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

As B2B software continues to eat the world, sales teams have to hustle a lot harder to keep the attention of buying teams. And if you want to get to the ever-elusive economic buyer, you need a reliable method for staying top-of-mind.

Enter the sales champion. Your personal hero in the buying org—the person who will go to bat for your product and sell it internally before anyone else cares.

Enabling your sales champion is the most important job in the sales process, as busy CFOs don’t have time to participate in a long, drawn-out pitch—they just need proof that your software will be good for business.

But your sales champion can’t win the deal alone. You need to help them.

Gartner research shows you're three times more likely to close a deal when you arm your sales champion with helpful information.

With your help, your champ will remember your product’s most valuable features, functions, and solutions. They’ll remember to share your sales assets internally and check off tasks from your mutual action plan. They will confidently rebut common objections to your product and defend it against competitors.

So, as a salesperson, how do you prepare your champion to win the deal? Read on for strategies and tactical tips.

:::box "What is a buyer champion?", "A sales champion, also called a buyer champion, is the biggest advocate for your product or service within your prospect’s company during the B2B sales process. 

There’s no single archetype for a buyer champion. They might be a power user of your product, a potential admin or manager, or someone in the C-suite."

:::

However, a sales champion typically has all of these characteristics:

• Enthusiastic about your product
• Able to influence decision-makers
• Has something personal to gain
• Is your primary point of contact throughout the sales process
• They’re taking this on for free and on their own time"

“The facts are that the people that we're working with day in and day out are going beyond the scope of their own role to help you close them on a deal.” —Joey Wright, Head of Sales at Dock

The idea of a buyer champion was popularized by the MEDDIC sales methodology (an acronym that stands for Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Identify Pain, and Champion).

The partnership between a sales rep and their buyer champion is a two-way street:

• The champion helps the seller sell: They navigate the inner workings of their company's decision-making processes and educate decision-makers on your product’s competitive advantages.
• The seller helps the champion buy: Sales reps set their champion up for success by equipping them with all the information they need to “win” the internal argument for adopting your product.

In the end, both parties benefit: the champion gets to adopt the product they want, and the sales rep closes the deal.

What does a buyer champion actually do?

What does this relationship look like in practice?

Sales champions have three goals:

1. Gather (relevant) information: Discover everything they can about your product and uncover new opportunities for the business
2. Confirm product-buyer fit: Feel confident they're making the right choice over competitor tools
3. Convince others of value: Advocate for your product internally to key decision-makers and get the deal over the line

They do this by:

• Strengthening the case for your product by conducting market research and presenting data that highlights its advantages over competitors
• Assisting in the evaluation and decision-making process by leading product demonstrations and trials for decision-makers
• Serving as a liaison between the sales team and internal stakeholders by scheduling regular meetings to keep them updated on the sales process and address any concerns or questions

The buyer champion vs. the economic buyer

A buyer champion typically won’t be your primary economic buyer — the financial decision-maker who controls the budget. Instead, think of your buyer champion as your inside influence — the one who can convince the budget owners to say yes to your product.

For example, if you're selling an employee education tool, your champion may be the HR manager who wants to make employee training more efficient, while the economic buyer may be the Chief of Staff who is more interested in the product's ROI.

Why B2B sales teams need buyer champions

Here’s why working effectively with a champion is key to closing deals.

To qualify deals

To quote Andy Whyte from MEDDICC: “No champion, no deal.” 

Without a strong, qualified champion on the buyer side, you won’t make the sale. That’s why sales enablement is so important for a successful sales cycle.

For example, the prospect may just be engaging you to do due diligence on the market when the company is already bought into another tool.

Plus, the B2B sales process has become incredibly complex. For bigger sales, there are multiple stakeholders involved in every deal, each armed with their own opinions and priorities.

To properly qualify the deal, you’ll need to work with a champion as your sales team’s personal tour guide:

• To uncover decision makers: The champion shows the sales professionals the ins and outs of the prospect company, helping you identify the key decision-makers and learn crucial insights about their specific needs and pain points. This helps you tailor sales materials and presentations to make a more compelling case for your product. 
• To uncover buying requirements: The champion also navigates the murky waters of the buying process, ensuring no important steps are missed (e.g., a security review). They also help align your sales pitch and strategy with the prospect company’s buying process.

Without sufficient knowledge of the company’s decision-makers and buying process, you can’t properly qualify the deal.

To win in closed-door conversations

A buyer champion can give your sales team an edge by ensuring your product is a topic of internal buying conversations. 

According to Gartner, buyers only spend 17% of the buying process talking to sales teams — and that’s split across competitor products. Buyers spend only 5-6% of their buying time with an individual rep.

This limits your opportunity to influence purchasing decisions.

The buyer champion is the person who cuts through all the noise and backs your product up, increasing your chances of winning the sale. 

For example, the champion could conduct 1:1 training on using your SaaS tool, provide case studies and references from similar companies that have implemented your product, and do a deep-dive presentation on the potential benefits. 

