Who are you actually selling to in B2B? The 2026 buying committee study

In almost 10 years of assisting over 1,000 clients with client acquisition, one truth remains unchanged: Sales and marketing leaders are wasting time on the wrong contacts. The conventional “always sell to the C-suite” playbook falls apart when you look at the data: CEO involvement actually declines as company size increases, while technical buyers become more dominant. The bigger the target company, the lower in the org chart the real decision-maker sits.

Also, the size of the company you’re selling to plays a huge role in which titles actually matter — not industry, and certainly not the generic persona templates floating around LinkedIn.

This research analyzed real ICP submissions from B2B companies across the software, professional services, healthcare, finance, and manufacturing sectors. We extracted 9,756 individual decision-maker title mentions, normalized them into standardized categories, and cross-referenced them against target company size, industry vertical, and buying committee composition patterns.

Key findings: What this data reveals about B2B buying committees

1. The bigger the target company, the lower in the org chart the decision-maker sits. The CEO appears in 33.8% of SMB-focused buying processes but drops to 28.7% in enterprise buying processes. Meanwhile, CTO involvement climbs from 65.4% (SMB) to 77.1% (Enterprise).
2. Buying committee size grows modestly with company scale. SMB-focused sellers list an average of 4.6 decision-maker titles per deal. Mid-market companies target 5.6 contacts. Enterprise sellers plan for 6.0 stakeholders, with 20.7% listing 6–8 titles and 14.2% naming 9 or more.
3. Industry dictates functional buyer concentration more than company size. Marketing/Advertising firms prioritize CMO 54.5% of the time — the only industry where a functional executive rivals the CTO. Healthcare and Manufacturing show Manager involvement at 46.9% and 50.6%, reflecting decentralized decision-making. Financial Services is the only vertical where the CEO (51.9%) outranks the CTO (43.0%). No universal buyer exists across verticals.
4. New executive roles are reshaping buying authority. Chief Digital Officer (3.7%), Chief Customer Officer (3.6%), CISO (3.5%), and Chief Revenue Officer (2.2%) appear in buying committees. These emerging titles represent new entry points for vendors selling digital transformation, customer retention, security, and revenue operations tools.

How does the size of the buying committee change with the target company’s size?

When we analyzed how many decision-maker titles companies listed in their ICP forms, a clear pattern emerged: the larger the target account, the more stakeholders you’re navigating.

SMB committees are larger than expected: 4–5 contacts typical

• 45.2% of companies targeting SMB accounts (<200 employees) list 1–3 decision-maker titles. But 30.8% list 4–5 contacts, and another 24% list 6 or more.
• Average committee size: 4.6 titles

This challenges the assumption that SMB deals involve just the CEO and maybe one other person. But even small companies have multiple stakeholders who influence purchasing decisions.

The CEO controls budget, but the CTO evaluates technical fit, the VP of Sales cares about integration with existing tools, and the Operations Manager worries about implementation bandwidth.

Mid-market adds one more layer: 5–6 contacts standard

• At mid-market scale (200–1,000 employees), 38.9% of companies list 1–3 decision-makers, while 28.2% target 4–5 titles, and 32% target more than 6 contacts.
• Average committee size: 5.6 titles

The committee expands as functional specialization kicks in. Marketing reports to a dedicated CMO, not the CEO. IT has its own budget and a CIO or VP of IT calling the shots. Finance, operations, and product each have their own leadership.

Sales teams selling to mid-market accounts can no longer rely on a single champion. They need to multi-thread across functions.

Enterprise scales to 6 contacts on average

• For enterprise accounts (1,000+ employees), 58.2% of companies list 4 or more decision-maker titles. 20.7% target 6–8 people, and 14.2% plan to engage with 9+ stakeholders.
• Average committee size: 6.0 titles

41.8% still list only 1–3 contacts, suggesting that even in an enterprise, some deals can be navigated with a focused approach to the right stakeholders.

At this scale, procurement gets involved. Legal reviews contracts. IT Security needs to vet your platform. The economic buyer (CFO, COO) signs off, but the technical buyer (CIO, VP Engineering) controls the evaluation process.

Enterprise sales isn’t about finding the decision-maker. It’s about mapping a network of influencers, evaluators, champions, and final approvers — then building relationships and consensus with them.

