How to Identify and Reach the Right Business Decision-Makers: Types and Approaches

Connecting with the decision-makers in business as early as possible is crucial to accelerating the sales process. 

However, identifying business decision-makers is more complex than targeting people with a specific job title. In this article, we’ll dive into the nuances of recognizing decision-makers within a prospective company and explore why the process now requires more strategic thinking than ever before.

We’ll also cover how modern targeting technologies, such as LinkedIn Sales Navigator and advanced filtering strategies, can significantly improve your chances of identifying business decision-makers. These tools enable you to effectively narrow down prospects from a broader pool of companies, making your outreach more focused and successful.

But first, let’s start with the basics.

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What are business decision-makers?

Business decision-makers, by definition, are individuals within a company, usually in a leadership or management role, with the authority to make significant choices regarding the company's operations, purchases, and strategies. They are responsible for evaluating options and making decisions that impact the business's overall direction and success.

Understanding decision-making in B2B business

Understanding decision-making in B2B business is crucial for successful sales. Unlike B2C transactions, B2B decisions often involve multiple stakeholders from various departments, making identifying and engaging key decision-makers essential. Recognizing the decision-making unit (DMU) allows sales teams to tailor their pitches to align with organizational goals.

B2B decisions are increasingly data-driven, requiring compelling evidence and case studies highlighting solutions' value. By presenting insights that resonate with decision-makers and addressing their specific needs, sales professionals can position their products as essential solutions, fostering long-term partnerships and driving growth.

Who are business decision-makers typically? The hierarchy

Business decision-makers usually include individuals in key organizational positions with the authority to make significant purchasing or operational decisions. Common roles among business decision-makers include:

1. C-Suite executives: This group includes Chief Executive Officers (CEOs), Chief Financial Officers (CFOs), Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs), and Chief Operating Officers (COOs). They usually have the final say on large investments and strategic direction.

2. Department heads: These are leaders responsible for specific areas such as marketing, sales, operations, IT, and human resources. They assess solutions based on departmental needs and budget considerations.

3. Procurement managers: Individuals in this role focus on acquiring goods and services. They often evaluate suppliers and negotiate contracts, which is crucial in purchasing.

4. Product managers: These professionals oversee product development and strategy. They may influence decisions regarding tools or services that impact product offerings.

5. Financial analysts: They analyze data and provide insights on the financial implications of potential purchases, influencing the decision-making process by evaluating ROI and cost-effectiveness.

5 types of decision-makers in business

Understanding the different types of business decision-makers is crucial for tailoring your approach and effectively engaging with them. Each type has unique characteristics and decision-making styles that influence how they operate within their organizations, making it essential to recognize these distinctions in your sales and marketing strategies. These may include:

• Brand-centric

• Multifocal

• Aggregator

• Risk-taker

• Cautious

1. Brand-centric

Brand-centric decision-makers in business prioritize brand identity and loyalty in their decision-making process. They focus on maintaining a strong brand presence and consistency across all business activities. For them, long-term brand reputation often outweighs short-term profits, and they are highly selective about partnerships, ensuring they align with their brand values.

2. Multifocal

Multifocal business decision-makers balance multiple factors, considering everything from financials to company culture, customer satisfaction, and market trends. Their decisions often result from evaluating diverse perspectives, ensuring that all aspects of the business are aligned for holistic growth. They’re adept at juggling short-term and long-term objectives simultaneously.

3. Aggregator

These business decision-makers rely heavily on collecting and analyzing vast data before moving. They aggregate insights from various departments, market research, and customer feedback to inform their choices. Their decisions are driven by data, ensuring informed and calculated actions that minimize risk.

4. Risk-taker

Bold and forward-thinking, risk-takers are not afraid to make big moves that could significantly impact the company. They often embrace innovation and are willing to venture into untested areas if they see potential for high rewards. These business decision-makers thrive in fast-paced environments, drive rapid growth, and face higher risks.

5. Cautious

Cautious business decision-makers are more conservative in their approach, preferring stability and proven methods. They meticulously assess potential risks and prefer gradual, incremental changes over disruptive ones. Their decisions are often based on minimizing risk and avoiding uncertainty, ensuring the company maintains steady and predictable growth.

