How to Save a $240K Account When Your Champion Left and Usage Collapsed
Kevin was your champion. For 14 months, he drove adoption across three departments, answered your emails within the hour, and showed up to every QBR with a slide about how much the platform saved his team. Then Kevin left. No goodbye email to you. No introduction to his replacement. You found out from a LinkedIn update three weeks after his last day. Since then: 60% usage drop. Two departments stopped logging in entirely. The third is limping along at 30% capacity. Your emails to the general inbox went unanswered for six weeks. You finally got 20 minutes with Vanessa Okafor, the new Director of Operations, who inherited 14 vendor contracts she did not choose and is deciding which ones to cut. She does not know your name. She does not know your platform. Renewal is in eight weeks.
Why This Conversation Goes Wrong
You open with the product pitch. "Let me tell you about what our platform does." Vanessa has heard this opening from every vendor fighting for survival. She does not need a product tour. She needs someone who understands her situation — she is drowning in inherited tools and no one is helping her sort through them.
You get defensive about the usage drop. "Well, your team stopped using the platform properly after Kevin left." Even if it is true, blaming the client's team for adoption failure tells Vanessa that your product requires a dedicated internal evangelist to function. That is an argument for canceling, not renewing.
You lead with Kevin's success metrics. "When Kevin was running things, we saved 340 hours per quarter." Vanessa does not care about Kevin's numbers. Kevin is gone. His success story is evidence of what the platform did for someone else. She needs to know what it does for her.
You beg for more time without a plan. "Just give us a chance before renewal." Desperation without specifics is the fastest way to confirm Vanessa's suspicion that this is a vendor contract she should cut. She does not owe you a chance. You have to earn one.
The Cold Restart
When your champion leaves, the relationship resets to zero — and zero is generous. The new stakeholder has no loyalty, no context, and no patience. A cold restart is not about defending the old relationship. It is about building a new one in compressed time, with a person who is predisposed to cut you. The framework works because it prioritizes what the new stakeholder actually needs: clarity about value, honesty about the current state, and a concrete plan that does not require them to take it on faith.
Lead with their reality, not yours
"Vanessa, I know you inherited a stack of vendor contracts and are trying to figure out which ones earn their keep. I want to help you make that decision about us — even if the answer is no." This opening does something counterintuitive: it gives Vanessa permission to say no. Paradoxically, that is what earns you the full 20 minutes. She relaxes because you are not selling — you are helping her do her job.
Acknowledge the usage collapse transparently
"I want to be upfront: usage dropped significantly after Kevin left, and that is partly on us. We should have flagged it sooner and reached out to your team the week he departed." Taking partial ownership of the adoption failure before Vanessa brings it up changes the dynamic. You are the one honest vendor in a stack of fourteen.
Translate past value into present terms
"Here is what the platform delivered when it was fully adopted: 340 hours saved per quarter, $82K in operational efficiency. Those results came from three departments. Right now, only one is active at partial capacity." Do not dwell on the past. Use it as evidence of ceiling — then connect it to what Vanessa cares about: "The question is whether it is worth re-engaging those two teams. I think it is, and here is why."
Propose a recovery sprint with teeth
"I am proposing a 30-day recovery sprint. Week one: I run three training sessions for the departments that went dark. Week two: we rebuild the dashboards for your KPIs — not Kevin's. Week three: we measure re-engagement. Week four: you and I sit down and look at the numbers. If they do not justify renewal, I will tell you that myself." Specifics and accountability beat promises every time.
Make the ask concrete and low-risk
"All I need from you is 30 days and access to the department leads for training scheduling. No contract changes, no commitments. Just 30 days to show you what this platform does when someone is actually driving it." The ask is small. The implied commitment from you is large. That asymmetry works in your favor.
The moment that changes everything
Vanessa is not evaluating your product. She is evaluating your honesty.
Vanessa has been in the Director of Operations chair for three months. In that time, she has sat through fourteen vendor pitches from companies trying to keep their contracts. Every single one told her their product was indispensable. Every single one blamed her team for declining usage. She has developed a finely tuned filter for vendor self-preservation disguised as partnership. What she actually craves — what would make her pause the evaluation — is a vendor who tells the truth without being asked. When you say "usage dropped and that is partly on us," you become the only vendor in fourteen who did not make her feel like the problem. That transparency is worth more than any ROI slide. Vanessa does not need to love your product today. She needs to trust your word. The recovery sprint will handle the product; the honesty handles the relationship.
What to Say (and What Not To)
Instead of
"Let me walk you through what our platform does."
Try this
"I know you are evaluating a lot of vendor contracts right now. Let me help you figure out if this one deserves to stay."
Instead of
"Kevin was getting great results before he left."
Try this
"Here is what the platform delivered at full adoption — and here is why it dropped after the leadership change."
Instead of
"Your team stopped using it properly."
Try this
"Usage collapsed after Kevin left, and we should have caught that sooner. That is on us."
Instead of
"Just give us a chance."
Try this
"Give me 30 days and three training sessions. If the numbers do not justify renewal, I will tell you myself."
Instead of
"We are confident you will see the value."
Try this
"I am not asking for confidence. I am asking for 30 days to earn it."
The Bigger Picture
A 2024 ChurnZero study found that 44% of enterprise churn traces back to a single event: champion departure. Not product dissatisfaction, not pricing, not competitive displacement — the loss of the internal advocate. Yet only 12% of CS teams have a documented champion-departure playbook. The gap between how common this problem is and how prepared teams are to handle it represents billions in preventable revenue loss across SaaS.
McKinsey research on B2B customer retention found that the single strongest predictor of renewal after a stakeholder change was speed of re-engagement: accounts where the CSM made meaningful contact with the new stakeholder within 14 days of the change had 2.7x higher retention rates than those who waited longer than 30 days. The clock starts the day the champion's LinkedIn updates.
Practice This Conversation
12 minutes · AI voice roleplay with Vanessa Okafor
Reading about this is step one. Practicing it changes everything. Sonitura lets you rehearse this exact conversation with Vanessa Okafor, a realistic AI newly appointed director of operations at a logistics company who reacts to your words in real time. It takes 12 minutes. The next time a champion leaves, you will already know the first five sentences of the recovery call.
Practice This Scenario Free →