In today’s B2B landscape, reaching the right audience is critical to success. Your sales teams meticulously map out organisational charts, identify key contacts, and tailor pitches. Yet, despite their efforts, it’s not uncommon for deals to stall, budgets to shrink, and proposals to vanish, seemingly in the midst of internal deliberations. But why?
The B2B buying process: More complex, more players
Today's buying journeys are more complex, intricate and collaborative than ever before, with numerous stakeholders across various departments. Edleman’s Trust Barometer 2025 reports that, on average, 13 stakeholders are involved in a single B2B purchasing decision, and more than 40% of deals stall due to internal misalignment within buyer groups. But even more than the size of the decision-making group, it is the huge influence of “hidden buyers” that can make or break a deal.
A study by Edelman and LinkedIn indicates that over 40% of business deals get stuck because people inside the company don't agree, often because this overlooked group of hidden buyers - perhaps considered merely ‘box-checkers’ - isn't fully on board or has unresolved concerns. Understanding their ‘quiet influence’ is no longer an optional extra: it’s an essential precondition for B2B sales and marketing success.
Who exactly are these “Hidden Buyers”?
Hidden buyers occupy key roles that are involved in any significant purchase. You won’t usually see them at product demos or sales presentations, and they are not necessarily the problem owners that your solution is designed to address.
However, while hidden buyers may not own the problem, your potential for sales success escalates when they understand how your offering supports their role and agenda. This is where tailored thought leadership activity is very effective.
The Edelman and LinkedIn research shows that 95% of buyers say strong, relevant thought leadership makes them more receptive to sales and marketing. So, by reframing your sales story from the perspectives of key hidden buyer groups, you significantly increase your potential for sales success. Common hidden buyers include:
- Finance/Procurement: Concerned with budgeting, cost-effectiveness, payment terms, vendor viability, and overall financial impact. They look beyond the immediate price tag to total cost of ownership (TCO) and long-term value.
- Legal/Compliance: Focused on contractual terms, data privacy regulations (GDPR, CCPA), intellectual property and ensuring the solution adheres to all industry and corporate policies.
- Information Technology (IT)/Security: Primarily concerned with technical integration with existing systems, data security protocols, infrastructure requirements, scalability, ongoing maintenance and potential cybersecurity risks.
- Operations/Logistics: Interested in how the solution impacts existing workflows, efficiency, staffing and potential disruption during implementation.
- End-User Managers/Specialists: While some end-users are part of the visible buying team, many key technical or operational specialists who will be deeply impacted by, or responsible for, the solution's success might be overlooked until too late.
Recognising these diverse roles and their unique concerns is the first step to acknowledging, understanding and addressing their huge influence in the sales and marketing process.
What kind of veto power do they hold?
Whilst the prominent C-Suite stakeholders might advocate the benefits of your solution, hidden buyers often have different priorities connected with their functional oversight. For instance, software solutions cannot be implemented without IT approval, a contract cannot be signed without legal review, and a budget cannot be allocated without finance sign-off. These roles are in-effect, fundamental checkpoints in the buying process, meaning they hold the power to stop or approve a deal.
What’s more, hidden buyers often turn up late on in the sales cycle. If this is the first time they’re hearing about you, it can lead to delays or even a deal collapse, costing huge time and resources.
As hidden buyers’ concerns are often based around risk mitigation, they tend to evaluate solutions from the perspective of compliance, security vulnerabilities, operational disruption, or financial longevity. Providing always-on thought leadership content tailored to these specific areas ensures that hidden buyers understand your offering however late they emerge in the sales cycle.
Hidden buyers are quiet, yet proactive
Research by Edelman reveals that 63% of business decision-makers spend over an hour a week reading expert articles. And an even greater majority - 71% - find thought leadership content more useful than sales materials to demonstrate value.
In other words, hidden buyers are actively looking for new ideas and solutions rather than waiting for sales pitches. Indeed, they are often wary of vendor supplied content, instead conducting their own due diligence, diving into technical specifications, comparing contracts and vetting security protocols.
As hidden buyers often have the ear of senior stakeholders, a “no” from them can kill a deal in its tracks. Understanding this dynamic shows that hidden buyers need proactive content to address their distinct concerns from the very start – to build trust and ensure they are not an obstacle to success later on.
