Your champion is probably fake (With Gal Aga)

Your main contact is not your champion. You champion might not be an experienced buyer. And the list goes on.

The problem is: not getting this right can really hurt your ability to bring in newbiz revenue.

That's why we invited Gal Aga from Aligned. Not only did he post a kick-ass meme on this problem, but he also has worked extensively with AEs and run into this problem too often.

• (00:00) - Introduction
• (01:56) - The Israeli Tech Ecosystem
• (04:35) - Understanding the Role of a Champion
• (08:15) - Champion Enablement Strategies
• (13:27) - Multi-Threading in Sales
• (18:08) - Executive Buy-In and Business Cases
• (23:06) - Navigating Executive Involvement in Sales
• (23:50) - Building Trust with Your Champion
• (26:38) - Understanding Buyer Dynamics
• (27:10) - The Role of Professional Buyers
• (28:47) - Collaborative Decision Making
• (29:15) - Avoiding Transactional Sales
• (30:58) - Managing Internal and External Stakeholders
• (31:38) - Modern Sales Strategies
• (41:43) - The Future of Transactional Selling
• (45:27) - Final Thoughts and Takeaways

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Creators and Guests

Host

Mikkel Plaehn

Marketing leader & b2b saas nerd

Host

Toni Hohlbein

2x exited CRO | 1x Founder | Podcast Host

What is The Revenue Formula?

This podcast is about scaling tech startups.

Hosted by Toni Hohlbein & Raul Porojan, together they look at the full funnel.

With a combined 20 years of experience in B2B SaaS and 3 exits, they discuss growing pains, challenges and opportunities they’ve faced. Whether you're working in RevOps, sales, operations, finance or marketing - if you care about revenue, you'll care about this podcast.

