Buyer enablement is the new demand gen

Your sales team does not have a lead problem. They have a "three squirrels in a trenchcoat" problem.

For years, marketing departments have celebrated "record-breaking" lead volume while sales teams have struggled to meet quotas. This friction exists because we have been measuring the wrong thing. Marketing celebrates the individual Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL), while sellers deal with the reality of complex committees. We treat stakeholders as unrelated individuals even though they are trying to buy the same thing together.

The evidence is damning: research shows that individual-level messaging actually lowers the likelihood of consensus by nearly 60 percent. When we nurture individuals in isolation, we aren't helping them buy; we are accidentally creating internal misalignment. To find the path to sustainable growth, we must stop viewing B2B revenue as a collection of clicks and start treating it as a group decision.

What is buying group marketing or B2B buying groups?

B2B buying groups are the specific collections of people inside an account who must reach alignment before a purchase can happen. In an enterprise environment, revenue is rarely the result of one person’s epiphany. It is a shared journey taken by people with competing priorities, different technical requirements, and varying levels of risk tolerance.

To navigate these groups, you must move past titles and start mapping roles. A person’s job title tells you what they do; their role in the buying group tells you how they influence the deal. In many cases, one person plays multiple roles, or a single role is shared by a committee.

Mapping the eight roles of the buying group

Understanding the interior lives of these buyers is the only way to move a deal forward. We have identified eight distinct roles that must be addressed:

1. The Champion: This is your internal advocate. They feel the pain of the current status quo most acutely and are willing to put their internal reputation on the line to push for your solution.
2. The Influencer: The subject matter expert. They may not sign the check, but they shape the requirements. If the Influencer doesn't like your approach, the Decider won't even see the proposal.
3. The Decider: The ultimate authority. They have the power to greenlight the purchase and sign the contract. They care less about features and more about business outcomes and strategic alignment.
4. The Financier: The keeper of the budget. They evaluate the fiscal impact and the return on investment. To the Financier, every dollar spent on you is a dollar not spent elsewhere.
5. The Technologist: The technical gatekeeper. They ensure your solution fits the existing stack and meets security standards. They are often looking for reasons to say "no" to protect the stability of their systems.
6. The Procurer: The administrative lead. They focus on legal, risk, and the logistics of the contracting process. They enter the group late, but they can stall a deal for months if their requirements aren't met.
7. The Saboteur: The hidden deal-killer. This is often the person who prefers a "build it ourselves" approach or a competitor they used at a previous job. They are often quiet in meetings but loud in private.
8. The Beneficiary: The happy-go-lucky recipient of your solution. That being said, if they don't use it, they will put your renewal at risk.

You can hear the difference in quarterly business review meetings. People can feel the impact of having better customer growth and larger deals. It’s like, ‘Ah, I see why we’re doing this.’" - Rich, Sysdig

Why are MQAs better than MQLs?

The traditional Marketing Qualified Lead is a scam. It is a "light signal"—a whitepaper download or a webinar attendance—that we have dressed up as a buying signal. Because MQLs are volume-oriented, marketing teams are incentivized to generate noise rather than revenue.

Marketing Qualified Accounts (MQAs) are better because they shift the lens from individual noise to account-level intent. An MQA tells you that something is happening inside a specific company. It aggregates the behavior of multiple people to suggest that the account is "in-market."

However, even the MQA has its limits. If your MQA model only counts "any three people from an account," you are still flying blind. You might have three Technologists doing research, but zero Champions or Deciders. An MQA is a necessary operational trigger, but it is "hollow" unless it eventually reveals the buying group reaching consensus beneath the surface.

What are the differences between MQLs and MQAs?

To move forward, we must define our terms precisely and understand the functional shifts they require.

What is a Marketing Qualified Lead?

A Marketing Qualified Lead is an individual contact who has met a specific threshold of engagement based on isolated behaviors. It is a funnel-driven metric that ignores the context of the larger organization.

What is a Marketing Qualified Account?

In marketing, a Marketing Qualified Account is an operational signal that indicates an account has reached a specific level of engagement or intent. It aggregates data across multiple contacts to prioritize accounts that are showing signs of being in a buying cycle.

How are MQLs, MQAs, and buying groups all related?

These are not competing philosophies. They are layers of a single, sophisticated revenue engine. You cannot have a high-functioning buying group strategy without the operational foundation of a Marketing Qualified Account.

The hierarchy looks like this: Account > Buying Group > Role > Contact.

1. Account (MQA): You identify that a company is showing intent signals.
2. Buying Group: You recognize that within that company, there is a specific project or "Buying Group" evaluating a solution in your category.
3. Role: You map the specific roles within that group (The Champion, The Financier, etc.).
4. Contact: You engage the actual humans filling those roles with content that addresses their specific worries and goals.

When you only focus on MQLs, you are staring at the "Contact" level and hoping the rest of the hierarchy takes care of itself. It rarely does. True account completeness means knowing you have identified and engaged at least one person in each critical role. If you have ten "leads" from an account but none of them are Deciders, your deal is at risk.

Individual-level messaging actually lowers the likelihood of consensus by 59 percent. To win, you must message to the group's shared goal. - Gartner

When should I use MQLs, MQAs, and buying groups?

The choice between these models is not a matter of preference; it is a matter of purchase complexity. You must align your measurement and engagement model to the actual complexity of your buyers' journey.

