The Decision Process

1Session at a glance

2Open (0:00, 4 minutes)

• Point at the six words already on the board and say they are the whole step. Do not explain them yet.
• Say what it buys on Monday for the seats that do not sell: the same six questions, asked at a project kickoff, are how you find out about the second approver before the change window rather than during it.

3Concept (0:04, 22 minutes)

What this step establishes (4 min)

• Define it before using it. The decision step is step five of the seven steps of our selling system, and it establishes how a decision gets made inside that organization: who takes part, in what order, against what rule, in which room, by when, and for what reason. The name of the person who signs is one answer inside that, not the whole of it.
• Ask the room what they would ask to find the decision maker. Somebody will offer "are you the decision maker". Ask what answer that question gets. It gets a yes, nearly every time, and the yes is usually sincere.
• Give the example before naming the rule. An office manager at a medical practice tells you she handles IT, she asked for the proposal, and she will take it to the owner. Every part of that is true. She recommends and somebody else approves, and she has never had to describe the difference out loud because nobody asked her to.
• Now name the rule: the person's name is one answer inside the process, and the process is what this step establishes. A person can tell you honestly that they decide and still be one step in a sequence that has three more steps in it.
• Say what this step is worth. Everything after it depends on it. A proposal written without the decision process is a document going into a room we know nothing about, to be argued by people we have never met, against criteria nobody told us.

The six questions (7 min)

• Point at the board. Who, what, how, where, when, why. The same six a news story answers, for the same reason: answer all six and the account of the event is complete, miss one and there is a hole in it.
• Take them one at a time from section 3 of the Learner Guide and read the worked example out loud for each. Then ask the room for one from a client they actually know, and take one answer before moving on. Two of the six should get an example from a non-sales seat.
• Spend the extra time on how and on why, which are the two that get dropped. How is the rule they will use to choose: a unanimous vote of the partners, one person with a veto, the lowest of three numbers, whichever provider the cyber insurance carrier will accept. Why is the reason the process has that shape, and it tells you what the process is there to protect against.
• Make the point about why concrete: a practice that takes three quotes because a provider walked out mid-contract three years ago is protecting against abandonment, and the thing that wins is evidence we will still be there. A practice that takes three quotes because their accountant requires it for anything above a threshold is protecting a control, and the thing that wins is a clean, comparable number. Same process, two different jobs to do.
• Do not let the room try to memorize the six answers. What they need is to be able to ask the six questions in their own words, in a normal tone, in the middle of a conversation.

The shape of the step (4 min)

• Five parts, in order, and they are on the board as you say them. Review what pain and budget established. Open with one open-ended question. Keep the client talking. Qualify, disqualify, or find that another meeting with other people is needed. Agree the next meeting.
• Part one is two sentences and a check: what the problem is costing them, the figure they named, and "have I got that right". It is the same opening move the budget step used, for the same reason. It puts them back in the conversation they have already agreed to.
• Part two is one question and it is open-ended, meaning it cannot be answered with a yes or a no. "Walk me through how a decision like this gets made here." Contrast it out loud with "are you the decision maker", which can only be answered yes or no and so tells you nothing.
• Part three is the hard part and it is mostly not talking. Short prompts only: what happens then, who sees it at that point, how did the last one go. This is the questioning work from session 05: ask a short question, stop, and let the silence do the work rather than filling it.
• Part five is an up-front contract, which is the agreement made before a conversation about what it is for, who is in it, how long it runs and what happens at the end. Every version of this step ends in one, including the version where you have disqualified the opportunity, because the file closing is also something you agree out loud.

The three outcomes (4 min)

• Three outcomes and no fourth. The opportunity is disqualified. Other people are involved that we have not met. The opportunity is qualified.
• Give disqualified the most time, because it is the one the room will resist. Examples: the parent company buys only from an approved vendor list we are not on and cannot join this year; the decision is already made and we are the third number a policy requires; the process is one nobody will describe.
• Say what to do with it, in this order, because "disqualified" with no procedure attached just means the record sits in the pipeline forever. Say it to the client plainly and thank them. Close the file in Nutshell with the actual reason written in it. Ask for a referral, which is one of the four results a conversation can produce: a yes, a no, a referral, or a clear and well understood future. Set one specific trigger to revisit, tied to an event rather than a date, such as the incumbent's agreement ending.
• Middle outcome, other people involved: this is ordinary, not a failure, and the mistake is treating it as one. Do not present to the person in front of you and hope they carry it accurately. Ask what each of those people cares about, what they would object to, and what this person's own part in the decision is. Then book the meeting with them in it.
• Qualified means the three conditions in the next block are all true. Then ask "what should happen next?" and let the client say it before you propose it.

