How to Find Decision Makers at Any Company (B2B Guide)

By Mitchell Keller, Founder & CEO, LeadGrow. Managed 3,626+ cold email campaigns. 6.74% average reply rate. 2,230+ meetings booked in 2025.

Most teams target the wrong person

A B2B SaaS company came to us after 6 months of cold email that produced conversations but zero deals. Their emails were well written. Their deliverability was solid. Open rates above 55%. Reply rate around 3.8%.

The problem was obvious the moment we looked at their target list. Every contact was a "coordinator" or "specialist." Mid-level people who loved the product in demos but couldn't sign a purchase order.

We rebuilt the list targeting directors and VPs with direct budget authority. Same product. Same offer. Same email structure. Reply rate jumped to 11.2% and they closed their first deal within 3 weeks.

We've managed 3,626+ cold email campaigns and booked 2,230+ meetings in 2025. The single most common mistake we see is targeting champions instead of decision makers. Champions are great for internal advocacy. But if you're running outbound, you need to reach the person who can actually say yes and cut a check.

What makes someone a decision maker

A decision maker is not defined by their title. It's defined by three things:

• Budget authority. They can approve spend without escalating to someone else, or they directly control the budget line your product falls under.
• Veto power. They can kill a deal even if everyone else wants to move forward.
• Signature authority. Their name goes on the contract or purchase order.

At a 20 person startup, the CEO is usually the decision maker for everything. At a 500 person company, budget authority is distributed. The VP of Sales controls the sales tech budget. The CFO controls major expenditures. The CTO controls engineering tools.

The title alone doesn't tell you this. A "Director of Operations" at one company might control a $2M budget. At another company, that same title reports to a VP who controls the budget. You need more than a title filter to find the actual decision maker.

The buying committee (and why it matters for outbound)

Gartner's research shows the average B2B purchase involves 6 to 10 stakeholders. In our experience running campaigns, the practical number is 3 to 7 depending on deal size.

The buying committee typically looks like this:

Role	What They Do	Should You Target Them?
Budget Holder	Controls the money. Signs the contract.	Yes. Primary target.
Champion	Loves the product. Advocates internally.	Secondary. Useful after the budget holder is engaged.
Technical Evaluator	Assesses whether the product works technically.	Only if they have veto power on vendor selection.
End User	Uses the product day to day.	No. They influence but don't decide.
Blocker	Can kill the deal (legal, procurement, IT security).	No. Address them during the sales process, not outbound.
Coach	Internal contact who guides you through the org.	Sometimes. If they can connect you to the budget holder.

For cold outbound, target the budget holder first. If they're interested, they'll pull in the rest of the committee. If you start with a champion, they still have to sell your product internally to the budget holder. You're adding a step to the sales cycle that doesn't need to exist.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator: the best tool for finding decision makers

Sales Navigator gives you more data about organizational structure than any other prospecting tool. Here's how to use it specifically for finding decision makers.

Step 1: Start with the company page

Search for the target company in Sales Nav. Go to their company page and click "See all employees." This gives you the full org from Sales Nav's perspective. Sort by seniority level and you immediately see the leadership structure.

Step 2: Use the seniority filter

Sales Nav has a seniority filter with levels: Owner, CXO, VP, Director, Manager, Senior, Entry. For most B2B sales, your decision maker sits at VP or Director level. CXO for smaller companies (under 50 employees) or for large enterprise deals.

Filter to VP and Director first. If that gives you too many results, add a function filter (Sales, Marketing, Operations, Finance, IT) depending on where your product sits in the org.

Step 3: Check the "Spotlight" filter

Sales Nav's Spotlight filter shows people who recently changed jobs, posted on LinkedIn, or were mentioned in the news. Decision makers who are active on LinkedIn are easier to reach. They're more likely to see and respond to outreach because they're already engaging with the platform.

We've seen reply rates 40 to 60% higher when targeting people who posted on LinkedIn in the last 30 days versus cold contacts with no recent activity.

Step 4: Look at reporting lines

Click into individual profiles and look at how they describe their role. Decision makers tend to mention things like "overseeing," "managing budget," "leading the team," "responsible for vendor selection." Champions use language like "supporting," "coordinating," "helping evaluate."

Also check how many direct reports they have. Sales Nav shows this for some profiles. More direct reports usually means more authority.

