How to identify the key decision-makers in B2B companies

Most prospects we meet on demo calls struggle with the same issue: Ensuring the names on a lead list actually belong to decision-makers so that their team’s time and budget don’t go to waste.

The challenge has two layers. First, identifying who truly holds decision-making power (a CEO versus head of department, for example). Second, uncovering reliable contact information for people who often leave little or no digital trace.

To solve this, we’ve built a proven framework that verifies every lead on your list as a genuine decision-maker, with a 98% accuracy rate. Below, you’ll find a step-by-step breakdown of our approach, along with a toolkit of free and paid resources to replicate it.

Initial determination of decision-makers based on ICP

Every project at Belkins begins with a thorough review of the client’s ideal customer profile (ICP) and a brainstorming session to refine it. This initial preresearch phase is critical for setting clear, measurable goals.

We ask clients to complete an ICP form based on their lead generation efforts and future objectives. Once the ICP is finalized for internal discussions and client calls, we evaluate whether the requested titles and industries align with the client’s offering.

At this primary stage, our two reference points are:

• Experience: Insights gathered from working with 1,000+ B2B clients across 50+ industries.
• Client data: Results and patterns from the client’s previous lead-generation efforts, supported by numbers (which industries, companies, and titles brought the most appointments).

Although every project requires tailored adjustments, here are some common refinements we make early on:

1. Expanding narrow lists: If a client insists on targeting only one title (say, chief strategy officers across all companies), our researchers might suggest broadening the scope to avoid missing potential leads or companies.
2. Narrowing broad lists: Conversely, if a client wants to target several departments (finance, marketing, operations), we often recommend focusing on the titles most relevant to their specific offering. This prevents wasted effort and ensures outreach stays personal.
3. Reconsidering decision-makers: Using both data and experience, our researchers often advise clients to prioritize alternative titles. For instance, instead of targeting CEOs at large organizations, who rarely handle vendor research directly, we might suggest reaching out to department heads or team leads who can evaluate a solution and champion it internally.

Here’s a practical example: Suppose someone wants to pitch our Belkins team a lead-verification tool. Sending a cold email straight to our CEO would likely go nowhere. CEOs focus on long-term strategy, not vendor selection. Instead, the head of research or research team lead would be the right point of contact. They could a) test the tool, b) present their findings to leadership, and c) recommend the next steps internally. This route is far more effective because a CEO is much more likely to trust a colleague’s recommendation than a cold pitch from an unknown company.

📚 Related reading: How we use clients’ ICP for lead generation campaigns

Building and verifying the final decision-making unit (DMU)

After the initial brainstorming session and analysis of past experience, we move on to competency mapping, which involves breaking down the industry landscape and setting clear priorities for target roles. This step helps conserve team resources and ensures that the roles on your lead lists genuinely belong to key decision-makers.

Decomposition is the first step in building a competency map. It involves categorizing leads across several key dimensions:

• Industry: The primary industries your target audience belongs to. This is usually the most critical category and applies to nearly all projects.
• Service or solution: The main offerings are grouped into clear categories (e.g., software development, SaaS).
• Technology: The specific technologies you use to deliver those services.

By categorizing this data, you can quickly pinpoint the decision-makers worth approaching first.

Once industries are identified, we prioritize them using three key criteria:

• Ease of sale (1–3): Evaluates how straightforward it is to sell in a given industry based on the client’s familiarity with the sector, the availability of case studies or reviews, and existing client recommendations. Rated from 1 (very difficult) to 3 (very easy).
• Sales potential (1–3): Reflects the potential profitability of projects in that industry. Rated from 1 (low-value projects) to 3 (high-value, high-revenue opportunities).
• Market growth (1–3): Determined using data from sources such as Statista, Morgan Stanley, and Gartner, based on Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR). Rated from 1 (declining market) to 3 (rapidly expanding market).

Other factors to consider during prioritization include seasonality and upcoming industry events, both of which can significantly influence the timing and focus of campaigns.

This prioritization not only shows where to focus sales efforts but also guides decision-maker mapping within each target company. For example, high-value industries with rapid growth often require reaching out to senior-level executives or strategic roles, while in less mature markets, mid-level managers or operational leads might be the key decision-makers.

📚 Related reading: Using lead scoring to identify sales-ready leads in B2B

After this fundamental job is done, we build the “decision-making unit” (or “buying committee”). This refers to the individuals within a target organization who either make purchase decisions or significantly influence them. 

Belkins’ researchers typically aim to pinpoint 2–3 key contacts within the same organization to start. This provides a strong foundation for outreach, and if initial efforts are unsuccessful, the list can be expanded to include additional relevant stakeholders.