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[00:00:00] Toni: Are your sales reps getting access to real champions or just the fake ones?
[00:00:05] Gal Aga: we're just calling everyone, you know, a champion.
[00:00:07] It just, it feels so comfortable, right? Like you have this main contact, they're giving you a lot of information and then you're sitting in a deal review and you're calling them the champion.
[00:00:17] Toni: That's Gal Aga, CEO of Aligned. Together we discuss common misconceptions around champions in sales.
[00:00:25] Gal Aga: It's not the ingredient that eventually is required to really. Uh, bring in deals. And I wouldn't say that every deal like a champion is a must have in every deal.
[00:00:36] Like you could get away with it in some more transactional deals. But I would argue in like in complex deals, which is almost everything today is pretty complex
[00:00:46] Toni: Today's episode is brought to you by ever stage, the top writer platform to automate sales commissions. You can create a single hub for your reps to track all their deals, earnings, and performance history thanks to EverStage's seamless integration with Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Slack, and MS Teams.
[00:01:04] Reps can also know exactly how much they could earn with Crystal, EverStage's one of a kind commission forecasting module. Visit everstage. com to learn more and help your sales teams ace 2025.
[00:01:18] And now, enjoy the show,
[00:01:19] Mikkel: One of the things yesterday I stumbled across a YC company. I even forget the name, but basically what they want to build is.
[00:01:28] Data center in space because it's cold out there. There's no regulation. It's become cheaper for rockets to, you know, into, to go into space. And I was just like, this is so ridiculous in terms of a business to build.
[00:01:42] It is so ridiculous, but it kind of makes sense. And then I immediately went to, boy, why is us just sucking up all those startups? Naturally. It's like anything in tech, Europe is kind of like a dot.
[00:01:56] And then I was like, but wait, actually, so Israel, it's not in us. They've historically done really well in tech.
[00:02:03] Why, why, why is that? Actually? I'm just super curious personally here. Do you, do you know?
[00:02:08] Gal Aga: Yeah, I think I have a good hunch and I, it's also, you know, data backed. I think that, uh, 99 percent probably of people in startups in the, in Israel have gone through military service. It's mandatory. And, and that just makes you like get, you're exposed to real life faster and it just brings a lot of discipline and a lot of things that you just.
[00:02:32] I think that's one element in the, in the Israeli culture, I think, um, that also a lot of these people have worked in tech parts of the military. So there's like 80, 200, it's one of them, one of the units, so a lot of really smart people are coming from there and they're going through product manager roles and dev roles, and that's how they get into that world. And I think that the, the reality here is that people really want to be entrepreneurs and because also the cost of living is very high and just high tech is one of the, it's the biggest you know, production. That's the biggest export, right. In Israel. So a lot of people just. You know, they're exposed to that and they're inspired by that and they want to just live well and get a, make a good living.
[00:03:20] Right. So that's, that's why. And if you look at statistics, Israeli tech companies are the second most listed in the New York stock exchange, right? In NASDAQ.
[00:03:32] Toni: Yeah, I think it's, I think it was pretty impressive. The, the ecosystem that has been
[00:03:36] built there. And yes, I talked to some folks from Israel and kind of the, the, the military path and especially kind of those special units, I forgot what they were called, but I think you mentioned one kind of, they're producing a lot of that. I think another component also is, and maybe, maybe I'm wrong with that, but I think Israeli folks very much quickly think like, okay. Seed in the bank, you know, MVP done, let's move to the U S right. Kind of, there's, there's a very, there's a very quick, like, like, you know, let's, let's not, let's not play around kind of in those small markets here.
[00:04:07] This is jumped directly into the
[00:04:09] U S and make it Where, where you have European folks, like, Oh no, you know, Germany, I think that's big enough.
[00:04:14] Mikkel: yeah, yeah,
[00:04:15] Toni: and, and, and, and I
[00:04:16] think, um, you know,
[00:04:18] Gal Aga: that's a good
[00:04:18] Toni: you Israeli guys, you're like much, much cleaner, clearer on
[00:04:21] Gal Aga: think,
[00:04:22] Mikkel: for a bunch of champions over in the U S to to move some deals along basically.
[00:04:27] Toni: why
[00:04:27] The introduction
[00:04:28] Mikkel: I always try and stitch it together.
[00:04:30] always always try.
[00:04:31] But so Gal, thanks a bunch for hopping on.
[00:04:35] We were supposed to talk about one thing and then we did I guess a last minute rug pull because you posted in between.
[00:04:40] Something super interesting and I think very close to our heart. And you recently wrote about champions. Why maybe just to start with like, what is actually a champion?
[00:04:50] I mean, I could imagine that there's cases where people think they have a champion. I think. Tony and I have experienced that pain. Well, I didn't experience. I just watched Tony experience the pain. So you think you have the champion and then it turns out it's just not. So maybe before we hop into this whole conversation, what, what is a champion and why does it matter?
[00:05:06] Toni: Yeah.
[00:05:09] Gal Aga: the post, basically the hook was you know, that I've ran, I've been in sales for 17 years and managed a lot of different teams and been VP sales, CRO. And basically I try to run a math of how many deal reviews have run and got to around a hundred thousand. I don't know if it's the accurate math, but then I said, I kind of felt that it's like probably 90 percent or 99 percent of these deal reviews were about, and any person that's the main contact, that's automatically the champion.
[00:05:39] It's like it's, it became a synonym in a lot of people's minds and the word champion is just. Something that you throw around and, Hey, who was your champion? Or you talk about the main person that you're speaking with as the champion. And I think that what resonated so much in, in the hook, which is maybe the biggest in this post, which is way the biggest takeaway, like there was this meme of Kate Blanchett, I think.
