Who really makes B2B buying decisions? Find the right contact first

A lot of prospecting fails without the message being at fault. You wrote to someone who was interested, sometimes you even got a meeting, but that person didn’t decide. A client summed it up for us in one sentence, about meetings that led nowhere: “They’re people who are interested, but they’re not the ones who make the decision.”

Finding the right contact before you write avoids that waste. Here is how to think it through.

Why isn’t your most enthusiastic contact always the decision-maker?

Because enthusiasm and decision-making power don’t necessarily go together. The person who replies fastest is often the one with the time, the curiosity, or the day-to-day problem. That isn’t always the one who holds the budget.

In a mid-sized or large company, buying is a group effort. According to Gartner, a complex B2B purchase typically involves 6 to 10 decision-makers, each arriving with information they have gathered on their own (Gartner, The B2B Buying Journey, study published in 2019). Each of them can also say no, sometimes without ever having spoken to you.

That is the most common cause of “nice” meetings that go nowhere: a real conversation, with someone who won’t be able to buy.

Which roles make up a buying committee?

Job titles vary from one company to the next, but you almost always find the same roles.

Role	What they look at	What to bring them	When they come in
User, operational staff	The day-to-day problem, ease of use	A concrete gain in their work	From the start, often where the need comes from
Department head (sales, production, HR, marketing)	Their department’s results	An effect on their objectives	Owns the project internally
IT or technical lead	Integration, security, data	Precise, verifiable answers	During comparison
Finance	Total cost, return on investment	A simple, honest calculation	Before commitment
Purchasing	Supplier risk, contract, price	Guarantees, clear terms	At the end of the journey
Senior management	Alignment with strategy	A reason to act now	On major decisions

The key role is often the department head. They live the problem through their team, carry enough weight to put it on the agenda, and they are the one who will defend the solution in front of finance and senior management.

Who decides, depending on company size?

Size changes everything, and that is where a lot of targeting goes wrong.

• Freelancers and micro-businesses. The founder decides alone, or with a partner. They live the problem, hold the budget and sign. Writing to them directly is the right approach.
• SMEs with 10 to 50 people. The founder remains the final decision-maker, but a manager (sales, production, admin) can own the topic. Both are good entry points depending on what you sell.
• SMEs with 50 to 250 people. The department head becomes the natural contact. The founder only steps in on major purchases.
• Mid-sized companies and large groups. Committees, purchasing, supplier onboarding, long cycles. What we see at our own clients: these accounts need very precise targeting, several contacts and patience. Standard prospecting rarely gets a useful meeting there. In manufacturing, where you often sell to several people at the same account, see account-based lead generation for manufacturers.

How do you identify the right contact before you write?

1. Start from the problem, not the job title. Who in the company suffers from what you solve? A late delivery hits the production manager first, not the finance director.
2. Look at who is talking about it. A public signal (a post, a comment, a repeated reaction) tells you who is genuinely interested in the topic, which the org chart doesn’t. That is the point of qualifying a signal, and the list of signals that can be spotted on LinkedIn will help you know what to look for.
3. Check the role and remit. Title, team size, time in post. A “manager” with no team doesn’t carry the same weight as a site director.
4. Check the company. Size, industry, market: does it match your current clients? A good contact at a company outside your target is still outside your target.
5. Spot moments of leverage. A manager who has just started often has more freedom to change suppliers. See a job change as a buying signal.
6. Plan for the second contact. Before you even write, note who will have to approve. You’ll know what to prepare as the conversation moves forward.

What if the signal comes from the wrong person?

It happens often: a technician comments on a post about your topic, but their director decides. Two options.

The first: write to the technician anyway, with a question about their day-to-day work. They can become your internal ally. The second: use the signal as information about the company and write to the manager, talking about the topic, never about their colleague.

Illustrative example. Signal: a maintenance manager at a food processing plant comments on a post about unplanned line stoppages. The decision-maker is the site’s operations director.

Opener that falls flat: “Hi, your colleague Julian commented on a post about line breakdowns. We have a predictive maintenance solution. Can we talk about it?”

Opener that gets a reply: “On a site running round the clock, an unplanned line stoppage often costs more in lost production than in repairs. Is that something you’re watching closely this year, or is it under control?”

The flat version exposes a colleague and talks about the product. The second talks about the director’s own concern, in his own words (lost production, not “predictive maintenance”), and leaves him an easy reply.

How do you adapt the message to each role?

The same signal can open several conversations, as long as you change the angle:

• to the user, talk about their time and their frustrations;
• to the department head, about their objectives and their team;
• to finance, about the cost of doing nothing and the expected return;
• to the CEO, about the reason to act now rather than next year.

Don’t mix everything into one message. A first message that talks about ease of use, ROI and strategy all at once speaks to nobody.

How do you get from the right contact to a meeting?

Once the conversation is under way, three simple moves make the difference:

1. Qualify without interrogating. Ask naturally who else would be involved in a decision of this kind.
2. Suggest a short conversation, with a reason. “Twenty minutes to see how other sites have solved this” beats a “45-minute demo”.
3. Give them what they need to convince people internally. A one-page document, clear and with figures, that they can forward without rewriting it.

That is also the logic the MeetMagnet AI follows: we only keep a prospect spotted on LinkedIn if their role and company match a real buyer, then the opener is written for them, from their signal. Because a meeting is only worth something if it’s with someone who can say yes. If your messages reach the right people but get no reply, the problem lies elsewhere: read why prospects don’t reply.