Brian LaMannaAE @ Gong | Closed Won 🦙 | 7x President’s Club

"I Don't Want to Go Around and Piss Off My Champion"

23 Dec 2025 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

1:20

A short YouTube monologue by Brian Lamont (enterprise AE at GONG) offering two practical principles for sellers on how to work with internal champions and handle blockers. Principle 1: always give your champion a chance and explicitly build and frame the ask with them (involving their leaders/peers as needed). Principle 2: if a champion blocks your strong recommendation, either they aren't fully bought in (poor champion building) or they are not an effective champion (unable/unwilling to advocate); if the latter, find another champion because deals need strong champions to close.

Questions this video answers

Brian Lamont, enterprise AE at GONG.

December 23, 2025.

Chapters

We've all heard someone say this to their sales leader in the past and hopefully it wasn't you. They'll say, no, I don't want to go around them. That could piss off my champion. I hear this all the time from junior sellers on pipeline reviews and they think that, hey, if I ignore the risk in this deal, it won't happen. Hi, my name is Brian Lamont. I'm an enterprise AE over at GONG and here are my two principles to get in front of this Number one, always give your champion a chance first. Your job is to build up this champion and frame with them. Why it's important get others involved, such as their leaders or others on the team. If you never make the ask or the strong recommendation, then yes, I'd be ticked off too if I were them. Don't go around something that you didn't need to go around in the first place. Number two is if you do make that strong recommendation and they are blocking you, one of two things are true. A you've done a poor job champion building and they aren't 100% bought in yet, or B they're just not comfortable really advocating and they are a blocker, meaning they're just kind of weak. If B is true, the reality is they're not not a champion for you. Champions want your solution so bad that they mobilize and they make shit happen. If you don't have a champion, you need to go to others to actually get one. Deals do not close without a strong champion. Simply put, the risk is the way.