[00:06:03] And and
[00:06:04] Leonardo DiCaprio dancing around and basically they're saying. Hey I'm, I'm a desperate sales guy and I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm no power, like I'm powerless buyer. Let's just wait. She's waste each other's time. And I think that just captured. So perfectly the reality of what we're seeing, we're just calling everyone, you know, a champion.
[00:06:27] It just, it feels so comfortable, right? Like you have this main contact, they're giving you a lot of information and then you're sitting in a deal review and you're calling them the champion. But
[00:06:38] it's not the ingredient that eventually is required to really. Uh, bring in deals. And I wouldn't say that every deal like a champion is a must have in every deal.
[00:06:48] Like you could get away with it in some more transactional deals. But I would argue in like in complex deals, which is almost everything today is pretty complex. You need someone basically. You're probably not talking directly to the, let's talk about other terms first, right? There's the economic buyer or like there's the term decision maker.
[00:07:09] Everyone today is a decision maker, but there are multiple layers of decision makers. The economic buyer, someone who holds the budget or someone and there's another person potentially with authority that would go in and be a big part of that decision. But you might not be speaking to these people directly, right?
[00:07:28] So a champion would be the person that you would probably spend most of your time with that is not the person that just educates you on what's going on and what to do next and you're speaking with and scheduling meeting. They have to have the ability to influence executives, right? They have to have the ability. To access that power and they have to be willing to go and fight the good fight, right. Of getting the deal across the finish line. So these are, yeah. And it's not everyone, not everyone can do this.
[00:08:06] Toni: No, exactly. And the, the thing is why this is so, I think emotional for most sellers. And let's just say, you know, all the marketing folks listening that they don't maybe know this.
[00:08:15] So that's why it was a good, great intro for the Mikkels that are listening that, you know, basically come from the marketing angle, but for sales folks, especially kind of the champions, I feel it's so. It's such an emotional rollercoaster, right? Because, you know, you're building up the rapport, you're kind of getting to know them, you know, that you ask them the right question, that they're giving you the right answers back. And it's like, you think, Oh, you know, they have influence. They can give me access to the decision maker.
[00:08:43] They're kind of doing all of those things. And And then they just disappoint you and the deal is dead, right? And it's like, why did this person break up with me? I thought we had a good thing going here. Right. And, and I think this is usually kind of, misplaced trust or overestimating the, the strength of the champion actually.
[00:09:02] Right. And I think what, what you broke down really well, and we're going to jump in maybe into this next, it's like. You know, what does it actually mean kind of, and, and when I read this, I was like, Oh yeah, yeah, no, no, I didn't make that mistake. Oh yeah, I did this wrong as well. And, and it's like, let's go through this.
[00:09:18] Uh, so people can maybe structure their, their emotional drain that they have from their champions a little bit more. And I think you kind of mentioned the first one already, kind of that the main contact isn't necessarily the, the, the champion, right? But the. The next thing here that, that I always had is like, well, if I fall in love with one person, why do I need to fall in love with many, many people, right?
[00:09:38] Isn't, isn't one person enough, right? And I think that's, dang, that's the next thing. Maybe, maybe you jump in here, girl.
[00:09:44] Gal Aga: Yeah. I think so first just to wrap up, maybe the first part, if I'll, if I'll summarize it, it's about the ability to influence, right. The ability to, the willingness to go and fight. and the personal motivation, right? Like they, they, they, they have to be really motivated. Knowledge is great, but it's really not enough to eventually close the deal.
[00:10:08] So. Um, I think when you find a person like that, that's, that's someone that can really get things moving and build a business case and get to build consensus and fight the fights and everything. But now we're like a lot of us, we're getting all throughout, we're going throughout the deal and we're coming across other people, okay.
[00:10:29] That also have these ingredients, but we keep kind of going back to the default. We have this main person that we're working with and. We're just going back to them and speaking mostly with them. But there, it might be like that you're selling to a director of marketing who is really strong and that, and they're that potential champion, but, um, but RevOps also is very involved and they have other motivations, right.
[00:10:56] For what you're selling
[00:10:57] and they're coming to it from a different angle. And you could take your product and really tailor it to them. And also turn them into additional champions. And now, if you think about how that decision will eventually be made, if they're going, let's say, to the CR, to the CRO or to the CMO and, and you have just one person and the rev ops doesn't feel that it's their project and they're just contributing, then they might just want to say. the things that will, you know, show that they've done the good work of
[00:11:34] yeah, right. Challenging it, right. And putting some um, uh, on the project, right. But if you're able to also turn them into your champion, basically, and run multiple threads in parallel, and basically run separate conversations with them, All with coordination with your main champion, but you also run a conversation with them, a separate one, maybe with your champion, and then you have some follow ups in between and you're sending them some things and you're understanding their motivation and you're getting them also to push.
[00:12:06] Maybe you're bringing someone from your company to build more relationship with them, and that's how you turn them into additional champions. Now you have a coalition of champions. Right? That are fighting the good fight and when a CRO, whoever it is that they go and face Now that's so much stronger, right?
