Your champion left the company: what still holds on the deal, and what to ask first
A champion leaving takes the person who carried your deal inside. It doesn’t take what the buyer told you. Below: what still holds, what goes back to the bottom rung, and the first questions for the next person you talk to.
Updated
My champion just left. Is the deal dead?
Not yet, but it has gone back a step. What the buyer told you is still true: the pain, the criteria, the steps to a decision. What left is the person who would have carried it inside. The next contact starts at the bottom rung, and so does your access to the economic buyer if it ran through them.
What does losing my champion change?
Two things go back to the bottom rung: who sells for you inside, and any access to the signer that ran through the person who left. Everything the buyer told you as a company stays where it was.
Still holds
The problem they described is still costing them. It didn’t leave with your champion.
What they said they’ll score you on is still the list, until someone on their side changes it.
The steps to a decision are still the steps. Who walks you through them is what changed.
Starts again
Who carries the deal inside when you’re not in the room.
- candidate
- motivated
- influential
- tested
Starts again at candidate
Someone who could become a champion: engaged, accessible, on the right side of the problem. A candidate has not yet done anything for you.
Your access to the person who signs, if it ran through your champion.
- named
- motivated
- engaged
Starts again at named
You have a name and a title. A name is enough to put a deal in the forecast, and on its own it tells you nothing about whether it will close.
What do I ask first?
Ask the next contact what a win here would be for them personally. If you reached the person who signs through the champion who left, find out what that person is measured on before you ask to meet them.
Then don’t leave the deal on one person again. Your deal is single-threaded covers who to add next, and how to ask for them.
Champion
Ask the next contact
To motivated
“What does a win here look like for you personally?”
Finds the motivation, or finds that there isn’t one — both are worth knowing in month two.
To motivated
“If this goes well, what changes for you at your next review?”
Ties the win to something they are measured on, which is what survives an inconvenient week.
Economic Buyer
Ask about the person who signs, if you reached them through your champion
To motivated
“What is [name] on the hook for this year — the number they get asked about?”
Gets the buyer’s personal measure, which is rarely the champion’s.
To motivated
“What is the thing they are most likely to say no to?”
Names the objection before it is raised somewhere you cannot answer it.
To engaged
“Would it help if I put the numbers in front of them directly, or would you rather take it?”
Tests access without asking for it — and a refusal is itself information about your champion.
To engaged
“Before this reaches [name] for signature, would they want fifteen minutes to check it against their priorities for the year?”
Gives your champion a reason to bring you in that serves the buyer, not you.
SalesWolf doesn’t know your champion left.
Nothing on the deal changes until you change it. The Champion Plan opens with coverage: who you have on record on the technical, business and executive side, and whether the technical or the business side has nobody.
14 days free, no card, no call.