The agreement before a presentation (3 min)

• Three conditions before a proposal is written, and all three have to hold: a problem we can actually solve, money that covers it, and a decision process we are willing to take part in. Stress the word willing on the third. A process where we submit a number and never speak to anybody is one we are allowed to decline.
• Then the four things agreed before the presentation goes in the calendar: what form it takes, who attends and what part each of them plays, how long there is, and what decision gets made at the end of it.
• The fourth is the session. Say the question in full and have the room repeat it: "If we walk through this and every question you have is answered, and you are happy with what we are proposing, what happens then?"
• If the answer is "we will think about it", that is the thing to settle now, before anyone books a room, rather than discovering it after the meeting. Tell the room what to say next: we would rather hear a no on the day than a maybe. Then ask whether the people in the room are able to say yes or no, and if they are not, who is, and get that person in it.
• Answer the objection while it is still in their heads: asking for a no sounds like inviting one. It is the opposite. A client who agrees to answer will answer, and a client who will not agree to answer was never going to give you one after the meeting either.

4Show (0:26, 10 minutes)

1. Set the scene in one line. A medical practice. Pain is established and the office manager named a figure that covers the work. This is the next conversation, and the room's job is to watch for the moment the decision process appears.
2. Run part one. Two sentences of pain, the figure she named, "have I got that right". Wait for her yes.
3. Ask the open-ended question. "Walk me through how a decision like this gets made here." Then say nothing at all until she has finished, however long that takes.
4. Work the six. Follow her answer with short prompts and get to all six words on the board. She will volunteer who and when. Make the room notice that how, where and why only come out because you asked.
5. Name the outcome out loud. The owner approves and we have not met him, so this is the middle outcome. Do not present to her. Ask what the owner will want to know, what he will push back on, and what her own part in the decision is.
6. Book the meeting properly. Who is in it, how long, what form it takes, and then the question in full: if every question is answered and he is happy with what we propose, what happens then. Keep going until she says a yes or a no is possible in that meeting, or says it is not, in which case find out who has to be there for it to be.
7. Debrief against the step. Ask the room which of the six questions produced the most new information, at which point the presenter nearly wrote the proposal anyway, and what the follow-up email would have said if this conversation had never happened.

5Do (0:36, 13 minutes)

1. Pairs, with something live each. An opportunity, a project that is being scoped, or a client who has asked about a replacement. Nobody sits this out.
2. Run the open-ended question and follow it. Five minutes. The partner plays their own client and answers only what is asked. The person asking has to reach all six words on the board.
3. Swap. Five minutes the other way. The presenter calls the change.
4. Write the decision map and keep it. Three minutes, on paper. Six lines, one per question, with a real answer or the word unknown. Then the outcome of the three, in one word. Then, if it is qualified or if other people are involved, the exact words of the question that gets a yes or a no agreed in advance.
5. Two people read theirs out. Presenter picks, and one of the two is a non-sales seat reading a project rather than a sale.
6. Write it where it lives. Before the end of the day, the decision answers go in the Nutshell lead record for an opportunity, or in the Syncro ticket and the client's Hudu record for a project. A decision process that exists only in one person's memory of a meeting is not usable by anybody else.

6Check (0:49, 7 minutes)

1. You ask a prospect "are you the decision maker" and get a confident yes. Why is that yes not an answer to this step, and what question replaces it?

   Answer

   Because it can only be answered yes or no, and people describe their own authority honestly and still leave out the sequence around it. Somebody who recommends, and whose recommendation is nearly always taken, will say yes in good faith. The replacement is open-ended: "walk me through how a decision like this gets made here", followed by short prompts until who, what, how, where, when and why are all answered.

2. A prospect agrees to a presentation next Thursday. The owner, the office manager and the bookkeeper will be there and you have an hour. Is this opportunity ready to present to?

