Champion
A champion is the person inside a prospect's organisation who actively wants your solution and sells it internally when you're not in the room. A real champion has three traits: they feel the pain you solve, they have influence with the people who decide, and they're willing to spend their own credibility to push the deal forward. Crucially, a champion is not the same as a friendly contact who enjoys your demos.
For a founder, finding and equipping a champion is often what turns a stalled deal into a closed one, because internal selling happens in conversations you'll never attend. Test whether your champion is genuine by asking them to do something: introduce you to the economic buyer, or share your business case with their boss. If they dodge, they're a coach, not a champion. Arm the real ones with what they need, a one-pager, ROI figures, answers to likely objections, so they can win the internal argument for you.