When navigating a large, complex sales opportunity, one of the most important relationships a sales rep can cultivate is the "customer coach".Customer coaches are people within the client’s organization who like you, your company, or your solution. These supporters can help you understand and navigate their organization's dynamics, including the buying process.
A great customer coach can explain their organization’s needs and how buying decisions are made. They also can help you understand what's important to each high-level decision maker, which is critical information.
More importantly, customer coaches often help reps access senior-level executives who have budget or contract-signing authority, which can mean the difference between winning and losing a deal.
Building a relationship with a customer coach is important (see here), but how do you assess the strength or quality of that relationship? Ask a sales rep about the strength of the relationship with their customer coach, and they'll answer with something like, "Sarah’s great. She likes us and wants us to win.”
People often confuse rapport with relationship strength. A more objective way to assess the quality of your customer coach relationship is to use these five criteria:
As an experiment, think of one of your current sales opportunities and consider the person at that organization who you think of as your customer coach. Now rate that person on a 1-5 scale (1 = Never and 5 = Always) for each criterion. Assume that a score of 20-25 means you have a strong relationship, 15-19 means a good relationship, and anything in the 5-14 range is fair or weak.
How’d you do? If your relationships wasn’t as strong as you thought, you may need to spend more time creating value for your customer coach or cultivating other relationships at that organization.