SPORTS EPISODE 01: Microsoft Federal GM Christine Barger Shares Sales Leadership Insights She Gained as a Maryland Terrapin Division One Lacrosse Champion

CHRISTINE’S TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: “There’s no “I” in team, that’s something I apply every day. I also feel like I don’t lose, I either win or I learn – that’s another thing that I apply every day. And I would say plan your work, work your plan and make sure that you’re grounded in what makes you feel passionate every day when you wake up and just enjoy and have fun.”

[NOTE: There’s a little bit of unintended background noise from the 15 minute mark on. Please ignore it. The content is great!] 

Christine Barger is the general manager for Microsoft Federal where she leads a team of 85 sellers and technologists with responsibility for over a billion dollars in revenue.

She also played on the University of Maryland’s women’s lacrosse national championship team in 1992.

On this episode, she talks about the mindset of the champion and how you can apply it to sales leadership.

Find Christine on LinkedIn!

Fred Diamond: Christine, it’s so good to have you back on the show. I really enjoyed our first conversation. I’m excited today just to focus on the sports angle, things you learned and I’m sure this is going to be of interest to the people listening around the globe but just to give a quick snapshot, tell us again what you do at Microsoft and then we’ll shift into the sports version.

Christine Barger: Fred, thanks for having me back, so excited to be back and chatting with you. I lead our sales and technical specialists in our federal market solely around productivity and cloud solutions as well as security and hardware.

Fred Diamond: Very good. Alright, so I mentioned that you were a Division 1 lacrosse player, give us a synopsis of your sports career, your journey and your highlights so people will get context for the next part of the podcast.

Christine Barger: Very interesting story about how I landed being a lacrosse player in college because I was actually recruited initially to University of Maryland as a field hockey player. I went there to start to play field hockey and started playing lacrosse and realized that I liked lacrosse better than field hockey as I moved through my career. At the time, Dr. Sue Tyler was the lacrosse coach and I went in and told her that I didn’t want to play field hockey anymore, that I was just going to play lacrosse.

I remember telling my high school coach that I was going to go ahead and move away from field hockey and I remember specifically her saying to me, “That’s interesting, because you’re not half as good as a lacrosse player as you are a field hockey player.” I remember that was a defining moment in my life to say, “I don’t really care what she thinks, I’m going to go be a lacrosse player and I’m going to do it well.” It was an interesting way to land because I was recruited to play a totally different sport.

Fred Diamond: For the people listening to the podcast, what are some of the differences between playing field hockey and lacrosse? What different type of skill do you need for lacrosse that you might not have needed for field hockey?

Christine Barger: I think a lot of the athletic prowess around eye and hand coordination still remain between field hockey and lacrosse. I think the lacrosse game is much more fast moving than the field hockey game mainly because it’s played in the air as opposed to on the ground for field hockey. A lot of the same principles around leadership and teamwork and collaboration and goal orientation is still the same regardless of sport. I guess my heart was leading me in a different direction.

Fred Diamond: Once again, for the people listening to the podcast you are a Division 1 lacrosse champion.

Christine Barger: Correct.

Fred Diamond: Tell us about that. You were at Maryland, when did you win the championship? Just tell us about that.

Christine Barger: It was such a great experience for me. My freshman year I remember playing, I started on second team my freshman year because I was not brought to Maryland to play lacrosse and quite frankly, they hadn’t even really scouted me for lacrosse. I went on to do fall ball and had an OK fall ball. The spring came and I started to get comfortable and I remember it was a week or so before our first game.

Ironically, it was against Penn State and Mandy O’Leary who’s now the head coach of Florida grabbed me out of practice and said I was the fastest person on the team. She came to me and she said, “There’s a woman that we want you to guard, her name is Diane Whipple from Penn State. You have to face guard her, your only job for the whole game is for her never to touch the ball.” I was playing second team so now I’m with basically juniors and seniors at Maryland who’ve been there forever playing and I’m tossed into the mix of this.

That was my first foray into first team or varsity, whatever you want to call it, Maryland lacrosse. Then I never went back down to the second team, I had stayed. I had a pretty good run of it, we were very good our freshman year. My sophomore year Cindy Timshal came in who is now the head coach of Navy and she came from Northwestern. Retooled the team a little bit and we made it to the semi-finals my sophomore year. Then we made it to the final game my junior year and we lost.

Then my senior year we made it back again and we actually ended up winning. Across my college career there were three pinnacle years, lessons learned throughout all of those years but very exciting times.

Fred Diamond: Who’d you beat for the finals?

Christine Barger: Harvard.

Fred Diamond: Harvard? Good for you.

Christine Barger: We were losing in half-time by 4 goals.

Fred Diamond: That’s incredible, that’s a large margin.

Christine Barger: I remember going back, we had scored one goal to get within 4 and I remember coming back to the circle getting ready to take the draw again, gathering my teammates around and saying, “We can do this, I know we can do this. We can win this game” and a different kind of energy generated on the field and we came back and we won in overtime.

Fred Diamond: Let’s talk about that moment. How much time was left in the game? You’re down by 4, was it?

Christine Barger: 4 and a half.

Fred Diamond: 4 and a half, and when did you have that moment? When did you gather the team together to say, “We can win this game”?

Christine Barger: I think it was 8-4 and when we scored our fourth goal and we came back to get the draw to try to get possession for the next sequence of events, I remember gathering everyone around the circle and just looking at everyone directly in the eye and saying, “We can do this. We have been preparing all year to do this and we can do this. We haven’t gotten this far the last two times. As a senior, I’m not losing.” [Laughs]

Fred Diamond: Did you believe that?

Christine Barger: Absolutely, 100%.

Fred Diamond: Absolutely, 100%. Could you see something different from the young ladies of Harvard that you were competing against? That you saw something that you knew that you could do it or did you just have confidence in the women who were on your team and how far you’ve come in this journey?

