Get practical tips on how to identify, build and work with a champion to win more deals.
Closing a five-, six-, or seven-figure deal in B2B software requires more than a great product and a persuasive pitch. It requires a strong internal advocate—someone within the buyer's organization who believes in your solution, champions your cause, and helps you navigate the complexities of the sales process. This person is known as the "champion," and they're crucial to your success.
But how do you actually build and work with one effectively?
In this blog post, we'll explore the process of identifying, building, and working with a champion and offer practical tips from sales leaders on how to leverage this relationship to navigate complex sales cycles and drive your deal to a successful close.
A champion is more than just a supporter. They have a vested interest in the success of your solution because it aligns with their personal goals. They have influence within their organization and can sway others in favor of purchasing your solution. Moreover, they understand the inner workings of their company, providing you with invaluable insights on how to present your business case and navigate the procurement process.
A true champion will "walk the halls" for you, meaning they will:
Building a strong relationship with a potential champion starts with understanding their personal goals. Remember, every person you're engaging with has a full-time job outside of evaluating new software or services. Their time with you is time away from their core responsibilities, so your solution needs to align with something that truly matters to them.
To discover what motivates an individual, consider the following:
With this information, you can tailor your value proposition to resonate personally with your potential champion, motivating them to advocate for your solution internally.
Motivating your champion is crucial, but enabling them to sell internally is equally important. To do this, you need to develop a value proposition that aligns with what their boss cares about. While your champion might love your product, their boss might not see it as a priority unless you demonstrate how it addresses the company's broader goals.
Here are some questions to help you uncover these priorities:
Your champion should leave every interaction with you feeling like you’ve added value. There are many ways to add value. For instance, you could ask the potential champion thoughtful questions that get them thinking about their challenges in new ways or sharing insights on how others in similar situations have achieved success.
Even in your first meeting, known as the "discovery" call, you can add value by providing context to your questions. For instance, instead of just asking about their challenges (which helps you learn but doesn't teach the buyer anything), you might say, "The reason I ask is that we've seen other companies in your industry struggle with X, and they found that Y was an effective solution that helps them see an improve of Z% in [this metric they care about]."
This approach not only demonstrates your expertise but also builds rapport and respect.
Buyers love hearing about how similar individuals overcame the same challenges they have. They also want to consider new practices/approaches for their industry that can lead to improved performance. Thus, it's worth taking a moment to research so you have something to teach the buyer.
When presenting your solution, resist the urge to do a "feature dump" or show off everything you know. Instead, tailor your demo to match your buyer's specific problems and priorities. Spend eighty percent of the demo time highlighting those features and your product's differentiators. As you prepare for a demo, you should know how each feature would be used by the buyer and the benefits it would bring.
This approach ensures your demo is relevant and engaging, leaving the buyer thinking, "This person genuinely understands me and my needs."
If you don’t know how a buyer would use a feature, it means you should ask additional questions to get clarity.
While the champion is your primary point of contact through the discovery and demo phases of the deal, they will likely need to meet with additional stakeholders and get others onboard for you to successfully close the deal. Unfortunately, when a proposal for a solution has been shared, the buyer dictates the next steps. They'll say, "Let me talk internally and get back to you."
If your response is, "When should we reconnect to discuss internal feedback?" you run the risk that the potential champion cannot progress the deal on their side enough to continue the conversation.
Realize that your champion may be reluctant to introduce you to their colleagues because they don't want to risk wasting these individuals' time (especially if you've asked to meet with an executive).
To address this concern and help the champion advance the conversation when you're not in the room, you must find out who they need to talk to and the priorities for those stakeholders. Then, offer to help your champion assemble materials they can share with those stakeholders. Say something like this:
"I'm looking forward to hearing their feedback. I'd love to send snippets of our presentation for their review so they can have relevant context. To help me share the most relevant content, can you share who you will meet with and which parts of our solution align with their priorities?"
Once you get the answers above, say:
"Since we've had a few conversations, it'll be tricky for you to summarize it all for your team. I'd be happy to put together a short document (or a couple of slides) to help you bring your team up on our previous conversations and why they might find value. Let's grab twenty minutes before your internal meeting to get your feedback on what I put together."
This approach allows you to maintain control of the deal cycle by defining a practical next step and a reason to continue meeting while helping your primary contact to sell internally.
Your champion may not want to introduce you to their colleagues. If this is the case, you'll need to help them understand why you want to meet with them. Here's what a request could look like:
"Emily, it's been great working with you to identify how UltraCheck could help your dev team improve efficiency. The last thing we'd want to do is begin an implementation without a really clear picture of how our work could impact the broader engineering org. We want to optimize for the long term. Typically, the CTO is the best person to discuss long-term architecture goals. We'd love to bring Linda onto the next call to get her up to speed on our goals and planned implementation and see where she would recommend adjustments. To best use her time, we'll prepare an executive summary she can review before the call. The main feedback we'll want from her is related to the milestones we've discussed. Now is the right time to change those definitions or timing. To ensure the call is successful, we'll also include the executive who leads our Solution Architecture team. That way, any questions she has can be addressed during the call."
This approach will increase your champion's confidence in you, earn an audience with others, and help everyone make the most of those conversations.
Now that your champion has agreed that it's helpful for you to put together a document that they can forward to their colleagues, what should you create?
One of the most influential documents you can create is a one- or two-page business case that summarizes the key insights from your conversations with the buyer. When this is well done, it allows your champion to sell on your behalf—and they may even want to take credit for creating it!
A business case is a document that tells the buying team why they should be invested in taking action and what they should do and by when to achieve their desired outcomes. It highlights how your solution can help them solve the problems hindering their attainment of desired outcomes. To make it compelling, it needs to include specific language the buyer uses (e.g., characterize the problems the buyer faces in their own words).
A business case document is easy to digest and easy for the champion to forward to their executives. As the seller, you can start this document and ask your champion to review it and fill in the gaps. If your champion works on this document with you, they can get to where they think, “Wow, this captures what we need so well,” and convince themselves to do a deal with you.
When sellers use a business case, they see better results:
Below is a solid template for a business case document.
______________________________________________________________________
A bold, compelling title goes here.
Developed by: [ Champion Name ], [ Key Deal Players ]
Headline: [ Buying team or business unit ] should [ recommended action ] by [ timeline ].
This will result in [ outcome ], while avoiding [ cost of the problem ] created by [ problem ].
The Problem Statement.
Include who’s impacted, the cost, how it impacts a company-wide goal, and why the problem’s getting worse. Example formats include:
Recommended Approach.
Outline your solution design, how it's been tested and proven, and the factors that must be true for it to work. Include a short note on how to resource the shift successfully.
The point is to first gain agreement on the approach agnostic of vendors while transitioning by sharing that "[ your company ] was found to meet and exceed all requirements."
A Payoff That Matters.
Here, outline a vivid picture of the before vs. after state for daily users, while showing the time to impact on executive-level metrics:
Required Investment.
Who needs to invest what, by when? List time and people resources needed, with relevant scenarios.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Here at Intersight, we want to help sellers build effective champions. Specifically, we'll help you create business cases and other documents that you can share with your buyers and their stakeholders.
Our AI-driven writing tool allows you to draft and refine business cases and other documents, ensuring they are perfectly tailored to your buyer's needs. Each document is assigned a unique URL, allowing you to track engagement and gain insights into whether a prospective buyer is seriously evaluating your solution or just kicking the tires.
We're currently building out this part of Intersight, with a solution expected to be available in the coming weeks. Sign up below to be notified when the application becomes available.