What this means for sales strategy

The growth in committee size from SMB to enterprise is real but modest: 4.6 → 5.6 → 6.0 average contacts. We are convinced that this means two things:

1. Even SMB deals involve more stakeholders than most sales teams assume. Reaching out only to the CEO and one functional lead (2 people) undershoots the actual committee size by more than half. You need 3–5 contacts even for small-sized deals.
2. Enterprise deals aren’t dramatically larger than mid-market. The jump from 5.6 to 6.0 contacts is incremental, not exponential. The difference isn’t volume but complexity. Enterprise adds gatekeepers (Legal, Procurement, IT Security) who can kill deals but rarely champion them.

When does the CEO actually matter in B2B sales?

The data shows that CEO involvement peaks in mid-sized deals and declines as company size increases. If you’re selling to enterprise accounts and leading with CEO outreach, you’re likely wasting time.

SMB: The CEO owns the decision (33.8% mention rate)

In companies with fewer than 200 employees, the CEO isn’t just involved in the buying process — they often are the buying process.

33.8% of companies targeting SMB accounts list the CEO or Founder as a decision-maker, making it the second-most-mentioned title after CTO (65.4%).

Why? Smaller companies usually centralize budget authority. The CEO approves software purchases, hires agencies, and signs off on new tools. Even when a functional lead, such as  VP of Sales or Marketing Manager, champions a vendor, the CEO retains final approval.

So if you’re selling to a 50-person startup, ignoring the CEO is a mistake.

Mid-market: The CEO becomes an influencer, not an evaluator (38.3% mention rate)

At mid-market scale (200–1,000 employees), CEO mentions actually increase slightly to 38.3%, but the role shifts.

Mid-market CEOs don’t evaluate vendors directly. They set strategic priorities (“We need to improve lead quality”) and delegate the selection process to functional executives such as CMO, CTO, and VP of Sales.

The CEO’s involvement at this stage is more about final approval than active evaluation. They’ll ask questions like “What’s the ROI?” and “Why this vendor over the alternatives?” but they won’t sit through product demos or compare feature sets.

Sales teams selling to mid-market companies should brief the CEO through their champion, rather than sell to them directly.

Enterprise: The CEO disappears from the process (28.7% mention rate)

In enterprise accounts (1,000+ employees), the CEO mentions drop to 28.7%. It’s the lowest rate across all company sizes.

Why? At this scale, buying decisions live 2–3 layers below the C-suite. The VP of IT selects the vendor, the CIO approves the technical evaluation, and the CFO signs the contract. The CEO only sees the deal if it’s a multi-million-dollar strategic partnership.

Even when the CEO is technically involved as the final signatory on a contract, they’re not a target for outreach. Neither will you get them on a discovery call, nor email them directly. And if you try, you’ll probably get lost in a pile of endless inbox messages.

Enterprise sales reps who obsess over getting to the CEO are solving the wrong problem. The CEO isn’t blocking your deal. The Director of IT Security, who hasn’t responded to your compliance questionnaire, is.

📚 Relevant reading: How to sell to C-level in B2B: Best tactics and approaches

So when should you target the CEO?

We recommend using this decision framework:

• Selling to SMB? CEO outreach is essential. They control spending and make final decisions.
• Selling to mid-market? The CEO is a late-stage influencer. Focus on functional execs first, then brief the CEO through your champion.

Which titles dominate at different company size tiers?

Company size doesn’t just change how many people are involved in a purchase. It completely reshapes which titles matter.

The data shows distinct buyer profiles for SMB, mid-market, and enterprise segments. Here’s who actually shows up in the buying process at each level.

SMB: Generalists and owner-operators

When selling to small companies, you’re targeting people who wear multiple hats. Titles like VP of Sales or Head of Marketing often mean “the person who does sales” or “the one managing the website.”

Top 5 decision-makers in SMB deals:

1. CTO (65.4%) — Even small companies need technical leadership, and the CTO often doubles as the entire IT department.
2. CEO (33.8%) — The ultimate budget owner and decision-maker.
3. Manager (Other) (31.7%) — A catch-all for operational roles that don’t fit neat categories.
4. Owner (16.8%) — Common in founder-led businesses where the owner still runs day-to-day operations.
5. CMO (15.4%) — Marketing leadership, though often a single person managing all campaigns.

What’s noticeably absent? Deep specialization. You won’t see many VP of Revenue Operations or Director of Customer Success titles at this scale. Roles are broad, and decision-making is centralized.

