EPISODE 218: Marketer of the Month Podcast with Benjamin Schneider

Hey there! Welcome to the Marketer Of The Month blog!

We recently interviewed Benjamin Schneider for our monthly podcast – ‘Marketer of the Month’! We had some amazing insightful conversations with Benjamin and here’s what we discussed about –

1. Explores transition from IBM to Lenovo, including key managerial roles and international experience.

2. Discusses the shift from hardware to end-to-end services and solutions.

3. Explains Lenovo’s natural progression into digital workplace solutions through customer demand.

4. Balancing regulatory, security, and employee satisfaction needs with digital workplace transformation.

5. AI used internally for optimization, and externally for new services and enhanced devices.

6. Focus on optimizing device lifecycles, from production to disposal, for sustainability.

About our host:

Dr. Saksham Sharda is the Chief Information Officer at Outgrow.co. He specializes in data collection, analysis, filtering, and transfer by means of widgets and applets. Interactive, cultural, and trending widgets designed by him have been featured on TrendHunter, Alibaba, ProductHunt, New York Marketing Association, FactoryBerlin, Digimarcon Silicon Valley, and at The European Affiliate Summit.

About our guest:

Benjamin Schneider is the Director of SSG Sales EMEA at Lenovo, where he leads services sales for global accounts in the enterprise and public sectors across the region. With extensive experience in the technology sector, Benjamin has held multiple leadership roles at Lenovo, including Director of Worldwide Business Operations and Director of Relationship Business for Eastern Europe and Turkey.

Beyond the ThinkPad: Lenovo’s Director of SSG Sales on Service-Led Transformation

The Intro!

Saksham Sharda: Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Outgrow’s Marketer of the Month. I’m your host, Dr. Saksham Sharda, and I’m the creative director at Outgrow. co. And for this month we are going to interview Benjamin Schneider who is the Director of SSG Sales EMEA at Lenovo.

Benjamin Schneider: Great to be here. Thank you.

Don’t have time to read? No problem, just watch the Podcast!

Challenge yourself with this trivia about the exciting topics Benjamin Schneider covered in the podcast.

Launch Interactive Quiz

Or you can just listen to it on Spotify!

The Rapid Fire Round!

Saksham Sharda: Let’s start with the rapid-fire rounds. The first one is, at what age do you want to retire?

Benjamin Schneider: Well, financial independence is the next step, and then we, look from there.

Saksham Sharda: How long does it take you to get ready in the mornings?

Benjamin Schneider: 30 minutes. If I need to rush it can be 15

Saksham Sharda: Most embarrassing moment of your life.

Benjamin Schneider: Wow. None comes to my mind.

Saksham Sharda: Favorite color?

Benjamin Schneider: Blue.

Saksham Sharda: What time of day are you most inspired?

Benjamin Schneider: Probably in the morning and then after work. If I do an after-work run,

Saksham Sharda: How many hours of sleep can you survive?

Benjamin Schneider: I need my beauty sleep. Seven, eight hours.

Saksham Sharda: Fill in the blank. An upcoming technology trend is blank.

Benjamin Schneider: An upcoming technology is a generative AI for real.

Saksham Sharda: The city in which the best kiss of your life happens.

Benjamin Schneider: 

Saksham Sharda: Pick one. Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk.

Benjamin Schneider: It’s probably Musk.

Saksham Sharda: The biggest mistake of your career.

Benjamin Schneider: Pass.

Saksham Sharda: How do you relax?

Benjamin Schneider: Spending time with family.

Saksham Sharda: How many cups of coffee do you drink per day?

Benjamin Schneider: I’m down to three to four.

Saksham Sharda: The most valuable skill you’ve learned in life.

Benjamin Schneider: Patience.

Saksham Sharda: Your favorite Netflix show.

Benjamin Schneider: Currently, it’s Killing Eve.

Saksham Sharda: One-word description of your leadership style.

Benjamin Schneider: Hands-on count as one.