[00:12:28] When, when I make decisions as a CEO my head of sales and my head of marketing come to me together or head of SDR, there are sometimes these tech, these, these areas where they're coming together and they see how this connects into multiple motivations, multiple OKRs, multiple, and they've both kind of deeply connected and they see how this would work. Like the, the fear of project failure goes down significantly, right?
[00:12:57] Toni: So, I, I think that's super powerful. I think And I think sometimes, you know, I might have been also kind of getting this a little bit wrong, right? The on the one hand side, adding more people to the deal also generates the possibility for more people to say no. So this is always like where people are trying to be careful, right?
[00:13:15] But on the flip side Maybe those people will be involved anyway you know, and, and then you rather have a relationship with them and, you know, have the conversation with them instead of them going into this cold and be like, I don't think this is useful.
[00:13:27] And I think then the other thing, and this is where people then kind of talk about multi threading, which I always think is like, What does that actually mean?
[00:13:34] And how do you actually do this? Well, this was a great example of multi threading right there, right? Kind of you creating a connection with multiple people. So if someone is losing motivation or gets fired or moved around in the organization, because, you know, if you have an enterprise cycle of six months, that just tends to happen. You still have another anchor basically that it can, you know, still kind of, influence and, and, and carry the deal through. Right. So I think kind of this whole idea of building a coalition of, of champions, it sounds very. You know, high level and highbrow, but, you know, basically having, having more anchors in the organization.
[00:14:07] I think that's, that's probably very good advice. I think, it's
[00:14:11] Gal Aga: you know, on, on that point also, sorry for jumping in here because he said multi threading and I think, and you touched a few good points. One is like, you don't want to just add people as much as possible. Hey, let's add this person, that person. Of course, that's sometimes that's also a mistake. You need to really figure out. So when you're, you're, you're an expert in how to buy in your world, right? They're an expert in their organizations and in the politics, but you know, if you know that, like, I'll talk about our software. I know that for a company above 200, 300 employees, right? We, we sell basically digital sales room collaborative workspace for the deal.
[00:14:55] We help solve deal execution problems. I know because it touches the cells enablement, the integration with the CRM, it brings data. So, and it's, it's a little bit in the world of seismic high spots. So, Which, which is typically very interesting for sales enablement or rev ops that they're typically the champions. But so it touches these worlds a little bit, but it's, but it's directly for the VP sales. So we sell to the VP sales and to the CRO, but I know that above a certain size of organization, like they'll always bring in sales enablement. They'll always bring in rev ops. So Yeah. Cool. If I don't bring it ahead of time, they're going to come in at some point.
[00:15:36] So it's about you having the confidence and the experience to know based on the company size or multiple variables, what's been your experience of who's best to involve. And when you go and make that recommendation and when you know that it's probably going to happen. It's better you addressing it and navigating it and making recommendations
[00:15:58] that are educated.
[00:15:59] That's one thing. And the second thing that I'll say, you mentioned multi threading. I think where, where I think more salespeople get multi threading wrong is they're thinking on, on volume, not quality. Okay. Like I'm going on a call and now. 10 people joined that call and RevOps enablement, like these people are there. That's, that's volume. That's scale. Okay. That's access. But just access is not, does not mean that I have multiple threads. I might be still hanged by a thread, by one single thread, which is my champion. And the rest of these people are just audience and they're there and it's good. But them being on an email or in a call doesn't mean that I'm multi threaded. So really multi threading, the way that I see it is maximizing for both access and influence. And to do that, you need to start isolating people. You need to have multiple conversations. Um, that's the really, that's the best way to go about it.
[00:17:04] Toni: One, one other thought that you just triggered you know, knowing based on the context of the account. Knowing whom to proactively pull into the conversation, right? I think that's, that's really strong advice. So, I read into this a couple of times. It feels like a coaching session for me here, Gal, this is great. Into this a couple of times where I'm like sitting there and it's like, Ooh, should I, should I ask for the whole compliance privacy thing to be kind of looped in, or should I, should I not poke the bear and just hope maybe it's not a thing in this organization. Right. And, and sometimes the champion doesn't even know.
[00:17:39] Like maybe it's the first time that they buy something like this. And it's like, I don't know. I don't, you know, I don't want to, you know, bother the CISO and kind of pull them into this, right? So this is another example where based on the size of the organization, based on the seriousness of the organization kind of you as a, as a, as a seller need to make the decision, well. If I don't pull them in now, they're just going to push out the deal for a month or longer. Right. But you know, I also don't want to poke the bear and kind of balancing this out. I think this is great, great advice here.
[00:18:08] I just wanted to drop this comment, but I actually wanted to kind of move the conversation forward to kind of one of the other things you mentioned here, which is thinking that the executive will actually care. Which I think is hilarious, fantastic, and is also so true, by the way, both me having been a seller, but also me having been a CRO and like
[00:18:28] someone comes to me and it's like, I actually don't give a shit. How much does it cost? Okay. I should do that.
[00:18:32] But, uh, but maybe, maybe, maybe your, your perspective on that.