How to find business decision-makers in a company

Within any organization, multiple decision-makers may influence purchasing decisions. Therefore, it's crucial to identify the individual who holds the authority to approve your specific product, service, or offering. This targeted approach ensures that your efforts are directed toward the business decision-maker, upping your chances of a good response.

Finding the right business decision-maker in a company is super important for boosting your sales success. You can use different strategies to track them down, like browsing professional networking sites like LinkedIn or attending industry conferences and events. No matter how you go about it, ensure you know the relevant job titles and hierarchy related to your pitch. This way, you can tailor your approach and connect with the right person more effectively.

Weaknesses of the traditional “Job Title” based approach

The typical sales development representative (or SDR) assumes a decision maker has a particular job title and runs that title through a LinkedIn search.

But that approach comes with its limits:

1. The decision maker’s title can vary widely depending on the size of the company you’re selling to.

2. When you filter out all but one job title, you miss out on viable business decision-makers.

3. You may waste time “barking up the wrong tree” just because that person has the “right” job title.

For example, if you sell PPC management services to marketing teams, the traditional job title-based approach may lead to a blanket statement like “Our business decision-makers are CMOs; let’s find them.”

But each of the above three problems would manifest itself like this:

1. Smaller companies (startups or small private companies) may not even have a CMO. The founder or owner may still need to sign off on a purchase decision even if they do.

2. Companies that don’t have a CMO won’t appear in your search, so you’ll miss out entirely on targeting potentially viable companies.

3. For other companies, you might spend valuable time wooing marketing heads when, in the end, they can’t even make a purchase decision.

A 3-step strategy for finding the right business decision-makers

To solve those problems, let’s look at an approach that uses advanced filtering on LinkedIn to help you find the right business decision-makers in companies of varying sizes.

Specifically, we’ll break it down into a three-step framework:

1. Framing who the business decision-makers you seek are

2. Identifying those key business decision-makers on LinkedIn

3. Finding their contact information

Step 1: Know the business decision-makers you’re looking for

One of the big reasons salespeople spend so much time looking for business decision-makers is that many of them miss a key first step: They don’t know what decision-makers look like across their target companies.

The solution starts with developing personas that explain who your business decision-makers are.

Buyer personas are an important piece of the entire sales and marketing process, and they come in extra handy when finding business decision-makers.

Understanding the key decision-makers you’re looking for—right from the beginning—means your contact search becomes laser-focused and a lot more efficient.

You spend less time scrolling through and qualifying the wrong contacts, and more time actually selling to the right people.

Define your business decision-maker personas

When you know your business decision-makers and what they look like, you can immediately eliminate everyone else at a company.

You can narrow in on those people and determine the best way to sell to them.

When you decide which companies to target, you look at specific qualifiers like:

• Revenue

• Industry

• Number of employees

Your decision-maker persona should have similar qualifiers in place, too. You need to know things such as:

• Job title and duties of decision-makers

• Tenure at the company

• Type of business decision-maker: Do they sign the paperwork and make the final decision? Do the research and pass the decision along to someone else? Are they the end user?

• What pages of your website do business decision-makers visit? How do they interact with your website and campaigns?

The best place to find that information and context is by looking at your existing customers and late-stage leads.

Look for the common threads and build a picture of what your typical business decision-maker looks like—this makes it easy as pie to identify more people like that at other companies.

The stronger and more complete your profile of ideal customers and decision makers is, the better success you’ll have finding and reaching them.

That way, if you know your typical decision maker is an Engineering Manager, you can narrow in on contacts with that job (or a similar title).

Knowing your business decision-maker is the end user instead of a procurement department changes how you approach outreach to them.

The key in B2B sales is that you rarely have just one buyer persona. Job titles vary across companies, and company size plays a role.

You may need to talk to the CEO for startups with ten employees. For huge corporations, lower-level managers or procurement departments might be your decision-makers.

That’s why it’s important to develop as many personas as possible to represent your customers.

Note: If you want to see how companies behave and interact with your website, sign up and try Leadfeeder free for 14 days here.

Step 2: How to find business decision-makers on LinkedIn

Once you have a full picture of your typical business decision-makers, how can you find more of those people?

That’s really what it comes down to—finding more business decision-makers who look like your existing customers.

One of the best tools B2B salespeople have for finding business decision-makers in the wild is LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

When you sign up for LinkedIn Sales Navigator, you answer questions about your typical leads' job functions and seniority.