All these efforts aim to enable the buying process by providing decision-makers with valuable insights and information to make an informed choice in your product's favor.

How to identify a strong buyer champion

“Someone who has influence is someone who has seen buying processes before, can make prioritization decisions, has context of what actually this product will solve on the ground floor, and can really tie that to business outcomes at the highest levels.” —Maryana Kessel, Director of Enterprise and Mid-Market Sales at Modern Health

Just because you have an enthusiastic contact on the buying team doesn’t mean you have a true sales champion.

According to John McMahon in his book The Qualified Sales Leader, “A champion is someone who has influence and authority.”

So, what is the difference between influence and authority?

• Influence: Influence could apply to anybody in the organization who has sway with someone in the C-suite. Experts, advisors, trusted confidants, and people who have been part of teams that have successfully purchased and implemented new solutions and seen positive business outcomes can all have influence.
• Authority: Someone with authority has a hierarchical title and a specific department and budget they’re in charge of.

This authoritative power and influence together create an unstoppable force.

How to validate your sales champion

“Man, I cannot emphasize the importance enough of testing your champions early and trying to validate.” —Pete Prowitt, Head of Revenue at Stytch

If you think you have a good champion on your side, the best way to validate that is to complete a deal with them. But you’re going to want to find out sooner.

Here‘s a quick guide to identifying a strong champion on the buyer side before you get too in the weeds with them:

1. Do they want to be your champion? Look for the individual who has taken the lead in evaluating your product. This person may be scheduling meetings, requesting more information, or asking questions. In product-led growth, this person is most often a power user — someone who already understands the value of your product in their day-to-day operations.
2. Do they have authority? Sometimes, buying comes down to hierarchy. If the champion is not well-positioned within the company, they may not be an effective advocate.
3. Do they have influence? Understand this person's role in the company. What influence do they have within their organization? Are they a respected figure? Do other stakeholders listen to them?
4. Do they have something to gain? Does this person have a personal interest in driving your deal? Have they asked to be kept informed about new developments? Will your tool help them meet their targets?
5. What’s their track record? Find out if this person is an experienced buyer who knows the challenges that come with buying software. If they aren’t, take this as a sign that they might need extra support to champion your cause.
6. Will they talk about your product when you’re not there? A true champion is self-motivated and doesn’t need constant reminders from you to make progress on the deal (though you should still send them, just in case). They know how to get in the right rooms to make things happen.

You can also validate a sales champion by looking at the larger picture of the organization you’re selling to: 

• Is the company in a growth position?
• Will the budget likely be tighter or more free-flowing?
• Has your champion been a part of recent successful deals?
• What did that sales process look like?

🎥 Watch: Maryna Kessel, Director of Enterprise & Mid-Market Sales at Modern Health, on how to tell if a champion has authority and influence

If you find someone who checks all the boxes, follow the tips in the next section to leverage each other.

5 strategies for empowering your buyer champion

To unleash your sales champion’s full potential, you need to arm them with everything they need to close deals even when you're not in the room. Think of this prep work as a mini sales training or sales coaching. 

“If they can't reframe [the pitch] in their own language and feel really good about how they bring it forward in the simplest way, knowing that they're going to get probably 60 seconds in a board meeting or a 1:1 to make their pitch, then you lost the deal.” —Joey Wright, Director of Sales at Dock

Here are some actionable strategies to leverage your buyer champion:

1. Curate information to support internal conversations

Provide the buyer champion with buyer enablement resources that help them communicate your product’s value to internal stakeholders and decision-makers. 

Equip them with sales collateral like product guides, brochures, case studies, and data sheets to emphasize your product's benefits and use cases — the more customized to the prospect's specific use case, the better.

Here’s the challenge, though: 

Most sales reps share content with their champions via email attachments, Dropbox folders, or as links in a Google Doc.

While this gets the job done, it doesn’t set your champion up for success. Here’s why:

• Creates more work: Receiving multiple attachments or links puts the burden on your champion to present the information internally.
• Not a premium buying experience: B2B buyers, especially at the enterprise level, expect white-glove service. Cramming everything into a Google Doc doesn’t meet those expectations.
• Scattered info: It’s hard to locate several emails and links and forward them all on to decision-makers.
• Key info falling through the cracks: It’s easy to lose email attachments over a long sales cycle.

Instead of sending messy email attachments, use Dock to create a digital sales room for your buyer champion.

By creating a Dock workspace for your buyer, you can centralize all deal-related information and content in one place. 

This removes lots of unnecessary friction for your champion. The whole buying team can access everything from a single link. The champion can spot progress and catch bottlenecks before they drag on and stall the whole sales process.

2. Map out their internal buying process

By developing a deep understanding of your buyer’s decision-making process, you can position your solution in a way that checks all their criteria, helping you emerge as the best choice. 