   Answer

   Not yet. Three of the four things that get agreed before a presentation are settled: who attends, their roles, and how long there is. The fourth is missing, which is what decision gets made at the end of it. Ask before the meeting is booked: if every question is answered and you are happy with what we propose, what happens then?

   The obvious answer is yes, because a named date with the owner in the room looks exactly like progress. That is why this one is worth getting wrong in here rather than on Thursday. A meeting with no agreed ending has a default ending, and the default is "we will think about it", which costs the preparation, the hour, and another cycle of follow-up to reach an answer that could have been given on the day.

3. You learn that the prospect belongs to a parent company that buys only from an approved vendor list, and getting on that list is not possible this year. Which of the three outcomes is that, and what do you actually do?

   Answer

   Disqualified. Not because there is no pain and not because there is no money, but because there is no decision process we can take part in this year. Say so to the client plainly and thank them for being straight about it. Close the file in Nutshell with that reason written in the record. Ask whether they know anybody else worth talking to, since a referral is one of the four results a conversation can produce: a yes, a no, a referral, or a clear and well understood future. Set one trigger to come back on, tied to an event such as the vendor list opening, rather than a date chosen at random.

4. Pain is established, the client named a figure that covers the work, and they will not describe how a decision gets made. Can you write the proposal?

   Answer

   No. Three conditions have to be true before a proposal is written: a problem we can solve, money that covers it, and a decision process we are willing to take part in. The third fails. What you do instead is ask once more in a different form, for example what happened the last time they bought something like this and who was involved that time. If it stays closed, the opportunity is disqualified and the proposal is not written.

5. An office manager asked for the proposal and says she will take it to the owner, whom you have never met. Which of the six questions would have surfaced that earlier, and what do you ask her now?

   Answer

   Who is involved would have named the owner. How the decision is made would have shown that she recommends and he approves. Where in the organization it happens would have shown that the decision happens in a conversation we are not in, and when would have given you the timing of it. Now: ask what the owner will want to know, what he is likely to push back on, what part she plays in the decision herself, and then ask to be in the room with both of them. She is not the obstacle. She is the person who can get you there, and cutting her out loses you the only advocate you have.

6. Three weeks into a firewall replacement, a technician learns that a compliance officer has to approve the change window. Which of the six questions was never asked, when should it have been, and where does the answer get written down?

   Answer

   Who is involved, and by extension when, since the compliance officer's availability sets the date. It should have been asked at the kickoff, in the same conversation that agreed the scope, and again at the business technology review if the project came out of one. The business technology review, or BTR, is the recurring account meeting we hold with a client. The answer goes in the Syncro ticket for the project and in that client's Hudu record, so the next person who schedules a change on that network finds it without asking again.

7Close (0:56, 4 minutes)

Work before the next session

• The practice steps in section 9 of the Learner Guide: a decision map for one live opportunity or project, six answers or unknowns, the outcome in one word, and the exact words of the question that gets a yes or a no agreed in advance.
• One decision answer added to a Nutshell lead record, a Syncro ticket or a Hudu record, so it is somewhere other than a notebook.
• Chapter 7 of the Sandler Foundations workbook, in the reference folder, for anyone who wants the source.

Next session

08 - Fulfillment and Post-Sell. Presenting only what the client told you they needed, in the language they used, and the work that happens after a yes so the decision holds when somebody else gets a vote on it later.

Open items to settle

• Whether the six decision answers get named fields in the Nutshell lead record, so a proposal cannot be raised without them.
• Whether the project kickoff checklist asks who else has to approve this and when they meet, and whether that belongs in a Notion SOP alongside the kickoff steps we already document.
• What we say, in plain words, when a client will not agree that the presentation ends in an answer, and whether we are willing to present anyway.

8Sources

• Sandler Systems, Sandler Foundations, chapter 7, Identifying the Prospect's Decision Making Process: chapter PDF.
• Sandler Systems, Sandler Foundations: full workbook PDF.

The decision step, the six elements, the three outcomes, the three conditions for moving to fulfillment and the question asked before a presentation are Sandler's. The worked examples, the decision map, the project kickoff application and everything about how this applies at Hermetic are ours.

9After the session