In this instructional video, Jermaine Edwards outlines a four‑step decision‑making framework that sales and customer‑facing professionals can use to move prospects from indecision to a committed purchase. He explains each of the four buying decisions a customer must make—owning the problem, urgency, commitment, and investment—provides concrete probing questions for each stage, and emphasizes the need to assess these factors systematically before advancing a sales conversation. Edwards also offers a downloadable PDF with the question set and urges viewers to apply the framework immediately to increase confidence and success in customer conversations.
Chapters
Hey, it's Jermaine Edwards, your customer growth guide. We're going to speak about why your customers aren't making decisions. Welcome to the channel, and if you're new, welcome. If you're old, welcome back to the fold. We're going to be speaking about why your customers aren't making the decisions that you want consistently and repeatedly. And there are 4 buying decisions that every single person needs to make. Before they say yes wholeheartedly. So you need to know what those things are so you can make clear decisions around what to do next with the customer. So let me walk through these 4 buying decisions with you. Number 1, do they want to own the problem? So basically, how important is this problem to them? Now, different levels of problems that have different levels of impact that might be much more visible to some people and sometimes invisible to them. So it's the skill of the person asking questions, i.e., you, to uncover how important those specific problems are to be solved. Your level 1 problems, which is just about the individual, level 2, which is about maybe the individual and the department, and level 3, which is much more broad and much more deep or maybe organizational that you could solve with your product or service. Choose to decide from those particular levels, how important are these for the this person to solve? What's the impact to them directly? Now, once you've understood that, you want to go to the second decision, which is how urgent is this? Meaning, hey, if this wasn't solved very, very quickly for them, or in a reasonable time, what would be the consequence of this? Not just the impact, but the consequence of not solving that particular problem. You can ask some questions around that. Mr. Customer, if we didn't solve this in 6 to 8 months, what do you think would be the consequence? What would be the impact of that if this solved? These are questions that you can ask to uncover how urgent that particular problem is to the customer. And if you know what that is, you can use it then to move them into the third decision, which is around commitment. How committed are they to getting it done, doing the work? It's very evident in our own lives. We know our health is important. We know it might even be urgent for us, but are we willing to do the work? Sometimes no, of course not. So the question for us is, are we aware on how committed our customer is to doing the work, to putting in the effort? There's some questions that we can ask to do that, such as, Mr. Customer, have we put aside the resource and the time to actually get the results that we want on this project or for this particular problem or for this specific result? Do we put aside the resources, the time? Do we know, are you aware of the effort that's needed to do this and are you committed to do that? 'Cause we wanna make sure that we partner together well and that we remove any of the risks that might be in the way. Those are questions, those are conversations that you could be having, questions you should be asking with the customer to really understand the commitment level of those people that will be involved. That's the third decision. The fourth and most important decision perhaps along the journey is the investment piece. Are they willing to put in the investment needed to actually solve the problem? A reasonable investment that makes sure that both of you are not just profitable but actually getting the return on investment that you want from solving the problem or from the result itself. So you need to decide with the customer, hey, what is the most appropriate resource here, and are they willing to put in the investment to get that result accomplished, to get it done, to solve that problem? If you can understand those 4 areas, moving them through this decision-making process of owning the problem, of urgency, of looking at the commitment, of looking if they're, they're willing willing to do what it is to invest and get the result, you'll be much more confident, much more assured that when you have that conversation, at the end of that conversation, that the customer will say yes and have everything in place needed to take action when action is needed. So make sure you have a process for asking those questions through the process And then you can be much more assured, much more confident of making those decisions that matter. And I've got a PDF to help you ask those questions in the link below. But I want you to take action now and ensure that you can get results in every customer conversation. And I'll see you in the next video.
