Your Champion Just Left. Here's the Call You Make on Day Two.

You find out from LinkedIn, and that is already a problem

You open the app on a Tuesday morning and there it is. Sarah Chen started a new position as VP Operations at [somewhere else]. Sarah is your champion. Sarah built the business case. Sarah told you two weeks ago that legal was the last hurdle. Sarah is in your commit.

Most reps do one of three things at this moment, and all three are wrong. They do nothing for a week because they don't want to say the words out loud in a pipeline review. They email the old work address and get a bounce. Or they find the generic info@ inbox and send a paragraph that begins "I wanted to reach out regarding."

The deal is not dead. But the version of the deal you were running is completely dead, and pretending otherwise is how a forecasted number turns into a slipped quarter. You didn't lose a contact. You lost the person who was carrying your story around the building for free. Nobody inside that account is going to pick that up on their own. Someone has to be recruited, and you are the only one motivated to do the recruiting.

Here is the sequence I run. Day one is intelligence and the ask. Day two is the calls.

Why the window is this tight

Two clocks start the moment that notification appears.

The first is your departing champion's willingness to help you. It is at its peak in the first few days and it falls off a cliff after that. In the first week she still feels a little guilty about the half-finished projects she left behind, she still has the org chart in her head, and she has not yet been swallowed by onboarding at the new place. By week three she has a new manager, a new set of problems, and your project is somebody else's memory. Her access decays too — the laptop goes back, the Slack goes dark, the calendar of everyone she knew stops being something she can look at.

The second clock is the vacuum inside the account. Right now, somebody is being told they're picking up Sarah's work. That handoff conversation is happening this week, possibly today. Whoever frames the project during that conversation owns how it gets described for the next quarter. If your competitor has a relationship two floors up, they are in that conversation and you are not. If nobody frames it, it gets described as "an open vendor thing Sarah was doing," which is the description that dies quietly in a spreadsheet.

So you move now. Not because urgency is a sales tactic, but because both of the things you need are perishable.

Day one: work the person who is leaving

Go to LinkedIn or her personal cell if you have it. Not the work email. The work email is either dead or being forwarded to somebody who does not know you.

Congratulate her properly and specifically — the new company, the new scope, something that proves you read more than the headline. Then make one ask, and make it small enough that saying yes costs her under a minute.

Congrats on the move — that's a big jump in scope and the timing makes a lot of sense given what you told me about the last reorg.

Selfishly, one thing: the [project]. Who picks it up while they backfill you? And would you be willing to send them one line saying it's worth finishing? I'll write it for you so it takes thirty seconds.

That last sentence is the whole play. "I'll write it for you" is the difference between a referral you get and a referral you meant to get. Most people want to help and will not do so if helping requires them to compose anything. So compose it. Send her the draft in the next message, already written, ready to forward:

Subject: handing off the [project name]

[Name] — one open item before I'm out. We were most of the way through evaluating [company] for [the problem]. The business case is in the shared drive and Tim has the version with the numbers we built together. I'd finish it. Copying him here so you two can connect.

While you have her attention, get three more things. First: her honest read. Ask it in those words — "honestly, does this get picked up, or does it sit until someone new starts?" Her answer is worth more than anything your CRM will tell you, because she knows whether that budget line survives without her. Second: who else in the building cared. Not who attended the demo — who complained about the problem. There is almost always a peer or a frustrated manager who wanted this more than the champion did. Third: the artifacts and the process contacts. Where the business case lives, who in security ran the review, which procurement analyst has the file. Names of people who own tickets.

That third one matters more than reps expect. Security reviews and procurement requests are institutional. They exist as work items in somebody's queue. Tickets don't quit.

Before you make another call, fix the record

Do this before day two, because everything you say in forecast for the next month has to match it.

Mark the contact as no longer at the company, but do not delete her. She is now a pipeline event at a new logo and I will come back to that. Blank the primary contact on the opportunity rather than swapping in a guess — a hopeful guess in that field is how a dead deal survives three pipeline reviews.

