By Amanda Leon, founder of OilMoney.io. Houston-raised, came up in the Houston marketing team of Vallourec, and has run Unrth, a brand and growth studio for oil and gas and industrial companies, since 2017, with her boots on client locations in Midland and Odessa. Last reviewed October 30, 2026.
A buying center is everyone inside a company who shapes a purchase: the people who use it, the people who weigh in, the person who signs, and the people who decide who gets in the door. In oil and gas, that usually means the engineer picks and someone else signs. The field voices described that split plainly this year. More than fifty years of research on how companies buy explains why it happens and how to sell into it.
What the Field Voices Said
Mark LaCour and Matthew Bertram's show, the Oil and Gas Sales and Marketing Podcast, puts nine out of ten engineered equipment decisions with the engineer, then adds the catch: the engineer who likes you usually can't sign, and the person who can has never heard of you. The same show says many buyers won't take a meeting until a third-party safety system clears you, and it lists “we stick with names we know” among the most common objections.
Chuck Yates, selling AI software to operators this year, described the room from the other side. The CEO loves the pitch, he wrote in August, while the engineer “in the third row” decides the tool is a threat, and no rollout survives that row. Yates's advice: sell to the user, not only the signer.
Pat Hinds brought the numbers. When Hinds reviewed 2,500 operator contacts in September, most of them sat in supply chain and procurement. In October, Hinds split field contacts into production staff, lease operators and pumpers, field operators, and field technicians, the people who spot the problems in the first place, and argued for mapping every account by role, seniority, and geography.
Why Diplomacy Training Helps Here
I have two degrees from Occidental College, 2009 to 2013: cognitive science, with an emphasis in neuroscience, and diplomacy and world affairs. The second one earns its keep on this topic. A buying center is a small political system. It has power that comes from title, power that comes from knowledge, alliances, and people who can't say yes but can absolutely say no. Reading a room like that is a diplomat's job before it's a salesperson's.
The Five Roles in Every Buying Center
The term goes back to Webster and Wind's 1972 model of how organizations buy. They named five roles. Here's how they look on an oil and gas account:
Users. The field hands, lease operators, and pumpers who live with your product, plus the engineer who runs the job.
Influencers. Engineers, HSE, and anyone whose opinion the decider trusts.
Buyers. Supply chain and procurement, the people Hinds found filling most of those 2,500 contact records.
Deciders. Whoever holds the signing authority, often someone you've never met.
Gatekeepers. Whoever controls access: procurement, the approved vendor list, the MSA, and the third-party safety systems the podcast describes.
One person can hold several roles. On a small operator, the superintendent may be user, influencer, and decider at once. On a major, the roles spread across buildings.
Who Shows Up Depends on What You Sell
Johnston and Bonoma studied the buying groups behind capital equipment and industrial service purchases in 31 firms. The makeup of the group, and how its members talked to each other, differed reliably between equipment and services, and tracked how each company was organized. Lau, Goh, and Phua found the same kind of pattern in 68 manufacturers: how important the purchase was, how much time pressure there was, and how new the situation was all changed how centralized, formal, and complex the buying group became.
The practical read: a technology that's new to the operator, going into a high-stakes application, brings more people, more paperwork, and more levels into the room. A routine reorder may come down to one buyer and a PO. Know which one you're in before you plan the sale.
The Engineer's Power Is Expertise
In a field study of 251 purchase decisions, Kohli found expert power was the strongest driver of a person's influence in the buying center, ahead of the power to reward or punish. That's the research behind the podcast's nine in ten. The engineer wins the room on knowledge, even without the signature. Kohli also found the strength of each kind of power shifted with the size of the group, how tight-knit it was, and how much time pressure it was under, so the engineer's pull isn't the same on every account.
The engineer who believes in you becomes what Howell and Higgins called a champion: the person inside a company who carries a new technology through it. Comparing 25 champions with 25 matched non-champions, they found champions showed more charismatic leadership and used a wider range of influence tactics to bring other people along. Your job is to hand your champion what they need to win the meeting you won't be in: the one-page cost case, the safety record, a reference, and a plain explanation they can repeat. Our answer on explaining a complex oilfield service covers that last part.
Why the Third Row Says No
Davis's 1989 study in MIS Quarterly followed 152 users and found that both usefulness and ease of use tracked whether people used a technology, and usefulness had the stronger link. If the engineer in the third row doesn't believe your tool makes the job better, the CEO's yes won't keep it running.
Then there's the status quo. Samuelson and Zeckhauser showed in experiments, and in real health plan and retirement choices, that people stick with the current option far more often than standard economics predicts. Add accountability on top: Lerner and Tetlock's review found that knowing you'll have to justify a decision changes how you make it. Sometimes that makes people more careful. Sometimes it pushes them toward whatever the people they answer to will accept, or makes them dig in on a past choice. Keeping the incumbent is easy to defend. That's why operators stick with the vendors they know, and why your job is to make switching just as easy to defend.
One Feed Can Reach the Whole Room
Our own client data shows how one feed can reach both rows. LinkedIn's audience breakdown for the Permian founder we work with, as of October 19, 2026, put drilling engineers at the top of the job titles at 5%, with chief executives, presidents, founders, and owners right behind at 3% each, then drilling supervisors, consultants, and managers. By seniority, 30% were senior level, 23% entry level, and 9% in the C-suite. The engineer who picks and the owner who signs were in the same audience, seeing the same posts.
