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<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">Most Sales Cycles Break in the Middle</h2>Here's where it gets costly.Late-stage stakeholder surprises don't just cost you the deal. They cost you the time that led to it. Every call, every demo, every proposal hour, every follow-up sequence — all of it built toward a close that never happened because someone in the buying committee was never engaged.According to Forrester, 74% of B2B buyers conduct more than half of their research before contacting sales. That means the internal conversations — among stakeholders you may never have spoken to — are already happening before you even get in the room. And those stakeholders are forming opinions based on what they've read, what their peers have told them, and what your competitors' content is saying.If you haven't mapped the stakeholders and reached each of them with relevant information, you're losing a conversation you didn't even know was happening.The deal doesn't break at the close. It breaks in the middle, quietly, when a stakeholder whose concerns went unaddressed becomes a silent blocker.

<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">What Stakeholder Mapping Actually Means</h2>Stakeholder mapping is the process of identifying every person who influences, approves, or blocks a buying decision — and understanding their role, their priorities, their level of influence, and the best way to engage them.It sounds tactical. And it is. But done well, it's also strategic — because it's the thing that transforms your pipeline from a guessing game into something you can actually manage.A proper stakeholder map for a B2B deal answers four questions:<ol><li>Who is involved? — Every person touching this purchase decision, whether you've spoken to them or not.</li><li>What do they care about? — Their priorities, fears, success metrics, and resistance points.</li><li>How much influence do they have? — Decision-maker, influencer, gatekeeper, end-user, or blocker.</li><li>Where are they in their thinking? — Champion, neutral, skeptical, or actively opposed.</li></ol>Most CRM setups capture name and title. That's about 20% of what you actually need. The real value of mapping stakeholders is in the 80% that most reps never document: the dynamics, the agendas, the internal politics.

<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">The Four People in Every Deal (And How to Find Them)</h2><h3 style="margin-left:0px;">The Champion</h3>This is the person you've been talking to. They like you. They believe in the product. They're internally selling on your behalf.The risk: champions are not always power brokers. They can be overruled, deprioritized, or quietly sidelined by people with more authority. A champion without exec sponsorship is a deal with a single point of failure.What you need from them: Introductions to other stakeholders. A clear picture of the internal approval process. Names, titles, and — crucially — the concerns they're anticipating from each decision-maker.<h3 style="margin-left:0px;">The Economic Buyer</h3>This is the person who controls the budget. In mid-market deals, it's often a VP or C-level. In enterprise, it might be a procurement committee.The economic buyer often doesn't show up until late in the process — which is exactly when you don't want to be introducing yourself for the first time.What you need to do: Reach the economic buyer early, even if it's indirectly through your champion. Arm them with business case materials, ROI frameworks, and peer benchmarks — content built specifically for their lens, not your champion's.<h3 style="margin-left:0px;">The Technical Evaluator</h3>Security, compliance, IT integration, API requirements — someone in the organization is going to vet your product on technical merit. In SaaS deals, this is almost always a blocker if ignored.What you need to do: Proactively surface the technical documentation, security certifications, and integration guides before they ask. Treat this stakeholder like a separate buyer, not a back-office formality.<h3 style="margin-left:0px;">The End User</h3>The person or team who will live in your product daily. They may not have formal decision-making authority, but they have enormous informal influence. A team that doesn't want the tool can kill a deal through a hundred small conversations with people who do have authority.What you need to do: Involve them. Give them a sandbox. Run a use-case-specific demo built around their workflows. Make them feel seen rather than sold to.

The Four People in Every Deal (And How to Find Them)

