“Who’s the decision maker?” is the wrong question for most B2B sales today. In a household purchase, there is usually a real answer: one or two people who decide. In a business sale, the honest answer is almost always “a group of people, most of whom you have not talked to yet.” The buying committee has grown sharply. The average B2B purchase now involves 13 internal stakeholders across as many as 10 functions (Forrester, 2025), up from 5.4 decision-makers a decade ago. Searching for a single signer instead of mapping the actual group costs deals. A rep who has only built a relationship with one contact has no visibility into objections raised by the people that contact never tells them about. About 40% of stalled B2B deals trace back to the primary contact changing roles or going quiet (Gong, 2025). If that person was the only thread, the deal resets to zero. Quick Answer For consumer sales, the decision maker is usually easy to identify: typically one or both heads of a household. For B2B sales, there is rarely a single decision maker. Instead, there is a group of stakeholders with different roles: someone who initiates interest, someone with technical influence, someone who can approve or block on a budget basis, and someone who will use the product day to day. The goal is not to find the one person who signs. It is to identify and reach the relevant people in that group directly, rather than relying on a single contact to relay everything internally. Deals that reach multiple stakeholders directly are 2x more likely to close than deals relying on one champion (Gong, 1.8 million opportunities analyzed). Why Finding the Decision Maker Is the Wrong Frame for B2B In consumer sales, identifying the buyer is straightforward. In B2B, treating the search as “find the one person with the title that signs” misses how these purchases actually get made. Decisions run through a committee. Each member has different reasons to say yes or no. And 79% of purchases now require CFO sign-off, meaning the financial frame has to exist alongside every technical one. For a deeper look at how buying committees work and why relying on one internal champion stalls deals, see our guide on B2B selling and buying committees. Step 1: Research Before You Ever Reach Out Check the company’s own site first – Leadership and team pages often list exactly who holds budget authority, technical ownership, or operational responsibility for the area your product touches. Use LinkedIn to map the org, not just find one name – Search the company page for multiple relevant titles. The technical evaluator and the budget approver are often different people at different levels. Eighty-nine percent of B2B marketers use LinkedIn for lead generation and it is 277% more effective for B2B than other social platforms. Focus on function, not job title alone – Titles vary wildly between companies. If you are selling a marketing tool, the right person might carry the title “Director,” “Head of,” or “VP.” What matters is whether marketing decisions actually run through them. Use any existing connection – A warm introduction from someone who already works there is faster and more credible than cold outreach. Referrals convert at roughly 3 to 5 times the rate of cold outreach and close 69% faster. A warm intro also surfaces who else is really involved. Step 2: When Research Does Not Surface a Clear Contact Sometimes there is no public information pointing to the right person. In that case, general outreach, a contact form, a direct call to the main line, or a LinkedIn message to a plausible candidate, is a reasonable fallback. The goal of that first contact is not to close anything. It is to get redirected to the right person or get a name to research further. Step 3: Getting Past the Gatekeeper Most organizations have someone who controls access to the people you need to reach. An assistant, a department coordinator, a front-line team member. Treating that person as an obstacle to get past quickly is a mistake. A gatekeeper who trusts you can become an internal advocate. They can pass along context and put in a good word before you ever speak to the actual stakeholders. Being genuinely respectful and clear about why you are calling matters more here than almost any other part of the process. Step 4: Identify Who Else Needs to Be in the Conversation Once you reach a real contact, the most valuable question is not about your product. It is about their process. Asking directly who else is involved, early, is far more reliable than guessing later why a deal stalled. These questions consistently surface the fuller picture: Who else, besides you, would be involved in evaluating or approving something like this? Has your organization looked at something similar before, and who was involved then? What would need to be true for this to get approved on your end? Is there anyone on the technical or financial side who would need to sign off? Would it be useful to loop in a specific role directly, or would you rather relay that? Deals that stall most often do so because internal complexity on the buyer’s side was invisible to the seller. Forty percent to 60% of B2B pipeline is lost to “no decision” rather than to a competitor, and single-threading is a primary mechanic behind it. Getting the full picture early, even imperfectly, is one of the highest-leverage moves in a B2B sales process. Step 5: Provide Value to Every Stakeholder, Not Just the First One Once more than one contact is in the picture, resist the urge to repeat the same generic pitch. A technical contact and a budget-focused contact are worried about different things. Understanding each person’s specific concerns and tailoring the conversation accordingly is what moves a multi-stakeholder deal forward. The same differentiator told three different ways, one technical, one operational, one financial, consistently outperforms one pitch delivered to everyone in turn. On larger deals, the win-rate lift from multi-threading is substantial. Gong’s analysis found that multi-threading increases win rates by about 130% on deals over $50,000. On deals under $50,000, the effect is smaller but still present. The higher the ACV, the more a second and third contact in the account is worth building. How This Shows Up in SFI Programs Multi-stakeholder navigation is built into how SFI structures every B2B outsourced sales program. The S.O.L.D.™ Study phase maps the likely buying structure for the client’s ICP before a first call goes out. Inside sales professionals open the account and surface the committee. Outside sales executives then develop the wider stakeholder relationships that carry a deal to close. In the IT services engagement (33 appointments, 77 MQLs in six months, exceeding the client’s goal), the campaign was designed from the start to reach multiple functions, not just the most senior title. That structure is what produced qualified pipeline rather than single-threaded activity. The Bottom Line Finding “the” decision maker is the wrong goal in most modern B2B sales. The better goal is mapping the real group of people involved and reaching the relevant ones directly, rather than hoping one contact relays everything accurately. That shift, more than any single research tactic, is what separates sales teams that consistently avoid late-stage surprises from ones that do not. The committee has 13 people. Act accordingly. If you want to talk through how SFI structures multi-stakeholder outreach for a specific program, contact us or call (866) 840-8305.
