Leon Baumann: I think I'm in the very… we're probably fairly similar in age. So I often wonder as well, is this, you know, what getting older is like and, you know, something I'm just going to have to get used to because I am getting older. But I also think it's kind of cyclical in terms of the amount of activity and, you know, probably pressure that I'm feeling in terms of what needs to be getting done for my customer and how much time. So there's so many times I'll wake up in the middle of the night and like have like a deal review going on in my head or, you know, a priority list of what needs to happen that day. And, you know, sometimes I get so worked up and excited about it. It's like, I can't fall back to sleep. And you're right, it might be 2:30 or 3 or 3:30. And I look at the clock and it's like, well, it's not worth trying to get back to sleep. So I might as well, you know, get started with my day. So, I think some of it is, to your point, probably getting older. Some of it is just not letting my mind get away from my customers and my business activity. I mean, granted, I sleep like a log. So, when I am sleeping, it's great sleep. But like you, there's more often than not that it's not my alarm clock that's waking me up, but it's an idea that somehow has created enough energy in my mind to get my body moving. You know, it's time to get the day started.

46:51 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. You know, it sounds really, really similar because I'm finding I'm often also kind of waking up with particular things going on, which is ruining my response to… I hate the what's keeping you up at night question. I think it needs to be expunged from sales.

47:07 Leon Baumann: Certainly not for us asking our customers, that's for sure. Yeah.

47:09 Scott Ingram: Right. Right. But, you know, usually I'm like, nothing wakes me up at night. I'm good. But maybe there is some degree of that that is creeping in and it's not keeping me up at night, it's waking me up at awful hours of the morning. The other thing that you mentioned, you kind of glossed over this idea, but it sounded like maybe a particular way that you're building the agenda. You said something about a purpose-benefit check. What is that?

47:32 Leon Baumann: Yep. Yeah. So, I actually picked that up from Professor Craig Wortmann in my Kellogg class. So, it's a way to prepare the opening of a meeting. So if… and I do this a lot when I have large groups from either side, my side or my customer's side in a meeting, I'll open it up with, the purpose of us getting together today is to do the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the benefit of going through this is the following. So when you start with, here's the purpose of us meeting and ultimately the benefit of going through this process, and then asking for validation from the customer to say, Is this the purpose that you have? Are these the benefits that you're looking for? It certainly gets the meetings set in the right direction. And then, I'll send that purpose-benefit check out to my team prior. So, if I've got 3 people coming into a meeting from Dell or 8 people or whatever it might be, I'll send that out to them to say, team, this is how I want us to open. Is there any suggestion that you have? Around the purpose that we should be contributing or that we're getting engaged for or the benefits that we're trying to drive. So, it's a great tool to get our team aligned prior to going in. I mean, we do a lot of prep, but just having something written down that they know that I'm going to use to open the call. And then, with the meeting or in the meeting with the customer to level set the customer's mindset, again, whether it's 2 people or 10 people, on why we're there is certainly something I took out of that class from Kellogg that, you know, sticks with me and something I prepare again in the morning before those meetings, whether it's a big meeting 2 days from now and I want to get it out to my team to make sure they're on the same page, or even if it's just a one-on-one meeting that I'm having that day. And I document, you know, what I think the most impactful purpose and benefit statements are so that I can open the meeting that way.

49:27 Scott Ingram: Brilliant, brilliant. That whole section, that just turned into another Daily Sales Tip. I know you've been, you've been working on this cool little… it expanded, it became a 2-part series that we'll be putting out on the podcast as well. But this will be one that we still, because that's one I haven't heard before. And I think like, what a great way to just really be intentional about your prep. And going back to the customer focus piece, like it's the what's in it for you. And I was just thinking that whole time, I'm like, wait, so you're seeing, you're saying that a meeting can have a benefit?

49:59 Leon Baumann: Why are we taking the time today?

50:01 Scott Ingram: Yeah, brilliant. Yeah, love that, love that. So we've talked through kind of your routine and the way that you're structuring your day. Are there any other kind of habits or things that you're doing that are kind of central to your success in that?

50:15 Leon Baumann: Yeah, I think… I mean, we've talked about a lot of these already today, but I'd kind of summarize it into, you know, first that element of trust and really working hard to build trust across my customer base, with the individuals that I get to work with. And like we mentioned, you know, the people across my team that I need to inspire to be engaged with my customers as much as I want to. It's that customer-first mentality of focusing on their success over my own. And then, you know, we talked a lot about the preparedness, but it's making sure that you schedule that time to be prepared because I feel, you know, especially in this people-to-people world that we're involved in, in B2B sales, You need to take the time to be hyper-prepared to make a lasting impression. You know, people talk about first impressions. I think more about a lasting impression. So when you're engaged with that customer and you're so focused on what they're thinking, what they're trying to do, what their challenges are, and you've been prepared to come in and make the most of that extremely valuable time that they have, that you can leave them a lasting impression. Then, you know, they're going to be more apt to take more time in the future to share with you, to work with you, to, you know, bring you into their projects. So I think that, you know, focusing on being prepared enough to make a lasting impression is another kind of habit or routine that we talked a lot about today, but I think it's certainly essential to my success.

51:44 Scott Ingram: God, I love that. That is so good. I mean, are there particular elements or things that you're trying to do to make that lasting impression?

51:52 Leon Baumann: Sure. So, and I mentioned about it before, and one of my favorite sales successes is thinking about not just what we're trying to do for my customer, but what we're trying to do for my customer's customer. So, it's trying to relate that purpose and benefit of what we're doing in Tuesday's meeting, not just to what's on their mind, but knowing that they're internally being challenged to better serve their customer. So, how do I come into a meeting with that connecting the dots mentality of, we're going to do this today and it's going to help you do that. And I've thought about some of the challenges and pressures that you have to be able to serve your customer and deliver them a better experience. And here's how that map works. So, I think that's a big part of it in helping them realize why you, as someone that's selling technology to their company, are thinking about their customers and the relationship to their customers buying more from them or being more delighted because of the experience that they're getting by interacting with them. I think that's a big part of that. And then it's doing the research and understanding whether it's listening to the earnings calls or the investor presentations or reading the 10-K or every morning, one of my morning routines I forgot to mention, but I get my daily Google alert. So I've set up my Google alerts so that any press release or any story that has come out with my customer's name on it or a handful of key executives within my customers from the prior day hits my mailbox every morning at 6 o'clock. So it's what's happening in their world, either from a Wall Street perspective or what they're saying to their customers. So being able to be in tuned with what's happening in their world. At a macro level so that I can turn it into, you know, a part of my micro conversation with the individuals that I'm working with. There's just so much to be prepared. It could probably be a whole nother session, but that's kind of some of the things I think about.