Christine Barger: I think quite frankly it was one of the only times over that whole year. Actually, I don’t ever think during my senior year we were ever trailing to anyone. We were very well coached and well prepared. Cindy was very meticulous in game preparation for the team both from a competitive perspective like scouting our other teams but also in our own preparation about what we were good at and focusing on what we were good at as our strength. We had never been in a deficit situation before, but I think the best thing that came out of that is that we knew that we were so prepared, that it was just a lag of execution for that brief moment and then we knew we were going to rally and come back.

Fred Diamond: Very good. You also mentioned Penn State a few moments ago without passing, congratulations, your daughter recently was accepted and committed to Penn State.

Christine Barger: She is, she’s going to play. She’s a senior at Notre Dame Prep this year and she’s going to play lacrosse at Penn State next year, so very excited about that.

Fred Diamond: Lacrosse has obviously been a big part of your family, your husband was also a player as well.

Christine Barger: My husband was a two-sport college athlete as well; he played soccer and lacrosse at Towson University. Then my son is also a lacrosse player for Crabs in Baltimore and then my little one plays for school.

Fred Diamond: I’ve got one quick question before we ask you some of the lessons that you’ve learned from the field. You mentioned that you went back to your high school coach and said, “I’ve made the decision. I’m going to go lacrosse versus field hockey” and she said, “I’m surprised because you’re not half as good at lacrosse” and you said you just shunted that aside. Do you still think about that or did you ever go back to her? Was that something that you held onto or was it just a passing comment on the way?

Christine Barger: I think it was a defining moment for me. As an individual – and I think I still carry that along – for people that I come to encounter in my life whether it’s business or professional to say that I can’t do something, if I really have a burning desire to do it, it just gives me the fuel and the fire to say, “I’ve done that before. People said I couldn’t do something and I continue to do what I want to do.”

A really good friend of mine is a mentor to me and she always says, “Just because it’s someone else’s path, doesn’t mean it has to be yours.” I keep that in the back of my mind and when people are nay-saying saying I can’t do something, I just reflect on all of the great things that I have been able to accomplish when people haven’t believed in one of my skills.

Fred Diamond: You’ve worked for Microsoft for a large part of your career and obviously it’s one of the most successful companies in the history of the planet, world-class at everything that it does and no one needs to know more about the history of Microsoft. Do you feel like an elite athlete working for Microsoft as a sales leader? Does that translate as well how you felt yourself on the lacrosse field, do you feel that way about representing such a strong, powerful brand like Microsoft?

Christine Barger: Yes. There’s a lot of pressure everywhere in this world and I feel like I dealt with that early in my life – pressure to perform, pressure to prepare and then an expectation of once you’re on top, how do you stay there. I would say perfect planning, plan your work, work your plan was always something Cindy was very big on. That’s something I coach all my folks, so you have to have a plan and then you’ve got to work your plan and if your plan’s not working you divert and do something different. You try different things and I feel like those experiences on the lacrosse field about having to morph and change so frequently based on game time situations have really helped me become the sales leader that I am because as market conditions change or skills change or come in and out of the organization, it gives me a platform to adapt quickly because I’ve had to do that my entire life.

Fred Diamond: I have a question. As a woman in sales, as a female sales leader – and obviously, you’re an elite sport performer – do you use sports analogies much when you lead your team? Quote Vince Lombardi or something or, “It’s the fourth quarter guys, we need to do this”?

Christine Barger: I think guiding principles for athletics I use, weaved into every message. I try to stay a little bit away from sports analogies just because in this type of world where diversity and inclusion is important and every perspective is unique and different, I never want to feel like I’m alienating anyone because maybe they didn’t play sports or maybe they don’t like sports, or maybe they don’t understand, they don’t know who Vince Lombardi is.

I would say definitely the guiding principle that I have for execution in my team and leadership principles that I feel are important, but I would say day to day sports analogies not so much.

Fred Diamond: When you’re out there on the field, take us back to your college days. Again, you had a great career in lacrosse all the way to the division 1 championship. Tell us what it feels like, because most people listening to the podcast today are successful sales leaders or they want to become Sales Game Changers, sales leaders. Tell us what it feels like on the field. You’re at that championship game, you’re down to 4 goals, what are you thinking? Are you present in the moment? They say that Wayne Gretzky used to always go where the type was going to be, type of a thing. Tell us what it feels like to be on that field in a championship game. What’s it, a 60 minute game, lacrosse?

Christine Barger: Yes.

Fred Diamond: What is it like? Then I want to know how does it translate to yourself as a sales leader. How has that presence, if you will, translate into what you need to do as a sales leader every day?

Christine Barger: I would say #1 is focus, being in the moment and being able to get really dialed in into the task of what you need to do. Not just me as one of the team members, it has to be everybody dialed in because it’s not like I could have won the game by myself but the diligence to remain focused and the passion to be successful. Just being dedicated to the craft, whatever your craft is you want to be successful at whatever you’re doing, to be dialed in and focused on that was probably the most important thing for me.

Then I would say the belief that your team member to your left and your right is supporting you 100%. If you missed a ball, if you missed a check, if someone had to drop off of another plan, play defense on someone else. If someone was tired, is someone was hurt, just remaining really present with your teammates to know that they have your back. I feel like I try to run my org like that, too. If someone’s not having such a great month or needs some extra help, it should be another teammate to come pick them up to make sure that we’re focused and that we’re supporting each other.

I would say those two things were super important to me.

Fred Diamond: That’s interesting, I always wondered this about elite sport performers. You’re at the top of your game – were you the captain of the team, by the way?

Christine Barger: I was one of the captains, yes.

Fred Diamond: One of the captains. Obviously you were a leader, you talked about your ascent. If someone doesn’t perform, let’s say somebody misses an assignment or they’re out of position or something like that, how do you feel as that’s happening? I’m curious as a manager, too. Obviously as a manager it’s a longer game, there’s ways to correct but how do you feel if you’re on the field and someone just flat-out misses an assignment or something?

