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What Qualities and Characteristics Make a Great JMP Champion?

JerryFish

One of my "to-do's" this year is to try to develop a few JMP Champions at OVR clients. (By this I mean to intentionally help them however I can to become more proficient at JMP, with the hope that they will help us sell JMP internally at their companies.)

I'm in the process of picking potential champions now, and it occurred to me that I need a list of qualities and characteristics of what makes a great JMP champion, so I can try to pick that kind of person and help them develop in the "right" way. I'd like the help of the SE Community.

Think about JMP Champions at your clients. What makes them a Champion?

I'll also post in the Sales & Marketing Discussion space.

Thanks!

Accepted answers

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MikeD_Anderson

For me it’s the three p’s: Passion, Position, and Pragmatism

Passion: Do they love what they do? Are they passionate about helping those in their sphere of influence more effective through analytics?

Position: Are they positioned in their company to have a broad and significant impact? Do they have the ear of the people in positions of influence? Interns are pretty passionate, but they can have a Sisyphean task if they try to move the culture in a large way…

Pragmatism: Why do they value JMP? This one is the hardest to put to words – but basically, it’s a question around their view of JMP and us. There are users that love to use JMP because they find it fun or they like the attention that we give them. These are not necessarily champions. On the other hand, there are users that are more interested in getting to the right answer for the problem at hand and have noticed that JMP is generally the best tool to do that. These are more likely to be champions. They will evangelize JMP not because of the attention we give them, but because it’s the best solution for them. They view us as supports to their company’s success (not to say there isn’t friendship there – but they are pragmatic about the software and its role in their work).

Hope that helps!

M

JerryFish

Thanks Mike. Good stuff! Anyone else care to share?

Peter_Hersh

I agree with Mike. Typically I will look for the most active users those who attend events, go to Webcasts are members of the user community. The key is differentiate the JMP fans from champions. JMP fans usually lack one of the things Mike mentions. We can’t do a ton about position but we can help with the passion and pragmatictism. Helping them show the value in an important project can lead to both. My two cents.

JerryFish

Thanks Pete!

Bill_Worley

I'm all in with Mike and Peter.

I thought it might help to call out a person who embodies all these qualities and more.

Carol Kramer from 3M

Passion - Carol is a diehard JMP user and she is working extremely hard to get JMP out in front of the powers that be at 3M Corporate. Carol was able to wrangle JMP an invite to the 3M Global Quality Council meeting to present some of our visualization capability to over 100 corporate quality professionals. None of our competitiors were even invited! Carol's advocacy has led to 3M actually pre-purchasing blocks of JMP licenses instead of the onesy-twosy as needed that they have been doing for years. A few JMP Pro licenses are also on the horizon, although this isn't so much Carol's doing.

Position - Carol isn't super high up, but she is in a position to have the ear of the corporate Quality Vice President and she does not shy away from talking to him at length about the capabilities in JMP that she finds useful and would be useful for all of 3M Quality. Prior to our onsite meetings we will meet with Carol via WebEx or for a meal and she will give us her perspective on what is important to cover and who will be present to hear the message. She is one of the best at pre-meeting setup. We realize that part of that is so that we don't let her down or make her look bad with the content we show.

Pragmatic - Carol evangalizes JMP because she loves it and she is convinced that JMP is the right tool to put in the hands of all the quality professionals in 3M. The thing I find most intersting is that Carol is near the end of her career yet she is pushing very hard to get JMP more widely accepted. And to one Mike's other statements, there is friendship there as well. Carol is a great all-around person.

From our side, we make sure that Carol has all the support that she needs from us and we keep her posted on all the latest quality tools available. We stay in touch at least quarterly and plan meetings that help her show the value of JMP and how it has helped her solve several internal quality issues.

JerryFish

So given all these great thoughts on what makes a champion, and how to find champions, I'm wondering...

Has JMP ever tried to do a formal "Champion Certification"? What would it look like? What would we require that champions do to earn this recognition? (Complete STIPS, present at Discovery, peer recognition, etc.).

Dumb idea??

JerryFish

Good stuff Bill. Thanks!

Peter_Bartell

My take is a champion is equal parts practitioner and evangelist for JMP and quality/statistical methods in their organizations. Everyone before me on this thread has contributed congruent thoughts. It also helps if they are an economic buying influence as well (makes our selling MUCH easier). Some we've had in Mid Atlantic over the years are Rhonda Newman at Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inna Ben-Inat at Teva, Chris Chen at WL Gore, Ronald Tessier at Berk Tek, Christi McDowell - Patterson at first Novavax, and then Spark Therapeutics. They are also what I call 'true believers' in using quality and statistical methods because it's the best way to solve the business and technical problems in their respective organizations. Rather than a formal SAS certification what about a "Champions Breakfast" or some such social event at Discovery?

martindemel

Jerry,

in the European SE team we had this discussion last year as well and this is more or less the outcome (kind of similar to Bills example):

The link Malcolm refered to in his response is here: https://www.insightsquared.com/2014/05/how-to-gain-a-sales-champion/

Key is finding a person who likes JMP, has influence (not (!) equivalent with manager!) and is open enough to reveal personal wins and business benefits. We can test they have influence by setting them tasks to see if they deliver. We may have different champions at different stages of maturity. Early on it might be someone from the data analytics team to get us started and we may need to transition to a champion with more influence as usage of JMP expands. It may be that the initial champion is interested in one application area and will not be motivated to help us expand into new departments. It is therefore important to understand the extent of champion interest – is it department, site, company. The most influential champions are more out-going, are looking to advance their career within the company, are already established, work hard, and have some personal and business frustration/pain that we can align to.

Good things tend to happen if we can:

Find the right champion
Get them to love JMP
Give them the tools to bring other on board (or the tools to teach others)
Maintain close connection with champion
Let champion go do battle for us