The Champion Criterion Is Where MEDDPICC Deals Actually Die: A Test for Fake Champions
"Champion" is the one MEDDPICC letter nobody verifies — it just gets typed in after a nice call. Here's the test that catches the ones who'll disappear the second the deal gets hard.
Champion is the only MEDDPICC letter you can complete without ever verifying anything. Metrics wants a number. Decision Process wants names and dates. Champion wants a rep to type a name into a CRM field after a call that went well, and nobody checks it again until the deal is dying and someone asks, in a pipeline review, "wait, is this person actually going to bat for us?" By then it's too late to find out the answer was always no.
The letter fails quietly because there's no natural moment that forces verification. A bad Metrics answer sounds bad the moment you hear it — vague, hand-wavy, obviously invented. A fake champion sounds exactly like a real one, right up until the deal needs something from them that costs them something. That's the whole test, in one sentence. Everything below just operationalises it.
Why this letter is different from the other seven
Every other MEDDPICC letter has some form of external check. Metrics can be cross-referenced against what finance actually tracks. Decision Process can be checked against who shows up on later calls. Economic Buyer can be verified by whether that person's calendar ever opens up. Champion has none of that. It's a feeling a rep had on a call, encoded as a fact in a system of record. Managers who run pipeline reviews on the assumption that "Champion: Y" means the same thing as "Metrics: quantified" are comparing a verified field to an unverified one and treating them as equally solid. They are not.
The three questions, in the order to ask them
Ask these across the life of the deal, not all in one sitting — each one needs a different amount of elapsed time to have a true answer.
- "What's it cost them personally if this doesn't happen?" Ask this of your own rep in week one or two. If the honest answer is "nothing, they just like the product," you don't have a champion — you have a friendly user. A real champion has skin in the outcome: a target they're missing, a team they're trying to fix, a boss they need to look good in front of. No personal cost, no champion, however many calls they take.
- "What's the last thing you asked them to do that had zero benefit to them personally?" Ask this mid-cycle, once there's been time for a favour to be requested. A champion who has done something slightly outside their job — pulled a colleague into a call, pushed back on their own procurement team, forwarded your business case to someone above them — has spent something. A contact who has only ever done things that were easy and low-cost for them, like attending a demo or replying to an email, hasn't been tested yet, and untested isn't the same as real.
- "Who have they introduced you to without being asked?" Ask this latest, because it needs the most time to have happened and it's the hardest evidence to fake. A real champion eventually can't help themselves — they want you talking to the person who controls budget, or the peer who had the same problem last year, because it makes their own internal case stronger too. An unprompted introduction is the closest thing to hard proof this letter ever produces.
The one tell that beats all three questions
If you only have time for one check, use this: does this person bring you bad news before you ask for it? A real champion tells you, unprompted, that finance pushed back, or that a competitor got invited to a late-stage call, or that their boss asked an awkward question in a hallway. A fake champion goes quiet exactly when things get difficult, and reappears once things are friendly again. Enthusiasm on the good days is free. Volunteering the bad days is the only behaviour on this list that a person with nothing invested has no reason to perform.
Real vs fake, in the moments that matter
| Moment | Real champion | Fake champion |
|---|---|---|
| Budget gets challenged internally | Tells you before your next call, often flags who raised it | You find out from a stalled response and a vague reschedule |
| A competitor gets invited late | Warns you, sometimes with detail on why | Says nothing; you hear about it from procurement, weeks later |
| You ask for an intro to the Economic Buyer | Makes it happen within days, or explains exactly why not yet | "Let me check" repeats for three straight calls |
| The timeline slips | Pushes back internally on your behalf | Agrees the slip is fine and stops replying as quickly |
What to do when someone fails the test
Don't kill the deal — downgrade the label. A failed test doesn't mean the opportunity is dead, it means your forecast has been trusting a field that was never verified. Multithread immediately: find a second contact and run the same three questions on them before you decide whose word the deal actually rests on. And stop letting "Champion: Y" sit in a pipeline review with the same visual weight as a verified Metrics field — put a different marker on unverified champions so the whole team can see, at a glance, which deals are standing on a name and which are standing on evidence. The Champion Identification Checklist is a harder gate to run at qualification stage, and the Champion Tracker Template is built for exactly this — tracking the test results over the life of the deal, not just the name.
The letter isn't broken. It's just the only one in MEDDPICC that runs entirely on trust, and trust is the one thing in a deal review you're supposed to verify, not assume.