关于什么能达成交易的惊人真相:来自 250 万次销售对话的洞见 | Matt Dixon
The surprising truth about what closes deals: Insights from 2.5m sales conversations | Matt Dixon
Matt Dixon: We collected two and a half million sales calls and studied them with a machine learning platform at scale.
Core Concept of The Challenger Sale
Lenny Rachitsky: The big insight is that you’re losing most of your sales deals, not to competition, but to indecision.
Matt Dixon: And that indecision stems from their fear of failure. Dialing up the FOMO backfires 87% of the time. They’re not afraid of missing out, they’re afraid of messing up.
Introducing the Guest
Lenny Rachitsky: You just talk about how to actually leverage these insights to improve your sales process. You have something, I think you call it the JOLT method?
Research Methodology: The Challenger Sale
Matt Dixon: Yeah, JOLT them forward. The first thing is we’ve got to judge their level of indecision. The second thing is we’ve got to offer a recommendation. The third thing is we’ve got to get them to start trusting us and we call it limit the exploration, and the T is we’ve got to de-risk the deal. We’ve got to take some risk off the table.
Lenny Rachitsky: Great segue to The Challenger Sale, which is basically this on steroids.
Research Methodology: The JOLT Effect
Matt Dixon: Most salespeople are trying to figure out what’s keeping the customer up at night. The challenger approach is about showing the customer what should be keeping them up at night. What’s a risk that they don’t know about but you do.
Key Insights from The JOLT Effect
Lenny Rachitsky: Holy moly, this is going to be the most action-packed, high-density podcast episode we’ve done. Today, my guest is Matt Dixon. Matt is one of the world’s foremost experts in sales, known for his groundbreaking research into what makes the best salespeople different from everyone else. His first book, The Challenger Sale, was a number one Wall Street Journal bestseller and has sold over a million copies worldwide. His most recent book, The JOLT Effect, builds on his lessons and insights and will change how you do sales.
In our conversation, Matt breaks down what you’re probably doing wrong in your sales process based on research, into millions of sales conversations, and then how to tweak your process to be a lot more successful. This episode is for anyone that wants to improve their sales skills or improve the rate at which they close deals.
With that, I bring you Matt Dixon and if you enjoy this podcast, don’t forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. It’s the best way to avoid missing future episodes and it helps the podcast tremendously. Matt, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the podcast.
The Real Reason Customers Hesitate
Matt Dixon: It’s great to be here. Thank you for the invitation, Lenny.
Lenny Rachitsky: It’s great to have you here. First of all, a huge thank you to April Dunford for connecting us. She’s a huge fan of your work. She mentioned you a number of times on the podcast episode that she did. She’s great.
True Drivers of No-Decision Losses
Matt Dixon: Yeah, she’s very nice.
Lenny Rachitsky: She’s amazing. You basically spend your time researching salespeople and digging into what makes the best salespeople different from all the rest, and then synthesizing these lessons into these really actionable pieces of advice so that anyone can become better at sales, which to me feels like a dream come true even if I’m not a salesperson, even though many of us do sales part-time, but especially if you’re a salesperson.
First of all, just to give people a sense of the work that you do, could you just talk a bit about the research that went into the books that we’re going to talk about, we’re going to be focusing on The Challenger Sale and The JOLT Effect. What is the research they did?
Omission Bias: Stronger Than Status Quo
Matt Dixon: Yeah, sure. Just start with The Challenger, because that chronologically came first. We actually started that research study in, I think it was in late 2008 actually, and we published the initial results to, at the time I was working for a company called CEB, which was acquired by Gartner Group in 2017, a research organization, and then I was running the group that served heads of sales, business, business heads of sales around the world. We had five or 600 clients around the world, and we launched that study in ‘08.
We published the initial results for our clients in ‘09. We kept collecting some data and then we published the book in 2011. The book was published off a data set of 6,000 salespeople, so we did an in-depth survey with 6,000 salespeople, as well as collected performance data on those 6,000 sellers. It was a global, cross industry, different types of companies as well, product companies, services companies, large, small, slow growth, fast growth, you name it.
Overtime, though, that research has been ongoing, so we’ve collected data. I think to date, on roughly a quarter million salespeople around the world that we continue to go back and not just validate the original findings, but look at how things are changing and do cuts of the data now that the data set’s so big. That was a survey based piece of research we did.
The JOLT Effect, we started that research in 2020, actually. It was actually in March of 2020, which I think is a time that everybody remembers with probably mixed emotions, most of them bad. I think though, you remember March was a time when people were getting into Tiger King and baking sourdough bread. A few months later, that got really old, but in the beginning it was kind of surprising and weird and this whole pandemic thing, but we actually thought because we’re huge nerds, that this would be an interesting time to do a sales research project.
We had always been fascinated by what Professor Neil Rackham did back in the ’70s and ’80s and spin selling, and he and his research team sat in on 30 something thousand sales calls, physically sat in on these meetings and took notes. They’re a team of psychologists to produce the research that went into spin selling, and so we always kind of aspire to get, if you will, at the coal face or where the rubber hits the road in sales, which is the sales conversation when that salesperson is sitting across from the customer.
The problem with that is it’s really hard to get people to pay for that kind of research, that kind of undertaking, and then let alone, getting invited into those meetings because a lot of the really critical sales meetings took place, of course, in the client’s office. Until March of 2020 when that all changed and the entire sales process for every company on Earth went to Zoom and Teams and Webex and other virtual platforms.
