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27
November
2025
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Sometimes you need to risk getting in trouble with your Champion.
Having a Champion means working on the same team, but sometimes what you know is the next best step isn’t immediately accepted by your Champion. With a true Champion, your interests are aligned, so if they aren’t on board with something initially, they’ll most likely be going forward. It’s up to you to navigate that initial resistance to reach true collaboration.
Remember: your Champion is working with you because they have a vested interest in your success, not necessarily because they like you. While that can help, the main focus of and reason for your partnership is that they see that working together aligns with making them successful.
If you identify something that will make progress towards that goal of making your Champion successful that they don’t see, you have some work to do to win them over. But, that doesn’t necessarily mean you should completely back off while you do that. As they say, sometimes it’s better to beg for forgiveness than to ask for permission.
What matters is finding the boundary lies with your Champion – where the line is when they will start to push back. We talk a lot about testing your Champion, and finding their line is part of that. How much internal selling are they ready to do for you? Many people don’t even get close to that line.
Often it comes down to the difference between a good seller and a nice seller. The nice seller focuses on what their prospect likes, even if what they don’t like is something that would be better for their success in the long run. Meanwhile, a good seller will do the right thing, and win over the prospect later.
It’s important to remember that while you are the expert in selling, your Champion isn’t an expert in buying. You will be able to point to the last ten times you were in this situation, and tell stories about what happened to demonstrate why your approach is the right one. Your Champion won’t have the frequent experience to rely on, so this is crucial.
By positioning this expertise as a story: “When I’ve seen this before, this is what has happened…” you take your Champion on a journey that lends you credibility and wins them over.
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