The Biggest Internal Confidence Eroder - "The Overrule"

Last week, I proposed a formula for measuring decision confidence with the idea being to provide some way for customers and the vendors selling to them to assess they level of confidence in a decision. Our research shows that more confident customers buy faster with less regret.

A spirited dialogue ensued and a number of folks talked about the issue of Confidence Eroders having a bigger impact than Confidence Builders. We also talked about the idea that confidence is not just based on your confidence in a product or service, but also the confidence of the buying team in how they are approaching the decision.

That sent me back to look at some of our buying research. We regularly see issues with buying team dynamics, particularly teams that have decision makers that occasionally participate. (We've all experienced the occasional decision maker situation).

One of the things we ask is for respondents to assess their level of agreement with the statement "Occasional decision makers, NOT part of the active buying team, frequently overruled our recommendations" on a 7 point scale. In two studies, combined, only 31% of our respondents disagreed with that statement at any level. 13% were neutral. 56% agreed (with the dominant two scores being 5 or 6).

That tells me we have an issue. Imagine the amount of work and effort that is required to go through a buying process: from agreeing on the problem to solve to identifying options, evaluating them, deciding, and then negotiating and finalizing the deal. It's a lot.

Occasional decision makers should be evaluating the effectiveness of the decision process. That is their job. But "frequently overruling" is a warning sign. Either the Decision Maker has preferences or "other factors" that are driving the decision---that they have not told the team, or the team is doing a poor job.

In either case, confidence and commitment is likely to plummet. And it does. When we look at the percentage of high quality deals based on the buckets of respondents to this question, we see a clear pattern:

Look at how the percentage plummets as the feeling of frequent overruled recommendations increases. Beyond meeting the criteria, those respondents who were frequently overruled generally took many more months to finalize a purchase (the rough range looks like 7 to 12 months or more).

How can we deal with this? I'd suggest 2 paths:

1. Buying teams needs training on how to conduct a more effective and complete buying process. I've blogged about many of the issues repeatedly, but the teams need to learn the fundamentals and need help from the vendors they are considered in completing buying jobs effectively.
2. Occasional decision makers need to be more transparent in terms of other factors influencing decisions or be clearer on what they are looking for in recommendations.

The overrule done poorly is a confidence eroder. Done well, it could become a path to rebuilding confidence. Today, that is not happening enough and we need to change. That will take work on all sides

This newsletter does not follow Gartner's standard editorial review. All comments or opinions expressed here are mine and do not represent the views of Gartner, Inc. or its management.