Transcript for The surprising truth about what closes deals: Insights from 2.5m sales conversations | Matt Dixon (author of The Challenger Sale and The JOLT Effect)

We collected two and a half million sales calls and studied them with a machine learning platform at scale.

In that indecision stems from their fewer failure, dialing up the phomo backfires 87% of the time. They're not afraid of missing out. They're afraid of messing up.

So the first thing is we've got a judge there level of indecision. The second thing is we've got to offer a recommendation. The third thing is we've got to get them to start trusting us and we call limit the exploration. In the T as we've got a dearest to deal, we've got to take some risk off the table.

Most sales people are trying to figure out what keeping the customer up at night. The challenger approach is about showing the customer what should be keeping them up at night.

It's great to be here. Thank you for the invitation.

Yeah, sure. So they would just start with that challenger because that chronologically came first. So we actually started that research study. And I think it was in late 2008, actually. And we published initial results to, at the time, I was working for a company called C.B., which was acquired by a gardener group in 2017. Research organization. And I was running the group that served heads of sales, business business heads of sales around the world. We had 5 or 600. clients around the world. And we launched that study in 08. We published the initial results for our clients in 09. We kept collecting some data. And then we published the book in 2011. The book was published off a data set of 6,000 salespeople. So we did an in-depth survey with 6,000 salespeople as well as collected performance data on those 6,000 sellers. This was a global cross-industry, different types of companies as well. Product companies, services companies, large, small, slow growth, fast growth, you name it. Over time, though, you know, that research has been ongoing. So we've collected data. I think to data on roughly a quarter million salespeople around the world that we continue to go back and not just validate the original findings, but look at how things are changing and do cuts of the data and how the data sets so big. So that was a survey based piece of research we did. The joke the fact, we started that research in 2020 actually. It was actually in March of 2020, which I think is a time that everybody remembers with probably mixed mixed emotions. Most of them bad. I think, though, you remember March was a time when people were getting into Tiger King and baking sourdough bread at B as much. A few months later that got really old, but in the beginning it was kind of you know, surprising and weird and you know, this whole pandemic thing. But we actually thought because we're huge nerds that this would be an interesting time to do a sales research project. We had always been fascinated by what Professor Neil Rackham did back in the 70s and 80s and spin selling and he and his research team sat in on 30 something thousand sales calls physically sat in on these meetings. and took notes there, the team of psychologists, to produce the research at what it's been selling. And so we always kind of aspire to get at the kind of you will at the cold face or where the rubber hits the road in sales, which is the sales conversation. When that sales person sitting across from the customer with problem with that is, it's really hard to get people to pay for that kind of research into that kind of undertaking. And then let alone getting invited into those meetings. As a lot of the really critical sales meetings took place of course in the Clyde's office until March of 2020 when that all changed and the entire sales process for every company on Earth went to Zoom and Teams and WebEx and other virtual platforms. And so we recruited several dozen companies across industry and around the world into a large global study. We collected two and a half million sales calls. and study them with a machine learning platform at scale. So that was a very different kind of research project. And you know, honestly, it's, it's fun just as a researcher to look back on Challenger and you know, the manual kind of survey based approach and the interviews and all this stuff to fast forward to like today being able to take advantage of large data sets and advanced technology to study, you know, millions of sales conversations is pretty cool.

Good summary. If you're busy, you said it more succulent. I've been doing this for a while now and you said it way more simply than I can. I think, you know, we just to back up for a little bit, I think the one of the data points I always start with when I present the research on the results fact is that are analysis showed that anywhere between 40 and 60% of the average sales person's qualified pipelines. These aren't just leads, you know, sometimes bad leads are thrown over to us by marketing. These are qualified opportunities. These are, you know, people we've met with customers, we've pursued, we've engaged there in the sales process. 40 to 60% of them will be ultimately marked as closed loss, no decision. That's actually, I think that numbers actually on the rise, especially in places like SaaS and in the broader tech sector over the past year. But that's a really painful thing, right? If you think about a salesperson that for 46% of your deals, you've got to spend a lot of time, energy, resources, a lot of your company's money, and their time and resources, pursuing these opportunities where you eventually just get ghosted. And you don't really know what happened just like the customer of the opportunity evaporated on you. They go to you, they want radio silent. You don't really know what happened there. And so we decided to take this two and a half million sales call data set, which you could have used to answer lots of different questions, but we were really fascinated by this question. Maybe two, two questions. One is why do customers make no decision? Like, because you understand it's frustrating as a salesperson, but it's also puzzling for customers to do that. They go through the entire process to evaluate a solution. And many of those customers say, yeah, I want to buy, and then they go to the salesperson. And it's just, it's so puzzling. Like, why would they waste their own time evaluating a solution than doing nothing? Then the more important questions probably, what are the very best salespeople do differently? What if they figured out to avoid that outcome?