A good starting point is to ask the following:

• Who are the key decision-makers?
• What do they care about?
• Who else in the company will be impacted by the decision?
• How does the buying team typically make decisions? 
• What needs to happen before they sign a deal?
• What is the typical timeline for a buying decision?
• How do the decision-makers and stakeholders decide between proposals?
• Have they made a decision like this before?

This doesn’t just help you — it also increases your buyer’s chances of getting the product they want.

By understanding your prospect's priorities and aligning your approach and messaging accordingly, you can improve your chances of success. 

For example, if cost savings are a major concern for decision-makers, highlight the cost-saving benefits of your product in your pitch.

Answering these questions also helps you better qualify prospects and focus on more viable opportunities. If a prospect's needs do not align with your product, it's best to disqualify them and invest your time in more promising deals.

🎥 Watch: But what if your champion isn’t sharing these details? Here are a few tips from Maryna on working with tough champions.

3. Work around potential deal roadblocks together 

Make sure your reps flag and prepare the champion for potential deal roadblocks they may encounter during the internal buying process (think budget constraints, competing priorities, and security assessments).

Arm them with relevant solutions and strategies that will help them address objections effectively, such as:

• Offering alternative pricing options
• Sharing references from current clients
• Highlighting your product’s economic benefits 
• Providing comparisons against competitor products
• Sharing security information

This way, even if there’s a setback, your champion will know how to tackle and mitigate objections, increasing their chances of success.

This not only demonstrates your commitment to helping the champion close the deal but also helps the champion build internal trust with decision-makers by helping them make informed decisions.

For example, a common deal roadblock is the security assessment. Buyers may need you to fill out a security questionnaire, and it may take a while to get those answers. 

Champions may not always see this step coming — which could hold up the deal. You can help them prepare by providing them with a pre-filled security profile in a Dock workspace that gets ahead of any security questions their IT team might have.

4. Create mutual action plans

A mutual action plan (MAP) is a sales roadmap to track the necessary actions to achieve mutual success (in this case, closing the deal). 

Think of a MAP as a shared to-do list between sales management, sales reps, and the sales champion to create accountability and track progress.

It's a great way to clarify expectations and set a clear path for your champion.

Here's what to include in your MAP:

• Clear goals for the sales process, like setting up a product trial or meeting with key decision-makers
• Specific milestones to achieve a goal, like scheduling a demo before finalizing the deal
• Assigned responsibilities so everyone knows their role in the process
• A timeline with deadlines for completing crucial tasks and follow-up activities

Traditionally, sales reps have used messy spreadsheets and Google Docs to manage this process. But Dock’s mutual action plans provide a much smoother buying experience. Dock’s MAPs let you:

• Improve collaboration by letting both the buyer and seller work through tasks
• Provide additional sales context by embedding sales presentations and meeting notes around the MAP
• Provide a premium buying experience that feels nicer than a spreadsheet
• Track engagement on your MAP to improve deal forecasting

Your sales champion can also directly comment on anything within the Dock workspace, streamlining communication and making it more convenient for everyone.

5. Help them prep for internal meetings

“It takes discipline from the seller and a lot of trust that you build with your champion to slow things down and say, ‘For you and I to get off on a good foot here, for us to have a quick win in the next 30, 60, 90 days, we've got to hone in on one thing that is going to be important to you, to the business. We've got to just pick one thing to start.” —Ben Solari, VP Sales at Jellyfish

Your champion really wants your solution to win, but you also need to set them up for the next steps of the process. This requires focus and clarity. Train and educate the sales champion on your product, industry trends, and best practices. Communicate what to emphasize with them.

Here are a few tips to help your champion confidently advocate for your product with decision-makers and stakeholders:

• Give them a recording of your one-on-one product demo.
• Share features tailored to their company’s key pain points and opportunities.
• Share real-life implementation examples from their industry, such as case studies and customer testimonials.
• Get ready for any scenario by role-playing common situations that may arise during a meeting, such as handling objections or addressing concerns.
• Give them a projection of the estimated ROI of your solution.
• Build their slide deck for/with them for their internal buying meeting.

These are just a few examples. You can always brainstorm more ways to empower your champion.

:::callout "🎥 Get more tips for empowering champions", "If you want to go even deeper on enabling your deal champions, check out our recent webinar with Joey Wright, Dock’s Head of Sales, and Maryna Kessel, Dir. of Enterprise & Mid-Market Sales at Modern Health.

‍Watch on-demand: How to build champions that close enterprise deals.":::

Turn your champion into a buyer with Dock

With Dock, your sales team can provide your champion with all the resources and tools they need to effectively communicate your product's value and lead it to victory in internal sales conversations.

“We've actually had customers doing a business case to their CFO pull up the Dock and just scroll through it," said Stephen Ruff, Co-Founder of Champify.

Also, Dock's mutual action plans give your champion a clear roadmap of milestones and deadlines to follow, ensuring they're taking the right steps to close the deal.

And with Dock’s engagement analytics, you can see which team members on the buying side are engaging with your workspace and what content they’re accessing most often.

Here’s a quick Dock demo video:

You can try Dock with five clients for free today.