MKT.4:4.3.1 - Choose how to work on the criteria
Recover the result each criterion protects, who judges it, its importance and the grounds for comparing the options. Keep three judgements separate: importance to the customer, this offering’s fit and another option’s fit. Being better than a competitor does not establish adequacy. Include keeping the current arrangement and another way of doing the work among the alternatives.
Enter through the customer’s actual question. An experienced buyer may already have criteria and reasonably want to discuss them before describing needs. Examine how those criteria serve the work; do not insist on restarting a discovery script. A screening condition may exclude an offer from one small purchase or from all future consideration. If the exclusion is justified and no worthwhile attainable change is available, accept it. When a consequential exclusion rests on a mistaken comparison or a revisable preference, ask the responsible buyer whether its basis can be examined. A seller’s interest supplies no permission to bypass a binding condition.
Choose the work from what is missing:
| Situation | Useful move and its result |
|---|---|
| A useful need has been established but is absent from the comparison. | Derive a criterion from that need: what would distinguish an adequate result, under which conditions, and how could the customer judge it? Confirm it with the affected people. |
| An important criterion is understood and an option meets it. | Make its warranted importance and that option’s fit inspectable. Carry the same meaning and evidence into the later decision; repetition of a product claim is insufficient. |
| A potentially consequential difference receives little attention. | Find out whether it was never considered or deliberately set aside. Examine the relevant consequence and evidence. Restore its importance only if that changes a justified comparison; retain the customer’s reason for setting it aside when that reason still holds. |
| An important criterion is not met by the present offering. | Establish whether a different comparison or provision can meet the receiving need. Use the alternatives below; retain another provider, deferral and refusal as possible answers. |
These are alternatives that can combine. They have no compulsory order. Start with a consequential question that is both answerable and worth answering. Promoting a seller’s strongest attribute has no value when it does not matter in the customer’s work.
For an important criterion the present offer does not meet, examine four different ways forward:
| Way forward | Construction | Limit that changes the answer |
|---|---|---|
| Change relative importance | Establish another actual consequence and let the customer compare its importance with the original one. For example, an available adequate service may matter more than an extra feature whose benefit would arrive too late. | The original consequence remains in the comparison. A preferred advantage cannot cancel a protected minimum. |
| Clarify or revise the criterion’s meaning | Recover the use behind the label. “Easy to use” might concern first setup, ordinary operation, correction or available support. Define the relevant distinction, make the evidence judgeable and return to its importance. | The new meaning needs the customer’s grounds and agreement where it changes the comparison. Relabelling an unmet condition as a strength does not meet it. |
| Compare an acceptable trade-off | Show which combinations are actually attainable and what each gives up. Compare the same consequences for the affected people; ask who can accept the sacrifice. | Do not invent a trade-off where another attainable option meets both needs. Incompatible protected conditions require changed provision or a stop. |
| Change how the result is supplied | Construct another configuration, supplier, sequence or support arrangement that could meet the need. For example, local stock with replenishment can change the relation between manufacturing lead time and availability. | Obtain the supplying practices’ answer about the whole arrangement, including resources, responsibilities and operating conditions, before presenting it as available. |
Often two moves are needed: clarifying “availability” can expose a provision problem; comparing a different configuration can reveal a permissible trade-off. Ask which move changes the next decision and carry its result into that decision. Stop when the available comparison is sufficient. Unresolved supply remains an explicit condition.
PSD.8 supplies alternative construction where needed; PSD.9 and PSD.11 develop a disputed criterion or consequential trade-off. Use their substantive result in this choice. The repertoire above selects the needed work; it does not qualify technical performance, create a measurement scale or confer authority to revise a requirement.