SALES MANAGEMENT

Sales tales: How to Win from Within

Today’s Tale: 3 steps to Create Champions inside Your Customer

by Alex Mackenzie, Fractional CRO, COO, Executive Coach

Selling can be hard, both intellectually and psychologically. But what if there was a way to deliver more productivity, with better focus without relying on your effort alone? How can salespeople multiply their impact, instead of just getting busy or overwhelmed?

There is a way. Recruit champions inside your customer. Then they will work for you from the inside. Grow your deals. Beat the competition.

1. They give you the inside track on what is needed to win key deals.
2. They sell for you internally when you “land and expand”
3. They will give references externally.

“Once you believe you have a potential Champion, selling ceases to be selling. Selling becomes educating” John McMahon

Here are the 3 steps you need to take to mobilise Champions.

1. Learn how to use Champions: what kind of characteristics do they have?
2. Get connected — how do we identify champions?
3. Drive the deal home — how do we mobilise our champions?

Part 1. What is a Champion?

Someone inside the prospect’s organisation who not only supports your solution but actively advocates for it and gives you more control over your deals.

In John McMahon’s book, The Qualified Sales Leader, he highlights the 2 key characteristics of a champion:

• Professional Win: your champion stands to benefit professionally, e.g. the initiative will help them get promoted.
• Personal Win: they will benefit personally, e.g. promotion will enable them to move to an overseas office in a country they love.

Influence vs. authority dynamic.

• Champions have influence over the person who will sign the cheque but are not typically the final decision-maker.
• Someone who has formal authority, such as a senior title, does not necessarily have influence.
• Equally someone who lacks formal authority may yet have influence over the buyer.

Below is a shorthand to filter for these traits.

Alex Mackenzie graphic

A champion is vital in giving you CONTROL of your deals. Here is how you work with your champion.

• Work with your champion to overcome internal obstacles. You may not even be aware of such obstacles. Know of and / or overcome competitive threats. Differentiate yourself from other sellers trying to gain a customer’s attention.
• The presence of a champion enables you to access the buyer and shape the criteria they will buy against. Create urgency by attaching your solution to their metrics.
• Deepen your understanding of their pains, and thereby grow deal size.

Part 2: Getting connected — how do we identify champions?

Identify and recognize potential champions right at the beginning of your sales campaign. Continue during the discovery phase both before meetings and in the meetings themselves. The key things to look out for are:

First, pre-meeting:

• Have they published professional content that indicates that they care about the problem you solve? For example, are they posting, podcasting or sharing anything aligned to the problems you solve? Linked-in is often a great place to start.
• Is there personal content or connections that can help you? Their personal blogs or social media accounts, and even mutual connections who can help you better understand that person before you speak.

Second, observe how they behave during meetings:

• Strategy: they engage with the meeting preparation you have done. They deeply understand their own strategy and build on your observations.
• Attitude: they not only ask critical questions, but also really listen to you.
• Influence: are they leading and proactively guiding both you and their peers. They go straight to the point because they are professional. And they are time poor!

Finally, stay disciplined here and be binary in your assessments: you either have a champion or you do not. If you don’t have the evidence it doesn’t mean you don’t have the right person, it just means you don’t know. Finding out either way is key.

Part 3. Driving the deal home — how do we mobilise our champion?

a. Building your Champion is like making a deposit — you need to put something in.

Building is a combination of developing both Credibility and Trust.

• It is vital to recognise that Credibility building is the hardest and also the most important. Do not skip this step.
• There is no point in being ‘trustworthy’ if they don’t trust you when it comes to the specific expertise you are proposing to bring to them

Examples of champion-building activities are:

• Doing your homework: Understanding their challenges and delivering value.
• Equipping them with tools: data, presentations, and insights to champion your cause internally.
• Coach to prepare them for internal meetings, ensuring they can address objections and communicate value.

One of your biggest risks in these early interactions is miscalculating and ‘backing the wrong horse’ as your champion. Here are the ‘breeds’ you need to watch out for:

• Smartest person in the room — there for the ego, but not really interested or listening to you.
• The coach — they are happy to support you, but unfortunately they are just as happy to support your competitor. They disappear when the going gets tough.
• Internal salesperson — unlike the smartest person in the room, they are interested in the product or service you are selling, but unfortunately they believe they can do it better than you and don’t include you in the process.
• Contractors — it depends on their circumstances, but the less time they have left working in the company the less chance they have of helping you.

b. Testing your champion is like making a withdrawal — if you have given the right investment, they will be happy to give back. Tests include but are not limited to the following:

• Asking the champion to arrange a meeting with the buyer.
• Asking the champion to introduce you to other potential champions: “who else cares about this problem?”
• Asking the champion to capture info. that will be used to inform the business case.

c. Leveraging your champion — now you are truly in it together.

• Completing the build and test stages successfully will equip you to leverage your champion.
• This phase is different from the previous 2 as you are now both implicated.
• Both you and your champion will be fighting for the deal with your prospective buyer, but also fending off competitors and navigating structural challenges such as procurement

Conclusion.

Champions give you a vital advantage

1. Inside track on what is needed to win key deals
2. They sell for you internally when you “land and expand”
3. They will give references externally

Champion building is not a one time event

• The same applies to Champions as to Deals as a whole… always be qualifying.
• Remember that champion building, like puppies, are‘for life, not just for Christmas’. Future opportunities, and bigger deals will require careful understanding of your client and champion landscape and both will continue to change.
• Ask your champions — “who else cares about this problem?”

Choosing to focus on champions is vital in making the shift from getting busy to getting productive. Know any sales person who doesn’t want that? No… I didn’t think so!

Action: What can you do now?

Look at your current pipeline and identify those people who you think are champions.

• Compare them to the Champion Characteristics in part 1. Do you really have a champion? Be ruthless, ‘I think so’ = no. Do the work to be clear on this. It’s binary.
• If your prospective champion has the right characteristics’ work out what actions you can take from part 3 to increase the impact of that relationship.