Saksham Sharda: Coffee or tea to kickstart your day.

Benjamin Schneider: Coffee.

Saksham Sharda: The top priority in your daily schedule.

Benjamin Schneider: Getting organized in the morning.

Saksham Sharda: An ideal vacation spot for relaxation.

Benjamin Schneider: Mediterranean Island.

Saksham Sharda: A key factor for maintaining a work-life balance.

Benjamin Schneider: Have a private life in the first place.

Saksham Sharda: Memorable career milestone.

Benjamin Schneider: First promotion to managerial position.

The Big Questions!

Saksham Sharda: So that was the end of the rapid fire. We go to the longer questions. Can you walk us through your journey from IBM to Lenovo and how your roles have evolved?

Benjamin Schneider: Yeah. So I’ll give you a brief summary. Right. So I joined IBM in 2001 as a key account manager in the PC business. I moved over to Lenovo with the acquisition of that PC business in 2005. Took the first managerial role in 2008, and went international in 2010. Had a couple of other stops in between. And here I am for four years in the role of SSG, sales leader, and then leader of our digital workplace solutions business in EMEA. Might sound a bit boring. I am only in one company for so many years, but, well, it was 12 bosses. I’ve worked for, it was eight roles I worked for, I had the pleasure of managing 24 nationalities on an individual level directly, which was just a great experience. So I stuck around for longer than initially planned.

Saksham Sharda: So what advice would you give to someone transitioning between large tech companies like IBM and Lenovo?

Benjamin Schneider: I would argue it’s most important to maintain your curiosity, be open-minded, accept the challenges as they present themselves, and then apply your skills to whatever emerging situation.

Saksham Sharda: So, since you joined Lenovo, how has it changed as a company over all these years?

Benjamin Schneider: Well, it’s a tremendous success story. It’s, it’s always good to take some time to remind myself, so to speak.2005 being bought out of IBM. Then the PC business was fairly small globally, but we set the ambitious goal of becoming the market leader in pc, which we achieved after a couple of years. And then the company continued to grow. So today, we look at Lenovo as a global technology powerhouse with 60 billion in revenue, 70,000 people we serve our business acquired from IBM, Motorola Mobility being part of the company. Yeah. So it’s been an enjoyable ride over all those years.

Saksham Sharda: What are the most significant cultural shifts you think you noticed at Lenovo during the tenure?

Benjamin Schneider: I would argue the shift was more drastic, let’s say moving out of IBM and moving into Lenovo, right? So IBM was very centralized in, the decision-making and definition of strategy. At Lenovo, we pay a lot of attention to local market requirements. We don’t it’s not as centralized as IBM used to be. So that’s probably the most important cultural shift. And we have a very strong hands-on attitude. We all pull together in the same direction. So that’s an a work in my environment. I simply like it.

Saksham Sharda: So what are some of the obstacles Lenovo has encountered during the service-led transformation?

Benjamin Schneider: Okay, yeah. So the service-led transformation is the latest step in the evolution, right? So Lenovo has created a dedicated services and solutions group like four years back. That was probably, and we are evolving from being the, being known as a very strong provider of hardware products for both infrastructure as well as workplaces. But now we are more and more looking at providing the end-to-end solution to our end customers. And in support of that goal, we have created SSG as a separate strong business unit.

Saksham Sharda: How do you manage the integration of hardware and service solutions to deliver a seamless experience?

Benjamin Schneider: So I think it’s good to talk about how we drove the development and evolution of our services and solutions offerings. And I will call out that we co-created a lot of that with our customers, right? So a lot of the capabilities were initially piloted and invented, so to say, working with our customers and solving their challenges. Yeah. So that has been the recipe for success. And then we look at scaling out and scaling up beyond the initial call with a few customers we pilot things with.

Saksham Sharda: Could you talk a bit about what your typical day looks like? You wake up in the morning and then?

