"Decision-maker" isn't a job title — it's a role someone plays for a specific purchase. The person who signs off on a $5k tool is different from the one who approves a $500k contract, and neither has "decision-maker" in their headline. Finding them means reasoning about authority, then searching for the titles that hold it.
Start with the buying decision, not a title
Before you search, answer one question: for what you're selling, who signs off? The answer depends on deal size and function:
- Small purchase — often a manager or team lead can just buy it.
- Departmental purchase — the department head (VP/Director of X) decides.
- Large or cross-functional purchase — a C-level exec, sometimes with a committee.
Search for the titles that hold that authority for your specific offer, not a generic "decision-maker."
The exact Boolean
For departmental buyers, target the head of the relevant function:
("VP" OR "head of" OR "director" OR "chief") AND ("marketing" OR "sales" OR "operations" OR "IT")
For C-suite authority on bigger deals:
("CEO" OR "CFO" OR "COO" OR "CTO" OR "founder" OR "owner" OR "president")
For the manager-level buyer of smaller tools:
("manager" OR "team lead" OR "head of") AND (your function)
See Writing Boolean Searches for the operators, and the role-specific guides for CEOs, founders, and marketing directors.
The filters that matter
- Company — decision-maker search is usually account-based: pick the target company, then find the right authority inside it. This is the core move.
- Seniority — map it to the deal size, per the logic above.
- Function / department — the decision-maker for your product lives in a specific function; target it.
- Company size — authority sits at different levels in a 20-person startup vs. a 20,000-person enterprise. In a startup the founder buys everything; in an enterprise it's a department head or committee.
Find the whole buying committee
For anything but the smallest deals, there's rarely one decision-maker — there's a champion, an economic buyer, and often a blocker. The smart play is to identify several relevant people at the account: the person who'll use it (champion), the person who signs (economic buyer), and the person who could kill it (e.g. IT, finance). LinkedIn is where you map that committee.
How to reach decision-makers
- Lead with a business outcome, not a feature. Decision-makers think in results and risk.
- Be brief and senior in tone. The more senior the person, the shorter your message should be.
- Reference why them, why now. A trigger (a job change, a company move) beats a cold open every time.
- Respect that they're pitched constantly. Specific and relevant is the only thing that cuts through.
Map and reach the committee at scale
Conextly finds the right authority at each target company with LinkedIn search, tracks the whole buying committee on a pipeline, and flags job changes — new decision-makers are your best moment to reach in. It drafts an outcome-led message per person from their profile, which you approve before it sends. You map and work every account's decision-makers with personal notes, at a human pace that keeps your account safe.