Podcast episode
Overcoming mistakes and missed opportunities when champion building (Ford Williams, Regional Director Majors-West & Central @ ThoughtSpot)
30 Minutes to President's Club16 Nov 202235 min
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Join the most tactical sales newsletter in the world: https://hubs.ly/Q01-R33G0 FOUR ACTIONABLE TAKEAWAYS Don’t block yourself by prospecting and meeting with non-champions / non-economic buyers / below-the-line prospects. Use your champion to pre-brief your economic buyer before you present to them so that you don’t have to spend time demoing. Identify the right champion by seeing who takes the next steps, who gets listened to when they speak, and gauging the rigor of their questions. Play the negotiation table with ALL of your asks. If you get an ask on pricing, decline it, but in return give a non-monetary ask. PATH TO PRESIDENT’S CLUB Regional Director Majors-West & Central @ ThoughtSpot Regional Sales Manager @ Expanse Inc. Enterprise Account Executive @ AppDynamics Sr. Enterprise Account Executive @ ClearSlide RESOURCES DISCUSSED Join our weekly newsletter Things you can steal 30MPC Training: 30mpc.com/training
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viewers gets 500,000? In my world, that'd be the partner ecosystem. I'd be calling Snowflake, Redshift, Databricks, trying to understand their spend and get that. In yours, it may be another podcaster or another traditional means of advertising. Also, how to swing big. At the end of the day, Nick, there's also an art part of this. “There's a lot of science, whether it's everything I just mentioned, there's an art, understanding” their business, understanding the people you're working with, knowing your momentum. As I said, we came up a little early. The customer really wanted us to share pricing. My team was like, don't, don't. It's not the right time. We were kind of forced to do it. We did go big, but then we got on site and this champion set us up with the CIO.
So how do you identify that champion? They join a meeting, you may not even set it with them, they join, and when they walk in the room, do people take notice? When they speak, Zoom, does everyone listen? When you're discussing the next steps at the end of the call, “are they the person setting the next steps with you?” Are they the one driving it? Another one, are they asking tough questions? I think a junior sales, oh, they're asking tough questions, I want to stay away. But if they're tough but relevant questions, that means they've actually, they probably have brought other projects in. Like they have scars from delivering on other projects.
So how do you identify that champion? They join a meeting, you may not even set it with them, they join, and when they walk in the room, do people take notice? When they speak, Zoom, does everyone listen? When you're discussing the next steps at the end of the call, are they the person setting the next steps with you? “Are they the one driving it?” Another one, are they asking tough questions? I think a junior sales, oh, they're asking tough questions, I want to stay away. But if they're tough but relevant questions, that means they've actually, they probably have brought other projects in. Like they have scars from delivering on other projects. That's another one. Of course, where do they sit in the org?
are they the person setting the next steps with you? Are they the one driving it? Another one, are they asking tough questions? I think a junior sales, oh, they're asking tough questions, I want to stay away. But if they're tough but relevant questions, that means they've actually, they probably have brought other projects in. Like they have scars from delivering on other projects. “That's another one. Of course, where do they sit in the org?” Who do they report to? Good one is, did they follow the economic buyer here from a previous company? Have they worked together before? Is this the right hand man or woman of the economic buyer? So there's a few, there's many, and I can keep going, but you absolutely need to identify, because if you don't identify correctly,
I want to start with, as you go into procurement, you should be checking with other vendors and partners that have gone through this process and knowing what God asks of them, what they had to do to get the deal done. Right. If you can just get three or four to talk to you, you're going to be in such a better shape. “The first and foremost question is what's important to you and what's important to the EB?” Right. Get that. What's important to procurement? And that shifts, by the way. Let's be very clear. That changes all the time. What's important to procurement today is very different than it was 12 months ago with how the economy has changed. Right.
that meeting can be focused on solving business problems, not technical problems. Number three, one way to figure out if you even have the right champion is figure out who takes the next steps. “Look at who gets listened to when they speak and also listen to the types of questions they're asking.” Make sure they're the ones asking the tough questions. And lastly, number four, when you're in a negotiation, play the table with all of the asks. And one trade-off you can make is if someone has a monetary ask, decline the monetary ask and exchange it for a non-monetary ask.