“You take the time to invest into a process to hold yourself accountable while keeping your manager engaged in your business.” – Leon Baumann in today’s Tip 1704
Do you have a weekly exercise with your team or your manager?
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Client Champion
Leon Baumann on LinkedIn
Sales Success Society on LinkedIn
Mastering Sales: A Toolkit for Success
1:1 Template
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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. Leon’s focus at Dell Technologies and his career are centered around being a Champion for his Clients. While he has been engaged in B2B Sales for over 2 decades in Tech, he has found much more joy and success by focusing on Human to Human Helping (H2HH) as his approach. Here he is:
Leon Baumann: Hello, Daily Sales Tip listeners. I’m excited to share some experience to help you all become better sellers and better serve your customers. And today, I’m going to focus on something that I started doing religiously. A few years ago when I got a new sales manager and has now become a part of my weekly process ever since. It’s simple. It’s a weekly cadence or weekly one-on-one with my manager that I set up and run. And really, it’s as much for myself as as well as it is to keep my manager informed of what I’m doing and what I might need from them.
It’s an opportunity for me to observe and reflect on my week. I start with a what am I did well? And what do I need to do differently? So your did well, or what are the things that you’re proud of in that past week that made progress in what you’re trying to do to help your customer? And you do differently, is there maybe some of the things that you learn from, that you need to adjust, that you need to do, as it says, do differently as you approach that customer next week and maybe your next meeting. Then I go on to what are my goals. So what are my priorities, both personal and work-related? And how did I do in the last week to measure up against those goals?
And then the next element is I document my priorities, and I categorize them into the Eisenhower matrix. I figured if it worked for one of our greatest presidents, it’s probably going to be a good tool for me to use as well. So I categorize my activities that I need to feel to get done in the next week into what’s important and urgent, what’s important and not urgent, what can I delegate, and what can I eliminate.
So once I go through that exercise and update it on a weekly basis, I can develop my plan as to what’s important and urgent, and that I time block to make sure that I get those to get things done quickly. And then maybe the important and not urgent, what I can time block to get done later or early in the next week, or if I can have some extra time that I can get that done. So I have it ready and waiting for me to tackle if I get some free time. And then, of course, what do I need to delegate and how to get my team assigned to get those things done for me in the time that it takes to be able to make sure that I can be successful in helping my customer.
And of course, I always want to have a spotlight deal that I’m focused on or a mega deal that I’m working on. And I use this weekly exercise as an opportunity to say, Am I making the progress on it that I want to be? And can I measure my progress on that mega-deal? What are some of the things that I need to be doing? And what are some of the things that I need help with that I can be talking to my manager in that weekly one-on-one about what I need from them to help me move my deal forward.
Another thing I capture every week is, what have I done in the past week in the areas of knowledge, skill, and discipline? So what have I learned? What have I read? What have I listened to? And what did it mean to me? How did I exercise some of the skills that are important to me to most effectively help my customers get what they want out of life and out of their business objectives? And then what is the discipline that I exercised in that past week that’s important to me, that I need to make sure that I continue to exercise that discipline? So to me, knowledge, skills, and discipline are how I run my business. And this weekly exercise is an opportunity for me to reflect on that.
There’s also some elements in there in terms of aside from my priorities, is there anything else that I need or that I need from my manager? So I document that and go into it with me. I make sure that I ask my customer or my manager, if he observed any did wells and do different ways when he was in joint sales calls with me or maybe internal meetings. It’s always good to get someone else’s perspective.
And then ultimately, are there some tactical things like expense report approvals, training questions, upcoming meetings, things like that that are always good to capture in there as well. So I recommend that you take the time to invest into a process to hold yourself accountable while keeping your manager engaged in your business. You, your quota, and your career will be glad that you leveled up to this type of experience.
I’ll have the template that I’ve been referring to available in the show notes. If you want to learn more from me, simply reach out to LinkedIn or join the Sales Success Society and join me there for regular interaction to engage with other top sellers, focused on helping our customers and getting better at our craft.
Scott Ingram: For a link to connect with Leon and to get his 1:1 Template, just click over to DailySales.Tips/1704. Once you’ve done that, be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!