Zack KassBuilt OpenAI's sales and partnerships teams

“The silence usually means your champion hit the organizational issue, not the technology issue. Procurement is where the owner of AI gets decided, and most companies still don't know who that owner is. I saw this at OpenAI: the demo won the room, but the deal only moved when we helped the buyer build a vision their CEO could actually stand behind.”

Duston HarperBrutal Truth About Sales, 80K+ listeners

“A champion who loved the demo and then went dark at procurement is usually not a champion at all. They were interested, not invested. The real test is whether they can sell your case in a room you are not in. If procurement silence is where it dies, they never did.”

Marvin KaundaLed demo calls selling Procureezy’s procurement solution to leads

“Procureezy died there too: a champion’s enthusiasm means nothing once procurement discovers your tool has no procurement workflow, no approved vendor process, no way to survive their internal checklist. I rebuilt the product around the buyer’s buying process, not the user’s demo smile.”

Brett Jansen$275M+ raised across 75+ startups

“I watched a $250K payer deal I was advising fall apart in procurement because the founder had no SOC 2 documentation ready, six months of champion work gone in a week. The champion loved the demo, but procurement silence usually means someone with budget or operational control still has an unanswered checklist item, and your champion cannot carry that story into the room you were not invited to.”

Aaron KatzScaled Elastic revenue

“Procurement silence usually means your champion stopped being able to sell it internally, so I’d call them and ask who is actually blocking the deal and what proof they need.”

Sanjay Sharma

“A champion's love doesn't survive procurement unless you've already mapped their buying committee and given them the business case in their language. I teach this in project management classes: enthusiasm is an event, approval is a process, and the gap between them is where most deals die.”

Christophe BodinAdvising investment firms, individuals and giving back to the Leaders community at Next Chapter MC LLC

“The champion loving the demo means almost nothing if you never mapped who else had to say yes, and by when. I learned that the hard way: a deal dies at procurement because the real buyer was still back in awareness, not intent.”

Glenn RachlinHead of Strategic GTM at OpenRouter

“I lost a Stripe-sized deal at Alchemy because I treated procurement as a stage instead of a second sale. Now I map the buying committee before the demo ends and run legal, security, and procurement as parallel workstreams, not a handoff.”

Dev IttycheriaInterim President & CEO at MongoDB

“Procurement silence usually means your champion was a coach, not a champion: they liked it but had no juice to carry it. At MongoDB we qualified every deal around why now, who the economic buyer was, and whether our champion could sell for us when we left the room. Without that, the demo is just a nice meeting.”