Christine Barger: First of all, everyone’s going to make mistakes and it’s not so much the mistake that you made but it’s how you correct it and how you rebound the second time. We were never a team that if someone missed a ball or missed a check that we would get down on the other person, mainly because it’s the way that you respond to those types of adversity that really matters. We knew that if someone’s having a bad game or someone missed something we had the confidence in our team, in our teammates to say, “They’ll figure it out, they’ll adapt and they’re going to make it better for next time.”

Fred Diamond: I know that you’re obviously a tremendous preparer and that you wouldn’t have gotten to this level without that. Can you take me through your regimen before a game? Let’s say a typical game, I’ve always wondered. Let’s say the game starts at 7 o’clock at night, from 3 o’clock to 7 just tell us what you do. Did you have to get yourself psyched up, did you eat a certain meal? Then I just want to see how you could apply that to what you do as a sales leader.

Christine Barger: Our game preparation started several days before with competitive information about the team that we were playing and Cindy always did a very good job of making sure that we had our assignments a couple days leading up to the game. For example, if someone needed to guard their leading scorer and they were a left handed attacker, that they knew how to defend that person. Or if someone had a specific move that they did going to goal or a specific expertise that we are well prepared from a competitive perspective.

From an internal team perspective, how we got ready, the day before she was a big imagery person so we did mental imagery although when you’re in college and your coach puts on soothing music and they’re walking you through imagery exercises, we did spend a good amount of time laughing. That was humorous, but nonetheless that was a principle that she was very much into, guided imagery and imagining yourself executing what you need to be executing on the field that had a time in your mind.

Then game day was all about music for us, music and that’s how our team got pumped up. The game day we walked into it feeling prepared so then it was all about how do we raise the energy.

Fred Diamond: Thinking about the competition, not to date you but today, obviously there’s tons of video that you could see every game any of your competitors every played. You’re playing Harvard in the championship game as a senior, did you know the tendencies of everyone on Harvard? Again, this was before the prevalence of video all the video and smartphones and YouTube and things like that. Were you prepared at that moment from a “you know everything” about the ladies on the Harvard team?

Christine Barger: I would say for our specific assignments because not everybody can cover everyone but for my specific assignments I felt completely prepared where we would have a little bit of tape that we would watch, we would have other people go and watch their games. Depending on where you were on the field, what position you were playing and who you were guarding, you had your one or two people that were around your area that you felt prepared to take on.

I wouldn’t say I knew everyone, we knew the goalie, if the goalie liked to save high or low or if they were weak nonstick side hip or where we should put shot placement, we knew that. The whole team knew that, the whole team knew. Pretty much people that would take the draws which is how we started the game, people would know where the opponent would go ahead and normally target the draw as they did the draw so that would be a common theme. Then it was down to brass tacks of who you were guarding and what their strengths were and how to defend them.

Fred Diamond: Tell us what you were exceptional at. Obviously you reach the pinnacle of your college lacrosse career and you played in the championship game which you won. Tell us what you were specifically amazing at and then relate that to sales. As a sales leader, what is something that you’re particularly tremendous in as a sales leader?

Christine Barger: That’s an interesting question. I would say what I was known for on the field was speed #1 and defense of technique would be #2. I would say how that translates into my professional experiences day to day is I am a person that does many things at speed. This isn’t very good, but I don’t have a lot patience for sometimes slowness which could be a detriment to me as well, it’s a little bit of a blind spot because I’m used to doing everything at speed.

Sometimes you’ve got to slow down to speed up as well, so I always keep that in mind. That’s been a blessing and a curse a little bit from the speed perspective. Then I think the defender part of that is all around competitiveness I think, for me. The mindset of that person can never get the ball, they will never get the ball, they won’t beat me, I will dominate them [laughs] on the field and I feel that pulls through a results oriented for me. A little bit of perfection which isn’t always a good thing either but definitely the competitiveness.

Fred Diamond: Curiously, are there any women that you played with that you also have encountered in your career? Have any of them gone into sales leadership or have any of them become competitors?

Christine Barger: Yes. I have a couple of points. It’s been interesting because like I said, my daughter is a senior in high school so a lot of my friends who I played with over the course of my career are now college courses. During my daughter’s recruiting process I got to visit with a lot of my friends and my daughter always used to joke, “Is this about you, mom, and your social hours is about me?” That would be the first thing. Then interestingly enough I just ran into my friend Deb Cupp who I played against, she played at Richmond and I played at Maryland and we also went to a little bit of rival high schools. Our paths have just crossed and she works at Microsoft as well.

Fred Diamond: Very good.

Christine Barger: It’s been great to encounter some other top performing female athletes.

Fred Diamond: How did you improve over time as a lacrosse player, how did you keep getting better? To reach the Division 1 championship game as one of the captains of the team, you made the transition from originally being invited to University of Maryland as a field hockey player. Of course, you shifted over to lacrosse, you continually progressed your career. How did you improve and how do you work with sales professionals to get them to make continuous improvements so they can move up from entry level positions to account management to first line management to eventually senior management?

Christine Barger: How did I improve? I think as you start to mature as an athlete, your mindset flips from “I” to “we” and it’s not all about just your performance on the field but it’s about your performance coupled with how do you make your other teammates great. I think that translates nicely from a leader perspective because as you’re an individual contributor the results are all about what you’ve been able to achieve and then as you move into a leadership position you’re empowering others to be great.

I think that experience translates pretty directly from what I specifically experienced on the field and how I embraced going from the, “It’s all about me” to, “It’s all about we” and we collectively achieving a goal. I think that type of coaching for any type of teammate is important, even if you’re an individual contributor because you’re always going to need a supporting staff around you at any time or teammates to accomplish your goal. I think it expanded for me even outside of just the teammates on the field but the “we went to our coaching staff”, the “we went to our equipment managers”, the “we went to our trainers”, the “we went through people that would make sure that we were fed well, strength and conditioning coaches.”

