Writing for the champion, not the buyer

The economic buyer signs. The champion sells. And in a services deal, most of the selling happens in meetings you'll never attend.

So write for the person who has to carry your case into those rooms.

Who the champion is

The champion is the person inside the account who wants the problem fixed and will push for it. Often a director or VP who reports to the economic buyer. They feel the pain every week. They've probably tried to fix it already.

They don't control the budget. But they shape the shortlist, frame the problem for their boss and decide whether your name comes up at all.

If the champion can't explain why your firm matters in two sentences, you're out. The buyer never said no. Nobody brought you up.

What the champion needs from you

They need words. Specific, plain words they can repeat to their boss without sounding like a vendor.

They need a clear statement of the problem that matches what they've been saying all along, ideally sharper. They need a reason why now. And they need a way to look smart for bringing you in.

What they don't need is your credentials. They'll ask for those later. The first message has to give them something to use.

Write the opener for the seat

The Hypothesis Opening works for every seat on the committee, but the personal trigger and the misery hypothesis change.

For the economic buyer, the trigger is the mandate and the risk. For the champion, the trigger is the work. What's landing on their desk. What they're stuck with.

Say a regional bank's latest 10-K commits to moving core banking to a new platform over the next few years, and the bank just hired a new CIO. The CIO gets a note about the mandate. The champion, a VP of application development, gets something different.

The 10-K commits the bank to a core platform move, and a new CIO just arrived to run it. That kind of program usually lands on application teams as a long list of integrations to rebuild, often with the old system still running beside the new one. My guess is your team is already being asked for estimates on work nobody has fully scoped. Is that close, or is the bigger issue something else?

That note speaks to the VP's week. It's easy to correct. And if it's right, the VP now has a sentence to bring to the CIO. "We're being asked to estimate work nobody's scoped." That's the champion's argument, written for them.

Make your follow-ups forwardable

After the first reply, everything you send the champion should be written so it can go up a level.

Keep it short. Lead with the problem in their words. Say what you'd do first, not everything you'd do. Leave out jargon that would make them look like they're forwarding a sales email.

A useful test is to read it as the economic buyer would. If the champion forwarded this with only a line on top, would the boss understand the problem and see why the conversation matters? If yes, send it.

Writing for the champion doesn't mean ignoring the buyer or the technical lead. Each gets their own version. But the champion is the one who connects them.

When you understand what the champion needs to win internally, you'll write better notes to everyone else. The buyer gets the business case the champion is building. The technical lead gets the scope the champion is worried about. The sell to the committee, not the contact post covers who else to reach.

The short version

Find the person who wants the problem fixed most. Give them the words to make the case. Make everything you send easy to forward up.

Deals in services rarely get won in the meeting with the buyer. They get won in the meeting before it, when the champion says your name.