How to find decision makers at a target company, step by step

A rep spends two weeks chasing the CEO of a target account. No reply. No forward. Nothing. Then she finds out the deal was actually owned by a team lead two levels down, the person who’d been quietly evaluating tools like hers for a month.

That story repeats itself across pipelines every day. Reps default to the most senior title on LinkedIn and call it targeting. Meanwhile the person who owns the budget, or the problem your product solves, sits somewhere else in the org chart entirely.

This article is a practical method for how to find decision makers at any target company, not just the obvious name at the top. I’ll show you how to work out which role actually owns the problem you solve, how to filter by seniority and department instead of guessing at job titles, and how to confirm what you find before you ever hit send.

You’ll also see how to get verified contact details instead of wasting outreach on emails that bounce, and how to use a few simple questions in conversation to confirm you’re actually talking to someone with authority. By the end, you’ll have a repeatable way to map the buying committee at any account, champion included.

Who counts as a decision maker

A decision maker is the person who owns the budget or the problem your product solves. In B2B, that person rarely acts alone.

Most purchases involve several people: someone who feels the pain daily, someone who controls the money, and someone who signs the final approval. Your job during prospecting is to figure out which of those people you need to reach and in what order.

The mistake most reps make is treating “decision maker” as a single title. Decision maker is a function. The person who can say yes to your deal depends on what you sell, how much it costs, and how the company is structured.

Decision makers, influencers and champions

Four roles show up in almost every B2B deal. Each one needs a different message.

You don’t always need all four on your side. But if you only talk to one person and ignore the rest, you’ll lose deals to internal politics you never saw coming. The champion is especially easy to overlook because they rarely have a senior title. They’re the person who will sell for you when you’re not in the room.

1. Work out which role owns the problem you solve

Start from the problem, not from a job title. Ask yourself two questions: which department feels this pain every day, and which level in that department controls the budget to fix it?

If you sell sales engagement software, the pain sits with the sales team, but the budget might sit with RevOps or the VP of Sales. If you sell compliance tooling, legal feels the pain, but procurement might own the vendor decision.

Build a buyer persona around the problem owner first. Then map outward to the people who influence or approve the purchase. That gives you a target list grounded in how the company actually buys, instead of a guess based on org charts you found online.

2. Filter by seniority and department, not job title only

Job titles are inconsistent across companies. The person who runs demand generation might be called Head of Demand Gen at one company, Director of Growth Marketing at another, VP of Marketing at a third, and Growth Lead at a startup. Same scope, four different titles.

If you search for one exact title string, you’ll miss most of your market. Filter by seniority level (Director, VP, C-level) and department (Marketing, Sales, Engineering) instead. That casts a wider net while still landing on the right people.

Here are three common examples of title variation for the same role:

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  The person running outbound sales: VP of Sales, Head of Sales Development, Director of Revenue

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  The person owning the tech stack: Director of RevOps, Head of Sales Operations, VP of GTM Strategy

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  The person managing data infrastructure: Head of Data Engineering, Director of Analytics, VP of Data

Seniority plus department filters catch all of these. A single title keyword catches one.

3. Adjust for company size

Company size changes who decides and how.

At a startup, the founder or the first functional hire (first Head of Marketing, first VP of Sales) usually owns the budget and the decision. One email to the right person can close the deal.

At a mid-size company, department heads own their budgets. The decision maker is typically a Director or VP who reports to the C-suite but doesn’t need executive sign-off for every purchase under a certain threshold.

At an enterprise, decisions go through a committee. There’s usually an executive sponsor who approves, a project owner who evaluates, and a procurement team that negotiates terms. You need a champion inside that committee or you’ll stall in “we’re still reviewing internally” for months.

Knowing the company structure tells you how many people to reach and at what level. A broad outreach to a tiny startup will feel aggressive. A single-threaded email to a large company will disappear.

4. Confirm the role on LinkedIn and the company website

Once you have a shortlist of likely decision makers, confirm their scope before you reach out.

