Cracking the Code on Decision Criteria: The Formula That Wins Deals Every Time
- Wayne Johnson
- Sep 22
- 6 min read
Sales frameworks often get boiled down into checklists, but checklists don’t win deals. Conversations do. Insight does. And nowhere in the MEDDIC framework is that more obvious than with Decision Criteria.
If Metrics are the proof and Decision Process is the playbook, then Decision Criteria are the rules of the game. The buyer uses them to evaluate vendors, compare options, and justify the final choice to leadership. When you master this piece, deals feel less like coin flips and more like controlled experiments with a predictable outcome.
But here’s the problem: too many sellers treat Decision Criteria like a box to tick. They nod politely when a prospect says, “We need something easy to use,” and scribble down easy to use. That’s not discovery. That’s stenography. Additionally, they don't even tie to the pain nor metric that you have worked so hard to uncover.
What if instead you had a repeatable formula, a way to turn mushy, vague buyer preferences into clear, ranked criteria you could anchor your entire deal strategy around?
That’s what today’s post is about.
Why Decision Criteria Is the Pivot Point
Think about how B2B buyers make choices. Rarely does one product beat the others in every category. Instead, decision makers stack up a mix of hard business impact, functional requirements, and human factors. They assign weight to each, then compare how well each vendor fits.
The vendor who understands those criteria better than the buyer themselves? They usually win.
The vendor who misses the emotional undercurrent or misjudges the weighting? They burn months in the pipeline and come out empty-handed.
This is why top-performing sales teams don’t stop at “requirements gathering.” They dissect and engineer Decision Criteria into something measurable, ranked, and story-driven.
The Decision Criteria Formula
Here’s the formula I recommend using in every deal:
Decision Criteria = (Business Impact Metric + Functional Requirement) × Priority Weight + Emotional Driver
It forces you to consider all four elements that shape buying decisions. Let’s break them down.
1. Business Impact Metric
This is the so what. If the buyer’s criteria can’t be tied to a measurable business outcome, it’s not really a criterion. It’s a preference.
Examples:
“Reduce manual reporting hours by 40%.”
“Increase lead conversion rates by 15%.”
“Cut cost per customer served by $10.”
Notice the numbers. The best Decision Criteria are always tethered to math.
2. Functional Requirement
This is the “must-have” feature or capability that enables the business impact. Without it, the buyer can’t realistically achieve the metric.
Examples:
“Must integrate with Snowflake.”
“Needs multi-channel sequencing (LinkedIn + email).”
“Must support single sign-on with Okta.”
Functional requirements without metrics are meaningless. Metrics without functional requirements are fantasy. Together, they become concrete.
3. Priority Weight
Not every criterion carries the same gravity. Buyers assign weight, formally in scorecards or informally in conversations.
Examples:
“Critical” (weight = 5)
“Important” (weight = 3)
“Nice to have” (weight = 1)
When you assign weights, you prevent yourself from chasing low-value preferences while ignoring the non-negotiables.
4. Emotional Driver
The part buyers don’t write in RFPs but that always tilts the field. Emotional Drivers are about personal risk, ambition, fear, or pride.
Examples:
“CFO wants to be seen as data-driven before the board meeting.”
“VP of Sales is staking her promotion on the success of the new SDR team.”
“CIO doesn’t want to be the one who missed the breach.”
This is the fuel underneath the math. Ignore it at your peril.
Pulling It Together
Here’s how the formula looks in action:
Example 1: Business Analytics Platform
Business Impact Metric: Reduce manual reporting hours by 40%
Functional Requirement: Must integrate with Snowflake and Tableau
Priority Weight: 5 (critical)
Emotional Driver: CFO wants to be seen as data-driven before the next board meeting
Decision Criterion = (40% reduction in reporting + Snowflake/Tableau integration) × 5 + CFO’s reputation driver
Example 2: Sales Engagement Platform
Business Impact Metric: Increase outbound connect rates by 20% within 6 months
Functional Requirement: Must automate multi-channel sequencing (email, phone, LinkedIn) and integrate with Salesforce
Priority Weight: 4 (very important)
Emotional Driver: VP of Sales needs proof the new SDR team can deliver before the board questions the investment
Decision Criterion = (20% increase in connect rates + multi-channel automation & Salesforce integration) × 4 + VP Sales credibility stake
Example 3: Cybersecurity Threat Detection
Business Impact Metric: Reduce mean time to detect threats from 48 hours to under 4 hours
Functional Requirement: Must integrate seamlessly with existing SIEM and provide real-time alerts
Priority Weight: 5 (critical)
Emotional Driver: CIO wants to avoid being the executive who “missed the breach”, personal job security is on the line
Decision Criterion = (44 hours saved in detection + SIEM integration & real-time alerts) × 5 + CIO’s risk-avoidance driver
Why a Formula Beats a List
Most reps are handed “criteria” in the form of bullet points:
Easy to use
Integrates with Salesforce
Good support
That’s shallow discovery. None of those tells you why it matters, how much it matters, or who cares most.
