Customer value management has become a key priority in business markets, but many firms struggle to implement it. While the prior literature has considered this primarily as sales responsibility, emerging research suggests that best practice firms employ dedicated value champions to implement customer value management. However, at present, we know little about the characteristics, and the tradeoffs between different value championing approaches in business markets. Based on a discovery-oriented field research and interviews with 59 managers in 11 firms, this study illustrates four alternative role configurations firms use to employ value champions, and unpacks the characteristics and implications of each approach. Collectively, this study advances industrial marketing theory by shedding light on an emergent and contemporary management practice, and offering practical insights into how firms can employ value champions in business markets. •This study explores how firms employ value champions in business markets.•We elicit insights from a discovery-oriented field study with 59 managers from 11 different industrial firms.•Findings illustrate four alternative role configurations for value champions in business markets.•Results describe the specific characteristics and implications that each role configuration has for customer value management.