Scorecard · No. 07 / 17
How should you test whether the prompt set represents buying decisions?
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Start with the buyer’s decision, then select questions—not the other way around. Require every tracked prompt to have a purpose, provenance and reporting segment.
Use this proposed prompt register:
| Field | What the supplier should record |
|---|---|
| Exact wording and version | Preserve the actual text, not just a topic label |
| Buying situation | Category discovery, requirements, comparison, shortlist or branded verification |
| Customer segment | Relevant company size, role, industry and use case |
| Provenance | Customer interview, anonymised sales question, support issue, observed dataset or analyst inference |
| Priority | Buyer-assigned commercial importance, clearly distinguished from measured demand |
| Brand prompting | No brand supplied, buyer brand supplied or competitor supplied |
| Expected answer type | Recommendation opportunity, factual explanation or another task |
| Reporting group | Which results may legitimately be aggregated |
Illustrative B2B software questions—not observed customer queries:
- Discovery: “Which customer-support platforms should a US software company evaluate?”
- Requirements: “Which support platforms offer an audit trail and role-based permissions?”
- Integration: “What support software should we shortlist if we already use our CRM as the customer system of record?”
- Comparison: “How should we compare Vendor A and Vendor B for a small support operations team?”
- Branded verification: “Does Vendor A support the integration we need?”
Do not pool the final two examples with unaided discovery. The brand has already been introduced into the task.
Ask the supplier to show which prompts would change a budget or implementation decision. Remove near-duplicates that add cost without a distinct test purpose. Retain a frozen core panel for comparison, with exploratory prompts reported separately.
AMEC’s principles support linking query libraries to stakeholder needs and documenting markets, languages and collection conditions. They do not establish that an analyst-generated list represents all US buyers. (amecorg.com)
Sources cited on this page
- amecorg.com amecorg.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/26-05-15-AMEC-GEO-Principles.pdf