In Matthew Dixon and Ted McKenna's new book "the jolt effect" they make a number of revelations.

If you didn't know, Matthew was one of the co-authors on the "Challenger Sale" so he was only going to put his name against a book that was based on something groundbreaking.

The thing is, this isn't an opinion as with so many sales books, this is based on research.

During the pandemic, he was able to analyse sales calls that took place, record them, create transcripts and then get AI to analyse them.  You may or may not know that 20 years ago, Neil Rackham wrote a book called "Spin Selling" and that was based on observing 35 thousand sales calls, it took him 12 years to complete.

What Matt and his team were able to do was analyse millions of sales conversations that took place on Zoom, Teams and Webex.  Using automatic speech recognition and used an AI company, Tethr, they were able to bring structure to the data.

I have a deal stuck or I just lost a deal because the customer decided to do nothing

In the book, Matt describes that, they had all this data and didn't know what to do with it, then they were at a deal review and there was a discussion about a deal and if they should put more time and resource into the customer, the sales leader said

"Do you think the customer is committed to maintaining their status quo or just indecisive about changing it?"

This is the point where the study had meaning and they looked at the data to find out why deals get stuck and why deals end up with no decision. 

What they found was that of the buyers that decided to proceed with no decision.

44% where lost for the client to prefer the status quo, for example, maybe they decided to stay with their current supplier.  Where as ...

56% of the people decided to move ahead, but then abandon that idea.  In the book, Matt explains that in their research, the buyer is too scared to change.

Afterall change requires effort, and places my job at risk. 

If you want to know more about the research then buy the book. 

The current issue with sales 

the problem we have is that currently, we assume that when a clients decides to make no decision, we lump them all together, and the playbook we use only works on 44% of cases.  In fact, the playbook we use and have all been taught to use in this case, actually makes the situation with the 56% of buyers who are too scared worse.  It makes them dig into their position and makes them more scared. 

For example, you might tun up and say, I can make you $10 million in savings, but the buyers hears

 "that's 10 millions in savings is all well and good, but projects fail in this company. That's $10 million in savings and I get the sack.  Or I can bury this project and keep my job, I'm only 5 years to retirement".

The more you run proof of concepts (PoCs) and the more you create businesses cases, the more you scare them. 

Want to know more about social selling, check out my new book

"social selling techniques to influence buyers and changemakers - 2nd edition".

In this brand new edition, I have updated all the text, I have also got 15 practitioners, so people who are doing this already to explain how they are get (practical) business benefit. From the CEO that has been running a digital business for over 18 months to sales leaders who use social selling every day.  

Articles on how these business have and are implementing digital, from Mercer, Telstra Purple, Ring Central, Cyberhawk, Namos, Ericsson, Crux Consulting, DLA Ignite and more.

What does Mark Schaefer, Marketing guru think of the book "social selling - techniques to influence buyers and changemakers - 2nd edition"? watch the video here

It's available on Amazon worldwide.  Link to Amazon.com here and Amazon.co.uk here.