The Title-to-Authority Reference: Signer, Approver, Champion, or None

This reference is for founders, account executives, SDR leads, and partnerships teams who have a title string on a contact at a target account and need to know what it proves before sequencing them. Take the title and four company facts: headcount band, funding stage, country, and legal form. Look up the matching row and you get a likely buying authority, the public record that would confirm it, and the way that title most often misleads.

What does a job title prove about buying authority?

A job title on its own proves very little. Spend authority comes from a company's internal policy, and contract-signing authority comes from law and the company register. So the same title can mean signer at one account and nothing at the next. As one sales-methodology source puts it, "Title alone won't tell you."

In this reference, every contact gets one of five authority levels:

• Signer: can legally bind the company to a contract. This is shown by a register entry or a published officer role, not by a title.
• Spend approver: internal policy lets them approve a purchase at your deal size. This is the "economic buyer" in most sales methods: the person who can say yes to the money.
• Champion: wants your product and will push for it internally, but cannot approve a purchase at your deal size.
• Evaluator: assesses the product and shapes the decision without owning it.
• No authority: none of the above at this account, whatever the title says.

Signer and spend approver are often different people. A delegation-of-authority matrix (DoA matrix) is the internal table that sets who may approve what spend. It answers the approver question. The register answers the signer question. A title answers neither. It only tells you where to look first.

Spend approval ceilings by role and company size

Published delegation-of-authority templates put a Director at $25,000 to $50,000 per item and a VP at $100,000 to $250,000 in mid-market companies. Below 50 staff, one template has no VP tier at all. These are estimates from public templates, not the target's real policy. Use them to judge whether a title could plausibly approve your deal, then confirm.

Figures are operating spend per item, in USD, from public delegation-of-authority templates. The two size-band columns come from one template. The last column spans three further templates.

What the ceilings prove, and where they lie

• They prove order of magnitude. A common design rule is that limits "should step up roughly an order of magnitude per level." If your annual value is $40,000, a Manager is very unlikely to approve it alone, and a Director might.
• The VP ceiling is the least reliable row. It varies 2.5x across mid-market templates. One template's "VP Operations" row says $200,000, while the same page also cites $50,000 for a VP. Treat any VP figure as a range.
• The size bands are coarse. No public source ties thresholds to exact headcount bands such as under 100, 100 to 500, or 500 to 1,000. Interpolate with care. No public source ties ceilings to funding stage either, so use stage only as a rough proxy for headcount.
• Many companies have no working policy at all. One source says nearly 90% of companies have a DoA matrix but only 71% call theirs effective. That figure is attributed to EY/APQC and I have not checked it against the original surveys. In practice, the written ceiling and the real one can differ.

Approving is not signing

One approval-matrix template recommends "separate columns, because many companies let a VP approve a purchase but only officers sign the contract." In its example, a Department VP approves up to $100,000 while contract signing is marked "Not authorised". Other templates set a VP's contract limit at "Up to $100,000 annual value". Some add a monthly cumulative cap, for example "Director $50,000 single, $200,000 monthly". That catches someone splitting one purchase into several.

Compare against your annual contract value (ACV), the yearly amount, not the total contract value (TCV) across all years. No public source establishes a rule that a company adds up TCV to push a multi-year deal into a higher approval tier. Some companies surely do. If you are selling a three-year term, ask.

Who is registered to sign, by country and legal form

In most jurisdictions you can name the people who can legally bind a company from a public register, without asking anyone. The title that binds and the record that proves it differ by country, and the field you need is often a single line in the extract.

Germany: Geschäftsführer and Prokurist

A Geschäftsführer is the managing director of a GmbH. Their Handelsregister entry says whether they have Alleinvertretung (they can represent the company alone) or Gesamtvertretung (they must act jointly). A Prokurist holds Prokura, a commercial power of attorney entered in the register. Prokuristen are listed with a note saying whether they hold Einzelprokura, meaning they can act alone, or Gesamtprokura, meaning they can act only jointly with another Prokurist or a Geschäftsführer.

Einzelprokura covers almost everything "except selling or mortgaging land and appointing further Prokuristen". For a software or services contract, a sole Prokurist is a full signer. The register also protects whoever relies on it: a Prokura still on the register can bind the company even if it has actually lapsed. For Germany, the register is better evidence than any title or profile.