53:45 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Let's keep going on kind of the information piece, right? Because I'm always curious about the makeup of folks' information diet. So I think that Google Alert component is really interesting, but what all are you reading, listening to, and watching? And when all does that happen?

54:01 Leon Baumann: Yeah, yeah. So like I mentioned, I try to get a workout in probably 2 or 3 days a week, a longer one on the weekends. You know, in the summertime, it's maybe a couple hours out on my bike, but my workout time in the last few years has turned into podcasts, right? So, you know, it introduced me to your podcast probably 2 or 3 years ago. So Sales Success Stories is certainly something I consume every week. Daily Sales Tips is another one that I consume. And then Winning the Challenger Sale. So again, I read The Challenger Sale probably 10 years ago. It really spoke to me in terms of, you know, what I was, you know, probably a relationship builder, but always tried to do something more than just relying on relationships. And that's where I think The Challenger Sale kind of spoke to me. So I'm still very, you know, in tune to, you know, both Challenger Sale, Challenger Customer, but then the Winning the Challenger Sale podcast. And then I mentioned before Adam Grant, one of my favorite authors. So I listen to WorkLife with Adam Grant. Simon Sinek is probably my favorite author. So A Bit of Optimism from Simon Sinek is something I love. So those are, you know, and then there's a few others that I try to catch up on, or I try to listen to if I get more workout time than, you know, the appetite of what's been released on a weekly basis comes out with. And then we did mention reading. So I'll shout out to Stephen M.R. Covey, Stephen Covey's son. Has written 2 great books that I love. One, The Speed of Trust, and 2, the one I just read, Trust and Inspire. I recently read Mindset by Carol Dweck. So again, that growth mindset, I think she does a great job of talking about that. I referenced Keith Ferrazzi earlier, so Never Eat Alone, Competing in the New World of Work, and then of course, as I mentioned before, Leading Without Authority. I certainly have to make a plug for my leader's book, Play Nice But Win. So a book that Michael Dell released last year about kind of our company and what we've been able to do and what his role has been, which is very inspiring. And then right now I'm reading a book by Brené Brown, Dare to Lead, which talks about the idea of being vulnerable amongst your team and really taking some courage to how to interact with people around you. So those are some of the book recommendations, some of the podcasts that I try to engaged in the most. And, you know, when I read, whenever I can, you know, it's not very often, but whenever I can. So it's, you know, maybe a book a month that I get a chance to get through. But, you know, probably consuming as much podcast content as I can.

56:25 Scott Ingram: Yeah, man, what a great list. As always, we'll have the complete list and links at top1.fm/leon-baumann or top1.fm/whatever this episode number is. Yeah, there's a couple I love. Speed of Trust. I didn't realize that Covey had written a more recent version.

56:41 Leon Baumann: It just came out. Yeah, it just came out this year.

56:45 Scott Ingram: All right, cool. And it comes with your recommendation. So it's… I've actually got a… my Audible credits have been stacking up a little bit, so I need to go on a learning spree, and that's definitely going to make the cut.

56:55 Leon Baumann: Yeah, I think it's very, very applicable to what we do every day, Scott, in interacting with our teams and our customers.

56:59 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah. I mean, obviously the trust theme here is so, so strong, right? And it's one that we probably just don't pay enough attention to as sellers, right? Like, how do you develop that? How do you really get that? But man, it is such a massive contributor, especially when you're doing these huge deals, working with huge clients where this isn't a transaction. No, it's not a one-time thing.

57:25 Leon Baumann: No, it's engaging with them day in and day out. I remember years ago I worked with a customer and And she had recently gotten divorced and her ex-husband was in car sales. So I introduced myself as the new salesperson and she immediately hated me because I was in sales. And to your point, I mean, we are engaged in long-term. I often talk about this with customers that right now, especially just having 2 accounts, at the end of the day, if I screw anything up in either one of my accounts, I've immediately eliminated 50% of my opportunity. I don't have 100 different customers that I can go call on. I've got 2 companies that I interact with. So that importance of being a trustworthy advisor that they know they can rely on, that's going to be thinking in their best interest every day, is the only way that I can be sustainable.

58:20 Scott Ingram: What a great callout. And no pressure, right?

58:22 Leon Baumann: Yeah, exactly.

58:26 Scott Ingram: So Leon, what about the tools and apps and just like, what are you using in your day-to-day to be more efficient?

58:33 Leon Baumann: Yeah, I'm pretty basic in that sense. I'm not nearly the tech guy that I should be. You know, the 2 apps that I probably use on my phone outside of the standard, you know, email or calendar is, you know, Strava to track miles on my bike or MapMyRun for when I go for a run. But that's kind of the extent of the apps that I use. I'd say, you know, I'm very much of a PC-driven person. So, you know, email, chat, Excel, PowerPoint, Word is probably where I spend most of my time being productive during the day in a fairly basic way. I mentioned before, I, you know, I plan my week on the Friday prior. So I've got the time or the most important actions defined prior to going into the week. And categorized by day. And then, you know, I'll block the time out in the day that I need to, to ensure that those most important actions can get done by the time they need to. I certainly use LinkedIn, not from a, you know, I think I've only posted on LinkedIn a couple of times in my life, but, you know, certainly for research on, you know, my customers and what their history has been and maybe what they're saying because of their posts. I mentioned the daily update from Google. And then just recently I've been able to engage, you know, from a tech perspective, engage in my customer Slack channel and in shared Google Drives. So the productivity that I've been able to gain by kind of being engaged in the way my customers interact internally has been super productive. And, you know, I think about that, we do that inside of Dell all the time, but to be at that same level with my customer has been a lot of fun and again, super productive in being able to get things done with them.

1:00:10 Scott Ingram: Yeah, let's talk about that, right? Because I often say when I'm speaking more broadly about the show and the learnings, I'm like, look, there are no silver bullets. There's no magic tricks, right? This is… to be successful in sales, you just have to do the right things and do the stuff that you need to do. But Irfan Jafar was the first one to call this out from VMware, and, and it ended up being like the number 2 tip of last year on Daily Sales Tips. Getting into your customer's Slack channel is… okay, that is a little bit of a magic bullet. Can you talk about just like how you you got there and how that manifests sort of day to day?

