How to find the decision-makers in a company as a B2B salesperson

Blog · Partner: POLISH YELLOW PAGES® · since 1991

A post from the POLISH YELLOW PAGES® blog (formerly DATABOT.PL), originally published on 10.11.2022. Some information (tools, prices, regulations) may have changed since then.

This may sound familiar: you are having a really nice conversation with a prospect, you hit it off straight away, and your product clearly solves their pain point. But then comes the sentence: “Well, I think the solution is great! But first I need to talk to the Head of Sales. He manages our budget.” 

Isn’t that annoying? Well, for you it is not only a waste of time but also a serious matter economically – after all, you spent valuable time and energy on a conversation you may need to have again. Only next time, hopefully, you will talk to the right contact, i.e. the decision-maker. 

Let’s find out how to find the decision-makers in a company and the important contacts for your B2B business.

What defines decision-makers in a company?

If the situation described above sounds familiar, don’t worry. On the contrary! At least you then know who the decision-maker in the company is and can carry on. For the future, you can set the following rule: before your first sales conversion in B2B, always clarify who the decision-maker in the company is! 

Decision-makers in a company usually have specific rights and more power than other employees. You could say the right contact in a company is the person who approves the budget for your product. Or at least someone who usually approves projects and takes care of releasing them. 

Your contact may be, for example, the user of the product, but the decision-maker in the company is still the one who ultimately gives you a “yes” or “no” on the deal. 

In this article we would like to give you some tips on how to find the decision-maker in a company as well as the relevant contacts. We will also show you some exciting tools that help you identify the right contact and decision-maker with ease! Let’s go.

Find B2B decision-makers at the push of a button — get the right data at your fingrtips

Find decision-makers and contacts at the companies that really matter to your business. With the DataBot employee database you always have the latest information on more than 40 million contacts from the Germany-Austria-Switzerland region, the UK and the EU.

LEARN MORE

Before you start searching at random, you should ask yourself: Whom do I want to talk to first? Who knows the answers to my questions? If you sell a marketing automation tool … does talking to the head of HR make sense? Or an IT intern? Not really. If you have already defined your Ideal Customer Profile and your Buyer Persona, you usually know whom to approach in order to close the deal as quickly as possible.

Even if decision-making authority in companies is not always distributed according to a standard organisational principle, you can usually assume a basic structure. That means: if your contact is a team leader in the sales department, the decision-maker may well be the head of sales.

In the first step, therefore, you need to clarify who is responsible for buying your solution. First identify the relevant departments and people responsible, and then you can place your offer with the right contact.

Remember: all roads lead to Rome. There are many ways to identify a decision-maker in a company or the right contact. Let’s look at some of the options:

Find contacts with DataBot

The easiest way to find contacts and decision-makers is DataBot. Sales Intelligence DataBot combines various research methods and gives access to many online sources with a single search query. A crawler searches all available public sources for sales-related company information and thus provides valuable information about the responsible employees at prospective companies.

Unlike your own searches online, which are often time-consuming and fruitless, Databot collects B2B data from various sources and compiles it for you clearly. The tool gives access to the names of contact persons in companies and decision-makers – even with the relevant contact details for an easy approach!

You can narrow the results further with selected filters — for example by department, hierarchy or job title. In addition, Databot always shows the sources of individual pieces of information, so you can do further research.

The time you save by using Databot, will in the long run translate into your sales results. By shortening the research phase you can have more conversations in the same time. In addition, the quality of Databot’s data increases your success rate. What’s more, all B2B data from Databot on decision-makers and important contacts is fully compliant with the GDPR and in line with the promise of True Compliance !

What’s more, their DataBot sales intelligence platform is not limited to Germany but provides exciting insight into contacts and decision-makers from all over Europe!

Calling the switchboard

In most cases you don’t always get the direct phone number of employees or certain departments straight away. Many companies use a central number for incoming calls and forward them to the responsible employees. But how can you make sure they put you through to the right person, i.e. the decision-maker?

It is common for companies to have quite a restrictive corporate policy here and to use the central number as a kind of protective wall to filter spam calls. Overcoming this kind of isolation often requires a lot of effort and persuasion on your part.

If you succeed and are put through to an employee in the right department, you have to overcome another obstacle. Whoever answers the phone must be able and willing to answer your questions about where responsibility and decision-making power lie – and often, unfortunately, you cannot reach the relevant decision-maker directly.

Research via Google and other search engines

The internet is probably the most important research source in B2B sales, and Google is the preferred search engine. Whatever has been written about a company online – you will find it there! Of course, you can use the internet to look for decision-makers and contacts in companies.

