{"site":{"name":"Koji","description":"AI-native customer research platform that helps teams conduct, analyze, and synthesize customer interviews at scale.","url":"https://www.koji.so","contentTypes":["blog","documentation"],"lastUpdated":"2026-11-11T19:55:36.922Z"},"content":[{"type":"blog","id":"a83046d7-18f7-4c63-8ba4-9bb14b6431e6","slug":"research-enterprise-buyers-before-moving-upmarket","title":"How to Research Enterprise Buyers Before Moving Upmarket (2026)","url":"https://www.koji.so/blog/research-enterprise-buyers-before-moving-upmarket","summary":"Before moving upmarket, a scaleup should interview 15 to 25 people across the enterprise buying committee of target companies: the economic buyer, champion, admin or rollout owner, security and procurement, and daily users. Forrester found an average of 13 people involved in B2B purchase decisions in 2024, so sales calls only hear part of the decision. Screen by company size and role in the last purchase, ask about the last real purchase and rollout, and move upmarket only if at least half name the same blocker, buyers can name a budget, rollout work can be built once and users want it as much as the buyer.","content":"**The short answer:** before you rebuild your product for enterprise customers, interview 15 to 25 people across the buying committee of companies you want to win: the economic buyer, the admin who will roll it out, security and procurement, and two or three people who would use it every day. Ask what they bought last time, who signed off, what nearly killed the deal and what they had to change after it went live. If fewer than half describe the same blocking problem, or nobody can name a budget line it would come from, you are not ready to move upmarket yet.\n\nThat is the whole method. The rest of this guide shows who to talk to, how to find and screen them, what to ask, and the signals that say \"not yet\".\n\n## Why upmarket moves fail on research, not on product\n\nMost scaleups decide to go upmarket for a good reason: a few larger customers signed, they pay more and churn less, and the board wants bigger contracts. Then the team builds what the biggest customer asked for, ships SSO and audit logs, and wonders why the next ten enterprise deals stall.\n\nThe problem is usually who you listened to. Your existing customers are the ones who already said yes. Enterprise deals are decided by a group, and most of that group never talks to you:\n\n- In Forrester's 2024 survey of more than 16,000 business buyers, an average of **13 people** were involved in a purchase decision, and **89%** of purchases involved two or more departments ([Forrester, The State of Business Buying, 2024](https://www.forrester.com/press-newsroom/forrester-the-state-of-business-buying-2024)).\n- Gartner found that B2B buyers spend only **17%** of their buying time meeting potential suppliers, which, split across three vendors, leaves each one about 5% of the buyer's time ([Gartner, The B2B Buying Journey](https://www.gartner.com/en/sales/insights/b2b-buying-journey)).\n- Gartner's research also shows **75%** of B2B buyers prefer a rep-free sales experience, and a 2025 Gartner survey of 646 buyers still put the figure at **67%** ([Gartner](https://www.gartner.com/en/sales/insights/b2b-buying-journey); [Demand Gen Report on the 2025 survey](https://demandgenreport.com/industry-news/news-brief/gartner-67-of-b2b-buyers-prefer-a-rep-free-experience/52142)).\n\nPut those together and your sales calls see a sliver of the decision. The champion you demo to is one of thirteen people, and most of the discussion that decides the deal happens in rooms you are never in. Research is how you hear from the rest of the room before you spend two quarters building for it.\n\n## Who sits on an enterprise buying committee\n\nYou don't need all thirteen. You need one or two people from each role that can stop a deal or make it fail after signing.\n\n![Framework showing the five roles to interview before moving upmarket: economic buyer, champion, admin, security and procurement, and daily users.](/visuals/enterprise-buying-committee-roles-to-interview/enterprise-buying-committee-roles-to-interview.png \"Talk to every role that can stop the deal, not only the one who likes you\")\n\n1. **The economic buyer.** Owns the budget. Usually a director or VP. Tells you which budget line you come from and what it has to beat.\n2. **The champion.** The person who found you and argues for you inside. Knows the internal politics and what the business case has to say.\n3. **The admin or rollout owner.** Sets it up, connects it to the identity provider and the data warehouse, and gets the blame when adoption is low. Often the person who decides whether the second year renews.\n4. **Security, legal and procurement.** Rarely love anything, but can add months. Learn which questionnaires, certifications and contract terms are non-negotiable.\n5. **Daily users.** Two or three people who would use the product every day. Their workflow tells you whether the product survives after the champion moves on.\n\nIf you sell to one department, start with the buyer, admin and users. If you sell across departments, as 89% of purchases in the Forrester data did, add one person from each department that shares the budget or the data. For a deeper method on running these interviews as a set, see [buying committee interviews](/docs/buying-committee-research-interviews) and [how to interview enterprise customers and C-suite decision makers](/docs/interviewing-enterprise-customers-c-suite).