[00:18:36] Gal Aga: yeah, absolutely. So if the whole topic, right, that we're talking about is not, not only who's, who's a champion, but how to build them and how to run actual champion enablement, right. Then, you know, yes, our first, our first goal is to identify the person and to test them and to maybe move on to multiple people.
[00:18:54] And we talked about that, but then the next thing it's about how to actually work with them. And I, and I think that we're assuming a lot of times that the way that we work with the champion and the materials that we provide, the champion who has the time. Are in their day to day, they're diving into the details will be the same way that the executive will approach it.
[00:19:21] Right. And it's not the reality is that the champion is typically probably the problem owner, right? Like I'll take again, make an example from our side. So the BP sales missing targets. Um, they getting, you know, into the weeds of their sales process and they know where things fall and where things break and that they're trying to implement mutual action plans, for example, and that multi threading and champion building is one of their challenges and they know exactly what they do and where they miss. When, where, where they miss out. But then when they go to the CFO, for example, to get budget, the CFO is just not in the details. They don't, they don't know they're, they're not familiar with the process. They don't know the day to day to that level. And, and the VP sales might just go and talk about the features and might talk about the, the granular things that their reps are doing in the day to day. And where things fall, and it's just too much, right? So both the level of granularity that they'll go into is too much. The details that you've shared so much so far to enable your champion are just irrelevant. All of the demos and the decks and the deep case studies, it's all too much for the executive. Who's eventually gonna, probably, it's gonna be like a 5 10 minute conversation. Okay, a lot of times that's how our champions, that's, that's how they think, okay, about taking this to a decision there. I'm, I'm in that, I'm in these shoes all the time. Like I have my team coming to me and blocking 10 minutes at the end, like our one on one and allocating time to, hey, bring up a solution that they want to buy. And it's just a 10 minute conversation. Like it's the entire thing condensed into these 10 minutes and 10 minutes. It's even a good example.
[00:21:14] So it's your role to work with them to be able to distill everything into that, these 10 minutes and, and, and ideally not to have it just a 10 minute conversation rather to. teach them how to prepare. When are you going to meet with so and so? How are you thinking about going, going internally and bringing this up? Is this something that you typically, how, what have you done previously? So what I've found that worked best actually is to bring a heads up, like it's important to bring them into the loop more ahead of time.
[00:21:48] So you're educating, right? You're champion. Bring them to the loop, maybe a little bit earlier in the conversation, get them a little bit aware, bring them into the loop and share throughout the project. What are the things that you're working on? Bring them updates. Okay. And then towards the end, block time to present the business case, write a business case and you as a seller, help them write that business case. If you do all of that, your win rate just jumps for the roof. Like it just changes everything completely. And I feel it myself. And I'm, I'm doing it all the time with my managers that I'm teaching them on how to go and, and work internally with a business case, with a proper business case. And I know Gartner is saying, by the way, that more than 70 percent of buying decisions are made with a formal business case. So yeah, I know, and I feel it myself how, how different it is. Like sometimes I will, Hey, no, no, no, we don't have time for this. Like a five minute, potentially 10 minutes conversation ends up there for two, three minutes. I'm hearing it out. It just feels off from defocus from what we're trying to do right now. And because it's just, you know, someone went through a five month sell cycle. And then it's a, it's a three minute shutdown.
[00:23:06] So these are things that are, so just to recap, coach them on how to bring executives into the loop earlier, a, how to all the time kind of update them. And potentially even you can have your executive reach out to that executive and continuously throughout the process, update them on. The progress. Hey, we're speaking with your team. Here's the challenge. Hey, here's another update here where things stand. So bring them into the loop earlier and coach the champion and how to not use the same materials that have helped them evaluate. Rather condense this right and make this distill it down really into that one page business case.
[00:23:48] Toni: on on that specifically.
[00:23:50] So, so I agree with obviously everything you're saying actually, so I don't have anything to, unfortunately, anything to disagree on, but the how do you, how do you get, you know, into this position where your champion is open to you coaching them? You know, where it doesn't become like a patronizing kind of situation, you know, maybe, maybe they tell you like, Hey, I've, I've bought, you know, all of these tools before I know how this thing works.
[00:24:14] And, and obviously they don't, by the way, let's just be clear. Like 99 percent of the cases, they kind of don't. So how do you get into this relationship with you, with your champion, where they're open to receiving your guidance, basically? Yeah.
[00:24:29] Gal Aga: real, be authentic, be yourself. Like when, when these are scripted, if you're right now trying to write down some of the things that I. I think that's also why discovery fails for so many salespeople because they're trying to write, Oh, I saw this influencer on LinkedIn writing these top five discovery questions and it just doesn't work. Like the reality is that it's a natural conversation between people. And if you're confident, if you know, if you're confident, you're speaking the way that we're speaking right now about the process and, and you're bringing it up in a, in a. In a humble way, authentic way, right? And, hey, you know, John, I'm thinking about your, your next step right now internally and how you've described it from what I've seen so far, typically I've seen more success when this happens.