1. The Transactional Sale (MQL)

If you sell a low-cost, low-risk product where a single person can discover, evaluate, and purchase in one sitting, the Marketing Qualified Lead remains a valid metric. In this scenario, the "group" is a single person.

2. The Operational Scale (MQA)

As soon as your deal size increases and you require more than one person to agree, the lead-based model becomes a liability. Organizations that sell into the mid-market or enterprise must adopt the Marketing Qualified Account as their primary operational trigger.

The MQA is your signal for prioritization. It allows your Business Development Representatives (BDRs) to stop acting like telemarketers chasing individuals and start acting like account strategists. Instead of asking, "Is this person interested?" they begin to ask, "Is this account showing enough smoke to suggest a fire?"

3. The Strategic Alignment (Buying Group)

For the 88 percent of B2B purchases that involve a group of two or more people, the Buying Group model is the only honest way to market. This is where you move from "counting signals" to "orchestrating consensus."

You use the Buying Group model when your success depends on account completeness. This means you aren't just looking for activity; you are looking for specific roles. If your sales team is stuck in a cycle of "great meetings" that never turn into contracts, it is almost certainly because you are missing one or more of the critical roles—likely the Financier or the Procurer—who only show up at the end of the process to kill the deal.

Buying groups are the targeted upgrade for ABM

Adopting a buying group model does not mean abandoning your existing account-based marketing efforts. It is an upgrade, not a replacement. Traditional ABM often stalls because it identifies the right account but fails to engage the right humans inside of it. By adding buying groups to your strategy, you move from broad account targeting to precise group orchestration. You are no longer just chasing a company name; you are engaging the specific stakeholders whose alignment is required to move the deal forward. This is ABM with greater fidelity—it combines high-value account selection with the role-based insights needed to build the consensus that leads to revenue.

The functional shift: What changes for your team?

Moving to a Buying Group model isn't just a change in your dashboard; it's a change in your daily habits.

For Marketing: From lead-gen to role-enablement

Marketing's job is no longer to "capture" a lead. It is to enable each role in the group to reach consensus. This means creating content specifically for the Technologist (security whitepapers, API documentation) and the Financier (ROI calculators, business case templates). Marketing must measure success by "group penetration"—how many roles have we successfully engaged in our target accounts?

For Sales: From closing individuals to managing groups

Sellers must shift their mindset from "who is the boss?" to "how can I help this group agree?" Success in a Buying Group model requires a deep understanding of the internal politics of the account. Sellers should be asking Marketing for help identifying the Saboteur early in the cycle, rather than waiting for them to emerge during contract negotiations.

For Operations: From lead routing to account orchestration

Operations must stop building systems that "route leads" and start building systems that "surface groups." This requires a "Revenue Engine" approach where account scoring is more important than individual scoring, and where CRM data is organized around buying group roles rather than just contact titles.

From vibes to value: Messaging the entire group

Marketing to a buying group requires a two-speed messaging strategy. You cannot use the same tone to get a Technologist's attention that you use to help a Champion close a deal with their Financier. We categorize this shift as moving from "Vibes" to "Value."

Top of funnel: Marketing for "Vibes"

At the start of the journey, your goal is simple: capture the attention of as many roles as possible. This is "Vibes" marketing. It’s about emotion, curiosity, and recognition.

For the Champion, the vibe is empathy. You show them you understand their daily frustration. For the Saboteur, the vibe is challenge—you poke at the hidden costs of the status quo. This content doesn't need to be 40 pages long; it needs to be technicolor. It’s the creative device, the provocative question, or the "three squirrels in a trenchcoat" metaphor that makes someone stop scrolling. You are building trust by proving you understand the human behind the role.

Middle and bottom funnel: Marketing for "Value"

Once you have their attention, the Vibes must transform into Value. This is the harder work of orchestration. Middle and bottom-funnel content isn't just about your product's features; it’s about providing the Value that helps stakeholders align with one another.

The Champion needs value in the form of internal selling tools—slide decks they can present to the Decider. The Technologist needs value in the form of deep-dive security documentation that proactively answers their "no" before they say it. The Financier needs value in the form of a business case that aligns your solution with the company’s quarterly goals.

The goal here is consensus. You aren't marketing to them; you are providing the evidence that helps them market to each other. If your middle-funnel content is just a generic feature list, you are leaving the Value work to your buyers. And in a complex committee, if you don't do the work for them, they will likely choose the path of least resistance: doing nothing.

Marketing is doing its job when prospects show up at a sales call asking how you compare to specific competitive solutions, not asking what your product can actually achieve.

Moving to this model isn't just about better numbers; it's about better relationships. When you treat your buyers like the group they are, you stop being a vendor and start being a partner in their success.

Call to action

The era of the individual lead is over. In a world of complex committees and hidden blockers, the "three squirrels in a trenchcoat" model of lead generation will only lead to missed quotas and frustrated teams.

To find the path to sustainable growth, you must map the group. You must identify the roles, address their specific worries, and provide the content they need to reach consensus. It is a harder path, but it is the only one that leads to revenue.

It's time to make the move

If you are ready to stop chasing interns and start mapping the people who actually sign the checks, join us for our upcoming webinar series.

Webinar Series: It's a Family Affair

We are diving deep into the "why" behind buying groups (along with an executive presentation) and providing a 7-step manual for managing the transition to buying groups. Sign up for our series to get both!