Stakeholder Mapping
By Federico Donatone · Updated October 15, 2026Stakeholder mapping is the process of identifying everyone who influences a buying decision inside an account and recording each person's role, level of influence and attitude toward your offer. In B2B sales, a stakeholder map shows who signs, who champions, who evaluates and who could block the deal, so sellers know who to reach next.
The stakeholder roles to map in a B2B deal
| Role | What they care about | What you need from them |
|---|---|---|
| Economic buyer | Return and risk | Approval and budget |
| Champion | Their own win inside the company | Access and inside information |
| Technical evaluator | Security, integration, effort | A pass on the technical review |
| End users | Their daily workflow | Adoption and feedback |
| Blocker | The status quo, a rival vendor or budget | A concern you can answer |
| Procurement and legal | Terms, compliance, price | A signed contract |
Roles are not job titles. A head of operations can be the champion in one deal and the blocker in the next. Map what each person does in this decision, not what their title says. In smaller companies one person can hold several roles: the founder is often economic buyer, champion and technical evaluator at once.
How to build a stakeholder map
- List every person you know in the account, plus the roles you have not found yet.
- For each one, note the role in this decision, the level of influence (high, medium or low) and the stance (supporter, neutral or opponent).
- Draw the lines: who reports to whom, and who listens to whom.
- Mark the gaps, especially a missing economic buyer or technical evaluator.
- Plan one action per person: a meeting, a piece of proof or an introduction through your champion.
- Update the map after every call.
Stakeholder mapping with a power and interest grid
A classic way to sort people is a grid with influence on one side and interest in your deal on the other. Each box gets a different plan.
| High interest | Low interest | |
|---|---|---|
| High influence | Manage closely: meet often | Keep satisfied: short, regular updates |
| Low influence | Keep informed: share progress | Monitor: light touch |
The dangerous box is high influence and low interest: a senior person who was never engaged and can still say no at the end. Move them up by tying your offer to a goal they already own.
Where stakeholder research comes from
Start before the first call. LinkedIn profiles, company websites, press releases and job posts show who owns which function. In Clay, an AI research step can answer what a database cannot, such as who owns a decision at a given account, as our Clay consultant page describes. Then confirm everything on calls, because org charts rarely show who actually decides.
Mapping changes who you target from the first touch. In Growth Cab's outbound program for Cloudsome, 41 of the 62 qualified opportunities were with CTOs and CIOs, the leaders who run the infrastructure the product manages. The Cloudsome case study shows how the targeting was set up.
Use discovery to fill in the rest. Questions such as who else would be involved in a decision like this, or how the company bought the last tool of this kind, reveal roles nobody lists on a website. Our guide to sales discovery questions covers what to prepare on your side before those calls.