A JOLT of confidence: Taking risk off the table in an age of indecision

Just when the champagne corks were supposed to pop, the incoming CEO took the fizz out of the bottle. Deal’s off, he said. The five-year contract looked good for four of his business units but not the company’s cash cow division.

This is a true story, courtesy of Matt Dixon, author with Ted McKenna of “The JOLT Effect: How High Performers Overcome Customer Indecision.” In this living nightmare, did sales scurry back to treading the well-rehearsed fear uncertainty and doubt playbook? 

That’s what average performers do, Matt says. Here, though, head of sales zeroed in on the source of the problem. The client accepted his offer of a five-year contract for those four divisions and a one-year provisional contract – still with a five-year discount -- for the outlier. 

After three months of performance, the customer called. Five years was a go.

Matt’s point? Salespeople can get creative in guiding customers around, through, and past their indecisiveness.

“There’s a lot of stuff you can do to instill confidence with the customer that they’re going to get value out of your solution, that you’re going to drive that adoption,” Matt told me in a discussion about overcoming the kind of outcome uncertainty that grinds deals to a halt.

In today’s shaky economy, indecisiveness is grounded in FOMU, or the fear of messing up. Buyers see the status quo as the safer risk, whether real or perceived. I like to talk about sellers who buy for, not sell to, the customer, and Matt’s JOLT Effect presents four pillars in that transformation:

• Judge the level and causes of indecision through active listening.
• Offer ameliorative recommendations.
• Limit the customer’s endless research.
• Take risk off the table.

When sales reps take risk off the table, win rates increase 109 percent, according to Matt’s research. Those who set proper expectations achieve a 155 improvement.

It’s about flipping indecisiveness inside-out. A strategic approach vaporizes the outcome uncertainty that mires the buyer in indecisiveness. 

Ecosystems empirical research with buyers and sellers reinforces this point as it helps transform the sales rep into buyer’s agent. In this one-on-one digital workspace, seller and buyer tabletop-exercise all possible scenarios—even the ones where things go wrong. The seller becomes a trusted guide instilling the buyer with the confidence to make the smartest decision. 

The transparency of Ecosystems pushes risk off the table through things like quarterly value reviews. The seller's "no shade" accountability reassures the buyer because there’s no escaping the light of scrutiny. It’s a great place to be, building your own self-efficacy as you stoke the buyer’s confidence. With the proper platform, champagne corks fly, because the buyer and seller are sharing a journey in discovering, realizing, and adapting value.