My client Champion would put his career on the line to grow and protect our relationship.

Why would someone at your customer risk their career, money, and reputation to help you win? Most people won't, and they shouldn't for just anyone.

A true Champion has the power and influence to sell on your behalf when you're not in the room. A Champion believes what you offer is better than any of the alternative solutions. They trust it because they've seen the evidence firsthand and believe it will strengthen their cause. They do this by aligning your value to what their organization needs and expects in service, quality, and business results.

In a career that spans 30 years of growing key accounts that produced over $1B in B2B revenue, I've been fortunate to have several key Champions that have helped me along the way. But one really stands out. He would go "all in" on our partnership, risk his career at times vouching for us in high-stakes environments because he believed we were stronger together than apart.

When I first met him, he had 100s of salespeople calling him. Everyone I competed with wanted this account. He had become a bit of a rock star amongst the competition. He was in high demand, and he knew it. Suppliers from around the world funneled through him because, as a Global Director, he controlled the gateway to more than $40M annually in our spend category.

I had no intention of being just another vendor to this account, inching my way to the top, brick by brick. That approach could take years. Nor did I want to buy my way to the top through heavy discounting and winning a race to the bottom on price. And I really didn't want my competitors to establish him as their Champion first. That could literally make him our enemy, the one person inside the account with enough power and influence to keep us out. If we were going to beat all competitors and create a vital partnership with this account, we needed him as our Champion.

To get to the next stage, I needed to first find a win for him, one that really mattered.

We had met a few times up to this point, but nothing had surfaced. That is until one day I called him and said, "Good morning!" He responded, "I don't have time to speak with you right now. We're in a bit of a crisis." Perfect. I was counting on that. I asked, "What's the problem? I'd like to help you." He said, "Unless you have 30 ___s lying around that I can deploy within 48 hours, you can't help me."

To be clear, what he described was nearly impossible. I knew none of the other vendors by themselves could pull this off (see the Competitiveness Domain at https://www.vitality-index.com/case-studies). I knew they would try convincing him they could do it and give him incentives to try. That was not my play. I wanted to find a win for him, one that really mattered.

I said, "What's at stake here for you if this doesn't happen?" I thought to myself, "In his job, there will always be a crisis." What I was listening for was why this crisis mattered to him personally.

He told me they were in a fight for their life at one of their largest accounts. A competitor of theirs had introduced a new delivery model that was gaining attention across the industry, the shiny new object everyone was talking about, one that promised to be more agile and lower costs while maintaining high-quality standards. His customer sent them an RFI to test whether they had this new capability or not.

I asked him some follow-up questions. I said, "What's expected of you from your leadership, how are they measuring your success, and what would a win look like for you when this is over?" I was listening for what he thought was going to happen, what he wanted to happen, and why it mattered to him.

I learned that his leaders gave him this project because they trusted him. From their point of view, he was the only one who could pull this off. He told me they could lose the account if they failed, which likely meant missing their forecast for several quarters. Lastly, he was concerned about the fallout. Their brand and reputation could go from the modern global leader to an outdated, more expensive, less agile service model. He felt that if this didn't work, his career could stall there or worse.

I said, "I understand why this matters to you, and I want to help."

I read it back to him. "You need to show your customers that you can meet their delivery expectations just like the other vendor. Today, you can't do that alone. You also don't have time to partner with 100 other vendors to pull this off. Our solution is to give you our best people for the next 48 hours, combine forces with your team, knock this out in two days, and meet all your customer's expectations."

He gave us a shot. I started communicating updates within the hour. By 24 hours, our teams were in rhythm. By 48 hours, we were done, just finishing up the final presentations. He sounded physically different on our wrap-up call. You could hear in his voice that the pressure he was under had left him. In fact, he invited my team for drinks off-site and thanked each of them individually.

We met 100% of the project goals as a team. No money changed hands in this effort. It was a good-faith opportunity to show how we partner with our clients and the type of relationship they can expect from us. We helped them solve a massive "industry-sized challenge." That week, we firmly established him as a Champion. We proved that we could be trusted and leaned on when the stakes were highest. He knew that our focus was on the customer and not on ourselves. We didn't sell him; we showed him that we can be a vital partner to his organization.

The results: They retained the client, and we received future opportunities to support them with their customer. It opened four more opportunities just like this one where we were given a sole-source deal worth over $4M, or 10% of their annual revenue. Eventually, we would earn 90% of their total annual spend and see their spend increase to over $60M annually in five years.

Building a Champion is not hard when you approach it with the right set of plays. Most of our competitors didn't have the right playbook, and so they missed out on this opportunity and many more like it across the industry. This one play, find a win for him, one that really mattered, is just 1 of 50 we handcrafted for creating a Champion. This is just one of three Growth Drivers that belongs to the Domain we call Relationships. In all, there are 7 total Domains and 21 Growth Drivers with over 1,200 power plays, next moves, and coaching insights just like this that form the Vitality Index, the Key Account Growth System.

Growing key accounts can be complex, so we distilled this type of work into a system everyone can use, no matter what level of experience you bring to the table. It was built from the same approach we used to create some of the largest partnerships in our industry that have lasted decades and are still running.

Winning, growing, and protecting key accounts has been our life's work for the past 30 years. In the Vitality Index, we don't tell you what to do. We show you, because we lived it. This is the system we wished we had years ago. But now, it's here! If becoming a top-producing account team is important to you, then the Vitality Index can help.

We made a sample for you to try. This is not the actual system, but it will show you a practical plan for growing a live customer in your portfolio. This snapshot will give you a diagnostic, analysis, and an actual growth plan for where you currently sit across two of the seven Domains: Relationships and Competitiveness.