1:00:47 Leon Baumann: Well, one, inside of a large organization like Dell with a tremendous security posture, it was very difficult. So, you know, it's going through all the IT process and internal approvals, but it was, you know, fortunately working with a customer that sees us as a big part of what they're trying to do and, you know, is heavily working throughout their team and has a way of communicating within their team. That they invited myself and a couple of people on my team to be engaged in those conversations. So it's, you know, an honor. It's an opportunity. But it's, you know, when I know people have talked about, is email dead? You know, I still rely on email a lot, but, you know, I'm starting to recognize more and more that email is a way that my customers communicate with the outside world. Slack is the way that they communicate internally. So, you know, if and when you can get that opportunity to be on that inside communication string. So they're not sifting through, you know, thousands of emails in a day that they may or may not be interested in because it's not necessarily how their peers are communicating with them, but instead being on an internal channel of communication that, you know, is a little bit more responsive. Comes with, you know, some expectations that you're going to be responsive as well. But yeah, the benefit of being kind of on the inside of their communication string versus, you know, just being one of, you know, many, many, many, many different salespeople that might communicate with them through email has been very successful.

1:02:12 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I feel like Slack is the new badge. So, you know, years ago it was a huge triumph, right, if you could get a badge to be able to just walk in the door of your client and walk the halls and go wherever you wanted to go. Slack is like the new version of that. Slack or Teams or whatever platform they're using, right?

1:02:32 Leon Baumann: Yeah, yeah, no, that's a great point. In this new virtual world, you know, what does a badge get you anymore? Nothing, because nobody ever goes to the party.

1:02:39 Scott Ingram: Nobody's there.

1:02:40 Leon Baumann: No, exactly. But yeah, to have that kind of internal communication aspect that a badge would have gotten you years ago, that's a great metaphor.

1:02:49 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So you have absolutely hinted at this, but I want to be really explicit about it and dig into it. What is the sales philosophy that you subscribe to.

1:02:59 Leon Baumann: Yeah. And again, the reason that I'm here today is, you know, John's recommendation. And, you know, I wanted to be here to be able to share what the Client Champion represents because of what I believe. And I mentioned this earlier, but I'm really excited, have been, you know, getting in on the ground floor of this movement because of what it means for our sales profession. So again, one of the classes I took virtually, you know, through the height of the pandemic was from Harvard. And John Westman is professor. He teaches at both Harvard and Boston College, you know, longtime seller, sales leader, marketing guy. And then, you know, for the last decade or so has been teaching at the 2 schools in a sales-centric curriculum. So he's driving a philosophy that B2B relationships between the seller and the buyer are founded on trust. And we've talked a lot, as you said, about trust today, but it's important to me. And I think, you know, enterprise selling is and should be a highly trusted profession. And that's kind of the foundation behind the Client Champion is if you can leverage the methodologies and the attributes and the beliefs of the top 1% sellers and bring forth a… he doesn't like to call it this, but a verification or accreditation. It's more of authentication that you've got a history and track record of being trustworthy and trusting by the interactions that you've had with your customers, that by having that authentication, you know, hopefully it will… again, the Stephen M. R. Covey Speed of Trust… hopefully it can enable you to help your customers faster because they can recognize that if you are an authenticated client champion, that you've got a track record and history of operating a certain way with your customers. You know, you approach your customers as if they can hopefully become lifelong friends. You champion them. You know, we talk about the Daily Sales Tip, you know, being able to create raving fans within your customer base because you're focused on their individual success. And then, you know, knowing that trust is a currency before relationships, partnerships, legal tendency, currency. Trust is the foundational element to being able to get things done. It's really a core aspect of what John, you know, is creating this movement around. And again, I'm super excited to be be a part of it. So I'd say I'm, you know, some part challenger, but, you know, very much of a client champion in terms of how I think and how I operate.

1:05:17 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Connecting with John and just talking with him, his work is really, really awesome. And Leon, I know you were the first certified client champion. I will also follow up with John before we get this episode out the door so that when you go to top1.fm/this episode number, we'll have some links to John's work. Around the Client Champion because it's so well aligned with what we're doing, right? I mean, it really is adopting what the top performers are actually doing, probably a little bit more kind of enterprise tilted, right, in nature, just by the depth of these relationships, but such interesting stuff.

1:05:54 Leon Baumann: Yeah. But in that same sense, you know, it's… I probably am one of the few tech-specific, you know, pioneers in his program. I don't know how many of your listeners are in the tech industry versus other industries, but, you know, he's got representation from people all over the world. Blair, who's another pioneer, is in the energy industry up in Canada. You know, there's people in the finance world, you know, financial focused on financial, personal, personal financial advising or whatever it might be. We've got a CEO of a company, a tech company in Atlanta. We've got, you know, people in Europe. So it's, you know, it's, I think, a consistent theme across industries. In anyone that, you know, engages in a personal relationship with a buyer or a customer and, you know, really hoping that you're acting in a way that they want to become your friend more than just your customer.

1:06:41 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Greatness. Leon, how would you describe your style, right? As you're executing that philosophy, like, who are you stylistically?

1:06:49 Leon Baumann: Yeah, I think it's curious with a focus on helping. You know, John spends a lot of time on this in his class. And it really, you know, made sense to me prior, but it hammered to me in the semester I spent with him that, you know, our job is to be here to help our customers. And first, we need to understand how we can best help them. So being curious as to how we can best help them and then focus on helping, I think, is, you know, what I would describe my style as. And then along with it, I try to bring as much energy and optimism into the relationship, whether it's an external relationship with my customer or an internal relationship with my team. Then I mentioned before, you know, being organized. I think this is probably some of my engineering background, but being organized and coming into any type of relationship, whether again internal or external, with the focus on communication and collaboration is, you know, probably how I describe my style. So focus with a focus on helping, energy, optimism, and organization. Love it.

1:07:50 Scott Ingram: Love it. I think the energy and optimism likely kind of ties back to the motivation topic. And usually I ask this in the context of, you know, what motivates you and drives you. I'm interested in that, but I also want to talk about how are you motivating and inspiring your team, right? And working through that alignment around your customer. So, talk about both those things.

