I asked the question salespeople all the time, and the answer I get is,
well, you should always be able to wing a champion, and that's
correct. Developing of champions never ends. You're listening to the Audible Ready Podcast,
the show that helps you and your teams sell more faster. We'll feature
sales leaders sharing their best insights on how to create a sales engine that helps
you fuel repeatable revenue growth. Presented by the team at Force Management, a
leader in B to B sales effectiveness. Let's get started. Hello and welcome
to the Audible Ready Sales Podcast. I'm Rachel clap Miller, joined today by
our own Patrick McLaughlin Patty Mac. How are you doing pretty good? Rachel?
How are you good? I'm excited for you to join me today for
this conversation. For those of you listening and you haven't heard, we have
an online subscription platform called a Sender. A Sender by Force Management. It
is available for anybody to subscribe to and we provide daily content. There's a
community there where you can and ask questions and people like Patty Mac jump on
and answer your deal questions or your sales execution questions. And we also have
a curriculum On there, you can get medic certified. We also have a
Pipeline Generation certification and we also host live events for our subscribers. One of
our recent events was focused on champions. It's such a big topic and I
know one that a lot of people have questions on. Patty Mac was gracious
enough to host and take everybody's questions and kind of go through best practices as
it relates to champions and medic qualification. As you can imagine, a lot
of questions came up about champions, So I pulled out the top questions and
Patty Max is going to go through how to deal with them the answers to
them in this podcast today. So we're gonna get ready to go. You
ready, Patty Mat, I'll ready, Rachel. All right, First,
Patty, define what a champion is just so we can level set for everybody
listening right now. Okay, three things, Power and influence. Number one,
they have to have power on and influence in the organization. So a
great question to ask yourself is can they connect to how to and the why
do in a sales cycle. Second thing is they need to be able to
sell on your behalf right because they'll be communicating with other people and they need
to know the value of your solution in their language and they can communicate that
internally. And then the last thing, they have a vested interest in your
success. What that also means is there's something in it for them promotion,
recognition, more responsibility inside of the organization. But they truly have to have
a best interest in your own personal success as a salesperson. So those three
things. Anything short of those three things, Joe a coach. There we
go, all right, So everybody's level set on the definition, and you
can understand why having a champion is such a critical component to your being able
to move a successful deal forward. So let's start with one of the most
common questions that we got in our live session. When is the best time
to build a champion? And are you able to build a champion outside a
sales cycle? Great question, So I asked the question of salespeople all the
time, and the answer I get is, well, you should always be
building a champion, and that's correct. Developing of champions never ends. But
to me, the critical time to build a champions when you're not in an
active sales cycle. Okay, that's a big one for me, I'm not
in an active sales cycle. What is my communication process? What is my
interval of communication? Am I dropping by and understanding what he or she is
doing in their field? What's important to them? Am I educating them?
Am I introducing them to people of similar roles and other companies? And then
the big one for me is do I know how they're paid? Like?
How are they valued? How are they measured? Right as a salesperson,
I was measured by my ability to meet my plan right, achieve my quota
for the year. How are your champions measured? What defines a good year
performance for them? And do I provide them the knowledge and the insight to
achieve those results? That's a big thing for me. So when you talk
about building a champion outside of a sales cycle, just to clarify, you're
really talking about nurturing that relationship. And I'm guessing you're saying outside a sales
cycle because you don't have an ulterior motive. Correct. For me, a
sales cycle is when you're sitting now and with a customer and understanding of the
business pain or a business outcome they're trying to achieve, and educating them on
what's required to get there. So you're an active sales cycle, there's discovery
and communication and questioning. It's going on when you're not an an active sales
cycle. It's when you pick up the phone and say to the customer,
Hey, Rachel, how's your day gone. What are some big things that
you're being impacted by today? Rachel? Let me send you some documents that
I saw were interesting in your industry. They might not have anything to do
with my solution, right, but I see things that you may be interested
in. I'm introducing you to other people in other companies that have similar responsibilities,
so you understand their point of view. I see myself as an extension
of the champions organization chart. How do I enable them to do their job
really well? I may even send them stuff that doesn't even pertain to my
solution, only because I know it's important to them in their job exactly building
champions outside the sales cycle. Where can I look for champions? Good question,
So I think about a power of influence. Power and influence is really
important. So there was a couple of things that I've heard is if there's
change, there's a champion. If there's change in an organization, there's a
champion. So if a new C level has been put into a position,
if a new executive team has come up. You know. One of the
things another one of my teammates says all the time is there's three types of
people in the accounts. People who want change and will lead it, people
who want change and don't want to do the work, and the people ask
themselves. Just happened. So I'm looking for people who can evangelize an opportunity,
can take a challenge on someone that's willing to put theirselves out there.
