Optimising digital journeys that convert committees, not just champions

sandip amlani
3 days ago
4 min read

A buying committee gathered around a computer debating and arguing about what is important to them when making a big purchase decision. — How do you optimise for buying committees?

Note: This article is taken from my course: CRO for complex B2B sales companies. If you would like the entire 6-part email series from the beginning, you can sign up here.

If you’ve ever seen a great lead stall after weeks of promising engagement, you’re not alone. In complex B2B sales, the problem usually isn’t your offer; it’s the fact that your champion has to win over a room full of stakeholders, each with their own agenda.

And when your website only speaks to one person, you're asking them to do that heavy lifting alone.

Let’s talk about what it takes to drive conversions when the real decision-maker is a committee, not an individual.

Why Multiple Decision-Makers are challenging to optimise for

An illustrative B2B buying journey with all the various potential touchpoints and decisions that need to be made. — An Illustrative buyer journey in complex B2B sales

1. Conflicting priorities

Every stakeholder in the buying committee evaluates your offering differently:

CFOs care about cost-effectiveness and ROI.
IT teams focus on security, compliance, and integrations.
End users want usability and efficiency.
Procurement looks at legal and vendor risks.

If your CRO strategy doesn’t cover these different priorities, you could lose support before a decision is made.

2. Longer decision cycles

With more stakeholders involved, decision-making slows down due to:

Internal discussions and approvals across many departments.
Delays when key decision-makers aren’t engaged early enough.
The need for additional information to justify the investment.

Optimising for speed and clarity in the buyer journey helps to prevent bottlenecks.

3. Varied Entry Points

B2B buyers interact with your site in a unique way. Unlike eCommerce and many SaaS businesses, they don’t usually follow a defined pathway. Regardless of how many customer journey maps you create, users will often veer off them.

A CFO might go straight to pricing and ROI pages.
An IT lead might look at security documents and technical specs.
A sales leader might focus on case studies and testimonials.

If your content doesn’t match their role, key stakeholders might not get what they need. This can cause delays or drop-offs in the sales process.

4. Internal Selling Hurdles

Even if you manage to catch the interest of a decent prospect, they still must sell your solution to others — often with limited resources.

Leaders may not back the investment if they lack key resources. These include ROI reports, competitor comparisons, and pitch decks.
Without structured materials, key details get lost, slowing down the decision process.

Your CRO strategy should help champions promote your solution internally. Give them what they need to make a strong case.

How to optimise for multiple decision-makers

1. Create role-specific content

Develop dedicated landing pages, white papers, and case studies for different stakeholders.
Use dynamic content personalisation to surface relevant messaging based on user behaviour.
Conduct user testing to find out what users need to make decisions. Ensure the content addresses key objections for each persona before they come up.

2. Map the Buyer Journey and identify key touch points

See how different stakeholders engage with your site. You can do this with heatmaps, session recordings, and funnel analysis.
Ensure critical pages (ROI calculators, security documentation, pricing information) are easy to find.
Address any drop-off points that may indicate missing information.

3. Support Internal Selling

Provide downloadable PDFs, comparison guides, and explainer videos. Champions can use these to pitch to leadership.
Offer interactive ROI calculators to help decision-makers justify the investment.
Add a "Send to My Team" button on key content to facilitate internal sharing.

4. Use Multi-Touch Attribution to measure influence.

Track which stakeholders interact with your site over time to understand decision-making dynamics.
Connect web engagement to offline talks using CRM integrations, UTM tracking, and call tracking.
Identify and optimise for the most influential touchpoints in the buying journey.

5. Optimise Contact Forms for Group Decision-Making

Replace generic "Contact Us" forms with specific CTAs. Test CTAs like "Schedule a Team Demo" or "Request a Custom ROI Report."
Test options that let visitors indicate their role and concerns. This will help ensure follow-ups are more relevant.
Guide non-decision makers toward materials that help convince leadership.

Case Study: How Cisco increased conversions by targeting multiple stakeholders

At Cisco, we learned that giving the right content to the right person at the right time was essential. This helped us keep deals progressing and avoid delays.

The Challenge

After analysing our buyer journey, we identified key blockers:

IT leaders needed security details. CFOs wanted ROI insights. End-users focused on features. However, they weren’t getting the right content when they needed it.
Internal Selling Roadblocks – Champions struggled to pitch our solution. They needed clear, ready-to-use resources.
Lack of Multi-Stakeholder Engagement – Deals often got stuck when decision-makers didn’t agree early on.

The Solution

To solve for these issues, we revised our CRO strategy cater for buying committee decision making:

✔ Personalised Content – We tested special pages for IT, finance, and end users. This way, each group gets the information they need.

✔ Multi-Touch Engagement – We used role-specific email sequences, targeted ads, and sales tools. This approach ensured the right content reached the right people.

✔ Tested "Share with My Team" CTAs on whitepapers and ROI calculators to simplify internal collaboration.

✔ Stakeholder-Specific CTAs – We replaced generic forms with “Schedule a Team Demo” and “Request a Custom ROI Report.” This change brought in higher-quality leads.

The Results

Engagement, content downloads, decision velocity, and conversion rates all showed strong positive impact.

More stakeholders were engaging earlier in the sales cycle, preventing last-minute objections.
Internal champions were better equipped to pitch our solution, leading to faster approvals.
Optimising for committee-based buying led to higher-quality leads and improved close rates.

We aligned our CRO strategy with real-world decision-making. This made buying easier by removing obstacles, increasing engagement, and conversions.

Key Takeaways

✅ Different stakeholders have different concerns—personalise the experience to address their specific needs.

✅ Multi-touch attribution helps track influence across the entire buyer journey.

✅ Making content easy to share improves the chances of buy-in from the full committee.

Next week, we’ll explore what it takes to run a CRO program in legacy B2B organisations, where outdated systems, long approval chains, and resistance to change often hamper your optimisation efforts.

I'd love to know how you deal with optimising digital experiences when buying committees are involved. Let me know in the comments!