Possible search terms to find the right contacts are:

1. Company name,
2. Location (if the company name is not particularly unique or there are branches in different locations, the location is a must),
3. The job title under which you can assume the relevant contact or decision-maker.

The result you are looking for, in turn, can be found in various sources: in company news, on its website, in publicly available business directories and even on social media. However, the results have several things in common: they are only as accurate as the search terms used, they are often hidden among a large number of worthless entries, and compiling them takes disproportionate effort.

Company websites as another source of information

The most reliable information about a company can usually be found on its website. However, the quality of company information available online can vary greatly depending on whether or not the company maintains its online presence.

Some companies limit their website to a kind of virtual business card containing only basic contact information. Others run extensive corporate websites that even provide insight into the staff structure and list individual contacts in the company.

Often on the “About us” or “Company” page you will find the right contact persons and decision-makers for your enquiry. So how about visiting the company’s website next time?

Research on business networks

Whether as part of your communication strategy, as a basis for exchanging ideas with other experts or as an investment in your own professional future: business networks are a must in today’s business world! About 20.7 million people in German-speaking countries use XING, and about 18 million have a LinkedIn profile (source: Statista).

These are of course job seekers, as well as freelancers and the self-employed. But some users are also employees at companies that are your potential next customers! For this reason, business networks should be an essential source of information for you.

As a skilled salesperson you use LinkedIn and Xing not only to find new contacts: decision-makers’ profiles, for example, provide a lot of important information you can use to personalise your marketing and outreach strategies. For example, a recent post or comment by a decision-maker can be used perfectly as a conversation starter. One thing is certain: as a sales rep or manager you should definitely include social selling in your portfolio.

The drawbacks of manual research for contacts and decision-makers

Each of the search methods above has advantages and disadvantages. It is often pure luck to find the right contact or decision-maker in B2Bstraight away. Reasonably complete and reliable information is usually only provided by combining different media. One source gives information about the responsible department, another names a specific contact, and yet another verifies it and finally provides the necessary contact details. But do you really want to spend your time manually looking for a needle in a haystack?

If you already have experience in B2B sales, you surely know that in most cases the preparatory work takes the most effort. This is where diligence often pays off! Effective research is therefore a basic condition for overall sales effectiveness.

That is why we can only recommend Sales Intelligence for finding the right contacts and, most importantly, decision-makers! With a tool such as DataBot , you will not only find the right contacts and decision-makers in just a few clicks, but you will also get all the useful information about the company while you’re there. Another plus: DataBot is based on artificial intelligence, which provides useful features. For example, you can use sales trigger events to find the right conversation starter. Or use the “Find similar companies” feature, which provides additional relevant target companies from your ICP.

Achieve maximum effectiveness in finding contacts and decision-makers in B2B with DataBot!

Find B2B decision-makers at the push of a button — get the right data at your fingertips

Find decision-makers and contacts at the companies that really matter to your business. With the DataBot employee database you always have the latest information on more than 40 million contacts from the Germany-Austria-Switzerland region, the UK and the EU.

LEARN MORE

Summary:

how to find contacts and decision-makers at the push of a button? One thing is certain:

Cold calling by phone is and remains the preferred sales method for many companies in B2B. A personal conversation with a prospect, even if not face to face, is the best start to building a relationship. You can respond spontaneously and directly to your counterpart’s needs and pain points and get immediate feedback on your product. Unlike social selling, for example, where your counterpart may even ignore you completely.

A basic condition for sales success in B2B is, in addition to thorough preparation and the right conversation techniques, choosing the right contact in the company. If you approach the wrong person, even the most experienced salesperson will not reach an agreement. This means: look for the right contacts and decision-makers in advance so you don’t waste time! Identifying the decision-makers in a company before getting in touch should be one of your priorities!

As you have noticed, manually searching for the right contacts and decision-makers is time-consuming and exhausting, despite the many freely available media. With Sales Intelligencetools such as DataBot , every salesperson in your team has access to automatically generated research results from various sources. A few clicks are enough to get all the information you need to win prospects. So what are you waiting for?

Tags: B2B sales, B2B databases, B2B database contacts, B2B database decision-makers, Sales, B2B management

Mariusz Biniak – creator of the POLISH YELLOW PAGES® brand (formerly DATABOT.PL) and author of a blog on B2B sales. Disclosure: the author is connected with the publisher of THE BUSINESS TIME.

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Source

• POLISH YELLOW PAGES® (databot.pl) – original blog post

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