How to Sell to Decision Makers in a Buying Group

Search for how to sell to decision makers and most of the advice is about getting past a gatekeeper to one senior person. The research on how companies buy describes a different situation. The person who signs is one member of a group, and the group is larger than most account plans assume.

Forrester's State of Business Buying 2026 report, built on a 2025 survey of nearly 18,000 business buyers, puts the typical buying decision at 13 internal stakeholders and nine external influencers. It also found that procurement is a decision-maker in 53% of buying cycles.

Gartner counted differently. Its survey of 632 B2B buyers, run in August and September 2024, found buying groups of five to 16 people across as many as four functions. In 74% of the buyer teams, members showed unhealthy conflict during the decision: they had conflicting objectives, disagreed on the course of action or were overruled by outside decision-makers. Groups that reached consensus were 2.5 times more likely to report a high-quality deal.

The two surveys define a group differently, so read the figures as a range and not as one average. Both show that the person you are talking to is rarely the only one with a say, and that the group disagrees with itself more than a seller can see from outside.

A handful of roles recur across deals. Titles only hint at them: a VP of engineering is the economic buyer at one company and a technical reviewer at the next. Use titles to decide whom to learn about, then ask your champion what each person does in the purchase.

The decision-makers endpoint takes a company ID and returns people at c-level, VP and director level, most senior first. The seniority parameter narrows the tiers. Manager is left out on purpose, because it is the largest band at most companies and rarely what anyone means by decision maker.

Two limits matter here. Seniority is inferred from job titles, so a person with an unusual title and no recognizable seniority signal may be missing even when the role is senior. And the title filter in people search is a text match where every word must be present, so a search for "chief financial officer" will not return a "finance manager". Search for the stem you care about, such as finance or procurement, and read the titles that come back.

Start from the person you already talk to. The colleagues endpoint returns the current coworkers of a known profile, which shows you the other functions at the account without going through the whole company. The past-employees endpoint is a second angle: a person who used to work at the account and now works at one of your customers can describe how decisions get made there, and may be willing to introduce you.

The hiring-signals call lists people who joined in a window you choose. A new head of a function changes who is in the group, so run it before a late-stage call. It shows who joined and in which function. It does not show open requisitions.

Gartner also tested what kind of content helps a buying group agree. Content tailored to the group or the organization improved consensus by 20%. Content built around individual-level relevance had a 59% negative impact on consensus, because it reinforced each person's own view and made a shared direction less likely. Buyers who experienced group-level relevance were three times more likely to report a high-quality deal.

Gartner measured content, and how that carries over to calls and meetings is our reading. We take it to mean that the business case for an account should be one story every member can read without finding it contradicts what a colleague was told.

A map made at the start of a deal goes stale while the deal runs. Re-run the senior-people call before the late stages and compare it with the earlier list. For the one or two people the deal depends on, a monitor sends a signed webhook when a tracked profile changes, including a new title or a new employer. A champion who changes jobs mid-deal is an event you want to hear about the day it happens.

The API returns no email addresses or phone numbers, so reaching someone happens through your own channels or a contact data provider with its own terms. A title describes a role and says nothing about a person's influence or appetite to buy. Using professional profile data about named people needs a lawful basis, usually a documented legitimate interest assessment, and an HTTP 451 response means the person has asked to be withdrawn: remove them from your CRM and any cache.