00:09 Pim Roelofsen: Welcome to The MedMen Show. This is Andy — 00:11 Andy Whyte: — and that's Pim. What are we talking about today, Pim? 00:15 Pim Roelofsen: Today we are talking about the things that people get wrong with champion. 00:19 Andy Whyte: Champion? Can you have more than one champion, Pim? 00:23 Pim Roelofsen: Yeah, you can. Which is something people get wrong. I've lost count of the times I've had people say "you can't have more than one champion." I think you will have one primary champion. But then we typically think about someone starting as a contact, then a coach, and ultimately they might — and hopefully they will — become a champion. And then you might find a secondary champion, or someone else who becomes the primary champion. That can happen. 00:51 Andy Whyte: And that leads nicely to another thing people often get wrong — which is: "that person is my champion. I've done a ten out of ten job of identifying, testing and confirming they're my champion. They're the world's best champion I've ever had." And now they're always going to be my champion — no matter what happens. And we know that's not true. Because any number of things can happen. Not simply that your competitor goes in and wins them over — it could be that they get moved into a different team, a new initiative lands on their plate that's more important than yours, they could lose interest, the pain you're solving could be seasonal and goes away and is no longer top of mind. There's a whole world of things that can happen that mean the person who was a perfect champion for you is not going to be your champion in the future. So tying those two things together — it's actually really important that you have more than one champion if you can. 01:44 Pim Roelofsen: Absolutely. I also think about it in the context of multi-threading. Because if as a salesperson you own the relationship with a primary champion — sure, that's mostly the case. But then when you have a secondary champion, especially if you think about it in the context of a partnership between an AE and an SE — how powerful is it for that SE to have a secondary technical champion? So that when something goes dark, when someone leaves, you have that backup to keep things going. 02:15 Andy Whyte: Yeah, absolutely. Another thing people get wrong is what I'd call happy ears. And happy ears is a nice thing when it's your friend calling you — but it's not good to have happy ears about your champion. And as sellers, you want to be selling. You're looking for that person who can be your partner going through the motions, building all the things you need to build to ultimately come out the other side successful and go into value delivery. However, someone being friendly, responsive and giving you information — maybe coaching you on how to win — doesn't necessarily make them your champion. Because a champion needs more than just that to be effective. 02:57 Pim Roelofsen: Yeah. I mean, they can have all of that — which is good. But if they don't have power and influence in the way we need a champion to have it, it's pretty much useless to us. So the thing people get wrong there is not being strict about: do I really have a champion here? Because in the long run, if you just accept someone as a champion and they're not really one, it will bite you at some point. 03:29 Andy Whyte: You have to ask yourself very honestly as a salesperson when you're finding your champion: is this person helping me make progress towards an outcome on this opportunity? And I say outcome because it's easy to say "is this person helping me win?" — but that ties back to happy ears. If we're just looking for someone making us feel like we're winning, that's not necessarily winning. We're looking for an outcome. And of course the second best thing to do is to lose fast. So we're looking for that person to make progress for us. The disciplined approach — really asking yourself: is this person going to be the champion? Do they check out against the traits we have? Have we fully tested them? 04:16 Pim Roelofsen: Yeah. And that's very difficult to do on an individual level as a seller. So for leaders, it is imperative to create that environment. Because sometimes the onus of this is too much on the seller and not enough on the environment and leadership as a force multiplier — to create the space where sellers can say: "hey, this person is a great contact, maybe a coach, but champion? Probably not. How do I figure this out?" You want your sellers to think like that. And I think that's where a lot of organizations have a little work to do. 04:53 Andy Whyte: So — if your contact who we're defining as potentially a champion tells you: "don't worry, I'm your champion." Green flag or red flag? 05:04 Pim Roelofsen: Well, there's not really a flag — but it would be pretty much like this, right? I mean, we were talking about this the other day. We obviously hear it because we're selling MEDDPICC — it's quite meta. People talk back to us and say "yeah, I'm your champion." And we were reflecting on how rare that actually is. But when someone tells you they're your champion — the intent can still be there. They might just be missing one of the traits. 05:31 Andy Whyte: Yeah. So to summarize: you can have more than one champion. They're not always going to stay your champion — they can change. The mistake you can make is to have happy ears and believe everything you hear, just lining up behind the person that's always giving you the good news. 05:52 Pim Roelofsen: Yeah — the things you want to hear. A champion will also give you the bad news. That's how you know they have a vested interest — because they come to you saying: "Oh no — the competition was in today and they talked about this and it was really good." That's a question to ask yourself. And that takes discipline, but also the right environment to really feel confident doing it. What do they win if we win? Are we really aligned? If you can't answer that clearly, there's some work to do. 06:21 Andy Whyte: That's a great one to end on. Cheers, Pim! 06:23 Pim Roelofsen: Cheers!
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