MEDMEN: The Dirty Secret Every SaaS Company Is Ignoring

Most deals don't die because of the competition — they die because no one internal is fighting for you. Andy Whyte and Sarah Chen break down exactly how to identify, develop and activate a true champion inside your prospect's org.

May 21, 2026

42 minutes

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Andy Whyte

Robin

NOTES

TRANSCRIPT

GUESTS

A champion is someone who sells on your behalf when you're not in the room — and they need capability, access and motivation to do it.
Most reps mistake a "friendly contact" for a champion. True champions take personal risk to advocate for your solution.
Champion development is a deliberate, ongoing process — not something that happens passively.
When a champion goes quiet, it's almost always a signal that something has changed internally that you need to uncover fast.

What makes a true champion?

Andy opens with one of the most common misconceptions in enterprise sales: that having a friendly stakeholder is the same as having a champion. It's not. A champion, as Sarah explains from her time leading enterprise teams at Momentum, is someone who has three things: the capability to influence a buying decision, access to the power and economic buyer, and a strong personal motivation to see your deal succeed.

Without all three, you don't have a champion — you have an ally. Allies are nice to have. Champions win deals.

How to identify champion potential

One of the most practical segments of the episode is the framework Sarah uses to assess whether a contact is worth investing in as a champion candidate. She looks for three signals early in the relationship:

Do they ask questions that reveal internal context — org dynamics, budget timelines, competing priorities?
Do they follow through on small commitments without being chased?
Do they proactively connect you to other stakeholders without you having to ask?

If you're seeing those behaviours, you likely have someone worth developing. If not, Andy is blunt: you should keep looking rather than hoping a passive contact will activate when you need them most.

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Champion development tactics

Sarah walks through a practical sequence she calls "building the business case together." Rather than presenting a polished deck and hoping the champion runs with it, she co-creates the internal pitch with them. This does two things: it gives the champion the materials they need to sell internally, and it surfaces objections early — before they surface in front of the economic buyer.

Andy adds the concept of "champion stress testing," which involves asking increasingly difficult questions to see how far the champion will go to defend the case for your solution. If they fold under light pressure, they'll fold under the real thing too.

When champions go quiet

This is perhaps the most practically useful segment for active deals. Andy and Sarah agree: when a champion stops responding or becomes suddenly unavailable, it is almost never because they're just busy. Something has changed — a reorg, a budget freeze, a competing internal project, a change in their personal role. The worst thing a rep can do is wait it out. The right move is to multi-thread immediately and try to understand what's happening from another angle inside the account.

Copy Full Transcript

0:00Andy Whyte

Welcome back to Revenue Mastery. I'm Andy Whyte, and today I have one of my favourite conversations lined up — we're going deep on champion building. And I've got someone who I think is genuinely one of the best practitioners of this in enterprise SaaS right now. Sarah Chen, VP of Sales at Momentum. Sarah, welcome to the show.

0:00Andy Whyte

This is a lightly edited transcript. Some sections have been condensed for readability. Click any timestamp to jump to that moment in the video.

Andy Whyte

CEO & Founder of MEDDICC

HOST

Andy is the author of the MEDDICC book and founder of the world's leading MEDDPICC platform. He spent over a decade in enterprise sales leadership roles at companies including Sprinklr and Glassdoor before building MEDDICC. He writes about enterprise sales, GTM strategy, and the art of qualification.