We recruited several dozen companies across industry and around the world into a large global study, and we collected two and a half million sales calls and studied them with a machine learning platform at scale. That was a very different kind of research project and honestly, it’s fun just as a researcher to look back on Challenger and the manual survey-based approach and the interviews and all this stuff to fast forward to today, being able to take advantage of large data sets and advance technology to study millions of sales conversations is pretty cool.
Lenny Rachitsky: Amazing. Okay, so the second book, the most recent book, The JOLT Effect is based on these two and a half million sales conversations.
Why FOMU Trumps FOMO
Matt Dixon: Mm-hmm. That’s right.
Starting With a Real Case
Lenny Rachitsky:
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Let’s dive into the insights from The JOLT Effect. The way that I understand is the big insight is that you’re losing most of your sales deals not to competition, but to indecision. Basically, customers preferring to do nothing versus choosing something because they are afraid of making a mistake.
Three Drivers of Purchase Fear
Matt Dixon: Good summary. Yeah, [inaudible 00:08:25], if you’re busy, you said it more succinctly. I’ve been doing this for a while now and you said it way more succinctly than I can. Just to back up for a little bit, I think one of the data points I always start with when I present the research on The JOLT Effect is that our analysis showed that anywhere between 40 and 60% of the average salesperson’s qualified pipelines, these aren’t just leads, sometimes bad leads that are thrown over to us by marketing, these are qualified opportunities.
These are people we’ve met with, customers we’ve pursued, we’ve engaged, they’re in the sales process, 40 to 60% of them will be ultimately marked as closed loss, no decision. That’s actually, I think that number is actually on the rise, especially in places like SaaS and the broader tech sector over the past year and a half, but that’s a really painful thing.
If you think about as a salesperson, that for 46% of your deals, you’re going to spend a lot of time, energy, resources, a lot of your company’s money and their time and resources pursuing these opportunities where you eventually just get ghosted and you don’t really know what happened, just like the customer, the opportunity evaporated on you, they ghosted you, they want radio silent. You don’t really know what happened there.
We decided to take this two and a half million sales call dataset, which you could have used to answer lots of different questions, but we were really fascinated by this question, maybe two, two questions. One is why do customers make no decision? Because you understand it’s frustrating as a salesperson, but it’s also puzzling for customers to do that. They go through the entire process to evaluate a solution, and many of those customers say, “Yeah, I want to buy,” and then they ghost to the salesperson and it’s so puzzling.
Why would they waste their own time evaluating a solution than doing nothing? Then, the more important question is probably what are the very best salespeople do differently? What have they figured out to avoid that outcome?
Lenny Rachitsky: Cool, and we’re going to talk about that latter part to help people understand why, because it sounds like, okay, I guess this happens, but help people understand why this happens. Why are people nervous to make a mistake and not make a decision at all?
A Deal Lost to a Gartner Report
Matt Dixon: Let me maybe take us a step back, Lenny. There was a reason we actually even asked that question that you just asked, and the reason was this, when we looked at sales calls, if you think of the typical sales process or buying journey, it kind of moves through three phases. Phase number one, is the customer in their status quo. It’s what they do today. They use your competitor’s product. Maybe they do use a homegrown solution, maybe they never saw a need for a solution like yours, but that’s their current state.
Step two is we’ve got to get them to agree that the current state is no longer acceptable and they’ve got to move forward in a new and different way. We call that agreement on a vision. We’ve got to get their intent to move forward and to change, and that step number three is you got to get them to buy something. That’s the action step where they execute the docuSign, they sign on the line that is dotted and they send the contract back.
It’s a simple three step process, and what we found in our analysis is one of the big places where a lot of deals fall out of that process is between intent and action. It’s after the point where the customer says, “Yeah, Lenny, this sounds great. I’m sold. Let’s talk.” But before the point where that actually deal gets sold, a lot of deals kind of go sideways in that moment and the way this comes across in sales calls is that customers start, if you will, relitigating concerns that they had asked and you thought you’d address much earlier, like what might go wrong and is this really the right answer for us?
These are things that are puzzling to salespeople because it feels like this thing is slipping through my fingers right before my eyes. I thought we had this closed. I thought you said you want to move forward and now you’re asking questions that we addressed three months ago, what’s going on?
What salespeople tend to do, because they’ve grown up in a world where they’ve been told, the only reason the customer hesitates is because you haven’t put to bed their status quo bias. We all know, we’re all human beings, not just customers, but perhaps especially customers, are guilty of status quo bias, meaning we are prone to laziness and doing nothing because it’s easier, it’s inertia. It’s easier to just keep doing more of the same than to change behavior.
Change is really hard and salespeople have been taught that the status quo is their biggest competitor, and if the customer is starting to get cold feet, it’s because they still think either what they’re doing today is good enough, what you are proposing is not a compelling enough reason to change, or maybe it’s just not a top priority for them or their organization. It’s got to be one of those reasons.
What salespeople have been armed to do is go out and dial up the FOMO and make the customer sweat a little bit. The first thing they do is they say, “Lenny, remember the demos and the proof of concept trial, how excited you were and those benefits, you got to pay for it. You’re not going to get all those great benefits for your organization unless you sign the agreement.”
