He used to pour honey in my ears.
Now, before you think you've ended up on the wrong website and reading some sordid homoerotic tale, I'm talking about a salesperson's 'happy ears'.
He was the Head of IT. Knew the estate inside out, hated the incumbent, loved our solution.
He'd ring me after internal meetings to tell me how they'd gone. At one point he sent me our competitor's pricing. Actual numbers, from an actual proposal, from a deal I was actively fighting for.
"We'd be idiots to not pick your solution", he told me.
I'd skip from our meetings like a happy baby goat, thinking about what I'd buy with the commission cheque.
The COO picked the competitor.
Two million pounds. Gone.
Turns out, it was far from in the bag. I never really had it, because instead of looking at all the things that could kill the deal, I was blinded by the positivity of the feedback I'd been given.
I wasn't multithreaded into that business in any meaningful way. I had one relationship, and I'd convinced myself it was worth five.
Here's the bit that still makes me wince. At exactly the same time, I was running one of the biggest deals of my career. High seven figures. And I ran that one like a pro.
I mapped every stakeholder. Tested everything I was told against a second source. Built a business case and ran a PoC that was textbook. I closed that one.
So it wasn't that I didn't know how. I knew exactly how. I just didn't bother on the other one, because it felt like I didn't need to.
Happy ears are the curse of many salespeople. It's the thing where somebody tells you what you desperately want to hear and, instead of scrutinising it, you file it under 'evidence'. You start building your forecast on top of somebody else's enthusiasm.
What's worse is I stacked one mistake on another. A true fuck-up sandwich!
I confused a coach for a champion. Probably the most common mistake made in enterprise sales. I see it in nearly every deal review I sit in.
Now, a coach and a champion look identical from the outside.
Both love your solution and evangelise on your behalf. Both feed you info they probably shouldn't in the backchannel.
But there are two things a champion has that a coach does not, and neither of them is about how much they like you.
Proximity to power. A champion reports to the economic decision maker. Not adjacent to them, not in the same all-hands, not "he'll definitely be in the room". Direct line.
If your person has to pass your case through two intermediaries before it reaches the person who signs, you don't have a champion. You have a very well-informed, very friendly relay station.
Internal influence. This is the one everybody struggles with, because unlike the first one you can't check it on an org chart. There's no field in the CRM for it. And it is absolutely decisive.
Next time you think you have a champion, ask yourself this..
When their boss sees them coming down the corridor, does the boss duck behind the water cooler to avoid ten minutes of blabber? Or does the boss clear the next half hour because if this person has bothered to walk over, it's probably worth hearing?
My Head of IT was a water cooler duck. Lovely bloke. Knew his stuff. Genuinely on my side. And when he walked into the COO's office to argue for us, I suspect the COO's face did a thing that I never got to see.
None of which makes a coach worthless. A good coach is one of the most useful people on a deal and you should keep them close. They're just not the person who wins it for you, and you still have to go and earn the one who is.
I found out the difference the expensive way. Two million quid's worth. You can have it for free.
So go and do something for me. Open the biggest live deal on your forecast, the one you've already spent the commission on, and find the name you've written under 'champion'.
Then ask the ugly questions. Do they report to the person who signs, or do you just really hope they do? Have you ever watched them be listened to, or have you only ever watched them talk to you? What have they spent on your behalf that actually cost them something?
And the only one that really matters. If they walked into their boss's office right now to make your case, is that a good day for you, or a bad one?
The next time a prospect is singing your praises, enjoy it. Then stop, and go and find out whether anyone in that building is actually listening to them.
If this is landing a bit too close to home on a deal you're running right now, drop me a note. I promise not to say I told you so.