Decision creep is a self-inflicted injury

Are you causing decision creep??

Decision creep is a self-inflicted injury that occurs when a seller pushes a purchase decision to higher levels in the prospect's company than is necessary.

Decision creep slows down decision cycles and increases your risk of losing the deal.

The problem starts with the common sales assumption that it is universally desirable to sell to the C-Suite.

It isn’t.

The fact is that not all products are created equally.

The product or service you sell falls into one of two categories. It is either strategic or tactical for the customer.

Strategic products will typically require a broader internal consensus and approval at higher levels. Tactical products don’t.

In other words, are you selling mission critical infrastructure or are you selling paper clips?

I know that all sellers would like to think that their products or services are strategically important to their customers. The fact is, in most cases, they’re simply not.

This doesn’t mean your product or service isn’t important. It’s just not strategic.

Similarly, sometimes a vendor is just a vendor, not a “partner."

This also doesn’t mean the customer doesn’t value their relationship with your company or that they don’t appreciate the great customer service you provide. But, not every product is strategic and not every product can command the time and attention of the C-Suite.

I worked with a client’s sales guy, Jim, who always oversold his product. By oversell I don’t mean that he promised it would do things it couldn’t. Rather, he was always pushing to sell his product, a debug tool used by engineers, to the C-Suite.

The design tool he was selling was a tactical product and, typically, the decision to buy his product was made by the engineer who would use it and approved by an engineering manager.

But, Jim’s boss had taken a sales training class that taught that he always had to sell to the C-Suite and he wasn’t to be dissuaded.

What are strategic products? In rough terms, any product or service that can demonstrably have a measurable impact on the revenue and profitability growth of a company, or that has a certain level of complexity and a price that is large in relation to the company’s revenues, can be a strategic product.

Tactical products and services are most everything else. These are items that a company can’t necessarily operate or function without, but the price and complexity level of the product or service is low relative to the size of the company.

Tactical products and services are relatively commoditized, meaning that the buyers have multiple vendors to choose from and pricing is often one of the primary purchase considerations. The actual choice of product and vendor typically happen below the C-suite level.

Well over 90% of the purchase decisions a company makes in the course of a business year are for tactical products or services.

Think of a typical $50 million revenue company. This is a classic small business but it makes thousands of purchases every year. In very few cases are the actual decisions about which of these thousands of products or services to purchase made at the C-level. (There just isn’t enough time in the day for that.)

What can happen when you push a decision too high?

Take the case of Jim, again. In one instance he had finally gained access to a large account that previously had purchased almost exclusively from one of his main competitors. In fact, they were ready to give Jim an order, but on his manager’s insistence, Jim convinced his chief internal advocate to set up a meeting with his CEO.

The first words out of the CEO’s mouth when he met with Jim were “Why am I in this meeting? I’m not involved in this decision.”

This was quickly followed by “But, since you asked, I do have an opinion…” Which was that they should stick with the incumbent (and Jim lost out.)

Don’t let decision creep come back to bite you.

Realistically determine if your product is strategic or tactical.

And, instead of selling too high, win the deal with the actual decision maker for your product or service.