What is an economic buyer?

Why it matters

Plenty of people can say no to a deal. Usually only one can say yes to the money. Reps often spend months with an enthusiastic user or a project lead, only to learn at the end that the budget sits with a CFO or managing director who has never heard of them. Deals without access to the economic buyer tend to slip, shrink or end in “not this year”.

Knowing who the economic buyer is, what they care about and whether the rep has spoken to them is why the E sits near the top of MEDDIC and MEDDPICC. It is also a question a forecast review should be able to answer from the calls themselves, not from the rep’s memory.

Example

In a negotiation call with a logistics company, at 41:05, the procurement lead says: “This all sounds good, but anything above our budget line goes to our CFO.” It is the first time the CFO has come up in five calls. The rep asks what the CFO needs to see and offers a short meeting with their own sales director. On the MEDDIC scorecard, the economic buyer criterion now shows the CFO as identified but not yet met, with 41:05 as the evidence.

How Drummer handles it

Drummer scores every call against your scorecard, such as the MEDDIC template, and gives each criterion a score, the reasoning and the timestamp. The rep’s AI twin writes the economic buyer field to the CRM after the call, with an audit trail.

Managers can ask across calls. In Ask Drummer, or in Claude or ChatGPT through the MCP server, a question like “which reps skipped the economic buyer this week?” returns the calls, with links to the moments that matter.