1 min lesson
Who you sell to and who blocks the deal
Connect "A Cursor deal is rarely one buyer" to the decision you would make.
Step 1 of 3
A Cursor deal is rarely one buyer. Developers pull the product in from the bottom, leadership decides whether to standardize and a set of gatekeepers can quietly stall everything if you ignore them. Knowing who cares about what - and reaching them in parallel - is the difference between a 30-day cycle and a 90-day one.
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Full explanation
Who Can Stall the Deal, Ranked
Interactive diagram. Tab through its regions; each focused region shows its detail in the panel below.
Weight is how hard each stakeholder can block a signature if ignored. The two highest can kill a deal outright - engage them early, not last.
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Advanced table
Each blocker has a different question
- Stakeholder
- IC / developer
- What they care about
- Does it make my day faster and not get in my way
- What unblocks them
- Real usage in their editor; they sell upward for you
- Stakeholder
- EM / CTO
- What they care about
- Team throughput, retention, one standard tool
- What unblocks them
- An ROIReturn on Investment. The value gained versus what it cost, the language an economic buyer funds deals in. Press Enter for the full definition. case tied to dev productivity and adoption
- Stakeholder
- Security
- What they care about
- Code and IP exposure, model data handling, SOC 2
- What unblocks them
- Docs, data-handling answers and a privacy/zero-retention story
- Stakeholder
- Procurement
- What they care about
- Price, seat math, contract terms, consolidation
- What unblocks them
- Clear seat model and a defensible value-per-seat number
- Stakeholder
- Legal
- What they care about
- DPAData Processing Agreement. The contract spelling out exactly how a vendor may process your data: purposes, subprocessors, retention and breach duties. The document privacy reviews actually read. Press Enter for the full definition., data residency, IP indemnity, AI-output terms
- What unblocks them
- Early access to standard paper and the security posture
| Stakeholder | What they care about | What unblocks them |
|---|---|---|
| IC / developer | Does it make my day faster and not get in my way | Real usage in their editor; they sell upward for you |
| EM / CTO | Team throughput, retention, one standard tool | An ROIReturn on Investment. The value gained versus what it cost, the language an economic buyer funds deals in. Press Enter for the full definition. case tied to dev productivity and adoption |
| Security | Code and IP exposure, model data handling, SOC 2 | Docs, data-handling answers and a privacy/zero-retention story |
| Procurement | Price, seat math, contract terms, consolidation | Clear seat model and a defensible value-per-seat number |
| Legal | DPAData Processing Agreement. The contract spelling out exactly how a vendor may process your data: purposes, subprocessors, retention and breach duties. The document privacy reviews actually read. Press Enter for the full definition., data residency, IP indemnity, AI-output terms | Early access to standard paper and the security posture |
Each blocker has a different question; you carry the answer before they ask it.
The sequencing instinct is the trap. New AEs run these stakeholders one after another - win Engineering, then start Security, then hand to Procurement. On a high-velocity book that serial path bleeds time. The move is to map all of them at the start of the cycle and advance them in parallel.
In the mock discovery, surface the full stakeholder map out loud: “Who else touches a tooling decision like this - does Security review new AI vendors and who owns procurement?” Asking that early tells the interviewer you've been burned by a late security review before and you plan around it.
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Optional practice