How to Work with Your Main Contact—and Help Them Win Over Their Stakeholders
When your B2B business is growing, one of the biggest challenges is realising that your main contact isn’t always the final decision-maker. Early on, you probably landed deals by building a great relationship with one buyer. But when you start dealing with bigger businesses, that one person? They’re just the tip of the iceberg.
In larger organisations, buying decisions are often made by groups. Your contact might love your solution, but they’ll need to sell it to their colleagues—each with their own worries, priorities, and opinions. That’s where things can get tricky.
The good news? With the right approach, you can make life easier for your contact and help them win over everyone else, without the process dragging on forever. Let’s work through how you can support them, stay involved, and still keep things moving forward.
1. Understand Who’s Involved—and What They Care About
Your contact may seem like your biggest fan, but they aren’t always making the decision alone. They might need buy-in from people across departments—IT, Finance, Procurement, and maybe even the CEO. Each of these people will care about something different.
Here’s where you step in: ask your contact about the internal process and the key players.
Who are the key stakeholders for this project?
What questions or concerns are likely to come up?
How does your organisation usually make decisions?
Your goal is to map out who’s who and what matters most to them—because once you know that, you can give your contact exactly what they need to keep things moving.
2. Help Your Contact Sell the Solution Internally
Your contact is now your internal champion—but sometimes they’ve got a tough job ahead of them. They’ll need to convince their team that your solution is the right fit, and that can get complicated. Different stakeholders will have different priorities (and possibly some objections).
Here’s how you can make their life easier:
Tailor your content for different audiences:
Finance will want to see ROI and cost comparisons.
IT will care about security and integrations.
End users? They’ll want to know it’s easy to use.
Arm them with talking points. Anticipate objections and give them answers they can confidently share with their team.
Create shareable resources—short, punchy PDFs, a landing page, or a quick video demo. Make it easy for them to forward stuff on without a lot of back and forth.
3. Stay Involved—Without Being a Pain
There’s a fine line between being helpful and being pushy, right? Your contact is juggling a lot, so the last thing you want to do is overwhelm them. But that doesn’t mean you disappear into the background either.
Offer to join key meetings. If there’s a big decision-making session coming up, offer to attend and speak directly to other stakeholders.
Check in without nagging. A friendly, “How’s everything going? Is there anything I can help with?” goes a long way.
Step in when needed. If your contact is getting resistance from another department, offer to jump on a call with that team. Your contact will appreciate the support, and it keeps the process moving.
4. Navigate Politics—Without Undermining Your Contact
Every organisation has its own politics and power dynamics. Sometimes your contact might be junior, or maybe they don’t have enough clout to push the deal through on their own. When that happens, you might need to engage with senior stakeholders—but you’ve got to do it the right way.
Ask your contact how they’d like you to approach it. Do they want to introduce you to someone higher up, or would they prefer you to hang back?
Build relationships with influencers. These could be people who aren’t officially decision-makers but have a say in what happens.
Respect the process. Some companies have a formal way of buying, others are more informal. Either way, play by their rules—it’ll make your contact’s life a lot easier.
5. Celebrate the Small Wins
Big deals with lots of stakeholders can drag on, and it’s easy to feel like you’re stuck in a holding pattern. But if you focus only on the final outcome, you’ll burn out fast—and so will your contact. That’s why it’s important to celebrate progress along the way.
IT meeting went well? Send a quick message thanking your contact and tell them you’re excited about the next step.
Stakeholder feedback came in? Great! Use it to tweak your approach and let your contact know you’re on it.
These little moments keep the energy up and build momentum toward closing the deal.
Scaling your business means you’ll need to navigate deals with more people, more opinions, and more moving parts. Your contact might be your biggest supporter, but they can’t do it all alone. They need your help to convince the rest of their team—and that’s where you come in.
By giving them the tools to sell your solution internally, staying involved without being pushy, and managing relationships across the board, you’ll give your deal the best chance of success.
At the end of the day, it’s not just about getting one person on board—it’s about helping your contact win over everyone. Do that, and you’ll not only close the deal—you’ll build strong relationships that keep customers coming back.
As a marketing consultant with over 20 years of global experience in B2B SaaS, I focus on helping Media, Tech, and eCommerce companies navigate their journey from start-up to scale-up. If you’re interested in refining your marketing strategy or just want to connect and share ideas, feel free to get in touch! And I'd love for you to connect with me on LinkedIn.
