Targeting & ICP
How to Find the Right Decision-Makers at Target Accounts
Start by identifying who owns the problem your product solves, who influences the decision even without owning budget, and who actually controls the spend. Those can be three different people, and job titles alone often don't reveal which is which, since the same title can carry very different authority at different companies.
Practical guide · Published August 22, 2026 · Written by Zaki Usman
Three roles, not one title
The person who experiences the problem your product solves day to day isn't always the person who approves spending on it, and neither is always the person whose opinion carries the most weight internally. Mapping these three roles, problem owner, influencer, budget holder, before choosing a recipient produces a much more deliberate targeting decision than defaulting to whichever title sounds most senior.
Why titles alone can mislead
The same title can carry very different levels of authority depending on company size and structure. A director at a 50-person company may have more actual purchasing authority than a director at a 5,000-person company, where several more layers sit above them. Function, what someone is actually responsible for, tends to hold up better across company sizes than title does.
How to map it in practice
For a given offer, ask who deals with the problem this solves on a regular basis, who would need to sign off before it gets purchased, and who holds the budget line it would come out of. At a smaller company those might be the same person. At a larger one they're often three separate roles, and understanding which one matters most for a given campaign shapes both who receives the mailer and what the message should emphasize.
When to mail more than one contact
For higher-value accounts where the purchase clearly involves more than one internal stakeholder, reaching two roles, commonly the problem owner and the budget holder, can be worth the added cost, since it reduces reliance on one person to advocate internally for the purchase. For lower-value or more straightforward purchases, a single well-chosen contact is usually sufficient.
Frequently asked questions
No, that's usually reserved for higher-value accounts where the purchase clearly involves multiple stakeholders. For most of a qualified list, one well-chosen contact is enough.
It's often inferred from company size, structure, and typical patterns for that type of purchase, rather than known with certainty in advance. Existing customer data on who actually signed similar deals is the strongest signal.
Generally yes, since function describes what someone actually does, which holds up more consistently across companies of different sizes than title does.
It's not necessarily wasted, an internally-forwarded piece or a redirected conversation can still work, but it's a weaker outcome than reaching the right contact directly, which is why the mapping step matters.
Often, yes. At smaller companies, the problem owner, influencer and budget holder are more likely to be the same person, which simplifies the targeting decision considerably.
Related topics
Work with Yotru
How Yotru maps roles before mailing
Yotru's targeting process maps problem owner, influencer and budget holder for a given offer before a list is finalized, so the recipient chosen for each account is the one most likely to act on the piece rather than whoever has the most senior-sounding title. Where a purchase clearly needs more than one internal stakeholder, that mapping is what decides which accounts get a second, differently-emphasized piece instead of applying it evenly across the list. .