Judge decisions, not outcomes

Two reps, same team, same quarter. The first closes a deal everyone knew should have been qualified out in month one. No Economic Buyer, no Metrics, a Champion who was really a Coach, and a 35% discount in the final week to drag it over the line. It counts. The second qualifies out of a deal in month two because the Decision Criteria had been written by the Competition and the Economic Buyer would not take a meeting. The Competition closes it.

At the kick-off, the first rep is on stage. The second is explaining herself in a one-to-one.

That is how most sales organisations judge, and it is backwards. The first rep made a bad decision and got a good outcome. The second made a good decision and got a bad one. Reward the outcomes and you will get more of the first rep’s decisions, and within a year you will have a team that chases luck and hides its process.

Why outcomes lie

Every outcome is a mix of two things: the quality of the decision and the luck that followed. Over a career you can start to tell them apart. On any single deal you cannot. The deal that closed because the Competition’s rep left mid-cycle looks identical, on the dashboard, to the deal that closed because you ran it properly.

Poker players have a word for this. Annie Duke calls it resulting: judging a decision by how it turned out rather than by what you knew when you made it. Poker punishes resulting fast, because you play thousands of hands and the luck washes out. Sales punishes it slowly, because you play twenty deals a year and the luck has time to hide.

Nobody regrets qualifying out. I have said that for years and I stand by it. But a leader who praises the lucky close and interrogates the correct qualify-out is training the team to regret it.

Four boxes

Draw a grid. Good decision or bad decision across the top. Good outcome or bad outcome down the side. Every deal lands in one of four boxes.

Good decision, good outcome. The deserved win. Easy to judge, little to learn.

Bad decision, bad outcome. The deserved loss. Also easy, and usually the only box that gets a review.

Good decision, bad outcome. The unlucky loss. The qualify-out that went to the Competition. The honest forecast that missed because the customer’s budget was pulled in the last week. Punish this box and people stop telling you the truth.

Bad decision, good outcome. The lucky win. The 35% discount that closed. The sandbagged forecast that was then “beaten”. This is the most dangerous box in the business, because nobody examines a win. The bad decision gets rewarded, repeated, and taught to the new hires.

Most organisations only see two of these boxes. They see wins and losses. The grid gives you the other two, and that is where all the learning is.

Judge the decision

The practical move is to judge the decision at the time it is made, with the information available then, and write it down.

For every significant call on a deal, three lines. What I knew. What I chose. What I expected to happen. Qualify out, discount, walk away from the RFP, go over the Champion’s head to the Economic Buyer. Three lines, dated.

Then, when the outcome arrives, you have something to judge other than the outcome. Review the lines, not the result. Was that the right call with what was known at the time? If yes and it lost, say so publicly, because the team is watching what you reward. If no and it won, say that too, quietly, to the rep, because the next one will not be lucky.

A leader who does this for a year ends up with a team that makes better decisions, which is the only thing in sales that compounds. Luck does not.

Go back through your wins this year. Which were good decisions, and which were good luck?