| Title | : | The Jolt Effect: How High Performers Overcome Customer Indecision |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0593538102 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780593538104 |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 256 |
| Publication | : | Published September 20, 2022 |
In sales, the worst thing you can hear from a customer isn't "no." It's "I need to think about it." When this happens, deeply entrenched business advice says to double down on your efforts to sell a buyer on all the ways they might win by choosing you and your business. But this approach backfires dramatically. Why? Because it completely gets wrong the primary driver behind purchasing decision-making: once purchase intent is established, customers no longer care about succeeding. What they really care about is not failing.
For years, sales expert Matthew Dixon has been busting longstanding business myths. Now in The JOLT Effect, he and co-author Ted McKenna turn their trademark analysis and latest research to the vital and growing problem of customer indecision--and offer a shocking new approach that turns conventional wisdom on its head. Drawing on a brand-new, first-of-its-kind study of more than two and a half million sales conversations from across industry, they reveal the surprising truth that high-performing sales reps grasp and their average-performing peers don't: only by addressing the customer's fear of failure can you get indecisive buyers to go from verbally committing to actually pulling the trigger.
Packed with robust data, counterintuitive insights, and practical guidance, The JOLT Effect is the playbook for any salesperson or sales leader who wants to close the gap between customer intent and action--and close more sales.
The Jolt Effect: How High Performers Overcome Customer Indecision Reviews
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We all have been there. We work a on a sale and then it comes to a standstill. We tried all techniques in our tool kit but the customer is still not moving forward. The authors call this the Inaction Paradox.
To understand the inaction paradox, the authors introduce a few concept from behavioural economics. Firth the concept of loss aversion: Basically, losing 10% is perceived way worse than winning 10%. Although rationally, speaking it should be the same (Kahneman and Tversky can explain it much better than I can).
In addition, there is the difference of errors in commission and errors of omission. In the sales content we can think about this:
Error of commission: The buyer made the purchase decision and the implementation is failed. The buyer gets the blame (might even lose his job).
Error of omission: Nobody made a decision, we did not improve but are still in problem. in this case, it is much harder to blame someone, right? Especially, in corporates it is easy to hide behind the various departments.
Ultimately, a buyer is more comfortable with missing out than with messing up. This leads to the indecision and the reason why many sales don't move forward.
To overcome this authors developed the JOLT effect. A method to overcome indecision:
J - Judging the indecision
O - Offer your recommendation
L - Limiting the exploration
T - take risk of the table
J. Top sales rep unqualified indecisive opportunities earlier than low performer and focused their energy instead on opportunities that moved forward.
O. The customer struggles with evaluating various option. The top seller take initiatives and make recommendations and guide the sale. "Personally, I would do X if i were you.."
L. At some point, additional information will not bring the client closer to the sale. Top sales persons limit the flow of information, anticipate needs and addressing unstated objections. (Only works if perceived as trustworthy expert)
T. Find creative ways to lower the downside risk of the purchase: opt outs, refund, change clause, contract carve outs and so on. Interestingly, the common fear, uncertainty and doubt FUD turned out to be contra productive and lead rather to losing a sale when prospects were indecisive.
This is the JOLT effect in a simple terms. The book takes a deep dive into each topic and provides some organisational design option to facilitate the JOLT effect.
What I like about the book is that they analysed more than 2.5 million sales calls (Zoom, WebEx and so) with machine learning techniques, interviews and other assessment tools. This gives clearly credibility to their findings.
From my personal experience, I can relate to the findings. What helped me in particular was to make a recommendation and taking the risk of the table. Basically, making it as easy for the client to buy and get out of the deal if they are not happy. The big bet here is that your product must be so brilliant that they would never get out it! So if you have an amazing product that it is easy to take the risk of the table.
The only negative in the book is that in the last part of the books they try to sell their services. Read chapter 1-7 (roughly 100 pages) and feel free to skip the last 4 chapters.
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Looking forward to implementing the research in this book. Sales teams should read this. Sales managers should read this. 4-5 hour read - anyone should be capable of reading this…Sit down and read it and think about the changes that need to be made in your sales org/sales process.