Benjamin Schneider: Yeah. I wake up in the morning, and if I’m not on the road, I probably start relatively early in front of my pc, clean up my email backlog, and get organized as I mentioned earlier for the rest of the day. And then there a two big number of teams meetings I am on. But still, it’s working internationally a lot, right? So it’s a very diverse set of activities from discussing new offerings in the pipeline to having individual coaching discussions with one of my salespersons to planning the next marketing event. So it’s never a dull moment.

Saksham Sharda: And how much of your time is taken up by meetings daily?

Benjamin Schneider : Probably more than half, which is not an ideal situation.

Saksham Sharda: So let’s head back to the other questions. You’re reading this you’re heading sales of Lenovo’s Digital Workplace Solutions. Why is Lenovo entering this highly contested business?

Benjamin Schneider: Yeah, I would answer by saying why not? But I would also answer by saying it’s a logical evolution of our services and solutions business. Again, we co-create a lot, of those solutions with our customers, and a lot of the engagements are based on customers approaching us. Can you do more for us? Yeah. And obviously, it’s a good additional business opportunity for us. It’s a good opportunity to get closer to our customers to evolve further beyond the traditional selling of hardware and become the solution providers to our customers. And I will also say that it’s probably a strong moment or a good moment in time to engage in that area. On a high level, our mantra for Digital Workplace Solutions is, well, let’s look, at what we can automate together with our customers. What we can’t automate, put that on us, Lenovo. So you dear customer can take care of all those other priorities and you don’t waste your time on, let’s say, keeping the lights on tasks. Now, automation plays a key role in, obviously generative AI will accelerate automation and take automation opportunities to the next level. And we are building our Digital Workplace solutions portfolio based on, AI-enabled tools.

Saksham Sharda: And in all this what role does customer feedback play in refining Lenovo’s approach to Digital Workplace Solutions?

Benjamin Schneider: It’s an integral part. As I mentioned before, it’s an integral part of how we set up our solutions, how we build our solutions, and how we fine-tune the solutions along the way. This type of sale only happens and works in very close cooperation with our customers.

Saksham Sharda: So what are some of the big drivers you see in Digital Workplace Solutions today?

Benjamin Schneider: Well, I would say I don’t envy any digital workplace leader out there, right? So there’s all those priorities. There are regulator requirements. They need to have an eye on sustainability. Employees are coming their way. I’m not happy with the support I’m getting. My machine is too slow, my machine is too old. Why can I not use my private machine in the company network and so on? You have security considerations that play a role. So it’s a super challenging environment. But for us, it’s very important to engage with customers and look at the outcomes that they want to achieve with the modernization of their digital workplace. And then we embark on a journey together to define priorities and work them off one by one.

Saksham Sharda: And how has remote and hybrid work accelerated this need for Digital Workplace Solutions? The pandemic, any of this has had any impact on it?

Benjamin Schneider: Oh, it has a massive impact. Yeah. Overnight companies needed to shift people to working from home. That was a very much hoc imposed move, and it worked a lot better than many anticipated, but it also brings a bit of a backlog of challenges that still need to be resolved. And that’s where we are engaging with customers on now putting hybrid work models onto a more solid footing, helping them take an end-to-end look at their workplace environment inclusive of meeting rooms, inclusive of office space and how, how do we enable workers to be more productive and improve the digital employee experience in here.

Saksham Sharda: What outcomes do your customers seek to achieve most frequently when working with you to modernize their Digital Workplace?

Benjamin Schneider: Yeah. So I think there is a base layer of maintaining and ensuring compliance, right? And, and security. That’s a base layer. And then we engage with customers and they have different focuses. So can be, they look at workplace agility and resilience in the light of hybrid work environments can be, they have a big initiative around improving, the digital employee experience. And drafting and architecting a great user experience can be, they are focused mostly on efficiency and effectiveness of their workplace environment. But I want to tell you a story. We had a very good customer session lately, and we had a very long session where we discussed, what are your priorities. How do we see the world? How do you see the world? And we’ve done a lot of discussion, a lot of good alignments. And then the CIO who was a heavier bearded man, said quiet for most of the discussion. But then in the end he said, listen, there’s one point missing from my perspective. And that point is simplicity because if it tries for simplicity, we get all the rest automatically. Users like simplicity, simple processes are more sustainable. Security is easier to manage if we strive for simplicity. So that has become my mantra. I’m picking that idea from a dear customer to strive for simplicity in order to work around digital workplaces.

