You ran the test and the answer was no: your contact is friendly, but they have no access to the budget holder, no personal stake, and have never once advocated for you internally. That is not a dead deal — it is a build project. Champions are developed far more often than they are discovered, and the work follows four steps you can start this week.
Most reps respond to a weak champion by working harder on the same person, hoping enthusiasm converts into influence. It rarely does. Influence is structural: it comes from standing in the organization and from having something personally at stake. You can help create the second, and you can go find the first.
The reason this is worth doing rather than walking away is that most enterprise deals do not begin with a champion in place. They begin with a curious contact, and the rep either develops that person into an advocate or watches the deal quietly stall in the middle of the funnel. Building champions is not a rescue operation — it is the normal work of the job.
Step 1: Find who could actually advocate
Before investing in anyone, map who in the account has the standing to be heard by the economic buyer and the exposure to the problem you solve. The right candidate is usually the person who owns the pain, not the person who is nicest to you.
Prompt: "Here is what I know about the buying committee at [COMPANY]: [PASTE STAKEHOLDERS, TITLES, AND WHAT EACH HAS SAID]. Rank them by who is most likely to become a genuine champion, weighing access to the economic buyer, ownership of the problem, and personal stake in solving it. For each, tell me the strongest reason they would advocate and the biggest reason they would not."
Step 2: Give them something to gain
A champion with no personal upside is an enthusiast. Your job is to connect the deal to something they care about: a target they are measured on, an initiative they own, a problem they have promised their boss they would fix. That connection cannot be manufactured — but it can very often be surfaced, because most people are carrying a goal you can help them hit.
Ask plainly: "If this problem were solved by next quarter, what would that change for you specifically?" The answer tells you whether a stake exists and, if so, exactly what it is.
Step 3: Equip them to advocate without you
People do not advocate for things they cannot explain. Hand your candidate a business case in their organization's language, answers to the objections they will face, and one clear ask they can deliver — then get out of the room.
Prompt: "Build an internal case for [CONTACT], a [TITLE] at [COMPANY], to present to [ECONOMIC BUYER]. Cover the business problem in their company's language, the outcome using their metrics: [METRICS], the risk of doing nothing, and one specific approval ask. Write it from their perspective so they can present it without me present."
A useful test of whether you have equipped them properly: could they make the case convincingly if you were unreachable for two weeks? If the honest answer is no, the materials are not finished, and no amount of enthusiasm on their part will close that gap in a meeting you are not attending.
Step 4: Test the advocacy before you trust it
Advocacy is proven by action, not agreement. Ask them to take one small internal step — forward the case, set the meeting, raise it in a staff meeting — and watch whether they actually do it. A candidate who does becomes a champion. One who repeatedly does not is telling you something true about their willingness or their standing, and it is far better to learn that now than at the end of the quarter.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does it take to build a champion?
Usually a few conversations across several weeks, because the personal stake has to be real and the internal case has to be understood well enough to repeat. It is faster than most reps expect and slower than a deal timeline usually allows, which is exactly why you start the moment the test comes back negative.
Can I develop more than one champion in an account?
You should. Single-threaded deals die when one person changes roles or goes quiet. Two advocates in different parts of the organization is the difference between a deal that survives a reorg and one that evaporates with it.
What if nobody in the account qualifies?
Then you have a qualification problem, not a champion problem. If no one with standing cares enough about the pain to advocate, the pain is probably not urgent enough to fund. Treat it as a signal to lower the deal in your forecast rather than as a reason to push harder.
Put It to Work
Map the account, find the person with the stake, and build the case they can carry into the room without you. Browse the library for the champion development prompts.