Can Customers Be JOLTed Past Their Fear of Making a Mistake?

I recently finished reading the latest book out of Ted McKenna and Matthew Dixon (one of the authors of The Challenger Sale and The Challenger Customer), The JOLT Effect. It provides a useful lens through which to think about, and overcome, buyer resistance to making a decision.

The authors contend that customers who end up with the “status quo” instead of making a purchase don’t actually prefer the status quo. Rather, they are more afraid of making a mistake by commission than they are of making a mistake by omission.

I’ve written in the past about a variety of cognitive biases that affect sales, but I haven’t addressed omission bias, which is the one they lean on for their theory. They analyzed millions of calls to extract the insight that this bias is a primary factor in many cases for the so-called “status quo” decisions.

What is Omission Bias?

Omission bias is the human tendency to fear making a mistake through action more than making a mistake through inaction. For example, there’s a classic thought experiment in which it is posited that you are standing near a train track. You see that a train is about to run over five people who are powerless to move out of the way.

Beside you is a lever. If you pull the lever, you will change the track so that the train does not hit the five people. However, if you do so, it will hit a different person who also cannot get out of the way of the train.

Logically, the greater good is served if you save the five people even when it harms one person. But most people nevertheless find this to be an ethical challenge, because it feels to them that they are responsible for the death of the one person, whereas they are not responsible for the death of the five.

This shows how we are wired to believe that we have a larger responsibility for actions that we take than actions that we choose not to take.

In a buying scenario, this means that a buyer who is uncertain will generally choose the status quo not because of a preference, nor even because they believe the status quo is better, but because they would rather experience harm from failing to act, than be responsible for harm caused by their own action.

Why Omission Bias Matters to Salespeople

The Jolt Effect posits that salespeople fail their customers by assuming that they actually have a preference for the status quo. This leads salespeople to choose tactics that pressure and attempt to influence the buyer’s preference toward action.

We believe that we have larger responsibility for actions we take than for actions we choose not to take.

When they understand that omission bias is the reason for choosing the status quo, then salespeople can help the buyer overcome the fear of action, and choose something more effective.

To make this case, McKenna and Dixon analyzed millions of sales calls against outcomes and salesperson behavior. What they found was that the most effective salespeople understood that the buyer was struggling with indecision and instead of pressuring the buyer, followed a somewhat consistent pattern to help the buyer get unstuck and move forward.

The Fears that Fuel Omission Bias in Buyers and What To Do About Them

According to the book, there are three key fears that fuel omission bias in buyers:

• Valuation problems - they don’t know how to value and compare potential solutions
• Lack of information - they feel they haven’t done enough homework
• Outcome uncertainty - they wonder whether they will actually achieve the desired benefits

High performing salespeople help customers get unstuck by:

• Judging their indecision and helping them move past their fears
• Offering a recommendation as a subject matter expert
• Limiting the exploration by setting boundaries, guiding, and being proactive
• Removing risk by providing safety nets like refunds, extra services, and smaller starts

One thing I found interesting in McKenna and Dixon’s recommendations was the “indecision scorecard” salespeople can use to qualify and disqualify candidates based on the likelihood of a “no decision” outcome.

The scorecard helps salespeople understand which buyers are more fearful of making a decision and therefore less likely to move past their fear and into a purchase. This reduces the amount of time salespeople spend on poor quality candidates so that they can focus their attention on helping the buyers who are likely to actually move forward with the right attention and assistance.

How to Create Structure that Reduces Status Quo Decisions

I think one of the most interesting and useful things in this book, is the idea that you can take a structured approach to reducing status quo decisions. This structured approach should include:

• Scorecards to help identify the level of indecision customers may be demonstrating
• Training and enablement to help salespeople have more effective conversations that help buyers move past fear
• Different processes for engaging different stakeholders with the specific fears they experience around decisions
• Best practices embedded into the salespeople’s workflow so it becomes a daily part of how they engage buyers

I see The JOLT Effect as a useful addition to the canon of sales handbooks. Its insights bring us closer to being able to truly partner with buyers to help them get what they really want. We liked it enough that we’re planning to bring the authors onto our podcast with Paul Fuller. I look forward to hearing them soon.