So I'm looking a lot of times for people who are geople can gain information,
right, gain information to understand how they convetit their organization. Like for
me, champions know three things. They know the impact of the company,
they know the impact of the department, and they know the impact of their
own personal goals. So those are the types of people I'm looking for.
They usually speak in the plural. They speak about organizational impact versus talk about
me myself and I yeah, that's what we want. Okay, So that's
good. Some good tips there. You mentioned at the top coaches versus champions,
And I've written a lot of content around coaches versus champions, but in
reality, a coach can eventually become a champion. So what are your best
tips? If I have a coach, how can I nurture that relationship to
move that person to a champion? Okay, so here's what I tried to
do. I tried to create an emotional connection with my customer to take credit
for the value of my solution, and I worked really hard to teach them
the language the economic buyer understands. Right, So I taught my customers and
I won't say if they're coach as a championship, will just use the word
customer. I created an emotional connection for them to take credit for the solution
so they could be celebrated and thanked inside of the organization. And then I
worked really hard to teach them how that solution delivered results in language the economic
buyer understood. So then if I was trying to move or understand could potential
coach become a champion? Would they then take that message and get a meeting
with the economic buyer? Right, So, if they had the power and
influence to get to the economic buyer, that was good. The second thing
is they could understand the why do behind the solution. Most technical buyers or
power users right sometimes we hear this word power user in today's business sales.
Right, those people they know the how to the technical solution, but can
they communicate in the why do and the why do? Or the business outcomes
usually focused around revenue, cost and risks. And then the third thing is
they know that I'm there to help them, right, so they have a
vested interest in my success. So that's the key thing for me is moving
a coach to a champion And then if they falter and they can't get access
to the v well, they don't have the power in the influence. If
they can't communicate the why do, right, that's also a big issue for
me. And then I need to know what's in do they realize that they
can get a promotion or recognition and what value that has for their careers?
So that's like a big thing to me because then I'm trying to look at
that type of person. Like one of the things that came up on that
podcast we did on Champions in medic was the idea of power users in skeptics,
right, Like power users scared me sometimes scares me as a manager.
These are people who want to talk to you, but you know what they're
doing. They're trying to drain you of all your information so they can power
themselves inside the organization and they don't have the power and influence and sometimes their
peers look at them like, WHOA, this person's moving a little bit too
fast. So one of the things that came up during that podcast was the
idea of a skeptic, and skeptics to me were really good. You know
why, they weren't going to make a mistake in front of the economic buyer.
They knew they only had one shot in front of the EB to get
their message across. So they challenged me on sales calls, they challenged me
on my ability to deliver the business outcomes, and they benchmark me off the
competition because they weren't going to make a mistake in front of the EB.
So that was also that was something like we came up on that last podcast
that we did. You mentioned emotionally connecting the person to the outcomes, talked
about they have something to gain in their career year by going with your solution.
I'm sure those are two, but what tips you have to create those
meaningful connections with the champion for me. It was treat selling not as an
act but as a verb. I need to service my customer, Okay,
And when I say service my customer, I needed to become an extension of
their organization chart. I needed to know what their individual priorities were, departmental
priorities, and how those tied to the company priorities. And I tried to
help my customer get those achieve those results, even if it did not involve
me potentially selling my solution to them, because I knew and when it came
time to buy my solution that they would champion the results for me. So
that was a big thing. So I just felt like I was an extension
of their organization chart and I was their employee, and even if I did
or did not sell something to them, I was going to do whatever I
possibly could to help them achieve their goals. So what did that look like?
