In my last blog I talked about the power of decisioning superstructures. In this blog I wanted to provide a concrete example of putting decision superstructures in action. In the mid 90’s, I ran marketing at a company that built world class field computing products. We turned the market upside down by building the world’s first completely rugged portable computer. To do it, we had to make a myriad of trade off decisions in the design. How long should the batteries last? How big should the hard drive be? Should we back light the display or make it reflective? And many, many more design decisions.

We were able to discuss, test and decide on each design trade off in real time using logical reasoning and interactive customer feedback. We documented each decision as to what was decided, what the alternatives were, and why the decision was made the way it was.

The end result was a sales training manual that covered all the important decisions. It actually answered all the typical buyer questions in detail including explanations that provided solid rational answers for the design elements. It provided the sales people with good talking points for the entire product. As important it created answers for questions being asked by the sales force.

Without the document the sales force would have been asking very logical questions about what would have appeared to have been, “you guys must have been smoking something” kinds of design elements. In most situations, we would have been telling the sales force that we couldn’t remember exactly why the decisions were made but we do remember they were made for a good reason. Instead we were able to give them hard answers that convinced them the design was well thought out. Moreover, it gave them the confidence in the product to truly believe it was the best. The product was extremely successful, the sales folks loved selling it, and it was in use by some of the biggest field service organizations in the world. You can’t get better than that!