Saksham Sharda: You also mentioned sustainability. What role does sustainability play in Digital Workplace Solutions then?

Benjamin Schneider: Yeah, I would say it permeates the digital workplace solutions from start to finish, so to speak. Yeah, I think we have a very strong view on how to optimize the digital workplace and the device lifecycle also from a sustainability perspective, starting from how we ship the goods from the factory to the end customer. How many shipment legs do we have? How can we optimize CO2 emissions along the life cycles and the life, and how do we support it more efficiently? How do we avoid unnecessary sending back and forth of devices, and sending technicians onsite? How can we streamline this? And then there’s a big role in retirement processes at the end of the life cycle of devices. And, we look at it from cradle to grave and how can we optimize it across the whole life cycle?

Saksham Sharda: And so how do you see sustainability priorities evolving within the workplace solutions sectors over time?

Benjamin Schneider: I think it is a bit about picking the low-hanging foods first, and that is what we work on with customers. There are a number of customers who do not have a retirement process for old assets. That is something that can be fixed, fairly simple but then you need to get deeper and you need to take that end-to-end holistic approach and holistic view. We also offer customers tools, a new tool now called LSA that helps them to assess with what is a very important task, their CO2 emissions baseline first. So that is the first step. Be transparent, be clear about where you are. Then we define where you wanna get to and we align on measures to be taken.

Saksham Sharda: What kind of talent would you be looking for people who want to join Lenovo and work with you, what kind of skills or what kind of talents is Lenovo looking for currently?

Benjamin Schneider: So a dear colleague of mine said fairly early in my career hire for attitude, train for skills, right? So it’s mostly about, the attitude, it’s about curiosity, it’s about adaptability, it’s about flexibility and enthusiasm is very important if I see the spark and the light in, in somebody’s eyes when and during the interviews that does have the trick.

Saksham Sharda: Okay. Let’s talk a bit about the talk of the time now AI. What impact does AI have on Lenovo in general and on your area of responsibility in particular?

Benjamin Schneider: Yeah. We can not talk about AI, but I’ll give you a couple of perspectives. So the first one is to differentiate between Lenovo internally and then what we do. What do we do externally? Lenovo internally has been utilizing AI for years, right? To optimize our supply chain, to optimize demand planning processes, to optimize our logistics networks. So that’s, that’s a little bit not cold coffee and the evolution continues, but we have been using it internally for very long now. From an external perspective, there are again, a couple of dimensions. The one is, that it’s a great driver for our core business in intelligent devices where the next generation of products will come with mural processing units enabling faster processing of local AI workloads. There is a big momentum building for our infrastructure solutions group business where we also offer the, let’s say, infrastructure side of things and solutions. And yes, there’s great momentum for our services and solutions group. And again, it’s two ways. Yeah. We look at how we enable more traditional services utilizing generative AI and then we look at native AI services, and AI consultancy services where we help our customers embark on the journey of their implementation of AI. And we pull from our internal experience from the experience with other customers to help them on their journey.

Saksham Sharda: What ethical considerations does Lenovo take into account while implementing AI in its services?

Benjamin Schneider: I’m happy about the approach that Lenovo has taken here. We were very cautious when chat GPT and so on, started up, so there were restrictions in place immediately on the internal usage before things got clarified. And that is now opened up gradually. And, the ethical considerations are, are a top and the number one priority for Lenovo. Hence we also look at three levels of AI. So you have the private level, that resides on an individual’s machine potentially. Then you have the corporate or the organizational level, which, which is the next layer, in terms of privacy concerns. And then you have the public world which is the open world. And that thinking and that categorization helps us, navigate and ski our way through the complex world of, AI and AI use cases and AI tools finding the way,

Saksham Sharda: How has the evolution of customer expectations in the tech industry influenced the selling of Lenovo’s services & solutions?