\n\n## Where to find enterprise buyers to interview\n\nEnterprise buyers are hard to recruit because they are busy, senior and protected by assistants. Four routes work for scaleups:\n\n![A small group of colleagues in a meeting room talking through a software purchase, the kind of buying group a scaleup needs to hear from](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1431540015161-0bf868a2d407?crop=entropy&cs=tinysrgb&fit=max&fm=jpg&ixid=M3w5NDUzMDN8MHwxfHNlYXJjaHwzfHxidXNpbmVzcyUyMG1lZXRpbmclMjBjb25mZXJlbmNlJTIwcm9vbXxlbnwxfDB8fHwxNzk0Mzc5ODEwfDA&ixlib=rb-4.1.0&q=80&w=1080)\n\n_Photo by [Benjamin Child](https://unsplash.com/@bchild311?utm_source=koji&utm_medium=referral) on [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/?utm_source=koji&utm_medium=referral)_\n\n- **Your own larger customers.** Ask your champion for 20 minutes with the admin, a user and whoever signed the order. They will usually say yes if you promise it is research, not an upsell.\n- **Lost and stalled deals.** People who evaluated you and walked away are the most useful voices you have. Our guide to [win-loss interviews for scaleups that lost bigger deals](/blog/win-loss-interviews-for-scaleups-lost-bigger-deals) covers how to ask.\n- **Lookalike companies.** Search for people by job title, seniority, company size and industry, and invite them directly. [Recruiting B2B participants](/docs/recruiting-b2b-participants) and [B2B participant recruitment without a panel](/blog/b2b-participant-recruitment-without-a-panel) cover outreach that gets answers.\n- **A research panel,** for the daily-user layer, where you need volume more than seniority.\n\nAim for 15 to 25 interviews in total: three to five per role across at least five target companies. That is enough to see whether the same blockers come up in different organisations, which is the question that matters.\n\n## Screen hard, because titles lie\n\nTitle inflation is the main way B2B studies go wrong. A \"Head of IT\" at a 40-person company is not the person who buys for 4,000 seats. Screen on behaviour and context, not job title alone:\n\n- **Company size:** \"How many employees work at your organisation?\" with bands, and rule out the bands below your target.\n- **Role in the last purchase:** \"In the last 12 months, what was your role when your team bought software in this category?\" with options such as \"I approved the budget\", \"I evaluated options\", \"I set it up\", \"I use it\", \"I was not involved\". Rule out \"not involved\".\n- **Current tool:** what they use today, with a foil option that doesn't exist, to catch people who tick everything.\n\nKeep it to three or four questions. Each one you add narrows who qualifies, and a long screener tells people what you want to hear. Our [screener questions guide](/docs/screener-questions-guide) has more patterns.\n\n## What to ask before you change the product\n\nAsk about the last real purchase, not about your roadmap. People are good at describing what happened and poor at predicting what they would do.\n\n![Question bank for interviewing enterprise buyers before moving upmarket, in three sections: the last purchase, the rollout and the gaps.](/visuals/enterprise-buyer-interview-questions-upmarket/enterprise-buyer-interview-questions-upmarket.png \"Ask about the last purchase they made, not about your roadmap\")\n\n**The last purchase**\n- Tell me about the last time your team bought a tool like this. What started it?\n- Who had to say yes, and who could have said no?\n- What nearly stopped the deal?\n- Which budget did it come from, and what did it replace?\n\n**The rollout**\n- What did you have to do after signing before anyone could use it?\n- What did security or IT ask for that surprised you?\n- Six months in, who uses it and who stopped?\n\n**The gaps**\n- What do you still do outside the tool, in spreadsheets or by hand?\n- If you replaced it tomorrow, what would the new one have to do on day one?\n\nAsk the admin and the users the same rollout questions you ask the buyer. Their answers will differ, and the difference is the finding: the buyer remembers the business case, the admin remembers the integration work, and the users remember the bits that never worked.\n\n## Signals that say \"not yet\"\n\nMoving upmarket is a bet that the same product, with more controls, wins larger deals. The interviews tell you whether the bet holds. Work through it like this:\n\n![Flowchart for deciding whether to move upmarket after buyer interviews: four questions on blockers, budget, rollout work and users.](/visuals/move-upmarket-readiness-flowchart/move-upmarket-readiness-flowchart.png \"Run the interviews first, then let the answers decide the roadmap\")\n\n- **Do at least half name the same blocking problem?** If the blockers are all different, you are hearing customisation requests, not a market. Interview more companies in one segment before building.\n- **Can the buyers name a budget line it would come from?** \"We'd find the money\" means no. If nobody can, test the price and packaging first. [Contact us or a published price: how to test it](/blog/contact-us-or-published-price-how-to-test-it) shows how.\n- **Is the rollout work something you can do once for everyone?** SSO, audit logs and a security pack are one-off builds. Bespoke integrations per customer are a services business.\n- **Do the daily users want it as much as the buyer?** If the buyer is keen and the users shrug, expect a big first contract and a hard renewal.\n\nFour yeses mean build the enterprise version, starting with the blocker most people named. Any no is a cheaper thing to do first.\n\n## When these interviews will mislead you\n\nInterviews tell you why people buy and what blocks them. They are weaker at three things:\n\n- **Willingness to pay.** Senior buyers are vague about price in interviews. Pair interviews with a price test or real proposals.\n- **Security requirements.** People remember the questionnaire as painful but not its contents. Ask for the actual document.