[00:25:27] Have you thought about that? Okay. So if they're very, very experienced, maybe don't tell them, ask them, have you thought about maybe doing it this way? Like I've, I've, I've been doing this with a lot of companies, you know, and what I've found work best is typically doing this and that. Have you, do you think that would work in your case? So if you're asking them questions, instead of telling them, Hey, do this, and I'm coaching you and I'm teaching you, that's a better way to approach someone that feels that they know everything. Right. But if, if you have someone that doesn't and has done this and he's doing
[00:26:02] this
[00:26:02] Right now
[00:26:03] for the first time, they'll be more likely to accept your authority and leadership.
[00:26:07] So you're basically sales is leadership, right? You're, you're a leader right now. And that's, that's what I have to say.
[00:26:16] Toni: And I mean, and then the flip side of this is giving up on this, right? Kind of not basically kind of hoping for the champion to figure this out, right? Kind of, what's your experience there? Is that, is that ever going to work out or kind of how, how does that, you know, how do you maybe also help your reps to make sure that they're not trapping or, you know, stepping into this trap of hope, basically.
[00:26:38] Gal Aga: Yeah.
[00:26:38] So another point actually was the Bluebird champion, and that maybe connects to that very well. So a lot of times we feel like there, there are these people that, yeah, they're experienced buyers. And I just read again, Gartner, I'm a, I'm a Gartner fan. I read a lot. They just do them and Challenger sales, which is, you know, CEB that's part of Gartner as well. They just do a ton of buyer research and I feel like buyer research is one of the things that have elevated my skills the most.
[00:27:10] So they, they talk about the, the fact that professional, like professional buyers are around, I think, 10 or 15%. Like most buyers are not professional, are not experienced buyers but some of them are. So. If you are speaking with a more professional, experienced buyer, then yeah, that's, that's that sometimes really feels very good, right? You'd feel like, wow, they're, they're such strong champions. They've, they know everything. They've been at the company for seven years. They've bought hundreds of millions of dollars in software and they've done all of these things. So they just feel, okay, I just need to lay back here and relax. And, right, and just give them everything they need and just don't, don't, don't stand in their way. Right. So I think in these situations, we just, you know, that, that's a lot of times where things fail because we, we still, we still know, right, what is the right way. to describe the problem, what is the right way to compare, what is the right way to introduce our solution to a certain buyer that would not create an issue, right? So yes, yes, we can listen to them a bit more and get them to coach us a bit more, but don't like let go and just let them do their thing because then you're out of the loop.
[00:28:43] You're not really influencing. You're really.
[00:28:47] Like we should all, and I think the biggest mindset shift is you're not selling to someone you're selling with someone. That's something that you know, Nate Nostrala talks about a lot, if you know who he is. Um, and I love that. That's just the perfect mindset. So just don't ever lose that mindset. Always be like in that it's you and them together. And even if they're very experienced, try to help them understand and try to give tips and work with them.
[00:29:13] Mikkel: I think that's very healthy.
[00:29:15] Like usually sales is seen, seen as extremely transactional, but when I think about transactional sales, it's me going to a whatever clothing store, buying a shirt and maybe never returning. That was a good transaction for, for everyone involved, but we don't need to have a relationship now.
[00:29:31] Software is different. B2B is just different. They're going to stick around afterwards. Right? So, so I feel like these details matter a great deal, actually. I think another question, at least I have, I wonder if there's a risk sometimes that the champion bring in brings in the wrong person. I don't know if you've, you've experienced this, but I've at least been on the end where.
[00:29:54] product would pull me into conversations on getting Jira for marketing. And every time I just wanted to blow out my brains because that solution was just not geared for the use case we had was too complicated. It costs three times as much and it was a good dream to have, you know, wall to wall. Product management tools.
[00:30:13] So everyone could get visibility. But for me, I was just straight up, no, never happening. And that could, you know, obviously if a wall to wall deal, it just dies there. Right. So I just wonder how do you, together with the champion, figure out who to bring in and making sure they actually understand that side as well.
[00:30:31] Gal Aga: Yeah, I would say what you said directly, as clear as that, like we, we would someone tell people, Hey tell us more about this role and what, what are they like, how much control do they have over these areas? And look, typically from our experience, bringing this, this person into the conversation at this stage might derail the process.
[00:30:56] And this is why. Okay.
[00:30:58] Like, just be, again, like it's you, it's like, you, the best way to think about it is you're in there in their organization with them thinking about how to run this project.
[00:31:13] Toni: Yeah.
[00:31:14] Gal Aga: Okay. You're, you're their enablement team.
[00:31:17] You're
[00:31:18] their advisor, right? That's, that's how you should think about it. And then, yeah, whatever comes to mind, whatever makes sense for, for the deal, they'll just. Oh, well, the, the, just you talking like that and asking these kind of questions already puts you at a, at that place,
[00:31:34] right?
[00:31:34] Already positions you in a different way in front
[00:31:37] of them.
[00:31:37] Mikkel: Yeah.
[00:31:37] Toni: And the I think kind of then the, the, the next step here obviously is well eventually you, you build up the case, your champion kind of gets you into the right room. And then there will be, you know, a decision maker sitting somewhere. Right. Kind of what's the misconception here, usually that, that then leads to those deals dying.
[00:31:54] Gal Aga: And so the misconception is that there's no such thing as a decision maker. I think that it's just, it's just a myth. We're in 2025 and there's like, there's committees, there's decision groups, there's,
