You have already established a proposal to your target clients/business, and someone from them already acknowledged your proposal. Next, you must determine how to keep the ball rolling by finding a way to talk to the decision makers.
How can one move forward and get in touch with a decision maker, such as the owner, CEO, CFO, or other person capable of making a decision?
The key to keeping the ball rolling when it comes to landing a contract is communication. At this point, you've submitted a proposal, and it sounds like you've either contacted a member of that organization directly, or a member of that organization contacted you.
First, the decision maker may actually be the person you've contacted. Don't assume this is always an executive level decision, especially in today's business climate where workers on the front lines are empowered to make decisions based on their own knowledge and experience.
Second, you must determine what criteria they're using to determine what decision to make. If this wasn't made clear to you, contact the prospect, make it clear to them how you plan to add value to solving the problem, and ask them what they need from you in order to move forward. If you assume that person isn't the decision maker, you may inadvertently insult that person, which may or may not have an impact on their decision to select you. If they think you'll try to run to the VP of Operations everytime they ask you to do something you don't like, that may be a huge turnoff. I know it would be for me if I were hiring a contractor.
Just like with hunting for a job, you must ask for the job in order to land the job. If the person you're speaking with hasn't yet made a decision, asking what they need from you in order to move forward may give you an action item, something that gives you an excuse to continue to follow up and keep the conversation moving forward. Of course, they may tell you that it's up to the VP of Financial Planning, in which case, you could then ask that person to set you up with a meeting with that person.
In addition to jmort253's points above, I think the best approach is to assume that you are talking to a decision maker on every contact but that decisions are made cooperatively. In many companies, these decisions are not made by one person in a vacuum but made cooperatively by groups of people. I have had cases where I got projects after being contacted independently separately by different decision makers at the director and C-level.
To tell a story of something that happened to my business once. I got approached by the director of accounting by a specific business. I was then contacted by the CEO who didn't know of the prior contact at the request of a software security specialist (so by an entirely different path). I ended up getting the project not because I got the apparent decision makers on board, but because I had previously impressed someone in a very different role (the security guy) on criteria that were very important to the customer's culture but not in the project specification.
So the moral of the story is that decisions get made from various levels, and it isn't necessarily always clear who holds the keys to the kingdom for every project.
A second thing to keep in mind is that people don't like to waste time. If you are in contact with someone from the company, you can assume that they have a role in the decision to be made and that if you impress them they will advocate for you.
So the best thing you can do is to offer to be available to talk to whoever needs to talk to you.