If that doesn’t work, I’ll try to kind of scare you into action by dialing up the fear, uncertainty and doubt and saying, “Lenny, you told me about these problems in your business. You guys are really struggling right now. By the way, did I mentioned, we’re working with all of your competitors and they’re seeing tremendous benefits from our product and you’re going to be left in the dust and those problems you brought up with me, they’re not going to solve themselves.”
I’m trying to create that burning platform a little bit for the customer and get them to realize the cost of their inaction. There is a cost of doing nothing, and if those two things don’t work, what most salespeople go to is the 10% discount that’s only good this quarter. It’s like the price driven urgency. Maybe this will be the thing you need to just get you over the finish line.
What we were so surprised by which led us to the question you asked, Lenny, was that 87% of the time when salespeople do that dial up the FOMO in those moments, especially with a customer who says that they’re ready to move forward, but they start to backpedal and waffle and waiver and become hesitant dialing up the FOMO backfires 87% of the time. In other words, it increases the odds, the deal will be lost to no decision.
If it weren’t for that finding, we never would’ve even bothered asking the question about why do people end up, why do we lose deals to no decision, why do customers make no decision, but this was really puzzling because it flew in the face of everything we talked about, including in Challenger, to be totally candid. We talked about how challengers are exceptional at breaking the customer’s status quo bias by showing them the pain of same is worse than the pain of change.
Again, overcoming that inertia, that not just individuals but organizations suffer from. Challengers are really good at that. Here, we see that the tactics that you might associate with challenging actually kind of backfire, which was, as the author of The Challenger, still a little bit troubling to me, but we’ll come back to that, but I think what we realized was we got it right, but we got it kind of half right.
We went into the data and we asked a slightly different question, which is why are deals lost in no decision? What drives that? We found that actually, there are a lot of deals that are lost because the customer does actually prefer their status quo. That is status quo bias. They believe what they’re going to say is good enough, what you’re talking about, it’s not a compelling enough reason to change or this is not a top priority.
Those are all status quo preference reasons, but it turns out those are only 44% of the no decision losses, 56% of no decision losses are customers who want to buy but can’t buy because they’re stuck in this no man’s land of indecision, and that indecision itself stems from their fear of failure, which you put your finger on earlier, and this is the part I found so fascinating, so we dug into the psych research. We read probably 30 years of cognitive psychology journal articles, many of them from Dutch universities, which I find very interesting, but a fairly very big into this stuff.
A lot of the Kahneman and Tversky work around loss aversion and prospect theory, et cetera, and one of the big findings we came across is that there’s actually a more powerful human bias, even more powerful than status quo bias that rears its ugly head and causes indecision, and that is called the omission bias.
The omission bias is, if you get down to it, is the fact that people don’t want to be blamed for making decisions that lead to a loss. In the human mind, there are two types of loss that we think about. We all like to avoid loss, but not all loss is created equal. There are losses that happen when we do nothing, and then there are losses that happened because we did something.
We made a decision, we picked a vendor, we executed a contract, and then something bad happened. It turns out that in the human mind, people are okay with missing out. They are not okay with messing up and being blamed, and this is really powerful. It’s even more powerful than status quo bias, as I said.
The shorthand for salespeople is this, dialing up the FOMO can be very effective to overcome status quo bias, but knowing that every human being, including all of your customers, who I include in that definition of human beings are definitely afraid of being personally blamed if things go wrong. The FOMU actually matters more than the FOMO. The FOMU is the fear of messing up or in the not safe for work version of your podcast, I’d say FOFU, but your listeners can figure out what that stands for on their own, but this is really powerful for salespeople, right to understand.
Look, if you are trying to scare your customer into action, you’re going to miss out on these benefits. You’re going to miss out on solving these problems. You’re just going to pay more later if you don’t say yes now. What you’re really doing is using scare tactics, but you’re trying to scare somebody who’s already afraid. The problem is they’re not afraid of the thing you think they’re afraid of. They’re not afraid of missing out, they’re afraid of messing up.
We’ve got to address that as salespeople. We’ve got to help instill the confidence in the customer that you’re making a great decision. I’ve got your back. You’re going to look like a hero, not like a fool and that’s really what The JOLT Effect is about. It’s about how the very best salespeople execute that. It wasn’t that we’re wrong with Challenger, it’s just the story was kind of incomplete.
You got to break status quo bias. If you don’t do that, you’re never going to have an indecision problem, but even once you overcome the customer’s indifference and their status quo bias, you got to second battle you’ve got to fight, which is you’ve got to instill the confidence and make them feel good about this. Frankly, leap of faith they’re about to take and their fear, you got to deal with the fear that if something goes wrong, they’re worried that they’re going to be blamed for it.
Lenny Rachitsky: We’re going to talk about this method you developed for how to actually do all the things you’re talking about, but first, to make this even more real, what I’m thinking about is an example. Is a good example, maybe a CRM, like a better CRM product, say someone has Salesforce installed and now they’re like, maybe there’s probably something better out there we should probably evaluate.
Then, I’m thinking from the perspective of a startup trying to build a better CRM. There’s always this advice, you have to be 10 times better for anyone to pay any attention. I think that feeds into exactly what you’re showing is it needs to be so much better that this fear is reduced. Can you just talk about maybe an example, whether it’s that one or a different one to make this more concrete?
