--- title: "B2B Buyer Research: Who Else Has to Say Yes? | antedote" description: "Users, buyers and implementers can need different things. Understand the people and conditions behind a technology purchase before refining the offer." url: "https://antedote.com/thinking/who-else-has-to-say-yes/" published: "2026-10-28" updated: "2026-10-28" author: "Anne Lacey" --- # Who else has to say yes? The person who wants a product may not be the person who pays for it, approves it or has to make it work. Research needs to understand how those conditions meet. Article on Customer choice, 4 min read Reviewed by [Anne Lacey, Founding Partner](https://antedote.com/why-antedote/#partners) on October 28, 2026. Published October 28, 2026. Imagine a scheduling tool for field service teams that its intended users love. The operations managers who trial it save hours each week and ask when they can keep it. Then the deals slow down, although nobody in the customer organizations has said no. In a business purchase, the others who have to say yes are the people whose responsibilities the purchase touches: whoever approves the spend, pays for it, has to make it work and answers for what it changes. A favorable response from users meets one condition of the sale. The rest belong to people who may never have been asked. ## The question the trial didn’t answer In this hypothetical, the customer’s IT team has a different question. It wants to know how the tool connects to the systems it already runs, who supports it when something breaks and where customer data goes. Nobody has refused. The IT lead may even like the product. The purchase has stalled because a condition that belongs to someone else is still open, and the users’ enthusiasm can’t settle it for them. A user trial rarely surfaces this kind of concern, because it was designed to show what the product does for its users. ## Several opinions, or several responsibilities? It is tempting to treat a business purchase as a set of opinions to win, as though enthusiasm in one place could make up for doubt in another. In [Gartner’s description of B2B buying](https://www.gartner.com/en/sales/insights/b2b-buying-journey), the typical buying group for a complex solution “involves six to 10 decision makers,” each bringing information that they “must deconflict with the group.” The count matters less than what each person is responsible for. A finance director weighs the cost against other uses of the budget. Someone in IT answers for security and support. A department head thinks about what happens to the team’s current way of working during the change. Each can stop the purchase while the others are content. That is why a universal committee diagram helps less than it seems to. Job titles don’t reliably show who has which concern. In one organization, procurement sets the terms. In another, a senior user decides and everyone else advises. Research has to find out how those responsibilities are arranged in the market the business actually sells into. ## What research needs to understand The useful questions concern the decision as well as the product: how approval works, what each person needs to be confident of before agreeing, what the organization would have to migrate, retire or retrain in order to switch, and what the purchase would change for people who never use it. A product team tends to know its product through the people who use it. Those who approve, pay for and implement it may judge it by quite different standards, and those standards can decide whether it is bought at all. ## When the answer changes the offer Seeing the conditions together can change the proposition, and sometimes it reveals a real trade-off. In the hypothetical scheduling tool, the freedom to configure everything is the users’ favorite feature. For IT, the same freedom means more to secure and support. Restricting it might make approval easier while making the product less appealing to the people who championed it. There is no general answer to that trade-off. Sometimes the right response is evidence: a clear account of security, integration and support that lets the IT lead agree. Sometimes it is a change to the product or the terms, such as administrator controls or a staged rollout. Sometimes the sales conversation needs to reach a different person earlier. Knowing which applies tells the business where to spend its effort. A sharper message to users won’t help if the purchase is waiting on a question nobody has answered for finance. ## Counting the pattern, reaching the people Quantitative research can show how common a pattern is: how often IT can veto a purchase, or whether cost concerns weigh differently with smaller and larger customers. That helps a business decide which conditions deserve the most attention. A broad sample can still miss the point if it reaches the wrong people. Conversations with those who actually approve and implement a purchase may explain a stalled deal better than a large survey of people who only use the product. Reaching those specialist audiences is often the harder part of the work. An enterprise technology company we worked with sells into purchases that involve many people, each with different priorities. Its marketing leadership had to learn how each of them influences the decision and what each needs to hear. Personas built from a survey in four markets came first. Later stages brought in those who influence the choice of AI provider, along with technical leaders and industry analysts. The team came away with messaging guidance for each audience. The work is described in [Getting to know everyone behind an enterprise technology purchase](https://antedote.com/explore-our-work/researching-enterprise-technology-buyers/). ## Whose condition is still open? When a promising offer stalls inside customer organizations, the useful question is whose condition remains unmet, and what would meet it. The answer may point to the product, the evidence or the person the sales team speaks to first. Understanding how those conditions meet lets a business make its proposition work for more of the people whose agreement it needs. ## Read next - *Article* · 3 min read ### [What would customers have to give up to choose you?](https://antedote.com/thinking/why-customers-who-want-to-switch-stay-put/) An offer can be better and still ask people to give up something they value, from a routine that works to the certainty of the familiar. - *Article* · 4 min read ### [AI can make an idea look finished before the thinking is.](https://antedote.com/thinking/ai-concept-development-polish/) AI can make a concept tangible sooner. The risk is a polished image that settles product and commercial choices the team hasn’t yet made. ## How we help [Strategic research](https://antedote.com/what-we-do/strategic-research/) Qual, quant and data science, designed together, and the strategic thinking to turn the evidence into your next move. ## Working through this question now? Bring us the version your team is facing; half-formed is fine. We’ll say how we would approach it, and whether we’re the right fit. [Talk to us](https://antedote.com/talk-to-us/) · [hello@antedote.com](mailto:hello@antedote.com) A partner or director will reply.