John Kaplan at Force Management has an ace way of circumnavigating this issue and that is to write what he calls ‘The Champion Letter’. This is a letter written to the Economic Buyer that introduces yourself and your solution whilst, at the same time, praising your Champion for what an outstanding job they are doing on the project. You can even call out all of the value they have helped you to uncover. It is quite hard for a Champion to be angry at you when you’ve effectively just been praising them to someone senior within their organization.