That info helps LinkedIn recommend business decision-makers and contacts you might want to talk to.

You can use Advanced Lead Search to find the right business decision-makers for any company.

Type in the company name and toggle on “Apply your sales preferences,” and LinkedIn will automatically narrow your search based on the business decision-maker qualifications you entered during setup.

In the results, you can view suggested leads’ LinkedIn profiles, send InMail, and opt to view similar contacts. Save leads to create a list of your potential business decision-makers at the company.

Advanced filtering on LinkedIn

When you search for business decision-makers on LinkedIn, advanced Sales Navigator filtering makes it easy to search for business decision-makers separately within each buyer persona.

That means you can search for leads based on job title and headcount at their company. So you find CEOs and founders at tiny companies, Engineering Managers, or procurement specialists at larger accounts.

Adding that extra filtering layer helps you spend less time talking to the wrong people and more time selling to the actual business decision-makers.

Step 3: Find contact information for business decision-makers

In some cases, B2B salespeople can’t reach every potential lead through LinkedIn.

Whether they don’t allow or respond to InMail or their email address and phone number are missing, there are times you’ll need to find contact information elsewhere to reach business decision-makers.

That’s where sales prospecting tools that help you find contact info for key business decision-makers come into play.

There are tons of those tools out there, but here are solid options to get you started:

Dealfront

Speak to the right person immediately and ensure a truly GDPR-compliant outreach. Dealfront's database contains companies and matching contacts — including email addresses & phone numbers.

Hunter

Type in any domain name and Hunter will pull up every email address associated with that domain. Scroll through to find a specific contact’s email, export all the addresses into a Google Sheet, or use the common pattern to make an informed guess about your business decision-maker’s email.

Prospect.io

Prospect.io offers more than just contact info; it also offers outreach and automation features. Prospect.io’s integration with popular CRM software sets it apart as a prospecting tool. Plus, with their credit system, you can even verify the email addresses provided before you hit send.

Voila Norbert

This tool makes the sales prospecting process even easier—all you have to do is type in the business decision-maker’s name and company, and Voila Norbert will give you their email address. It even boasts a 98 percent success rate for B2B sales, so you can rely on the info you get.

Strategies for influencing business decision-makers

Influencing business decision-makers requires a strategic approach that emphasizes building relationships, demonstrating value, and aligning with their goals. Here are several effective tips: 

• Understand their priorities: Research the company’s goals and pain points to align your approach.

• Build relationships: Network at industry events and leverage platforms like LinkedIn to establish trust.

• Demonstrate value: Showcase relevant case studies and quantify benefits with data.

• Leverage thought leadership: Share insights through articles or webinars to position yourself as a resource.

• Engage in consultative selling: Ask open-ended questions to understand needs and focus on solutions.

• Utilize personalization: Tailor your message and segment your audience for targeted outreach.

• Be persistent but respectful: Follow up without being aggressive, knowing when to step back if needed.

Key factors to consider when targeting business decision-makers

No matter who the decision-makers are in your target organization, there are key considerations to remember throughout the buying process. Tailoring your outreach to these insights can enhance your effectiveness and foster stronger connections. Here are essential factors to consider as you navigate their journey:

1. Understand the decision-making hierarchy: Recognize the structure of the decision-making process in an organization. Identify the primary business decision-maker and key stakeholders who may influence the final choice. This insight will help you tailor your approach to address the concerns of everyone involved.

2. Cultural and personal preferences: It's essential to adapt your approach to fit the corporate culture and the unique communication styles of various individuals within the organization. Being flexible in your interactions can foster stronger relationships and facilitate more effective communication, allowing you to connect with business decision-makers on their terms. Understanding these preferences can significantly enhance your ability to engage and persuade them.

Why business decision-makers are important

Business decision-makers play a pivotal role in shaping the future of a company. Understanding their importance can enhance your approach to sales and marketing strategies. Here are a few reasons why they are essential:

• Authority: They can make significant decisions regarding purchases and partnerships.

• Influence: Their choices directly impact company strategy, resource allocation, and operational efficiency.

• Relationship building: Engaging with them fosters long-term partnerships, leading to repeat business and referrals.

• Insight: They provide valuable insights into market trends and customer needs, guiding product development and marketing strategies.

