By Huthwaite (Creator of Spin Selling)
Decision criteria are the criteria, standards, or dimensions which a person uses to make judgments or decisions. They are an essential part of decision-making. Without decision criteria a buyer has no mechanism for making choices between alternative solutions.
If you can help to define a customer’s decision criteria during the selling process, you are well on your way to winning more, and more profitable business. There are three basic rules for influencing decision criteria:
1. Develop decision criteria from needs you’ve uncovered during the Recognition of Needs phase of the sale.
2. Reinforce crucial decision criteria you can meet.
3. Build up incidental decision criteria in areas where you are strong.
Perhaps you recall what I mean when I say the Recognition of Needs phase—it is that period in the buying process during which a potential buyer begins to feel a certain pain in their current situation; problems with the status quo have begun to arise and they are becoming aware that something may need to be done about it. As you meet with a client in this phase, and help them to crystallize their understanding of the pain and the potential consequences, you are in a unique position to get them thinking about possible criteria for determining a solution. This is one of your best opportunities to influence their thinking about what really matters; what really counts; what they ought to be thinking about. Take advantage of the time to guide their thinking in a truly consultative fashion, and they will thank you. And they will remember these conversations when they begin to evaluate their options.
As they move into the formal phase of Evaluation of Options, consider your own possible solution to their problem. What are your strengths? Help them to see the vital importance of those criteria that they have earlier formulated, with your guidance, which you just happen to be best suited to meet. If they developed their decision criteria without your assistance, then reinforce those criteria which are crucial in their minds if they mesh with your strengths.
If the criteria that is most important to them is not in line with your own particular capabilities, build up their incidental criteria by taking them back to the real nature of the problem they are trying to solve. Help them to see the importance of criteria they may have overlooked or given lesser weight to. Help them to see the problem and its consequences in a new light; a light which highlights the crucial nature of your own great strengths.
There may be no more critical asset in your sales arsenal than your ability to influence decision criteria. Remember that the needs of your customer come first. Be a genuine consultant. Be an expert diagnostician. Your own expertise about their problems and the potential consequences of those problems gives you the right to help them understand things in a new and brighter light.
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