The “we” as you start to elevate your career and elevate your knowledge or comfortableness of being in the situation, you can see that the “I” goes away and the “we” that you even though could have been just team related starts to expand as well. Those people all working together helping to push towards a common goal is pretty much the coaching that I give most of my folks.

Fred Diamond: One thing that we know is that sales is hard. Of course, you work for Microsoft, you’ve been at Microsoft for a long time and obviously hugely successful and you’re running a hugely successful organization now, but it’s hard and you don’t win every gig. You have some tremendous competitors right now, obviously we all know who they are and you’ve dealt with various competitors over time. You won the championship as a senior which means you didn’t win it as a junior, sophomore or freshman.

Christine Barger: That’s correct [laughs].

Fred Diamond: Very few teams have had perfect records. Of course, the last team in the NFL was the Dolphins in 1972. How did you deal with break down? How did you deal with not just the loss but a heartbreaking loss? Then curiously, how have you related that to the business world, where you’ve just lost a big deal? Tell us about what you learned from the sports field and how that applied to the business world.

Christine Barger: I think what translates pretty nicely is the type of coaching style that Cindy had at Maryland was not one of if we were doing something wrong – I’m not saying she didn’t yell at us, because we got our fair share of getting yelled at – but it was more around creating that environment to learn why we weren’t performing our best. I think Satya (Nadella, Microsoft CEO) has done a really great job over the last couple of years of transitioning our culture. We’re still very results oriented, don’t get me wrong, but when things aren’t going the best way that they can go, focusing on what we’re learning, what’s the business outcome and what are we learning from it in order to transform doing something different, doing something a better way.

I think it translates pretty nicely is the way that I was coached and brought up on the athletic fields during my college career and how that translates over to my selling career because obviously you’re not going to win every deal but it’s about what you learn from it, what’s the experience you learn from it and how do you package that up and make it better for next time.

Fred Diamond: You’re obviously up to some great things at Microsoft. Again, you could go back and listen to our original podcast with Christine at www. salesgamechangerspodcast.com/christinebarger but why don’t you tell us about one or two things that you’re working on right now that excites you? Do you get the same passion working on the stuff right now that you’re focused on as compared to the ascent to that Division 1 championship game?

Christine Barger: Yes, I think my personal tagline for myself is I’m a builder, I’m not an optimizer. I love to build things, I love to transform teams, I love being the thick of new technology, I love to develop people, anything that I’m doing to build something whether it’s someone else’s individual career or building a relationship with a customer or partner or getting a deal done. That’s my sweet spot.

My passion for right now is all about security, I am super passionate about that. I feel like it is the anchor to Microsoft success both in the present and in the future. I personally am not the strongest in security right now so I’m in a immerse myself learning mode for that which is how I thrive and where I feel most passionate about. That’s where I’m really focused right now, trying to make an impact on the security space.

Fred Diamond: Why don’t you give us a final thought or two or anything else that we might have missed over the course of the interview that you think is pertinent to the Sales Game Changers around the world to understand?

Christine Barger: I would say a couple of things. I’m kind of goofy, so I do things in three’s. I would say there’s no “I” in team, that’s something I apply every day. I also feel like I don’t lose, I either win or I learn, that’s another thing that I apply every day. Then I would say plan your work, work your plan and make sure that you’re grounded in what makes you feel passionate every day when you wake up and just enjoy and have fun.

Fred Diamond: I’m going to follow up on that one quick time. Whenever someone says, “I’m a big planner as well” but a lot of times…

Christine Barger: My family would say that I’m a huge planner [laughs]. That I need to release a little bit on the planning, I’m very scripted but…

Fred Diamond: What would be some of your advice along the way for the sales leaders or sales professionals listening if things don’t quite go as planned?

Christine Barger: I would say the athletic analogy transitions really nicely into the professional analogy which is what I talked about, the team. The team isn’t just your immediate teammates, it can be your trainers, etcetera. One of the things that I’m very diligent about even in my career and I coach others to think about is who is in their network similar to “who is on my team”. Not just my teammates, but who are all the people that I could tap into for help to be a high performing athlete, and I try to coach people the same way making sure that you’re reaching outside of your immediate network of people that you could reach out to touch to get feedback or thoughts or diversity of thought on what you’re trying to do.

It’s always been super successful for me because it’s amazing what you learn from different types of people that aren’t even in your industry but you can get some really interesting knowledge and things to apply to help you be more successful.

The post SPORTS EPISODE 01: Microsoft Federal GM Christine Barger Shares Sales Leadership Insights She Gained as a Maryland Terrapin Division One Lacrosse Champion first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.

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KEY MOMENTS
Key lessons from your first few sales jobs: 10:08
Name an impactful sales mentor: 16:16
Two biggest challenges you face today as a sales leader: 20:29
Most important tip: 30:18
How do you sharpen your saw and stay fresh: 37:06
Inspiring thought: 38:38

EPISODE 085: Christine Barger Tells How Being a Collegiate Lacrosse Champion Helped Her Exceed Her Billion Dollar Sales Goals at Microsoft

CHRISTINE’S CLOSING TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: “Do what inspires you, spend time and invest the time in yourself getting grounded in understanding what you love to do and where you provide value, and realize that your path isn’t the same as the person next to you. You chart your own path.“

Christine Barger is the general manager for Microsoft Federal where she leads a team of 85 sellers and technologists with responsibility for over a billion dollars in revenue.

A large part of her mission is helping the Federal customer implement Microsoft cloud solutions to help the government customer modernize and achieve their mission.

She’s a technology sales leader with over 20 years’ experience. She’s also a graduate of the University of Maryland where she played on the University of Maryland’s women’s lacrosse national championship team in 1992.

Find Christine on LinkedIn!

