MEDMEN: We Upset Our Champion… What Happened Next?

00:00 Pim Roelofsen: Welcome to The MedMen Show. Today we are talking about getting in trouble with your champions. 00:05 Andy Whyte: This sounds like there might be a bit of recency here — something that happened recently? 00:09 Pim Roelofsen: Oh yeah — glad that made you smile! But yes, there is a little bit of recency. We were getting access to an economic buyer in one of the deals we were working on. And in order to prepare ourselves with the right context, we started doing some stakeholder interviews in the wider business. And this wasn't necessarily coordinated with the champion. They didn't like it at first. So we got in a little bit of trouble there. 00:33 Andy Whyte: Interesting, interesting. Of course, this is not a real story. Yeah. Tell us more. 00:40 Pim Roelofsen: Yeah. I think what you always see with champions is you're collaborating — you're on the same team. And then sometimes you'll see a gap and feel like the right tactic, the right action to take, may not be immediately accepted by your champion. If it is, great. If not — "I don't know, I'm not sure I want to work on this with you." And I think the latter was the case here. We did inform them, but had already started on that specific action, and they didn't like it at first. And now — they love it. They think: "Actually, that was a good move." And that's often the thing, isn't it? If it's a true champion, our interests are aligned. By nature of being a true champion, they have a vested interest in our success — not because they want us to win or have a bias towards us, but because they see that working with us as the vendor aligns with making them successful: helping them achieve a goal, or solving a pain or challenge they currently have. 01:45 Pim Roelofsen: So for them to be a true champion, they have to have that vested interest. And if there's something we can see — as the selling entity, the one with the experience, the one that knows how to make progress in these kinds of engagements — something that will help us make progress, but they can't see it yet, we've got work to do to hopefully bring them over to our way of thinking. But in this instance, we couldn't quite get them there in time. So we went down the path anyway, and it all worked out fine. 02:10 Andy Whyte: It worked out absolutely fine. And there was a story Jake on the team told me about from one of his previous organizations: when you're working with your champion and testing the boundaries of what's possible in the collaboration — when this happens, when someone gives you pushback, that should actually be applauded or celebrated. Because you've now found where that boundary is. 02:40 Pim Roelofsen: Yeah — I love that. And I think we say this all the time: there's so much talk about champions in sales. Outside of even MEDDIC, it's probably the most commonly used phrase — particularly when talking about a persona. And of course there are lots of different definitions. Ours is very clear: power and influence, selling internally for you, and a vested interest. That's it. Simple. And often people focus on those traits, the qualification of those traits, and testing those traits. But they kind of see testing as a scientific thing — "we need to test whether they have these things" — rather than actually putting them to work. The actual purpose of having a champion is to help you make progress faster than you would without them. 03:27 Andy Whyte: And so often — in fact, more often than not — when we're talking to our customers and looking at a deal someone's working on, wherever that line is that you found in this instance, people are often nowhere near it. Nowhere near it at all in terms of really helping that champion work internally for you, to help you make progress. And in turn — by definition of being a champion — make progress for themselves too. And I think it's such a great experience for you to have with the team here, just to remind everyone that even in this instance, you went to the line, you crossed it, the champion was upset — but in hindsight they're very happy you went down that route, because it did help you make progress. 04:11 Pim Roelofsen: Yeah, absolutely. I think the bottom line here is also the distinction between a good seller and a nice seller. The nice seller does what's liked by the other person — "if I go here, they probably won't like it, so I won't do it." Whereas if you can see something they need but can't see yet — do you still do it because it's the right thing for the deal and for the pain they're trying to solve? 04:43 Andy Whyte: Exactly. I was talking to our colleague David Weiss about this the other day. It's not quite as much of a science as this, but I've typically found in my career that the very highest performers fall under two different profiles. It's not that one is better than the other — but typically their success comes from having a very, very strong focus on outcome. Almost to the detriment of how much they're liked. They can see where they want to get to, and by virtue of being very good at what they do, they know they have to bring the customer along with them. They still have to do the basics very, very well. But they're very outcome-driven, very focused on getting the customer to see the world the way they see it — to see it as a journey worth going on together. 