Buying committee map template

Make one copy for each account you plan to work. Start by deciding which roles this account needs: at a small company one person may hold three roles, while an enterprise deal can need all six. Fill in the people you can find, each with a source and a date, and leave a role blank rather than guessing.

The map is a working document. Update it when someone changes jobs, when a new leader arrives, or when a reply tells you who really owns the problem. A departure is itself a buying signal: the person who left may buy again elsewhere, and their replacement may review the budget.

These six roles follow the model in our guide to the B2B buying committee. Not every account has all six, and one person can hold two roles: at a 40-person company the founder is often both decision maker and economic buyer. Forrester’s State of Business Buying 2024 found that an average of 13 people inside an organization are involved in a purchase, so the map does not try to list everyone. It names the few roles that decide and move the deal, and the person in each.

Copy both tables into a spreadsheet or document. The header sits above the map so each copy stands on its own. Use one row per role, and add rows if two people share a role.

Three columns do most of the work. Need says whether the role must be found before outreach starts. Confirmed in role says whether a recent, dated source shows the person still holds the job. Contact order turns the map into a plan: who hears from you first, and who hears later with a specific reason. Fill the source column for every name; a person with no source is a guess.

• Name and exact title, as the company or the person writes it.
• A source and its date, such as a leadership page, press release, filing, conference listing or professional profile. Prefer sources from the last 12 months.
• Confirmed in role: yes if a recent, dated source shows the person in the job; named only if you have a name without that confirmation.
• What they care about: the problem, metric or risk this role is judged on, in one sentence.
• Need: required, if the role exists, or nice to have, set once per segment.
• Contact order and channel, decided by your outreach rules.
• Status: not contacted, contacted, replied, meeting, or not a fit.
• Relationships worth knowing: who reports to whom, who joined together, who came from one of your customers.

A filled-in map for a fictional mid-sized US distributor being sold warehouse software. The company, people and sources are invented to show the format.

The account meets its minimum: the decision maker and the champion are both confirmed. Outreach starts with the champion, who owns the problem, then the evaluator. The COO hears from you third, with a specific reason tied to the announcement, and finance only once the project is real. The entry point is blank, which is fine for a nice-to-have role in this segment.

Set the minimum per segment, not per account, so the same rule applies everywhere. Small companies often need only the decision maker, because the founder decides and holds the budget. Mid-market deals usually need the decision maker and a champion. Enterprise deals add the economic buyer and at least one evaluator, because procurement and security reviews are predictable. If an account cannot reach its minimum, hold it rather than writing to whoever you found. A single contact with no champion behind them usually stalls. Review the minimums after a quarter, once you can see which roles were present in the deals you won.

People move more often than companies change their plans, so a committee map goes stale faster than an account list. A map that was right in spring can point at three people who have left by fall. A few habits keep it useful.

• Re-check every confirmed person before a new round of outreach, and at least once a quarter.
• Treat a departure as a signal. Follow the person to their new company, and find out who replaced them.
• Add people as replies come in. A reply that says “not me, talk to my colleague” is a map update.
• Record why each person holds their role, and the date you last checked.
• Retire the map when the account is disqualified, and keep the reason.

In SalesOne, a map is built for every qualified account. S1 deep research agents find the people who fill the six roles, each with a dated source, and your ideal customer profile sets which roles an account needs. Reach, meaning how much of the committee was found, is 15% of each account’s default score. Each person is shown with the source and date behind them, so your team can check the map before acting on it. Contact details are found only for the people your team picks, and outreach rules decide who may contact which roles. A person approves every message before it is sent. S1 agents do the homework. Your team builds the relationship.