Buying Committee Map

Buying Committee Map

The persona is one person. The deal is six. A startup that markets to the practice manager and never meets the COO finds out at the signature stage that the COO has questions, and a deal that was "closing this month" for three months is usually a map with one name on it.

This skill draws the map for a deal, or for the typical deal in a segment, and reads it the way a good sales manager would in a pipeline review: who have we not identified, who can we not reach, what does each person need to believe that we have no proof for, and who is against us with nobody working on it. The engine orders the next conversations and lists the assets to build; it does not score the deal.

When to use

In a deal review when a deal has stalled or is single-threaded. In segment marketing, to decide which assets each role needs before the first campaign. Before a sales-enablement build, to know which role each asset serves.

Not for forecasting (pipeline-and-forecast) and not for qualifying whether the account fits (target-account-list).

Before you start

1. Read the brand/product context first (.agents/product-marketing.md) for the buyer roles already written down and the proof points on file.
2. For a live deal, use real names. A title is a role; a person is a name. The engine counts a role as identified only when someone is named.
3. Write the belief as a sentence that could be false. "Payback inside two quarters" can be proved or not; "sees the value" cannot.
4. Be honest about access. "Via champion" means the champion carries your case; "none" means nobody is carrying it.

Method

Nine roles: champion, economic buyer, end user, technical, security-legal, procurement, executive, influencer, blocker. The first three are the core (engine rule); a map without them is incomplete.

For each person: identified or not; access (direct, via champion, none); stance (for, neutral, against, unknown); the belief; the asset; the plan.

Reading the map, in order.

1. A blocker with no plan outranks everything. Someone against the deal whom nobody is working on will win, because silence is cheaper than argument.
2. An economic buyer you have not identified or cannot reach means the deal has no close date.
3. Beliefs with no asset are the sales-enablement backlog, and the engine suggests the asset type for each role.
4. Unknown stances are conversations to have before the next meeting.

Coverage is the share of roles that are identified, reachable and answered. It is a checklist measure, not a win probability.

Workflow

Step 1 - Draw the map with the champion, in the champion's words: "who signs, who else has to say yes, who could say no, who will use it, who reviews security?"

Step 2 - Run the engine. Take the verdict and the first next conversation.

Step 3 - Handle the blocker first-hand. Hear the objection yourself; a relayed objection is half an objection. objection-handling gives the structure.

Step 4 - Reach the economic buyer. Equip the champion with a one-page case for that person, then ask for twenty minutes. If the champion will not make the introduction, that is information.

Step 5 - Build the missing assets in the order of the roles that block the close, with aaj-sales-enablement; put security answers in the Security Questionnaire Answer Library.

Step 6 - Re-run before each pipeline review. The stances change; the map should too.

For a segment rather than a deal, run it with typical titles and no names: the asset list is the campaign plan, one piece per role.

Run the tool

node resources/buying-committee.js --demo
node resources/buying-committee.js '{"deal":"Northside Dental","roles":[{"role":"champion","name":"R. Ortiz","access":"direct","stance":"for","mustBelieve":"...","asset":"ROI sheet"}]}'
node resources/buying-committee.js --help

run({ deal, roles }) returns the map, coverage, next conversations, assets to build, findings and a verdict. Deterministic, offline, no dependencies.

Present the result

1. The verdict and coverage.
2. The map as a table: role, person, access, stance, must believe, asset, plan.
3. Next conversations, numbered.
4. Assets to build, each with the role and the suggested form.
5. Findings.

Guardrails & common mistakes

• Never let a title stand in for a person. "The CFO" is a hole in the map until there is a name.
• Never score the deal from this. Coverage says what you know, not what will happen.
• Never assume a role is absent because nobody mentioned it. Security, legal and procurement appear late and add weeks; ask.
• Beliefs are per person, not per company. The COO and the IT contractor need different proof.
• A happy champion is not a deal. The map exists so that the champion is not the only name.
• Treat anything the champion tells you about others as a hypothesis until you have heard it from them.

Related AAJ resources

• The one-person view this extends: https://aajconsult.com/tools/persona-builder
• Whether the account fits before you map it: https://aajconsult.com/tools/icp-fit-scorer
• The answers the security-legal role needs: https://aajconsult.com/templates/security-questionnaire-answer-library
• Mapping buying groups across many accounts: https://aajconsult.com/playbooks/abm-playbook

Related skills

• aaj-sales-enablement - building the assets the map says are missing
• objection-handling - the blocker conversation
• persona-builder - the beliefs and triggers for each role
• discovery-call-framework - the questions that draw the map
• pipeline-and-forecast - the forecast, which this does not replace
• abm-program-design - the same map at programme scale