5 Steps to Navigate Buying Groups in 2025: A RevOps Guide

In today’s business environment, B2B buying is never just one person. According to Forrester Research, more than half of global business buyers purchase in complex buying scenarios that include more people, more departments, and generally higher price points. And this buying group can be made up of 7 to 20 people!

Unlocking the power of buying groups is a crucial aspect of the B2B landscape.

This blog is a synopsis of our conversation with revenue operations leader, Nandini Karkare. She is currently the SVP of RevOps at Zywave. Nandini suggests strategic steps to navigate through the realms of Revenue Operations and helps uncover the strategies, insights, and best practices that constitute a comprehensive guide to mastering the dynamics of buying groups.

Read on to get actionable tips on how you can navigate buying groups in 2025 (and beyond). And implement the learnings to create a winning GTM motion.

Here are the 5 steps Nandini recommends:

1. Decode Your Buying Groups

The buying groups typically consist of members from departments and they all contribute different aspects. It is critical to understand the scope of decision-making including the people who play the most significant roles in making the call.

Gartner’s report on B2B Buying highlights that 77% of B2B purchases involve a buying group of four or more people.

PS: The key stakeholder can turn out someone altogether different from who you had building a relationship with all along.

a. Capturing Buying Group Members

Effective buying group management means considering not just decision-makers but influential stakeholders across departments. Misidentifying key players or focusing solely on the main contact risks derailing the sale.

(i) How can you map the entire buying group efficiently?

• Leverage internal and external data to identify the key players
• Segment the Group by Role and Influence

(ii) Not everyone in the buying group holds equal power or influence. Segment them into categories:

1. Decision-makers (who give the final heads-up)
2. Influencers (who sway the decision)
3. Users (who use the product and provide feedback)
4. Budget owners

b. The Role Transition Within a Buying Group

Moving the focus from a buying group to a renewal or expansion committee includes knowing precisely who remains in the relationship, as well as who becomes more active as an account grows.

(i) New roles may emerge in a Buying Group

Technical or operational leaders may become more influential post sale, since they are now using the product.

(ii) The focus shifts from buying to renewal

The interaction should be more about the return on investment (ROI) of the product placed on the market, ongoing value delivery, and ongoing needs.

(iii) Alignment between the buying groups and renewal committee

Leveraging the same enthusiasm and relationships generated at the first-buying stage helps in anchoring the transitions and preventing any drop-offs in engagement.

Related Resource: Navigate Enterprise Buying Committees: Strategies for Driving Alignment

c. Understand the Personal and Collective Priorities of a Buying Group

As per McKinsey & Company, B2B buying decisions increasingly require engagement across departments, with 60% of purchasing committees including members from outside traditional procurement, like IT and HR.

(i)Alignment Between C-Suite and Technical Teams

Decisions aren’t Made in a Vacuum

Collaboration between C-suite and technical teams ensures a holistic approach to solving customer problems, creating stronger, more sustainable relationships

Their cross departmental collaboration can help with:

(ii) Alignment on Strategic Goals

C suite executives need technical assistance to translate their strategic vision to reality that also aligns with company-wide objectives.

(iii) Technical Validation

These insights guide the C-suite in making informed decisions that fit technical infrastructure and future-proofing.

(iv) Cross-functional Communication

Bridging the gap between these two groups involves continuous, open communication, ensuring that technical evaluations don’t delay business goals but instead support them cohesively.

2. Use Data as your Weapon

Teams need data to back their claims and build credibility among buying groups. Revenue operations play a key role in documenting this data into the CRM. By analyzing this data, sales teams can further extract valuable insights, anticipate stakeholder needs, and accelerate sales cycles by customizing engagement based on historical behavior patterns.

a. Unlocking and Capturing Buying Group Insights

Good quality data and insights are like cheat codes to a game of winning a Buying Group.

While you can go ahead and try your luck, having a cue to the winning strategy can increase your chances of getting it right in the first place and moving past the trial and error.

Captured insights can furnish revenue teams with important intelligence like:

• Champion’s involvement in a deal
• Number of meetings attended
• Involvement of different stakeholders at a particular stage

(i) Documenting the Buying Group in CRM

By analyzing historical patterns and data, RevOps can glean transformative insights from their buying groups which eventually help sales in cutting down their sales cycles.

The first step in making these data figures actionable is to actually document them in CRM in a cohesive manner that makes sense to everybody using it.

(ii) Centralizing Lead Management

As per Salesforce, 71% of APAC executives report that customer data in their business originates from far too many sources that practically makes it difficult to act upon.

By aiming at the control of the lead data, it is much easier to comprehend how the leads are advancing, which helps in customizing the approach better.

The key advantages include:

– Streamlined collaboration among the different business units

The Sales, Marketing as well as Customer Success teams can have the same data therefore maintaining an organized way of approaching the buying groups.

– Better engagement with leads

Workflows that are automated enable specific touchpoints to be triggered at critical points of the buyer’s cycle thus nurturing leads better.

– Enhanced productivity

Automation allows alleviation of manual workloads to the teams. Hence, maximizing the outputs of high-level tasks such as strategic planning and customer interactions.

b. Teamwork Makes the Dream Work

42% of businesses say that sales and marketing alignment is crucial for accelerating the conversion process

When teams embrace a mindset that “this is a team sport”, collaboration gets embedded within the organization thereby enhancing engagement and success.

(i) Cross Departmental Collaboration

Strategies for sales, marketing, and customer success should all be integrated so that the customer gets a seamless and consistent experience.