UK: statutory director versus "Director" in the title

Under English law, only a director or the company secretary can sign for execution by the company itself under s44 of the Companies Act 2006. One person who is both director and secretary may not count as two authorised signatories. A statutory director appears on the Companies House officers list. A "Sales Director" who is not listed is a job title, and anything they sign rests on internal delegated authority you cannot see.

France: Président and directeur général of an SAS

Every SAS (société par actions simplifiée) must have a Président, who is the company's legal representative toward third parties. A directeur général (DG) or directeur général délégué (DGD) listed on the Kbis, the official company extract, does not automatically have power to represent the company. Kbis registration is a legal formality, not a grant of power. To confirm a DG's power you need two documents: the Kbis and the statuts (the articles of association) filed at the greffe, the commercial court registry.

French case law gives counterparties some protection: Cass. com. 9 July 2013, no. 12-22627, held that third parties can rely on commitments made by a DG or DGD. That protects you after the fact. It does not tell you who to sequence. For targeting, the Président is the clean answer, and a DG is a signer only once you have read the representation clause.

Japan: representative director

The Japanese register lists directors (取締役) and, separately, representative directors (代表取締役), who can bind the company. A plain director is not a signer by virtue of that title. Viewing the register online cost JPY 330 when this reference was compiled. Paper certificates cost a few hundred yen and the price depends on how you order. Fees are set nationally and change, so check the Registry Information Service before you budget for volume.

US public companies: officer lists

Under Rule 16a-1(f), a VP counts as an officer only if they are "in charge of a principal business unit, division or function (such as sales, administration or finance)." Whether someone performs a policymaking function "depends on the individual's actual role within the organization rather than their title alone." Officers appear in the 10-K and proxy and file Forms 3 and 4 on SEC EDGAR. Being on that list proves seniority, not contract-signing power. Signing power comes from board resolutions, which are usually not public.

Title-by-title lookup

Find the title token, read the authority for the company's size or country, check the record named, and watch for the listed failure. Where public evidence is thin, the row says so and gives a default plus the check that would overturn it.

Ladder titles

Company-head and registered titles

Two of these rows rest on thin public evidence. No systematic study covers what "Head of" means in European startups, or how UK and US companies differ in their use of "Director". The only published pointer is that a startup "Head of Growth" may do what a VP and a Manager do at a large firm. Treat those rows as defaults to test, not findings. No public source, and nothing in Refolk's index, gives the share of VP or C-level titles at companies under 50 staff who have no direct reports. So I won't put a number on title inflation at small companies. Check each contact's reporting line instead.

Managing Director and VP: one title, two meanings

In the UK and much of Europe, the Managing Director runs the company and is the equivalent of a CEO. In investment banking it is the most senior banker rank, above Director and VP. In finance, VP is "typically a mid-level manager rank achieved within four to ten years." Refolk's index shows how much this matters at volume.

"Bare title" means the sampled profile carried the title alone, with no function attached. In the UK Managing Director sample, the top employers are small firms such as The Phone Company, Holy Cow! Food Company, and Levantar AI, where the MD is very likely a registered director. The US sample includes Alvarez & Marsal, a consultancy where MD is a rank. Among the US financial-services VPs, Goldman Sachs alone accounts for 3 of the 25 sampled. That is 89,651 VP-titled people, far more than any executive officer list could hold. I left out a query for US software VPs because it returned only 2 results, almost certainly a mismatch in industry labels. Treat that cut as unusable.

Searching titles alone will not separate a UK MD who runs the company from a US MD who holds a rank. Searching for the registered role does. Refolk takes a plain-English request for the legal role rather than the title string and returns named people across LinkedIn and the open web, so you can start from the signer list and work outward.

Procedure: from title string to confirmed signer

Run the register check before you infer anything from the title, then estimate approval, then confirm both in conversation. The whole pass takes roughly 15 to 30 minutes per account, most of it spent pulling the register extract.

Some playbooks put title-based guessing first. I put the register first because it is the only step that produces proof rather than probability, and it changes how you read everything after it. A registered Geschäftsführer at a 40-person GmbH is the signer whatever the title on their profile says. A US bank VP who is not on the officer list stays an evaluator unless discovery says otherwise.

Step 5 is where most of the time goes when done by hand across a long account list. Refolk returns profiles with current title and employer from a single request, which cuts down the hunting. The reporting-line call is still yours to make.

Record the result in the same shape every time, so whoever picks up the account can see what was proved and what was guessed.