1:08:12 Leon Baumann: Yeah, I think I'll start with my favorite topic, my team versus myself. I think it's helping them realize the potential outcome. So painting a picture of what we're able to do. So again, you know, it goes back to understanding my customer in a way that is very intimate to the individual or to, you know, the project that they're trying to deliver as it relates to impacting their customers, but then being able to make sure that my team understands that as well as I do. I've said this a lot of times, you know, a part of a large matrix organization, I've got a lot of product-centric people that have responsibility for certain solutions in our portfolio. My product is the customer. So I need to be the one across our broad team that best understands the customer, but then can share what I have learned and what I understand with my team so that my team can get excited about what we're doing, about what that product or solution can be doing to help the customer. So I think it's that inspiration, through understanding is what my role is and has been successful in getting them, whether they are my consulting lead or they have responsibility for our data protection portfolio. If I can help them understand what I'm asking them to do as it relates to something that my customer's trying to do, and more importantly, what my customer's trying to do for their customer, then I find the engagement level is much higher, the excitement. And the commitment is there. And then, you know, for myself, it's really just, you know, what expectations can I set for myself or what other people might have expectations for me? But it's really, you know, more of that internal, what can I do to exceed the expectations that I have on myself with some big expectations? But, you know, what can I do to ensure that tomorrow I'm doing better than I did today, that, you know, next year I'm going to do even better than I did this year. And it's that constant growth and aspirations to try to do more. And deliver more for my customers.

1:10:05 Scott Ingram: Is it fair to say that you are your own benchmark?

1:10:10 Leon Baumann: Oh yeah, no doubt about it.

1:10:12 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

1:10:12 Leon Baumann: Again, you know, mentioned before, I don't know where I rank in, you know, the 35,000 sellers across Dell's global sales force. But, you know, what's most important to me is am I doing what I want to be doing to deliver the numbers that I want to deliver for You know, my team and my customer, irrespective of, you know, where I might fit in comparison to, you know, other sellers across the organization. It's 100% competing with myself.

1:10:40 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. Leon, I want to come back to something I usually ask earlier in the sequence here, but what do you find to be the biggest challenge in sales today? Or maybe even talk about a time where you felt you were struggling the most?

1:10:52 Leon Baumann: Yeah, I love this question because I feel like in what we do, if we're not facing tremendous challenges or struggling every day, we're not pushing ourselves hard enough. You know, if we're just doing the same thing over and over again, one, it's boring. Two, we're selling ourselves short. You know, I just the other day I had a meeting with an internal meeting with my manager and my vice president, and I came into it, you know, coming out of a customer meeting. I basically said to them, I said, guys, I have no idea what to do. And again, I've been, you know, doing this for a long time, you know, over 10 years now at what is Dell Technologies, you know, over 22 years in sales. But, you know, looking for the opportunity to help my customer in a way that, you know, they haven't been helped before or Dell hasn't done something is certainly a challenge, but a challenge that I am excited about and thrive in that opportunity to be creative and innovative on how we help. It's not easy, but it's a lot of fun. And those are challenges that, you know, I'll look for and then get into and rely on my team, rely on the people around me and their ideas to try to figure out how we make this work. But it's certainly the biggest challenge that I have on a day-to-day basis. But it's the challenge because I create a challenge by trying to push, you know, my organization to do things for my customers that we haven't done before.

1:12:16 Scott Ingram: I love that. And I want to come back to something that you and I were talking about before I hit the record button around creativity.

1:12:24 Leon Baumann: Yeah.

1:12:24 Scott Ingram: I think the way I kind of set it up was I have zero creativity from an artistic perspective, right? Like I struggle to draw stick figures, right? It doesn't express itself that way, but I'm super creative, like entrepreneurially and structuring deals and just strategically. And I think I hit a nerve when I shared that with you. You want to talk about that piece of it?

1:12:47 Leon Baumann: Yeah, I agree. I can't play a tune of music, read music. I can't paint. I can't draw. I've got no artistic talent whatsoever. But that ability to be creative in how we help our customers… my longtime friend, former district manager, now vice president, likes to say, Leon, we're limited by your own creativity. So if we think, hey, we've got a set of products, we need to sell those products to our customer, then, you know, we're probably not going to be successful. We're not going to be very impactful to our customer's business. But if we can think outside the lines and be creative on how to better approach our customers' challenges or the outcomes that they're trying to drive and how we create a model and an opportunity to help them, even if it hasn't done before. It takes a lot of creativity and it's not easy, but you're right, Scott. I think you operate much the same way that I do, that if I can be more creative in how I help my customer, then ultimately, you know, they're going to get more benefit from the engagement. And, you know, we're probably going to be a lot more successful than if we would have stuck to the status quo and just trying to sell, you know, the products that are on the shelf.

1:13:56 Scott Ingram: Yeah. You know, one of the things I'm thinking about here is, as I think about how that sort of manifests for myself, is Sometimes it's really setting aside what you're selling and what that product and solution portfolio is and really just like, what are we really trying to do? What are we trying to solve for? And maybe I don't have anything to do with certain elements, right? Maybe we're going to need another partner to, you know, fill a particular gap or 2 before we even get to our stuff. But now you're adding real value. Like it's again, for For me, it's way bigger picture strategy. Like, how does this all really fit together and connect? And we'll get to the parts that we can help with later.

1:14:36 Leon Baumann: 100% agree. And if you can go into that engagement with your customer, not thinking of what you can sell them, but thinking, what do they need to be successful? There's so many more opportunities that you can then come up with. I just today, We closed a deal with one of my customers providing a product that early on we weren't sure if Dell was the right solution or not. We worked with them in terms of what their needs were, how they wanted to deploy the solution, you know, what specific capabilities that they were looking for from the platform. And it ended up being not a Dell solution, but a partner's solution that we could provide through our model, through our support channels, through our deep And, you know, so, you know, I'm selling a partner's product instead of a Dell product because we felt it was a better outcome for the customer. But, you know, if I would have went into it thinking, hey, I've got a product to sell and, you know, I want to try to figure out why you want to buy it, we would have never been in the opportunity or in the position that we're in today. But instead we started with, you know, what are your challenges? What are you trying to solve? And then let's get really creative on the best way to solve it.

1:15:43 Scott Ingram: Yeah. You know, that reminds me of another thing that just absolutely jumped out at me in your notes, and I would love to it's not the part that you were actually talking about, but I want to understand how you solve for this particular dynamic. So, when you're in a role like yourself where you've got this massive portfolio of stuff that you can sell, sometimes you have multiple ways to solve a particular challenge, but you have internal sellers who are going to get comped on one solution versus another. How are you managing that dynamic, both with the customer but also within your team?