Check the company’s team or about page. Many companies list leadership with short bios that reveal reporting lines and responsibilities. Then look at the person’s LinkedIn profile. Their headline, job description, and recent posts tell you what they actually own versus what their title implies.

Job ads are another underrated source. If a company is hiring a “Senior Sales Operations Manager, reporting to the VP of Revenue,” you just learned the VP of Revenue owns that function.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator makes this faster with filters for company, seniority, function, and recent activity. But even without it, a few minutes of manual research on a free LinkedIn account will save you from emailing someone who has no authority over your deal.

5. Get verified contact details

Finding the right person means nothing if you can’t reach them.

For email, use a waterfall enrichment approach that checks multiple data providers in sequence. This gives you the highest chance of finding a valid, deliverable address. You can learn more about the process in our guide on how to find someone’s email.

For phone, data quality matters more than most reps realize. Verified phone numbers connect around 20%, while scraped lists connect around 10% (lemlist internal data). That gap compounds fast across hundreds of dials. A dedicated phone number finder that verifies numbers before you dial will save hours of wasted call time.

Always verify before you send or dial. A bounced email hurts your sender reputation. A dead phone number wastes your best calling window.

6. Ask qualifying questions once you are talking

Even after all that research, you still need to confirm authority in conversation. The trick is asking without sounding like you’re interrogating someone.

These questions work well:

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  “How have decisions like this been made in the past at your company?”

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  “Who else would typically weigh in on something like this?”

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  “Is there a specific budget owner for this area, or does it go through a broader approval?”

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  “What would the next steps look like on your end if this seemed like a fit?”

Each question gives you information about the buying process without putting the person on the spot. If they say “I’d need to loop in my VP,” you just found the decision maker. If they say “I own this,” you’re already talking to them.

When a gatekeeper picks up the phone, don’t try to trick your way past them. Give a clear, specific reason for your call and ask who handles the area you’re calling about. Our guide on how to get past the gatekeeper covers this in detail.

Mistakes that hide the real decision maker

Only targeting the C-suite. CEOs and CROs at companies with dedicated functional leaders rarely evaluate tools themselves. You’ll get ignored or forwarded to someone you could have contacted directly.

Trusting one title keyword. Searching only for “VP of Sales” misses every company that calls the same role “Head of Revenue” or “Director of Sales.” Use seniority and department filters instead.

Ignoring the champion. The person who will fight for your solution internally is often a manager or senior IC. They don’t sign the check, but they control whether your deal moves forward or dies in a shared Slack channel.

Stopping at one contact. Single-threading an account is the fastest way to lose a deal you should have won. If your one contact goes on vacation, changes roles, or just gets busy, your deal goes cold. Reach multiple people per account, across roles.

How to find decision makers in lemlist

lemlist gives you a workflow to go from target company to live conversation with the right people.

Start in the lead database. Search across 650M+ contacts and 65M+ companies (lemlist internal data) using filters for job title, seniority, and department on your target accounts. You can combine filters to find, say, Director-level and above in Sales or RevOps at companies that match your ICP.

If you’re prospecting on LinkedIn, the lemlist Chrome extension lets you add leads directly from LinkedIn profiles or search results into your campaigns.

Once you have your list, waterfall enrichment runs each contact through 14+ data providers to find verified emails and phone numbers. The phone finder delivers a 77%+ find rate (lemlist internal data), and you only pay for successful finds.

To catch new decision makers before your competitors do, the intent signals monitor your target accounts and surface people who recently moved into buying roles. A new VP of Sales who just started is far more open to evaluating new tools than someone who’s been in the seat for years.

From there, build a multichannel sequence that combines email, LinkedIn, and calls aimed at several roles in the same account. That way you’re reaching the decision maker, the champion, and the influencer with messages tailored to each one’s priorities.

Final takeaway

Finding the decision maker starts with the problem you solve. Map the buying committee by seniority and department, confirm roles with real research, and reach multiple stakeholders per account.

The reps who book the most meetings are the ones who reach the right person at the right time with a reason that matters to them. Build your first signal-based sequence in lemlist.