A champion is the most valuable person in your deal and the biggest single point of failure in it. Build a backup before you need one. A champion in sales is an internal advocate at the prospect's company who wants your solution to win and actively pushes for it, including
A champion is the most valuable person in your deal and the biggest single point of failure in it. Build a backup before you need one. A champion in sales is an internal advocate at the prospect's company who wants your solution to win and actively pushes for it, including in the internal meetings you are not invited to. In a buying committee of 6 to 10 people, a strong champion is often the only reason a deal makes it through the internal conversations a vendor never sees. That same concentration of dependence is the risk: if your champion leaves, gets reorganized, loses internal standing, or simply cools off, the deal can collapse overnight because so much of it was riding on one person. This guide defines what a champion is, how to tell a real champion from a friendly contact, and why a second champion is the most important insurance in a complex deal.
A champion in sales is an individual at the prospect's organization who genuinely wants the vendor's solution to be selected and actively advocates for it internally, including advocating in discussions the vendor is not part of. A champion differs from a coach, who provides helpful information but does not advocate or take personal risk. Because a champion carries a large share of a complex deal's internal momentum, over-dependence on a single champion is a significant deal risk.
A champion does the work the vendor cannot do from outside. They represent the solution in internal meetings, repeat its value in the vendor's absence, navigate the company's politics, connect the vendor to other stakeholders including the economic buyer, and give the vendor early warning about objections, competitors, and budget constraints.
Crucially, a champion takes personal risk. Advocating for a specific vendor means putting their credibility on the line: if the purchase goes badly, they are associated with it. A person who is friendly and helpful but unwilling to take that risk is providing information, not championing. The willingness to spend political capital is the defining test, the same one covered in the MEDDIC methodology.
Three roles that get conflated:
The dangerous mistake is treating a coach as a champion. A deal that a rep believes is championed, but is actually only coached, has no real internal advocacy in the rooms that decide it, and tends to stall in exactly those rooms with no clear explanation.
Champions are built, not found. The pattern:
A strong champion concentrates deal risk into one person's continued presence and standing at the company. Consider a hypothetical: a deal is 80% of the way to close, entirely on the strength of one champion who has been driving it internally. That champion accepts a job elsewhere. Their replacement has no relationship with you, no stake in the purchase, and often a reflexive skepticism toward decisions their predecessor was making. The deal does not just slow down, it frequently resets to near zero or dies.
The same collapse happens with a reorg that moves your champion out of the relevant team, a political shift that reduces their internal influence, or a performance issue that makes their advocacy a liability rather than an asset. Any of these can happen without warning, and a single-champion deal has no cushion when one does.
Start early, before you need it. As soon as you have one solid champion, identify a second stakeholder, ideally in a different function, who could also become an advocate, and run the same development pattern with them. The goal is not two identical champions but two people whose fortunes at the company are not correlated, so that a change affecting one does not affect the other.
A practical trigger: once your primary champion has confirmed they will advocate, ask them directly, "who else on the team should be as bought in as you are, and can you introduce me." A genuine champion helps you build the backup, because they also do not want the deal resting entirely on them. This is part of the broader discipline of multithreading a deal across the full committee.
The Champion Liability: a champion is an asset that can become a liability. Because a strong champion carries so much of a complex deal's internal momentum, their departure, reorganization, or loss of internal standing can collapse the deal overnight. The fix is to develop a second champion early, ideally in a different function, so no single person's fortunes at the company are a single point of failure for the deal.
The discipline is to treat "we have a great champion" as a reason to build a backup, not a reason to relax. On every complex deal, ask: if this one person left tomorrow, what happens to the deal. If the honest answer is "it dies," the deal is under-threaded and needs a second advocate before it progresses further.
"A champion is the most valuable person in your deal and the biggest single point of failure in it. Build a backup before you need one."
Run the "if this person left tomorrow" test on every open deal above a meaningful size monthly, and treat a single-champion deal as a yellow flag regardless of how strong that one champion is.
Building a second champion means identifying and reaching another suitable stakeholder in the account, often in a different function, which requires knowing who those people are and being able to contact them directly.
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A champion in sales is an internal advocate who actively pushes for your solution, including in the meetings you are not in, and takes personal risk by tying their credibility to the outcome. In a complex deal, a strong champion is often the only thing carrying it through internal conversations a vendor never sees, which is exactly why one champion is a single point of failure: their departure or loss of standing can collapse the deal overnight. Build a second champion early, in a different function, so no one person's fortunes at the company decide your deal. Reach that second stakeholder directly. Start free at inboundlabs.app.
A champion is an individual at the prospect's company who genuinely wants your solution to be selected and actively advocates for it internally, including in discussions you are not part of. A champion takes personal risk by tying their credibility to the purchase, which distinguishes them from a merely helpful contact.
A coach gives you useful inside information, decision-makers, evaluation criteria, competitor details, but stops short of publicly advocating for you. A champion advocates: they argue for your solution internally, bring other stakeholders to the table, and put their own credibility on the line. Coaches are valuable and often become champions later.
Deliver a genuine insight about their situation, give them data and framing they can use to advance their own agenda internally, then ask directly whether they will advocate and what they need to do it well. Equip them with a sharable business case and answers to the objections you know are coming.
Because a strong champion concentrates the deal's internal momentum into one person. If they leave, get reorganized, or lose internal standing, the deal can collapse overnight, since their replacement has no relationship with you and often skepticism toward their predecessor's decisions. A single-champion deal has no cushion when that happens.
Start early, as soon as you have one solid champion. Identify a second stakeholder in a different function whose fortunes at the company are not correlated with the first champion's, and run the same development process. Ask your primary champion who else should be bought in and for an introduction.
Ask what personal risks the person has actually taken for you: advocating in internal meetings, bringing other stakeholders to you, sharing unasked-for information about objections or competitors, telling you bad news early. If you cannot name specific risks they have taken, you likely have a coach, not a champion.
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