6 strategies for engaging the buying group through account-based marketing

Today’s B2B deals aren’t made with one person—they’re made by a committee.

With 25% of software purchase decisions often involving more than 7 people, focusing on a single contact is a recipe for failure. Engaging just the end-user means you’re ignoring key decision-makers — the finance leader who controls the budget and the IT manager who can veto the deal over security concerns.

Winning these complex deals requires a new playbook. This guide breaks down the essential strategies you need to engage the entire buying group, build consensus, and close deals faster using Account-Based Marketing (ABM).

What is a buying group?

A buying group, also known as a buying committee, is a group of stakeholders inside a company who collectively approve a significant purchase.

They exist to ensure major decisions align with the entire business, not just one department. The committee brings together leaders from finance, IT, legal, and the actual end-users to evaluate a solution from every angle, each with their own pain points and priorities.

For sales and marketing teams, this means your real customer isn’t a single person; it’s the entire committee. To win the deal, you must address the unique priorities of each member of the buying committee:

• Chief financial officer: Cares about price, contract terms, and ROI.
• Head of IT: Cares about security, data privacy, and compatibility.
• Department head: Cares about team productivity and hitting their goals.
• End-user: Cares about features and ease of use.

Understanding these different roles is the key to managing a complex sales cycle and winning larger deals.

• Who is most engaged?
• What topics are they researching?
• Are their interests below or above the line (key decision-makers versus influencers or end-users)?
• What content resonates with them, and how can you use it to engage effectively?

6 essential strategies for engaging every buying group member with ABM

Winning over a buying group isn’t about luck—it’s a strategy. Think about it: every member shows up to the big meeting with four or five pieces of research they did on their own. Your job is to make sure your solution is the one that ties all their different needs together.

1. Map the account to identify all stakeholders

You can’t sell to people you don’t know exist. The first step in any account-based play is to create a detailed map of the organization. Identify the key stakeholders, understand their roles, and map out their relationships to each other. Your goal is to see the complete picture. Your goal is to see the complete picture of the decision-making process.

To do this, you can rely on:

• First-party data: Analyze information from your CRM, sales team insights, and website analytics to see who from the target account is already engaged.
• Third-party data: Use firmographic, technographic, and intent data to identify other potential committee members and understand what topics they are actively researching online.

PRO TIP: Use an account intelligence platform to automatically uncover “hidden” stakeholders. You can see engagement from the entire account, not just known contacts, revealing influential people who are doing research anonymously.

2. Multithread your engagement

Once you have your map, engage multiple contacts within the account simultaneously. Relying on a single point of contact is the fastest way to lose a deal if that person leaves the company or gets overruled. Building relationships across different departments and levels de-risks the deal and builds broader consensus.

PRO TIP: Use engagement data to see which personas aren’t active yet. If you see lots of activity from IT but none from finance, you know exactly who you need to thread into the conversation next.

3. Personalize messaging for each archetype

A generic message sent to everyone just won’t work. Each person on the committee has their own “what’s in it for me?” question, and you have to answer it for them.

• The CFO needs to see a case study on ROI, not a long list of product features.
• The head of IT needs a whitepaper that proves your solution is secure and easy to integrate.
• The end-user just wants a quick video showing how your product makes their daily job less painful.

PRO TIP: Create distinct audience segments for each persona within your target accounts. You can then run targeted advertising campaigns with personalized creative—for example, show ROI-focused ads to finance personas and security-focused ads to IT personas.

4. Find and enable your internal champion

In almost every deal, there’s one person who really “gets it.” This is your internal champion. They are excited about your solution and will fight for it in internal meetings. Your job is to find this person and make them look like a hero.

Once you’ve found your champion, give them everything they need to win the argument for you. Hand them the slides, the data points, and the case studies that will address the concerns of the other committee members. An empowered champion does your selling for you when you’re not in the room.

