In making the Action Decision, there are a lot of factors your customer will consider and questions they will have to answer for themselves. To get in step with our buyer, we need to know the answers to these just as much as they do. In a top-down initiative many of these questions will already be answered, but in a bottom-up initiative, you can bet these are the questions that management will be asking when the proposal finally hits their desk.
To help answer the larger question of ‘Do we have to buy something now?’ your customer will consider the following factors, and seek to answer the associated questions (please note the six Action Drivers ):
- Disparity: ‘What is the goal, objective, need, pain, problem, obstacle, disparity, or gap we are trying to address?’
- Motive: ‘Why do we have to take action on this right now?’
- Urgency: ‘Is there a deadline (either internal or external) by which we must take action?’
- Payback: ‘What kind of return-on-investment can we expect? How soon? How certain?’
- Consequence: ‘What bad thing will happen if we don’t take action?’
- Means: ‘Do we have the money to buy, and the manpower to make this investment successful?’
- Risk: ‘What is the downside of taking action? What could go wrong?’
- Prioritization: ‘Of all the initiatives we need to act on, which are the most important right now?’
The Action Decision is by far the most critical because if this decision can’t be resolved, none of the others really matter. Top-down initiatives begin here, and every buying decision has to end here, so our knowledge and understanding of where our customer stands on the Action Decision is one of the most important things we can know about any opportunity. But as important and as overarching as the Action Decision is, it is highly reliant on the other three decisions as well, because . . .
A buyer cannot take the action to buy until they have a course of action to take, the resources available to buy, and a source to buy from.
Therefore, successful resolution of the other three decisions becomes an important factor that influences how and when the Action Decision is ultimately made.