Even Big Vendors Aren’t Immune
Matt Dixon: We encountered a ton of examples. It’s so interesting you mentioned startups and I think sometimes, I was actually with a big enterprise software company and I think when, and I presented this research to some of their sales leaders and one of the folks in the room said, “I’m really glad we are who we are, that we are the 800-pound gorilla, especially in a market like we’re in right now,” because as the old adage goes, it wasn’t IBM, but the old adage is that nobody ever got fired for buying from IBM, right?
This company is like the IBM of their space. They’re the 800-pound gorilla. They’ve got the brand strength, the reputation, they’re the safe choice. This team felt kind of comfortable or comforted, I should say by that fact, especially in a tight environment where it’s a battle for deals and for mindshare and for wins out there in the market right now, especially in tech.
What I said is you’ve got to remember though, that may be true, and I would argue, and I think you’re right, that for a startup, yeah, you’ve got to be 10 times better to get that mind share. It may be even better than that to get somebody to take a leap of faith with you. There is inherent risk in going with the unproven player, but I cautioned these folks and I said, “Now, remember, what are the things that drive fear of failure and indecision?”
It turns out there are three big ones. The first one is have I made the right choice? I know I want to work with this vendor, but did I configure the solution of the proposal the right way, the right contract length, the right implementation, the right used cases, the right integrations, all that professional services or DIY, all those big questions.
The second thing that customers worry about in their second fear of failure is that they’re going to learn something after the contract is signed that’s going to make the decision look like not such a great decision. I’ll give you a really specific example about this. I spoke to a tech company not too long ago, maybe a month ago, and they landed their biggest deal of their existence. It was an early stage company, seven-figure deal, game changer for this organization. Then, they beat out some big established competitors. This is a huge win.
They went out. They celebrated. It was just totally amazing, their first big enterprise win and their first seven-figure deal and their first victory against some of these incumbents. Unfortunately, about two weeks after they won this deal, the new Gartner Magic Quadrant on their space came out and they were shown to be kind of, eh, right? They weren’t the leader, but they were sort of middle of the pack.
All of a sudden, the client who signed the agreement, the CTO just got crap rained from everybody saying, “Did you see the Gartner Magic Quadrant? It looks like the company we just plunked down seven figures with was kind of seen as so-so by the Gartner analyst? Have we talked to these guys and those guys and why aren’t we going with the leaders,” and blah, blah, blah?
They ended up backing out of the contract because the CTO said, “I’m spending every day talking to all the other key stakeholders trying to convince them that yes, we did all of our due diligence, but life is too short and we’re probably going to end up going with one of the big players. We’re sorry. I mean, that’s such a painful story, but that’s the customer is like they’re going to keep doing research because they don’t want to be surprised when some new piece of information comes to light. It’s the second big fear of failure driver or failure driver.
The third one is that the customers are worried they’re just not going to see the ROI. They’re not going to get the full benefits. You might project for them a 5X improvement in sales productivity. What if it comes in at two or three X and my name’s on the agreement and the CFO comes asking why we didn’t get the benefits we thought? In today’s environment, that’s not just egg on your face, you could get fired for that stuff.
This is the client who’s really looking for that vendor to have their back and to assure them that they’re going to see the benefits that are being projected and promised through the sale. What I said to this big enterprise tech company was, “Look, you guys, yes, it’s tough to be a startup right now, early stage company, there’s a lot of risks there, but who’s offering more choices, them or you guys? You guys have a partner ecosystem. You have 20 different cloud products. You bought seven companies in the past three years. You have a cornucopia of options, which adds to the buyer’s anxiety that they haven’t chosen the right thing.
Second, do you think there’s more written about you guys or about them? You could fill a football stadium with all the coverage on you guys. I mean, everybody’s got an opinion about you because you are the 800-pound gorilla and everybody’s worked with you before and they have opinions, good and bad, and people want to leave no stone unturned.
Then, lastly, it turns out you guys are a lot more expensive because you’re trying to move from selling simple products like these ankle biters out there, these startups into selling big enterprise solutions. You guys are selling not seven-figure deals, eight-figure deals, nine-figure deals to your customers. That increases the customer’s anxiety that I really have to see return on this.
You, in many respects, are getting whipsawed by these factors in a way that the startups are not because they don’t have as many choices. There’s not as much coverage about that. The investment is lower, and so there’s a little bit less risk for the customer. You guys aren’t immune just because you’re the big brand.”
The JOLT Method
Lenny Rachitsky: You’re doing a great job making it clear why it’s so nerve-racking to buying new software. There’s just so many things that could hurt you as a person at a company. April Dunford, I think this is barred from your language that she talks about how it’s actually more stressful these days to buy software than to sell software because of all these things you’ve talked about.
How to Execute JOLT
Matt Dixon: Yeah, I think she’s on point on that one. I mean, your customers are, yeah, they’re really, really afraid of this not panning out. It was so interesting, and salespeople can think of so many different occasions where the purchase buying your product, just made all the sense in the world for the customer, it would make things so much better. It would solve such big problems for them.
They’re so dissatisfied with their current approach. It’s just a no-brainer, and the customer will look at that and they will agree with you and they still won’t make a decision because of the what-ifs, right?
Lenny Rachitsky: Yeah. This is got to be very frustrating for founders to listen to and be like, “Come on, our product is so much better. What are you doing?” But I think this explains a lot of the challenges they’re probably having.