Common decision makers by department*:

*The table of common decision-makers can serve as a reference, but every decision-making unit (DMU) varies depending on unique factors within each target company, such as company size, organizational structure, areas of responsibility, product or service focus, and internal decision-making processes.

Also, the DMU will differ depending on the company’s size.

• For mid-size and big companies (250+ employees), the focus often shifts to managers, coordinators, and specialists. These individuals are frequently responsible for communications and new ideas, usually acting as gatekeepers or initial points of contact. 
• For small companies (up to 250 employees), the strategy typically targets Director+, Head, or C-level executives. In these companies, higher-level decision-makers are often more directly involved in the operational process and actively seek new opportunities, tools, and services for their teams.

In some cases, unexpected roles turn out to be highly effective decision-makers or influential contacts. Examples include buyers in manufacturing, drivers in logistics, and even assistants to C-level executives in retail who filter communications — all drawn from real-world scenarios. These contacts can be identified through client input or internal brainstorming, informed by insights from past project performance.

Searching for decision-makers (free and paid tools)

Once the DMU is set and confirmed with a client, we move immediately to the search phase. Belkins utilizes various tools to find and verify decision-makers, including our proprietary tool. 

How to find leads with LinkedIn Sales Navigator

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is best for finding people with a strong digital presence across companies.

It allows advanced filtering by company attributes (headcount, location, industry) and role attributes (function, current job title, seniority level, years in company/position), as well as personal attributes (geography, industry, groups, school).

Another great option with LinkedIn Sales Navigator is searching for groups. First, search for groups by keywords related to industry, title, or interest. Then, join any relevant groups, keeping in mind that acceptance can take time. Researchers may also adjust their job title or company affiliation to gain access to specific groups.

Once the groups are joined, use Sales Navigator’s advanced filters to narrow down members. Filters include company size, location, industry, job function, seniority level, and current job title.

PhantomBuster is a complimentary tool that is best for exporting Sales Navigator leads after applying filters. This initial export provides LinkedIn profiles but often lacks full company details. PhantomBuster is accessible, with team leaders having paid access and research specialists using the free version (with limitations). The platform processes a maximum of 500 companies per run, so multiple runs might be necessary for larger lists.

Other ways to find decision-makers

1. Searching through event attendees ( free): LinkedIn events related to your industry can provide a list of attendees interested in solutions like yours. These people have already expressed interest in attending and could be at the decision-making stage. However, you need to register to access this list.
   

2. Reddit (free): Reddit is great for B2C lead generation, but it’s still worth exploring for B2B prospects. You never know where potential leads might be active.
   

📚 Related readings: 

• How to generate free leads for a manufacturing company
• Where and how to buy quality leads for your business

How to find contact details

1. Paid third-party tools: Contact Out, Name2Email by Reply (a 99% success rate), RocketReach (highly accurate but limited usage)
2. LinkedIn Sales Navigator: can also reveal hidden email addresses
3. Other social media (free): If no info is found on LinkedIn, check Facebook and Twitter. Try to generate emails using common formats and nicknames. Example for user Ross Moody from Belkins:
   • moody@belkins.io
   • rossmoody@belkins.io
   • ross.moody@belkins.io
   • rmoody@belkins.io
   • r.moody@belkins.io

4. Search via Google Queries (free): Use queries like: "CEO Belkins.io," "CMO Belkins.io," etc. If no results are found, the chances of locating the needed contacts are very low.
   
   

Within our team, we use Research AI to search for lead data. It’s our internal tool, available only to the Belkins team within Belkins Home. It automates information collection from the 15 best lead search platforms, including ZoomInfo, Sales Navigator, Apollo, Crunchbase, Hunter, and GetEmail. This unified tool helps in gathering the correct lead data and increases the chances of finding the needed contact data. 

Verifying the final lead list

At Belkins, leads are usually “freshly checked” immediately before being handed over to SDRs. This typically involves new batches of approximately 200 leads each being generated and verified multiple times a week.

Despite the use of paid automated tools and our own AI, every batch of leads still undergoes 100% manual cleaning and verification by researchers because automation may not always yield perfectly relevant data. We recommend doing this to address any mismatches in industry, company size, or title relevance that automated filters might miss.

The manual research involves checking the full job title (e.g., “Director of Operations” versus “Director of HR Operations”) and seniority level to ensure they match the defined criteria. Manually scraping LinkedIn profiles and the company’s website helps verify this.

Leads from companies that do not match the ICP’s size or type (e.g., small companies for an agency targeting larger enterprises, or direct owners when property managers are sought) are identified and filtered out to prevent wasting resources on unqualified prospects.

Final checklist to prove that a lead is verified enough for outreach: 

✅It has a correct, verified email

✅The seniority level fits the ICP 

✅The role within a target company is confirmed

For a final email check, we recommend using QuickEmail. It also allows you to check bulk databases by simply uploading your lists with emails in CSV format.

