Champion: questions to ask your prospect

Grey: moving to yellow

Status: No Champion and no potential Champions identified

Guiding light principle: Identify. You may have “friends” within the account, but you have no indication yet whether these “friends” have any influence, access to the Economic Buyer (EB) or a personal win tied to your solution.

• Describe to me how solving the pain issues we jointly uncovered would help the company, the key stakeholders, the executive team and you.
• Who would be the key stakeholders to help drive this initiative forward?
• Have you sold something like this internally before? How did that manifest itself?
• Have you ever had to change an executive management decision before? How were you able to do that?

Yellow: moving to green

Status: You have identified a potential Champion, but haven’t confirmed their personal win and/or tested them as a Champion

Guiding light principle: Develop and test. A potential Champion has emerged from the pack as a “change agent” who will tell you the truth and share important information. You are aware that this potential Champion needs your solution, and you’re aware of their personal win. This potential Champion has access to the EB or has a clear plan to gain access.

• Will you share the decision criteria template you and I worked on with the stakeholders? When can I get a copy back that has their weighted input?
• See the Economic Buyer questions at yellow. Most important: getting a meeting with the EB.
• Our executive sales leader is in town next week. Can you get us a meeting with your executive management?
• Do you have an internal ROI document that we can use to build the business case? If so, can I have a copy?
• Can you map out with me all the events and the timeline for you to make an informed decision?
• Who is the champion of the status quo, or of doing nothing?
• Will you attend our next customer case study seminar?

Green

Status: One or more Champions validated, with personal wins tied to us winning

Guiding light principle: Actively selling for you. The individual or individuals have emerged, and you have seen tangible evidence of their support, such as sponsoring meetings with the EB, modifying decision criteria, adding or removing events in the decision process, and/or assisting in the development, authoring and distribution of Metrics, success stories or ROIs.

Note: If you have a true Champion, your Economic Buyer should be known and validated. Otherwise, the person you call a Champion is not the right person to be talking to.

• Why should you do anything?
• Why should you do it now?
• Why should you do it with us?
• Who cares if this initiative fails?
• What is your personal win?
• What will you say if the EB says no?