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. Our research shows that best sellers use a unique combination of behaviors—what we call the JOLT approach—to overcome indecision and close more sales.

Learn more:

The JOLT Effect: How High Performers Overcome Customer Indecision

JOLTEffect.com

The days of relying on firm or personal reputation, waiting for the phone to ring and being able to tap into bottomless professional services budgets are over. Today’s customers have dramatically changed how they buy services—leaning not just on sophisticated procurement functions but on alternative fee arrangements and disruptive, low-cost service providers. The impact on professional services firms has been significant as most partners struggle to both engage new clients and grow their existing books. Our research shows that best client-facing partners have figured out how to navigate these changing environments and their techniques and behaviors can be distilled down to an actionable frameworks for client impact and commercial success that others can learn to apply and master.

Learn more:

“McDermott Law Firm Biz Dev Chief Shares an Award-Winning Strategy for Teaching Lawyers to Sell,” Sales Game Changers Podcast, Episode 177, Sept 2017

“Chief Marketing and Business Development Officers as Change Agents,” Intapp On-Demand Webinar

“CPA Firm Growth Insights from Inside and Outside the Accounting Industry,” Lauren Clemmer, Association for Accounting Marketing, September 2019

Today’s business customer is nearly 60% through their purchase journey before ever reaching out to a vendor to have a sales conversation. The ability of customers to learn on their own boxes salespeople out and forces them into a price-driven conversation. The best salespeople buck this trend by engaging customers with provocative, frame-breaking insights—the things the customer couldn’t learn on their own—and that best marketing organizations equip salespeople with commercial insight that reframes customer thinking and leads to what makes their company’s solutions unique.

Publicly available research:

The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation (Penguin, 2011)

“Selling is Not About Relationships” (Harvard Business Review, September 2011)

“The Worst Question a Salesperson Can Ask” (Harvard Business Review, October 2011)

“Why Your Salespeople Are Pushovers” (Harvard Business Review, October 2011)

“The End of Solution Sales” (Harvard Business Review, July-August 2012)

Challenger skill development and message creation are services offered by our partner, Challenger Inc. Challenger Selling is a trademark of Challenger, Inc.

Selling complex solutions is increasingly a game of herding cats. The average customer buying committee has been growing in size and role diversity for several years and shows no sign of slowing down. Unfortunately, left to their own devices, buying committees struggle to overcome their own dysfunction, resulting in little more than “lowest common denominator” decisions (e.g., stay the course, avoid risk. minimize disruption, etc.). To forge consensus for big, disruptive purchases, best sellers don’t target economic buyers or “coaches,” they look engage customer Mobilizers with disruptive insight and then equip these stakeholders to get others on board for the change journey.

Learn more:

The Challenger Customer: Selling to the Hidden Influencer Who Can Multiply Your Results (Penguin, 2015)

“The End of Solution Sales” (Harvard Business Review, July-August 2012)

“If the Customer is Always Right, You’re in Trouble”. (Harvard Business Review, August 2012)

“The Best Sales Reps Avoid ‘Talkers’” (Harvard Business Review, July 2012)

“Sales Reps Should Avoid Customers Who Are Ready to Buy” (Harvard Business Review, July 2012)

Training on identifying and leveraging customer Mobilizers is provided by our partner, Challenger Inc. Challenger Customer and Mobilizer are trademarks of Challenger, Inc.

The most important lever at the disposal of managers and leaders to drive change is an effective coaching program. Unfortunately, most organizations confuse coaching to behaviors with deal or activity inspection. Best coaches understand not just how to coach, but whom to coach and what to coach to. In doing so, they forge lasting bonds with their teams that boost performance and discretionary effort while also boosting employee engagement and intent to stay.

Learn more:

“The Dirty Secret of Effective Sales Coaching” (Harvard Business Review, January 2011)

Despite offering compelling, sticky and differentiated products, the majority of organizations continue to struggle with higher churn, lower account growth and more negative word-of-mouth than they can afford. The conventional wisdom holds that to increase customer loyalty, organizations must strive for delivering surprising, delightful experiences—especially in moments of truth, such as when customers reach out for help resolving problems. Instead of focusing on delivering delightful experiences, organizations should focus on delivering frictionless, low-effort experiences. The data shows that when customers receive low-effort experiences, they are far more likely to repurchase and spend more—and far less likely to spread negative word of mouth. What’s more, low-effort experiences are nearly 40% cheaper for organizations to deliver. The research further points to a set of unique practices that set low-effort companies apart from their peers.

Learn more:

The Effortless Experience: Conquering the New Battleground for Customer Loyalty (Penguin, 2013)

“Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers” (Harvard Business Review, July-August, 2010)

"Top Effort Drivers to Avoid in 2021," On-Demand Webinar with Matt Dixon and Ted McKenna

Our partner, Challenger Inc, helps teach frontline staff the skills necessary to deliver a low-effort experience and helps organizations overhaul key processes, like quality assurance, to reinforce low-effort behaviors. Effortless Experience is a trademark of Challenger, Inc.

Despite the vast majority of organizations professing to be focused on “customer centricity,” their results and widespread negative customer feedback often suggest otherwise. Our research shows that while most companies push internally-generated assumptions to their customer-facing teams about what they think customers will value, truly customer-centric organizations allow their frontline teams to exercise their individual judgment, collaborate with peers and operate as business owners. Best organizations also use more than just episodic loyalty or post-transaction surveys to assess the quality of the experience they’re delivering. Instead, they mine large quantities of unstructured data (e.g., call recordings, email exchanges, chat interactions, case management data, etc.) to obtain a richer and more contextualized understanding of the experience and spot the opportunities for improvement that will deliver the most benefit to customers and the most leverage to the organization.

Learn more:

“Dismantling the Sales Machine” (Harvard Business Review, November 2013)

“Kick-Ass Customer Service” (Harvard Business Review, January-February 2017)

“Call Length is the Worst Way to Measure Customer Service” (Harvard Business Review, February 2017)

“Customer Service Reps Work Best When They Work Together” (Harvard Business Review, April 2017)

“Reinventing Customer Service” (Harvard Business Review, November-December 2018)

“Supporting Customer Service Through the Coronavirus Crisis” (Harvard Business Review, April 2020)

"Examining the Silent Killer of Customer-Centric Strategies," Matt Dixon, Tethr blog, October 2018

"Turn Up the Stereo: Why Listening for Customer Context is Essential," Ted McKenna, Tethr blog, November 2018