As a student of my profession, I’ve probably read about 100 sales books. Of these, there are only a few that I would read more than once and even fewer that I would enthusiastically recommend. To qualify, the book must teach something new, be backed up by hard data, and be well-written. I’m happy to say that The JOLT Effect: How High Performers Overcome Customer Indecision, by Matt Dixon and Ted McKenna, easily meets all those criteria.
Here’s the gist of the book in one paragraph. The single biggest reason sales are lost is because customers can’t or won’t make a decision. The way that most salespeople have been taught to sell doesn’t’ work against indecision, and actually makes things worse. Using the counterintuitive approaches described by the acronym JOLT can more than double your chances of winning deals.
Let’s take these one by one.
Your biggest competitor
For any sales opportunity to succeed, the customer must take action to buy from you. That means that they must intend to change, select your offer, and follow through with their intent. In other words, your three competitors are status quo, competitive vendors, and indecision. The first surprising insight from this book is that indecision is the most common reason that deals don’t close, comprising 40-60% of losses. Indecision is not the same as deciding to stick with status quo; it occurs when the customer has expressed an intent to change, but is either unwilling or unable to actually pull the trigger on the decision. Amazingly, even after customers have said they’re willing to buy, conversion rates are only 26%!
You can’t fight fear with fear
Since sales is about change, most sales approaches are designed to overcome status quo bias. In this battle, fear is the salesperson’s friend. Because change is hard, salespeople have learned to bring out the fear of loss—to make the cost or pain of not changing greater than the cost or risk of changing. It’s extremely effective in getting the customer to agree that they need to change.
But there’s a problem. Once the customer has decided that change is necessary, another more powerful fear kicks in, called commission bias. We are more afraid of making a mistake through action than inaction. Especially in a large organization with a lot of people involved in the decision process, it’s easier and safer not to decide. Fear of missing out is not as strong as fear of messing up.
When the customer delays or dithers, the average salesperson assumes they haven’t done a good enough job on making their case for change, so they double down on the fear. But this just injects more fear into the customer’s mind and actually backfires. Statistics gleaned from literally millions of sales conversations show that while dialing up fear works 16% of the time, it does not work 84% of the time.
So, to combat indecision, the trick is to flip the switch—from fear to reassurance. You have to lower the fear of deciding. Every business book needs an acronym and that’s where JOLT comes in.
JOLT them into action
Judge the indecision. The best sales reps qualify not only ability to buy, but ability to decide. This is probably the hardest part: being able to detect the presence and depth of indecision. Their research has shown that indecision is present in 84% percent of sales opportunities. It comes from three sources: valuation problems, which means they have trouble comparing options; incomplete information; outcome uncertainty, which is the risk of not getting the results they expect. This chapter explains how to gauge the source and depth of indecision through things the customer does and says during the sales cycle.
Offer recommendations. Another “aha! moment” for me. I’m a huge proponent of asking questions and talking less during sales conversations, but that’s not the best approach at this stage of the sale. Their research showed that the most effective reps actually talked more rather than less, telling more than asking. Too much choice and resulting complexity make it harder to decide, so the salesperson who offers proactive guidance and expert personal opinion makes it easier, boosting conversion rates from 13% to 48%. (I note that for this to be effective, the rep must have established credibility and trust, and asking a lot of questions earlier in the sales cycle is still one of the best ways to demonstrate customer orientation and to get the information needed to make credible recommendations.)
Limit the exploration. Every salesperson knows the frustration of analysis paralysis, where the customer is always asking for just a little more information. High performing reps learn to own the flow of information in three ways. First, they establish their own expertise. One of the ways they do this is by actually limiting the participation of subject matter experts like sales engineers. Another way is to anticipate objections or concerns the customer is likely to have, and bring them up before the customer does. This strategy of “pre-buttal” is extremely effective, as shown by a 45% increase in win rate when it’s used. Third, they are not afraid to challenge the customer’s request for more information, and follow up with questions to probe for exactly what uncertainty is driving the request.
Take risk off the table. When the book first came out, I texted Dave Brock to ask if he thought it was worth investing the $29 price. He responded by saying that it was well worth it, and if I did not agree, he would personally reimburse me. He demonstrated the effectiveness of finding ways to lower the customer’s downside risk and make it easier for them to decide.