Advantages of early engagement are numerous, including providing your sales and product teams with valuable insights to inform your product development and refine your go-to-market strategy. Building trust can foster a more robust partnership, helping to minimise churn and create the foundations for future project stages or cross-sells. And ultimately, we want them to become internal champions, positively influencing within their own departments and other parts of their business.
Develop a strategic approach to identify and engage hidden buyers
We’ve seen how reaching hidden buyers means going beyond the usual stakeholders. However, it’s more than asking who else is involved; it’s about systematically anticipating and addressing their needs. During initial talks, your sales team need to ask questions that uncover other potential stakeholders. For instance:
- Who handles the budget approval for projects like this?
- What internal teams would need to review the technical or security aspects?
- Who within your legal department reviews new vendor contracts?
- Who manages the operational impact of new software rollouts?
- Who will be responsible for the long-term maintenance or integration of this solution?
- Are there any internal policies or compliance requirements we should be aware of?
This critical information helps map the entire buying circle of stakeholders, including their roles, departments, likely concerns and relationships with your primary champions. In turn, this helps your sales and marketing teams to anticipate, and plan for gaps in your engagement strategy.
Engage hidden buyers with stand-out creativity and tailored content
Despite the rapid transformation in marketing over the last few years, there is still no substitute for strong, differentiating creative ideas to draw attention to your message. In fact, Edelman revealed that 60% of decision makers see creative formats and distinctive design as strong differentiator and indicator of quality.
Of course, even the best creative ideas are ineffective if they’re not seen by the right audience. Here, your main client contacts can be your best allies in reaching hidden buyers.
Equipping customers to secure alignment from their internal stakeholders with high quality thought leadership and other materials demonstrates a sophisticated understanding of their needs. Here a few examples of hidden buyer-specific content that can deduce internal barriers to sale:
- Finance: ROI calculators, TCO analyses, case studies highlighting financial efficiencies.
- Legal: Compliance checklists, data privacy statements, standard contract terms overviews.
- IT/Security: Technical integration guides, security whitepapers, API documentation, data flow diagrams, testimonials from other IT leaders.
- Operations: Implementation timelines, change management guides, training support materials, workflow integration examples.
While direct access isn't always possible, aim for it if you can. If not, help your client contact to engage them early. Suggest a brief introductory call with the IT lead, or offer to share specific resources. The goal is to address potential roadblocks before they become deal-breakers.
Remember, hidden buyers are often risk averse. Frame your solution not just in terms of benefits, but also in terms of how it reduces risk, ensures compliance, simplifies processes, and provides reliability. This speaks directly to their core concerns.
Use marketing to nurture and influence
For hidden buyers, marketing is about much more than sales. You can position your brand as a credible, trusted expert, rather than just a vendor, by anticipating their needs and providing accessible, relevant information, to subtly influence them long before sales makes first contact:
- Create high-quality thought leadership content (whitepapers, webinars, industry reports) that addresses the strategic challenges and opportunities relevant to roles like CFOs, CIOs, chief legal officers and procurement heads.
- Allow hidden buyers to self-educate without direct sales interaction, by ensuring your website has dedicated sections or resources that cater to the specific concerns of hidden buyers, including detailed security pages, compliance statements, technical specifications, integration guides, and clear pricing/licensing information.
- Develop case studies that highlight not just ROI and benefits for end-users, but also smooth implementation processes, compliance adherence, successful integrations, and positive feedback from IT or finance teams in similar companies.
- Consider hosting webinars or virtual events specifically for technical or financial audiences, and create in-depth FAQs or resource libraries that answer common questions from legal, security, or procurement teams.
- Use the power of SEO to optimize your content for keywords that hidden buyers would use in their research. Think "data privacy compliance for [industry]," "integration challenges of [software type]," "calculating total cost of ownership for [solution]," or "vendor risk assessment checklist."
Luxid is a brand strategic growth agency at the intersection of creativity, data and technology. Talk to an expert at Luxid about how we can help you reach hidden buyers in an ever complex buying environment – by identifying their roles, understanding their unique concerns and integrating their perspectives throughout the sales cycle with powerful and personalized campaigns, content and growth programs.