What My Mom Taught Me About Procurement
My mom has worked in the oil and gas industry for more than 30 years. She's in procurement, and she's the one who got me my first job at Vallourec, because her friend worked there. I had only been home three or four days. I said, “Why, Mom? I didn't study drilling or petroleum.” She said, “Get off my couch, you're going to work.”
A lot of what she taught me is still relevant today, starting with treating everyone with respect. In a buying center, that's strategy as much as manners. The supply chain contact you skipped this quarter is the gatekeeper you'll need next quarter.
The People With Their Hands on the Equipment
One of the clients I visit in Midland is Hondo Resources, a water transfer company. I'm there in my white hard hat, my safety glasses, and my yellow gas monitor clipped to my chest, because that's the proper way to wear it, not on your helmet. I get to talk to the men and women who have their hands on the equipment and their hands in the mud, living it day to day, and honestly, that's where the best innovation happens. That's how one of my clients innovated their steel stairwells that help people get in and out of containment units.
I learned that lesson before I came back to oil and gas, in food franchising. As Head of Marketing at Wetzel's Pretzels, I found that the people making pretzels in more than 300 locations around the world had way better innovations than I could have ever dreamed up in the headquarters office in Pasadena, California. In Webster and Wind's terms, those were the users, and the users knew the most.
Grocery taught me the same split from another angle. I helped get an ice cream brand stocked at Central Market, and in grocery generally, a category buyer decides what gets shelf space while shoppers decide whether it stays. Sell only to the signer and you can win the shelf and still lose the product. Oilfield deployments work the same way: the signature gets you on location, and the crew decides whether you stay.
Where the Science Has Limits
Most of this research is decades old, and little of it was run in oil and gas. The roles have held up. The exact shape of any one operator's buying group is something you learn by asking.
Influence moves. Kohli's findings depend on group size, cohesion, and time pressure, so an engineer who runs the room on one account may be a voice among many on the next.
Accountability isn't always cautious. Lerner and Tetlock show its effect depends on who people answer to and when they find out, so don't assume every buyer defaults to safe.
Nine in ten is the podcast's figure. It fits the research on expert power, but it's their estimate, not a study.
How to Sell to the Whole Buying Center
Map the five roles on every account. Hinds' role, seniority, and geography mapping is a good start. Write down who uses, who influences, who buys, who signs, and who guards the door.
Clear the gate before the pitch. Safety qualification, the vendor list, and the MSA come first, because many buyers won't meet you until they're done.
Arm your champion. Give the engineer the cost case, the safety record, and a reference they can carry into the meeting you won't attend.
Talk to the third row early. Ask the field hands what breaks. Users who helped shape the fix are slower to fight it.
Make yes easy to defend. Data, references, and a small trial beat a big promise, because the person signing has to explain the choice later.
Respect procurement. They're buyers and gatekeepers, and they remember who treated them like an obstacle.
Be known across the room, not by one contact. That's the idea behind The Warm Walk-In™: the signer has heard your name before your champion says it. For the operator version of this, read our answer on the operator buying committee, and our guides to selling to supply chain and selling to completions engineers.
Follow Along
Want the short version in your inbox? The Tailgate is one letter a month from the patch. Sign up at the bottom of any page. If you'd rather see what a buyer sees when they look you up, get your Bison Walk-Around.
Sources and As-Of Dates
Peer-reviewed studies (each DOI checked on Crossref, October 30, 2026):
Webster, F. E., and Wind, Y. (1972). A General Model for Understanding Organizational Buying Behavior. Journal of Marketing, 36(2), 12-19. Supports: the buying center and its five roles.
Johnston, W. J., and Bonoma, T. V. (1981). The Buying Center: Structure and Interaction Patterns. Journal of Marketing, 45(3), 143-156. Supports: buying groups differ between equipment and service purchases (31 firms).
Lau, G., Goh, M., and Phua, S. L. (1999). Purchase-Related Factors and Buying Center Structure. Industrial Marketing Management, 28(6), 573-587. Supports: importance, time pressure, and novelty reshape the buying group (68 manufacturers).
Kohli, A. (1989). Determinants of Influence in Organizational Buying: A Contingency Approach. Journal of Marketing, 53(3), 50-65. Supports: expert power is the strongest driver of influence (251 decisions).
Howell, J. M., and Higgins, C. A. (1990). Leadership behaviors, influence tactics, and career experiences of champions of technological innovation. The Leadership Quarterly, 1(4), 249-264. Supports: champions show more charismatic leadership and use a wider range of influence tactics (25 matched pairs).
Davis, F. D. (1989). Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use, and User Acceptance of Information Technology. MIS Quarterly, 13(3), 319-340. Supports: usefulness had a stronger link to actual use than ease of use (152 users).
Samuelson, W., and Zeckhauser, R. (1988). Status quo bias in decision making. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 1(1), 7-59. Supports: people favor the current option far more than economics predicts.
Lerner, J. S., and Tetlock, P. E. (1999). Accounting for the effects of accountability. Psychological Bulletin, 125(2), 255-275. Supports: having to justify a choice changes how it's made.
Field voices:
Energy Growth Playbook, Oil and Gas Industry Basics and Objections, read October 30, 2026.
Chuck Yates, LinkedIn post of August 4, 2026.
Pat Hinds, LinkedIn posts of September 14, October 12, and October 20, 2026.
LinkedIn analytics export (audience breakdown) for the Permian founder we work with, September 15, 2025 to October 19, 2026, read October 30, 2026. Details on request.
The Warm Walk-In™ is an original method created by Amanda Leon and owned by The Valours Creative Innovation LLC.