• Revenue growth: Targeting the right business decision-makers increases the chances of closing deals and driving revenue.

How the best choices are made in business decision-making

Business decision-makers also play a crucial role in evaluating the best choices for their organizations. Their process often involves several key steps:

1. Data analysis 

They gather and analyze relevant data, including market research, financial reports, and performance metrics, to understand the potential impact of a decision.

2. Identifying needs

Business decision-makers assess their organization's specific needs and challenges to ensure that any proposed solution aligns with their goals.

3. Consulting stakeholders

They consult with other stakeholders, including team members, executives, and external advisors, to gather diverse perspectives and insights.

4. Evaluating options

Business decision-makers compare different options by weighing the pros and cons, considering cost, implementation time, and potential return on investment.

5. Risk assessment 

They conduct a thorough risk analysis to identify potential obstacles or challenges associated with each option.

6. Trial and feedback 

Sometimes, business decision-makers may pilot a solution or gather feedback from a small group before making a final decision.

By systematically following these steps, business decision-makers ensure they choose the most suitable business option that aligns with their organization's objectives and maximizes value.

Business decision-making examples

Here are some common examples of business decision-making scenarios across different contexts:

1. Product launch

• Situation: A tech company is considering launching a new smartphone.

• Decision process: Business decision-makers analyze market trends, customer feedback, and competitor products. They may conduct focus groups to gather insights on potential features before deciding to proceed with the launch.

2. Budget allocation

• Situation: A marketing team must allocate its budget for the upcoming year.

• Decision process: The team reviews previous campaign performances, assesses which channels delivered the best ROI, and consults with stakeholders to prioritize spending on high-impact initiatives.

3. Hiring new talent

• Situation: A company is looking to fill a critical position in its sales department.

• Decision process: Business decision-makers evaluate resumes, conduct interviews, and assess candidates based on their qualifications and cultural fit. They may also consult current employees for input on team dynamics.

4. Choosing a vendor

• Situation: A business needs to select a new supplier for raw materials.

• Decision process: Business decision-makers gather bids from multiple suppliers, compare pricing, delivery timelines, and quality assurance standards, and may visit suppliers' facilities to make an informed choice.

5. Entering a new market

• Situation: A business is considering expanding its operations to a new geographic area.

• Decision process: Business decision-makers conduct market research to understand local consumer behavior, analyze regulatory requirements, and evaluate potential risks and benefits before entering the new market.

6. Implementing new technology

• Situation: A company is considering adopting a new customer relationship management (CRM) system.

• Decision process: Business decision-makers review the features of different CRM systems, consult with IT and sales teams, and assess how the new technology will integrate with existing systems and workflows before making a final decision.

7. Crisis management

• Situation: A business faces a public relations crisis due to a product recall.

• Decision process: Business decision-makers quickly assemble a crisis management team, evaluate the situation, gather facts, and determine the best action to communicate with stakeholders and mitigate damage.

These examples illustrate the diverse nature of business decision-making, showing how leaders must weigh various factors, consult with stakeholders, and use data to make informed choices that align with their organizational goals.

Identify the Right Business Decision-Makers

Finding the business decision-makers within a company is an essential yet often time-consuming first step in the B2B sales process. Sales professionals must adopt the right strategies and leverage advanced tools to streamline this challenge. 

By starting with a clear, well-researched profile of your target contacts and utilizing the best sales and prospecting technologies available, you can accelerate this process, making it more efficient. This lets you focus on what matters most—selling to the right people faster.

Contact us today for more information on how Leadfeeder can help your business.

FAQS about business decision-makers

How to reach decision-makers in business

To reach business decision-makers, focus on personalized, value-driven outreach through platforms like LinkedIn or email. Use tools like LinkedIn Sales Navigator to identify key contacts and leverage mutual connections for introductions. Tailor your messaging to address their specific challenges and highlight how your solution can meet their needs. Building rapport and offering value upfront increases your chances of getting a response.

What is a business decision-makers survey?

A business decision-makers survey is a research tool used to gather insights and opinions from individuals within an organization who hold positions of authority and are responsible for making significant decisions. These surveys normally focus on various aspects of the business, including strategic priorities, challenges faced, purchasing behaviors, preferences for products or services, and insights into market trends.