Decision Process
The sequence of steps, approvals and reviews a buyer must complete before a purchase can be executed.
Where forecasts break
Deals slip because a step nobody mapped — security review, procurement queue, a board meeting that happens quarterly — takes longer than the enthusiasm suggested. The buyer was never misleading; nobody asked.
Enthusiasm is not a timeline
How to map it
Ask directly and early: what has to happen between agreement and signature, and who is involved at each step? Buyers answer this readily and are rarely asked.
Separate the commercial approval from the legal and security review. They run on different timelines and frequently in sequence rather than parallel.
Identify who can stop the deal without appearing in any meeting. Security, procurement and finance frequently hold veto without visible involvement.
Convert the map into dated steps with owners on both sides — this is what a mutual action plan is for.
Re-confirm at each stage. Buying processes change mid-deal more often than sellers expect, particularly after reorganisations.
Where it misleads
Buyers frequently do not know their own process, particularly for a new category, so the first answer is a guess stated confidently.
A mapped process creates false confidence: knowing the steps does not mean they will happen on the stated dates.
Process maps go stale when a sponsor changes role, which is also the most common cause of a deal restarting.
Over-focus on process can substitute for building the business case, and a well-mapped deal with no value case still loses.
RELATED TERMS
Decision Criteria
The explicit and implicit standards a buyer will use to choose between options.
Economic Buyer
The person who can authorise the spend — not who recommends it, and not who signs the paperwork, but who controls the budget decision.
MEDDPICC
MEDDIC extended with Paper process and Competition — acknowledging that deals are lost to procurement and to rivals as often as to unclear value.
Mutual Action Plan
A jointly owned document listing the steps, owners and dates required to get from agreement to signature.
Paper Process
The contractual, legal, security and procurement steps between verbal agreement and a signed contract.
Sales Cycle Length
The elapsed time from an opportunity's creation to its close. The time dimension underneath capacity planning and forecasting.
COMMON QUESTIONS
- What is a decision process in sales?
- The sequence of steps, approvals and reviews a buyer must complete before a purchase can happen — commercial sign-off, legal review, security assessment, procurement. It is distinct from decision criteria, which are the standards they judge options against.
- Why does mapping the decision process matter?
- Because unmapped process is the most common cause of deals slipping. A seller who knows a security review takes six weeks plans for it; one who does not discovers it at the end of the quarter, when the timeline is already committed and nothing can be done.
- How do you find out a buyer's decision process?
- Ask directly and early. Buyers answer this readily and are rarely asked. The useful follow-up is who can stop the deal without appearing in any meeting — procurement, security and finance frequently hold a veto with no visible involvement until late.
- What is the difference between decision process and decision criteria?
- Process is how the decision gets made — the steps, approvals and people. Criteria are what it gets judged against. You can meet every criterion and still lose on process if an approval you did not know about arrives too late, and vice versa.
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