Fred Diamond: Tell us a little more about what you specifically sell today and tell us what excites you about that.

Christine Barger: I’m in the cloud business today and Microsoft, we’re very fortunate to be very well positioned in the marketplace for all of cloud technologies. My specific focus for my group is on the modern workplace or productivity solutions, so what does that mean for folks?

People that are using collaboration tools in the marketplace, email, they’re using instant messaging, presents and voice technologies as well as Windows and newly added to the portfolio is our hardware offering which before this position I spent four years creating the market, me and my team creating the market for hardware, for the public sector across Microsoft so we have that added to the portfolio so you think about it from the endpoint all the way to the cloud helping make people more productive.

Fred Diamond: Remind us about the hardware and what exactly is that?

Christine Barger: If you’ve heard in the marketplace anything about Surface, we have a variety of form factors. We have tablets, we have a laptop form factor and then reaching to our largest form factor which is 85 inches which is called our surface hub which is a productivity tool that people use to collaborate with teams across the world, the country and anywhere that they may be to go ahead and conduct business.

Fred Diamond: We mentioned that you’re also the general manager here at Microsoft Federal. Tell us specifically who you sell to. Who actually is the customer that you’re bringing these solutions to?

Christine Barger: Historically, Microsoft has focused mostly on the IT customer within the federal government so any large civilian department of defense system integrators fall under my per view as well as our national security group practice we have as well.  It spans the whole segment of the federal government. The type of people that we are traditionally talking to in the past has been IT and now we’re making a big push to go ahead and really focus on helping our federal customers achieve the mission within their organizations.

That’s allowed us to go ahead and branch out to have all kinds of great discussions with people that are specifically managing programs to help better citizen access, help secure the country, really at the heart of what this country stands for with regards to all around the missions for the government space.

It’s gotten us beyond IT. We’re getting to partner more with those types of folks and that’s really exciting because it allows us to see our solutions that we create at Microsoft come to life in our customer’s environments.

Fred Diamond: Microsoft has been selling to the federal government probably since its inception.

Christine Barger: Absolutely, yeah. I’ve been here personally 20 years. I know that when Bill (Gates) and Steve (Ballmer) were around, I was around at the same time and Steve  was actually one of the sponsors for one of our large Department of Defense customers so Bill and Steve spent a lot of time in DC and funny story – not funny, but interesting story – that our Exchange platform, a lot of the enhancements and security parameters that were created for Exchange came out of requirements of the federal government. Interesting story.

Fred Diamond: That’s great, we’re actually broadcasting today’s podcast from Microsoft’s offices in Washington, DC and there’s been a lot of great meetings, great events here bringing the partners together and also providing great solutions to the government customers. I’m looking forward to getting a little deeper into that. Take us back to the beginning of your sales career. How’d you first get into sales as a career?

Christine Barger: OK, you’re going to laugh but I begged.

Fred Diamond: OK, alright. Did you beg to Bill Gates?

Christine Barger: I didn’t beg to Bill Gates but way back when I was working in a human resources department at a bank in Cincinnati, Ohio and that was in the early 90’s and we were using Word Perfect in IBM systems to go ahead and input candidate data and I was not computer savvy at the time and I said to myself, “I think something big is going to happen with this whole computer thing, I got to get myself positioned.”

I had a contact with a mainframe computer company and heard they had some openings and interviewed twice and the woman who actually ended up hiring me said, “I don’t know why I’m hiring you because you don’t have any experience but you’re the most tenacious person I’ve ever met so I’m going to give you a try.”

I had no computer experience, I hadn’t gone to school for that. I actually wanted to be a sports broadcaster when I was going through the University of Maryland, I was a speech communication major and she said, “I’m going to give you a shot” so that was kind of the birth of my career in which I spent 24/7 five days a week servicing financial services customers west of the Mississippi on the telephone.

I was a telesales contributor. I spent a lot of time smiling, dialing and trying to figure out how to make a relevant message for people over the phone when you didn’t have any physical contact which is super challenging and I feel like it sets you up for great successes because you’re able to refine your messages to make them impactful in a very short period of time because if you can imagine, they would say, “You have two minutes.”

Fred Diamond: I have to imagine now, so if you fast-forward twenty years into the future to today, a lot of sales is going inside. A lot of it’s being done on the phone, and I presume Microsoft is leading the edge on that as well. How have those lessons helped you as a sales leader with a whole generation of sales professionals who are now primarily doing things on the phone?

Christine Barger: I think for me, preparation. As you noted in your intro, I was at University of Maryland playing lacrosse so I was there on a lacrosse scholarship in a very intense program. We won a national championship in 1992 and I think preparation is one of the key factors in having those types of very quick discussions.

I always encourage people to, “What’s your elevator pitch?” I know people use that kind of as a cliché but if you get someone that you need to make an impactful statement to within two minutes, what are you going to say? And I think the preparation for that in that job has done me really well as I prepare for any type of meeting. I always like to be super prepared before I have discussions with folks.

Fred Diamond: I want to address this now before – I’m not going to forget, but I have all these notes about the fact that you were on the 1992 NCAA division one national lacrosse champion and you just mentioned preparation was a big thing. We’ve had a lot of people on the Sales Game Changers podcast who’ve had some great achievement who’ve been on professional sports teams, have worked on world class project. Would you mind talking about that experience for a little bit and how it’s prepared you for where you are today?

Christine Barger: I would not change a thing about my college experience. I know a lot of people say, “I went to college and it was so fun, I got to do this or that.” My college experience was comprised of six days a week of lacrosse practice, very regimented time that I could be out and about celebrating with friends in certain things, but the greatest thing about that is that it taught me a sense of collaboration and teamwork and nobody on that field at any given time could win the game for anyone else.

There were people that performed better on certain days, but at the end of the day it was all about the team and making sure that we came together no matter what the circumstances were and I think the most riveting example of that is in the final game we were playing Harvard and we were losing by five goals and I remember coming up to the center circle because I was a defense of midi and with a group of people around me saying, “If we believe we can do this, we can.”

