What It Takes to Build Business Champions
"Execution is key." - Ben Baker
Ben and Syya explore how to turn everyday connections into lasting business champions. They discuss how trust, emotional connection, and strong communication lead to loyalty, and why recovery after mistakes is just as important as execution. This episode is a guide to building real relationships that grow your brand and boost long-term success.
Takeaways:
✔ People are the X factor in business
✔ Trust and understanding build champions
✔ Mistakes can lead to deeper loyalty
✔ Communication and execution go hand in hand
✔ Relationships require consistent effort
Learn more about Ben Baker: IamBenBaker.com
Chat with Syya and the team at Brilliant Beam Media
Transcript
If there's one thing we've learned about business and life is that people are the X
factor.
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:They constantly surprise us both in amazing ways and not so much.
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:We're Ben and Sia and welcome to the Nod On This Business Bites podcast.
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:This show is all about real life things we all deal with every day, how they relate to
business and how to make some sense out of our daily chaos.
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:Welcome to the show.
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:And welcome back to another episode of non this business bites.
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:I'm Ben, this is Sia.
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:And let's think about it this way.
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:How do you build champions for your cause?
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:Not everybody's going to be a champion.
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:Most people won't.
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:Most people sit in the interactive mode.
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:Most people sit there and say, you know what?
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:This company does a good job.
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:Great.
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:Thank you.
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:I'll continue to buy from you.
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:And then you have the raving fans.
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:Then you have people that are excited to tell other people about you.
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:They're excited when new products launch.
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:They're excited oh when they get a new piece of news from you.
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:They're excited to share all this information.
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:They're excited to grab their friends by the hand and bring them to you.
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:Those are your champions.
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:Those are your number one customers.
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:Those are the people that are incredible, incredible people to have in your life.
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:I remember years ago, had a client of mine, she was with an organization and she ended up
going to Health Canada.
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:She said it helped when she got to Health Canada, says, Ben, unfortunately, I can't do
business with you anymore.
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:She goes, and I went, oh, she goes, but I got something better.
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:What we do is we fund the projects across Canada that you do.
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:We don't buy them directly, but we fund this.
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:I can introduce you when we're funding these projects to all the people as we're funding
the projects.
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:And she did.
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:She brought me to conferences.
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:She had me speak at conferences.
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:She had me sit in her booth a few times.
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:It was an incredible relationship.
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:And over 15 years, I have 300 plus people that I've met because of Shirley.
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:And she told...
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:everybody if you're doing anything to do with smoking cessation, alcohol awareness, or
drug addiction promotion in Canada, you need to talk to Ben.
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:And I've literally had her grab my hand, grab somebody else's hand, and say those exact
words.
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:She was a champion.
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:And those things take time to foster.
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:It's about building trust.
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:It's about building understanding.
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:It's understanding
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:What do they need to succeed?
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:That's the key thing.
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:What do they need to succeed?
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:What do they need to be excited?
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:What do they need to feel like they're on the inside?
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:What do they need to be the person that feels that they're behind the velvet rope and they
are the ones getting the white glove treatment?
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:Because you can't do it for everybody.
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:It's impossible to do it for everybody, but there are those few
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:And it may be 10, it may be 100, it may be a thousand.
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:But those few people who can sit there and say, yeah, I am on the VIP list.
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:I'm the one who actually gets treated like a VIP.
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:It's not just a membership card.
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:It's what I get when I have the membership.
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:And those are the people you need to foster the relationships with.
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:Those are the people you need to embrace.
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:Those are the people when they bring you people that they trust, you need to treat those
people like gold because it's their reputation on the line with this person because they
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:brought them to you.
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:And we need to think about that.
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:How do we build those champions?
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:And every business is different.
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:See, let's gnaw on this.
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:Talk about Disney.
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:Disney is the perfect sample of this.
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:Well, because guys, it's like, like anything, if you can create an emotional connection to
something, you're going to have someone that's going to and I, it's funny, I talked about
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:some another podcast, you're gonna have nostalgia for that emotion.
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:And if you can associate yourself for that memory, and that positive emotion tied to that
memory, right?
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:Because you know, negative memories do exist, right?
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:uh It's it's a slam dunk.
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:The thing is, is
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:Yes, 100%.
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:You need to listen to whomever you're working with because you're trying to solve their
needs.