Roll the stage back to wherever your definitions say you are when you do not have a named buyer confirming a timeline. If your stages are behavior-based, and they should be, this is not a judgment call. You had an identified economic buyer. You now don't. That's a stage.

Then pull the close date. Not a one-week push. Pull it out of the quarter unless you have, in writing, a named replacement who has told you the date holds. And write a short note in the deal that says in plain language what happened and what you are doing about it, so your manager reads it instead of interrogating you in front of the team. "Champion left for [company] on the 14th. Requested intro to interim owner. Calling [names] Wednesday. Date moved to next quarter until I have a named owner confirming."

That note buys you something valuable. It makes you the rep whose forecast means something.

Day two: the calls

Call in this order. The named interim owner if the intro came through. The champion's manager. The peer who cared. Then procurement or security, because they have a ticket and a ticket is a reason to talk that has nothing to do with you.

The voicemail

Most of these calls go to voicemail. Leave one. Keep it short, name the departing champion in the first sentence, and make the entire message about handing something over rather than asking for something.

[Name], it's Tim Yang at [company]. I worked with Sarah Chen on the [project] — I saw she's moved on. I've got the business case you two built and the notes on exactly where the security review stopped. I'm not calling to restart anything with you, I'm calling to hand you the file. Number is 555-0148. That's 555-0148.

Every line is doing a job. Sarah's name in sentence one is the only reason they keep listening. Naming the project proves you're not a cold caller working a list. "Where the security review stopped" signals that real work exists and that abandoning it wastes something. And "I'm not calling to restart anything" pre-handles the actual fear, which is that this person has just inherited a sales process they never agreed to sit through.

The email that follows it in ten minutes

Subject line: Sarah Chen's open item — [project]. Three short paragraphs, no attachment on the first send, and one specific offer.

[Name] — Sarah asked me to make sure this landed with whoever picks up her work. Quick context: your team was solving [problem], and we got as far as [specific stage] before she left.

I've written a one-page handoff — what the problem was, who described it, what we agreed, what's left, and what it costs to do nothing. Want me to send it? Takes you four minutes to read and you'll know whether it's worth your time.

And if you look at it and decide it's not a priority this year, tell me and I'll stop. I'd rather know than chase.

That last line is the one that gets replies. You are handing a stranger explicit permission to kill your deal, which is the fastest way to prove you are not going to be a problem in their inbox for six months. Some of them will take the out. Those were never going to close, and finding out on day two instead of day sixty is a gift.

Write the handoff page yourself, properly. It is the single best asset you will produce on this deal, and if the project does survive, it becomes the document the new owner uses to brief their boss. You want your framing of the problem in the room when you aren't.

Re-running discovery without making them re-live it

You get the meeting. Now the two failure modes.

The first is running discovery from question one, like the last four months never happened. The new person feels quizzed on a project they didn't choose, didn't build, and can't defend. They shut down and give you the version of the answers that ends the meeting fastest.

The second is assuming the old discovery still holds and going straight to a pitch. You'll be pitching a solution to a problem this person has never articulated, using words their predecessor chose.

The move is to present the previous discovery as a hypothesis and ask them to correct it. "Here's what Sarah told us the problem was, in her words, and here's what she said it was costing the team. I've been wrong before. Tell me where that's already out of date." People who won't answer an open question will happily fix a wrong answer. It's easier and it's more fun.

Then re-establish three things, and do not skip any of them because you feel like you already know. Does the problem still exist, and does this person own it? Does the money still exist — budget is very often attached to a person, and it evaporates with them. And is the timeline theirs or inherited? An inherited timeline is not a timeline. It's a date on a slide that nobody in the room feels responsible for.

You can compress this. Twenty minutes is enough if you open with the summary. The structure I use for a first real conversation with a VP or a CRO is the same one in the 25-minute discovery playbook, just run at double speed with the recap doing the work the opening questions usually do.

One question earns its place above all the others: what are you being measured on in your first ninety days? Somebody who just inherited a function wants two things — a visible win, and to not inherit a mess. Your project is one or the other, and which one it is decides whether you have a deal. Ask, and then shut up long enough for them to actually answer.