By running everything through the formula, you force clarity:
Metric → What measurable outcome depends on this?
Requirement → What feature makes it possible?
Weight → How important is it relative to everything else?
Driver → What human emotion or reputation is at stake?
Now you don’t just have a list of features — you have a playbook to win the deal.
Using the Formula in Discovery Calls
So, how do you actually apply this?
Start broad: Ask about goals and business outcomes. Don’t let the conversation live in features too early.
“What impact would solving this have on the business?”
Anchor the metric: Pin them down to numbers.
“You mentioned efficiency. How many hours per week are we talking about?”
Identify enablers: Dig into the capabilities that make that impact possible.
“What’s required for that to work in your environment?”
Rank it: Get them to prioritize.
“If you had to rank these in terms of what would drive your decision, how would you score them?”
Uncover the human layer: This usually doesn’t come from direct questions but from listening, tone, and context.
“What’s driving urgency on your side?”
“How will success be measured internally?”
Do this, and by the end of discovery you’ll have a matrix, not a mushy list.
Turning Criteria Into a Scorecard
One of the simplest ways to operationalize this is to build a Decision Criteria Scorecard. Each row has:
Business Impact Metric
Functional Requirement
Priority Weight (1–5)
Emotional Driver
Notes
As the deal evolves, you fill it out. When you review the opportunity in pipeline meetings, you can literally score your position against the competition.
This scorecard does two things:
Keeps you honest, no hallucinating about what the buyer cares about.
Gives you a clear map for deal strategy, where to double down, where to differentiate, and where to neutralize.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
Accepting vague answers.If the buyer says, “Ease of use,” your job is to peel the onion. What does “ease” mean? Faster onboarding? Fewer support tickets? Higher adoption rates? Quantify it.
Ignoring weighting.Not every requirement is equal. If you treat them as equal, you’ll waste time on nice-to-haves.
Forgetting the emotional driver.Deals are lost because a stakeholder felt a vendor didn’t understand their personal stakes, even if the business case was airtight.
Not writing it down.If it isn’t documented and visible to your team, it gets forgotten. Scorecards prevent that.
Why This Matters Beyond the Deal
Here’s the sneaky upside: when you discipline yourself to map Decision Criteria this way, you become not just a vendor, but a strategist. Buyers start to see you as the person who helped them clarify their own priorities. That kind of influence creates champions, referrals, and future pipeline.
But the impact doesn’t stop at sales. A well-documented Decision Criteria matrix becomes a blueprint for the rest of the company. Implementation knows exactly what to prioritize during onboarding. Account Management has a clear map of what matters most for renewals and expansion. Marketing gains sharper insight into messaging that resonates in the field. And Product gets a direct feed of validated customer requirements instead of anecdotal wish lists.
You also equip leadership with better forecast data. If every deal in your CRM had a ranked Decision Criteria matrix attached, forecast accuracy would shoot up. No more sandbagging, no more false confidence — just clarity that cascades across the entire revenue engine.
⬇️ Download The Decision Criteria Scorecard Template ⬇️
To help you implement this formula, I’ve created a Decision Criteria Scorecard Template. It’s a simple, print-ready tool your team can use to capture metrics, requirements, weighting, and emotional drivers in discovery calls.
Wrapping Up
Decision Criteria isn’t about memorizing what the buyer says. It’s about engineering a formula that captures the measurable, the functional, the weighted, and the emotional — every time.
So here’s your takeaway:
Decision Criteria = (Business Impact Metric + Functional Requirement) × Priority Weight + Emotional Driver
Run every deal through this lens. Use it in discovery, document it in scorecards, and review it in pipeline meetings. Do that, and you’ll stop guessing at how buyers decide — you’ll start shaping those decisions yourself.
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