So let me maybe take us a step back. There was a reason we actually even asked that question that you just asked and the reason was this you know when we looked at sales calls if you think of the typical sales process or buying journey it kind of moves through three phases phase number one is the customer in their status quo. It's what they do today, right? They use your competitors' product, maybe they do use a homegrown solution, maybe they never saw a need for a solution like yours, but that's our current state. Step two is we got to get them to agree that the current state is no longer acceptable. and they've got to move forward in a new and different way. That we call that agreement on a vision. We've got to get their intent to move forward into change. In this step number three, you've got to get them to buy something, right? So that's the action step where they execute the docu-sign, they sign on the line that is dotted and they send the contract back. It's simple through that process and what we found in our analysis is whether the big places where a lot of deals fall out of that process is between intent and action. So it's after the point where the customer says, yeah, I let me, this sounds great. I'm sold. Let's talk. But before the point where that actually deal gets sold, a lot of deals kind of go sideways in that moment. And the way this comes across in sales calls is that customer start, if you will re-litigating concerns that they had asked and you thought you would address much earlier. what what might go wrong and is this really the right answer for us and they and these are things that are puzzling to salespeople because it's like it feels like this thing is slipping through my fingers like right before my eyes I thought we had this close I thought you said you want to move forward and now you're asking questions that we address three months ago what's going on And so what salespeople tend to do because they've grown up in a world where they've been told the only reason the customer hesitates is because you haven't put to bed their status quo bias. So we all know, we all human beings, not just customers, but perhaps especially customers are guilty of status quo by the speeding. We are prone to laziness in doing nothing because it's easier to inertia, right? It's easier to just keep doing more of the same than to change behavior. Change is really hard. In salespeople would talk that the status quo is their biggest competitor. And if the customers start to get cold seat, it's because they still think either what they're doing today is good enough. What you are proposing is not a very compelling enough reason to change. Or maybe it's just not a top priority for them or their organization. It's got to be one of those reasons. So what salespeople have an arm to do is go out and dial up the phone though, right? And kind of make the customer sweat a little bit. So the first thing they do is they say, You know, when he remember the demos and the proof of concept trial, how excited you were and like those benefits like you got to pay for it. Like it's that you're not going to get all those great benefits for your organization unless you saw in the agreement. If that doesn't work, I'll try to kind of scare you into action by dialing up the fear uncertainty and doubts and letting you know. You told me about these problems in your business. You guys are really struggling right now. By the way, that mentioned we're working with all of your competitors and they're seeing tremendous benefits from our product and you're going to be left in the dust. Those problems you brought up with me, they're not going to solve themselves. So I'm trying to create that burning platform a little bit for the customer and get them to realize the cost of their inaction. There is a cost of doing nothing. If those two things don't work, what most sales people go to is the 10% discount that's only get this quarter right so it's it's like the price driven urgency like maybe this will be the thing you need to just get you over the finish line What we were so surprised by, which led us to the question you asked, Lenny was that 87% of the time, when sales people do that dial up the phomo in those moments, especially when the customer says that they're ready to move forward, but they start to back pedal and waffle and waver and become hesitant, dialing up the phomo backfires, 87% of the time. In other words, it increases the odds that deal will be lost in no decision. If it weren't for that finding, we never would have even bothered asking the question about, like, why do people end up, why do we lose the opposite decision, why do customers make an decision? But this was really puzzling because if flew in the face of everything we talked about, including, you know, in Challenger to be totally candid, we talk about how Challengers are exceptional at breaking the customer status quo bias by showing them the pain of same is worse than the pain of change. And again, overcoming that inertia. And that not just individuals but organizations suffer from. Challenges really good at that. And so here we see that the tactics that you might associate with challenging actually kind of backfire, which was as the author of the Challenges so a little bit troubling to me, but we'll come back to that. But I think what we realized was we got it right, but we got it kind of half right. And so we went back into the data and we asked a slightly different question, which is why are deals loss in no decision? What drives that? And we found that actually there is a lot of deals that are lost because the customer does actually prefer their status quo. So that is status quo bias. Like they believe what they're in say is good enough, which you're talking about. It's not a compelling enough reason to change or this is not a top priority. These are all status quo preference reasons. But it turns out those are only 44% of the no decision losses. 56% of no decision losses are customers who are who want to buy, but can't buy because they're stuck in this no man's land of indecision. In that indecision, itself stems from their fear of failure, which you put your finger on earlier, And this is the part I found so fascinating. So we dug into the site research. We read probably 30 years of cognitive psychology, journal articles, many of them from Dutch universities, which I find very interesting. But apparently very big into this stuff. You know, a lot of the economists of Versky work around loss of version and prospect theory, et cetera. And one of the big findings we came across is that there's actually a more powerful human bias, even more powerful than status quo bias, that rears its ugly head and causes indecision. And that is called the omission bias. The omission bias is if you get down to it is the fact that people don't want to be blamed for making decisions that lead to a loss. And in the human mind, there are two types of loss that we think about. We all like to avoid loss, but not all losses created equal. There are losses that happen when we do nothing. And then there are losses that happen because we did something. So we made a decision, we picked a vendor, we secured a contract and then something bad happened. And it turns out that in the human mind, people are okay with missing out. They are not okay with messing up and being blamed. And this is really powerful. It's even more powerful than status quo biases I said. And so the shorthand for salespeople is this. Diling up the FOMO can be very effective to overcome status quo bias, but knowing that every human being, including all of your customers, why to include in that definition of human beings, are definitely afraid of being personally blamed if things go wrong. The FOMO actually matters more than the FOMO. The FOMO is the fear of messing up or in the not safe for work version of your podcast, I'd say FOMO, but your listeners can figure out what the sense were on their own. But this is really powerful for customer versus salespeople, right to understand, Look, if you are trying to scare your customer into action, you're going to miss out on these benefits, you're going to miss out on solving these problems, you're just going to pay more later if you don't say yes now. What you're really doing is using scare tactics, but you're trying to scare somebody who's already afraid, the problem is they're not afraid of the thing you think they're afraid of. They're not afraid of missing out they're afraid of messing up. And so we've got to address that as salespeople. We've got to help instill the confidence in the customer that you're making a great decision. I've got your back. You're going to look like a hero, not like a fool. And that's really what the Jolt defect is about is about how the very best salespeople execute that. So it wasn't that we were wrong with Challenger. It's just the story was kind of incomplete. You got to break status quo by. So if you don't do that, You're never going to have an indecision problem. But even once you overcome the customers in difference in their status quo bias, you've got a second battle. You've got to fight, which you've got to instill the confidence and make them feel good about this. Frankly, leap of faith are about to take and their fear. You got to deal with the fear that if something goes wrong, they're worried that there will be blame for it.