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It’s a great segue to talking about how to actually leverage these insights to improve your sales process. You have something, I think you call it the JOLT method?
Bringing Fear of Failure to Light
Matt Dixon: Yes. Yeah.
Lenny Rachitsky: Awesome. Let’s get into it.
Sonar Method: Pings and Echoes
Matt Dixon: The JOLT, it’s an acronym. It just so happened it worked out that way, but I like it because it’s memorable, but it also speaks to what’s happening. Our customers’ stuck in their indecisive state. They want to buy from us, but they just can’t because worried about what might go wrong. You got to JOLT them forward. We got to JOLT them into action.
Lenny Rachitsky: Beautiful.
Diagnosing Customer Decision Barriers
Matt Dixon: How do we do it? The first thing is we’ve got to judge their level of indecision, we’ve got to figure out what we’re dealing with. The second thing is we’ve got to offer a recommendation. The third thing is we’ve got to get them to stop doing endless research and start trusting us and limiting, we call limit the exploration, and the T is we’ve got to the derisk the deal. We’ve got to take some risk off the table, and we establish that safety net for the customer so they feel like we’ve got their back.
Maybe we talk about each of those. I’ll start with the J because it’s first, but also I think the way, while it’s kind of linear, I would encourage listeners don’t think about this as a process where it’s like I do step one, two, three, four, J-O-L-T. Think of it as it starts with the J, and the J tells you what the next step is. Is it the T? Is it the L? Is it the O? Is it the O, and then we got to deal with the T. Then, we got to go back to the O because it comes up again.
Think of it as sort of the dividing rod. How do we figure out what’s got the customer nervous? This is a really, really, really tricky thing because, and I’ve likened indecision to the carbon monoxide poisoning of sales. It’s everywhere, but it’s odorless, it’s tasteless, but you need a carbon monoxide detector, and that’s what the J is.
How do we get fear of failure on the table? The problem with this is that, and I think most of your listeners will be familiar with this, everybody, especially customers suffers and senior executives especially, especially, suffer from what’s called the Dunning-Kruger effect, which is they think they’re better at things than they really are and decisiveness is one of those things that buyers will think they will say they think they’re decisive.
In fact, if you surveyed your customers, not that they recommend this, and you add 100 of them, if they consider themselves to be decisive folks, like 99 out of 100 will say, “Absolutely, yes, I make the tough calls. I manage from the gut. I live on the edge as an executive making those big calls,” but the research tells a very different story. It turns out that 87% of buyers in our two and a half million sales calls we studied, either showed moderate or high levels of indecision.
The folks who are not worried about fear or failure were 13%. Yeah, those people do exist. By the way, if you find one of those people, you should sell them everything as soon as possible because they’re making the decision quite literally on the dollars and cents and the ROI and whether it makes sense for their business. It’s a rational decision for them, but for the rest, they’re dealing with a lot of emotion, and that emotion is all wrapped up with fear of failure.
What’s so tough about this is that it’s not just Dunning-Kruger like we think we’re more decisive than we really are, even if your customer knows that they’re indecisive or they’re worried about failing or how their boss is going to perceive them, if this purchase doesn’t pan out, they don’t like talking about it because it’s embarrassing. They don’t want to talk about like, “God, I got to tell you this better pay off because if it doesn’t, I’m already on thin ice with my boss. She doesn’t like me already. This is going to be the last straw.” Nobody’s going to say that stuff.
How do we get on the table? One of the things we don’t think works particularly well are classic open-ended questions like, “Lenny, do you find when you go to the Cheesecake factory, do you leave satisfied or hungry because you can’t decide what to order?” I guess, it’s not great approaches with customers, you’ll end the sale pretty quickly because again, your customers find that kind of offensive. They’d like to think of themselves as decisive people.
We found a technique, this is actually not in the book, we found it after we wrote the book, called pings and echoes that high performers use. Think of the way a surface ship might detect a submarine in the water using sonar. They send a ping out into the water and they’re listening, if you will, using sonar for the reflection back and the reflection tells them, is it a friendly submarine, an enemy submarine? Is it just a whale? Is it heading towards us? Away from us? At what speed are they about to torpedo us? All that good stuff.
We want to do the same thing in sales. The way this works is that a salesperson will try to articulate but in a non, not to out the customer, but to get confirmation or refutation, if you will, that what they’ve articulated is actually a concern for their buyer.
Hypothetically, let’s imagine we’re talking about a purchase and we’ve had a lot of great conversations. I’ve shown you a lot of demos. You guys have liked everything we’ve shown. We showed you partner options. We showed you different configurations. We did POC over here. We did a pilot over there. You guys are just eating it all up, but I’m kind of getting the sneaking feeling that you guys actually don’t know what you want and we’ve shown you a lot and we’ve probably made that problem worse.
What I might say to you is, “Lenny, I’m just curious if we could calibrate here for just a moment, and there’s a reason I’m asking this, which is a lot of the customers at this point in our process of working together, they get almost overwhelmed with all the options, and look, I probably made this worse. We’re very proud of what we do. I want to show you, paint the art of the possible, but I also know if we’re going to do business together, you told me right away budgets are limited and you can’t have it all. You’ve got to decide what’s nice to happen and what’s need to happen. I’m just curious, are you and your team clear on what would be in and out of the proposal?”