05:37 Andy Whyte: And then there's the other type, which is much more about building value. It's almost like one person going to the next point and pulling the customer with them — versus the other making the customer want to pull them. Different types. But either way, the point is: I don't think it matters too much, as long as the customer sees you as someone with credibility and trust, who is genuinely going to help them get closer to achieving their goals. 06:06 Pim Roelofsen: Yeah, absolutely. And what you said there also made me think about something you mentioned a while ago — a lot of this is pattern recognition. You end up in a challenging situation, you discuss it as a team, and sometimes going direct — like in my example at the start of this episode — is the right action. And sometimes it's storytelling about a similar scenario, so that your champion gets to see what they don't see yet. That increases their perspective on the thing. 06:43 Andy Whyte: Yeah — and that's a really good point to keep in mind. Because you as the salesperson are doing this again and again. The beauty of experience in sales is that when you're met with a scenario or predicament, you can say: "The last ten times I was in this same situation" — let's use this example, where you think it would be beneficial to speak to more stakeholders to get a broader view before meeting the economic buyer, and your champion is blocking you — if you've got experience, you might have been there ten times. Five times you did it and 3 or 4 of those times the champion was upset with you — but ultimately the juice was worth the squeeze. And the other five times you did nothing, upset your champion, and it didn't help you at all. 07:43 Andy Whyte: The point is: I've been in that situation ten times. But your champion has never been a salesperson in that situation. They can't say "the last ten times this happened, these things followed." So that's why it's so important that you've first qualified that you have a true champion with vested interests — so that if you do go down the path your pattern recognition tells you is the right route, you have the confidence to go there, having seen it through before, and know there's going to be upside. 08:19 Pim Roelofsen: Yeah, absolutely. And the example you gave — positioning this as telling a story — you can show them: "I've been here before. And let me tell you, the biggest mistake I made the last time we were in this situation was not challenging this and just accepting it. And that led to us ultimately missing our go-live date" — for example — which is where you can connect it back to the vested interests of your champion. So the bottom line is there are multiple ways to go about it. It's not an exact science. But I do think people are typically a little bit too cautious with this. They observe something that might upset their champion, so they don't do it — when typically, in the long run, doing it has a powerful, positive effect. 09:07 Andy Whyte: And what's really critical about what you said there is: you're talking about not wanting to say to your champion directly "if we don't do this, here's the downside" — because then it's your word against theirs. It's conflict. What I loved about what you said a moment ago is that by telling a scenario that involves someone else — a third party — you say: "Typically when I was met with a situation like this, these sorts of things happened." Or you tell a story in a way that suits your style — but it needs to be credible. You reflect on a time when you were met with a situation and you didn't persevere or follow through. You can tell the story about how that negatively impacted things — or you can tell a positive story about how following through did positively impact the next engagement. The beauty of that approach is it takes the conflict away. It's not me versus you — it's me saying: "Let me tell you what I've seen before" and taking you on a journey without calling you out. 10:12 Pim Roelofsen: Yeah. So that's actually my preferred route — showing someone what they don't see yet, so you can get to a consensus and take the next steps together. But sometimes, when that's not possible, I'll still do it anyway because I know it's the right thing to do. And that's the most challenging situation — because we're often attached to the outcome and hold back because something might have a bad impact. And then you may not end up with the result you could have got. 10:46 Andy Whyte: Yeah. And now I'm thinking about when I was selling to you when you were at Cisco — and you were my champion. Did I push you far enough? No. I don't think I did. We got the deal done, of course — but there are probably some sales velocity improvements there. Maybe a faster deal, a bigger deal size — something else I could have done if I'd pushed you a bit further. Did I get anywhere near the limit of what a champion could do? 11:01 Pim Roelofsen: That's a really great question — didn't see that coming. But I think there was plenty of room still. 11:17 Andy Whyte: I'll drink to that. Cheers! 11:18 Pim Roelofsen: Cheers! Bam!