SALES JUDGMENT CHALLENGE 002
THE SEVEN
SIGNALS
Your AI sales platform rates the opportunity as one of your strongest. Seven positive buying signals point the same direction.
What would you do?
THE SITUATION
Seven signals, no timeline.
You've been working a significant opportunity for two months.
Your AI sales platform rates it as one of your strongest opportunities. The customer has opened your proposal several times. Three stakeholders attended the product demonstration. They've asked detailed implementation questions, completed a security review, discussed possible start dates, and yesterday asked you to revise the pricing.
Seven positive buying signals. But you still don't know what the customer has committed to doing internally to reach a decision.
You have several other opportunities competing for your attention this week.
MAKE THE CALL
What do you do?
Choose before you continue.
WATCH THE CHALLENGE
Now test your decision.
Hold on to your choice. The challenge isn't whether the AI's assessment is wrong. It's whether seven positive signals actually mean what you're treating them as meaning.
THE JUDGMENT PROBLEM
Positive evidence doesn't tell you what it's evidence of.
The AI assessment may be completely reasonable. Every one of those seven signals can be genuinely positive.
But here's the judgment problem: positive evidence doesn't automatically tell you what that evidence means for the decision you're making. A proposal being opened several times tells you something. A completed security review tells you something. But those signals don't necessarily tell you the same thing.
Seven positive signals don't automatically become seven pieces of evidence that the customer is moving toward a decision.
When the wrong signals consistently receive too much weight, a pipeline can look stronger than the customer movement underneath it actually is.
THE EVIDENCE VOTE
Evidence doesn't work like a vote.
The number of signals matters. But so does what each signal is actually evidence of.
AI can detect and combine signals across an opportunity. Your judgment determines how much weight those signals deserve for the decision in front of you — not how many of them happen to be positive.
THE JUDGMENT DIFFERENCE
Counting is not the same as weighing.
How many positive signals do I have?
Which of these signals is actually evidence that the decision is advancing?
The signals can all be real. The count can be accurate. Whether they add up to genuine progress is still a separate question.
BETTER QUESTIONS
Before you increase your confidence, ask:
What are these buying signals actually evidence of?
Which signals deserve the most weight for the decision I'm making, and why?
What evidence, if it changed, would most change my decision about this opportunity?
You don't need to reweight every signal equally. Start with the ones that would most change how you prioritize your time if they turned out to mean less than you assumed.
SO, WHAT WOULD I DO?
Reassess what the signals actually tell you.
Not because the AI assessment is wrong. And not because the seven positive signals don't matter. They do.
But I wouldn't give them equal weight simply because they're all positive. I'd ask which signals are most relevant to the decision I actually need to make: does this opportunity deserve more of my limited selling time right now?
THE SALES JUDGMENT TAKEAWAY
Count the signals.
Weight them against the decision you're actually making.
Decide what the evidence justifies.
Counting evidence tells you how much you have.
Weighing it tells you what it's worth.
BRING THE CHALLENGE TO YOUR TEAM
Make judgment visible.
Judgment Challenges can be explored with your team through a private 90-minute Judgment Lab, turning the scenario into a practical conversation about evidence, weight and priority.