5. Centralize all communication

Don’t force your champion to forward messy email chains of PDFs and slide decks. A key part of buyer enablement is creating a single, shared digital space where every stakeholder can access the latest proposals, case studies, and action plans. This makes it easy for the committee to stay aligned and for you to control the narrative during the purchasing process.

PRO TIP: Use engagement spikes as a trigger to add new, relevant content to the shared space. If you see an account is suddenly researching a competitor, you can add a competitor comparison sheet for your champion to find.

6. Build trust with transparent timelines

Complex B2B deals are built on trust, not fake urgency. Work with your champion to create a mutual action plan based on the buyer’s actual goals and deadlines, not artificial ones you impose. Demonstrating that you are committed to their long-term success, including post-sale support, is far more compelling.

PRO TIP: Use account journey data to understand where an account truly is in their buying process. This allows you to align your timelines realistically, building credibility by showing you understand their context.

The 5 key archetypes of a B2B buying group

Job titles vary from company to company, but the roles people play in a buying decision are remarkably consistent. Instead of focusing on titles, think in terms of these five key archetypes. Understanding who they are and what they need is crucial for a successful marketing and sales strategy.

1. The Initiator

This is the person who first identifies a problem or discovers your solution. They might not have final authority, but they get the conversation started. They are your point of entry.

How to engage them: Your goal is to validate their insight. Give them robust information like industry reports, data sheets, and case studies that prove the problem is real and your solution is credible.

2. The Champion

In every successful deal, one or two people emerge as internal champions. They are convinced of your product’s value and are willing to advocate for it in internal meetings.

How to engage them: Your job is to make their job easier. Give them the “ammunition” they need to sell on your behalf: compelling success stories, ROI analyses, and testimonials from similar companies.

3. The User

This is the person (or team) who will use your product day-to-day. They are focused on features, functionality, and how your solution will impact their workflow.

How to engage them: Show, don’t just tell. Give them hands-on access to the product through demos, free trials, and video tutorials. Focus on how your solution makes their specific job easier and more effective.

4. The Technical Gatekeeper

This is the expert from IT, security, or compliance who evaluates the technical aspects of your solution. They are focused on risk, integration, and security.

How to engage them: Be transparent and prepared. Provide detailed technical documentation, security specifications, and compliance checklists upfront. Proving that your solution is secure and has full compatibility with their tech stack is key to getting their approval.

5. The Approver

This is the person with the authority to greenlight the final decision, often a C-suite executive or department head with budget control. They focus on the high-level business case, not the day-to-day features, and oversee the procurement process.

How to engage them: Speak their language. Tailor your content to highlight the strategic value and financial benefits. Executive summaries, financial models, and clear ROI calculations are what they need to see.

See and engage your entire buying group with Demandbase

The strategies for engaging a B2B buying committee are clear, but trying to execute them with disconnected tools and incomplete data is nearly impossible. Manually mapping accounts and guessing who holds influence leaves your sales reps a step behind.

It’s time to move beyond leads and accounts. A lead gives you a name. An account gives you a company. Demandbase shows you who actually moves a deal.

We are the only solution that gives you the full, precise picture of the people who influence, approve, and champion every sale.

• Automatically build your buying groups: Our AI agent does the work for you. It identifies the right personas, maps your known contacts to their roles, and fills in the gaps from a database of over 150 million contacts.
• See the complete picture in one place: A single dashboard shows you everything. See who is missing from the committee, highlight who is actively engaged, and surface the silent influencers you didn’t know existed.
• Focus your team on the hottest accounts: Our prescriptive dashboards use AI to tell your salespeople which accounts and contacts to prioritize right now, so they can stop sorting lists and start selling.
• Take immediate, intelligent action: Go from insight to action in seconds. Instantly sync new contacts to your CRM, add them to an ad campaign, or update fields without leaving the platform.

It’s time to zero in on the people who actually influence buying decisions. We’ll show you how.

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