What’s going to happen is one of two things, one you might say, or a few things, you might say, “You know what? No, we don’t know and we have liked everything you’ve shown us, but as you said, we can’t have it all. So, we’d be really curious to know what do other companies like us start with? How do we get going? What are the things we can do without and we can maybe add later on down the road,” or you might get the customer says, “No, no, no, we were just being polite. There’s a lot of stuff you showed us that we’re not actually that interested in. It’s cool, but it’s just not for us. We are very clear on what we want.
So, let me share that with you now. However, what I’m really concerned about is once we get this kind of specked out and configured and priced, I’m going to take it to the CFO because I’ve got to get her approval on this and I can’t build our business case on the claim you guys make about improving sales productivity by 10% because she’ll laugh me out of her office. Help me get grounded in what’s a believable outcome for us so that I can sell it and I can be confident we’re going to actually hit it.”
Again, it’s not designed to embarrass the customer, it’s designed to get this on the table so it can be recognized and dealt with and contextualized. You’re totally normal. Everybody struggles with this. There’s a lot of stuff we throw in front of people and it ends up doing some harm. They don’t know what to pick. Let me be of service and value to you.
That’s the first thing that we point to and that’s going to tell us, okay, is it a choice problem? They’re overwhelmed. They don’t know what to choose, like that example we just used. Is it that they’re just doing endless research and they feel like they haven’t really come down the learning curve yet around this purchase or is it, no, I don’t actually know that we’re going to get what we’re paying for here and we screw this stuff up every day of the week at twice a Sunday and I don’t think it’s going to be any different and then I’m going to get blamed, so help me manage the downside risk, but it tells us kind of where to go next on that journey, if that makes sense.
Step Two: Make Your Recommendation
Lenny Rachitsky: Yeah. Awesome. The advice there is basically get a sense of how clear they are internally on knowing exactly what they want that’ll help them make a decision. There’s kind of this moment of, okay, let’s just help me understand the question, the way you phrased it, are you and your team clear on what would be in or out of this proposal?
The Delegation Effect
Matt Dixon: Yeah. That’s just a one example. That’s if I hypothesize that you’re really struggling with what to choose. Now, my hypothesis might be, you know what you want. You’ve done plenty of research, but you’re really worried about the ROI and you’re just worried you just aren’t going to be able to accomplish that.
That ping might sound very different. It might be we’ve been having a discussion about, you’ve been asking for multiple terms of the ROI calculation and changing parameters and really trying to make it bulletproof, but a lot of customers struggle with that a little bit because that’s a big thing. You’re putting your name against that. Maybe we should have a conversation about whether that’s a concern for you. Is there a believability gap? Is there an execution gap you’re worried about on your side or on our side?
Let’s have a conversation about that so I can set the proper expectations so you feel really confident going to the CFO and lobbying for investment here. That ping could go in, but it’s based on what I think is holding you up.
Lenny Rachitsky: Got it. It’s just like at this point, many customers have this question…
L: Limit Their Exploration
Matt Dixon: Yes. Yeah.
Lenny Rachitsky: … and that maybe comes from the thing that you think is probably blocking them.
T: Take Away the Risk
Matt Dixon: Yeah, I think that’s perfect language. At this point, most customers like you, are thinking about this or they’re worried about that, or they’re getting a little anxious about this. Let’s have a conversation about it.
Safety Nets and Exit Clauses
Lenny Rachitsky: Awesome. Okay, cool. Let’s go to step two, offering your recommendation.
The Pause Button: Indifference vs. Hesitation
Matt Dixon: Sure. Oh yeah. This was right with that example we talked about before. Options are really a double-edged sword. What we know from the research is that options are great early on. If you’re meeting at the trade show and the customer’s swinging by your booth or you’re doing a first demo or first, let a thousand flowers bloom, but if you want the customer to actually make a decision, you’ve got to get the weed whacker out and call it down to a manageable set of choices.
The science is very clear on this, that too many choices at some point will overwhelm the customer and it leads to a lot of bad outcomes. It leads to the customer not making a decision at all because they don’t want to make the wrong decision. I don’t want to work with you, but you put so many options in front of us. I don’t want to be blamed if I choose the wrong one and it leads to things like post-decision dysfunction, which is, I thought I made the right decisions, but now I’m learning more and people are asking hard questions and maybe I need to go revisit this. Hey, Lenny, we’re going to have to scrap that agreement and start over because I don’t think we can figure this right way.
We have to, there’s a time and place to offer options, and there’s a time and place to narrow choices up. The simple guidance here for salespeople is that you’ve got to shift your posture from asking the customer what they want and just diagnosing their needs, to actually recommending to them what they should do. Salespeople get a little bit anxious about this, I find, because they don’t want to be seen as like, I told you to do A, but you’re like, I don’t want to do that. I want to do B and now I feel like we’re at odds.
They worry about that. Salespeople have grown up in this world that it’s the customer’s choice. The customers always right, let me just guide them, but they’re the ones should make this decision, but sometimes the customer can’t and they don’t know enough about these decisions. We know the stuff because we eat, sleep, and breathe it every day as salespeople. We work in this industry, they don’t.
We are in a much better position to be able to guide them toward, you know what? You don’t really need X, Y, and Z. You can leave that out of the proposal. Companies like you, they get started in this way. Let me put three options in front of you. I would go with the middle one because I really think that’s going to be the best for you in the first year, and then we can expand from there.