Benjamin Schneider: I think the complexity has exploded if you wish. So we face ever bigger buying centers on the customer side. Those decision-makers are, are better informed. These days. Recently, I think some studies say that in a professional B2B sale, any customer engages potential suppliers. They are like 60% down the road of the individual purchasing decision, right? So we need to level up our game and we have leveled up our game to cater for that, right? If you think you survive going out to a customer pitching your standard solution, you are probably dead. You need that consultative approach. You need to engage in discovery fashion with customers to get a seat at the table. And then as customers open up, they are more and more interested in hearing our viewpoint, hear our experience in the vast number of projects that we drive.

Saksham Sharda: What changes have you observed in customer purchasing behaviors for the last few years?

Benjamin Schneider: I think the decision-making has gotten longer and longer given also the buying centers have become bigger. We see quite a few projects stalling or going in one direction first and coming back from a different direction a little bit later. But it’s, it’s even more important to work with the customers to identify the compelling reasons to act early in the sales cycle and then move a targeted project through the sales cycle in a targeted fashion.

Saksham Sharda: Speaking of customer decisions, then marketing plays a key role in solution sales. How do you align your sales strategy with Lenovo’s marketing efforts to drive growth?

Benjamin Schneider: So we are very closely aligned and talk about digital work-based solutions. As an example, the first step is we need to build awareness. That’s why we are at, events like this, the, TechX in, in Amsterdam. We need to get out, we need to spread the message, make people, and make customers aware, Hey, Lenovo is not Thinkpad or some hardware stuff. Lenovo is your end-to-end solution provider. For that, we then work very closely with our marketing colleagues to define adequate tactics and execute them adequate tactics in again, globally consistent, but locally efficient manner.

Saksham Sharda: How do you tailor marketing strategies to different regional markets, particularly in EMEA?

Benjamin Schneider: So it’s event-based marketing in some, some of the markets it’s more generic outreach in other markets. So you always need to understand also the different levels of maturity that in all honesty, Lenovo’s business has across those different markets, right? By no means is our business homogeneously developed in all those markets. So you need to cater to what the market requires where Lenovo’s maturity is and then define the right set of marketing tactics and initiatives.

Saksham Sharda: Looking at your career as a whole, now, that you’ve been working internationally for more than 15 years, what are your most important observations working in regional or global sales roles?

Benjamin Schneider: So I enjoy working internationally a lot. It’s a salt in the soup of my workday, and it helps me stay on my toes. It helps me take in different perspectives. It helps me learn, from everyone and curiosity helps me along the way. Yeah. And then you can say, well in some ways, selling product selling solutions is the same globally. You could say same, same, but different maybe, or you could say different, different, but same in the core of selling it, I think you need to figure out the new answers and you need to be aware of the common core principles of the sale, and then you’ll be successful.

Saksham Sharda: So what advice would you give to someone aiming for a leadership position in sales or business operations within the tech industry?

Benjamin Schneider: I think it’s all about curiosity and maintaining that curiosity. It’s about adaptability, being, being flexible. It’s about being patient at times when patients can be of good advice, but then also being divisive asking for your next career move when you feel it’s the right time, and the right opportunity you are pursuing.

Saksham Sharda: Right. So the last question for you, so it’s of a personal kind, what would you be doing in your life if not this?

Benjamin Schneider: I’d be a shepherd on a Greek island.

Let’s Conclude!

Saksham Sharda: Thanks, everyone for joining us for this month’s episode of Outgrow’s Marketer of the Month. That was Sophie Heller who is the Benjamin Schneider who is the Director of SSG Sales EMEA at Lenovo.

Benjamin Schneider: Pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Saksham Sharda: Check out the website for more details and we’ll see you once again next month with another marketer of the month.