A Which criterion is most critical?

A Which are desirable?

A Which are relatively unimportant?

Even when the salespeople ask for this information, only 18 percent of the time do they ask the customer to make comparisons and indicate which critical criterion is more important than other critical criteria.2

WHY IDENTIFYING CRITERIA ISNT ENOUGH

The standard advice given to salespeople has been to identify the criteria upon which the customer will base the decision. In addition, some managers recommend that these decision criteria should then be prioritized.

This advice is faulty because it is based on two wrong inferences.

TRADING OFF ONE CRITERION FOR THE MOST IMPORTANT. The first wrong inference is that the customer knows how to prioritize the criteria. Often customers dont think formally about how they rank criteria. Therefore, you have to get them to think about it by asking questions such as, Which one of these two criteria, delivery or price, is the most important? One critical decision criterion may be more important to the customer than another critical criterion. In other words, customers may be forced to trade off one critical criterion for another because only one solution provider can meet their number-one criterion.

OMITTED CRITERIA. The second wrong inference is that the customer will use all critical criteria in the decision-making process. In fact, the customer may omit a critical decision criterion from the decision-making process. For instance, the customer may not be able to distinguish among the various competitors on the criterion of service.

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Therefore, the customer will not be able to use this criterion in making a final decision-not because it isnt important to the customer (it is), but because the customer doesnt see how it will help in selecting between the competing alternatives. Its not objective. Rackham refers to these types of criteria as soft in his book Major Account Sales Strategy.

DIFFERENTIATING OFFERINGS

If customers cant see a criterion as objective, they cant use it to differentiate the sellers offerings. Subjective criteria, by definition, are difficult to measure. Therefore, in addition to understanding how a customer ranks the critical decision criteria, the consultant must help the customer to quantify the subjective criteria. Dont just rank the criteria; make the criteria objective.

If the customer cant quantify service, for example, he or she may exclude it from the decision-making process. What does the customer mean by service? Is it measured by the number of hours it takes the loan officer to return telephone calls? Or by the number of invoicing errors? Is it measured by the frequency of visitations?

Its not enough to identify and rank the customers decision criteria, because the customer still may not be able to use the results. Sellers need to be able to demonstrate their ability to meet an objective critical decision criterion that the competitor cant meet. This entails turning subjective critical criteria into objective criteria.3 Customers need decision criteria that they can use to distinguish or discriminate between the various competing options. They favor objective, measurable decision criteria.

Objectivity sells better to customers superiors and subordinates than subjectivity-at least if you can provide factual evidence. While there may be some feeling and judgment left in any subjective criterion, the salesperson should quantify the criterion as much as he or she can.

CRITERIA ARE IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER

Jan Carlzon defines any interaction a customer has with your company as a moment of truth. Moments of truth, like beauty, are in the eye of the beholder and can be almost anything. Jerry Fritz, director of sales and customer service management programs for the Management Institute at the School of Business at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says, A moment of truth is when an airline passenger pulls down her seat-back tray to find a coffee stain and infers that the airline is sloppy about engine maintenance. 4 Moments of truth are customer perceptions of value. They are subjective. So are buyers decision criteria. Decision criteria, as defined by one of my colleagues, are those important factors which customers use to evaluate, compare, and choose between the options that are available to them. 5 Decision criteria vary from customer to customer, and a criterion that is crucial to one customer may be much less important to another.6

Customers are increasingly looking inward for their decision criteria. Their concerns focus more on themselves, their boss, and the competitive issues they face than on their own customers. For example, they see it as OK to define service in terms of how it affects them, the buyers, and they fail to consider how it affects their customers. Decision criteria now include their responsibilities to themselves and to their stakeholders (employees, stockholders, customers, etc.).7

OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE CRITERIA

Its helpful to divide decision criteria into two types: objective and subjective. As discussed previously, these terms refer to whether a particular decision criterion is measured quantitatively (objectively) or qualitatively (subjectively) by the customer. Common subjective criteria that are not necessarily industry-specific include:

A Reputation

A Flexibility