Step 5: Map the org chart

For high value accounts (deals over $50K), manually map the org chart. Pull up all employees at Director level and above. Note who reports to whom based on title hierarchy and LinkedIn connections between employees. This takes 10 to 15 minutes per company but gives you a clear picture of where budget authority sits.

Apollo and ZoomInfo for contact data

Once you know who the decision maker is, you need their contact details. This is where data providers come in.

Apollo

Apollo's search filters let you target by title, seniority, department, and company attributes. The key filters for finding decision makers:

• Management Level: C-Suite, VP, Director
• Department: Match to your product's buyer (Sales, Marketing, Engineering, etc.)
• Title Keywords: Include "Head of," "VP," "Director," "Chief." Exclude "Assistant," "Coordinator," "Specialist."

Apollo's data is solid for North American contacts. We typically see 60 to 70% email accuracy from Apollo alone, which is why we run it as the first step in our enrichment waterfall and then cascade through Hunter, Dropcontact, and Prospeo to get total coverage above 85%. For a detailed comparison, see our Apollo vs ZoomInfo breakdown.

ZoomInfo

ZoomInfo is more expensive but has better org chart data than Apollo. Their "Org Chart" feature literally shows you the reporting structure at a company, making it trivial to identify who the budget holder is.

The downside is price. ZoomInfo's annual contracts start at $15K+ for most teams. If you're running less than 5 campaigns simultaneously, Apollo with a Clay enrichment waterfall gets you comparable data quality at a fraction of the cost.

Which to use when

Scenario	Best Tool	Why
SMB targets (under 200 employees)	Apollo + Clay waterfall	Simpler org structures. Apollo coverage is strong here.
Mid-market (200 to 2,000 employees)	Apollo + ZoomInfo org chart	Org structures get complex. ZoomInfo's hierarchy data helps.
Enterprise (2,000+ employees)	ZoomInfo + LinkedIn Sales Nav	Multiple buying committees. You need both data and manual mapping.
Budget constrained	Apollo + LinkedIn Sales Nav free/core	Gets 80% of the way there at 20% of the cost.

Org chart analysis: reading between the titles

Titles are unreliable across companies. A "Director" at a 50 person company has authority equivalent to a VP at a 500 person company. And some companies use non-standard titles entirely.

Here's how to figure out who actually holds budget authority when titles don't tell the full story.

Check who reports to the CEO

At companies under 200 employees, look at who reports directly to the CEO or founder. Those direct reports almost always have budget authority for their function. If the "Head of Growth" reports to the CEO and manages the marketing budget, they're your decision maker for marketing tools. Even if their title doesn't say "VP."

Look at hiring patterns

If a company just hired a "VP of Sales" for the first time, that person likely has a mandate and budget to build out the sales org. They're making purchasing decisions right now. This is a situation signal that makes them a high priority target.

We use Clay to monitor hiring data across our target accounts. When a company posts a leadership role we care about, that company moves to the top of our list.

Check LinkedIn activity for budget language

Decision makers often post about vendor evaluations, tool selections, or process changes they're leading. Search their recent posts for phrases like "evaluating," "implementing," "rolling out," "selected," "budget." This is free intel that confirms they have authority.

Use the "congratulations" signal

When someone gets promoted to a leadership role, their LinkedIn feed fills with congratulations. This is a strong signal that they're new in the role and likely making changes, including vendor decisions. New leaders want to put their stamp on the function. They're more open to new tools and vendors than someone who's been in the role for 5 years.

The qualifying question that sorts decision makers from influencers

Even with perfect research, you sometimes reach the wrong person. The fastest way to find out is to ask directly.

Use this question early in the conversation: "Are you typically involved in vendor evaluation and selection for tools like ours?"

Decision makers will answer directly. "Yes, I handle all vendor selections for our sales stack." Or "I'm part of the committee but the final call is our CTO's."

Influencers will either redirect you ("You should talk to Sarah, she handles that") or give a vague answer ("I can look into it"). Both responses tell you this person doesn't hold the budget.

This works in email too. We sometimes include a soft version of this in follow-up emails: "Would you be the right person to evaluate whether this fits your team's workflow, or should I connect with someone else?" This gives them a graceful exit if they're not the decision maker, and it often gets you a referral to the person who is. Our follow-up sequence guide covers how to build referral requests into your cadence.

