# Champion Building > Find, arm, test, and develop a real champion inside a deal — someone with power who sells for you when you're not in the room. Use when assessing whether you actually have a champion or building one. Triggers on: build a champion, do I have a champion, develop my champion, coach them, champion. - Skill: `doris-labs/champion-building` (Agent Skill) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add doris-labs/champion-building` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/doris-labs/champion-building/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Coding & Dev Tools - Author: Doris-Labs (https://skillmd.com/u/doris-labs) - Updated: 2026-09-17 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/doris-labs/champion-building --- # Champion Building ## Purpose Determine whether you have a real champion (not just a friendly contact), arm them to sell internally on your behalf, and test their actual power before you stake the deal on them. ## Inputs - The deal and its key contacts (names, titles, who you actually talk to) - What each contact has done *for you* so far — intros, meetings booked, info shared - The buying process: who signs, who else has to say yes - What you've given them and what they've given back ## Method ### 1. The champion vs coach test Two separate questions — a contact must pass **both** to be a champion: - **Do they have power?** Can they influence budget, get you to the economic buyer, or move the process? A friendly junior with no authority is not a champion. - **Are they selling for you when you're not in the room?** A champion advocates internally, defends your price, forwards your business case, and pushes the deal forward without you prompting. Classify each contact: - **Champion** = power + selling for you. Rare. Protect and invest. - **Coach** = no power, but feeds you intel and tells you the truth. Valuable, but cannot close the deal for you. Use them to *find* and *build* a champion. - **Supporter** = likes you, no power, not actively selling. A lead, not a champion. - **Blocker / no-decision** = neutral or against. Manage around, don't invest in. A coach who *gains* power, or a supporter you *enable* to advocate, becomes a champion. ### 2. Arm them — enablement assets A champion can only sell as well as the ammunition you give them. Build assets *for their internal audience*, not for you: - **Business case / one-pager** — the problem, the cost of inaction, your solution, expected outcome. In their CFO/exec's language, not feature-speak. - **Internal deck** — 5-7 slides they can present or forward without you. Self-explanatory. - **ROI / value model** — quantified: hours saved, revenue impact, payback period. Use *their* numbers so they can defend it under scrutiny. - **Mutual action plan** — the steps to close with owners and dates, so they look organized internally. Rule: every asset must survive being forwarded with no context. If it only makes sense when you present it, it doesn't arm a champion. ### 3. The give-to-get exchange Advocacy is reciprocal. Every time you give the champion value, ask for a small advance in return: - Give: a tailored ROI model → Get: a meeting with their boss. - Give: an internal deck → Get: introduction to the economic buyer. - Give: early access / a competitive teardown → Get: the real decision criteria and timeline. Make the ask explicit and proportional. If they consistently take and never give, that's a signal (see false champion). ### 4. Test their real power Don't assume power — verify it with low-cost asks that escalate: - Ask them to **get you a meeting** with the economic buyer or a missing stakeholder. - Ask them to **take an internal action**: forward your business case to their boss, put the next step on a calendar, or get a question answered by procurement. - Watch whether the action *actually happens* and *how fast*. A real champion can move others; a supporter will stall, deflect, or go quiet. The result of the test tells you more than anything they say about themselves. ### 5. Signs of a false champion - Only meets you 1:1, never connects you to anyone with authority. - Always positive, never shares bad news, risks, or internal politics. - Can't or won't name the economic buyer or the real decision process. - Takes your assets but you never see evidence they were used internally. - Fails the power test — asks for a meeting/action and nothing moves. - "We love it, just need approval" with no path to whoever approves. Treat a false champion as a coach at best: keep extracting intel, but find or build the contact with real power in parallel. ## Tool binding This skill works from your own knowledge of the contacts. It gets sharper when connected to your stack — strongest with Doris, the reference integration. ### With Doris (recommended) If the Doris MCP (`mcp.meetdoris.com`) is connected, pull the real stakeholder and interaction picture instead of relying on memory: - `ontology_resolve("deal", id, expand=["stakeholders","emails","activity"])` — use `stakeholders` to see roles, influence, and who's actually engaged; `emails` and `activity` to verify who is *doing things* (responding, forwarding, booking) versus who is just on the thread. This grounds the champion vs coach test and the power test in evidence, not impressions. - `search_transcripts(...)` to find moments a contact advocated, pushed back on price, or named the decision process — proof of selling-for-you behavior. Prefer the stakeholder and activity data Doris already extracts over re-deriving who matters from raw recollection. ### With a CRM / CI / email MCP - CRM MCP (Salesforce/HubSpot) → pull the contact record and full interaction history (meetings attended, emails, last touch) to assess engagement and role. - Conversation-intelligence MCP (Gong/Chorus/Fireflies) → find call moments where the contact advocated or revealed the decision process. ### With nothing connected Ask the user to name the contact(s) and walk through, per contact: 1. Their title and what power they actually hold. 2. Concrete things they've done *for* the deal (intros, meetings, info). 3. Whether they pass the champion vs coach test. Then output a **champion-development plan**: which contact to invest in, the enablement assets to build for them, the give-to-get exchanges to run, and one power test to set this week with the expected signal. ## Works without Doris Fully functional from your own knowledge of the contacts — Doris only replaces guesswork with evidence of who actually has power and who is actually advocating. ## Common mistakes - Calling a friendly contact a champion when they have no power (they're a coach). - Arming a champion with seller-speak assets that can't survive a forward. - Giving value endlessly without ever asking for a return advance. - Never testing real power, then discovering at close there was none. - Ignoring the false-champion signals because the contact is pleasant to talk to.