Sales strategy for SMB: Plan for 4–5 contacts. Target the CEO (budget owner), CTO (technical evaluator), and 2–3 functional leads depending on your category.

Mid-market: Functional specialists emerge

At mid-market scale, companies have grown large enough to hire dedicated leaders for each business function. The CEO no longer approves every vendor. Budget authority shifts to VPs and Directors who own specific domains.

Top 5 decision-makers in mid-market deals:

1. CTO (70.9%) — Still the most frequently named technical buyer
2. CEO (38.3%) — Involved, but often as a final approver rather than active evaluator
3. Manager (Other) (28.4%) — Still present, but declining in importance as specialized roles grow
4. CFO (18.1%) — Budget owner for larger purchases; involved when deals exceed $50K+
5. VP (Other) (17.9%) — Generic VP-level roles covering sales, marketing, operations

What’s changing? Decision-making becomes more distributed. The CTO might evaluate a tool, but the CFO has to approve the budget. The CMO champions a platform, but the CEO wants to see ROI projections first.

Sales strategy for mid-market: Plan for 5–6 contacts. You need a technical champion (CTO, VP Engineering), an economic buyer (CFO, COO), and functional executives (CMO, VP of Sales) who will own the tool post-purchase. The committee is larger than SMB, but growth is modest (average: 4.6 → 5.6).

Enterprise: Committees, layers, and specialists

Enterprise buying isn’t a process — it’s a negotiation across departments. Titles proliferate. Every function has its own hierarchy. And the people you need to convince are often 2–3 levels removed from the C-suite.

Top 5 decision-makers in enterprise deals:

1. CTO (77.1%) — The highest mention rate across all segments, confirming that technical leadership is non-negotiable at scale.
2. Manager (Other) (30.9%) — Still surprisingly high, reflecting the reality that even in an enterprise, managers influence vendor selection.
3. CEO (28.7%) — Lowest CEO involvement across all segments.
4. CIO (20.7%) — Emerges as a distinct role from CTO at enterprise scale, often owning infrastructure and operations.
5. CFO (17.1%) — Controls budget approval, especially for 6–7 digit deals.

What’s new at enterprise scale? Specialist roles emerge that didn’t appear in SMB or mid-market top-5 lists: CIO (20.7%) becomes distinct from CTO, and roles like CISO, CHRO, and VP of Operations start appearing frequently enough to influence deal outcomes.

Sales strategy for enterprise: Accept that you’ll be navigating a committee of 6 people on average. This includes:

• Technical evaluators (CTO, CIO, VP Engineering)
• Economic buyers (CFO, COO)
• Functional owners (CMO, VP of Sales, CHRO, depending on your category)
• Gatekeepers (Procurement, Legal, IT Security)

Your sales process needs to account for multiple champions, parallel evaluation tracks, and a timeline measured in quarters, not weeks.

📚 Relevant reading: How to identify the key decision-makers in B2B companies

How do decision-makers vary by industry vertical?

Company size shapes decision-making unit structure, but industry determines which functional buying committee roles actually matter.

A CTO at a healthcare IT company has a completely different set of priorities (HIPAA compliance, clinical workflows, EHR integrations) than a CTO at a fintech startup (regulatory reporting, transaction security, API uptime).

When we segmented our data by industry, clear buyer concentration patterns emerged. Some verticals have a dominant decision-maker. Others are fragmented across multiple titles with no clear hierarchy.

Here’s what the data show for the six industries with statistically significant sample sizes (n≥60).

Software/SaaS/IT: CTO dominates, CIO close behind

Top decision-makers:

1. CTO (75.6%) — Three out of four companies selling to this vertical target the CTO.
2. CEO (35.9%) — Still involved, but not the primary technical buyer.
3. CIO (25.1%) — Distinct from CTO at larger organizations; owns infrastructure and operations.
4. Manager (Other) (23.8%) — Reflects the reality that mostly team leads purchase many SaaS tools, not executives.
5. VP (Other) (17.3%) — Generic VP-level titles covering sales, marketing, and product.

