Decision Process

The Decision Process is how the customer gets from “we should look at this” to “we have chosen”. Who evaluates, who validates, who recommends, who approves, in what order, and by when. It covers the proof of concept, the security review, the business case to the board, the vote in the steering committee. Every one of those is a step, and every step has an owner and a date, whether or not anyone has told you what they are.

The question it answers: what has to happen, in what order, for this customer to decide?

The mistake is confusing your sales process with their buying process. Your pipeline stages are yours. The customer does not know they are in “Stage 3: Proposal”. They are in “waiting for Priya to come back from leave so she can look at the integration”. Sellers who forecast off their own stages are guessing. Sellers who forecast off the customer’s Decision Process are reporting.

How I use it. I ask my Champion to walk me through the last time their company bought something like this, step by step. Who was involved, how long it took, where it stalled. Then I write it down and test it with the Economic Buyer, because the Champion’s version and the Economic Buyer’s version are often different, and the Economic Buyer’s is the one that counts. The output is a dated plan the customer has agreed to. That plan, shared and owned by both sides, is what a Mutual Action Plan is. If a step on it slips with no explanation, the close date slips with it. No exceptions.