Evaluation criteria are the specific requirements a prospect's buying team uses to judge competing options — features, price, security, implementation speed, references. They are the scorecard the decision actually runs on. If you ask for the criteria early, you can map your solution directly onto them and help your champion sell internally. If you never ask, you will lose on a checklist you never saw.
In plain English
Every serious purchase gets compared against a list, formal or not. Your job is to discover that list and shape your demo and proposal around the exact boxes they care about. "What will you use to compare us with the other options?" is a question that wins deals.
Why it matters to you
Criteria tell you where you are strong and where you need to qualify honestly. When your product genuinely misses a must-have, better to find out now than at the end. Reps who map criteria run cleaner vendor evaluations and lose fewer deals on surprises.
Ask for the scorecard in the first discovery call, and update it as the committee changes, so your message never drifts from what the decision actually rewards. The criteria you do not know are the ones that can blindside you.