A buying committee is a list of the roles you sell to, such as a finance leader or a head of operations. Each role has a few example job titles. Ocean compares the people at a company with those titles, so the right contacts show up first.
Where you will see it
Context studio: the "Buying committees" section in the left rail is where you create, review, and edit committees.
Discovery: the "Buying committee" column in the Recommendations table shows the best matching people at each company.
Workflows: the "Find buying committee" step turns each company into its best matching people.
What you need
Segmentation. Buying committees are part of Segmentation. If you don't see Context studio and Discovery in the left menu, Segmentation isn't turned on for your organization. Ask your account manager or contact support.
Contact data. To see people in Discovery, your plan needs contact data. Without it, each row shows a "See people" button that opens an upgrade prompt.
A connected CRM, to build roles from your won deals. Without a CRM you can still start from standard roles and edit them.
Workflows, for the "Find buying committee" step.
Set up your first committee
The first time anyone in your organization opens Context studio (or opens the "Find buying committee" step in a workflow), Ocean creates a committee called "Main committee" and makes it your primary committee. If a CRM is connected, it builds the roles from your won deals. If not, it starts with standard roles.
Until that happens, the Buying committee column in Discovery shows a "Set up a buying committee" link instead of people.
To add another committee, select the plus button next to "Buying committees" and choose one of two options:
Build from won deals reads the job titles of the people on your most recent won and lost deals in your CRM. It groups similar titles at the same seniority level, and each group that shows up on enough won deals becomes a role. A committee has up to eight roles. This usually takes about a minute, and you can leave the page while it runs.
Start from standard roles gives you six common roles to edit: Founder / CEO, Finance leader, Operations leader, Sales leader, Marketing leader, and Engineering leader.
Building from won deals needs job titles on at least 20 won deals. With fewer, or if no title shows up often enough to form a role, you get the standard roles instead, and the committee page tells you why. If the build fails, the page asks you to create a new committee from won deals to try again.
Read a committee
Open a committee to see its roles in a table. Each role shows:
Role and its example titles.
Seniority and function. Seniority is Executive, Leadership, Manager, or Individual contributor.
Importance: Key, Involved, or Optional. Key roles count most when people are ranked, and Optional roles count least. No role hides anyone.
On won deals and On lost deals: the share of your won (or lost) deals with job titles that have a contact in this role.
Evidence: "Won more", "No difference", "Lost more", or "Won deals only". "Won more" means the role shows up clearly more often on won deals than on lost deals. Ocean needs job titles on at least 20 lost deals to compare. With fewer, you see "Won deals only".
For a committee built from won deals, the header shows how many won deals were read. A line under it shows what share of your won deals include at least one of these roles. When Ocean builds roles from your deals, it starts roles with "Won more" as Key, roles with "Lost more" as Optional, and the rest as Involved.
Edit a committee
Select "Edit". You can:
Rename the committee.
Select "Add role", then set the role name, seniority, function, and importance.
Add up to five example titles to a role. Examples are enough, because people with similar titles match too.
Add up to five titles under "Leave out". People whose job title is the same as, or very close in meaning to, one of these, such as Intern, are left out of the lists in Discovery and in workflows.
Use "Make a role" next to a title in "Other titles on won deals". This list shows the titles that come up most on won deals that have no contact in any role.
Select "Save changes". If a CRM is connected, Ocean rechecks your roles against your deals, and the Evidence column shows "Updating" until it finishes.
If a title shows "Not analysed yet", Ocean hasn't processed it. It starts matching people once analysed, usually within a day.
How people are matched
Ocean compares the meaning of each person's job title with the example titles of each role, not the exact words. It also looks at seniority. A person at the same level as the role counts fully. Someone one level away counts less, and further away counts much less.
In Discovery, people who match a role show a label under their name:
"Matches" a role: the same seniority level and a title very close in meaning.
"Close to" a role: the same level and a fairly close title, or one level away and a very close title.
People who match are listed first, and "Matches" come before "Close to". Within each group, people who are closer to a role come first, and Key roles count more than Optional ones. The remaining people in the list, up to three per company in Discovery, are shown after them under "Other people".
A title that is only a seniority word, such as "Director" or "Manager", doesn't say which function the person has, so Ocean can't match it to a role.
Your primary committee
Discovery and workflows use your primary committee by default. It has a "Primary" tag in the rail.
To change it, open another committee and select "Make primary". You can also open the menu on a committee's row in the rail and choose "Make primary".
The same menu lets you rename a committee, or delete it after you confirm.
You can't delete the primary committee. Make another committee primary first.
Your committees are shared by your whole organization. They are not set per segmentation. The "Buying committee" tab inside a segment is a separate view of your won deals. It does not use the committees described here.
In Discovery
In the Recommendations table, the "Buying committee" column shows a small group of avatars for each company. Select it to open a list of up to three people:
Under "Top matches for your buying committee", you see the people who match a role, with the role name.
Under "Other people", you see the rest.
Each person shows their name and job title. An "In CRM" tag marks people who are already contacts in your CRM.
Select a person to open their profile.
"Edit buying committee" at the bottom opens the primary committee.
If a company has no people in Ocean, the cell reads "No matching people". Showing people in this column doesn't use credits.
In workflows: Find buying committee
"Find buying committee" is a sourcing step. It takes companies in and sends people out, the same way "Find people at company" does. Each company becomes its best matching people, best match first.
By default it uses your primary committee and keeps up to three people per company, the same as Discovery. You can pick another committee, keep up to five people, and skip people who are already in your CRM, leads, or exports. Each person comes with a "Buying committee score" field. "Buying committee role" and "Buying committee match" are filled in only when the person matches a role strongly or closely. Use them in later steps.
This step costs 0.2 credits per person found. For all the settings, see the "Find buying committee" article in the Workflow builder steps library, and Credits in workflows.
What it does not do
It doesn't hide people who match no role. They are still listed, after the ones who do. Only people with a title under "Leave out" are removed.
It only finds people that Ocean already has for the company.
It doesn't use a different committee for each segmentation. Your primary committee is used unless you choose another one in a workflow step.
The search page has no buying committee filter.