\n- **Your own customers' loyalty.** Customers who like you will overstate how many peers would buy. Weight lost-deal and lookalike interviews more heavily.\n\nA design-partner deal with a signed letter of intent beats twenty encouraging interviews. Use the interviews to choose which partner to sign.\n\n## How to run this study in Koji\n\nEnterprise buyers rarely have 45 minutes for a call with a vendor. A short AI interview they can take by voice or text, at a time that suits them, gets you the admin and the users as well as the champion. If you wonder whether senior people will talk to an AI, read [will customers open up to an AI interviewer?](/blog/will-customers-open-up-to-ai-interviewer-2026).\n\n1. **Start a study** with your research question: \"What blocks companies with 1,000 or more employees from buying and rolling out a tool like ours?\" The research assistant drafts the brief and questions; edit them to match the question bank above.\n2. **Add screening questions** for company size and role in the last purchase. Screening questions are single or multiple choice, and you mark which answers qualify or rule someone out. Everyone answers them before the interview starts, by whatever link they arrive on, and people who don't qualify are turned away before any interview runs. Setup is in [adding screening questions to your study](/docs/adding-screening-questions-to-your-study).\n\n![Koji screener question asking participants which role best describes them, with one option selected](/email/shots/shot-screener.jpg \"A screening question participants answer before the interview starts\")\n\n3. **Invite each role.** Email your own customers from Participants with each person's own interview link, use Find people to search for lookalike buyers by job title, seniority, company size and industry (paid plans), or recruit daily users from Koji's panel (paid plans).\n4. **Read the report by role.** The report groups themes and quotes across interviews, so you can see whether the admin's blockers match the buyer's.\n\n## Start before the roadmap is written\n\nThe cheapest moment to learn that enterprise buyers need something different is before the quarter's roadmap is set. Fifteen interviews across five companies is a small study, and AI interviews run in parallel, so nobody waits for a free slot in five calendars.\n\n[Start a free Koji study](/signup) with the questions above, add the two screening questions, and invite the first five companies' admins and buyers this week. If you are a product manager running this without a researcher, [Koji for product managers](/for/product-managers) shows the setup end to end.\n","category":"Research","lastModified":"2026-11-11T07:20:14.800202+00:00","metaTitle":"How to Research Enterprise Buyers Before Moving Upmarket","metaDescription":"Interview 15 to 25 people across the enterprise buying committee before you rebuild for bigger customers. Who to talk to, screener, questions and readiness signals.","keywords":["moving upmarket","enterprise buyer interviews","moving upmarket customer research","buying committee interviews","enterprise customer research","scaleup upmarket strategy"],"aiSummary":"Before moving upmarket, a scaleup should interview 15 to 25 people across the enterprise buying committee of target companies: the economic buyer, champion, admin or rollout owner, security and procurement, and daily users. Forrester found an average of 13 people involved in B2B purchase decisions in 2024, so sales calls only hear part of the decision. Screen by company size and role in the last purchase, ask about the last real purchase and rollout, and move upmarket only if at least half name the same blocker, buyers can name a budget, rollout work can be built once and users want it as much as the buyer.","aiKeywords":["moving upmarket","enterprise buying committee","B2B buyer interviews","scaleup research","screening questions","enterprise readiness"],"aiContentType":"guide","faqItems":[{"answer":"Aim for 15 to 25 interviews: three to five per role (economic buyer, champion, admin, security or procurement, daily users) across at least five target companies. That is enough to see whether the same blockers come up in different organisations.","question":"How many enterprise buyers should I interview before moving upmarket?"},{"answer":"Usually an economic buyer who owns the budget, a champion who argues for you, an admin who rolls the product out, security, legal and procurement, and the daily users. Forrester found an average of 13 people involved in B2B purchase decisions in 2024.","question":"Who is on an enterprise buying committee?"},{"answer":"Ask about the last real purchase: what started it, who had to say yes, what nearly stopped it and which budget it came from. Then ask about the rollout after signing and what they still do outside the tool.","question":"What should I ask enterprise buyers?"},{"answer":"Buyers name different blockers, nobody can name the budget line it would come from, every customer needs bespoke integration work, or daily users care much less than the buyer.","question":"What are the signs a scaleup is not ready to move upmarket?"},{"answer":"Gartner research shows most B2B buyers prefer a rep-free experience, and a short async interview by voice or text asks less of them than a scheduled vendor call. It is also how you reach admins and users. Keep it short, say it is research and not a sales call, and screen so only the right roles take part.","question":"Will senior enterprise buyers take an AI interview?"}],"relatedTopics":["Moving upmarket","Enterprise buyer research","Buying committee interviews","B2B recruitment","Screening questions"]}],"pagination":{"total":1,"returned":1,"offset":0}}