ABM Platform for B2B Sales & Marketing Success

Strong relationships post-purchase influence a buyer’s likelihood of making repeat orders—and therefore, generating consistent revenue for your company. The B2B buying process doesn’t conclude once a customer has placed their first B2B order. It’s this type of marketing and promotion that influences 16% of global B2B buyers to make a purchase. To do this, understand their pain points—the problem they’re trying to solve. Buyer enablement focuses on what the B2B buyer needs to make a confident decision. Gartner found customers who received helpful information from suppliers throughout their decision-making process were 2.8 times more likely to experience a high degree of purchase ease.

Traditionally, marketers focused on the buyer journey as if a single person handled research, evaluation and final selection. See why competitors are outranking you and take back your market position with actionable insights. Reconciling diverse needs, budgets, and priorities among consortium members. Use intent data and behavioral signals to understand what B2B buying consortium different stakeholders are researching and when. Combine intent data, engagement signals, and customer relationship management (CRM) insights to gain a fuller picture of buying groups.

See which accounts are active and who’s involved, so sellers can focus outreach on the opportunities most likely to close. Formal buying committees are giving way to fluid networks of influence—internal stakeholders, external peers, AI agents, and digital communities—all shaping decisions long before sellers get involved. When stakeholders get involved, decisions aren’t made by tidy buying committees anymore.

When this happens, early momentum can fade if the problem they surfaced is not consistently reinforced with other stakeholders. Because initiators focus on identifying the problem, they often play a smaller role later in the evaluation or approval stages. They define the problem and trigger the search for potential solutions by bringing attention to a gap or opportunity within the organization. In a buying committee, authority and influence are distributed across different roles, each contributing a specific perspective to the decision-making process.

Engagement begins with understanding each stakeholder's priorities. Marketing and sales teams can benefit greatly from understanding these groups, as they can help them access the right people faster and secure more strategic wins. Organizations focused on buying committees are creating decisions.

When asked what primarily triggers engagement with providers, respondents more often cited interactions with industry experts than information from AI tools. In the 2025 survey, generative AI tools were the single most cited meaningful interaction type for researching purchases. When Forrester first added generative AI as a research option in 2024, it immediately became one of the most frequently cited tools buyers used. In Forrester’s Business Risk Survey, 2025, respondents ranked economic uncertainty and trade wars among the top systemic risks facing organizations, alongside concerns about data integrity.

What is the difference between a buying group and a buying committee?

As data, security and product have become more and more integral across B2B industries, many companies have added c-level roles to focus on these areas. As companies evolve, new roles are created and added to the buying group. One of the best ways to understand your buying group is by leveraging intent data. But it’s important to map out where you expect each role to be active so you can reach out to targets and customize messaging and content for when they’re most engaged.

Complex B2B deals are built on trust, not fake urgency. Hand them the slides, the data points, and the case studies that will address the concerns of the other committee members. If you see lots of activity from IT but none from finance, you know exactly who you need to thread into the conversation next. Relying on a single point of contact is the fastest way to lose a deal if that person leaves the company or gets overruled. Identify the key stakeholders, understand their roles, and map out their relationships to each other. The first step in any account-based play is to create a detailed map of the organization.

The B2B buying process is the decision-making exercise buyers go through when purchasing from another company. This guide shares how to handle those complexities as potential customers progress through the B2B buying process. Successful B2B companies are those that handle both simultaneously, easing pain points throughout the buying process and reaffirming to customers that they’re making the right decision.

• They’re ultimately risk minimizers focused on ensuring no one regrets the contract later.
• Deals that close smoothly also launch more smoothly — and satisfied customers become your best source of referrals and case study content.
• If you’ve ever struggled to keep up with messy data, missed handoffs, or unclear account ownership, you know how quickly RevOps complexity can spiral.
• Use insights from previous customer journeys through the buying process as well as market research to plot it out.

Influencer (The Trusted Voice)

Most teams don’t have a system to generate them consistently. That’s not a failure; it’s the math of volume-based prospecting. Manual research and lead scoring tools came out on top — cold calling and email ranked last.

What Is the B2B Buying Process in 2026?

Use enrichment data and intent signals to find additional stakeholders who engaged but were never formally added to the opportunity. LeanData is the only solution that creates and manages buying groups natively inside Salesforce. Companies that align their go-to-market strategy around buying groups consistently see higher win rates, larger deal sizes, and faster sales cycles. Set up automation for lead-to-contact conversion and opportunity matching. Identify the signs that your lead-based model is underperforming (low MQL-to-opportunity conversion, single-threaded deals, stalled pipeline).

Offer agile management tools and A/B testing modules for quick adjustments and optimization. Underscore how your solutions can provide data and insights to improve supply chain resilience. Highlight how your data analytics and automation tools can help CFOs/CIOs identify areas for cost reduction without compromising key operations. Offer competitive intelligence tools or market analysis services to help CEOs make informed decisions and maintain a competitive edge in the face of mergers or acquisitions.

This structured approach to sharing content gives the buying committee members the right information at the right time. Use InMail or PointDrive presentations in Sales Navigator to share tailored content and address each stakeholder’s specific concerns while reinforcing the overall value proposition. Build detailed personas for each committee member based on their likely priorities—financial goals, technical requirements, or day-to-day user needs. For example, a financial buyer may focus on cost-effectiveness, while a technical buyer prioritizes compatibility and performance. Buying committees are composed of individuals with diverse priorities, often shaped by their roles.