“I’ve got the great benefit that I have built some Raving Fans, and some of them are even no longer customers. So even though I don’t get to work with them as I once did, I still connect with them. I still talk to them. In fact, they’re still friends of mine today.” – Leon Baumann in today’s Tip 1427
How about you? Are you a raving fan?
Join the conversation below and learn more about Leon!
Dell Technologies
Leon Baumann on LinkedIn
Leon Baumann on Sales Success Stories Interview
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from Leon Baumann. Normally I share a clip from my Sales Success Stories interviews, but Leon went above and beyond like I’m sure he always does and sent me a stand-alone two-part series! Leon is a Senior Account Executive and Client Champion at Dell Technologies. Leon’s focus at Dell Technologies and his career are both centered around being a Champion for his Clients. He is a firm believer in investing heavily in himself, as evidenced by the numerous training programs he’s taken part in at Wharton, Kellogg, and the Professional Selling and Sales Management program from Harvard. As a result of these efforts, and his relentless pursuit to serve his customers with relationships built on a foundation of trust, he is an Authenticated Client Champion. Here he is:
Leon Baumann: Hello Daily Sales Tip Community. This is Leon Baumann, and today I want to provide you part one of a two-part series in which I’ll share some thoughts with you about the importance of creating Raving Fans within your customer base.
But before we get started, are you a fan of some team?
Now, I’m in Milwaukee and I’m a big Brewers fan. And of course, we may have only won one pennant and we’ve never won a World Series, but I still love watching my Brewers, and I can’t wait until spring when they get started again.
And we’ve had some greats here in Milwaukee that I’ve enjoyed seeing, like Hank Aaron and Robin Yount. And our current team is anchored by former MVP Christian Yelich, former Cy Young winner Corbin Burnes, and the expectations is that the Brewers are going to be hot again in 23.
Speaking of hot teams, we’ve got another team here in Milwaukee that is so hot. The Bucks.
Now, I’m not as much of a basketball fan as I am a baseball fan, but we’ve got Giannis. Yeah, Giannis. Wow, is he fun to watch. He’s like superhuman on the basketball court. I was even lucky enough to see them win it all in 21 and become the world champions in game six with some of my customers. And this year, the Bucks are hot again! GO BUCKS!
So, what about you? Who is your team? Who are some of your favorite players? Do you talk about them with your friends and family? Do you wear their jerseys on Sundays? Do you wear their hats? Their sweatshirts? Do you have their memorabilia hanging on your walls like I do with my 82 pennant hanging on the wall in my office?
Now, think about this for a moment.
What if your customers thought about you like this? What if they wore a jersey with your name on the back? Or a hat? Or a sweatshirt with your company’s logo on them? Or your name on them? Talked about you with your friends and the family on Monday mornings, cheering for you every chance they get, and love watching you make the impossible look effortless.
Well, this is what I want to talk about today. How to get your customers to love working with you to become Raving Fans of what you do for them and how you make them feel?
Now, everyone in sales can focus on creating Raving Fans.
Maybe you’re like me. I’m in the Enterprise, and as an AE, I have a small group of very large customers, and I essentially work with the same leaders every day within those companies.
Or maybe you’re in the commercial or SMB space, and you have a very large territory with a broad group of customers in which you might not work with the same people every day like I do, but maybe only see them at times, work with them a few times a year.
But just think, if you could have just one of those occasional customers be an active reference for you to your other customers, wouldn’t that be priceless?
Now, before I share my thoughts with you about having Raving Fans as customers, I need to start with some advice.
You get nothing in this world without first giving, whether it be trust, love, friendship, kindness, and especially with Raving Fans.
You need to make sure that you’re a Raving fan of your customer and that you’re doing everything for them as a person, not just a customer. You need to look for opportunities to contribute to and celebrate their personal success. Cheer them on. Wear their jersey. Be a Raving fan of them.
So, first of all, what is a Raving Fan?
In our context, a Raving Fan is a customer that has personally benefited enough from the value that you can provide that they’ll advocate to others on your behalf. Talk about you when you’re not around, like my coworkers and I do, talking about Giannis after his triple-doubles.
Now, this may be internal to their organization. Maybe they’re talking to their peers or their leadership team that may be to other customers that they’re already connected to, and they like talking about the great success that they’ve had and how you’ve been a part of that. Or maybe it’s something that you can do to introduce them to other customers of yours. Like I mentioned earlier, that your Raving fan doesn’t even know. But because they’ve had such great success, they’d be proud and happy to talk about it to anyone that you put them in contact with.
Now, Raving Fans will also go out of their way to help you out.
This could be letting you know something that is not working and that you need to be fixing it, or letting you know specifics of what your competitors are doing within their account, or who they’re talking to. Or maybe it’s internal changes in their organization model that might affect your relationships and who’s responsible for making decisions.
Now, after 22 years of selling in the same market and in the same industry, I’ve got the great benefit that I have built some Raving Fans, and some of them are even no longer customers. So even though I don’t get to work with them as I once did, I still connect with them. I still talk to them. In fact, they’re still friends of mine today. As they will talk about more, my approach has always been to put the client first, and I’m refining this mindset to now treat both prospects and clients in a way that hopefully, they’ll become lifelong friends.
This reframe keeps me orientated to the client as a person, a person who has business needs that I can help solve. And it keeps me curious, it keeps me bringing value and positive energy to that conversation, and it enriches my life because I get to learn a lot more about and appreciate that person as an individual.
Now, that’s it for today, and I’ll be back soon with a second and third element of my Raving Fan philosophy. So for now, enjoy your team and cheer on your customers.
Scott Ingram: For a bunch of great links to connect with Leon, his full interview on Sales Success Stories, and a transcript of this tip, just click over to DailySales.Tips/1427. Once you’ve done that, be sure to come back tomorrow for part 2 of this tip. Thanks for listening!