Your champion will be selling for you. Are they prepared?
Last week I laid out the four things your solution needs to clear to get a deal done in today’s environment. Here’s the one thing that can still kill it even when you’ve cleared all four.
If nobody inside your customer’s organization is effectively making the case when you’re not in the room, your deal stalls — not from lack of merit, but from lack of attention.
A common scenario
You’ve got a qualified opportunity. The discovery is solid. The value proposition is compelling. The pilot is designed to succeed. Your champion gets it, is bought in, is enthusiastic, and tells you it’s a priority.
And then they walk into an internal meeting without you, get asked questions they weren’t prepared for, and the initiative quietly gets tabled.
This isn’t a product problem. It’s not an ROI problem. It’s a preparation problem. The project was evaluated… it just happened unexpectedly, ad hoc, without you and without the right messaging.
What this looks like in practice
I recently worked with a client navigating a renewal conversation at a hospital system. They had strong results and a solid relationship. But the budget conversation was happening at a level where nobody knew the numbers.
We built a one-pager together. Not a sales document. A performance summary. Using the hospital’s own language: their strategic priorities, their metric categories, their terminology. Specific, attributable numbers. Designed to be presented by the champion, not the vendor.
The champion walked into the renewal meeting looking like they had done their homework. Because they had.
That’s the goal.
Your job: teach your champions to sell
A significant part of your job is teaching your champions to sell: to the CFO in CFO language, to the CMO in CMO language, to the board in language that sticks with them.
Different audiences need to hear different things. Your champion needs to know what will resonate.
What to build
This isn’t a slide deck. Your champion shouldn’t be presenting your pitch. They need something they can share as their own.
Key ingredients:
- A one-pager in their language. Co-developed with the champion, using their metrics, tied to their stated strategic priorities. Not your features. Their outcomes.
- A clear narrative arc. Situation → what we’re doing → what it’s producing → what’s next. Four sentences per audience. No jargon.
- Numbers they can point to. Specific, visible, attributable. The CFO wants a number. The CMO wants a measurable outcome. Give your champion what they need when they walk into the room.
- Something designed to be forwarded. Short enough to read in 90 seconds, clean enough they’re proud to attach it to an email.
What to do this week
Pick one account where you have a champion. Ask yourself honestly: if they had to present your solution to their CEO tomorrow… without you on the call, without advance notice… could they do it convincingly?
If not, you know what to do.
Start with one question: what would make your champion look good internally for backing this? Answer that, and you’ll know where to start. (And if you need help with that, ping me.)
