You spent four hours on a proposal. You tailored every section. You followed up twice. Then they went with someone you never heard of, for reasons nobody explained. The issue was not your proposal. The issue was that you built it without understanding how they actually decide.
Why Buyers Have Two Processes
Every buying organization has an official process, the one they describe in the brief, and an actual process, the one that determines who wins. The official process is rational: scope review, proposal comparison, price check, reference call. The actual process is social: whose champion had credibility, which proposal felt safest, who showed up with the right language for the internal politics.
Decoding the vendor selection process means understanding both. Trish Bertuzzi, in The Sales Development Playbook, calls this “mapping the buying journey”, identifying not just the steps but the stakeholders and the informal rules that govern each step.
The five questions below map both layers in under 10 minutes.
The Five Decode Questions
Question 1: “Who else is involved in this decision besides you?” This surfaces the full stakeholder map. The person you are talking to is rarely the only decision-maker, and often not the most powerful one. You want to know if there is a CFO who will see the final number, a legal team that must approve the contract, or a technical lead who will flag concerns. Each one is a potential champion or blocker.
Question 2: “Walk me through how the last vendor in this role got selected.” This is the most revealing question in the framework. Historical behavior is a better predictor of future behavior than stated intentions. The answer tells you who had informal veto power, whether price or fit won, and how long the process actually took.
Question 3: “What criteria will you use to compare proposals?” Ask for the top 2 to 3 factors. If they cannot answer, the criteria are undefined, which means the decision will be made on feel, and relationships matter more than proposal quality. That changes your strategy entirely.
Question 4: “What is your target timeline to make a decision?” The answer tells you how much urgency is real versus stated. A 2-week timeline with a 6-month project is either a fire drill or a sign that someone is already the preferred vendor. Probe: “Has that timeline been approved internally?”
Question 5: “Is there a scoring rubric or a standard evaluation framework you use?” This is a bold question, and the response is almost always informative. Some organizations genuinely have formal scoring. More often, the question forces the buyer to articulate what they actually care about, even if they have never written it down.
Every question you ask about their process is also a signal that you are the kind of consultant who thinks systematically, not just the kind who sends the cheapest proposal.
Building the Decision Map
After your discovery call, create a one-page decision map before writing the proposal. Include: stakeholders and their roles, stated criteria and your read of actual criteria, decision timeline, budget range if surfaced, and what happened last time.
This takes 20 minutes and changes how you write the proposal. You lead with the criteria that actually matter, address the concerns of the most powerful stakeholder, and structure the timeline section around their decision window.
The Scoring Rubric Ask
If a buyer mentions that they use a formal scoring rubric, ask to see it. Many buyers are surprised that someone asked, and most will share it, because it makes their job easier too. A rubric tells you the exact weighting between price, experience, approach, and fit. You can reverse-engineer a near-perfect score by calibrating your proposal sections to the criteria weights.
If they do not share it, ask: “No problem, can you tell me roughly how much weight you give to price versus fit versus methodology?” Even informal weighting guides where you invest proposal effort.
Red Flags in the Decode
Three responses signal a process that is not worth pursuing:
Refusal to identify other stakeholders. “It’s just me” is almost never true in a B2B context. Either the contact is not actually empowered, or they are protecting a preferred outcome. Neither is good for you.
Vague criteria plus tight timeline. No clear criteria and a 10-day decision window usually means the decision is already made. You are providing competitive cover.
“We are just collecting information right now.” A buyer at true information-gathering stage has no timeline and no criteria. That is not a selling situation, it is a research request. Offer a 30-minute call instead of a full proposal.
Influence Points Inside the Process
Once you have mapped the process, identify 2 to 3 influence points: moments where your input can shift the decision. These might be a stakeholder meeting you could request, a technical evaluation where your methodology is distinctive, or a reference call where your strongest case study is relevant.
Most freelancers propose once and wait. Consultants who decode the process find legitimate reasons to re-engage at each influence point, providing value at every stage rather than disappearing after the first submission.
