Sales teams are taught to find the economic buyer, the person who controls the budget, and to reach them early. That advice is sound as far as it goes. The problem is what it leaves out. In most complex purchases other people can stop a deal, and they rarely announce themselves until late.

We find it more useful to think in terms of three judges.

  • The technical judge ultimately approves or denies the use of your solution within their organisation.
  • The operational judge approves the way of working and the processes that surround it.
  • The financial judge approves the spend and the business case.

Sometimes one person holds two of these roles. Often each judge leans on an adviser: a systems architect, a CRM manager, a lawyer. The task is to name all three and to confirm that each is the person who really gives the verdict, rather than the most senior person you happen to know.

Ask, don't guess

Once the judges are known, the temptation is to decide on their behalf what will impress them and build a demo around it. We prefer to ask. Each judge is interviewed with the same short set of questions:

  1. What decision are you being asked to make here?
  2. What evidence would you need to see to decide?
  3. How good does it need to be? What is the pass mark?
  4. In what format do you want it presented?
  5. What has stopped similar decisions in the past?
  6. Who else will you consult before you give a verdict?
  7. When do you need it, and how will you tell us the outcome?

The answers are then played back in writing, in the judge's own words:

“So if we show you [evidence] to [standard] by [date], you'll be able to give a verdict?”

Why this works

Organisations buying something new to them often have no clear process for the decision. Asking each judge to set their own bar creates one, with dates attached. It also changes the seller's job. Instead of persuading, the seller designs the smallest piece of work that will produce exactly the evidence each judge asked for, then reports against it plainly, gaps included.

The bars tend to be more specific than sellers expect, and more achievable. In our worked example the technical judge asked for a two-week sandbox test signed off by her architect. The operational judge wanted a two-week live test against a holdout, with a 3-point uplift and 90% of orders attributed. The financial judge wanted a 24-month business case in Finance's own template, with all management and procurement costs included. None of them asked for a better demo.

The financial judge's bar also brings procurement into view early. A finance director who wants every procurement cost in the business case is telling you, months ahead, what the paper process will involve.

A note on MEDDPICC

None of this replaces MEDDPICC. The economic buyer still matters, but technical and operational judges can veto around them, so we secure documented support from all three. MEDDPICC is the checklist; Evidence Based Sales gives each item on it something the buyer has confirmed.