Beware of labelling Champions
“Strong”
“Powerful”
“Weak”
“Big” … Champions.
Beware them all.
Humans need humans to succeed. That’s life.
To be successful, we trust others to help us succeed. This faith naturally leads to attachment.
Spending time with salespeople over the years, I continue to notice the emotional attachment we develop for our Champions.
This attachment is easily justified. In sales, following MEDDIC, Champions are where all our hopes and dreams lie.
Why? On average, over 70% of meetings to determine a project spend are internal meetings for our customers.
Salespeople do not always have a seat in that room. Our Champion fights for the cause in those meetings.
Labelling is misplaced hope
Within MEDDIC, champions are very clearly defined as:
- Someone with power and influence.
- Someone with a track record for successful engagements.
- Someone with something to gain from our project.
- Someone with access to the Economic buyer.
Sometimes, when our faith in our Champion starts to falter, we use adjectives to describe that Champion.
Think about this: if we have built a Champion of our product or service low down in an organisation, too many levels away from the expected Economic buyer, they will not be able to secure a meeting with the Economic buyer.
When we review a deal, we might start to excuse this inability with the following:
“Maybe our Champion isn’t powerful enough.”
Or:
“Maybe they are not a strong enough champion.”
“It’s a trap!” Admiral Akbar
The immortal words of Admiral Akbar tell us we have fallen into one of the most common issues when considering Champions. We are forgetting that the definitions are absolute:
- They have the power and influence or not.
- They have a track record or not.
- They have something to gain or not.
- They can get access to the Economic buyer or not.
If any of these answers are not, they are not your Champion.
Stick with me here as I hope others can learn from some significant learnings from my experiences.
Emotional attachment vs. objectivity
In my experience, by adding describing words to Champions, we become more attached to the Champion and lose our ability to be objective.
Our job as salespeople and leaders is to consistently qualify and validate where we are in a cycle and assess the risks in front of us.
By attaching ourselves to our Champions, a few pervasive scenarios occur:
- We don’t test our Champions. We trust them, so why continue to validate that they fit the bill?
- We ignore or excuse the failure of one or more tests the Champion must pass.
I often hear that “weak” Champions are not senior enough. We then try to fill in their gaps with our actions. The hard lessons of experience tell me this will not work in the long run.
If a Champion is not being tested and validated, they are not your Champion.
If they fail a test, they are not your champion.
Full stop.
The foundation of forecast accuracy is your ability to be honest about the risks and then mitigate them. Don’t fall into the trap of your faith driving your numbers.
Not your Champion… yet
I’m not suggesting that all people who don’t fit the definition should be discarded into the wind. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither are Champions.
People can be Champion material, but we must build them into “our Champions.” To do this, we must create a relationship based on trust, and it takes time to build trust.
Perhaps your contact is the right person; if this is the case, then a Champion plan and activities are needed to build that trust.
One word
Champions are the cornerstones of deals.
Without one, we don’t have a deal. So, consider carefully: do you have a Champion?
If you have a strong, powerful, weak (or other) Champion, ask yourself why you are describing them. Who are you convincing?
Be honest with yourself. The worst thing that can happen is that you take action to mitigate the risk.
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