Chapter 02
Decision-maker research without org-chart cosplay
Titles lie. Influence moves. pralkexun maps who shapes a B2B purchase by listening for risk language, status games, and silent vetoes — then frames the map with Claude discipline.
Four roles that usually matter
Sponsor
Owns the business case narrative. Cares about cover, timing, and peer optics.
User coalition
Feels workflow friction daily. Can quietly kill adoption after signature.
Control roles
Security, IT, legal. Ask for evidence of containment, not inspiration.
Procurement
Runs process theater. Friction here is often ritual, not product rejection.
How pralkexun researches influence
Start from a recent buying story, not from a blank org chart. Ask: who joined which meetings, who forwarded which deck, who asked for a security packet, who stalled the calendar. Those behaviors reveal influence more reliably than titles scraped from LinkedIn.
Interview each role with tailored prompts. Sponsors: “What would make this look reckless to your peers?” Users: “Where did the pilot create extra work?” Control roles: “What evidence would let you say yes with less anxiety?” Pair answers with customer interview craft and later with Claude pattern synthesis.
“We needed someone else’s logo on the slide before legal would engage.”
Quotes like that become Claude pattern cards: peer cover, process gate, status transfer. They are not statistics. They are field evidence you can defend in a positioning workshop. When influence maps collide with contact-point behavior, revisit touchpoint mapping.
What not to claim
pralkexun refuses “buyer persona” posters that invent hobbies and ROI percentages. Decision-maker research should produce influence hypotheses, question banks, and friction watchlists — then send teams back into the field. For how committees stall after interest appears, continue with purchase friction.