Lost my raven

I was working with a Harpooner and Shaman team the other day on a whale deal when a call from that very company came into the Harpooner letting him know that his Raven, (champion) at his whale was leaving the company. The Harpooner had worked hard to get the relationship with his Raven and now, after almost 5 months, the Harpooner was going to have to start over- Happens all the time.

What do you do? (Let's assume we agree that having just one contact at this stage in the whale hunt was the first mistake, but we are still stuck, so what do we do?)

1. Back up - Typically you came in a door with a series of contacts that got you to this Raven. Time to tap that list again and determine who is handling these responsibilities.
2. Push forward - Reach out to the Raven's boss. The call should sound something like this: "The Raven and I have been moving along for 5 months on a very important project- I would like to meet with you and give you an executive briefing on where we are and determine the best course of action for your company on these solutions." The answer will probably be something like- "Well, we really need to wait until we have the Raven's replacement. I wouldn't be prepared to do anything until then." Your response needs to be "Of course, that's why I want to have the executive briefing now, to bring you up to speed and determine the interim steps you want to take with the time and energy investments made by your company up until now."
3. Side step - Someone is picking up the interim responsibilities- probably a colleague of the Raven- while he replacement search is going on. Take the same approach as the Push Forward approach but at the interim player.

One of the reasons that we tell people to add contacts to the Buyer's Table as fast as possible is that the business world in which we live is volatile- a Rolodex' shelf life is shorter than ever- so having a single important contact inside of a whale is very risky.

What techniques have you used when you have lost your Raven?