Spent 6 months closing a $2,000/mo deal. Our champion quit, and the new VP canceled it.

Last year, we spent half a year courting a mid-market company. We did endless demos, built a custom integration for their legacy system, and jumped through every hoop. Finally, we closed a $2,000/month contract. The Head of Operations, who loved our product, was our internal champion and promised it would be a massive success.

Three months into the contract, our champion resigned.

Two weeks later, we got an email from the new VP of Operations. He wanted to "review the software stack." We jumped on a call, and he told us he was canceling the contract. His reasoning? "I didn't buy this tool. I don't see the ROI. And frankly, I want to consolidate vendors and use the tool my old company used."

I was devastated. We had built custom features for them, spent weeks onboarding their team, and the product was actually working perfectly for the users. But because the person who signed the check was gone, we were treated like an unwanted stepchild.

I realized I made a massive mistake. We focused 90% of our relationship-building on the champion, but we completely ignored the other stakeholders (the end users, the IT team, and the finance department). When the champion left, no one else inside the company had any emotional or political investment in keeping our tool alive.

Now we have to start over and find a new champion.

For founders who have experienced this: How do you "champion-proof" your B2B accounts so you don't lose the deal when your main contact leaves?

Do you require multi-threading from day one? Do you force the end-users to build their workflows around your tool so it's too painful to cancel? I need to figure out how to protect our ARR from executive turnover.