How to Implement CHAMP in Your Sales Process to Boost Sales

CHAMP is a business methodology that helps your sales department prioritize some key factors, such as challenge, authority, budget, and priority. Qualifying a lead is the most difficult part of the sales process, as mentioned by 22% of sales representatives. For this reason, representatives who fail to adequately qualify prospects account for 67% of missed sales.

The  CHAMP method can help you find sales-qualifying leads easily. In this article, you will learn the implementation of the CHAMP framework in your sales process, its real-time example, best practices, and whether it fits your business criteria. So, let’s get started.

What is the CHAMP Framework or Sales Qualification?

CHAMP is an acronym of challenge, authority, money, and priority. Before a prospect becomes your customer, they have to go through a sales qualification process, and CHAMP is a qualification measuring method that helps you qualify a lead. Let’s see more details on this framework in the table below.

CH	Challenge	At this moment, what is the most difficult challenge for the business?
A	Authority	Who can make the decision for the business to change and purchase?
M	Money	What is the budget for this solution?
P	Priority	What are the most important priorities for your business for this solution?

Challenge

For every successful task, there are some challenges to overcome, as in sales qualified leads, there are also challenges, but a good sales representative knows how to overcome those challenges. As a customer, you want to know how the brand or service provider helps you out in a challenging situation.

Finding the challenges is important because once you identify the problem, then you can choose solutions for this, but if you don’t know the problems, then it becomes more of a mess. Let’s read some questions that can help you find challenges and their proper solutions, and further process for the sales qualification of a lead.

• What are your main concerns, and how can we help you tackle them?
• Is there a specific area where your current solution isn’t quite hitting the mark?
• How do you envision the perfect solution?
• How long have you been facing this challenge?
• What prompted you to seek out a solution at this moment?
• Can you imagine what your operations would look like if this issue were resolved today?
• Are there any urgent matters that need quicker attention?
• What might happen if we don’t address these concerns?

So, CHAMP is a very effective methodology for sales qualification of leads. If you can under this model, then the game is yours.

Authority

Once you have marked the challenge, you need one from the corresponding business that has the power to make a decision to buy the product or take the solution. And connecting with this kind of high-profile persona is not that easy, so you need to be strategic. Whatever, if you can ask the following questions, then contacting them can be easier.

• Are you or someone you know the key decision-maker here?
• Who gets to give the final nod for the deal?
• Could you share a bit about the purchasing process, especially for products and services like ours?
• Is there anyone else who should be part of this decision?
• Would you be open to a group call, or would you prefer that I arrange individual calls with each person involved?

Money

Money is a crucial factor for any case, like a sales-qualified lead, which has to be concerned about a few things regarding budget. If the budget does not talk, then how you lead can bring you business. Let’s ask a question that qualifies your lead: Is it worth investing in or not?

• Is there any budget allocated to solve this issue?
• Are you open to being flexible about the budget for the solution?
• What is the budget? If you are willing to discuss now, then when?
• Is there any chance to go beyond the allocated budget?

At this point, your sales department discloses the budget. So it is the best time to consider the lead for your ROI of the solution.

Priority

Priority is the last stage of the CHAMP framework. At this stage, you need to understand the prospect’s priority on this solution. Is it an emergency, or how soon do they want the solution? Knowing that information, you pitch the solution to the prospect, and you will get an idea of how you need to approach. Some questions can clarify your lead qualification for the sales process implementation.

• When would you like to see this problem resolved?
• Do you have an existing solution? If yes, when will it expire?
• How soon are you hoping to put this solution into action?
• Are you looking for assistance from someone else?
• When will you be able to make this decision?

How to Implement CHAMP in Your Sales Process

Using the CHAMP framework for lead qualification is all about taking a thoughtful approach. It includes tasks such as scheduling discovery calls, asking the right questions, and determining how well a lead aligns with your goals.  Here’s a detailed guide to help you make the most of the CHAMP framework during your sales process!

Understands the CHAMP framework

If you don’t understand the CHAMP methodology, then you are working like a mess, with no solid plan and organised approach. Once you get this strategy, start working on following it, and your lead sales qualification will become smoother and easier with quality.

Targeting and discovery

You will always need to filter the audience you want to target, because mass outreach rarely yields better results. Target your ideal customer’s profile, weed out the straw, and very cold prospects. Develop a lead scoring system in your sales process to enhance the efficiency of your sales representatives. Discover new calls, use CHAMP questions, and adapt your approach toward leads.

Qualifying leads

Qualifying leads can be processed in several ways, such as lead scoring, general interest, demographic checking, or by following the CHAMP framework. While nurturing a lead makes you the corresponding lead, it has the potential to convert you into a customer, matches industry, demandable geography, enough budget, and the ability to make decisions.

