Everyone says find a champion. What does that actually mean, and how do I know if I have one?

Most champion advice stops at identify. This one is about the harder half, arming them: mapping the internal buying process, prepping objections, and role playing the meeting they will have without you.

How to empower your buyer champion (to win you the sale)

From Dock by The Dock Team 14 min read

• Gartner: buyers spend only 17 percent of the buying process with sales teams, and 5 to 6 percent with any one rep.
• You are about three times more likely to close when you arm the champion with material they can use internally.
• Test a champion on six things: do they want the role, have authority, have influence, gain personally, know how to buy, and talk about you unprompted.
• Run a mutual action plan with named owners, milestones and dates so the champion has a spine to push on.

The clearest short explanation of the person your champion has to reach: the one with veto power and discretionary budget. It also makes the point that matters here, that the economic buyer will never announce themselves and finding them is your job.

Economic Buyer: Definition, Identify and Qualification

From MEDDICC 8 min read

• The economic buyer can say yes when everyone says no, and no when everyone says yes.
• Look for P&L responsibility and access to discretionary funds that are not already budgeted.
• If your champion will not introduce you to the economic buyer, they are probably not a champion.
• In that meeting, speak to economic decision criteria and business objectives, not product features.

Gives you the four behavioural tests for a real champion (they repeat your questions to colleagues, they introduce people unprompted, they share things they should not, they push back on you) so you stop mistaking a friendly contact for an advocate.

MEDDPICC Explained: How to Find and Develop a Champion

From SalesMethods by Jake Hickton 12 min read

• A real champion needs three things: confirmed influence, access to the economic buyer, and a personal stake in you winning.
• Behavioural tells: they ask your discovery questions internally, introduce stakeholders unprompted, share things they should not, and correct your misreads.
• Give them a small kit: a one page summary in the economic buyer's language plus an ROI case study for finance.
• Multi thread from day one and cultivate a second advocate before you need one.

The practical follow on to finding a champion: how to test whether the person you like actually has influence, and how to reach the other three people who will decide. Concrete language for asking a champion to introduce you upward.

Multi-Threading: Steal this framework to increase win rates by 2-3x

On GTMnow (GTMfund) by Jason Bay 59 min