Change the buyer, not the pitch: how to identify the decision maker in B2B sales
Most stalled B2B startups do not have a messaging problem. They are selling to someone who cannot sign.
The clearest proof I saw all spring came from a call where we lost. On April 7 Charles pitched a podcast-led funnel to a founder building AI for construction. The founder said no. And on the way to saying no, he explained the single biggest change that had made his sales work.
He did not rewrite his pitch. He changed who he was pitching.
Superintendents were the wrong door
The company first went after the people running job sites. It made sense on paper. Superintendents feel the pain every day. They are the users.
The problem, in his words:
superintendents on construction sites are pretty hard to reach.
They are on site, not at a desk. They do not answer email from strangers. And even when you reach one and he loves the product, he usually is not the one who signs the contract. So the founder was spending most of his effort getting to people who could only say "this looks cool, talk to my boss".
That is what a stalled pipeline looks like from the inside. Lots of good conversations. Very few contracts. And a founder who keeps rewriting the email because he thinks the words are the problem.
Estimators: one user, one decision maker, an instant demo
So they changed the product and picked an easier ICP. Instead of superintendents, they sold to estimators at mid-size door contractors, companies doing roughly 10 to 100 million in revenue.
Look at what changed. At those companies, he said, the structure is simple:
there's, like, one decision maker. Like, it's the owner or the, like, vice president who makes a final call
The estimator uses the product. The owner or VP signs. In a company that size, those two people sit close together, and the estimator can try the product on the spot during a demo. No committee, no procurement maze, no six-month pilot. A user who sees the value in the meeting, and a buyer one door away.
From his account, the revenue from the new ICP came from cold calling, with two SDRs feeding demos. Same company. Same founder. Same basic sales motion. A different person on the other end of the phone.
The test: can the person on the call say yes alone?
Here is the question I now ask every founder whose pipeline is full of nice meetings and no closes: if the person on your call loved it, could they buy it today without asking anyone?
If the answer is no, you have three options.
- Sell to the person who can say yes, and treat the user as a champion, not the target.
- Move down-market to companies where the user and the buyer are the same person or sit in the same room.
- Change the product so a user can start without a buying decision, then expand.
The construction founder did the first two at once. Smaller companies, where one person decides, and a user who can prove the value in the demo.
What I would not do is keep emailing the superintendent with better subject lines. Copy cannot give someone signing authority they do not have.
When a podcast is the wrong channel (yes, we said that)
Now the honest part. We sell a show-led growth system. Charles pitched it. And the founder pushed back on our channel for his market:
They're not, like, listening to a podcast.
His buyers found him through Google, not podcasts.
I think he was right for where he was. His ICP is narrow, his buyers search when they have the problem, and he had a cold-calling motion already working. A show would have been a slower way to reach people he could already reach by phone.
Where a show wins is the opposite case: a buyer who is hard to reach, who gets pitched constantly, and who will say yes to being a guest long before they would say yes to a demo. Executives at large companies. Investors. Senior people who ignore cold calls. That is why we built it. Not for every market.
The lesson cuts both ways. Pick the buyer first. Then pick the channel that reaches that buyer. Founders who pick the channel first end up forcing it onto a buyer it does not fit, and blaming the copy.
Why the user still matters
Changing the buyer does not mean ignoring the user. The construction founder's new setup worked because the user and the buyer sat close together. The estimator could try the product in the demo, see it work on his own numbers, and the owner one door away could see it too.
That is the ideal: a user who becomes your proof inside the meeting, and a buyer who can act on that proof the same week. If you sell into bigger companies where the two are far apart, your job is to build that bridge yourself. Get the user's result in writing, in their words, and put it in front of the person who signs.
Check your own pipeline this week
Pull your last twenty sales calls. Next to each, write who was on the call and who would sign. If those are different people in most rows, you have found your problem, and it is not your pitch.
If the people who sign in your market are senior executives who never answer a cold call, that is exactly the problem a show solves. Reach the people who sign.
Frequently asked questions
How do you find the real decision maker in a B2B deal?
Ask whether the person on the call could buy today without asking anyone. If not, find out who they would ask, and either sell to that person or move to companies where the user and buyer sit together.
What is the difference between the user and the buyer?
The user works with the product every day. The buyer signs the contract and owns the budget. In smaller companies they are often one or two people in the same room; in larger ones they can be several layers apart.
When should you change your ICP instead of your messaging?
When your calls are good but contracts do not follow. That usually means the people you reach cannot sign. Better copy cannot fix that; a different buyer can.