Build one champion first, test what they know about their own group, and widen through them: they carry the invitation, the executive comes in later, and you never go over the head of your only way in.
Your deal runs through one person, and that person has gone quiet. Widening is the fix, and how you widen decides whether you keep them.
Build one champion first: the person who will argue for the purchase when you are not in the room. Test what they really know about their own buying group before you rely on them. Then widen through them, not around them. They carry the invitation to the rest of the group, and the executive who approves the spend comes in later, once the group agrees there is a problem worth solving. The one rule every source shares: never go over the head of a contact who is your only way into the deal. The same rule covers an implementation partner or agency that talks to the buyer every day when you cannot. Use them to learn the real timeline, never in secret and never around your contact.
Jen Allen-Knuth's test for a champion, published by Gong. Before relying on a contact she asks four things. Who in the group is most likely to be sceptical about prioritising this problem, and why. Who would define the problem differently, and what was the group's most recent disagreement. What other projects compete for the same time, attention and budget. And why the group would not simply wait six months. Once she has her champion, she writes the group meeting request for them; the wording is under Open the group meeting on the problem and invite dissent.
Armand Farrokh's bottom-up path at 30 Minutes to President's Club. Win the champion, work across to the department leads, and use their agreement to reach the executive. He hints at the ask at the end of the first discovery call and makes it after the demo, framed as the buyer's problem: decisions like this blow up when the named executive is not involved, so could they pull her into the next call? If the champion will not make the introduction, he has two fallbacks: a note from his own chief executive to theirs early in the deal, with no ask attached, and asking the champion how they plan to justify this internally, until they see for themselves that they want the seller in the room. His rule: a contact is not a champion until they have shown they will take you around the organisation. And if they are your only route in, you do not go over their head.
Krysten Conner's three messages. Before the first meeting, a note of about fifty words to the executive: a colleague has booked a meeting, you may want to join, some executives are curious about the problem she solves. In the meeting, say who else you are speaking to, by name and function. After every meeting, a short recap to the executive.
Challenger's screen for the person worth building. The seven stakeholder profiles are set out under When a new executive arrives, open with an insight, not a re-pitch; the one worth building is a Mobilizer, who meets a new idea with testing questions phrased around "we". The page then lists what to ask that person about the people you cannot see: does the executive sponsor understand the return, does the finance chief know about a purchase this size, do procurement and legal know the date the agreement must be final.
A quiet champion, read from outside. MarketBetter checks the champion's LinkedIn activity over the last fourteen days before choosing a play: still posting suggests a shift in priorities or an internal blocker, silent there too suggests a change of role. A rule of thumb from a vendor, not a measurement.
The timing figure comes from the people selling the method. Dan Morgese of Gong Labs analysed more than a million executive sales cycles with 30 Minutes to President's Club and Jen Allen-Knuth and reported in February 2026 that win rates fall by roughly 6% when an evaluation starts with an executive and rise by about 5% when executives come in around the third meeting. The report's page at 30MPC adds that executive buy-in raises close rates on six- and seven-figure deals by 44%, and that 51% of qualified deals end in no decision. Gong sells the software that recorded the calls and 30MPC sells the course built on the finding. Neither publishes a method, and the comparison is between deals where an executive happened to appear early and deals where one did not.
Wider deals win more often, in Gong's data. Devin Reed reported from more than 10 million conversations and 500,000 emails that winning deals had at least three people from the buyer's side in meetings while losing deals often never got past one, and reached eight people by email against three. Gong's analysis of 1.8 million deals closed in 2024 reports a 130% higher win rate where deals over $50,000 involved several contacts, and about 17 contacts on won strategic deals. In 9,056 opportunities, deals with no vice president or chief officer in the meetings were 80% less likely to close, and win rates were highest when that person approved rather than evaluated. All of this is vendor data and correlation: a deal that is going well collects more people.
The group you cannot see is usually arguing with itself. Gartner's survey of 632 B2B buyers, published in May 2025, found unhealthy conflict in 74% of buying groups, and Karl Schmidt, Brent Adamson and Anna Bird argued in Harvard Business Review in 2015 that a single executive who can approve a purchase alone is now rare. Challenger's page reports that sellers who target Mobilizers are 31% more likely to be high performers, from 700 stakeholders rated on 135 attributes. Challenger sells the training built on that finding and publishes no comparison behind the 31%.
Partners have not been studied. Nothing published covers what to ask an implementation partner, and nobody has looked at what a partner does when one outcome earns it more than another.
Champions in health care. Wilmer Santos and colleagues reviewed the evidence on champions in 2022 and kept 35 studies out of more than 7,500 records. In the seven studies that looked at whole organisations, five found that having a champion went with greater use of the new practice; the evidence for individual clinicians and patients was mixed. The authors say cause is not established, and no study compares building one champion first with engaging the whole group at once.
The same proposal is worth less when it comes from the other side. Lee Ross and Constance Stillinger showed people an identical arms-reduction proposal and told them it came from Reagan, from neutral analysts or from Gorbachev. About 90% judged it fair or favourable when it came from Reagan, about 80% from the analysts and 44% from Gorbachev. It is the clearest evidence for why a third party, a partner or a colleague, can carry a message the buyer would resist from you.
Going over someone's head has a measured cost. David De Cremer's six experiments, summarised in Harvard Business Review, found that the more often a supervisor was copied on emails, the less trusted the recipient felt.
The timing figures come from Gong's own recorded deals, sit beside the course that teaches the move, and sort deals by when an executive happened to appear rather than by what the seller chose. The health care review found champions linked to adoption without showing cause, and no study anywhere compares building one advocate first with widening at once. Copying the boss is the one step here with a measured downside.
Find the person who will argue for you when you are not there, test what they know about their own group, and have them carry the invitation into the room. Bring the executive in after the group agrees on the problem, and never go over the head of your only way in. Every number behind this is vendor correlation; the case for doing it in this order rests on one vendor figure of a few percentage points.