1:16:19 Leon Baumann: Yeah, yeah. No, in fact, there's a story, right, a sales story in which this was extremely present. To your point, Dell has, you know, good or bad, an extremely broad portfolio. So most challenges that our customers have, there's going to be, you know, from 2 to 6 or more different ways to solve it. So it's truly focusing on learning as much about what the customer's challenges are. And again, being the student of the customer and taking that on as my responsibility on the team to then be able to advise my broad teams, my different product representation teams as to, you know, here's the gap that they have. Let's figure out how we best fit that gap. And in a case where there's, you know, 2 or 3 different solutions that probably are very close fit, then it comes back to, okay, well then let's internally create an evaluation of which of these options best fit what we know the customer's needs to be and testing those. And to your point, I might be representing one product or one solutions group product today in this customer and tomorrow it could be the other product solutions group with my other customer. So I need to have great relationships no matter what I end up recommending to my customer. But it's focusing on the customer more than the product, the customer's needs more than what our solution brings, and pushing my teams hard to making sure that what we're delivering is going to be the best outcome for the customer and delivering in a way that can best create an opportunity for success. So, you know, it's all the things that we've talked about. It's creating trust. It's, you know, listening to ideas. It's bringing smart people into the room to have great conversations. But I think at the end of the day, it's You know, with a very broad portfolio, lots of different options, really being laser-focused on what is the best option for the customer and why. And then, you know, once you have that figured out, then it's a lot easier to be able to go interact with your customer and help them understand why it's the best, because you've done so much work to ensure that it's the best through many different options that, you know, even I have available to myself inside of Dell.

1:18:21 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I want to talk about a little bit of a nuanced dynamic, and some people won't understand this, but for those that do, I hope this will be really, really valuable. There's a lot of situations like this inside very large sales organizations. And Leon, I know you spent a few minutes at Oracle where I'm very, very familiar. And in a lot of cases, they'll have kind of this prime co-prime model, right? And in that structure, you have kind of a global account manager who owns the entire portfolio. And then you have lots of individual sellers that work with that person who are representing their individual products or product lines. And maybe this is the advice that you give to those who are supporting you that you're interacting with. Like, what's the most proactive way or productive way to manage that relationship? Again, internal. You have a senior salesperson who maybe has a higher, deeper level of ownership of the overarching account. So they, to some degree, become your client. You're kind of selling to them to allow you access to the client How do they do that best? This is a really hard question to ask, but I hope you understand what I'm trying to get at.

1:19:24 Leon Baumann: No, I think I understand what you're saying, and I'm that person, right? So I'm the person that, you know, people across Dell want to sell to, to, you know, help me or help them leverage my relationships to get new ideas in front of the customer.

1:19:39 Scott Ingram: Yep.

1:19:39 Leon Baumann: So, you know, one of the things that I do on a regular basis is probably at least twice a year is hold big idea sessions. So, I invite every one of those product people or co-prime people that engage within my accounts to come to our big idea session with what is it about their solution, their portfolio, their part of our business that they think has a direct tie to what my customer is trying to do based upon some of the research that they've done, or what we've done with one of their competitors that was impactful in the insurance industry or the the retail industry, the finance industry, whatever it might be. So, you know, invite them in to kind of have a pitch contest and say, okay, you know, we're going to go through 8 big ideas today and, you know, 8 different people are going to have the opportunity to share with the broader group why their idea deserves as much attention as possible. So some of it goes back to the kind of the challenger methodology of how do you bring commercial insight to the customer by doing a bunch of research, by understanding what your solution could do for them. But then we have these internal, you know, almost like Shark Tank type things where people pitch their ideas and then we talk about them as a team. We refine them. We determine what the true impact is. You know, again, back to the challenger. Are they big enough? Are they bold enough? Are they impactful enough? Can we do things to those ideas to make them better? And then ultimately the best of those ideas, we create an action plan around. All right. So who are we going to go take them to inside of our customer? Why do we think those specific individuals are going to care about what we bring. So, it's very much of a process approach that I invite my co-primes or my product-centric sellers to bring to me in that forum. And then we've done it enough over the last number of years that people come to me and say, hey, Leon, I've been thinking about this. And even outside of the Big Idea sessions, I've been thinking about this. I put together a SCIPAB, situation, complication, implication. Position, action, benefit. I put together a SCIPAB of why I think this is good for X. Okay, fantastic. I love that. Let's sit down, let's go through it and understand it, and let me help you refine it based upon maybe some of the more intimate knowledge I have about that customer and the situation, so that together we can go take it to the customer and, and get their feedback on why we think it could be helpful to them.

1:21:57 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I think you're getting to a place that I kind of wanted to follow up on, on anyway, with sort of that final point of, you know, being proactive in that co-prime role, right? And kind of internal selling effort. What else? You know, I guess what I'm sort of imagining is, you know, being proactive, doing that research, because it is an internal sale, right? I'm trying to get you bought off on the idea that, yeah, this is absolutely something we need to take to the customer. I'm going to introduce you. I'm going to leverage my trust and my relationships to kind of walk you in. Are there other things that folks who are… I mean, if you were in that split position? Like, if you were trying to get Leon's attention, sure, and inside this particular account, what else would you do?

1:22:37 Leon Baumann: Well, there's… aside from being super prepared, you know, putting a lot of energy into creating why this is impactful, you know, documenting that through a SCIPAB process or some other, you know, methodology for ensuring that you've determined the benefits and the purpose of what that idea is. Again, going back to one of our joint favorite books, The Speed of Trust, If you bring competency and credibility to engagement like that time and time again with that, you know, core AE or that, you know, global account manager, whatever it might be, you're going to build up a level of trust that, you know, the last time I brought you something, you saw how impactful it was. You saw how, when given the opportunity, I executed and I delivered and exceeded upon your expectations. So I've created credibility, you know that I've got the competence to be able to deliver. So give me another shot. So the first time in, you've got to make a huge lasting impression, right? Because you've done all the right work. But then the second time around, third time around, etc., it's, you know, can that core AE, can that global account manager trust their colleagues because of the competence and credibility that they bring into the relationship every day?

1:23:45 Scott Ingram: Yeah, that is so good. And that doesn't just apply. So now I'm going to make it more broadly applicable. So if you don't work for a gigantic organization and have these dynamics, When you get referred into an opportunity, yeah, right? Somebody walks you in. That is it's a transference of trust, and you're not just trying to you know make that sale to that end user, that end customer. You need to make the person who introduced you look good. So it's one of those opportunities like you probably need to overprepare. You probably need to like really be buttoned up because if you don't execute there, you're not getting introduced again.

