What Is an Executive Sponsor in Sales? How to Earn One Before Your Deal Dies in the Middle

Here’s the pattern:

• We meet a friendly contact and call them a “Champion.”
• We do some light, problem-based discovery.
• We find something we can help with and jump to a demo.
• They get excited and bubble it up to their boss, or higher.

And then: “Sorry, this isn’t a priority.”

Not because the boss is unreasonable. Because the problem was never developed enough, the justification wasn’t strong enough, and the story wasn’t portable enough to survive the next conversation without you in the room.

Deals die in the middle. (Yes, I’m quoting myself. It’s a thing.)

They die there because they were never designed to travel to the top. And the person at the top who keeps a deal alive is the Executive Sponsor.

What Is an Executive Sponsor?

An Executive Sponsor is the senior leader who will own the initiative internally after you leave.

They’re the missing link between justification and priority. They make the change real and protect it from competing initiatives.

You use them for cross-functional alignment, executive prioritization, escalation, resource allocation, and making your change justification story travel across the business.

Titles vary, but the pattern is consistent:

• The CRO sponsors sales purchases.
• The CMO sponsors marketing tech.
• The COO sponsors operational systems.
• The CISO sponsors security initiatives.

My number one priority in every deal is to earn an Executive Sponsor. Not a meeting with an executive. An Executive Sponsor.

Because here’s the truth: I have never won a deal without an Executive Sponsor.

Executive Sponsor vs Economic Buyer

Most frameworks focus heavily on the Economic Buyer, and budget matters. But they’re two different seats:

• The Economic Buyer controls funding.
• The Executive Sponsor controls priority.

If the Economic Buyer is missing, everyone agrees, but no money moves. If the Executive Sponsor is missing, you don’t lose to a competitor. You lose to other priorities.

You don’t always get direct access to the Economic Buyer. You always need an Executive Sponsor. They’re not always the Economic Buyer, but they’re often the person who will go get the money.

And the two roles can move. After budget is secured, your Executive Sponsor can become your future Economic Buyer, as long as the budget stays the same. They shift back into the Executive Sponsor role when they need to go get new budget. That matters most when you’re displacing a vendor with a similarly priced solution, or running retention and expansion.

For how to find the person who actually controls the money, read Economic Buyer vs Technical Buyer vs Champion.

Executive Sponsor vs Champion

Executive Sponsor is a functional role, a seat in the decision. Champion is a behavior: access to power and a willingness to use it, selling for you when you’re not there, proven through testing.

So they aren’t competing labels. Executive Sponsors can be your strongest Champions, especially when they show Champion behaviors like securing budget and taking ownership of the project.

It also cuts the other way. An Executive Sponsor can become a Blocker the moment priorities shift. (More in What Is a Champion in Sales?)

Why Deals Die in the Middle

The middle is usually a director-level leader inside one function.

They’re close enough to the field to hear pain, and close enough to leadership to know priorities and bring problems up. But they rarely own the final budget or decision.

That’s where deals stall, because the seller never moved the story:

• They never got the truth from the field. No end users, no real workflow, no consequences.
• They never packaged it into a broad change narrative. It never became portable.
• They never leveraged the middle to go up to the top. No Executive Sponsor, no Economic Buyer.

So the deal gets stuck inside one silo, and eventually it dies.

Here’s the real path:

• The field is where truth is found. End users make the problem unignorable. You learn the workflow, the friction and the consequences.
• The middle is where deals die if the truth stays trapped. Cross-functional leaders translate truth into priority, align stakeholders and build the internal plan.
• The top is where deals live if the truth gets sponsored and funded. The Executive Sponsor backs it. The Economic Buyer pays for it.

When I started selling uniforms at Aramark, I did one thing almost nobody else did: I went into the factory and interviewed the workers. Then I looked at reality. Burn holes. Rips. Repairs that weren’t being done. I took pictures, captured quotes, and brought the stories to the GMs and plant leadership.

Change happened fast. I wasn’t better at pitching. I made the problem real through people, and put it in front of the people who could act on it.

The opposite mistake is selling too high, too early, with surface-level problems and big claims. Executives fund grounded stories tied to real operational impact.

The Deal That Died in the Middle, Then Came Back From the Top

A few years into selling RPO, I worked a multi-million-dollar deal with a large retail merchandising company. Keeping their shelf-stocking and supply chain roles filled at scale was a constant headache.

I did a lot of things right. I documented the problem with their frontline recruiters, built relationships with their VP of Talent, and mapped their full hiring strategy.

The case was solid. The people in the middle were aligned.

The deal died anyway.

We never got an Executive Sponsor. The story never traveled to the top. Without someone at that level willing to fund the change and defend the priority, the deal sat in the middle until it quietly stopped moving.

About six months later, I noticed they still had the same problem. It looked worse. More roles open, same postings, same pattern. So instead of going back through the path that had already failed me, I went directly to the CEO with a one-page document attached: current state, proposed future state, and what I’d learned about the financial justification from the prior cycle.

The note was direct:

“Hey John, I worked with your team last year on a way to fill your retail merchandiser pipeline at a predictable cost model and at scale. At the time the business chose to continue building internally. But I still see the same number of roles open as before, and it looks like it may have gotten worse. Here’s a brief summary of what we learned last time. Any interest in regrouping?”