A variety of different things. I'll give you an example. One Friday
night, I had a customer calling me up and saying we're going to miss
a delivery of a product and the new store was opening on Saturday night,
and what could we do? Well, it was nothing I could do.
We were closed. My company was closed. It was after five o'clock and
I said, oh, but you know what, I had a desktop printer
in my house and I'm like, I'll drive it. And she's like you'll
drive it five hours And I'm like yeah, and she's like, you're gonna
get a hotel. I'm like probably. So I drove five hours through the
night. The person was still at the store. I delivered the machine so
they had something the next day. Like that enabled her business. Right there
was a big store opening for a telecommunications company. They were selling wireless devices
and I needed to be there. So, like, I knew that was
critical to her, and so I was going to do everything in my power
to achieve it if it meant me driving five hours on Friday night. Yeah,
it's just having that mindset that creates that meaningful connection. Getting back to
this question is a little bit more tactical, but we talk a lot about
the importance of not being single threaded in your deals, being multi threaded,
doing the work to build the collective yes throughout your sales process, and your
champions can be a critical part to your being able to do that. So
how do I use my champion as I have other meetings within the account.
How do I best use that relationship to benefit the my sales process? Great
question, So a couple of things. One no large deal or megadeal,
and the megadeal could be for anyone that's going to listen to this podcast.
Whatever a megadeal is for your industry, your solution. But pleased to know
this, no megadeal is ever one without you having a person on the customer
side of the equation that wants you to win as much as you do.
That's critical and those are chaps. So if you want to close big deals,
it's getting to as many people as possible. So I think to close
large deals you have to do two things really well. Breath and depth.
The breadth of the conversation needs to expand to more stakeholders. The more people
that you can get at the table, deal sizes can usually increase. And
then once you've expanded to multiple stakeholders. Depth, right, how much does
it impact this person, how much does it impact this department? How much
does it impact these different groups of people? To going back to the definition
of a champion. They have power and influence, right, so they can
give you access, they can introduce you to those departments. They can attach
the why do to the how too, and they can understand the impact of
both themselves, their department or organization, and the company itself. So that's
what I was always looking to. You know, most people. I always
set to salespeople all the time, like if you're if you're single threaded and
that person leaves, are you starting over? Yes? Right, So you
want to be multi threaded so you can just in case someone does leave,
you have other contexts, But the main reason why you want to be multi
threaded is you want to close large deals. And the only quite to close
large deals is to increase the breadth of the conversations you're having and the depth
of those conversations, and that's when you get big business. This is such
a meaty topic. I feel like we could do a ten part series,
but We've covered several questions and topics today, so I'm going to start to
wrap it up. So as we close, Patty Mac give us like the
one takeaway you want salespeople to remember from our conversation today as it relates to
champions. Champions can attach how to to the why do, and it's best
that you provide them with knowledge and insights of proof because ninety nine percent of
the time they're community the value of your solution when you are not with them
as a salesperson. So what I would say today is constantly be developing them,
constantly be building them right, don't let them fight the fight on their
own, and then always be giving them the most up to date knowledge,
the most insights, and the most proof. And you can do that by
introducing them to other customers of yours, because that then validates your solution from
a third party proofpoint. And there we go. Thank you very much,
Patty Mac. That was fun. Yes, thank you, and thank you
to all of you for continuing to listen to the Audible Ready Sales podcast.
I've linked up a bunch of resources on champions, go ahead and check them
out in the show notes. Thank you. At Force Management, we're focused
on transforming sales organizations into elite teams. Are proven methodologies, deliver programs that
build company alignment and fuel repeatable revenue growth. Give your teams the ability to
execute the growth strategy at the point of sale. Our strength is our experience,
the proof is in our results. Let's get started. Visit us at
force management dot com. You've been listening to the Audible Ready podcast. To
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Until next time.