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 not miss an episode, subscribe to the show in your favorite podcast player.
Until next time.