Draw Who Buys, Who Uses, and Who Can Force the Two Together
Actor map template
Companion to The Product Manager’s New Job Is Acceptance · Updated 2026-09-30
The chapter “The Buyer and the User Are Often Different People” explains why. Fill one row for every person or role. Mark the last five columns with a yes, a no, or a question mark.
| Person or role | Buys or pays | Approves | Evaluates | Administers | Uses daily | Is affected | Can block | Can mandate use | Can abandon | Can renew or expand |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
How to use it
- Start from a real account, not an imagined one. Use a contract, a sales record, and a support ticket.
- Add the roles the record does not show. Ask the salesperson and the daily user who else mattered.
- Circle every row that has a yes under “Can mandate use.”
- For each mandated group, write down the workaround you would expect to see if people rejected the product.
- List every metric you report today, and mark those that would look the same if mandated users quietly stopped caring.
What to look for
- A buyer who is not the user, with no direct line to the user.
- An administrator with goals that conflict with the user’s.
- A blocker (security, compliance, procurement) who is not in your funnel.
- An affected person who never logs in, such as a patient or a customer of your customer.