Decision Criteria: questions to ask your prospect

Grey

Status: Trying to get the decision criteria (DC) documented

• Do you have any written decision criteria now?
• Would you like a generic template to get you started?
• Other clients have taken this, removed anything that was not relevant and weighted the capabilities that were most important to them. I suggest you do that with all stakeholders.
• When can you send it back to me?

Yellow: moving to green

Status: The criteria are influenced by you

Guiding light principle: Influence. Can you influence the criteria to favor you, set traps for the competition, gain consensus and help you avoid “No Decision”?

• Can you schedule a time with us (AE and SE) to review the DC and link the capabilities to the business outcomes we jointly discovered were important to you during our initial meeting?
• Explain to me the weighting in the DC.
• Tell me which stakeholder provided the most input.
• What business outcome would the Economic Buyer (EB) care most about?
• What would a DC for the current status quo look like?

Green

Status: The criteria are differentiated and have locked out the competition

Guiding light principle: Control. You have been able to influence the criteria and tie them to business outcomes, and your solution has been differentiated. You have set traps for the competition, including the “No Decision” contingent.

• Has the input from the EB been incorporated in the DC, and has he/she seen the document?
• Has any stakeholder requested some last-minute changes? What were they?
• How are you managing any changes to the DC?
• Is the DC the major driver for the technical validation event we are jointly executing?
• Are you comfortable defending the objectivity of this document to the EB?