What is Buying Group?
Buying Group is The collection of stakeholders within a target account who influence or make a purchase decision.
Definition
A buying group is every person involved in a B2B purchase decision. Gartner research puts the average B2B buying group at 6-10 people. Enterprise deals can involve 15-20. The group typically includes a champion (who wants the product), an economic buyer (who controls budget), technical evaluators, end users, and a procurement team. Most CRMs track individual contacts attached to opportunities, but don't natively model the buying group as a unit. ABM platforms and sales engagement tools are starting to fill this gap.
Why It Matters
Selling to one contact is single-threading, and it's how most deals stall or die. If your champion leaves, gets overruled, or can't build internal consensus, the deal disappears. Identifying and engaging the full buying group (multi-threading) increases win rates by 20-30% in most B2B segments. The shift from lead-based to account-based and now buying-group-based go-to-market reflects this reality.
Example
A sales team pursuing a $200K deal maps the buying group in Salesforce: VP of Sales (champion), CFO (economic buyer), two Sales Managers (end users), IT Director (technical evaluator), and Procurement Lead. They create separate engagement plans for each person using Outreach sequences tailored to their role's concerns. When the VP of Sales leaves the company mid-deal, the two Sales Managers they've already built relationships with keep the evaluation alive.
Tools for Buying Group
Find the Right Buying Group Tool
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