“Find the decision maker” sounds like a precise research instruction until you ask: the decision about what? The founder may approve a budget while a delivery manager defines the problem. A consultant who changes a working process may need to understand both, without assuming that either person wants the service.
A role map starts with one offer and identifies the responsibilities likely to be involved. It is a working hypothesis, not a discovered org chart or proof that a particular person can buy.
Start with the work you would change
Name the deliverable in operational terms. “We help agencies grow” leaves almost every senior role in scope. “We review the handoff from an accepted proposal to a delivery brief” makes the research narrower: the people preparing proposals, receiving work, resolving scope and approving a process change may matter.
Fictional example: Birch Process Studio offers a short review of proposal-to-delivery handoffs for specialist consultancies. Birch, its offer and the company situations in this article are invented. They illustrate how to organise research; they are not client results, a proven sales method or descriptions of a real company’s difficulties.
Birch writes down what its review would produce: a map of the current handoff, a list of unresolved responsibilities and proposed changes for the client to consider. That definition helps distinguish a potentially relevant operations role from a senior title with no obvious connection to the work.
If you cannot yet explain the deliverable, use Choose a Client Segment for One Consulting Offer before collecting names. A larger search result will not resolve an unclear service boundary.
Map roles before searching titles
List responsibilities first. Titles are ways to search for possible matches, not the definition of the role. In a small firm one person might hold several responsibilities; in a larger one the same decision may involve several teams.
For Birch’s fictional offer, an initial map could be:
| Responsibility to investigate | Why it may matter | Possible title clues, not confirmed owners |
|---|---|---|
| Receives sold work | Can explain what a usable delivery brief needs. | Delivery lead, project director, operations manager. |
| Defines the proposal | Can explain commitments and how scope is recorded. | Account director, sales lead, managing consultant. |
| Sponsors a process change | Can help evaluate whether a review fits a current priority. | Operations director, practice lead, founder. |
| Approves spending | Can explain the purchasing decision if a need is established. | A budget holder identified through discovery. |
| Grants access to examples | Determines which records can be shared for a review. | The relevant process or information owner. |
These are search hypotheses. Do not add five contacts to every account merely to complete the table. There may be one owner, a different title or no appropriate opportunity. The map should make uncertainty visible, not create an excuse to contact more people.
Also distinguish a user of the work from its buyer. A project coordinator might describe a handoff in detail without authorising a purchase. A founder might authorise spending without knowing every operational step. Neither observation makes one person a “bad lead”; it changes the question you can sensibly ask.
Look for evidence you can observe
Start with the company’s own service and team pages. Note what the business says it does and the responsibilities it publicly assigns. Record the URL and the date you reviewed it. A service page can support sector fit, but it rarely establishes an internal problem or a purchasing timetable.
Use professional profiles to investigate the role hypotheses. LinkedIn’s official People search guidance describes keyword search, the People results filter and further filters such as current company and location. The options visible in a particular account may vary. Use the filters you actually have; this exercise does not require you to assume access to a paid feature.
Read the current role description where available rather than treating a search title as a final answer. “Director” can describe different responsibilities in different businesses. A profile mentioning operations is evidence of the person’s stated work, not proof that they own this review or can sign a contract.
If the company site and a profile appear inconsistent, keep a note rather than silently choosing the version that supports your offer. Public pages can be incomplete or out of date. A respectful discovery question may resolve the uncertainty; another spreadsheet label cannot.
Keep a small account note
A useful account note should fit on one screen. For each company, record the observed service fit, the responsibility you are investigating, the supporting source and the question that remains. You can maintain this manually beside a profile export; no automatic role-mapping integration is implied.
For the fictional Birch example, one note might read:
Company website describes implementation projects. A public role description mentions delivery operations. Hypothesis: this person may understand the proposal handoff. Unknown: who owns the process, whether a review is a priority and who would approve it. Next question: who is responsible for turning an accepted proposal into the team’s delivery brief?
That note is more useful than “decision maker: yes”. It provides enough context for another colleague to understand why the profile was included and prevents an uncertain title from becoming an asserted fact.
If you use Leadsforlinked to collect profiles, the published header-only CSV lets you inspect the actual export structure before collecting a sample. Fields include linkedin_url, headline, company and position. The download contains no personal rows and does not establish that every field will be filled. Verified email addresses and purchasing authority are not demonstrated by those columns.
Keep your responsibility hypothesis, source notes and discovery question in your own review sheet. They are editorial research you add, not native export fields or verified product enrichment.
Turn the map into a discovery question
The role map should improve the first relevant question. Birch might ask: “When a proposal is accepted, who usually turns it into the delivery brief your team works from?” It should not begin by asserting that the business has a handoff problem. If the person points elsewhere, update the map; do not treat the referral as permission to start several parallel conversations.
Before contacting anyone, check your existing account and contact history so colleagues do not approach the same business independently. Research and contact are separate decisions. Keep any agreed stop or exclusion visible beside the account note.
When you are ready to investigate a few profiles, the practical Leadsforlinked path is a focused LinkedIn People search, selected collection through the Chrome extension, review in an app audience and CSV export. Check the actual sample against your role hypotheses. The useful outcome of this stage is a clearer next question about responsibility, not an assumed buying signal or a forecast of clients.