Professional Services: CEO and CTO split authority

Top decision-makers:

1. CTO (69.4%) — Even in services businesses, technical leadership matters (agencies need dev tools, consulting firms run on CRMs).
2. CEO (38.4%) — Higher than Software/SaaS, reflecting a smaller average company size in this vertical.
3. Manager (Other) (24.9%) — Team-level tools (project management, time tracking) often get approved by managers.
4. COO (21.4%) — Owns operations, process efficiency, and workflow tools.
5. CMO (19.2%) — Services businesses invest heavily in marketing to drive leads.

Marketing/Advertising: CMO concentration is extreme

Top decision-makers:

1. CTO (71.3%) — Still tops the list (marketing agencies run on MarTech).
2. CMO (54.5%) — Highest CMO concentration of any vertical. If you’re selling marketing tools, the CMO is the buyer.
3. CEO (31.7%) — Involved but secondary to the CMO.
4. Marketing Manager (24%) — High compared to other industries; reflects hands-on tool selection at the team level.
5. VP of Marketing (17%) — Decision-maker at mid-size agencies.

Healthcare: COO and clinical leadership matter more than tech

Top decision-makers:

1. CTO (60.5%) — Lower than most verticals; reflects that healthcare IT buying is heavily regulated and clinically driven
2. Manager (Other) (46.9%) — Extremely high; many healthcare tools are selected by department managers, not the C-suite
3. CEO (28.4%) — Relatively low involvement
4. COO (22.2%) — Owns operational workflows and patient care processes
5. VP (Other) (17.3%) — Covers clinical operations, patient services, and administrative functions

📚 Relevant reading: Ideal customer profile (ICP) example for B2B healthcare companies

Financial Services: CFO and compliance dominate

Top decision-makers:

1. CEO (51.9%) — Highest CEO involvement of any vertical.
2. CFO (44.3%) — Extremely high concentration; financial services companies buy tools that touch money, so the CFO controls the process.
3. CTO (43.0%) — Still important, but unusually low compared to other industries.
4. Owner (27.8%) — Reflects a high concentration of small financial advisory firms and wealth management practices.
5. Controller (15.2%) — Unique to this vertical; handles accounting systems and financial reporting tools.

Manufacturing: Operations and production leadership lead

Top decision-makers:

1. CTO (59.7%) — Manufacturing is increasingly software-driven (ERP, supply chain, IoT)
2. Manager (Other) (50.6%) — Highest manager concentration of any industry; reflects decentralized decision-making across plants and production lines
3. CEO (22.1%) — Relatively low C-suite involvement
4. Owner (16.9%) — Common in family-owned manufacturing businesses
5. COO (10.4%) — Owns production efficiency and supply chain

📚 Relevant reading: 12 reliable sources to find manufacturing sales leads

The takeaway: One size does not fit all

Generic buyer personas fail because industries have fundamentally different buying patterns:

• Software and marketing? CTO and CMO are your primary targets.
• Healthcare? You’re selling to operational managers and clinical leads, not just IT.
• Financial services? The CFO controls the process, and technical fit is secondary to financial and regulatory compliance.
• Manufacturing? Decentralized decision-making means you need champions at the plant or department level, not just C-suite approval.

Your ICP shouldn’t just define company size and revenue. It should specify which functional buyer you’re targeting based on the industry vertical you’re selling into.

Because a decision-maker in healthcare looks nothing like one in SaaS.

Which new titles are emerging in B2B buying committees?

B2B decision-makers aren’t static. New executive roles emerge as companies prioritize different strategic initiatives — digital transformation, revenue efficiency, cybersecurity, and customer retention.

Our data show several titles that now appear with enough frequency to warrant attention.

The emerging C-suite: Four new roles reshaping buying authority

Across the 1,871 companies in our dataset, four executive titles appear that barely existed in 2020:

• Chief Digital Officer (3.7%) — 69 companies mentioned CDO or VP of Digital Transformation
• Chief Customer Officer (3.6%) — 68 companies listed CCO or Chief Customer Success Officer
• Chief Information Security Officer (3.5%) — 65 companies named CISO as a decision-maker
• Chief Revenue Officer (2.2%) — 41 companies included CRO in their buying committee

What these roles signal about buying authority

The emergence of these titles reflects a fundamental shift: buying authority is fracturing.

Ten years ago, the CTO controlled most B2B software purchases. Today, the CTO might evaluate the product, but:

• The CDO owns the digital transformation strategy
• The CISO approves security and compliance
• The CCO evaluates the impact on customer retention metrics
• The CRO controls revenue operations and tech stack decisions

This means your sales process needs to account for specialists who didn’t exist in the org chart a few years ago — and who have veto power over deals even if they’re not the primary champion.