Watch for "let me get up to speed and circle back." That is not a brush-off, it's usually the literal truth, and treating it as a stall makes you the vendor who doesn't get that this person has forty other things on fire. Take it at face value and attach the next step to something on their calendar — their staff meeting, their planning cycle, the date their budget gets locked. Never to yours.

The honest call on your forecast

Here is how I decide whether it stays in commit.

Is there a named human who has said out loud that this is their project? Not "was copied on the handoff." Said it. If not, it isn't commit, regardless of what the close date field says.

Is the compelling event attached to the company or to the person? A contract expiry, an audit, a migration deadline, a funding milestone — those survive the departure. "Sarah wanted it done before her review" does not, and if you're honest with yourself, a surprising number of compelling events turn out to be that.

How much of the buying process is institutionalized? A completed security review, a redlined MSA, an open procurement ticket with a number on it — that's momentum that lives in systems rather than in one person's head. Verbal agreement and a good relationship is momentum that just walked out the door.

And is there a competing vendor with a live champion still in the building? Because a vacuum gets filled by whoever is standing nearest.

Most of the time, the answer is move it. Not out of pessimism — out of arithmetic. A deal you move and then pull forward makes you the rep whose number people believe. A deal you defend in three consecutive forecast calls and then lose makes every other number you give worthless for the rest of the year. The credibility cost is asymmetric and it compounds.

The exception, and it's genuinely rare: the replacement is internal, they were in the room for the original evaluation, and the compelling event is a date written into a contract. Then you can hold.

Don't forget the obvious thing

Your champion just landed somewhere new. She is going to buy software there. She already trusts you, and she has a fresh budget conversation coming.

Create the record at the new company and set yourself a task for around her first month — late enough that she's found the bathrooms, early enough that her spend for the year isn't locked. That call is warmer than anything else in your week, and it came out of the deal you thought you'd lost. Reps who work the departure well often end up with two opportunities where they had one.

The warm call, when the intro actually lands

If Sarah does send that email, understand exactly what you've been given. A referral buys you an answered phone and about one sentence of patience. It does not buy you trust. The most common way reps burn it is by behaving as though the new person is already a friendly — opening with warmth, chatting about the referrer, spending the goodwill on rapport instead of on getting to the point.

Five beats, in order. Name the referrer and the specific reason they sent you, in one sentence. Say why you're calling in one sentence and make it about the new person, not about Sarah. Ask for a specific, small amount of time. Ask one question only they can answer. Close on a next step with a date on it.

[Name], it's Tim Yang. Sarah Chen asked me to call you before she left — she said the [project] was landing on your desk. Do you have three minutes now, or is it better if I call back this afternoon?

When they ask what it's about, answer in one breath and end on a question: "Your team was losing [x] to [problem]. Sarah had us most of the way through fixing it. Before I send you anything — is that still a real problem for you, or did it get solved another way?"

One rule I'd hold to: never put words in the referrer's mouth about interest. "Sarah said you'd be interested" is a claim the person on the phone can immediately test and reject. "Sarah said you own this now" is a fact. State facts, ask for opinions. I've written the industry versions of this call — the SaaS one for cashing a referral with a CRO in four minutes and the legal one for spending a partner referral before the goodwill runs out — and the bones don't change much between them, because the underlying problem doesn't. You are a stranger holding a note from someone they know.

What I'd do next

The reason reps freeze when a champion leaves isn't that they don't know the play. It's that they've never said these particular sentences out loud, and the first live rep of a hard call always sounds like a first rep. So I'd take the two that matter most — the interim-owner voicemail and the first thirty seconds of the warm call — and run them until they're boring. That's what we built DrillCall for: saying the awkward version to a simulation instead of to the one person who can restart your deal.

Because you'll get one shot at that call. Sarah's goodwill is a wasting asset, the new owner is forming an opinion of you in the first sentence, and neither of them is going to give you a second take.