On today’s episode of The Sales Evangelist, our host, Donald Kelly, talks with Matt Dixon about how top performers overcome customer indecision. At the beginning of the pandemic, sales went entirely virtual overnight. Matt, and his team, studied 2.5 million recorded sales calls to answer the questions: what possesses a customer to go through an entire sales process and then not follow through, and what do the best salespeople do to avoid that happening to them? The answer is the JOLT effect. What do most salespeople do when customers get cold feet? Many salespeople are taught that the reason this happens is that you haven’t beaten their status quo. They dial up the FOMO. Matt found that this increases the odds that the customer will do nothing. Two reasons that the deal could be lost to no decision The customer still feels the pull of the status quo and they believe what they are currently doing is good enough. They don’t see that switching to your product is a better alternative. They are indecisive about changing the status quo. They don’t know what to pick, they feel a lack of information, or they feel like they won’t get what they are paying for. How do you overcome customer indecisiveness? The JOLT effect During Matt's study, he found that there are four behaviors that high performers use to get customers unstuck. The acronym JOLT. Judging the level of indecision. The best salespeople use a technique of pings and echoes. Offering a recommendation. If everything looks good, then doing nothing seems like the best option. The best salespeople narrow the options and then recommend to the customer what they believe would be best. Limiting the exploration. When the customer asks for more information it may feel like the customer is making progress. Beyond a certain point, the customer is engaging in analysis paralysis. To limit their exploration you need them to trust you and consider you the expert.

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