Your Champion Isn't Enough Anymore

Nate: I ran a deal review with one of my SE Directors on Monday. Big deal, late stage, champion is strong. I asked her one question and her whole face changed.

Ava: What was the question?

Nate: "Who's going to be in the room when this gets signed off?" She started to answer... stopped. Started again. Stopped. Realized she genuinely didn't know.

Ava: Oof.

Nate: Four months into the deal. Champion she trusts completely. She could tell me the champion's priorities cold. Couldn't name a single other person in that signoff room.

Ava: How big is that committee, usually? For a deal that size?

Nate: Look, that's the part that should scare every SE leader listening. Forrester says the average B2B buying group in 2026 is thirteen internal people plus nine external influencers. Twenty-two. That's not the outlier. That's the AVERAGE.

Ava: Welcome to Leading PreSales. I'm Ava.

Nate: And I'm Nate. Every episode, one idea, five minutes. Today: why having a strong champion is no longer enough to win a deal... and what actually is.

Ava: Okay so — twenty-two is wild. But let's pressure-test. When you say "buying group," are we talking about people with a vote, or just people who get CC'd on the thread?

Nate: People with real influence. Not the inbox-noise crowd. Forrester's definition requires the person to have substantively shaped the decision. Thirteen inside, nine outside — and the outside is the new piece. Consultants, industry peers, analyst calls, Slack communities, AI research tools.

Ava: Hmm. So even if we had somehow talked to all thirteen insiders... there's still nine people influencing the deal we'd never even meet.

Nate: Correct. And this is where I want to push back on how most SE teams operate today. For years we've trained our people on "find the champion, arm the champion, trust the champion to sell internally." That worked when the internal buying group was four people and the champion actually KNEW all of them.

Ava: And now?

Nate: Now your champion is one voice in a room of twenty-two. She can't physically maintain relationships with everyone. She doesn't know what the CFO's peer at another company told him over dinner. She can't be in the stakeholder review you're not invited to.

Ava: So the champion isn't obsolete... but leaving her to sell it alone is malpractice now.

Nate: That's the framing I'd use, yes.

Ava: Okay but... this is where I have to ask the honest question. What can an SE actually DO about a room they're not in? You can't demo to people who won't take the meeting.

Nate: You can't, no. But you can make sure your champion walks INTO that room with something that does the demo for you. My SE Directors have started calling it a "champion enablement kit." It's not a pitch deck. It's a pre-built answer to every question the people your champion has never met are likely to ask.

Ava: Give me a concrete example. What's in one?

Nate: A one-page ROI summary the CFO can scan. A security brief the CISO can forward to their team. A twelve-minute async product walkthrough the skeptical VP can watch at 10pm. A peer reference video from a company in their industry. All of it designed so the champion doesn't have to REPRESENT you in that room — your material does, through her.

Ava: So you're basically sending your SE into the meeting... on paper.

Nate: Through proxies, yes. The SE isn't in the room. But her answers are.

Ava: Okay, so here's the move. Before your next stakeholder review on any real deal — ask your champion ONE question: "who's going to be in that room that I've never met?" Then build them something specifically for each of those people. Not a generic deck. Something targeted.

Nate: And if your champion can't answer that question... you have a much bigger problem than a missing deck. You have a champion who doesn't know the room either. That's the real signal.

Ava: I'm Ava.

Nate: And I'm Nate. See you next episode!