This is how you can qualify a lead or go through lead scoring, which is also very effective. Need help navigating sales lingo? Check out Lead Generation Glossary:A–Z Terms to get familiar with key concepts that can sharpen your qualification strategy.

Nurturing and closing

Finally, you can follow up on leads and feedback, and according to how they react, you can take further steps. Closing a deal is not the end of everything; a successful deal closing with proper customer satisfaction brings another customer to them, so don’t force them to sell it.

An Example of CHAMP Methodology

Let’s take a look at a time example of how the sales team and a prospect communicate while following the CHAMP framework.

Rep (Mark): Hi, Ms. Patel! This is Mark from ClearTech. Saw your request about our project management tool. Thanks for reaching out. What has got you looking into solutions like ours?

Prospect (Ms. Patel): Hey Mark. We are drowning in missed deadlines right now. Teams are using three different apps, and nothing syncs up. It is chaotic.

Mark (Challenges): Oof, that is rough. Sounds like things fall through the cracks when they are juggled across apps?

Ms. Patel: Exactly! Last week, engineering shipped a feature the client had already scrapped. Total waste of time.

Mark (Authority): Yikes. Who is your go-to person to fix this besides yourself? Would they need to greenlight a new tool?

Ms. Patel: Our COO, Shakil, is the one pushing for this. I am just a poor soul stuck herding cats until we fix it. (laughs)

Mark: Ha! Well, let’s save those cats. Would Shakil want to join our next chat? I would hate to demo something without his must-haves.

Ms. Patel: Smart call. I will forward his calendar link, just don’t tell him I called him the cat herder in chief.

Mark (Money): Deal. Quick question: Are you working with a set budget, or is this more show us the value and we will make it work’?

Ms. Patel: The latter. If you can stop our dumpster fire, Shakil, find the cash.

Mark (Prioritization): Love the urgency. Realistically, how fast are you trying to move? Next month? Next quarter?

Ms. Patel: Yesterday? But seriously, if we don’t fix this in 4 weeks, our Q3 deliverables are toast.

Mark (Closing): Say no more. How is Tuesday at 3 PM for you and Shakil? I will show how we automate the chaos, no herding required.

Ms. Patel: Perfect. Just warn him about the cat jokes.

Best Practices for Implementing CHAMP

For the best result of the CHAMP sales process, you should follow the practices below.

• Take preparation: research about the leads industry, challenges, and profile before the discovery call because analyzing leads will give you confidence and help you ask more effective questions, and it will also make the lead feel you are an expert in this field.
• Proper attention: During the call, be an active listener to the lead. Pay attention to what you lead, focus on, and every single detail of their challenges and issues. And show that you feel their needs and genuinely want to solve their problems.
• Follow up and review: address the lead’s challenges and continuously follow up for next steps. If someone reschedules, keep that note properly and reach out at the correct time like that, and follow-up communication is important because the lead’s mind can change at any time, but if you push them, then the results are likely to be in your favour.

This is how you can implement CHAMP in your sales process for better results. There are more sales strategies similar to CHAMP, such as BANT, ANUM, and MEDDIC sales processes, which are also effective for customer satisfaction and product demonstration. Following these steps can bring you more sales in the entire process.

Is the CHAMP Sales Right for You?

The CHAMP process might be right for you, whether you are looking for a quick and efficient way to qualify leads, especially during the early stages of the sales process. If you are looking for more high-quality leads, you can take help from CallingAgency for better lead generation services around your area. This approach might not be suitable for every scenario, particularly when handling intricate enterprise sales or requiring a deeper understanding of the decision-making process.

Conclusion

CHAMP sales methodology is one of the most effective frameworks among several methods. It offers a structured and empathetic approach to your leads. CHAMP methodology helps you increase your sales pipeline with organized communication and steps because it lets you know the pain points of prospects and what kind of solution they desire. Try out CHAMP methodology and adopt its characteristics, and notice how it transforms your sales cycles.

FAQs

What is the CHAMP sales qualification?

CHAMP is a method used by sales professionals to evaluate potential customers. The CHAMP framework offers an organized, well-structured, and effective sales process, and also has a proven record of success.

What is CHAMP’s sales methodology?

It is a sales qualification framework using the method of identifying challenges, authority, money or budget, and priority.

How do the CHAMP & BANT frameworks differ?

They are both sales-qualifying methods. BANT uses the approach of budget, authority, need, and timing, where CHAMP uses challenges, authority, money, and priority.

Is the CHAMP sales right for you?

The CHAMP process could be ideal for you if you need a fast and effective method for qualifying leads, particularly in the initial stages of the sales cycle.