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:Because, I've argued this and I will argue it always, humans are selfish.
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:We have basic needs that we are looking for for ourselves.
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:If you can solve our need, I'm sorry.
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:Let me, let me rephrase this.
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:If you can solve my need, then we can collaborate.
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:Right.
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:It does feel a little one sided at times, but at the same time, all relationships are, you
know, ebb and flow where it goes back and forth.
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:But the transaction is still very, and I hate to say it, very stark.
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:I have a need, you can solve my problem, then we can do it together.
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:Correct.
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:Um, so.
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:I think the other part of the equation that we haven't talked about is we can love each
other.
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:I love you.
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:You love me.
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:We're doing this together.
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:We've done this for years now.
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:We didn't know each other.
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:Right.
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:But we did.
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:We fulfilled a need that we both were looking for.
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:Right.
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:I was
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:And we built a relationship.
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:Exactly.
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:However, the second part you and I did not talk about.
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:Do you remember early on in our conversations of doing this?
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:We're like, let's give it a quarter.
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:And then the new year came around and we're like, let's do another quarter.
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:Let's see if this makes sense for us.
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:Right?
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:Fast forward.
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:It's almost three years now we're going on year three.
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:Yep.
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:And this is the second part of the equation that we don't talk about.
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:Execution.
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:Just because
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:We can solve a quote need fill in a gap, solve a problem, whatever.
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:If you can't execute that, you and me don't become we it's a we for now.
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:execute over and over and over and over again.
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:That's the idea.
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:Right.
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:And I think, and sometimes you're not going to be able to execute.
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:think it goes back to a previous conversation.
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:We were talking about customer experience.
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:Sometimes you're going to, as a provider, you're going to fall on your face and go, Oh,
snap on crackers.
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:We said we deliver this.
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:We couldn't meet those objectives for whatever reason and explain why you couldn't on the
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:It's how you deal with it that keeps a champion from becoming an enemy.
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:And I think that's where, um you know, as a client too, is, yeah, you're gonna have
disappointments, just like all relationships.
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:But if you can overcome it and be like, they done, they done messed up a Ron, I'll say an
example, because my background is in technology.
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:If there's a network down issue, you'll be surprised how quickly the attention gets on
there.
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:Okay, the network went down.
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:As you always like to text me back when I'm all frustrated, excrement happens.
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:Yes, it does.
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:do we resolve it from here on out?
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:Can we fix it?
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:Is it really that enormous of a problem?
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:mean, the grand scheme of things.
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:Yeah.
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:Right.
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:So, um know, maybe, what's that saying?
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:Count your blessings.
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:Maybe your network went down during, you know, Fourth of July when the odds are high or
Canada Day, odds are high, ain't no one working.
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:Whew, lucky for you, right?
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:As opposed to if your retail store and it's, you know, Black Friday, that's a big problem.
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:You know what I
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:Yeah, I mean, I remember when Blackberry went down for three days.
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:When Blackberry went down for three days, I happened to be traveling.
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:I was traveling across the country.
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:I had no idea because I didn't have access to the news.
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:I wasn't listening to anything like that.
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:I just thought I had three days where people were leaving me alone and I could deal with
clients because I was dealing with client after client after client after client.
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:So I really wasn't looking at my phone where the rest of the world was going apoplectic.
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:Because because the BlackBerry network was down for three days.
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:I was going oh, okay.
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:I can deal with my clients great.
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:Nobody's bought nobody needs to be great perfect I can just focus on the client in front
of me but It was it was hysterical and I think that if we look at things that way and we
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:and we look at it sit there say, okay, how do we How do we recover?
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:I think the best part of building champions is how you recover, because we're all going to
make a mistake.
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:When I'm dealing with my largest clients, in fact, most of my clients, say, look, there
will come a time where I will disappoint you.
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:There will come a time where I will make a mistake.
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:I will guarantee you two things.
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:One, I will never shirk responsibility, and you will always be able to get a hold of me,
and I will help fix it.
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:I love that.
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:I have built more champions of my cause over the years because people know if there's a
problem, Ben's on the other end of the phone.
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:If I call Ben, if he doesn't get back to me, if he doesn't pick up the phone, he'll, he's
back to me in half an hour because he's probably in a meeting.
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:And I just, and I'm the kind of guy that says, okay, how do we fix it?
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:And you know, I've had problems cost me 10 grand.