[00:32:11] um, like the, the world has changed and it changed in a few ways. Um, one is the number of stakeholders involved in deals have just, has between triples, tripled to quadrupled in the last decade. Okay, if you look at all of the Gartner, CB, Forrester, all the different research companies who run research around these areas they talk about 11 to 16 right now, and you know, there are a lot of different averages that are thrown out there. So if you have so many people involved, like there's no, everyone have weight.
[00:32:49] Everyone have some level of power. And so that, that's one thing. Another thing is the generational shift. Hey, that's a lot, also something that I've been reading a lot about and seeing also with deals, eh. Has created more flat hierarchy type of decision, decision making. So if you think about the, the boomer with the cigar, with the suit and all of that, right.
[00:33:17] And probably a lot of the listeners are boomers. That's okay. And I don't want to jump generations or make any. Stereotypes, but that doesn't exist in, in many situations, right? It's not like this one person ruling everything and Hey, I'm making decision. Cause the generational shift is great. Gen Y, Gen Z based on a lot of research there, they prefer flatter hierarchy.
[00:33:40] They want to be heard more and they're more, they're more, they're more self researching and bringing a lot of opinions. So a lot of companies will really make decisions this way. I remember we had a deal where they had a voting mechanism where they've created a decision group of eight people and we're selling to sales teams and the set, the AEs are really big users of Aligned.
[00:34:08] They're the, they're the advocates, right? And out of these eight people, decision group, eight person decision group, uh, five were AEs.
[00:34:18] Toni: Mm-hmm
[00:34:18] Gal Aga: And they were giving power and the champion actually sent us the decision memo. And it was like this long document and all of the arguments were listed there. And then everyone had a vote at the end of that document, everyone, every person. And then we saw, Oh, great. We have the majority and that's eventually what the CEO decided. Okay. Based on really the majority. So they, they could have overruled it's eventually, yes, it's, it's there like they can overrule, but they didn't want it.
[00:34:51] Like
[00:34:52] they felt that they have a few leaders here. They have a lot of reps that are leaning towards this. So this is a modern age decision making. And the last thing that I would say is power can be in many shapes and forms. Okay. I'm, I'd rather look at it as above the line and the below the line power.
[00:35:12] And sometimes a, even below the line of power can be strong, can be power. Okay. Like we, like there's this misconception of you need to always just focus on the above the line. But I see this in our deals a lot of times an enterprise rep that has been with the company for seven years. And we're going to, we're not, we're basically solving complex deals, okay.
[00:35:39] And, and helping manage complex deals. So the, the more complex that the sales processes, the more we can add value. And sometimes these enterprise sellers that have brought millions or tens of millions and prob sometimes even two, 3 million a year, they have so much weight within the company
[00:35:58] that they might be the most important, important person to convince.
[00:36:02] And we might even hear that from a VP sales. Hey. If you convince Jane, she's our top rep and she's been with us for seven years. If she tells me this is going to help us close more deals, I'm going to buy. Okay. That, that's how I think about decision makers.
[00:36:18] Toni: I think so for, for some people that maybe kind of don't understand the above the line, below the line, above the line is VP and up usually below the line is kind of, you know, managers, directors, and in this case, even individual contributors, right? I think there's, there's also a different perspective to take on this instead of saying, Hey, there's power, um, which would certainly is the case, but I think from a bias perspective, what you're kind of doing is you're starting the the implementation and rollout process a little bit. Right. It's a, you're basically saying, okay, if all of these people say yes, and let's just say in your case, it's a ease. Those are going to be then my rollout champions or like advocates or, you know, whatever you call them in the internal rollout process, right? It's like, well, you, you sat on this committee. You, you voted yay right. Kind of now we need to lean on you that this thing actually kind of rolls out and actually happens. Right. So I feel the you know, making people part of the buying decision for you as a person that needs to manage that implementation process. Also afterwards is basically starting to give you a leverage.
[00:37:19] And I think we've seen this in other processes and companies as well, for example, in hiring a manager or a VP or something like this, right. I, myself. You know, I, I did the hiring process for the VP and it was, was my report. So obviously I'm doing that. But especially like a VP of sales. Ooh, what if, what if the guys reject him?
[00:37:38] Like
[00:37:38] what, what if they kind of come in and said going to work for that dude. So you maybe want to have, you know, some people that, you know, have a conversation with them before you can off, you know, put, you know, ink to paper and. You know, all of that basic kind of trying to use this a little bit as an implementation process. And I think to a degree, this is what's happening in some of those deals actually. So I think it can be a good sign that they're pulling in those folks because you're almost mentally one step further, but yes, it does still introduce risk for you as a seller because someone could come in and just, you know, rampage the deal basically.
[00:38:11] Mikkel: Do you think maybe this is a silly question, but like, so we talk about buying committees, do we need sales committees as well? Like I'm just trying to imagine this scenario where you have some AE and all of a sudden there's a CFO that's going to join, you He or she might never have talked with a CFO before, let alone understand their world like completely.
[00:38:34] And I, and I know you have obviously solution engineers and all the things that get involved, but I don't hear a lot of conversation in the same way as we talk about buying committees. Is that something you've, you've thought about Gal? Or is
[00:38:45] Gal Aga: I think that internal multi threading is as important as external multi threading. In, in bigger deals. Okay. Not, not every time. Like you can't hit run an SMB motion and have your, uh, product people and executives all the time. Like it's just an overkill.