When these roles matter

Chief Digital Officer: Most common in industries undergoing tech-driven disruption (retail, healthcare, financial services, manufacturing). If you’re selling transformation-oriented solutions, the CDO is often a better entry point than the CTO.

Chief Customer Officer: Concentrated in SaaS and subscription businesses where retention drives growth. If your product impacts customer onboarding, adoption, or expansion revenue, the CCO may own the decision.

Chief Information Security Officer: Appears in enterprise deals where security, compliance, or data governance are critical. The CISO can kill your deal even if they’re not the champion — treat their involvement as a required approval stage.

Chief Revenue Officer: Emerging in high-growth B2B companies where sales, marketing, and customer success are unified under one executive. If you’re selling to the revenue organization, the CRO may own the budget that traditionally lived with the CMO or VP of Sales.

How should you structure outreach based on target company size?

Buying committee composition isn’t just academic insight — it’s a decision framework for how you run outreach, structure your sequences, and allocate SDR time.

The data shows that the number of contacts, the titles you target, and even your messaging strategy should fundamentally change based on the size of the company you’re selling into.

Here’s the short playbook.

Selling to SMB

Committee size: Plan for 4–5 stakeholders

Primary target: CEO/Founder (appears in 33.8% of buying processes)

Secondary target: CTO (65.4% mention rate — the most frequently named technical buyer)

Additional targets: 2–3 functional leads, depending on your category (CMO, VP of Sales, Operations Manager)

Why this works: Even in small companies, buying involves multiple stakeholders. The CEO controls budget, but the CTO evaluates technical fit, and functional leads care about day-to-day usability. Planning for only “CEO + one other person” underestimates the actual committee size by more than half.

What NOT to do: Don’t assume two contacts are enough. Even SMB deals involve 4–5 stakeholders on average.

Selling to mid-market

Committee size: Plan for 5–6 stakeholders

Primary target: Functional executive (CTO, CIO, CMO, CFO, depending on your product category)

Secondary target: VP/Director level who will run the evaluation

Tertiary target: CEO (final approver, but not actively involved in vendor comparison)

Why this works: Mid-market companies delegate buying authority to functional leaders. The CTO doesn’t need the CEO’s permission to evaluate dev tools. The CMO owns the marketing stack. But these executives don’t do hands-on vendor research — that’s the VP or Director’s job.

Your goal: Find the VP/Director champion, then have them pull in their exec (CTO or CMO) for final approval.

What NOT to do: Don’t lead with the CEO. If your first email goes to the CEO of a 500-person company asking for a demo, you look like you don’t understand how they buy. The CEO will forward it to the relevant VP (if you’re lucky) or ignore it entirely.

Selling to an enterprise

Committee size: Plan for 6 stakeholders on average

Primary targets: VP and Director level (they run the evaluation process)

Economic buyer: CFO or C-suite (final approval, but not day-to-day involved)

Additional required sign-offs: Legal, Procurement, IT Security  

Why this works: Enterprise buying ші a negotiation across departments. The VP of Engineering might love your product, but if IT Security flags a compliance issue, the deal stalls. If Procurement can’t get the pricing terms they want, it goes back to square one.

Your job isn’t to sell to the decision-maker. It’s to build a coalition of champions across technical, financial, legal, and operational functions — all of whom need to say “yes” for the deal to close.

What NOT to do: Don’t assume the VP who loves your product can close the deal alone. Even if they’re your champion, they still need to get IT Security approval, Procurement sign-off, and CFO budget allocation. Your sales process needs to account for these parallel approval tracks, or you’ll spend 6 months in technical validation only to lose at the contract stage.

The bottom line: Your ICP should define the sales process, not just target accounts

Most companies define their ICP as “industry + company size + revenue.”

That’s incomplete.

Your ICP should also specify:

• How many contacts you’ll target per account (4–5 for SMB, 5–6 for mid-market, 6 for enterprise).
• Which titles you’ll prioritize (CEO + CTO for SMB, functional execs for mid-market, VPs and Directors for enterprise).
• What your expected sales cycle is (2–4 weeks for SMB, 4–8 weeks for mid-market, 3–9 months or more for enterprise).
• What your follow-up cadence looks like (3–4 day intervals for SMB, 5–7 days for mid-market, 7–14 days for enterprise).