1:24:22 Leon Baumann: Yeah, totally. Again, back to, you know, Dr. Martin and thermodynamics. If you're not going to prepare, you're probably going to fail. And you get limited opportunities to ensure that you don't. I mean, I do a lot of work with partners, you know, whether it's other technology companies that, you know, we bring in as a part of our solution or, you know, our channel that, you know, I interact with within my customers. And yeah, I'm very much having to build trust relationships with them and, you know, wanting to deliver on their behalf even more than I want to deliver on my behalf because they invited me into their relationship.

1:24:59 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah, that's it right there. Cool. So, Leon, is there something you believe that the average sales professional would think is crazy?

1:25:08 Leon Baumann: I don't know if others would necessarily think of it as crazy. But it might not be the norm. And again, it goes back to this concept of trust. I think there's a lot of, you know, unfortunate reputation of sellers, and there's probably a lot of sellers that live up to this poor representation from a buyer's perspective that they can't trust people that are selling to them. But I think if you go into a relationship with a customer, a negotiation, whatever it might be, focused on one thing, and that's how do I best help my customer, then, you know, you're like more likely to receive the same level of trust and investment in that relationship from your customer that, you know, you're trying to do something to help them, not just sell them something. So again, for any seller that's out there that's not thinking about how do I build trust within my relationship and goes into a sales opportunity thinking what can I sell them versus what can I do to help them, they're probably missing a tremendous amount of opportunity. So hopefully that's not a crazy thought for most sellers, but, you know, I think if people can tweak their perspective just a little bit in that sense, it's probably going to help them in the long term.

1:26:17 Scott Ingram: Yeah. What about the flip side? Is there something that the average or typical sales professional, or even that part of the standard sales dogma that you think is crazy?

1:26:27 Leon Baumann: Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's probably come with my maturity. You know, in my late 40s now and doing this for a long time. But I think that, you know, there's probably a lot of sellers out there, and I was one of them that, you know, got into the business or was doing something or, you know, was trying to sell from a selfish perspective, either to, you know, make money or get promoted. And I now think that that's kind of crazy. I think if you focus on helping, then you're probably going to be more successful. And make money. And if you focus on helping your customers and people around you recognize that, you know, that's something that they want you to help others within the organization, then they're going to give you opportunities for promotion. So if you're in this business to sell versus help, I think that's kind of crazy.

1:27:17 Scott Ingram: Ooh, I like that.

1:27:18 Leon Baumann: Does that make sense?

1:27:19 Scott Ingram: It totally does. I mean, in fact, it's another of those themes that I often talk about just in terms of the commonalities of top performers, because I see this over and over and over again, right? And it's very against the stereotype, right? Because the stereotype is you want somebody that's money motivated and this type of stuff. And the reality is virtually everybody that has been on this show has your mindset, right? It's, look, I'm going to do the best job of serving my customer and helping them get what they want. And by doing that, you miraculously end up with a great W-2 and at the top of the leaderboard.

1:27:57 Leon Baumann: Yeah.

1:27:57 Scott Ingram: Not the other way around.

1:27:59 Leon Baumann: Not the other way around.

1:27:59 Scott Ingram: Not because I was trying to get to the top of the leaderboard, not because I was trying to have, you know, an extra comma in my W-2.

1:28:06 Leon Baumann: Yeah, no, exactly. And, you know, we talked about this before, but that difference between being a one-hit wonder and being a U2 of the, you know, decades of number one hits It's if you want to be sustainable, you need to think about your customer success. And when you don't, you could have a great year, you could have a bluebird of a win, but you're probably not going to repeat it if you're not focused on the right things.

1:28:32 Scott Ingram: Leon, what have been the most important decisions you've made or the lesson you had to learn to get where you are today?

1:28:40 Leon Baumann: I think it's the important lessons of recognizing that failures are going to happen. And you should be pushing yourself so that failures will happen, right? To the idea that we had before of if you're not challenging yourself and being creative, sometimes failures are going to happen when you're stretching the boundaries like that. So you need to be ready for them. But more importantly, you need to learn from them and develop a plan to use that knowledge the next time you get into that opportunity. I've got a process of working with my customers called the Win/Loss Debrief. So after any large campaign, whether we win it or lose it, I work with my manager. He, you know, schedules a 20-minute follow-up. I'm not involved, so it's, you know, not personal to the sales team or whatever it might be, but it's, you know, a one-on-one with my manager and a key executive within my customer to basically ask 3 simple questions around what we did right or what we did wrong so that he can, you know, document and collect all that information, and then we do an after-action report, you know, common military term, or, you know, a debrief of let's understand what that customer's perspective was. I had a customer, you know, go through that win debrief with me about a year ago on a big campaign win that we had, and their feedback was, you know, the product was pretty comparable, the price was pretty comparable, but the primary reason that they decided to do business with us instead of our competitor is because they felt like they were a part of something. They felt like they were a part of a process and a journey towards the outcome that they wanted to get to. And they didn't feel like they were a part of a journey with our competitor. So, you know, that's, you know, a lesson that came not through a failure, but through a process that, you know, it's a failure or a win, but we're learning from it. In the same sense, you know, I had a loss debrief that my manager did with another one of my customers. After we lost a campaign. And we learned that, you know, that customer's perspective was, hey, you know, I can't give all my business to Dell. I've got to be selective about what business I give to Dell and what business I give to others. So, you know, we're recognizing going in that, you know, there's certain times that we've got to make sure that they don't feel like Dell's their only option, that they've got options, but they're going to choose Dell because they want to choose Dell and it's the right thing for them to do. So So again, learning from failures through a formal process and then, you know, really spending time on those learnings to impact how we do things the next time around is, you know, one of the things that I think I've learned and used to get to where we are today.

1:31:11 Scott Ingram: And you said there were 3 questions that were part of those debriefs. What are those questions?

1:31:15 Leon Baumann: Yeah. So whether it's a win or a loss, the questions are simple. With a win, question is, you know, question number 1, would you please share the criteria you used to make your final decision? 2, what are the specific reasons you had for moving forward with us? And, you know, 3, how could we have done better in the process of engaging you? And then similarly, you know, if it's a loss, it's again, please share the criteria to make your decision. What were the specific failures that we did, or what would you think that we could have done better? And then, you know, what could we have done better in the process of engaging with you? So it's really around the criteria, not in a way that I'm trying to change the customer's decision, right? The decision is made and all we're doing is accepting and learning from it. And then, you know, what were some of the specifics about what we could have done better or what we did well? And then, you know, how can we better engage with you as a customer through this process if we were to do it over again or if we were ever having the chance to be able to do it again?