After the tool finishes verifying the lists, you can download the full report result in a convenient format and sort out any emails that were not verified.

If you don’t have resources for paid tools, there’s always one reliable and free option — manual email verification by sending a non-empty email from a generic Gmail account. An invalid (bounced) email often indicates that the person no longer works at the company and that the found email is unsuitable, while an “I’m not in the office” response confirms its validity.

📚 Related reading: The B2B lead qualification process we use for our clients’ campaigns

Updating and monitoring lead lists

Finding decision-makers for a project isn’t a single task but a multipronged strategy. Contract data gets outdated, the company’s personnel and roles change, and companies change their priorities.

Updating and monitoring lead lists is primarily a reactive and collaborative effort within the team. It relies heavily on ongoing communication and performance analysis rather than on a fixed, automated schedule of rechecks. This approach helps save team resources while maintaining a reliable list of leads.

The following 4 triggering factors signify that a lead list needs to be updated:

• Low campaign performance: If a marketing campaign experiences low response rates, gets numerous negative replies, or fails to meet appointment booking expectations, the team reevaluates the choice of decision-makers in the list.
• High bounce rate: A significant number of bounced emails is a key indicator that prompts the research team to investigate and reverify email addresses.
• SDR feedback: SDRs provide crucial feedback when they receive “out of office” replies or are notified that a prospect has left their company or changed roles. This information is then used to update internal documentation and lead lists.
• Exhaustion of leads: When the available leads for a specific ICP become scarce, the team brainstorms and expands the search criteria or explores new target directions.

Suppose the reason for updates is a high bounce rate. In that case, we use our proprietary tool, Belkins Home, and email verification tools like QuickEmail to check the validity of email addresses, helping to identify invalid ones. If the email is valid, we send the reports to our deliverability team and ask them to set up domain deliverability correctly since the problem is in the sender’s email.

When the reason for the update is one of the 3 other triggers, we follow all the steps described in the previous paragraphs, starting from ICP review and competency mapping updates.

We also encourage experimentation with “non-decision-maker” titles (e.g., “buyers” in manufacturing or “drivers” in logistics) if traditional decision-makers prove ineffective, demonstrating a flexible approach to finding new successful channels.

Upgrading your lead generation

The most effective way to find decision-makers is to combine a strategic understanding of the DMU with manual research, smart tools, and continuous list refinement with feedback loops. This multifaceted approach ensures you’re targeting the right people at the right time.

Our expert is ready to walk you through this process and show how it can elevate your lead generation results. Book a call today to take the guesswork out of managing complex buying groups.

Frequently asked questions (FAQ) 

1. What defines a qualified decision-maker?
A qualified decision-maker fits your ideal customer profile (ICP) and either has the authority to make purchasing decisions directly or the influence needed to champion your offering and refer it to the ultimate decision-maker within their organization.

2. Who are the key decision-makers in a company?
In small and mid-sized companies, decision-making often rests with C-level executives such as the CEO, founder, or owner. These individuals typically hold the authority to approve purchases. In larger organizations (1,000+ employees), managers are more commonly the first point of contact, since they oversee new initiatives and act as gatekeepers in decision-making.
Beyond broad titles, what constitutes the right decision-maker usually depends on the service or industry. They may sit in IT, finance, operations, marketing, digital strategy, innovation, or supply chains. When the ultimate decision-maker isn’t obvious, a referral approach works well: Connect with the most relevant contact — say, a Head of Research — who can assess your solution internally and then escalate it to the executive level.

3. What is the best free tool to find decision-makers?
Some of the most effective free options are LinkedIn’s basic search, company websites, and Google.
With a standard LinkedIn account, you can look up people, view their profiles, and gauge their roles, seniority, and company ties. You can also filter by LinkedIn Groups, though more advanced targeting requires a Sales Navigator subscription. Company websites remain a primary source of reliable information. Pages like Team, About Us, and Leadership often list executives and department heads directly.
Google is the most flexible of the three. With the right search strings — for example, [company name] CEO, [company site] team, or [company name] + owner — you can surface articles, press releases, or directory entries that reveal who holds the reins.

4. How do I get past gatekeepers to reach a decision-maker?
A proven tactic is the name-dropping approach. Reaching out to C-level executives directly rarely works — their inboxes are overflowing, and your message will likely get buried. A smarter move is to email the person in their organization who’s the closest fit for your solution, even if they’re not the final decision-maker.
Your aim is to have this contact evaluate your offering, share their assessment internally, and then introduce you to the executive. A CEO is far more likely to engage when a trusted colleague makes the referral than when your pitch arrives as a cold email.