Will adopting the JOLT approach pay off for you? Let me try my hand at taking risk off the table[1]. First, using JOLT does not mean you throw out everything you’ve learned to date about changing the status quo. That is still necessary. It’s an addition, not a replacement, for your sales playbook.
Second, I can’t totally reduce your outcome uncertainty, but let me stress what I said at the beginning about hard data. Dixon and McKenna did not make up the JOLT techniques; they discovered them in the patterns from the data. They have taken advantage of the explosion of virtual sales conversations caused by the pandemic, using machine learning to analyze 2.5 million sales conversations and uncover patterns of what separates the high performers from the average. As you can see from the liberal use of statistics in this review, they’ve measured what works and how well. If it worked for them, it will work for you.
It’s an easy decision: buy it, read it, apply it.
[1] I don’t have the resources to make the same offer Dave did to me.
As the author of Lean Communication, I appreciate a book that delivers valuable information with few wasted words. Mike Kunkle has done just that with The Building Blocks of Sales Enablement. In less than 150 pages, he manages to be clear, concise and comprehensive—but above all, practical.
In my thirty years as a sales trainer and consultant, I have seen far too many instances of the old school sales “leader”, whose only tools are incentives and intimidation. That approach just won’t cut it anymore, as sales get more complex and competition gets more intense. It reminds me of the old saying that amateurs study tactics, armchair generals study strategy, but professionals study logistics. Just as logistics place the right people with the right equipment in the right places, sales enablement does the same for sales.
This book will show you how to get it done. Whether you are a sales leader or a sales enablement professional, you will find a lot of useful insights and actionable ideas to design and implement a system that will maximize the performance of the sales force. Depending on your own specific situation, some chapters will resonate more than others. I especially appreciated the chapters on buyer acumen, sales methodology, and training, but there is something for everyone, including hiring, compensation, coaching, analytics—fourteen building blocks in all.
So many business books are long magazine articles puffed up with “been there, done that” stories. This is the rare business how-to book that leaves you wanting more. In fact, the only quibble I have is that Kunkle could have used a few more examples and stories from his deep experience to illustrate his points. For example, he cites the importance of having exit criteria in the buying process, but the lack of real-world examples could make it unclear to someone just becoming familiar with the topic. And ironically, the building block that Kunkle says he is least expert in, sales compensation, is the only one enlivened and enlightened by a story from his own experience.
The Building Blocks of Sales Enablement is like a map that you consult once to get your bearings, and then keep at hand for a long time to consult on your sales enablement journey. Although Kunkle reminds us that the map is not the territory, you still need one to envision the destination and plan the most efficient route. This is the best one you will find.
When you try to open a drawer and it gets stuck, what’s your first reflex? You yank it again, a little harder the second time, and you may repeat this several times until you finally realize brute force won’t work—and you might even break something. So you finally get smart about it: you stick your hand in and feel around to find out what’s blocking the opening, move it out of the way, and the drawer slides open easily. How much lost time and potential damage might you have avoided if you had removed the obstacle first thing?
The same thing may happen when you try to change someone’s mind. You try to sell them an idea, and they shut you down. So you try again, maybe a little bit more forcefully, or you polish your arguments and come at it a different way. But that doesn’t always work, work, because there are factors which block people from changing their minds even in the face of the strongest rational arguments. In these cases, you need to first remove or work around these impediments.
That’s where Jonah Berger’s book, The Catalyst: How to Change Anyone’s Mind, comes in. The key point is that when you set out to change something or someone, don’t start by asking “What can I say to try to convince them?” Start by asking yourself, “Why haven’t they changed already?”
Berger identifies five factors which prevent people from changing (or resisting persuasion), conveniently arranged in the acronym REDUCE.
Reactance is our inner 2-year-old which causes us to resist being told what to do. If we feel our freedom to act threatened, we tend to resist, even when we know it’s good for us. (Probably the single biggest reason so many people are refusing to wear masks in a pandemic). The way to get around reactance is to give the other person at least the perception of having the freedom to decide. You can do this by giving people a menu of choices, asking questions to get them to reach the intended conclusion, especially by highlighting a gap between status quo and ideal.