1:32:10 Scott Ingram: Nice. Nice. Well, and this is probably the perfect place for me to ask you, what is your favorite failure?

1:32:17 Leon Baumann: Yeah. So, Scott, for this one, I'm going to take a trip in the Wayback Machine. Again, this is probably from about 20 years ago when I was just getting started and trying to break into one of my first big accounts. You know, back in the… I was learning so much every single day just because I had no idea what I was doing. I wasn't, you know, in the IT industry before. I was still fairly early on in sales, but I was having the opportunity to work with some really great people within my customer, you know, and 20 years later, I'm still friends with many of them. But at the time, they were giving us an opportunity to do a proof of concept with some of our technology in a space that they necessarily hadn't done before, but it was kind of core to us. But the proof of concept or the POC didn't go well. Our solution didn't live up to what they were looking for. We had a number of missteps and I was broken. Like, I still remember sitting in front of Dennis And like feeling like my world had fallen apart because this was it. This was my opportunity to finally do something big. We had been working so hard and so for so long. And, you know, there wasn't anything that we could point to as to why they should do what we were offering. But, you know, it was luckily great people that I was working with. They gave us an opportunity to reset, went back to the team, got really creative in terms of, okay, now based upon what we've learned the problems that we've had. Let's approach this a different way. Let's come at it with a different mentality and strategy and even a different solution. And, you know, the customer had the patience to give us that opportunity, and we did. And the second time around, the POC went extremely well, and they were super happy with the outcome, and they ended up buying. And then, you know, for probably 4 years, they bought more and more and more on top of that until, you know, they ended up getting bought by another company and kind of changed relationships. And a lot of those people left. And, you know, luckily I worked with them in many of their future companies. But that failure of we put so much into it, but then couldn't produce the results that we wanted. And recognizing that it was only because of the relationships that we created that they gave us another shot. And then by taking that second shot and learning what happened the first time around, that caused us to be ineffective and making the adjustments is, you know, probably one of my favorite stories from, again, you know, probably 20 years ago, but it still sticks with me today. And I still, again, remember sitting in that meeting room across the table from Dennis, kind of hearing from him of what he wasn't going to be able to do with us because the failures that we had created in our evaluation, and then overcoming it and, you know, having a long-term You know, success factor after that by picking ourselves up and changing our approach and doing something different. Yeah.

1:34:59 Scott Ingram: So many lessons within that lesson too, right? I mean, just the not giving it up, asking for another opportunity, the work that you did that I think not enough people really think about is really owning the outcomes, especially on a proof of concept, right? But also with bigger projects, because again, if you're doing this right, this isn't the last bite at the apple.

1:35:19 Leon Baumann: Yeah. I've heard other people, you know, on your show talk about, you know, when their competitor is selected, they don't walk away, right? They stay engaged because chances are, you know, your competitors are going to falter and they're going to fall down. But if you're continuing to invest in that relationship and thinking about, you know, what your customer needs to do and to have to be successful, and you're there at their door when they need you to be, you know, there's your second chance, whether they've given it to you or you've earned the right because you've stayed engaged. There's so much there to, you know, continue to be empathetic and curious about what your customers are trying to do. Even if you do lose at times, learning from that loss and trying to recover from it by staying engaged is certainly a sign of sustainable success.

1:36:03 Scott Ingram: Yeah. And that was Lynn Powers who shared that story. She went even deeper in a presentation at the summit and it was amazing. I mean, it was absolutely eye-opening. I mean, I think I called it out in that interview. That again, it's not often that I hear like some brand new idea, like that's really game-changing in this, but you know, when she talked about what she was doing to win back losses, just like, oh my gosh, like such a huge opportunity. And at a point where a lot of companies drop the ball and they're just, there is an opening that I don't think a lot of people are even thinking about exploiting.

1:36:42 Leon Baumann: Well, you invest… you and your team invest so much time and energy into trying to get to that point of a decision.

1:36:48 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

1:36:49 Leon Baumann: And, you know, again, you want to be able to win them all, but if and when you don't, the only way to, you know, maintain that investment is to stay close to the customer. Because you've likely, if you've done the right things, even if you didn't have the right solution, you've created a relationship. You've understood, you know, what their challenges and pains and opportunities are. And even if that specific project isn't something that they want to do business with you on, you know, you have an opportunity to take those learnings and recommend something else for their next project that might help them in even a bigger way and be a bigger opportunity for them and for you.

1:37:24 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, it goes back again and again, like it's just the longer-term relationship and, you know, sometimes you're going to lose. I mean, you're just that loss story, like the question you're asking or what you uncover covered is, look, this was nothing about you. There was just like this internal dynamic, or we're trying to diversify, or we don't want to have all of our eggs in your basket. It's not anything you did wrong. It's just something that we are trying to mitigate some risk, and you just represent more risk if we sign off on this.

1:37:52 Leon Baumann: Yeah, yeah, exactly. I agree with you 100%.

1:37:54 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So, Leon, what advice would you give to somebody that's just starting out in their sales career today?

1:38:00 Leon Baumann: I would think that the number one skill set that you can develop is the skill set of curiosity. So practice being curious. And the more you can be curious about things in your everyday life, the more natural it will be when, you know, you're needing to at times be curious about your customer. So, you know, part of this curious track is learning. And for young sellers, I'd recommend investing in yourself. You know, whatever your background was, whether it's engineering or business or, you know, even a schoolteacher or Or I think I remember one of your guests coming into sales from musical theater. You know, start learning about the profession of sales and really focus on the curiosity of what you can bring in your engagement with your customers. And if you're listening to this podcast, you're on the right track already, learning from all the guests like I do, you know, every week and all the top sellers that you bring in. But search out what your company offers in training or tuition reimbursement. Look for options to learn from, you know, the best in academia or in the professional space. I'm looking forward to David Weiss's MEDDPICC class. That's one of my goals for Q1 after I get through my current quarter is to take his master's class. So, you know, look for those opportunities to learn and look for those opportunities to practice your curiosity so that you can bring that skill set into your customer conversations and have it be a part of who you are.

1:39:19 Scott Ingram: Yeah. And if you get really good at it, You can conduct like a 2-hour podcast interview.

1:39:29 Leon Baumann: Some might call it an incredible side hustle.

1:39:32 Scott Ingram: Oh God, it's so fun. But that's what it is. Like, I just… this is so easy because I am so curious and I just want to know. And what people don't know is, you know, I've probably been talking for 3 hours after a little bit of pregame and sorting through a couple of glitches. But it's been an absolute blast. Leon, what about somebody that is a little further into their career and maybe they're struggling or they've been good? Like, okay, I'm generally at quota, but they're trying to get to like that level of greatness.

