Could Your Salespeople Be Delivering the Right Message to the Wrong Person? Meet With Decision-Makers

Meet with decision-makers to drive explosive growth in revenue, profits, and enterprise value.

If you’ve ever wondered why your pipeline looks full but revenue still misses plan, here’s a hard truth: your salespeople might be delivering the right message to the wrong person. They are having several “good meetings,” but not with decision-makers.

This is one of the most common—and costly—sales execution problems in B2B. Great discovery questions, polished presentations, and product knowledge don’t matter if they’re shared with someone who can’t actually say “yes.” As we assess sales teams, we often find they struggle to meet with decision-makers. If the person you are meeting with is an influencer or a gatekeeper, they gather information and deliver it to decision-makers.

If you do not meet with decision-makers, your close rate will be determined by the influencer’s gatekeepers’ ability to answer questions and sell.

Let’s break this down with the research, the skills your team must develop, and the steps they should take to consistently reach decision-makers.

 

What the Research Says About Salespeople Missing Decision-Makers

Studies from Gartner and Forrester consistently show that 50–70% of B2B salespeople never reach the true decision-maker. Instead, they’re stuck talking to influencers, users, or worse—gatekeepers.

Even more concerning, 65% of executive buyers say salespeople don’t understand their business priorities. Why? Because sellers are engaging too low in the organization, where conversations are about features and price, not strategy and ROI.

The result? Bloated pipelines (more pipedreams than pipelines), stalled deals, and too many “let me run this up the chain” endings.

Are your salespeople meeting with decision makers, influencers, and gatekeepers?

Your salespeople are hitting their prospecting meeting quota, right?

Wrong!

If your salespeople do not know how to identify and meet with decision-makers, they are wasting valuable selling time and increasing your cost of sale.

 

How to Recognize a Gatekeeper vs. a Decision-Maker

Here’s where many salespeople stumble: they don’t know how to identify who’s who in the buying process.

• Gatekeepers: Executive assistants, office managers, and sometimes mid-level staff. Their role is to control access and protect decision-makers’ time. Gatekeepers rarely have budget authority.
• Influencers/Users: They may evaluate or recommend solutions, but they don’t sign checks. Talking only to them creates a false sense of progress.
• Decision-Makers: Typically, titles like CEO, CFO, COO, CRO, or VP of Operations. They care less about features and more about ROI, risk, and business outcomes. Decision-makers can allocate budget and sign agreements.

If your salespeople don’t know the difference—or don’t know how to pivot when they’re too low in the organization—you’re losing revenue to trained salespeople that do.

 

How to Get Past the Gatekeeper

Every executive has a gatekeeper. The goal isn’t to bulldoze past them, but to earn their trust. Here are proven tactics:

1. Respect their role – Gatekeepers often have more influence than sellers realize. Treat them as professionals, not obstacles.
2. Communicate value quickly – Instead of “Can I speak to Mr. Smith?”, use: “I help CFOs reduce their supply chain costs by 12–15%. I believe this will be relevant to Mr. Smith.”
3. Leverage referrals – A warm introduction from an internal champion or industry contact is 10x more effective than a cold call.
4. Be persistent but professional – Research shows it takes 8–12 attempts to secure an executive conversation. Too many salespeople stop after 2–3.

Gatekeepers act as a conversation filter for busy executives and book meetings with their decision makers when the salesperson explains how they can help them achieve a desired outcome.

Skills Salespeople Must Develop to Speak with Decision-Makers

Breaking through to executives requires more than persistence. Your team needs advanced sales training and coaching in these areas:

• Business Acumen – Executives speak in terms of revenue, EBITDA, risk, and market share. Salespeople must learn to connect solutions to financial outcomes.
• Discovery Skills – Asking consultative, strategic questions rather than leading with a product pitch.
• Qualifying Skills – Specific to determining if they have authority
• Message Alignment – Tailoring communication to each buyer persona (CEO, CFO, COO, etc.).
• Confidence and Executive Presence – Executives won’t trust a salesperson who sounds like they’re “selling.” They want a peer-to-peer conversation.
• Persistence with Process – Building a repeatable cadence for reaching decision-makers through phone, email, LinkedIn, and referrals.

 

Common Steps to Reach Decision-Makers

Here’s a simple framework your salespeople can follow:

1. Map the Account – Identify the organizational chart, influencers, and likely decision-makers.
2. Engage Influencers First – Gain insights, pain points, and credibility at lower levels.
3. Craft the Executive Message – Translate those insights into business outcomes for leadership.
4. Leverage Internal Advocates – Ask influencers to facilitate introductions upward.
5. Secure the Meeting – Use a multi-channel cadence (calls, emails, LinkedIn messages, referrals).
6. Deliver Executive Value – Lead with ROI, cost savings, or growth opportunities—never product features.

 

The Bottom Line for Sales LeadersNeeding Salespeople to Meet with Decision-Makers.

If your sales team isn’t consistently reaching decision-makers, you don’t have a closing problem—you have a prospecting and positioning problem.

As a CRO, company president, or sales leader, your role is to ensure your team has the sales coaching, training, and playbooks to deliver the right message to the right person.

Are you tired of having full sales pipelines and forecasts that fail to deliver?

How many of these meetings with investors, owners, and CEOs are you willing to have to discuss how the sales team missed quota when you forecasted they would hit it three months ago?

Because the right message to the wrong person is still the wrong strategy.

Do your salespeople have well-crafted value messages to engage decision-makers?

Do your salespeople know how to qualify whether the person they are meeting with has the authority to buy?

Have your salespeople received training on getting past the gatekeeper?

Do you have lots of quotes but too few turning into revenue?

To improve your close rates, increase revenue, and enhance your company’s enterprise value, we need salespeople to have conversations with decision-makers that lead to revenue.

If you would like to determine whether your salespeople are meeting with decision-makers, gatekeepers, or influencers, let’s schedule a 30-minute consultation.

Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash