Sponsor
The senior person on the customer side who wants you to win and will say so when you are not in the room. Also used for the internal sponsor an offer needs to survive.
A sponsor is the role in the decision-making unit that a Relationship Builder finds and keeps: someone senior enough to matter, who wants you to win, and who will say so in the meetings you are not invited to. At the Master rung of the Tri-Stack a KAM has sponsors at the top of the customer and hears things competitors never do. Sponsors are earned, usually by having made the person look good once, and lost quietly, usually by taking them for granted.
The word does a second job inside your own business. The internal sale needs a senior sponsor too, the momentum in the 3M test, and an offer without one starves the first time delivery pushes back. The book’s living plan is described as acting like the senior sponsor who coaches, which is the highest compliment it pays to software.
Set out in full in: Creating Customer Value Propositions with AI (Kogan Page, 2027), chapters 5, 8 and 11.
Related terms
Decision-making unit (DMU)
The people who decide, influence, use, pay for and can veto a purchase. Mapped as roles, dispositions and relationships, not job titles.
Selling twice
In a value-based approach you sell every offer twice: once to your own leadership, then to the customer. An offer not sold inside your company is a rumour.
The KAM Skills Tri-Stack
Strategist, Business Developer, Operator: three skill domains, four sub-skills each, mapped to the three stages of the cycle. Almost nobody is trained for all three.
See the method run on one real account in three days: the One Page Proposition.