Endowment effect and loss aversion simply mean that we place a greater value on things we have than those we don’t. So, change is hard unless we see a much greater benefit—at least two to one, according to research. The antidote to endowment is to surface the cost of inaction, and that’s best done through asking them questions to arrive at the conclusion you want them to accept. (In case you haven’t figured out how important it is to ask questions, here’s a reminder).
Distance means that people have can have a range of different attitudes regarding the topic being discussed, from strongly in favor to strongly opposed to somewhere in between. For each topic they care about, they have a “zone of acceptance” and a “zone of rejection”. If your message falls into the former, it can move their attitude towards you; if the latter, the message can actually move them further away from agreement. This means you need to know where they are starting from, and most likely ask for less to start. This may require strategic patience on your part, but it beats getting shot down for good.
Uncertainty about potential outcomes makes people nervous. When people are asked to make choices between a sure thing and potentially more valuable gamble, risk aversion biases them toward the sure thing. As Berger puts it, anything new carries an “uncertainty tax”. To get over this hump, you’ve got to make it easy for people to try things out conveniently and at little risk to themselves.
Corroborating Evidence, Berger’s fifth factor, is a little out of place because it’s not technically a factor that impedes change; it’s a requirement. When people hold a strong attitude about the thing being changed, you may need reinforcements in the form of extensive and varied social proof. The theme of this chapter I “Don’t take my word for it.”
The Catalyst is a highly readable and useful book about removing barriers to persuasion. However, I don’t feel it lives up to its subtitle, ”How to Change Anyone’s Mind”, because it’s incomplete. While it’s important to remove roadblocks to change, you also need to make a positive case for the direction in which to move or the destination to aim for. Maybe that will be the theme of a sequel, in which case I look forward to reading it.
True consultative selling is about selling with your customers, not to them. In other words, you work closely together in partnership to co-create value by eliciting the best thinking on both sides to create better ideas, stronger buy-in, and unshakeable relationships.
It’s a beautiful thing when it happens, but it’s also not common because it takes a rare mixture of relevant knowledge, interpersonal skills, and an outside-in mindset to make it work. I’ve written about that in my book, Bottom-Line Selling.
But there is more to the story than the quantitative and logical approach I advocate, and there is more value possible in co-creation than can be captured in a spreadsheet. That’s where Chip Bell’s new book, Inside Your Customer’s Imagination: 5 Secrets for Creating Breakthrough Products, Services, and Solutions, comes in.
Knowledge, skill and outside-in thinking may not be enough unless you can also get inside your customer’s imagination. The customer’s mind contains a potential treasure trove of ideas for working together to generate incredible value, much of which they may not even be aware of. The trick is to harness that imagination. Have you ever had a customer meeting that just sparkled with enthusiasm and produced ideas almost faster than you could write them down? This book will show you how to make that the norm rather than the exception.
The book is divided into five tactics for creating and sustaining a co-creation partnership, each with three techniques to apply them effectively. Bell calls them “secrets”, but I prefer to see them as plain common sense, creatively applied. They are:
Curiosity: The first step to selling with someone is to be curious about them. Chip says “curiosity is fundamentally an optimistic treasure hunt”, and it springs from a genuine desire to know as much as you can about them.
Grounding: Grounding is about establishing a shared purpose with your customer. It starts with defining the customer’s core need or aspiration.
Discovery: Curiosity and grounding are important to get started, but at some point you have to start generating ideas. Discovery is about creating a climate to make innovation possible—maybe even inevitable.
Trust: All innovation contains risk for both parties, so trust is essential. Both parties must trust each other enough to open up fully and generate ideas, and they must also trust each other enough to share the risks of implementing them.
Passion: Just like a marriage, a co-creation partnership needs to be nurtured with passion to avoid complacency and indifference. Passion ensures that both sides consistently bring their best.
This short synopsis does not do justice to the book. Chip uses excellent analogies and tons of compelling stories to illustrate and support his points, which makes for excellent reading. If you’ve ever had the chance to see Chip in person, you’ll see that he writes like he speaks, with a dynamic combination of entertainment and insight.