[00:39:03] Um, but, but yeah, I think that creating some rules, some guidelines on who to involve when is very important. And I think that absolutely like a lot of, it's very hard to have these CFO conversations. So, even if you've done this a few times, it might make sense. They might listen more. to someone that's more senior, that speaks their language, they might be that person as well that they want to, they want to get and then speak with executives.
[00:39:35] So I would, yeah, really encourage to do that. And I think that I've, I've seen a strong correlation between. The top reps and an internal multi threading, I always say like the better you are, the less you close deals,
[00:39:51] you get others to do it for you. It's either champions and advocates and you rally people on the buyer side, but you also rally people on the selling side.
[00:39:59] And you just know how to play, be a conductor in an orchestra, right. And bring all the right people to the game. And then, and, and you do that because you have so much confidence that you don't need to be. the hero of the day that just, Hey, look at me, how I brought this huge deal. But you know that if you lose a huge deal, because you just didn't bring your product person to go and talk about the roadmap that they care so much about, and they would really trust the most.
[00:40:32] And they're, they're concerned about, about what you're going to build. And that's why you lost it. Like, okay.
[00:40:40] You're. People are going to look at this differently. So you're not proving anything by going solo. I think that that's the mindset that that's the winning mindset for sales.
[00:40:51] Toni: And maybe kind of one kind of closing question, and I'm not sure, I'm not sure if you have like the perfect answer for this, but, you know, many people that are listening, they might be selling super transactional stuff in the SMB. Some people that are listening, maybe kind of 200, 200, 500 K deals in the enterprise.
[00:41:07] And some of the things we discussed, you know, for some of the folks might be overkill. Right. And, and I think, I think the, the interesting bit here is. Where are they wrong? You know, listening to this, like, Oh, we don't need this. Do you have like, maybe someone in the 10 K deal, 15 K deal. Do you have some pointers where like, Oh, you're probably acting too transactional for what your buyers want.
[00:41:29] Is there, is there like a, like a, like a thing where you're saying like, Oh, you should probably up your game a little bit and play a little bit more like the enterprise guys, even though your ACV is 10 K, 15 K and so forth. Yeah.
[00:41:42] Gal Aga: transactional selling is pretty much dead. I don't, I don't think that there is such a thing anymore. It's not completely day dead, it's gonna die pretty soon. Because by buyers don't want access to information from a salesperson. Okay? I, I don't need this. If, if the buying journey for me with, with a company as a buyer is that I need a rep to do a general walkthrough, to ask me questions that support them, qualifying me in or out. To answer questions when I have them, like that's a bad buying experience. It's not even the rep, it's just bad. Like build self service, put AI, go to adopt the PLG motion create a lot of enablement materials on the website. Like I don't need that, right? I always need someone to understand my problem, to ask me questions in order to help me think about the problem better. To ask me questions in order to show me only the things that matter in their product. To, to send me the right materials throughout the process that are digested, that are relevant to my specific buying job to be done this moment, right? If I'm right now building requirements, if I'm comparing vendors, if I'm getting a buy in from multiple people internally, like, you always need That would be my expectation as a buyer, and that's what would help me most trust the vendor, trust the buyer, trust the seller first, which in turn means that I'm trusting the vendor. And that would, that would be what would make me get into internal consensus building challenges. into internal confusion, into indecision, or into ghosting the person that I'm working with. Okay? So if you're not solving for these things, if you're not going beyond the transactional into adding value today as a, as a seller, I, I, I'm, as a buyer, I'm, I'm just, I have chat GPT, I can take materials from the website.
[00:43:54] I can go and just say, okay, run me, analyze all of that and and recap, even. I can take the recorded demo and, and ask to summarize it and to build me a business case. Okay.
[00:44:07] Toni: yeah,
[00:44:08] Gal Aga: buyers today are expecting more and I think that it just doesn't fly. Um, but, but yeah, like. If you're, if you're selling 10K, 20K, we're selling 10K, 20K deals.
[00:44:19] And we're trying for these deals to not be, that's the low end to not, to not be transactional for us to do a tailored demo. And for us to build like a mini business case, we're not, but it's all a mini version of all of these things. And the last thing that I would say, I think that even SMB deals today are not. One or two people anymore. There's no such thing. You're, there's always three, four, or even, I don't remember the exact averages. I think it's between three SMB people that are involved. So that's yeah, that's still pretty complex.
[00:44:55] Everything is pretty complex today.
[00:44:57] Toni: it is. And I think kind of not, not realizing that this is happening to you. That can be, that can be pretty expensive. Right. And I can, I can see that some of the signs might be, you know, more and more ghosting, more and more indecision, more and more things where I think you said it well, where almost the other side starts being confused.
[00:45:15] Right. And then that then triggers indecision. So if. If those are some of the symptoms you guys are seeing out there Then, you know, probably elevating kind of your approach to selling might, might be a good idea.
[00:45:27] All right. So Gal, thank you so much for spending some time here, for coaching me to be a better seller.
[00:45:34] Mikkel: letting the observe.
[00:45:37] Toni: And,
[00:45:38] and the
[00:45:38] marketing guy in the background here.
[00:45:40] Yeah.
[00:45:40] exactly. And no, thank you so much for spending the time and,
[00:45:43] uh, thanks everyone else for listening and hit subscribe. If you haven't have a good one.
[00:45:48] Gal Aga: Thanks so much.