I would like to introduce a decision-making framework called the 4Qs. The 4Qs is a decision-making framework designed to help founders and sales teams 🏆 scale a business.

The 4Qs are short for Four Quadrants. The decision-making framework encourages users to ‘play’ 🕹 or ‘fit one quadrant with another. Although all four quadrants are distinct, each quadrant is interdependent. A decision made in one quadrant will present decisions to be made in one or more other quadrants.

Quadrant 1 addresses whom we serve. The remaining three Quadrants deal with what we are serving the customer, what we share in common with the customer, and how we serve the customer.

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Deciding which profile to serve is necessary for striking a Quadrant 1-2 fit. When an organization strikes a Quadrant 1-2 fit, it creates value ✨ for customers and makes revenue for the business. The quicker your organization strikes a Quadrant 1-2 fit, the faster they reach predictable revenue.

The 4Qs decision-making framework can be used to make other types of decisions such as a

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Unlike small businesses, enterprise organizations are far less likely to exhibit similarities between one another. A common complaint 😓  from business owners who decide to serve enterprise, is they end up creating a different version of their business to serve each enterprise customer. 

Despite enterprise organizations sharing a similar sector like logistics, because their businesses are so large with many kinds of legacy systems, each is its own customer profile.

Small business owners are often immature, never having experienced a product category before. So they may have few objections because they have no experience buying your product before. For enterprise decision-makers, this may be the fourth or fifth time they have bought this type of product.

They often feel like they know more 📚 about the product category and may request vast customization not available. Rather than purchase what you have in the warehouse, their decision-makers may be more inclined to have to build something from scratch.

Small business owners do not have time to interrogate your business. Many of them will refuse to meet in-person because they are busy juggling many roles and cannot afford the travel time. Small business owners will hand you their trust ❤️ quicker, allowing you to get on with serving them.

Enterprise decision-makers have many boxes to tick before they will grant you their trust. Each decision-maker will want to ✅  test and measure your organization. They are more likely to request RFPs, proposals, cost schedules, and meetings at their offices.

It is important to understand that small businesses and enterprises ⛔  don’t buy. It is the small business owners and enterprise decision-makers who buy. In an enterprise organization, there could be multiple stakeholders involved in a buying decision. Influencers, users, and buyers to name a few.

In a small business, nine times out of ten, the decision rests solely 👏  with a managing director or owner.

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Does your organization provide a must-have or a nice-to-have product? Organizations that are valuable are harder to substitute later ✂️  for a competitor. To become a must-have product for an enterprise organization is difficult because enterprise businesses have many departments. To be a must-have, you will need to improve not one but many departments.

Creating value for a small business owner is easier and requires less capital raising because their businesses are flatter.

Your organization cannot succeed if you serve customers who give you open and honest feedback. When an enterprise decision-maker tells you ‘we will get back to you’, 📣  what they really mean is, ‘I’ll never tell you what I really think’. Your organization is often a pawn in a political and power struggle. Small business owners only have their time to lose by giving you feedback.

Decision-makers take on very different behaviors when they are personally paying for a product or service from their own money. Even though it is a business cost, your fees eat 👎  into their profit, which affects how much money they can take home that week.

That’s why small business owners are likely to be price-sensitive compared to enterprise decision-makers.

Free trials and discounts are likely to appeal to this group but are less likely to appeal to enterprise decision-makers. In fact, the internal costs 🔔  for an enterprise organization to switch to your product may be higher than the price you are asking them to pay, meaning price is not part of their decision-making.

I have personally witnessed small-business owners expire in less than two hours. They begin researching a product at 7pm once they close trading, and by 9pm, they have made up their minds. A similar product from the same product category could take an enterprise decision-maker 🧨  90 days or longer before they expire.

Even though it can be more difficult to serve customers who 💥  expire quickly, serving this customer means less chance of revenue lag. Revenue lag is the distance between when you predict to get the cash into the bank account and the actual date the cash arrives.

Knowing the buying trigger 🔫  makes predicting revenue easier. In other words, it’s like having the money already in the bank. You don’t need to concern yourself with drip campaigns and hit and miss telephone calls. All you have to do is stand at the intersection where the decision will take place, and you have good odds of closing the sale.

Under normal circumstances, it is easier to discover what triggers a 😇  small business owner to make a buying decision over an enterprise decision-maker. Enterprise decision-makers are less transparent.

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> 4Qs EXPLAINER

> 4Qs PLAYBOOK

> AGILE AND 4Qs MASHUP PODCAST

> 4Qs INSIGHT VIDEOS