Evaluation-Criteria Drift
GTM ConceptWhen the axis a market grades vendors on decouples from the outcome buyers actually care about — the rubric keeps measuring what has stopped predicting value.
What it means for GTM
Every market settles on a grading axis — the dimension buyers, analysts, and vendors agree is the proxy for value. Evaluation-criteria drift is the slow event where that axis stops tracking the outcome it once stood for, while the market keeps grading on it out of habit. The rubric is now measuring a proxy that has quietly come unmoored from the thing it proxied.
The buyer-side mirror of positioning drift: positioning drift is what a vendor does to its own story; evaluation-criteria drift is what happens to the buyer’s rubric when the market moves under it. A buyer can be grading diligently against a criterion that no longer separates good from bad.