Close the Deal® starts with a critical negotiation principle: work with people who can say yes. The economic buyer is the person with authority to commit money to your solution. Identifying that person means looking beyond a title and examining three signals: behavior, “uniform,” and language. Together, those signals help you assess who can authorize the purchase before you start making concessions.
That distinction matters long before you send a contract. I’ve burned too many deals by discounting twice: once for someone I thought was the economic buyer, then again when the actual economic buyer appeared. By that point, I’d already negotiated away value with someone who couldn’t give me the final yes.
A friendly contact can help you. An enthusiastic end user can advocate for you. A knowledgeable administrator can guide you through the process. Every one of those people may matter to the sale. You still need to establish who has the authority to spend.
People without final buying authority often have good reasons to engage with salespeople. They’re researching a problem, evaluating options, or gathering information for someone else. They may eventually have to use whatever gets purchased, so their interest is real.
They also know how some salespeople behave when they hear, “I don’t control the budget.” Suddenly, the rep stops listening and starts looking for a way around them. That experience gives contacts a reason to make their influence sound larger than it is.
You don’t solve that problem by dismissing everyone who lacks signing authority. You solve it by understanding each person’s role while treating them with respect. Someone can be valuable to your opportunity without being the person who decides where the money goes.
And you need more evidence than a title, an enthusiastic meeting, or an assurance that “I’m handling this.”
When I’m trying to establish whether someone has buying authority, I start with their history. I want to hear about a purchase they’ve already made.
“Walk me through the last significant purchase you were involved in. What did you buy? How much did it cost? How did the decision get made?”
The purchase doesn’t have to be in my category. An expensive, complicated purchase elsewhere in the business can tell me plenty. I’m listening for detail about approvals, tradeoffs, negotiation, and the people involved.
Someone who has managed that process should be able to explain what happened and what they personally did. Someone who observed from a distance may describe the process broadly while struggling to explain their own role.
Keep the conversation grounded in an actual example. “How does your company buy things?” invites a general answer. A specific past purchase gives you something concrete to examine.
Economic buyers have usually had to compare alternatives and defend their choices. They understand that spending money with one vendor means passing on another option.
I pay close attention to a contact’s willingness to discuss the competitive landscape. Can they explain what they like about another solution? Do they understand the tradeoffs? Can they tell me why a particular alternative is being considered?
Reluctance to discuss competitors is a reason to investigate further. It could reflect a confidentiality rule or negotiation strategy. It could also mean your contact doesn’t have enough information or authority to speak comfortably.
The useful evidence is in the conversation as a whole. Look for familiarity with the decision, the alternatives, and the consequences of choosing.
“All calls go through me” deserves your attention.
A person responsible for a purchase often needs input from other departments. The solution will affect other people, and the budget may compete with other priorities. They have reasons to bring the right colleagues into the conversation.
Ask about those colleagues and what they need to evaluate. Then discuss an appropriate introduction.
You’re looking for the ability to move the purchase through the organization. A contact who continually blocks access may still have influence, but you need to understand what sits behind that restriction before treating them as your economic buyer.
Procurement and legal become much less mysterious when your contact works with them regularly.
An experienced buyer can put names behind the departments: Laura in procurement, Beverly in legal. They know who handles the work, what those people need, and how to engage them.
Compare that with, “It goes to legal, and then we wait.”
A buyer with relevant experience can often explain who reviews the agreement, where delays tend to occur, and what happened during the last purchase. That knowledge helps you understand both the person’s role and the process ahead.
Years ago, I met with a vice president of e-commerce at Dow Jones in New Jersey. (Yes, this was back when e-commerce had its own department.)
The title looked right. His place on the org chart looked right. And he was terrific company.
We had an hour scheduled in his office. He described his problems, what he hoped to accomplish, what he’d already tried, and why he thought our product could help. He wanted to sample it. I filled my notebook.
Near the end of the hour, he asked whether I could stay longer. My flight wasn’t until six, and I didn’t have another meeting, so I agreed.