I said, “We’ve been here before, we have been to two runner up games for national championships the two years prior” and I’ve said, “We’ve been here before. Let’s get our head on and do this.” We came back and won 8 to 7.

Fred Diamond: Five goals, that’s a lot of goals to make up in a lacrosse game.

Christine Barger: Yes it is. It was very exciting but the collaboration, the discipline, Cindy Timchal was my coach. She’s now at Navy, the Naval Academy. This week she had her 200th win as a collegiate coach and she really taught us preparation was everything.

Fred Diamond: Good. I just have this one last question on lacrosse, we could probably talk about this for the next four hours.

Christine Barger: definitely.

Fred Diamond: Of course, this is the Sales Game Changers podcast, just one last question because I’m not sure how familiar with a lot of the people, we get listeners around the globe. Is there anything about lacrosse that – I understand that preparation, collaboration, teamwork – but is there anything else about the game, something  you need to personally have as a skill to make you excel, is there some secret about lacrosse that you can share that maybe would help us understand?

Christine Barger: I think just having a full field vision and anticipation of where things are going to go next. I think that’s been really interesting because that skill of me just kind of predicting where the ball is going to go next on the field, I was a defender so my main goal was to get the ball back from the offense so things like intercepting passes and kind of reading people, plays and processes on the field have kind of translated nicely to business, too.

For me to help to think as a visionary about where things are going and think a little bit more strategically as well as execute on the tactical end as well.

Fred Diamond: That’s a great answer. A lot of people listening to the podcast obviously love sports analogies and one that has come up a couple times, of course, is Wayne Gretzky’s quote that he skates to where the puck is going to be as compared to where the skate’s going to be. I love that answer. You’ve given us some of the lessons you learned from some of those first few sales jobs. Tell us specifically about you, Christine Barger, general manager of Microsoft federal. What are you an expert in? Tell us a little more about your specific area of brilliance.

Christine Barger: I spend a lot of time thinking, “What do I want to be known for when I leave the workforce?” and I think when you spend a good amount of time getting grounded in what makes you happy and what you feel provides the most value to the company, it becomes a really interesting exercise.

I was able to do that with one of my mentors about seven or eight years ago and what I landed on is what I love to do and what my tagline is, is I’m a builder. I’m not an optimizer. What does that mean? I’m an expert in transforming things, I’m an expert in someone giving me a problem and saying, “I have no idea how to do this, fix this, build this, figure it out, find the right people, find the right markets and go ahead and execute.”

If you’re looking for somebody that has an existing sales territory and they need to grind out that extra point five of productivity on something, I’m probably not your person for that. It’s been interesting because being able to be grounded in things that I feel like I’m good at and where I provide value has really helped me define better my career path because great jobs will come up or opportunities will come up all the time and people say, “Oh, you should do this and you should do that. You should take this opportunity” and just being grounded in what I know and love to do and being able to kind of look at that against the opportunity has helped me really chart a pretty cool career path for myself and one that I continue to add value to the organization as well.

Fred Diamond: That is great. Obviously, we were talking before about how you’re bringing cloud technologies to the federal government marketplace specifically to help them achieve their mission and that’s an ongoing process and that will continue to go. You did mention a mentor that you had interfaced with a number of years ago. Can you tell us about an impactful sales career mentor and how they impacted your career?

Christine Barger: I have three I’ll mention. My first, Kim was the woman that gave me probably the best sales advice I still gleam onto today and I try to coach a lot of people too. I went into her one day early in my sales career and I slapped down this piece of paper and I said, “Look at all the meetings I have this week, look at all the things that I did” and she looked at me and she called me, “Chrissy…” she said, “Chrissy, that’s great, you have a lot of activity but you have zero results from that?”

That was the first impactful message that everyday, everyone’s inundated with information and things to do and people can never feel like they can get everything done so I think it’s really important as I think through how I prioritize it that and things, activities that I take on and projects that I take on, I think about is it going to make me busy or is it going to really have an impact to myself, to my team, to the organization, to the market, to my customers, etcetera. I keep that in mind.

The second one, great advice, the first leadership job I ever took. One of my still very close mentors and friends told me that he gave me the autonomy and the freedom to run my business the way I wanted to because he trusted me and he said, “Chris Barger, you are the CEO of your business. I will only hold you accountable for the results, how you get to the results is your path to choose.” I thought that was a very insightful thing and something that I continue to coach my people on to.

Since I am a builder, I feel like I’m an innovator so I’m always asking how can we do it better? How can we do it faster? How would it delight our customers more? How would it help them achieve the mission more quickly? I never settled for the status quo, I’m always pushing. My third one would be career advice from still a good friend and mentor, my friend Karen. I was trying to figure out what I was going to do next and it was at the time before I went through the exercise to really get grounded in what made me happy. I was a manager at the time and I was thinking about going back to be an individual contributor for a little while because it was Microsoft’s first entree into productivity solutions for cloud and way back when if people are listening, if people remember our cloud solution for productivity like ten years ago. I said, “Look, I think I really want to do this, this business is going to be big” going back to where the hockey puck’s going to go.

I said, “I think this cloud thing is going to be really big. I want to be on the forefront of that and learn but how I need to do that is I need to go back and be an individual contributor again.” And I was doing great as a manager, I was exceeding my numbers, my people were happy, they wanted to promote me and she looked at me and she said, “Sometimes you just need to feel like the rules don’t apply to you so if people are giving you specific career mentoring advice, you don’t have to listen to everyone. You should take everyone’s opinion but at the end of the day it’s your decision and just because someone else took a certain path doesn’t mean that you have to.

