The Scrambled Egg - a blog every sales professional should wake up to.

Are you using influencer and champion interchangeably? If the answer is yes, you’re making a grave mistake. While the definitions of these terms might vary slightly, that minor difference can makes a massive impact in a sale. If you’re not aware of this difference you could also be misinterpreting how close you’re deals are to closing. Which could mean you’re not allocating your time correctly and missing quota. 

An influencer is someone who can impact the decision to go with your product or service. This is the person who has access to the decision maker(s) and is usually the one doing the research and evaluating vendors.

A champion is the influencer that will impact the decision. The slight difference is “can” and “will”. A champion is the person that will run through walls to get the deal done. Having a champion in a deal will increase the likelihood of the account purchasing by 2x. While the expression “running through walls” is a great analogy, how do you really know if your influencer has turned into a champion?

Here is a list of things that are indications you have a champion on your hands: 

1. You have been brought to the decision maker(s)
2. Your champion has coached you on how to sell the decision maker(s)
3. If there are extenuating circumstances where the DMs don’t allow vendor presentations (this can happen with DM boards and committees), your champion will allow you to coach them on their presentation.

The above list are clear examples of a champion, however they are examples of a deal that would be towards the middle or towards the end of the a sale. So the next obvious question is if there are indicators of a champion earlier in sale?

Here is a list of earlier indications you’re working with a champion:

1. The person will give you inside information about what’s going on internally at their company.
2. They will pull in other people who can help influence the sale.
3. The champion will tell you who to avoid at their company.
4. They will tell what steps are next with out you asking. They will become your GPS and will pull you through the sale instead of you pushing them.
5. The champion will provide you with something tangible. I had coffee with Jeff Hoffman in the Spring when he mentioned he used to look for a prospect to provide something tangible to gauge if he had a potential champion at every step in his sale. In other words, will they provide you with something? Anything.  Will they provide you with reports they look at, perhaps complete a questionnaire you provided or share their internal presentation they might have done recently. 

Having an influencer in a sale is the first step and it’s your job to turn them into a champion. Spending your time with deals that have champions will allow you to work the same amount of deals, however sell more.

Go back through your pipeline with the lists provide above. Do you have influencers or champions in your pipe? Forecast the ones with champions and remove the ones with influencers.  Determine if the influencers can be made a champion and if they can’t, move on to another deal.