Champion or Coach? Reading Who Actually Has Power

A coach gives you information: who else is involved, what the internal politics look like, what your competitor is proposing. That's genuinely valuable, and a good coach can save you from walking into a deal blind. What a coach doesn't do, by definition, is advocate for you when you're not in the room, put their own credibility on the line for the decision, or push back against internal resistance on your behalf.

A champion does all of that. The relationship feels similar from the outside, friendly, responsive, apparently on your side, but the actual behavior when it counts is completely different.

• Have they ever advocated for you internally without you asking them to first?
• Do they have real influence over budget or the final decision, or just visibility into the process?
• Will they proactively introduce you to the economic buyer, or do they deflect that request?
• Do they have something personal to gain, or lose, if this deal succeeds or fails?
• Have they ever told you something uncomfortable, a real objection, a political risk, rather than only positive updates?

A coach usually answers no to most of these. A real champion answers yes to at least the last two, since personal stake and honest bad news are the hardest things to fake.

It's tempting to treat an enthusiastic, responsive contact as your champion simply because they're easy to talk to and clearly like the product. That's a projection, not a diagnosis. The actual test isn't how they behave with you; it's how they behave with everyone else in their organization when you're not there to see it, and most reps never actually verify that because it requires asking a slightly uncomfortable question instead of just enjoying a friendly relationship.

A genuine champion introduces you to other stakeholders unprompted, pre-sells the internal business case before you're even in the room to present it, and tells you when something is going wrong instead of letting you find out from a stalled deal. They also have their own reputation riding on the outcome: they'll look good internally if this succeeds and look worse if they backed the wrong vendor, which is exactly the personal stake that makes them fight for the deal when it hits resistance you can't see.

A coach is still useful, so don't discard the relationship. Use their information to identify who the real champion might be, then work to develop that separate relationship directly rather than hoping your coach eventually becomes one. Ask your coach plainly who internally is actually pushing for this, since they often know the answer even when they aren't that person themselves, and a direct introduction from a well-liked coach is a reasonable way to open the door to whoever actually has standing to advocate for you.

For example, say your coach keeps telling you the VP of operations is the real decision-maker, but the VP has never joined a call and never replies to you directly. Treat that as an open question, not a fact. Ask your coach to request a fifteen minute conversation with the VP on your behalf and watch what happens. If the meeting gets scheduled and the VP arrives with their own questions, you may have found your champion. If it stalls, you have learned the coach's picture of the org chart is incomplete, and you can adjust your plan before the deal depends on it.

In a larger organization, there are simply more layers between your daily contact and the actual decision, which makes it easier to mistake an enthusiastic mid-level person for someone with real influence two levels above them. The bigger the deal and the bigger the buying committee, the more deliberately you need to map who actually has standing versus who's just genuinely, honestly enthusiastic. Enthusiasm is real and worth having. It just isn't the same thing as power.