Real examples from LeadGrow campaigns

K-12 EdTech: from coordinators to administrators

Original target: School Technology Coordinators. These people loved the product. They'd reply, take demos, and then say "I need to get budget approval from the district." The client had a 3.2% reply rate and zero closed deals from outbound.

We shifted targeting to District Administrators and Superintendents with budget authority. Same product positioning, adjusted messaging to focus on district-wide impact instead of classroom-level features. Reply rate: 12.4%. Closed 3 deals in the first quarter.

Data infrastructure SaaS: from engineers to engineering leaders

The client was targeting Senior Data Engineers. Technical people who understood the product immediately. The problem was that engineers evaluate and recommend, but they don't buy. Every deal stalled at "I'll bring this to my manager."

We moved up to VP of Engineering and Head of Data. Added a technical angle to the messaging so these leaders didn't feel like we were skipping their team. The email positioned the tool as something "your data team will thank you for evaluating." Reply rate went from 4.1% to 8.7% and the sales cycle shortened by 3 weeks because the budget holder was in the loop from day one.

Marketing agency: from marketing managers to CMOs

The client sold a content analytics platform. Their SDR team was hammering Content Marketing Managers. Good conversations, lots of demos, very few deals. The managers liked the product but couldn't justify the spend to their CMO without a business case the CMO cared about.

We targeted CMOs directly with messaging focused on proving content ROI to the board (a CMO problem, not a manager problem). Reply rate jumped from 2.9% to 7.3%. And the conversations were fundamentally different. CMOs asked about ROI and integration. Managers had asked about features and workflow.

How to build a decision maker list (step by step)

• Define your buying committee map. For your product, who holds budget? Who evaluates? Who blocks? Do this once and it applies to every campaign.
• Build an Apollo or Sales Nav search targeting the budget holder title range. Cast slightly wide. "Director" through "C-Suite" for the relevant department.
• Export to Clay and enrich. Run waterfall enrichment for email, company data, and technographics. Add a Claygent column to verify the contact's role from their LinkedIn profile or company page.
• Score by decision maker confidence. Create a score based on title (VP/C-Suite = high), reporting line (reports to CEO = high), recent activity (posted about vendor selection = high), and company size (smaller company + senior title = higher authority). Use Clay's AI scoring to automate this.
• Segment into tiers. High confidence decision makers get your primary sequence. Medium confidence gets a "right person?" qualifier email. Low confidence gets deprioritized or skipped.
• Write messaging that speaks to budget holder problems. ROI, efficiency, competitive advantage, board-level metrics. Not features, not workflow, not technical specs. Our cold email writing guide covers the full structure from opener to CTA.

Common mistakes when targeting decision makers

Mistake 1: Equating seniority with authority

A C-Suite title at a 10 person startup means something very different from C-Suite at a 5,000 person company. At the startup, the CTO probably controls a $50K tools budget. At the enterprise, the CTO has a VP of Engineering who has a Director of DevOps who actually selects tools. Match your targeting to company size.

Mistake 2: Ignoring the "new in role" signal

Someone who just became VP of Sales 2 months ago is 3x more likely to evaluate new vendors than someone who's been in the role for 4 years. New leaders want to make changes. They have a "first 90 days" mandate. Target them.

Mistake 3: Sending the same email to decision makers and influencers

Decision makers care about business outcomes: revenue, efficiency, competitive positioning. Influencers care about features, usability, and workflow. If your email talks about features, the decision maker deletes it. If your email talks about ROI, the influencer doesn't know how to respond. Different targets need different messaging.

Mistake 4: Not having a referral play

Sometimes you reach the wrong person despite your best research. Build a referral mechanism into your sequence. "If this isn't your area, who on your team handles [function]?" This turns a miss into an introduction. We get 15 to 20% of our referrals this way, and referred contacts convert at roughly 2x the rate of cold outreach.

Tools summary

Tool	Best For	Cost Range	Decision Maker Relevance
LinkedIn Sales Navigator	Org chart mapping, activity signals	$100 to $150/month	High. Best for understanding hierarchy.
Apollo	Contact data, bulk export, title filters	$49 to $119/month	Medium. Good filters but titles are imperfect.
ZoomInfo	Org chart data, intent signals	$15K+/year	High. Best structured org data.
Clay	Enrichment orchestration, AI research	$134+/month	High. Combines data from all sources.
BuiltWith / Wappalyzer	Tech stack identification	$49 to $295/month	Indirect. Shows what tools they use.