He said yes.

Onsite, I walked him through the field truth, the financial picture and the full scale of the problem. Midway through, he stood up, walked out, and came back with his CFO, pulled out of another meeting.

We went through the numbers together. I left with a verbal. The deal closed for several million dollars annually.

The quality of the work didn’t change. The difference was the top. The first time, I built a case the middle understood but nobody at the top ever heard. The second time, the story traveled downward.

A deal doesn’t live in the middle. It gets sponsored from the top or it doesn’t happen.

How to Get an Executive Sponsor: Four Plays

Sponsorship often gets confirmed late in the deal, but the work to earn it starts early, and it doesn’t happen by accident. Ebsta and Pavilion’s 2025 benchmarks found that involving decision-makers in the first two stages of the sales process raises win rates by 55%. These plays are how you do that without going around the people you’re working with.

Play 1: Fast Track to Executive Sponsor

As soon as you have a directional business case, send a note to the person you believe will be the Executive Sponsor.

• Mention the work done so far.
• Praise the team you’re working with. It will likely get back to them.
• Offer time to review the current business case and priority alignment.
• Position it as not wanting to go further without their blessing, so everyone’s time is used effectively.

You gain early access, priority alignment and feedback on the project. It shapes your future chances at sponsorship, and it validates that the project is real and change could actually happen.

Play 2: Executive Alignment

This is a strong mid-cycle move once the project is qualified and you have a directional business case. Ask one of your executives to reach out to the likely Executive Sponsor to open a direct line and validate alignment.

A simple message:

“Hi {Name}, our teams have been working together to improve {business outcome}. It looks like we’re making good progress, and I’d love to connect. This is a standard step for us so we can open a line of communication, confirm the project aligns to your priorities, and build a relationship as we move forward.”

The goal is not escalation. It’s alignment, visibility and relationship, while the deal is still being shaped.

Timing is everything. Done at the right time, it reads as normal executive alignment, and the buying team doesn’t feel like you went around them. Done late, it looks like a negotiation tactic, triggers defensiveness, and often ends in last-minute discounting.

Play 3: Top Down / Bottom Up

Don’t pick a lane. Start at the top and the bottom at the same time and drive toward collision.

If you get a meeting at the bottom first, treat it like executive discovery. Gather the unfiltered truth: pain, priority, impact and the language people actually use. Then follow up to the top with what you learned and why it matters.

If you get a meeting at the top first, use it to accelerate access. Mention that you’ve also reached out to the people who do the work, because that’s where the problem lives and you want to avoid surprises.

One critical rule: if you start at the top and go down, agree up front that you’ll come back up. Otherwise you get trapped in the middle. A simple way to frame it:

“After I meet with your team and validate the reality on the ground, I’d like to come back to you with what I learned and confirm next steps. Can we hold 20 minutes for that now?”

Play 4: Circle of Leverage

Put multiple senior stakeholders on a single thread. One email. One shared conversation.

If you’re trying to gain access and you’ve built a strong business justification to meet, put the senior people you need on one thread (CFO, COO, CTO) with a clear, concise reason. Someone will respond. Senior leaders don’t ignore threads where their peers are copied on a business problem that affects all of them.

Then build sponsorship with the pre-read

Sponsorship isn’t built in the final meeting. If the first time your Executive Sponsor sees the business case is the Go/No Go meeting, you’ve made a mistake you can’t fix in the room.

Build the case with your Problem Owner first, then socialize it with the Executive Sponsor early. The Problem Owner validates the substance. The Executive Sponsor validates the priority. Invite challenge. Only then will they stand up for it when you’re not around.

The pre-read is where executive sponsorship actually gets built. (Build the case with the Business Case template.)

Color Code Your Executive Sponsor

Grade what you actually know:

• Red: You don’t know who will sponsor this change, or you’re stuck low in one function, hearing pain but never moving the story up.
• Yellow: “I think I know who my executive sponsor will be.” “I think this is a priority at the executive level.” You have names and some inside information, but no proof.
• Green: An active Executive Sponsor who’s reinforcing priority, unblocking internally, and keeping the initiative real. They can explain the deal without you in the room.

To be clear: if you don’t have a mobilized Problem Owner and an Executive Sponsor showing champion behaviors, you can’t be green on stakeholders. You may have support. You may have interest. You don’t have the force required to create change.

And if you’ve run the plays and it stays red, take it seriously. No Executive Sponsor is one of my four disqualify rules. If nobody owns outcomes internally, the deal won’t survive scrutiny. A deal without sponsorship is a deal without power. I can’t tell you how many years of sellers’ lives are lost selling to the middle, only to find there’s no future sponsor and watch the deal die.

The Bottom Line

Without a sponsor, you don’t lose to a competitor. You lose in the middle, to other priorities, with a solid case nobody at the top ever heard.

Get the truth from the field. Make the story portable. Then use the middle to go up, on purpose, early.

Not a meeting with an executive. An Executive Sponsor.

Map who you have and who’s missing with the free Stakeholder Map template, then read Stop Multi-Threading. Start Unlocking Gates. for the rest of the stakeholder system. The four plays are in the Stakeholders chapter of the book.