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:I wasn't happy about it.
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:I wasn't ecstatic about it, but it made me a $10 million client.
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:I love it.
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:Yeah, no.
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:oh You know, it's one thing.
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:Okay, so yeah, know, excrement happens, right?
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:I like the fact that, you know, a good long term relationship is when you can literally
say, I disagree with you.
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:I'm going to disagree with you.
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:I think that's the hardest.
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:I think that's the hardest step is things are going well.
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:Maybe there's a suggestion of going in a certain direction, etc.
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:Right.
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:But to be able to say, don't think that's the right plan.
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:Don't think that's the right idea.
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:And this is why.
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:And this is why I think working through that together that tells you you have a deeper
relationship and you have built yourself a champion advocate, whatever it might be.
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:Depends on the personality of the person too, right?
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:Cause there's cheerleaders that are like rah rah rah.
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:And then there's the more subtle, right?
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:And there's a connector.
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:Like there's also different facets of that, which I think is, I think we're using
cheerleader as like the big umbrella, but.
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:Yeah, 100%.
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:Like it could be something that's like passively just as like talking to, you know, with
buddies at Canada Day, Fourth of July party, right?
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:You'll like, oh yeah, you know, this is a great product if you're looking for that, right?
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:So.
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:Well, I never forget in my very early days of selling, and this is going back probably 30
years ago, working for Xerox.
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:Xerox training is some of the best training you'll ever get in your life in terms of
customer service and customer relationships.
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:And I never forget somebody telling me, says, unless you have a three by three model, you
are not in the client, which means you're dealing with three different departments.
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:and you're dealing with three different levels of decision makers.
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:All the way from the team manager, know, team managers, junior managers, senior management
team.
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:And you know, that's a minimum.
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:You know, if you want to build champions within an organization, you have to be in an
organization and you have to have the ability for people to know that they can reach out
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:to you and they know that you're going to be there for them.
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:I had one client, they had no idea I didn't work for the company.
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:I was in so many meetings and involved in so many projects, they assumed I worked for the
company.
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:Because I was in their office twice a week.
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:Now they were a multi-million dollar client of mine and we were working on a variety of
different major projects with across a variety of different departments.
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:So there was a reason for me to be there so often.
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:But there are people that they said, well, when can I come by your office and have a
conversation with you about this?
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:And this was a senior vice president and he says, actually, I don't have a, what do mean
you don't have an office?
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:I don't work for Canadian.
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:eh
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:That's funny.
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:That's funny.
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:That's funny.
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:I have a very similar story.
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:I was at a client so much talking to different divisions and all that, that someone's
like, should we just give you an office?
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:Like it was meant in jest.
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:But I actually was like, if you wanted to, I'll live here.
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:I don't mind.
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:Sure.
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:Yeah, no.
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:Because we give it to one vendor, got to get there all.
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:So
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:But it's amazing when, I think that's when you know you have champions, when people look
at you as part of their internal process system.
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:When they sit there and say, this person knows as much about the company, if not more than
I do.
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:This person understands our mission, our vision, our goals, and is working with us to be
able to solve our problems.
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:on a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly basis.
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:And those are the people that become your champions.
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:Oh, especially like, co author.
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:This was me help me out with this.
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:Does this look good?
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:Does this look good?
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:Yeah.
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:Does this presentation make us look fat?
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:Oh, man.
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:If you can get to that level, you're you're you're golden.
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:Golden for sure for sure.
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:So I would love to hear people's thoughts in the notes.
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:Tell me about times you thought you had champions, sometimes you thought you didn't have
champions, what you did to create champions.
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:Love to hear it all, either team live, team replay, whatever.
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:Put that information in the chat and let's hear it all because you know what?
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:We can all learn from each other.
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:And let's leave it there because everybody come on back.
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:Let's give the information so that way we can move on this over the week.
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:I'm Ben and we'll see you soon.
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:Hey hey hey, thanks for listening to another episode of Not On This Business Fights.
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:If you liked what you heard, be most humbly asked that you like, share, and hit that
subscribe button.
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:If you want to communicate more effectively within your organization, contact ben at
imbenbaker.com or me at
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:brilliantbeanmedia.com.
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:can help you build your community, brand awareness, and personality through digital
content and podcasting.
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:We cannot wait to hear from you.
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:See you next week for another episode of Nom This Business Bites.