Fred Diamond: Those are three great examples. I love the middle one, that’s come up a couple times before. Again, you’ve worked for Microsoft for close to 20 years. Obviously the company supports you, they train you, this is a beautiful facility, they give you great devices, obviously world-class software to do your job on the world-class productivity tools but at the end of the day you are the president of your career, it’s up to you to achieve, it’s up to you to think about your vision and where you’re going to. That one comes up frequent.

I typically love that you are truly the CEO of Christine Barger’s career and you’re the CEO of whoever career is listening to the Sales Game Changers podcast. Christine, what are the two biggest challenges you face today as a sales leader?

Christine Barger: I think just making sure that people have clarity around goals. There’s so much information and different priorities that come from every which way. It’s very much a priority for me. I’m a simple person, I like three to five things to be good at, I feel like that’s the best way to show impact and the greatest impact is to make sure that you figure out what your three to five things are that are important and you just hunker down on them and be the best at those things.

I spend a lot of my time trying to distill down messages and priorities that come from fourteen different directions into the top three to five things to provide clarity for my people so they feel like they’re making impact. The second thing I would say is generating energy for my folks. I try to make sure that the environment is fun yet competitive and fulfilling for their careers, so those are the two top challenges that’s a daily thing for me. I think about that as I prioritize and think about what kind of impact and activities I’m going to take on. I say those that provide clarity for my folks, for my customers and will it generate energy across the organization?

Fred Diamond: Christine, why don’t you take us back to the #1 specific sale success or win from your career that you’re most proud of?

Christine Barger: When we chatted just a second ago about me taking that turn from being a manager for four years and as pretty successful manager back to just reverting to an individual contributor again, I went back to the cloud and I think what that allowed me to do is really focus on what was important for my customers in a very deep way and I tend to build pretty deep relationships with my customers.

A lot of them will call me and say, “I don’t know who can help me fix this and I know you can’t but you probably can find me the person who will and I know that you’re going to take care of me”. It was pretty great but we executed on the cloud opportunity for a customer and at the end of it we decided that we were going to have a celebration as part of one of the implementation expectations for the project.

Little beknownst to me, Dwayne Bell stood up and provided some awards for some of his team members which I thought was great for them to get the recognition for doing this and then at the end of the award ceremony we’re clapping, I’m thinking, “Now we’re going to get out of here” he asked me and a teammate of mine to come up and they presented us with a plaque from the American Red Cross as a token of their appreciation for all that we had done for that big project.

I think being recognized by customers and just being looked at as someone calling you ten years later saying, “I know you’re probably not the right person, Christine, but you took such great care of me I know you’ll be able to help me or try to figure out who could” that’s kind of the reward in itself.

Fred Diamond: We talked about a lot of things, we talked about some of the lessons she learned from the lacrosse field pitch. Is it lacrosse pitch?

Christine Barger: It’s a field.

Fred Diamond: From the lacrosse field about preparation, collaboration, teamwork. About having a complete vision, understanding where the ball’s going to go next and how did that vision to build into it. We talked about how she’s utilized her skills as a builder and how she’s worked very critically with her team and her customers and her leadership to transform things and help her customer achieve their mission. We’ve had a couple great things here about activity is not the critical thing, it’s the results. Are you doing the right thing? Are you putting the right priorities in place to truly have an impact?

We also talked about the fact that she sat down about five years ago and thought about what are the three to five things that really made her happy so that she could then shift her career and focus on what really was going to be impactful not just to her and her family but also to her customer and to Microsoft, the company, as well. Christine, you’ve given us some great insights into a great career in sales. Of course, you started your career selling or supporting mainframe customers.

Christine Barger: Yeah, financial service’s main A series and Sperry, if anyone remembers Unisys. 

Fred Diamond: Was there ever a moment where you thought to yourself, “It’s too hard, it’s just not for me”?

Christine Barger: Ironically most people probably would say, “Yeah, there was these fourteen times.” I think my sports career and being focused on that going through times that we won, times that we lost and times of adversity really set me up in a great way to manage the ups and downs of sales so for me, my whole life has been on the competitive athletic field.

I have three beautiful children, my oldest is going to play lacrosse at University of Oregon as a division one lacrosse athlete, my son aspires to play in college as well and my daughter is competitive in her own way. She does plays and plays lacrosse for school and she has it different in her grades, she’s super competitive with her grades. I think that competitive spirit for me is one of the things that if I think about what makes me happy, I’m a competitor.

My tagline on my instant messaging right now is, “I don’t lose, I either win or I learn.” I think I’m grounded in the fact that I want to be in a sales environment because I get that competitive rush so I don’t think there’s ever been a time. Sure, there’s times I’m discouraged, right? But give up? No, that’s not me.

Fred Diamond: I have one quick question before we go to break. We’re going to listen to one of our sponsors in a second here. Do you still keep in touch with your teammates from the 1992?

Christine Barger: I do!

Fred Diamond: How does that go, frequently?

Christine Barger: It’s very interesting because until the recruiting rules had changed, my daughter’s very blessed to be skilled in lacrosse and we were going through her recruiting process so she was being recruited as early as from 9th grade year in high school. Ironically a lot of my friends, a former coach who coaches at University of Florida was recruiting my daughter and then Cindy Timchal would always say, “Yeah, Brooke’s coming to Navy, right?”

Several of my friends are coaches. My friend Kirsten is the head coach at Duke so there are all teammates and coaches and people that I get to see through the recruiting process and then my friends who now have daughters that are playing lacrosse, we’ll see each other at tournaments and stuff so it’s great. It’s a special bond when you go through some of the things that we went through as a team, so it’s great.

Fred Diamond: Especially reaching the pinnacle of the sport. I tell you, again, we’re talking here about your sales career. I think I’m going to start a podcast talking to high sales achievers who’ve also had high sports achievement. I could talk to you for the next hour about that, it’s just fascinating. What’s the most important thing you want to get across to junior selling professionals to help them take their careers to the next level?