We encountered a ton of examples. It's so interesting that you mentioned startups. And I think sometimes I was actually with a big enterprise software company. And I think when I present this research to some of their sales leaders. And one of the folks in the room said, I'm really glad we are who we are that we are the 800-pound gorilla, especially in a market like we're in right now. You know, it was the old adage, because it wasn't IBM, but the old adage is that nobody ever got fired for buying from IBM, right? This company is like the IBM of their space. They're the 800 pound gorilla. They've got the brand strength, the reputation, through the safe choice, right? And so this team felt kind of comfortable or comforted, I should say, by that fact, especially a tight environment where it's a battle for deals and for mine share and for wins out there in the market right now, especially in tech. And what I said is you've got to remember though that may be true and I would argue and I think you're right that first start up. Yeah, you've got to be 10 times better to get get that mine share. It may be even better than that to get somebody to take a leap of faith with you. And so there is inherent risk in going with the unproven player. But I caution these folks and I said now remember. What are the things that drive fear failure in the indecision? It turns out there are three big ones. The first one is, have I made the right choice? I know I want to work with this vendor, but did I configure the solution, the proposal the right way, the right contract length, the right implementation, the right use cases, the right integrations, all that professional services are DIY, all those big questions. The second thing that customers worry about in a few of their second fear of failure is that they're going to learn something after the contract design that's going to make the decision look like not such a great decision. I give you a really specific example about this. I spoke to a tech company not too long ago, maybe a month ago, and they landed their biggest deal of of their existence was the early stage company, seven figure deal, game changer for this organization, and they beat out some biggest established competitors. You know, they went out, they celebrated, it's just totally amazing. Big their first big enterprise win in their first seven figure deal. and their first victory against some of these incumbents. Unfortunately, about two weeks after they won this deal, the new Gardner Magic Quadrant on their stays came out, and they were shown to be kind of, eh, right? They weren't the leader, but they were sort of middle of the pack. and all of a sudden the client who signed the agreement are the CTO just got like crap rain from everybody saying did you see the gardener magic quadrant looks like the company we just plunked out seven figures with was kind of seen as so so by the gardener analyst have we talked to these guys and those guys are why are we going with the leaders and you know blah blah blah They ended up backing out of the contract because the CTO said, I can't, I'm spending every day talking to all the other key stakeholders trying to convince them that, yes, we did all of our due diligence. But I just, life is too short and we're probably going to end up going with one of the big players. We're sorry. And that's such a painful story, right? But that's the customers like they're going to keep doing research because they don't want to be surprised once a new piece of information comes light. So it's the second big fear failure driver or failure driver. The third one is that the customers worried they're just not going to see the ROI. They're not going to get the full benefits. You might project for them a 5x improvement in sales productivity. What if it comes in at 2 or 3x? In my names on the agreement and the CFO comes asking why we didn't get the benefits we thought. You know, today's environment that's not just egg on your face, you can get fired for that stuff. So, you know, this is, this is the client who's really looking for that vendor to have their back into assure them that they're going to see the benefits that are being projected and promised through the sale. So what I said to this big enterprise tech company was, look, You guys, yes, it's tough to be a startup right now. We're at least age companies. There's a lot of risk there. But who's offering more choices? Damn, where are you guys? You guys have a partner ecosystem. You have like 20 different cloud products. You bought like seven companies in the past three years. You have it a cornecopio of options, which adds to the buyer's anxiety that they haven't chosen the right thing. Second. Do you think there's more written about you guys or about them? There's what you could fill a football stadium with all the coverage on you guys. And, you know, there is everybody's got an opinion about you because you are the 800-pound girl and everybody's worked with you before. And they have opinions good and bad. And people want to leave no stone at all and then lastly, Turns out you guys are a lot more expensive because you're trying to move from selling simple products like these ankle fighters out there. They start up into selling big enterprise solutions. You guys are selling like not seven figure deals, eight figure deals, nine figure deals here customers. That increases the customers' anxiety that I really have to see return on this. You and many respects are getting whipsawed by these factors in a way that the startups are not because they're not, they don't have as many choices, right? They don't. There's not as much coverage about them. The investment is lower. And so there's a little bit less risk for the customers. So you're not, you guys aren't immune just because you're the big brand.

