Decision Maker

In selling and marketing, you have to convince someone who is going to decide to buy the product. When you are building something, custom, to someone's specifications, this person is the one who ultimately decides to go ahead with the project and approves the money. As often as not, everyone else in the process is constantly explaining to her what's going on as she is not usually intimately familiar with the real work being augmented, enhanced, or replaced.

Decision makers in large organizations are often general managers who are in positions of budget management learning about operational or other areas of the business. This broadening is very valuable to the individual. As she learns, everyone below and around her teach.

Marketing and selling to decision makers has to appeal to their sense of importance while staying very much in touch with the UserStory underlying the real needs. DecisionMakers? usually need to learn all about the parameters of the decision, even when they are, were, or should be familiar with the space.

 -- MartyHeyman

According to SPIN Selling, there can be more than one decision maker for each decision. The number of decision makers in an organization will increase when people are afraid to lose their jobs. -- StephanBranczyk