Here’s an analogy, I’ll often tell people to think about the last time they went to a fancy restaurant and they looked at a menu with some expensive entrees and everything looked delicious, but they didn’t know what to order, so you asked the wait person what they recommend. How helpful is it if that wait person says to you, “Well, what are you in the mood to eat tonight?” It’s no help at all, right? You’re no closer to a decision. They basically just dump the problem back on your lap.
But what a great way people do is they say, “If you want my opinion, I love this dish and I’d probably say it’s our most popular. We sell out of it every night. We’ve still got it. So you’re in luck. It’s a lot of food though, it’s a big portion. If you’re in the mood for something lighter, there’s a vegetarian option. It doesn’t get as much play on Yelp, but I love this one. It’s absolutely delicious. It’s one of our kind of dark horse favorites, if you will, but remember, everything we make here is delicious. If you don’t like those choices, you’re not going to go wrong with any of them, but those are just my favorites.”
Now, what happens in that moment is what psychologists call the delegation effect, which is rather than the burden of a bad decision being solely on the shoulders of the decider, that burden is now shared. Now, think about it, if you order the dish the wait person recommended and you don’t like it, whose fault is it? Well, technically it’s your fault because you ordered it, but it’s also kind of their fault because they recommended it.
You feel like there’s some safety in getting that recommendation, that endorsement. It’s a really simple example, but it works in complex sales as well. Customers are looking for somebody to share in the risk and the burden of making a bad decision and having that partner who’s guiding them toward what they should care about and what they shouldn’t care about, what they should consider and what they should take out of the proposal, is actually very reassuring and comforting them and it increases the odds of getting some kind of decision from them.
The Challenger Sale
Lenny Rachitsky: Amazing. This is a great segue to The Challenger Sale, which we’re going to talk about, but let’s get through the last two steps and then we’ll talk about The Challenger Sale, which is basically this on steroids, this idea on steroids.
The Dentsply Case
Matt Dixon: The last two, so L is about this customer who’s doing endless amounts of research. Every salesperson has seen this customer, they’re never happy with the number of reference calls or the amount of research they’ve done. They want to talk to more and more people. They’re just in information overload mode and/or what we might call analysis paralysis mode because at some point, they’re never satisfied with, they always feel like all the answers will be in the next white paper they read or the next reference call they do, or the next person on LinkedIn they talk to.
What salespeople need to do to stop that, you got to understand I think why customers do that. They don’t want to be surprised. That is the main reason, but they also don’t trust the salesperson to be forthcoming. They believe the salesperson is paid to sell them more than they need, to put one over on them, hide the dirty laundry, only talk about the things that work in the platform, not the things that don’t work.
You’re not going to get introduce any of the customers who hate you. You’re only going to introduce the customers who love you, and we know we’re going to say great things about us. That’s what the customer thinks. That is what is in the customer’s mind. You’ve got to actually shift, get the customer to stop trying to be an expert and start trusting you as an expert. There are two keys to that.
The first one is you’ve got to establish some trust. I know that sounds like a platitude, but we found in the analysis, there are specific things that great salespeople do very early on. They are brutally transparent with customers about like, “Hey, I know you were interested in this capability. I got to be honest, we get mixed reviews on that. It’s kind of an early capability for us. We’re still trying to iron out the kinks,” or “I know you are interested in this used case, but I have to be honest, we’re actually not the best in the market at that. Our competitors much better at that than we are.”
These kinds of moments show the customer that you’re not here to put one over on them. You’re here to get them to a great decision. It kind of makes no difference to the salesperson, whether the customer buys from them, doesn’t buy from them, it buys from a competitor. You just want to help them get to a great decision. That’s step number one is building that trust.
Step number two is you got to demonstrate some expertise. What we see in so many sales interactions, especially in tech, is that salespeople will show up with the clown car of experts, the subject matter experts, the solutions engineers, the product people, the executive sponsors, and then they will just punt to these people.
What happens in that moment is dangerous for the salesperson. The customer, it sounds like they’re loving it, right? They’re loving that. I’m talking to the people who really know their stuff, but what’s also happening in that moment is the salesperson is actively getting delegated down to the person they sound like. If they don’t sound like any more than a glorified emcee or a coordinator, then that’s kind of all the customer will perceive them as.
What right or ability would you have to guide the customer on what to choose if you’ve offered no value or expertise? You don’t have to be as deep as the product people. You’re not going to be, you’re a salesperson, you’re not a product person, but you do have to be deeper on than the customer, and you do have to demonstrate that expertise. Those are the keys, again, the customer to stop trying to be an expert and start trusting you as their expert.
Then, the T is taking risk off the table. Two keys to doing that, I think the first one happens really early actually, and that is resetting the customer’s expectations. Average salespeople love when they get an inbound lead from a customer who says, “Hey, I saw that case study on your website of the customer who got the 10X improvement in sales productivity, and we want that. That sounds great.” That company’s in our industry, amazing. That’s a slam dunk business case for us.
The average salesperson’s thinking like, “If you’re excited about that, I’m not going to talk you out of it because that means you’re going to be excited to take in the CFO and excited to sign the agreement and get going.”