Yeah, I think she's, I think she's on point on that. I mean, it's, it's a, your customers are, yeah, they're really, really afraid of this not panning out. And it, it was so interesting. It salespeople can think of so many different occasions where the purchase buying your product just made all the sense in the world for the customer. It would make things so much better, which solves such big problems for them. They're so dissatisfied with their current approach. It's just a no-brainer, and the customer will look at that, and they will agree with you, and they still won't make a decision. Because of the WTFs, right?

That Jolt isn't an acronym, so it just so happened to work out that way. But I like it because it's memorable, but it also speaks to what's happening, right? Our customers stuck in their indecisive state. They want to buy from us, but they just can't, because they're worried about what might go wrong. You have a Jolt them. We got Jolt them into action. Beautiful. So how do we do it? So the first thing is we've got to judge their level of indecision. The second thing is we've got to offer a recommendation. The third thing is we've got to get them to stop doing endless research and start trusting us and limiting, we call limit the exploration. And the T is we've got to de-risk the deal, we've got to take some risk off the table. And we've got to establish that safety net for the customers. So they feel like we've got their back. So, then we talk about each of those. I'll start with the J because, you know, it's first. But I think the way I, while it's kind of linear, I wouldn't, I would encourage listeners don't think about this as a process where it's like I do step 1, 2, 3, 4, J, O, L, T. Think of it as it starts with the J and the J tells you what the next step is. Is it the T? Is it the L? Is it the L? Is it the L? Is it the L? Is it the L? And then we got the L of T, then we go back to the L because it comes up again. So, think of it as sort of the dividing rod. So, How do we figure out what's got the customer nervous? And this is a really, really, really tricky thing, because I've likened in decision to like the carbon monoxide poisoning of sales. It's everywhere, but it's odorless, it's tasteless, you can't, but you know, but you need a carbon dioxide detector, and that's what the J is. So how do we get fear of failure on the table? And the problem with this is that, and I think most your listeners will be familiar with this, Everybody, especially customers, suffers and senior executives, especially especially suffer from what's called the Dunning Kruger effect, which is they think they are better at things than they really are. And decisiveness is one of those things that buyers will think they will say they think they're decisive. In fact, if you surveyed your customers, not they recommend this and you add 100 of them, if they consider themselves to be decisive folks, like 99 of 100 will say, absolutely, yes, I'd make the tough calls, I manage from the gut, you know, I live on the edge as an executive, making those big calls. But the research sells a very different story. It turns out that 87% of buyers in our 2.5 million sales calls we studied either showed moderate or high levels of indecision. The folks who were not worried about fear or failure were 13%. So yeah, those people do exist. And by the way, if you find one of those people, you should sell them everything as soon as possible. They're making the decision quite literally on the dollars and cents and the ROI and whether it makes sense for their business. It's a rational decision for them. But for the rest, they're dealing with a lot of emotion and that emotion is all wrapped up with fear of failure. And what's so tough about this is that it's not just done in Kruger, like we think we're more decisive than we really are, even if your customer knows that they're in decisive or they're worried about failing or how their boss is going to perceive them if this purchase doesn't pan out, they don't like talking about it because it's embarrassing. You know, they don't want to talk about like, guy, I gotta tell you like this better payoff because it doesn't. I'm already on thin ice with my boss. She doesn't like me already. This is the gonna be the last straw, you know? Nobody's gonna say that stuff. And so, how do we get on the table? One of the things we don't think works particularly well are kind of classic open-ended questions. Like, Lenny, do you find when you go to the cheesecake factory, do you leave satisfied or hungry? Because you can't decide what to order. You're not great. But for us just with customers, you'll end the sale pretty quickly. Because again, your customers find that kind of offensive. They'd like to think of themselves as decisive people. And so we found a technique. This is actually not in the book. We found it after we wrote the book called Pings and Echoes that Hyperformers Use. So think of like the way a surface ship might detect a submarine and the water using sonar. They sent a ping out into the water and they're listening if you will using sonar for the reflection back. And the reflection tells them Is it a friendly submarine, enemy submarine? Is it just a whale? Is it heading towards us away from us? Hell, what speed are they about to torpedo us? All that good stuff. And we want to do the same thing in sales. So the way this works is that a salesperson will try to articulate, but in a non-not-to-out the customer, but to get confirmation or refutation, if you will, that what they've articulated is actually a concern for their buyer. So hypothetically, Let's imagine we're talking about a purchase, and we've had a lot of great conversations. I showed you a lot of demos. You guys liked everything we showed you partner options. We showed you different configurations. We did POC over here. We did a pilot over there. You guys were seeing it all up. But I'm kind of getting the sneaking feeling that you guys actually don't know what you want, and we've shown you a lot, and we've probably made that problem worse. And so what I might say to you is, you know, Lam, just curious, if we could calibrate your for just a moment, And there's a reason I'm asking this, which is a lot of the customers at this point in our process of working together, they get almost overwhelmed with all the options. And look, I probably made this worse. We're very proud of what we do. I want to show you the art, it's paint the art of the possible. But I also know if we're going to do business together, you've told me right away, budgets are limited. And you don't have, you can't have it all. So you've got to decide what's nice to have and what's neat to have. I'm just curious, are you and your team clear on what would be in and out of the proposal? And what's going to happen is one of two things. One, you might say, or a few things. You might say, you know what? No. We don't know. And we have liked everything shown us. But as you said, we can't have it all. So we'd be really curious to know what other companies like us start with. How do we get going? What are the things we can do without it? We can maybe add later on down the road. or you might get the customer says, no, no, no. We were just being polite. There's a lot of stuff you showed us, so we're not actually that interested in. It's cool, but it's just not for us. We are very clear of what we want. So let me share that with you now. However, what I'm really concerned about is once we get this kind of speced out and figured in price, I'm going to take it to the CFO, because I've got to get her approval on this. And I can't build our business case on the claim you guys make about improving sales productivity by 10% because she'll laugh me out of her office. And so help me get grounded in what's a believable outcome for us, right? So that I can sell it and I can be confident we're going to actually hit it. So it's again, it's not designed to embarrass the customer, it's designed to get this on the table so it can be recognized it dealt with and contextualized. You're not, you're totally normal. Everybody struggles with this. You know, there's a lot of stuff we throw in front of people and they, you know, it ends up doing some harm. They don't know what to pick. Let me be a service and value to you. And so that's the first thing that we point to and that's going to tell us, okay, is it a choice problem? They're overwhelmed. They don't want to choose like that example you just use. Is it that they're just doing endless research and they feel like they haven't really come down the learning curve yet around this purchase or is it? No, I don't. I don't actually know that we're going to get what we're paying for here and we'll we screw this stuff up every day that we can twice in Sunday and I don't think it's going to be a different and then I'm going to get blamed. So help me manage the downside risk, but it tells us kind of where to go next on that on that journey if that makes sense.