<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">How to Build a Stakeholder Map That Actually Works</h2>Knowing the archetypes is one thing. Actually building the map — in a format that's useful, updated, and accessible to the full revenue team — is another.<h3 style="margin-left:0px;">Step 1: Start Early, Not at Discovery</h3>Most reps treat stakeholder mapping as a mid-cycle activity. The best AEs start mapping stakeholders at the first meeting — even if they're only talking to one person.The first questions to ask your initial contact:<ul><li>"Who else at your company typically gets involved in decisions like this?"</li><li>"What does the approval process usually look like here?"</li><li>"Who's most excited about solving this problem internally? Is there anyone who might have reservations?"</li></ul>These aren't pushy questions. They're collaborative. They signal that you've done this before and you want to make the buying process smooth for everyone.<h3 style="margin-left:0px;">Step 2: Map Influence, Not Just Titles</h3>Titles are misleading. A "Director of Operations" might be the most influential person in the room. A "VP of Sales" might be a figurehead whose recommendation always gets overruled by the CFO.When mapping stakeholders, note:<ul><li>Formal authority (who can technically approve the deal)</li><li>Informal influence (who do others defer to in practice)</li><li>Level of engagement (how involved are they day-to-day?)</li><li>Relationship with your champion (do they trust each other? Is there tension?)</li></ul><h3 style="margin-left:0px;">Step 3: Build a Separate Engagement Plan for Each Stakeholder</h3>Every stakeholder in the map should have a corresponding engagement strategy. Not the same pitch repackaged — a genuinely different approach that speaks to their specific concerns.<ul><li>The economic buyer gets a business case, benchmarks, and a conversation about risk mitigation.</li><li>The technical evaluator gets a security review packet and an integration architecture overview.</li><li>The end user gets a workflow-specific demo and a seat in a customer reference call with someone in a similar role.</li><li>The champion gets talking points, competitive intel, and your help preparing them for internal selling.</li></ul>This is where most reps fall short. They have one deck and one narrative, and they use it with everyone. Buyers see this immediately. It signals that you don't really understand their world.<h3 style="margin-left:0px;">Step 4: Keep the Map Alive</h3>A stakeholder map built in week two and never updated is almost useless by week eight. People change roles. Champions leave companies. New stakeholders emerge. Internal priorities shift.The map needs to be a living document — updated after every call, every email exchange, every piece of new information your champion shares. And it needs to live somewhere the whole revenue team can see it, not just in the AE's head.

How to Build a Stakeholder Map That Actually Works

<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">Mistakes That Kill Multi-Stakeholder Deals</h2>Even teams that understand stakeholder mapping in theory make the same execution mistakes over and over.<h3 style="margin-left:0px;">Relying Only on Your Champion for Access</h3>Your champion controls the access they're comfortable giving you. That may not include the CFO, IT, or legal. The reps who win complex deals find ways to reach other stakeholders directly — through events, content, mutual connections, or by simply asking directly: "Would you be open to me having a brief conversation with your Head of IT to make sure we can address their questions proactively?"<h3 style="margin-left:0px;">Treating the Technical Evaluator Like a Box to Check</h3>The technical review is not a hurdle to clear — it's a stakeholder relationship to build. Technical evaluators who feel heard and respected become internal champions. Technical evaluators who feel rushed or dismissed become invisible blockers.<h3 style="margin-left:0px;">Building a Business Case Only for Your Champion</h3>The ROI model you built with your champion reflects their priorities. The CFO has different priorities. The end-user team has different priorities. One business case built for one person will not survive a buying committee review.Build modular business cases: one for operational ROI, one for financial ROI, one for risk reduction. Let each stakeholder read their version.<h3 style="margin-left:0px;">Updating the Stakeholder Map Once and Moving On</h3>Deals change. Stakeholders change. The map you built in week three is stale by week seven. Treat it like a living document, not a one-time deliverable.

Mistakes That Kill Multi-Stakeholder Deals

<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">Where Outplay Helps Revenue Teams Map Smarter</h2>Most of the stakeholder mapping discipline described above can be done with discipline and a solid CRM setup. But there's a reason the best revenue teams are consolidating around smarter platforms: the coordination tax on complex, multi-stakeholder deals is real, and it grows with every deal.<a href="https://outplay.ai/">Outplay</a> is built for the kind of sales motion where stakeholder mapping isn't a one-off exercise — it's a continuous, team-wide practice.When your SDR hands off to an AE inside Outplay, the full engagement history — every email, every call, every sequence touchpoint — travels with the account. The AE doesn't start from scratch on context. The stakeholder map built at discovery is visible, updateable, and shareable across the revenue team.And when your team is running multi-threaded outreach to a buying committee — reaching the champion, the economic buyer, and the technical evaluator through coordinated, personalized sequences — Outplay gives you the control to run those plays without the coordination overhead of manually tracking who said what to whom.&nbsp;<a href="https://outplayhq.com/">See how Outplay supports multi-stakeholder deal management →</a> &nbsp;

Where Outplay Helps Revenue Teams Map Smarter

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Stakeholder Mapping for Sales: A Guide to Winning Multi-Stakeholder Deals

What Stakeholder Mapping Actually Means

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Vatsal Mittal

All Posts by Vatsal Mittal

Sales Basics

Stakeholder Mapping for Sales: A Guide to Winning Multi-Stakeholder Deals