Decision Criteria

Decision Criteria are the rules the customer will use to pick a winner. They come in two main flavours. Technical Decision Criteria: does it integrate, is it secure, will it scale, can our people run it? Business Decision Criteria: what does it cost, what does it return, how fast, and what is the risk if it fails? Many deals carry a third set around legal and commercial terms, and those are the ones nobody mentions until week eleven.

The question this letter answers is: on what basis will they choose, and who wrote that basis?

The mistake is to assume the criteria are fixed and fair. They are neither. Decision Criteria are written by people, and in most competitive deals one of your competitors wrote them with the customer months before you arrived. If the RFP asks for a feature only one vendor has, you know who was in the room. Sellers who take the criteria as given spend the whole deal answering someone else’s exam paper.

How I use them. First, I find out whether the criteria exist in writing, who authored them, and whether the Economic Buyer agrees with them. Second, I work with my Champion to influence them while they are still soft. If the customer’s real pain is a Metric we move and the competition cannot, that Metric belongs in the criteria. Third, I test my own position against them honestly. If we meet six of nine and the three we miss are the ones the Economic Buyer cares about, the colour of the deal in the CRM is red, whatever the rep says.