Yeah, and that's just a one example. That's if I hypothesize that you're really struggling with what to choose. Now, my hypothesis might be, you know what you want. You've done plenty of research, but you're really worried about the ROI, right? And you're just worried that like, you just aren't going to be able to accomplish that. So that ping might sound very different. It might be, you know, we've been having a discussion about like, you've been asking for multiple terms of the ROI calculation and changing parameters and really trying to make it bold proof. But a lot of customers struggle with that a little bit because that's a big thing. You're putting your name against that. So maybe we should have a conversation about whether that's a concern for you. Is there a believability gap? Is there an execution gap you're worried about on your side or on our side? Let's have a conversation about that. So I can set the proper expectations. So you feel really confident going to the CFO and lobbying for investment here. So that ping could go in, but it's based on what I think is holding you up. Got it.

Yeah, I think that's perfect language. At this point, most customers like you are thinking about this. Or they're kind of worried about that. Or they're getting a little anxious about this. Let's have a conversation about it.

Sure. Oh, yeah. So this was right with that example we talked about before. You know, options are options are really a double edge sword. It what we know from the research is that options are great, really on. So if you're meeting up the trade show and the customers swing by your booth or you're doing a first demo or first hit like Let a thousand flowers bloom. But if you want the customer to actually make a decision, you got to get the weed worker out and call it down to a manageable set of choices. And the science is very clear on this. That too many choices at some point will overwhelm the customer. At least a lot of bad outcomes it leads to the customer not making a decision at all because they don't want to make the wrong decision. I want to want to work with you. But you put so many options in front of us, like, I don't want to be blamed if I choose the wrong one. And it leads to things like post-dicision dysfunction, which is I thought I'd made the right decisions. But now I'm learning more. And people are asking hard questions. And maybe I need to go revisit this and, and hey, Lenny, we're going to, we have to scrap that agreement and start over because I don't think we can figure this right away. So we have to be, we have to, there's a time-and-a-place offer options, there's a time-and-a-place scenario choices up. The simple guidance here for salespeople is that you've got to shift your posture from asking the customer what they want and just diagnosing their needs to actually recommending to them what they should do. And sales people get a little bit anxious about this, I find, because they don't want to be seen as, like, I told you to do A, but you're like, I don't want to do that. I want to do B, and now I feel like we're at odds. And so they worry about that. And so sales people have grown up in this world that like, it's the customer's choice. The customers always write, let me just guide them, but they're the ones should make this decision. But sometimes the customer can't. And they don't know enough about these decisions. We know this stuff is we eat sleep and breathe every day as sales people. We work in this industry. They don't. And so we are in a much better position to be able to guide them toward like, you know what? You don't really need x, y, and z. You can leave that out of the proposal. Companies like you, they get started in this way. Let me put three options in front of you. I would go at the middle one because I really think it's going to be the best for you in the first year. And then we can expand from there. Here's an analogy. I all often tell people to think about the last time they went to a fancy restaurant and they looked at a menu with some expensive entrees and everything looked delicious, right? But they didn't know what to order. So you asked the wait person what they recommend. How helpful is it if that wait person says to you, well, what are you in the mood to eat tonight? Like it's no help at all, right? You're no closer to a decision. They basically just dump the problem back on your lap. But what great wait people do is they say, you know, if you want my opinion, I love this dish, and I probably say it's our most popular. We sell out of it every night. We've still got it, so you're in luck. It's a lot of food, those big portion. If you're in the mood for something lighter, there's a vegetarian option. It doesn't get as much play on yelp, but I love this one. It's absolutely delicious. It's one of our kind of dark horse favorites, if you will. But remember, everything we make here is delicious. So if you don't like those choices, you're not going to go wrong with any of them, but those are just my favorites. Now, what happens in that moment is what psychologists call the delegation effect, which is rather than the burden of a bad decision being solely on the shoulders of the decider, that burden is now shared. Now, think about it. If you order the dish, the wait person recommended, and you don't like it, whose fault is it? Well, technically it's your fault because you ordered it. But it's also kind of their fault because they've recommended it. It's so you feel like there's some safety in getting that recommendation, that endorsement. It's a really simple example, but it works in complex sales as well. Customers are looking for somebody to share in the risk in the burden of making it bad decision. And having that, you know, partner who's guiding them toward what they should care about, what they shouldn't care about, what they should consider and what they should take out of the proposal is actually very reassuring and comforting them and increases the odds of getting some kind of decision from them.

