What Is an Economic Buyer?

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Ask most B2B sellers to explain what an economic buyer is, and you’ll get a polished answer — but scratch the surface, and you’ll often find confusion. In the MEDDIC sales framework, the economic buyer (EB) is the person with final authority over the money. Not the budget owner, not the champion, and not the evaluator — the one who can approve spend or stop it cold.

Here’s why this matters: research from Miller Heiman shows that 70% of lost B2B deals happen due to poor qualification, not price or product issues. And a huge part of that qualification gap is the failure to identify or engage the true EB. Sellers fall into the trap of assuming the person they’ve built momentum with — often a champion or senior stakeholder — is the EB, only to hit a wall when the real decision-maker appears late in the game.

It gets trickier. The EB often doesn’t show up in your early conversations. They may sit above the functional buyers, controlling multiple budget lines, or operate at the executive level with an eye on risk and strategic fit. A Gartner report found that today’s B2B purchase decisions involve 6–10 stakeholders, but only one or two hold real approval authority. If you’re not getting to the people who hold the pen, you’re playing an expensive guessing game.

How to Identify the Economic Buyer: It’s Not About Job Titles

Most sellers trip up because they rely on job titles, org charts, or assumptions. But the only sure test is this: can this person approve the spend — and reallocate money if needed? The person who controls the budget isn’t necessarily the one who controls how it’s used. That difference is everything.

A classic mistake is mistaking the budget holder for the EB. A department head may manage a budget, but the CFO or COO may still sign off. Or a business unit lead may approve costs under a threshold, but anything above it goes to the board. The only way to know is to ask directly, and to listen carefully to how people describe the approval process. When you hear phrases like, “We just need to get this through finance,” or, “This will need to go to the executive committee,” you’ve just been handed a critical piece of intelligence: you’re not at the top yet.

The EB also tends to care about a completely different set of outcomes. Operational buyers focus on usability, technical buyers focus on fit, but the EB focuses on business outcomes: Will this make or save us money? How fast is the payback? What’s the risk, and how does it compare to other investments?

Bain & Company research underlines this shift: executive buyers are four times more likely to act on quantified outcomes than qualitative benefits. If you’re still talking about “improving user workflows” in the EB conversation, you’re missing the mark.

How to Engage the Economic Buyer Early and Win More Deals

Here’s the hard truth: if you wait until the deal is in procurement to meet the EB, you’re too late. To control the sales cycle, you need to bring them in early — ideally with your champion as a partner, not a barrier.

The best sellers don’t bypass the champion; they partner with them. That means framing the EB engagement as a shared goal: “To make sure this aligns with what matters most to the business, when and how should we bring [CFO/COO] into the conversation?” This approach turns the EB meeting into a moment of momentum, not a threat.

When you do get in front of the EB, you need to change your playbook. Features won’t save you; numbers will. Be prepared to talk in sharp, commercial terms: revenue impact, cost savings, payback period, risk mitigation, competitive advantage. Forrester data shows that companies that engage senior decision-makers early in the buying process close deals 2.5 times more often — and typically with larger deal sizes. This is not a small uplift; it’s the difference between sitting in the top tier of performers or chasing your tail quarter after quarter.

Timing also matters. You want to test EB access well before commercial negotiation. Too often, sellers push until proposal stage and only then discover they haven’t met the right person. That’s how deals end up stuck in “CFO purgatory” — where months of work vanish into a final no.

Finally, understand that the EB is often as interested in reducing risk as they are in capturing upside. They want to know: have you done this before? Will you deliver on time? What happens if it goes wrong? Bring proof, case studies, and a plan that makes the journey feel as safe as the destination.

The uncomfortable reality is this: until the EB says yes, you’re forecasting on hope. Sellers who master economic buyer engagement don’t just close more — they run cleaner, faster, and more predictable deals. Everyone else? They stay busy, they stay optimistic — and they stay stuck.

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Footnote: While this article uses terms like “economic buyer” and “decision-maker,” it’s worth noting that the idea of a single “decision-maker” is increasingly outdated. Today’s buying groups are cross-functional, consensus-driven, and politically complex. Smart sellers treat everyone as part of the decision — but they still know who holds the final authority over the money.