The JOLT Effect: How High Performers Overcome Customer Indecision

From the bestselling co-author of The Challenger Sale, a paradigm-shattering approach to overcoming customer indecision and closing more sales

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.

For years, sales expert Matthew Dixon has been busting longstanding business myths. Now in The JOLT Effect, he and co-author Ted McKenna turn their trademark analysis and latest research to the vital and growing problem of customer indecision—and offer a shocking new approach that turns conventional wisdom on its head. Drawing on a brand-new, first-of-its-kind study of more than two and a half million sales conversations from across industry, they reveal the surprising truth that high-performing sales reps grasp and their average-performing peers don’t: only by addressing the customer’s fear of failure can you get indecisive buyers to go from verbally committing to actually pulling the trigger.
 
Packed with robust data, counterintuitive insights, and practical guidance, The JOLT Effect is the playbook for any salesperson or sales leader who wants to close the gap between customer intent and action—and close more sales.

“Dixon and McKenna have mined a massive trove of data to extract piles upon piles of golden nuggets of sales insight. They show how we’ve misunderstood  what really holds back buyers. And with a deft combination of analytic rigor and  practical guidance, they chart a path to doing better.” — Daniel H. Pink, #1 New York Times bestselling author of To Sell Is Human and The Power of Regret

“Every last person in sales should rush to buy this book. Fresh, interesting, evidence-based, and above all practical, this book will spark a transformation in the way we sell.” — Dan Heath, New York Times bestselling coauthor of Switch, Made to Stick, The Power of Moments, and Upstream
 
“Matt Dixon and Ted McKenna use their pivotal research to break  down everything sellers need to know to overcome customer indecision. ” — Constantine Alexandrakis, CEO, Russell Reynolds Associates
 
“The JOLT Effect debunks long-held sales beliefs. The psychology behind buying decisions is a valuable perspective that is missing from traditional selling methods.” — Melissa Murray Bailey, chief revenue officer, Hootsuite
 
“The JOLT Effect is an absolute game changer—bringing the most fascinating current psychology insights together with the practical applications needed to succeed in B2B selling.”
—Jean Martin, senior partner and global head of product, Mercer
 
“For years, we’ve been told that the status quo is our biggest competitor in sales. But, using a powerful combination of modern machine learning and troves of research into human psychology and behavioral economics, The JOLT Effect turns that conventional thinking on its head.” — Jim Nystrom, executive vice president of global sales, Dialpad
 
“This is the most important advance in sales thinking since The Challenger Sale. The JOLT Effect shines a bright spotlight on the biggest and, for years, largely unspoken challenge facing sales teams: no decision. This should be required reading for any sales professional looking to overachieve. ” — Connor Marsden, executive vice president, North America Service Cloud, Salesforce

Matthew Dixon is the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of three of the most important business books of the past decade: The Challenger Sale, The Effortless Experience and The Challenger Customer. He is also a frequent contributor to Harvard Business Review on sales and customer experience. He is a founding partner of DCM Insights, a boutique consultancy focused on using data and research-backed frameworks to help companies attract, retain and grow their customers. Previously, he has held numerous global leadership roles at organizations like Tethr, Korn Ferry Hay Group as well as the research firm CEB (now Gartner). He is a sought-after speaker and advisor to management teams around the world, including many of those in the Fortune 500. 

Ted McKenna is an accomplished sales and customer experience researcher whose work has appeared in the pages of Harvard Business Review. He is a founding partner of DCM Insights, a boutique consultancy focused on using data and research-backed frameworks to help companies attract, engage, retain, and grow customer relationships. Prior to co-founding DCMi, Ted has held numerous executive leadership positions in product, strategy, research, advisory, and enablement for Tethr, Russell Reynolds, and CEB (now, Gartner). His most recent work focused on mining unstructured conversational data using advanced data science and leading AI/ML tools to build models, scores, and behavioral frameworks. Previous roles called for deploying syndicated research methods to mine more structured sources such as surveys, diagnostics, demographics, and jobs data. He is a sought-after speaker and advisor to sales and customer experience teams around the world.