How to Co-Create the Internal Business Case with your Champion.
You have identified a likely champion and need to turn them into someone who can sell the deal convincingly when you are not in the room.
A champion who only repeats what you told them will crumble under the first hard question from finance or a skeptical VP. One who helped build the case understands the reasoning, owns the numbers, and can defend it. The difference between those two outcomes is whether you built the case together or handed it over.
Where it goes wrong
You send a polished deck, your champion forwards it, and it dies in someone's inbox. No one pushes back on the objections because no one knows the answers. The deal stalls and you never find out why.
What you'll be able to do
You can run a working session with your champion that produces a shared business case they understand well enough to present and defend without you.
How to do it
Book a 45-minute working session framed as 'let's build
Book a 45-minute working session framed as 'let's build the story together, not just review mine.' Use their language from discovery, not your product language.
Structure the case around five questions
Structure the case around five questions: What is the problem costing today? What changes if it is solved? What makes our approach different? What does success look like in 90 days? Why does timing matter? Let your champion answer each one first, then sharpen together.
Tie every number to a KPI your champion owns
Tie every number to a KPI your champion owns. If they own churn, the ROI story lives in churn. If they own cycle time, build the case there. Generic ROI slides do not travel well internally.
End the session by asking your champion to summarise
End the session by asking your champion to summarise the case back to you in three or four sentences. If they can do it clearly, the case is ready. If they struggle, simplify further before it goes anywhere.
See the difference
AE sends a 14-slide business case deck to the champion with a note: 'Feel free to share this with your CFO.' The champion forwards it with no context. The CFO asks two questions, gets no reply, and moves on.
AE books a working session. Together they agree the core problem is that manual reconciliation is costing the finance team roughly 12 hours per close cycle. They build a one-page summary in the champion's own words. The champion can say: 'We lose half a week every month to this. The fix pays for itself in under a year and reduces the risk of errors that got us in trouble last quarter.' The CFO asks a follow-up and the champion answers it without looping the AE back in.
You can run a working session with your champion that produces a shared business case they understand well enough to present and defend without you.
How you'll know it's working
You have got it when your champion can explain the problem, the cost of doing nothing, and the expected outcome in under two minutes - using their own words, not yours.
Questions people ask
How do you co-create the internal business case with your champion?
A champion who only repeats what you told them will crumble under the first hard question from finance or a skeptical VP. One who helped build the case understands the reasoning, owns the numbers, and can defend it. You can run a working session with your champion that produces a shared business case they understand well enough to present and defend without you.
What is the most common mistake to avoid?
You send a polished deck, your champion forwards it, and it dies in someone's inbox. No one pushes back on the objections because no one knows the answers.
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