1:40:01 Leon Baumann: I think it really comes down to spending some time on self-reflection. And I mentioned this earlier, if you can understand yourself and what is about you in those times of greatness that got you to that level. And what's changed? You know, are you spending your time on things that aren't necessarily helpful or impactful? Are you spending too much time on internal busywork versus, you know, time focused on your customer? And with when you are with your customer, are you truly being curious or are you just trying to sell them something? So I think it's, you know, that self-reflection and understanding what you're doing, why you're doing it, recognizing that sales is a really hard profession. But if you can step back and recognize the opportunity to enjoy the struggle, then, you know, you can get through some of the little challenges and be focused on the bigger picture. And, you know, much like the younger seller recommendation, if you can be focusing on learning every single day to become better, then, you know, you're going to overcome whatever challenges that you've had. You understand what it is that you need to do to invest yourself, and you can have some goals as to where you want to go and how you get there and then create a plan. Plan to get there. But I think it's, you know, recognizing who you are and what you want to be and then creating a plan, you know, in your own head of how to get there.

1:41:16 Scott Ingram: Yeah, such great stuff. And as a consummate learner, as a fan of this show, what do you want to know about other top sellers and other organizations?

1:41:26 Leon Baumann: You know, great question. I think that's why so many of us tune into your podcast every week is to learn from others and what makes them tick, what makes them do well. What do I want to learn? It's, you know, how did they motivate themselves? You know, what goes on in their head in terms of what can I be doing to better serve my customers, to better, you know, create success for my team? You know, so what are their internal mind games that they play with themselves? Or, you know, what are some of the questions that they ask of themselves? And then how do they think about the individual on the other side of the sale? Did they share the same perspective that I do about helping customers and creating trust within a customer? Do they have a nuance to it, a different way of approaching it that I can learn from and tweak a little bit to, again, to the sports analogy, if I could shave a stroke off my game and be in the money within the PGA versus not being in the money, it's probably because I've listened to someone else and put a slight nuance on what I'm doing to how they do it and, you know, some success that they've had. So those are, you know, some of the things I like to learn by listening to your podcast about how they approach their customers. And then, you know, the team selling thing that we've touched on a number of times today, what did they do to motivate their teams to help their customers? And are there some things that I can learn from them to help me in my responsibility of getting my teams excited and motivated about engaging with my customers?

1:42:53 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I think that's something we may come back to over the course of this year. I'm going to read Keith's book, see if I can't get some insights there. But, you know, I may put together a panel or maybe we do a webinar with some of those who are, you know, doing this the best because again, I think it is a highly unaddressed topic that is critical. Like if you can't get this internal alignment, you can't serve your customer the way you need to. You can't deliver in a way that's going to allow you to open the door to another just massive opportunity.

1:43:25 Leon Baumann: Right, right. And again, I haven't worked between EMC, Oracle, you know, now Dell. I haven't worked for, you know, a startup, a small company that you don't have a big team. So I guess I, you know, I can't think of any other way to be successful. But yeah, I love listening to that webinar, that panel when you put it together, because I'm sure there's a lot more that I could learn from as well. Around, you know, leading without authority and getting those around you to do a lot of great things, you know, based upon your inspiration.

1:43:51 Scott Ingram: Yeah, great stuff. All right, let's put a bow on this thing. So the last question, we try and make this actionable. So Leon, what would you challenge our listener to do over the course of the next week or the next 2 weeks before the next interview episode comes out to improve themselves and improve their results?

1:44:07 Leon Baumann: Yeah, I thought about this a lot, so I'm gonna key on that theme. Of thought. I know some guests have talked about, you know, their meditation and their journaling, but I would say, you know, start by thinking, taking scheduled time in your day to think, whether it's like me, it's first thing in the morning when nothing else is going on and I can, and can really get focused. Or if you're good at scheduling deep work within your day, schedule some time to think about what you're doing today and what you need to be doing differently going forward, and then create an action plan. I, in my weekly one-on-ones with my manager, we have a list of did-wells and do-differentlys. So, you know, the did-wells are things that he observed or I observed about myself that, you know, are things that I think went well and we want to make sure that we do more of. But the do-differentlys are, you know, what do we need to adjust? So think about what your do-differentlys are through that self-reflection. And then, like I mentioned, develop a plan. For me, again, I've been using MEDDIC or now MEDDPICC for a long time. I've got a goal of I'm going to take David Weiss's masterclass on MEDDPICC. I've taken some training on MEDDPICC. I learn enough about it, but I probably don't do enough of it in my everyday thought process. So that's something I've thought about that I want to spend some time on to get better. So, you know, in the next 7 days, you know, schedule time each of those days to think about what it is that you could be doing to further invest in yourself, to further grow, you know, that growth mindset. And then coming out of that first 7 days, Take your top 3 ideas and create a plan on how you're going to use that 20 or 30 minutes every day or an hour a couple of times a week to take action against those ideas. So, that would be my recommendation for people coming out of here is right now schedule 20 minutes in at least the next 5 days, if not the next 7 days, if you can find time on a weekend and have it be thinking time and reflect on where you are and Leon, this has been amazing.

1:46:00 Scott Ingram: I think that's such a fantastic challenge, particularly in this point in the year, right? Like we've got that fresh start, really taking the time. I've certainly got some new strategies and some new approaches that I want to flesh out a little bit more and need to be turned into the action plan, right? They need to be kind of documented in that way. So I just, I so appreciate you and all your time, not only in this very, very long recording session that we've had, but obviously all of the prep that you did and all the work that you put into this. I think it's going to be super, super impactful for those that listen. So, thank you.

1:46:32 Leon Baumann: Scott, thank you. You know, this is a tremendous platform that I love learning from. So, I'm sure others, you know, learn the same. I saw it as a great opportunity to share, you know, some of the perspectives that we're cultivating within the Client Champion movement. I think a lot of people out there, as they become, you know, are having the opportunity to recognize what the Client Champion, what John is trying to do for our profession. Like me, they're going to get super excited about it. So, you know, thank you for giving us this voice. And, you know, I've had a lot of fun today, Scott. I appreciate it. Thanks for listening to the Sales Success Stories podcast. To be sure you never miss an episode and for an invitation to our Sales Success Community powered by Influitive, subscribe to our newsletter at top1.fm.