If your sales process doesn’t change based on target company size, you’re either over-complicating SMB deals or under-resourcing enterprise accounts.

The buying committee data isn’t just insight. It’s a blueprint for outreach structure.

Methodology

This research analyzed 1,871 Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) submissions collected by Belkins between January 2024 and February 2026. These submissions represent B2B companies across software, professional services, healthcare, finance, manufacturing, and other verticals seeking outbound lead generation services.

Data collection

Each ICP submission included:

• Respondent industry (the industry of the company filling out the form)
• Target client industries (the industries they sell into)
• Decision-maker titles (free-text responses listing the titles of people who typically appear as decision-makers in their target accounts)
• Target company size (employee count or revenue range for the companies they want to reach)

Data processing

Title extraction and normalization

We extracted 9,756 individual decision-maker title mentions from the free-text responses. These titles were then normalized into standardized categories to account for variations in naming conventions.

For example:

• “VP of Engineering,” “Vice President of Engineering,” “Head of Engineering” → VP of Engineering
• “Chief Technology Officer,” “CTO,” “Chief Technical Officer” → CTO
• “Marketing Manager,” “Manager of Marketing,” “Marketing Lead” → Marketing Manager

This normalization allowed us to aggregate similar titles and identify patterns that would be obscured by inconsistent terminology.

Company size categorization

Target company size was parsed from free-text responses describing employee counts or revenue ranges. We bucketed companies into three segments:

• SMB: <200 employees
• Mid-market: 200–1,000 employees
• Enterprise: 1,000+ employees

Industry grouping

Respondent industries were consolidated into major categories with a minimum threshold of n≥60 for statistical significance:

• Software/SaaS/IT (n=537)
• Professional Services (n=229)
• Marketing/Advertising (n=101)
• Healthcare (n=81)
• Financial Services (n=79)
• Manufacturing (n=77)
• Construction/Real Estate (n=51)
• HR/Staffing (n=60)
• Other (n=625)

Industries with fewer than 60 respondents were grouped into “Other” to avoid drawing statistical inferences from small sample sizes.

Analysis approach

Buying committee size

We calculated the average number of decision-maker titles listed per company, segmented by target company size (SMB, mid-market, enterprise). We also analyzed the distribution of committee sizes (1–3 titles, 4–5 titles, 6–8 titles, 9+ titles) within each segment.

Title frequency by company size

For each title category (CEO, CTO, CFO, etc.), we calculated the percentage of companies targeting each company size segment (SMB, mid-market, enterprise) that mentioned that title.

For example: “65% of companies targeting SMB accounts listed CTO as a decision-maker.”

Title frequency by industry

Similarly, we calculated the percentage of companies in each industry vertical that mentioned specific titles.

For example: “76% of Software/SaaS/IT companies listed CTO as a decision-maker.”

Cross-tabulation

We cross-referenced titles against both company size and industry to identify patterns such as:

• How CTO mentions change as the target company size increases
• Which industries show high buyer concentration (e.g., CMO in Marketing/Advertising) vs. fragmented buying committees

Limitations

• Self-reported data: The decision-maker titles reflect intended targeting, not necessarily successful outcomes. We cannot determine which title combinations led to closed deals.
• Title inflation: Job titles vary significantly across companies. A “VP of Engineering” at a 50-person startup may have different responsibilities and authority than a VP of Engineering at a 5,000-person enterprise.
• Sample bias: This dataset represents companies seeking appointment setting services from Belkins. While spanning diverse industries (manufacturing, healthcare, fintech, SaaS, agencies, software development), this sample reflects organizations that outsource lead gen rather than handle it fully in-house. Results may not apply universally to all B2B markets.

What this data does and doesn’t tell us

This data shows:

• Which titles B2B companies believe are decision-makers in their target accounts
• How buying committee size scales with the target company size
• Industry-specific patterns in buyer role concentration
• The prevalence of technical vs. economic buyer splits

This data does NOT show:

• Which title combinations actually lead to closed-won deals
• How long it takes to close deals with different committee compositions
• The relative influence of each stakeholder within a buying committee
• Geographic variations in buying committee structure

This research is descriptive (what companies target) rather than prescriptive (what companies should target). It provides a benchmark for how B2B companies currently define their buyer personas, which can inform go-to-market strategy but should be validated against each company’s own closed-won data.