How to Find the Real Decision Maker
- No invented stats
- Written for UK readers
- 6 min read
- Published 27 September 2026
"Are you the decision maker?" is a question that reliably produces the wrong answer. Ask someone if they have power and many will say yes, partly out of pride and partly because they genuinely believe it until the moment they try to spend the money. The job title on LinkedIn tells you less than you'd hope, too — plenty of directors can't approve £5,000 without a conversation, and plenty of office managers can.
What you want isn't a person. It's a map of the process. Get that and the person falls out of it.
Ask about the process, not the authority
Process questions are unthreatening. They imply competence on your part and cost your contact nothing to answer honestly.
"Say we get to a point in a few weeks where you're happy this is the right thing — what happens next on your side? Does it need a sign-off, does it go through procurement, is there a meeting it has to be tabled at?"
Follow up on whatever you hear:
- "Who's usually in that meeting?"
- "Is there a spend level where it needs someone else's name on it?"
- "Who'd be responsible for the budget it comes out of?"
- "Is there anyone who could say no to this, even if you and I both think it's right?"
That final question is the most revealing and the least asked. Blockers are different from approvers: an IT lead with security concerns, a finance manager protecting a cost line, or an operations head who doesn't want the disruption can all kill a deal without ever being formally in the decision.
The four roles to identify
In any deal above trivial size, several roles exist. They may be one person in a small firm or six people in a large one.
- The user — lives with the problem daily, feels the pain most, usually has the least budget authority.
- The economic buyer — can release the money. Often cares about very different things: risk, payback, whether this creates work for them.
- The technical or compliance gate — IT, data protection, health and safety, insurance. Can't say yes, can absolutely say no.
- The influencer — no formal role, informally trusted. The person the boss asks "what do you reckon?" Frequently invisible until they scupper you.
You don't need to meet all of them. You do need to know they exist and know what each one cares about, because your contact will have to sell to them without you. The MEDDIC framework treats this as core — see MEDDIC explained for small sales teams for the strict version.
Getting to the person above your contact
This is the delicate part. Going over someone's head damages the relationship and often the deal. Going through them, with their agreement, usually works.
Make it their idea and give them a reason that serves their interests:
"It'd be useful to get fifteen minutes with Sarah at some point — not to re-pitch, but so she can ask me the finance questions directly rather than you having to relay my answers. In my experience these things stall when the person signing hasn't heard it first-hand. Would that help you, or would you rather take it to her yourself?"
Three things make this land. You've framed the meeting as short and specific. You've explained why it reduces risk for them. And you've offered the alternative, which means they don't feel steamrollered — and if they choose to take it themselves, you've learned they're protective of the relationship, which is useful information.
If they do take it themselves, arm them properly: a one-page summary in their language, the two or three numbers that matter, and an honest note on the likely objections. Your contact is presenting to a sceptical room without you, which is the real reason deals are lost at this stage.
When your contact resists
Resistance to an introduction is information. The common reasons, and what to do:
- They're protecting their position. They want to own the project. Reassure them explicitly that it stays theirs, and make them look good in every communication.
- They don't have the access they implied. Now you know the deal is weaker than it looked. Consider whether there's a second route in.
- The senior person isn't bought in at all. Your contact is avoiding a conversation they expect to lose. This is a common reason, and the most serious.
- It's genuinely too early. Fair enough — agree what has to be true before that meeting happens, and put a date on it.
Ask directly rather than guessing: "Is there a reason it'd be awkward to get her involved at this stage? I'd rather work with how things are than push you into something unhelpful."
Doing your homework first
Spend ten minutes establishing the likely structure first. Companies House gives you directors and, for small companies, a sense of scale from the accounts. The website and LinkedIn give you the org shape. If a business has a finance director, a purchase of any size probably touches them.
This isn't about arriving with a chart; it's about asking better questions. "I noticed you've got a group structure — does spend like this get decided at site level or centrally?" beats "who decides?" and signals you've paid attention. See the two-minute pre-call research routine.
Starting higher in the first place
The easiest way to find the decision maker is to open with them. A senior person will often delegate downwards — "speak to Tom, he handles this" — and you arrive with implicit sponsorship from above, which is worth far more than the same conversation started from the bottom.
The trade-off is real: senior people are harder to reach, less patient and less interested in product detail. If you go high, lead with the business outcome and keep it short. If your outreach lands with the user instead, plan for the upward journey from the start rather than treating it as a surprise at proposal stage. Reaching senior people also means dealing with gatekeepers.
Procurement is not the decision maker
A common late-stage confusion. When a deal reaches procurement, the buying decision has usually already been made by someone else; procurement's job is terms, risk and price. Treating a procurement contact as the person to persuade wastes effort and can cost you margin, because you'll start selling value to someone whose job is to extract concessions. More on that dynamic in dealing with procurement in B2B deals.
When to stop
Disqualify, or at least de-prioritise, when:
- You've asked twice for access to the approver and been deflected both times
- Your contact can't describe the approval route at all, and can't find out
- The economic buyer is known to be opposed and your contact has no plan for that
- Everyone you can reach is enthusiastic and nobody can spend anything
The last one is the classic wasted quarter: a deal full of goodwill and devoid of authority. Three meetings with people who can't buy isn't progress, it's socialising. Check it against the other signals in how to spot a deal that's never going to close.
A note on very small businesses
None of this applies below roughly ten employees, where the owner decides everything, often on the spot, and elaborate questions about the decision process make you sound like you've been on a course. There, the questions are "is this you, or is there someone else?" and "when would you want it working by?" Match the process to the buyer, not to the framework.
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