Decision Process: internal inspection questions
Inspection questions on the Decision Process: visibility of how a decision will be made, the documented business justification, and control of the approval (paperwork) process.
Grey
Status: No visibility of how a decision will be made
Guiding light principle: Visibility. You may have some idea about next steps or budget, but until you are able to list out, in detail, the approval process and validation steps, you are still at grey.
- Tell me the process they will use to select or eliminate vendors and/or alternatives.
- Explain to me how they will add or take away activities, events or criteria from their validation process.
- Describe to me who the players are that are conducting the validation process.
- Tell me how you will engage the EB in this opportunity to make sure the planned validation events will produce the results they want.
- Explain to me how you know what the results need to be to survive the financial stress test.
- Describe to me how you are going to be informed if and when anything changes in the Decision Process.
Yellow
Status: Visibility of the decision process, but not in our control/influence
Guiding light principle: Input. Both elements of the decision process, approval and validation, need to be documented and mutually agreed upon with your prospect. Evidence exists that the customer is also committing time and resources to this process. For example: are they willing to begin the review of the license agreement/legally binding documents, or set you up as an approved vendor with procurement?
There should also be a timeline showing the dates for key activities. You must negotiate this timeline so that the approval process does not follow validation; rather, these two processes should be run in parallel.
- What document is being used to define the business justification?
- Does the document include the cost of doing nothing you uncovered in Identify Pain?
- Describe to me what business metrics (defined in the Metrics section) will be used to show our value in the ROI.
- Is your champion building the business case document with you?
Green
Status: Dominance: visibility and control, knowing the approval (paperwork) process
Guiding light principle: Dominance. You’ve applied all the sales rigor associated with understanding the approval (paperwork) process.
- Tell me what the paperwork process is for them to place an order with us.
- Who has to sign the requisition?
- Does the board of directors need to be involved?
- And then what happens, and then what happens…?
- Does the close date in Salesforce reflect the time for the paperwork process to be completed?
Go deeper on Decision Process
The route to a decision: technical, the route to money and the route to paper.