We kept talking until the meeting began to threaten my flight. Then he offered to take me to dinner. He still had questions about a possible pilot, and if I had to change my flight, he felt the least he could do was buy me a meal.
It would have been easy to treat all that attention as evidence of a strong opportunity.
But I needed to look more carefully. He could extend the meeting indefinitely. Nobody was interrupting with another decision that needed his attention. He could finish his day by taking a salesperson he’d just met to dinner.
That availability made me question whether he carried the responsibility his title suggested. In this case, my concern was justified. He wasn’t the economic buyer.
A long meeting alone doesn’t establish someone’s authority either way. What matters is noticing when the behavior and the role you’ve assumed don’t line up, then checking before committing more resources.
Had I launched a trial and spent the next 45 days working toward a contract, I could have reached the end only to hear, “Oh, I’m not the contract guy.”
That was the risk. An enjoyable conversation could have encouraged me to invest in a buying process whose actual decision maker I hadn’t identified. Within Close the Deal®, this is a practical reason to qualify authority before committing your team to the next stage.
When my kids were little, they would put on grown-up clothes and pretend to be Mom or Dad. The clothes helped them look the part. The responsibilities were another matter.
Buyers can present themselves in a similar way. The title, confidence, and familiarity with a department may fit your picture of a decision maker. I want to understand how far that person’s authority and knowledge extend.
Think of an org chart as a series of vertical lanes: engineering, product, marketing, finance. Most people know their own lane. Economic buyers often need to operate across several.
They deal with competing projects, priorities, and budgets. Committing money to your solution may affect another initiative. They need to understand those consequences and work with people outside their own department.
This is the “uniform” I’m looking for: evidence that the person can function at that broader level.
Explore what your contact knows about neighboring departments. Ask how the project affects those teams, which priorities might compete with it, and who needs to be involved.
Can they explain timelines outside their own group? Do they understand where another department’s budget intersects with this purchase? Can they introduce you to someone who needs to evaluate the impact?
Those answers help you see the scope of their involvement.
Someone who can look across the business may be able to find funding, adjust priorities, or build support for a purchase. Those are meaningful capabilities when the original budget doesn’t cover what the organization wants to accomplish.
Cross-functional reach can also identify a strong champion. You still need to confirm who authorizes spending. Knowing the right people and controlling the money are separate responsibilities, even when one person holds both.
I also listen closely to how people describe decisions.
Economic buyers often speak directly about what they want, what concerns them, and what they are prepared to do. Their language reflects responsibility for a business outcome. They can connect the purchase to broader priorities and explain why a choice matters.
I pay particular attention to how someone uses “I” and “we.”
Consider these two responses to a request for an org chart:
“That’s not something we feel comfortable sharing.”
“That’s not something I feel comfortable sharing.”
Both responses decline the request. The second explicitly places ownership of the decision with the speaker.
That difference gets my attention. I listen for whether the person consistently owns decisions or refers to a group whose members and authority remain unclear.
A pronoun alone won’t establish purchasing authority. Plenty of executives use “we,” and someone without budget authority can confidently say “I.” Use the language as a cue for a better follow-up conversation.
If a contact says, “We need to approve that,” find out who participates in the approval and what each person decides. If they say, “I can approve it,” understand the scope of that approval.
Your goal is to connect their words to a real decision they can make.
Behavior, uniform, and language work best together. A detailed buying history, useful internal introductions, broad organizational knowledge, and clear ownership of decisions give you more to work with than any single signal.
The Close the Deal® principle applies before the first concession. Establish what your contact can approve, who else must participate, and what remains after they say yes.
You can ask them to walk you through the purchase from agreement to authorization. Listen for specific people and responsibilities. Clarify whose approval commits the budget and who handles the administrative steps afterward.
Keep your existing contact involved. Their knowledge and support may be essential to getting the purchase approved.
Above all, avoid assuming that someone’s ability to reject your proposal means they can authorize it. Many people can stop a deal. You need to know who can say YES.
That knowledge changes how you invest your time, involve your team, and negotiate. It also reduces the chance that, after you’ve made your best concession, someone new arrives to start the negotiation again.
Happy Selling!®, Jeff