Christine Barger: I think perfect practice makes perfect is something that was instilled in me through athletics. You can practice a lot but unless you’re putting 100% of effort into your practice, you’re not going to get better. That would be the first thing and I would also say just as a general career tip, we talked a lot about this, be grounded in what you know and what you love, what makes you happy.

All the events across the US as you see on a daily basis just makes you appreciate every moment that you have and you want to spend every moment that you have in a fulfilling way. Be grounded so you can be happy in what you’re doing.

Fred Diamond: What are some of the things you do today to sharpen your saw and stay fresh?

Christine Barger: I have to get better at this, quite frankly. One of the things that I’ve been thinking a lot about to get better, I was reading a LinkedIn post by Warren Buffet and Bill Gates about the time investment that people need to make in themselves in order to keep their skill sharp and it was both of those two leaders spend an average of five hours a week reading all kinds of different things, it doesn’t have to be just business type of books but spanning all kinds of books just to make them more well-rounded and I think for me, that’s one thing that I want to get better in for that skill.

Fred Diamond: Good, so what’s a major initiative you’re working on today to ensure your continued success?

Christine Barger: I’m spending a lot of time coaching people because I enjoy that piece of my job a lot and I’m trying to teach folks that in your career you’re going to have people  that are going to sponsor you, meaning they’re going to say you do a good job and talk to others about what you’re doing and then you’re going to have advocates that when you have to go to the mat for someone or they want to pull one person in the boat and only one person in the boat so it gets across without it sinking, they’re going to advocate for you to be in the boat.

Really having a voice to make sure that people are advocating for you so I think that the whole mentorship thing is important but I’m convinced as I get later in my career that’s only half of the battle. You can get really great career advice from people that are advocates for you and have seen what goes on across the industry but you have to have that network of advocates that when you want to go for that next job, when you want to be promoted the people are going to stand up and say, “Christine Barger’s the best thing since sliced bread and she needs to move on” or “She can take on this big challenge.”

As I mentor and coach people, I tell them that as they think about grounding themselves and what they want to do next and what makes them happy they also need to surround themselves with a group of people that will advocate for them and stand up for them when they want to move on and draft under them for their next career moves.

Fred Diamond: I have a question for you about that, if you don’t mind a quick follow up. One of the favorite quotes that we sometimes hear as well as the Jim Rome quote that you’re the average of the five people that you spend the most time with. In a corporation like Microsoft where obviously there’s different levels and there’s different goals, agendas if you will, I love that advice but what are some of the things that you would tell your people to do? Is it to spend time figuring out who those people would be? How do you tell them to build those relationships?

Christine Barger: It’s so funny that you ask that question. I was at a mentoring lunch yesterday with a young woman, she asked me the same thing. I just love being around people so my natural tendency is to just reach out and meet as many people as I can even if I don’t feel like they necessarily will help me at that space and time, but maybe I’m interested in something, they know someone I know, any kind of connection, a business challenge that we’re working on, I’m never afraid to reach out and I typically will reach out via email but then I will always pick up the phone because if you go back to the first set of questioning, “What did I do and what did I learn and how did I get started?”

It was over the phone. I was able to hone in on that skill making a connection with someone if I can physically speak with them. I will make a virtual contact and then immediately say, “Hey, I just need” – and I never say 30 minutes because then people are like, “Oh, 30 minutes? That’s a lot.” I always say, “I just need 10 minutes of your time, 10 quick minutes I could use your thinking, your coaching, your support on something and that’s what I really do but it’s really just making sure that you’re making as many personal connections as you can and never judging like, “Oh, I don’t want to talk to that person because they’re not a VP” or “They’re not a general manager” or “That person doesn’t have a high enough title in my customer.”

There’s always something you can learn or some kind of nugget you can get from any kind of conversation that you have with people.

Fred Diamond: Very good. One thing that you just mentioned, people ask me all the time what have we learned from the Institute for Excellence in Sales. I always say that the #1 tip is the phone. I called someone yesterday and they were shocked to get a phone call, it’s like, “Oh, old-school.”

Christine Barger: Right? Everybody says that to me. They’ll say on instant messaging, “A call?” question mark, and I’m like, “Yes.” And then the second later I’m on the phone.

Fred Diamond: People love getting called, they really do. It’s such a pleasant distraction.

Christine Barger: Distraction from the email, looking at the screen, you can actually speak with someone.

Fred Diamond: You told us some great stories here today, Christine. Sales is hard, though. You talked about things that come up, people don’t return your phone calls or your emails. Of course, when you’re representing Microsoft you probably get a lot more of those calls answered and of course you’re dealing at the highest levels of some of the customers that you service but why have you continued? What is it about sales as a career that keeps you going?

Christine Barger: I think the value that we add and working jointly with our customers to achieve their mission. I worked on the commercial side of the business as well and while commercial customers have their own financial goals and big, bold aspirational goals – and that’s great, I’m not trying to judge – but when we’re working with federal customers, there’s a mission for this whole country to be successful and being able to align with that and provide value to our customers in that way is just something that’s completely differentiated from any other selling job that I’ve ever had. It keeps me going to know that when we partner with a customer we can see their mission come to life throughout out technology, it’s really amazing.

Fred Diamond: That’s a great answer and we’ve interviewed a bunch of sales leaders in the federal space: Anthony Robbins at nVidia and Gary Newgaard from PureStorage come to mind and the conversation like yours always goes quickly to the mission. The fact that the federal customer is definitely trying to achieve a mission to make the world a better place.

Give us one final thought to inspire the Sales Game Changers listening to the podcast around the globe today.

Christine Barger: Three short bursts: do what inspires you, spend time and invest the time in yourself getting grounded in understanding what you love to do and where you provide value and realize that your path isn’t the same as the person next to you, you chart your own path.

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo
Produced by Rosario Suarez

The post EPISODE 085: Christine Barger Tells How Being a Collegiate Lacrosse Champion Helped Her Exceed Her Billion Dollar Sales Goals at Microsoft first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.