A senior title is a clue, not proof that someone owns the decision you want to influence. Start with a company you already want to reach, identify the business problem you address, then record why each candidate role belongs in your research.
The worksheet below is for your own spreadsheet. It is not a RadarLeads feature or a buying-committee map.
Start with the account and the problem
Write down the company name and domain, the problem your product solves, and the function likely responsible for it. Keep the target narrow enough that you can explain why a role might care.
For example, a team selling onboarding software might start with a specific software company and ask who owns customer onboarding. That points toward customer success roles, but it does not prove that any particular person controls the budget.
Turn the hypothesis into a role search
Search for the known company and try relevant title or seniority terms. RadarLeads publicly describes searching contacts by title, seniority, company, location, industry and other criteria. Review the returned names and roles as candidates to research, not confirmed decision-makers. [1]
Keep title variations tied to the same responsibility. A VP of Customer Success, Head of Customer Success and Customer Success Director may all be worth checking, but the title alone cannot tell you who owns the project at that company.
Record evidence before you label a decision-maker
Create one row per candidate in a local worksheet with these columns:
- Company and domain
- Business problem you are researching
- Responsibility the role would need to own
- Candidate name and listed title
- Source where you checked the current role
- Date checked
- What the source supports, and what remains an assumption
- Next research step
For the onboarding example, a company page that assigns onboarding to Customer Success supports investigating that function. A profile listing a Customer Success Director supports the person's role, but neither source proves that the director controls the budget. A completed row might read: “Customer Success Director; profile lists onboarding responsibilities, checked October 22; likely evaluator, budget authority unconfirmed; check leadership or project ownership.”
Use a company team page or professional profile to check the current role, and note its date. A title in a search result alone does not establish current employment or budget authority.
Reject plausible titles that do not fit
Imagine the same software company returns an Engineering Director and a Customer Success Director. If the issue is customer onboarding, the Customer Success role is the closer hypothesis to investigate. The Engineering Director might still matter if the project involves integrations, but seniority by itself is not enough reason to include them.
In the worksheet, record the first role as “possible evaluator; confirm onboarding responsibility.” Record the Engineering Director as “not included yet; no evidence of ownership for this problem.” Those are research decisions, not facts about either person's authority.
Decide what to do when evidence is missing
If a candidate's role is unclear, leave the authority field unresolved. Check a current company source, look for a more relevant role, or move to another account. Do not promote a plausible title to “decision-maker” just to fill the list.
If the company appears but you cannot find a relevant contact, keep the account and role gap in your notes. The existing guide to troubleshooting a B2B lead search with no results covers how to test restrictive filters without broadening into unrelated contacts.
Keep contact discovery separate from authority research
A people database can surface contacts whose listed roles match your search. It cannot establish, from a title alone, that someone controls a budget, approves a purchase or wants your offer. Use your source notes to decide which candidates need more research, then consult the existing guide to building and reviewing a targeted B2B contact list for broader list preparation.
To search a known account, create a free RadarLeads account. Searching is free to preview; contact details are available where present. [1]
Sources
[1] RadarLeads public product overview.
[2] Origami: How to Find Decision Makers at Target Companies.