Do not hand the champion homework. Write the meeting request, the one-page business case and the speech about why yes was a win, and give them over as drafts to edit.
Your champion agreed to take it to their boss. Two weeks later, nothing has gone out.
The champion has to say something to their own organisation: ask their executive for half an hour, explain to the buying group why the problem deserves a budget line, answer the finance question in a meeting you will never sit in. Do not hand them that as homework. Write it for them, the meeting request, the one-page business case, the note to the group, and give it over as a rough draft they edit and send under their own name. A busy champion is not a weak one, but any step that needs an hour of their writing quietly does not happen.
The hardest piece is the one they will say after the decision: why saying yes was a win for them. William Ury tells negotiators to draft the other side's "victory speech" before asking for anything. Try writing your champion's. If you cannot write one they could give with a straight face, the stall may be about how yes makes them look, not about the value, which is the library's reading of Ury rather than a tested rule.
Nate Nasralla's one-page business case, written for the 30 Minutes to President's Club newsletter in May 2025, stacks five blocks. A headline that borrows a phrase or project name the executive already uses. The problem: who is affected, the cost in the buying team's own numbers, the link to that company-wide priority, and why it is getting worse now. The recommended approach, framed as the project rather than as buying software, in phases with month ranges. Target outcomes as a before and after against a few executive metrics. And the investment on both sides: headcount, pilot sites and dates, not only the price. His worked example is an invented pitch to IKEA, so it shows the shape, not a real deal. His rules: no branding, no ROI model without a story, keep it to one page. To get the buyers editing, he asks whether they would add a comment or two to a rough recap, and in the next meeting, what resonates and what is missing. His own post on the format calls it the way a rep controls the message when they are not in the room.
The meeting request. Jen Allen-Knuth's four-line note, which the champion sends to their colleagues over their own name, is described under Open the group meeting on the problem and invite dissent. Gong, which published it, calls the move ghostwriting and tells sellers never to leave a high-effort next step on the champion's plate.
Ury's victory speech. In Getting Past No, the speech is part of what he calls building a golden bridge: making it easy for the other side to say yes in front of their own people. He publishes no template.
Nobody has measured ghostwriting. No study compares deals where the seller drafted the champion's internal message with deals where the champion wrote their own. The one number attached to co-writing is Nasralla's claim, in the same newsletter, that win rates jump three times after three edits from the buying team. He founded Fluint, which sells software that produces these business cases, and gives no sample, comparison or method.
Help that reads as unbiased gets used. Nicholas Toman, Brent Adamson and Cristina Gomez of CEB reported in Harvard Business Review in 2017 that across more than 600 B2B buyers, suppliers who made buying easy were 62% likelier to win a high-quality sale. The same article sets the condition that matters for anything you write for a champion: help has to read as unbiased and credible, because anything mainly promotional is treated with suspicion. CEB sold advisory work built on the research, and the figures are buyers rating their own experience.
A message that reads as someone else's words loses most of its weight. The Congressional Management Foundation surveyed more than 250 congressional staff in 2011. Asked about a member who has not yet decided, 20% said an individual letter carries a lot of influence and 70% some, against 1% and 53% for an identical form letter. And 53% of the staff agreed that most identical form campaigns are sent without the constituent's knowledge or approval. A ghostwritten note that still reads as the supplier's runs the same risk.
Make them edit it, not forward it. Michael Norton, Daniel Mochon and Dan Ariely's IKEA effect experiments found that students who assembled a plain storage box bid $0.78 for it, against $0.48 from students handed the same box already built, and people who folded their own origami valued it far above outsiders. The effect disappeared when people were stopped before they finished. That is the nearest evidence for having the champion complete the draft, and it prices objects, not arguments.
The champion is carrying their own reputation. Joseph Bower's study of how companies allocate resources found that a middle manager pushing an initiative upward stakes personal credibility on it, and their standing rises or falls with the result. Henry Mintzberg and colleagues' study of 25 strategic decisions found that the people who approve decisions are short of time and lack the knowledge of those who developed the proposal, while the sponsor bringing it to them is, in the paper's words, inherently biased.
People who must justify a choice pick the defensible one. Jennifer Lerner and Philip Tetlock's review of accountability research found that people who expect to justify a decision to an audience whose views they already know, especially after committing in public, tend to defend and conform rather than think harder. Itamar Simonson found the compromise effect, choosing the middle option, strongest among people who expected to explain their choice to someone else. What your champion needs is a reason that survives a hostile question, not an argument that persuades a friendly one.
Nobody has tested a seller-written draft against a champion left to write their own. The CEB figures come from buyers rating a purchase after the fact, the advocacy survey is about strangers writing to a legislator, and the IKEA experiments priced boxes and paper, not a document someone has to defend in a meeting.
Write the meeting request, the one-page case and the victory speech yourself, hand them over as rough drafts, and ask the champion to change them rather than approve them. Keep them free of your branding and pitch, because help that reads as promotional is discounted. If you cannot write a victory speech your champion could give, find out what yes costs them before you push again.