The last two, so L is about, you know, this customer who's doing endless amounts of research. Every salesperson seen this customer like they're never happy with the number of reference calls or the, you know, the amount of research they've done. They want to talk to more and more people. They're just in the information overload mode and or what you, we might call analysis paralysis mode because at some point, they're just, they're never satisfied with. They always feel like all the answers will be in the next white paper they read or the next reference call they do or the next person on LinkedIn they talk to. And so what salespeople need to do to stop that, you got to understand, I think, why customers do that. They don't want to be surprised. That is the main reason, but they also don't trust the salesperson to be forthcoming. So they believe the salesperson's paid to sell them more than they need to put one over on them, hide the dirty laundry. Only talk about the things that work in the platform, not the things that don't work. You're not going to do it. You're not going to get interested in the customers who, hey, you, you're only going to share the customers who love you. And we know we're going to say great things about us. So that's what the customer thinks, right? That is what is in the customer's mind. So you've got to actually shift, get the customer to stop trying to be an expert and start trusting you as an expert. And there are two keys to that. The first one is you've got to establish some trust. And I know this sounds like a platitude, but we found in the analysis, there are specific things that sales great sales people do very early on. they are brutally transparent with customers. So that like, hey, I know you were interested in this capability. I got to be honest, it's, you know, we get mixed reviews on that. It's kind of an early capability for us. We're still trying to iron out the kinks. Or I know you are interested in this use case, but have to be honest, we're actually not the best in the market at that. Our competitors much better at that than we are. You know, so these kinds of moments show the customer that you're not here to put one over on them. You're here to get them to a great decision. It kind of makes no difference to the salesperson. Whether the customer buys from them, doesn't buy from them, it buys from a competitor. You just want to help them get to a great decision. So that's step number one. It's building that trust in a settler or two is you got to demonstrate some expertise. And what we see in so many sales interactions, especially in tech, Is that salespeople will show up with the clown car of experts, the subject matter experts, the solutions engineers, the product people, the executive sponsors, and then they will just punt to these people. And what happens in that moment is is dangerous for the salesperson. The customer, the sounds like they're loving it, right? They're loving it. I'm talking to people who really know their stuff. But what's also happening in that moment is the salesperson is actively getting delegated down to the person they sound like. And if they don't sound like any more than a glorified MC or a coordinator, then that's kind of all the customer will perceive them as. So what right or ability would you have to guide the customer on what to choose if you've offered no value or expertise? You've got to at least you don't have to be as deep as the product people. So you're not going to be your salesperson, you're not a product person, but You do have to be deeper on it than the customer. And you do have to demonstrate that expertise. And so those are the keys. Again, the customer is stop trying to be an expert and start trusting you as their expert. And then the T is taking risk off the table. Two keys to doing that. I think the first one happens really early, actually. And that is resetting the customer's expectations. Average salespeople love when they get an inbound lead from a customer who says, hey, I saw that case study on your website of the customer who got the 10x improvement in sales productivity, and we want that. Like that sounds great. And then that company is in our industry, amazing. Like, that's a slam dunk business case for us. If the average salesperson's thinking, like, if you're excited about that, I'm not going to talk you out of it. Because that means you're going to be excited to take in the CFO and excited to sign the agreement and get going. What great salespeople do, though, was they know that while they'll stand by those claims, those case salesers' prepoints, they try to kind of under-promise an over-deliverment. They might say something on the lines of, you know, let me, absolutely. That is a great case. I was involved in that sale. But we also need to understand, is everything went perfectly. They've resourced to the hill. They had no integration issues, no hiccups. It was beautiful and seamless. And I don't think you and I can think of many technology implementations that happen that way. And so what I'd rather we do is build your business case around a 5x improvement in sales productivity because we see that at least that, you know, 100% of our implementations. And then let's set up to over deliver against that because I think we're going to do better than that based on what I know about your organization. easily 6, 7, 8, 9%, maybe even 10. But I don't want you to just walk in in and promising 10x improvement sales productivity. If we finish the year and we're at 7x in the CFOs now asking her questions when in absolute terms, she should be thrilled with 7x, right? So let's make sure we set ourselves up for success. The other thing you've got to do, those establish some safety net options. Lots of different shapes and forms these can take everything from, you know, before the deal is closed, pulling the implementation team onto the call or the customer success team or the account management team. So we can start road mapping. Hey, as soon as we get signature, here's how we're going to spend our next six months together to make sure you guys are getting all the value you expect, if not more. Here's what we got to do. Here are the stage gates. Here are the owners. Here are the metrics. Here's how often we're going to connect with each other. It still is a lot of confidence with the customer because it feels like, oh, you guys have done this before, right? You've been there. You've done that. You've helped other customers like me get value. Everything from that kind of stuff to adding in professional services support, especially like you think about tech purchase. I'm not saying give it away for free, but you will find that high-performing salespeople will also add on professional services. It's not just because they're selling more, which they are, because they're hyperfaring salespeople. It's the way they position that. They usually position it as an insurance policy. Hey, I know you guys want to DIY. This is one of the great things about our solution. You totally can get all the training, support, all the videos. You got all the enablement content you need. But I know this is a big priority for you. And I think it will be really smart to carve out a slug of professional services hours. That way our A team is lined up in case anything slips. And if it does, we get you back up on track. Because the last thing we want is for you guys to be upset that you're losing ground and you're not get delivered on the outcomes that you promise to your boss. So let's set that up. So there's lots of different ways we can create those opt-out clauses in some industries or an option, not very common in B to B. But in some cases, you can offer those or specialize contract carve out for instance. There's lots of different things we do to create that safety out where the customer doesn't feel like they're jumping out of an airplane by themselves, but you are the tandem skydiving instructor that's going to guide them safely to the ground.