Contact:
Title string (exactly as written):
Entity and register ID:
Country / legal form:
Headcount band / funding stage:
Register status: Registered signer (sole) | Registered signer (joint, with: ) | Not registered
Register extract date:
Estimated approval ceiling (template tier) vs deal ACV:
Reporting line / leads a team (Y/N):
Authority call: Signer | Spend approver | Champion | Evaluator | No authority
Confirmed by: Register | Officer list | Discovery | Not yet confirmed
How this title could mislead here:
Discovery answer, "who signed off last time":
Signature block agreed (names, capacities):

How title reads go wrong

Most authority mistakes come from one of seven patterns. In each, a title or record looks like proof of authority it does not carry. Each has a specific check that catches it.

• Prokura shown on a profile.
  • Looks like: a sole signer.
  • Actually: may be Gesamtprokura, signing only with a second Prokurist or a Geschäftsführer.
  • Check: the Prokura field on the current register extract.
  • Limit: sources disagree on timing. One holds that a Prokurist appointed but not yet registered already has full authority. Another says registration is what makes it effective. The register can lag behind reality in either direction, so confirm in the paper process too.
• French DG on the Kbis.
  • Looks like: proof of signing power.
  • Actually: Kbis registration is a formality, and the DG's power depends on the statuts.
  • Check: the representation clause in the statuts filed at the greffe.
• UK "Sales Director".
  • Looks like: a statutory director.
  • Actually: often a job title with no statutory office.
  • Check: the Companies House officers list.
• US bank VP or consultancy MD.
  • Looks like: an executive.
  • Actually: a rank. In Refolk's index, Goldman Sachs alone is 3 of the 25 sampled US financial-services VPs.
  • Check: whether the name appears in the 10-K executive officers list.
• Approver mistaken for signer.
  • Looks like: the economic buyer has said yes, so the deal is done.
  • Actually: a VP can approve $100,000 and be "Not authorised" to sign.
  • Check: ask who signs the contract, separately from who approves the spend.
• Small-company VP.
  • Looks like: a budget holder.
  • Actually: the 10-50 staff template has no VP tier, so this VP is likely an evaluator or champion. Below 50 staff, inflating a title costs the company nothing, because there is no approval tier to protect.
  • Check: the reporting line, and who is registered as director or legal representative.
• Stale register extract.
  • Looks like: a current signer list.
  • Actually: a lapsed Prokura stays legally effective until it is deleted, and people leave.
  • Check: pull the current extract before the signature block is agreed, not one saved months ago.

The most expensive of these is the approver mistaken for signer. It does not lose the deal. It stalls it at the last step, when legal asks for a signature from someone the champion has never mentioned.

Confirming approver and signer in discovery

Public records tell you who can sign. Only the buyer can tell you who actually approved the last purchase and how their paper process runs. Ask two separate questions, one about approval and one about signature, and get a named person for each.

The anchor question comes from MEDDPICC practice: "Who signed off the last time your team bought something like this?" It works because it asks about a past event rather than a hypothetical, and people describe what happened more accurately than they describe policy.

1. "Who signed off the last time your team bought something like this?"
2. "Was that inside their own budget, or did it need to go higher?"
3. "At around [your ACV] a year, whose approval does this need?"
4. "When it comes to the contract itself, who signs for the company?"
5. "Does anyone need to sign alongside them, or can they sign alone?"
6. "Would a multi-year term change who has to approve it?"

Line 5 matters most in Germany and the UK. It catches Gesamtprokura, joint representation, and the s44 point that one person holding two roles may not count as two signatories. Line 6 covers the multi-year question that no public template answers. Check each answer against the register. A named signer who does not appear on the extract is relying on delegated authority, so ask for the delegation in writing.

Keeping authority reads current

An authority call goes stale as people leave, Prokura lapses, and officers are appointed. Re-check the register when a deal reaches the paper stage, and re-run the title-to-authority pass whenever a contact's title or employer changes.

• US officer lists move fast. A new Section 16 officer files Form 3 within 10 days of being designated, so EDGAR is a quick way to catch promotions at public companies. Section 16 reporting has also been extended to directors and officers of foreign private issuers, so check Forms 3 and 4 for those filers too.
• Japanese registers can hide addresses. Some representative directors' home addresses can now be partly redacted. Match on name and corporate number, not address.
• Fees and access rules change. Register fees and online access differ by country and are revised from time to time. Re-check the official service before budgeting a large pull.
• The public templates are generic. The ceilings in the spend table describe published templates, not your target. Once a buyer tells you their real approval ladder, record it on the account and stop using the template for that company.