(ii) Shared Vision

Teams can achieve superior outcomes and forge deeper relationships when all relevant parties are working towards the same goal.

(iii) Feedback Loops

Implementing systems for continuous feedback and adjustment, allowing for real-time improvements and alignment on goals.

3. Multithreading within Buying Groups

More than 80% of sellers say deals have stalled or been lost in the past 12 months due to a key stakeholder leaving

There is an emerging need to include every single stakeholder that is involved in the selling process.

While building a strong relationship with one contact is important, it’s equally crucial to understand how the product affects the entire buying group. Each member of the group may prioritize different aspects of the solution.

Energy Transfer: To persuade all members of the buying groups effectively one must build a relationship beyond the primary contact and hence there needs to be an “energy transfer and rapport building.

a. Higher-Level Engagement for Bigger Wins

In order to win bigger deals, teams must know the structure of the buying groups, find executive sponsors and/or champions early on.

It’s not just about multi-threaded at the same level, but you have to have this good marriage between the C suite, the senior levels, the decision makers and the technical buy in.

Nandini Karkare, Senior Vice President at Zywave

(i) Identify Key Players

Insights on influential players can impact the entire selling process

(ii) Strategic Engagement

Tailoring sales approaches for each stakeholder can open more opportunities for larger deals.

4. Tailor Your Sales Process to the Buying Group

Selling to higher-level decision-makers allows sales teams to position solutions as critical to businesses. They can elevate the discussions to enterprise-wide applications rather than department specific use-cases.

Leveraging AI to analyze the behavior of different buying group members and automate outreach accordingly. is crucial

a. Key Insights for Sales Strategies:

• Identify, capture and document the buying groups in CRM for targeted engagement
• Focus on multi-threaded relationships that align both executive and technical teams
• Use insights from previous interactions to adjust strategy and engage the right decision-makers at the right time

b. Challenges that can derail your Buying Group engagement:

• Data about buying groups often remains locked in individual sales reps’ emails, calendars, and inboxes. This date must be leveraged for a deeper analysis.
• RevOps must extract and centralize this data to provide visibility and insights that drive better engagement
• Tools for simplifying and automating data capture are critical to unlocking valuable information

c. Driving Consensus within your Buying Group

• Understanding the dynamics of buying groups is also essential to cut through internal disagreements that can potentially derail deals. Sales reps must align their priorities and mediate differences among buying group members.

5. Keep the Buying Group Engaged Throughout the Sales Cycle

Post-Sales Dynamics with your Buying Group

The most important factor in ensuring a fluid transition is having revenue operations that cut across all boundaries. From initial deal closure to the renewal phase, an end-to-end visibility can avert any possible gaps that can lead to miscommunication and misalignment.

With complete visibility, all teams have a shared understanding of;

• Who the key decision-makers are?
• What challenges or goals were highlighted during the initial buying process?
• How engagement with these stakeholders evolved over time?
• What was promised or committed at each stage of the process?

Embracing AI in Mapping Buying Groups

A report by Mckinskey says that More than 60% of companies already use AI to enhance customer outreach, including dynamic audience targeting and personalized follow-ups.

By leveraging AI, RevOps departments are able to streamline processes, enhance engagement with prospects, and make informed decisions that directly impact revenue growth.

a. Ways to leverage AI within Buying Groups

(i) Automated repetitive tasks

Ranging from filling forms, to qualifying a lead, delegate repetitive tasks to AI and free up your rep’s valuable time.

(ii) Improved forecasting

AI can look into historical data and the patterns that help in establishing future trends and make forecasts accurate and reliable.

(iii) Opportunity targeting

RevOps teams can pinpoint precise opportunities with AI whereas traditional data would be needed to crunch over days or months to deliver actionable outputs.

b. The Importance of Flexibility and Adaptability

Flexibility and adaptability are not just buzzwords in RevOps, rather they are the baselines for achievement. Teams that remain flexible will be able to navigate the changes in the industry and seize growth opportunities.

(i) Adapting to new tools and technologies

Even the most effective teams must be in unison to adopt new platforms and tools that can enhance operational efficiency.

(ii) Shifting responsibilities

Bringing together the efforts of sales, marketing, and customer success implies that RevOps must be agile when dealing with diverse buying groups and dynamic priorities.

(iii) Constant learning and development

With the integration of AI within RevOps, leaders must evolve continuously as they upskill their expertise to remain relevant.

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Get Deeper Buying Group Intelligence with Nektar

Navigating the complexities of the buying groups can lead to unprecedented efficiency for revenue teams. However, it comes with significant challenges.

With Nektar’s buying groups intelligence, you can use your customer interactions to identify buying groups. This can help in closing deals faster and driving long term success.

Here’s how Nektar can transform your process:

Automatically Detect Key Buying Group Members

Nektar uses intelligence automation to identify contacts involved in multi-channel interactions (emails, meetings, etc.) and automatically attaches them to the right opportunity. This ensures accurate buying group alignment with >90% accuracy.

AI-Powered Contact Role Identification

Nektar’s AI-driven rules help you define buying group roles automatically—such as tagging decision-makers in enterprise deals based on titles like SVP RevOps—so you can focus your efforts on the right individuals.

Track Engagement and Drive Alignment

Evaluate the level and quality of engagement for each contact by sales stage, fast-tracking alignment for new purchases, upsells, or renewals. No more guesswork—just actionable insights.

Ready to unlock the potential of your buying groups?

Talk to our team to understand how Nektar can help you master buying group automation and accelerate revenue growth.