We are data set cut across. I think that it might just be that SaaS is the place where we're seeing the most in decision these things. But it's not suggests it's kind of an easy target, but it is right within decision these days. And unfortunately, I think it's also right with a lot of these missteps that sales people make that actually make things worse. But we had data from manufacturing, from services, businesses, that cut across. So this was a pretty prevalent and consistent across industries.

You know, the only thing I would suggest is that for anybody, I mean, I think it just do it is this is that you should hit the pause button when that customer customers we all know are going to get cold feet off and late stage and it can be very frustrating. And the knee jerk reaction for almost every sales person out there. This happened like in our analysis, 75% of sales people we studied would immediately go out to dialing up the film. I like to go back to doing that. Like, you know, I could get these benefits. You're going to be, you know, stuck in this terrible state of affairs, you're in right now dial up the cost of an action or let's try to use some price base or other like delivery window base urgency driver to get the customer to move forward. But just remember that if the customer's already convinced that the status quo is suboptimal and you've already got the intent that you're basically again, you're using fear on top of a customer, you know, selling into a customer's already afraid and you're actually making it worse. So hitting the pause button and just reflecting a little bit on what's really going on here, is it that they're in different or is it that they're in decisive? And those are actually two very different things.

Yeah, very well said. I think one of the just like the the foam foam move kind of short hand here's a short hand that gives us sales people's like the most Most sales people are trying to figure out what keeping the customer up at night, right? It's classic solution selling needs diagnosis, et cetera. The challenger approach is about showing the customer what should be keeping them up at night. What is the thing you know that they need to know? What is the way that other customers are using your solution to generate returns and benefit for their organization? What's the risk that they don't know about what you do? Because by the way, you're going to talk to, you know, 10 times more customers than they are. Or I say, you're going to talk to like 10 of that customer in a week, then you are 10 times more than a week than they will all year. So you are window into the outside world for them. And that's what challenges really understand. It's not free consulting though, because if you remember from the Challenger sale, it's not just about bringing these provocative ideas that reframe the customers understanding of the world. It's about leading to your unique benefits. All right, so what you're really trying to do is kind of create a fire and then be the only person in town who sells the fire extinguisher that'll put it out.

