Module 2 — The Buyer · Lesson 2.1
How Buying Groups Actually Decide
Thirteen insiders, nine outsiders, and one seller who meets three of them
What you'll learn
- Cite current evidence on the size and composition of B2B buying groups
- Explain why buying difficulty, not seller performance, is the main obstacle in many deals
- Distinguish internal stakeholders, procurement and external influencers and what each needs
- Map the buying group on a Deal Room deal and find the gaps
A seller's view of a deal is usually one or two people: the contact who replied and perhaps their manager. The buyer's view is a committee. There are people who will use the product, people who will pay for it, people who will have to support it, people whose job is to reduce risk, and outsiders, consultants, peers and analysts, whose opinion the insiders trust more than they trust you. The deal is decided in conversations among those people, most of which you will never hear. Selling well starts with accepting that.
How big the group is now
Forrester's State of Business Buying 2026, drawn from its survey of nearly 18,000 business buyers, reports that a typical buying decision now includes 13 internal stakeholders and nine external influencers. For purchases that include generative AI features the group is larger still: Forrester reports an average of 14 members against seven for comparable purchases without such features. Procurement professionals act as decision-makers in 53% of buying cycles, and Forrester notes that they increasingly engage from the start of the process rather than at the end.
These are survey figures and your market's numbers will differ, but the direction is consistent across sources. 6sense's 2025 Buyer Experience Report (vendor research) reported prior-year buying groups averaging more than ten members and found that group size did not shrink in 2025.
The point is not the precise number. It is that the person who replied to your email is one voice in a group of roughly a dozen or more, and that several of the most influential voices sit outside the company entirely.
Larger groups are harder for the buyer first
It is tempting to read buying-group size as a sales problem: more people to persuade. The more useful reading is that it is a buying problem. Nick Toman, Brent Adamson and Cristina Gomez argued in Harvard Business Review in 2017 that B2B purchasing had become too complicated and that B2B customers were 'deeply uncertain and stressed', facing a growing number of stakeholders in each purchase. Their prescription, from the subtitle onward, was that suppliers need to make it easy for customers to buy.
Forrester's 2026 findings add a twist. Buyers with larger groups report clear benefits, 94% of those with groups of six or more say so, including better access to budget and a greater likelihood of approval. Buyers deliberately widen the group to make a decision they can defend. Forrester describes them as risk-averse and less forgiving of claims without proof.
Put the two together and you get the modern buying group's dilemma: involving more people makes a decision safer to defend but harder to reach. Every additional stakeholder brings a different definition of the problem, a different set of criteria and a different veto. A seller who helps the group reach agreement is providing something the group badly needs. A seller who simply adds another set of claims to evaluate is making the buyer's problem worse.
Who is in the group, and what each needs
Internal stakeholders fall into a few recurring types. Users care whether it will make their work easier or harder. The economic buyer cares whether the outcome justifies the cost and the risk to them personally. Technical and security reviewers care whether it will fit, break or expose something. Finance cares about total cost and timing. Each needs different evidence, and few of them will read a generic deck.
Procurement deserves separate attention because of how often it now holds a vote. Its job is to reduce cost and contractual risk, and it is measured on doing so. Treat procurement as a stakeholder with legitimate criteria, learn them early (security questionnaires, standard terms, approval thresholds), and the late-stage surprise disappears.
External influencers are the group most sellers ignore. Forrester's 2026 research says buyers increasingly rely on internal colleagues and external networks, peers, product experts and analysts, to justify and de-risk decisions, and are more likely to engage providers on the strength of expert information than of AI tools. You cannot sell to a buyer's former colleague. You can make sure that the material they will be shown, case studies, references, independent reviews, is specific, current and true.
Mapping the group on the deal
A buying group you have not written down is a buying group you will forget. In the Deal Room, every deal can hold several contacts, each added with a role on that deal and carrying a per-deal status and next step. Use them deliberately: one contact record per person you know is involved, with the role naming their part in the decision (economic buyer, champion, user, technical reviewer, procurement, influencer) and the status saying where they stand.
Then look for the gaps. The most common pattern on a stalled deal is a single well-engaged contact and nobody else. The Deal Room's Conversations panel lists one row per deal and contact with the last inbound and outbound email and whose turn it is, and its 'We owe a reply' filter sorts the oldest unanswered message first. Reading it deal by deal shows you, very quickly, which members of the group have never written to you at all.
Kavanah also tracks your own side of the table. A deal has a deal team, with a lead and other members, which matters for the same reason: a large buying group often expects to meet more than one person from the seller, and knowing who owns which relationship stops two of your people sending the same economic buyer contradictory messages.
Map one buying group this week
- 1
Open it in the Deal Room and list every contact on it with their role. Count how many of the roles above are filled.
- 2
Add the people you know about but have not recorded
Ask the agent: 'Add Jane Doe at Acme to deal X with role technical reviewer.' It uses add_deal_contact, so the person appears on the deal with that role.
- 3
Filter to the deal and look at whose turn it is for each contact. Any member of the group with no inbound mail at all is a gap to close through your champion.
- 4
Make sure the deal has a lead and that anyone else from your side who talks to the buyer is on the deal team.
Breadth of engagement
- Contacts per late-stage deal
- Average number of contacts linked to deals in Proposal or later stages.
- Healthy signal: No outside benchmark applies to your market. As a starting point we suggest at least three, including a confirmed economic buyer, before a proposal goes out.
- Engaged share of the group
- For a deal, the fraction of linked contacts with at least one inbound email or meeting on the deal timeline. You compute this from the Conversations panel.
- Healthy signal: A single engaged contact on a late-stage deal is the classic precursor to a stall.
- Procurement identified
- Share of deals above your procurement threshold with a procurement contact on the deal before the Proposal stage.
- Healthy signal: Aim for close to 100% on deals large enough to need it; the late surprise is the expensive one.
Key takeaways
- ·A typical B2B decision now involves around a dozen insiders plus outside influencers, and procurement often holds a vote.
- ·Big groups make decisions safer to defend but harder to reach; helping the group agree is the seller's real value.
- ·Each stakeholder type needs different evidence, and external influencers decide more than sellers assume.
- ·Record the buying group on the deal and look for the members who have never engaged.
Knowing who is in the group is half the job. The other half is giving the group something to agree on. The next lesson is about the research behind teaching-led selling: why the sellers who win complex deals bring an insight, not just a relationship.
Sources
- 1.Forrester's 2026 Buyer Insights: The State Of Business Buying
Forrester · Forrester press release, January 21, 2026 · 2026
13 internal stakeholders and nine external influencers per typical decision; 94% of buyers with groups of six or more report benefits; procurement decision-makers in 53% of cycles.
- 2.The State Of Business Buying: Risk-Averse Buyers Demand Proof, Not Promises
Barbara Winters, Forrester · Forrester blog, January 21, 2026 · 2026
Groups of 14 vs seven for purchases with and without genAI features; buyers widen networks to make defensible decisions and engage on expert information more than AI tools.
- 3.The New Sales Imperative
Nick Toman, Brent Adamson, Cristina Gomez · Harvard Business Review, March–April 2017 · 2017
B2B purchasing has become too complicated, customers are 'deeply uncertain and stressed' with a swelling number of stakeholders, and suppliers must make buying easy.
- 4.2025 B2B Buyer Experience Report
6sense · 6sense (vendor research) · 2025
Prior-year buying groups averaged 10+ members; group size did not shrink in 2025.