Yeah, we were at a sequel, the Challenger Cell called the Challenger Customer. And in that book, we talk about a case from a company called DensePly. DensePly, as the name suggests, manufacturers are produced as dental supplies. So they sell equipment and product into dental practices and dental offices. And years ago, dense fly had developed. We all know, I think your listeners can all relate to this when you go to the dentist and the hygienic is, you know, polishing your teeth or they're using the water picker, unfortunately, maybe the densities in the drill. And that wand has a very heavy, like, power cord. That's attached to it and that's attached to this power base and that if he's watered through there and electrical current and all those things, Identify had developed the world's first lightweight aerodynamic cordless wand. That drill bits could be attached to, you know, a clean, clean e-ampal nets, etc. And it was a total breakthrough. They actually went and unveiled it. It was pretty interesting. They gave, you remember the scene in Paul fiction where they opened the briefcase and they'd emanate like a light amidst front. So they gave all their sales people like this little aluminum briefcase thing with this egg shell foam in a, a, a wand in there. I can't remember what it's called. Let's call it. Let's call it the XP 9000 what? But it had one demo wand in there and they would go around the dental offices and be like, and it was lit literally like light had blue lighting inside and it was really cool all the reveal and they take it out and they give it to the dentist or the head of the dental office and they would hold it and be like wow it's so much lighter and it's aerodynamic and the thing is cordless it's amazing it's a revolution And then the first thing they would ask is, how much is it? And so, and when they told them, it costs like three times more than the current old fashioned wands are using with the heavy cord, they would gently put it back in the briefcase, close to briefcase, say, can you give me a price on new drill bits or new like policy, not to attachments? It's so they couldn't get anybody to want to pay for this thing that was much more expensive than the old one. So they did a lot of work and they figured out, they knew that this was unique. They knew this is a unique product. Nobody else in the market made this. The only supplier who had figured this out, total innovation. But they hadn't given the customer a reason to want to pay a premium for that innovation. Until they figured out the connection between the equipment that hygienists use and absenteeism and workers' comp. It turns out that one of the biggest professions that where you get carpal tunnel syndrome, a shoulder and neck and lower back injuries is being a dental hygienist. And the reason is that they're standing holding that heavy wand being dragged down by that heavy cord at an awkward angle all day long. So that's why dental office is really struggle to keep hygienists showing up, not calling in sick, not out for months at a time for reconstructive soldier surgery, not with exorbitant, health benefits claims and workers' comp claims. And so they came in and they revised their salesperson. Now when they come into the general office, they sit down and they say, you know, I'd like to talk to you about your hygienist workforce. Are you guys seeing higher turnover? Have you seen any absenteeism due to carpal or lower back or neck or shoulder injuries? What are you guys doing about that? What's the cost to your business? And they get the dentist talking and the way they start talking about it is not just the insurance and workers' cost. It's stuff like You know, when my hygienist get injured and this is pretty, it's a repetitive motion business and job. And when they get injured and they call in sick, I've got to reschedule all these cleanings and all these appointments. And that's a bunch of upset customers who end up then going to the practice down the street or saying bad things about me on Google reviews or what have you. So there's all kinds of ripple effects for the dentist, the cost of losing a hygienist is massive. And the market for hiring them is very, very tight. So what identified us, I start the conversation there, and then they say, you know, one of the things that we figured out is the primary base in our own independent research, the primary drivers of all these bad outcomes, absenteeism, repetitive motion injuries, is related to the equipment that hygienic use. It's because they're holding that old fashioned heavy wand attached to that big heavy power cable at an awkward angle doing repetitive motion all day. But what if you could solve for that? What if that was no longer a problem that dense as well? How would you solve for that? There's no other technology. That's what we got. We had the same equipment for 30 years. Let me show you the new XP 9000's world's first cordless lightweight ergonomic drill. And we can show you that it is far preferred by hygienists because they don't get injured as often because it's much easier to hold and it doesn't put stress on the joints and kind of pinch points if you will where hygienists tend to experience these injuries. So it's just simple example, but you see again, they're still selling a fancy wand, right? But before they're leading with it, let me show you this and talk about the features and benefits and that led to how much it cost. Now they're leading to it. They're starting with an insight and giving the customer a reason to care about solving this business problem and it turns out the only way to solve it is buying this XP9000 drill from DenseBline.

Yeah, that's exactly right. It makes sure those connections are really tight. Getting this right starts with answering the question, Why should the customer buy from you instead of your competitor? And it's not because you're more customer-centric or more innovative and possible to prove your competitors claim the same thing. It's not that you're the leading global solution provider of whatever you sell. It starts with the product or the way you deliver the product or something about your service delivery that only your company does. You are only capable. Nobody else can touch with the barge poll. And then the second question is, what would have to be true for the customer to want to pay us for that? To pay a premium, ideally. And that's the core components if you will, the challenger or conversation.

Well, I thank you for the offer. I love being, you know, I love being connected with folks who heard me on shows like this one. So if you heard me on the podcast and I don't let you show, shoot me a LinkedIn and buy them pretty active there, uh, love being connected with folks. So please reach out to me. If you want to learn more about, uh, jolt effect. So we do a lot of workshops and training around that, that methodology, visit joltifact.com. There's a ton of, there's also a lot of free tools on there that you can download and that help you put some of these concepts into practice with your sales teams or if you're an individual seller. And then of course the books are, the books are available everywhere. Good books are sold, which I think is on the Internet these days.