What great salespeople do though is they know that while they’ll stand by those claims, those case studies, those proof points, they try to kind of under-promise and over-deliver and they might say something along the lines of, “You know Lenny, absolutely, that is a great case. I was involved in that sale, but what we also need to understand is everything went perfectly. They resourced it to the hilt. They had no integration issues, no hiccups. It was beautiful and seamless. I don’t think you and I can think of many technology implementations that happened that way.
What I’d rather we do is build your business case around a 5X improvement in sales productivity because we see that at least that, in 100% of our implementations. Then, let’s set up to over-deliver against that because I think we’re going to do better than that based on what I know about your organization, easily 6, 7, 8, 9%, maybe even 10, but we don’t want you to just walking in and promising 10X improvement sales productivity. If we finish the year and we’re at 7X, if the CFO is now asking her questions when in absolute terms, she should be thrilled with 7X, right? Let’s make sure we set ourselves up for success.”
The other thing you’ve got to do though is establish some safety net options. There are lots of different shapes and forms. These can take everything from before the deal is closed, pulling the implementation team onto the call, or the customer success team or the account management team so we can start roadmapping, “Hey, as soon as we get signature, here’s how we’re going to spend our next six months together to make sure you guys are getting all the value you expect, if not more. Here’s what we got to do. Here are the stage gates, here are the owners, here are the metrics we’re going to monitor. Here’s how often we’re going to connect with each other.”
Instills a lot of confidence with the customer because it feels like, “Oh, you guys have done this before, right? You’ve been there, you’ve done that. You’ve helped other customers like me get value.” Everything from that kind of stuff to adding in professional services support, especially like you think about a tech purchase. I’m not saying give it away for free, but you will find that high-performing salespeople will also add on professional services, but it is not just because selling more, which they are because they’re high-performing salespeople. It’s the way they position that.
They usually position it as an insurance policy. “Hey, I know you guys want to DIY this. This is one of the great things about our solution. You totally can. You got all the training support, all the videos, you got all the enablement content you need, but I know this is a big priority for you, and I think it would be really smart to carve out a slug of professional services hours that way our A team is lined up in case anything slips and if it does, we get you back up on track because the last thing we want is for you guys to be upset that you’re losing ground and you’re not going to deliver on the outcomes that you promised to your boss. So, let’s set that up.”
There’s lots of different ways we can create those opt out clauses in some industries are an option. Not very common in B2B, but in some cases, you can offer those or specialized contract carve outs for instance. There’s lots of different things we can do to create that safety net where the customer doesn’t feel like they’re jumping out of an airplane by themselves, but you are the tandem skydiving instructor that’s going to guide them safely to the ground.
The Key Takeaways
Lenny Rachitsky: Amazing. All of this, especially this last step, is coming from, they’re probably not going to decide on anything that that’s what you’re fighting is help them…
Matt Dixon: That’s right. That’s right.
Recommendation and Closing
Lenny Rachitsky: … be less worried about messing up.
Matt Dixon: Yeah, that’s right.
Lenny Rachitsky: I especially love this point about under promising and over delivering because so much of, and most of this is B2B SaaS software that you’re working with, right? Like B2B SaaS companies?
Matt Dixon: Our dataset cut across, I think that it might just be that SaaS is the place where we’re seeing the most indecision these days, but it’s not suggest it’s kind of an easy target, but it is rife within indecision these days, and unfortunately I think it’s also rife with a lot of these missteps that salespeople make that actually make things worse, but we had data from manufacturing firms, services businesses that cut across. This was prevalent and consistent across industries.
Lenny Rachitsky: With the under promising and over delivering, I think that’s especially powerful for where most companies want to get to is net revenue retention being higher than 100% where you can expand larger within the org and it makes sense to help them set up base, feel like, wow, this is so much better than we even thought it was going to be, versus…
Matt Dixon: Absolutely. Yeah.
Lenny Rachitsky: … it’s not delivering what we thought. Amazing. Okay. Any last piece of wisdom to leave listeners with around The JOLT Effect before we move on to The Challenger Sale?
Matt Dixon: The only thing I would suggest is that for anybody, I mean, I think just do it is this, is that you should hit the pause button when the customer, because the customers, we all know, are going to get cold feet, often late stage, and it can be very frustrating. The knee jerk reaction for almost every salesperson out there, this happened in our analysis, 75% of salespeople we studied, would immediately go out to dialing up the FOMO.
Go back to doing that. You’re not going to get these benefits. You’re going to be stuck in this terrible state of affairs you’re in right now. Dial up the cost of inaction, or let’s try to use some price base or other delivery window-based urgency driver to get the customer to move forward. But just remember that if the customer’s already convinced that the status quo is suboptimal, and you’ve already got the intent that basically again, you’re using fear on top of a customer, selling into a customer who’s already afraid and you’re actually making it worse.
Hitting the pause button and just reflecting a little bit on what’s really going on here. Is it that they’re indifferent or is it that they’re indecisive? Those are actually two very different things.
Lenny Rachitsky: Amazing. I know you have a meeting in 10 minutes, so this is going to be the most action-packed, high-density podcast episode we’ve done. We’ve got 10 minutes talk about Challenger Sale.
Matt Dixon: Sure.
Lenny Rachitsky: First of all, how many copies of this book have you sold at this point?
Matt Dixon: I think it’s about a million.
Lenny Rachitsky: Holy moly.
Matt Dixon: Yeah.
Lenny Rachitsky: That’s insane.
Matt Dixon: That’s a lot, yeah.
Lenny Rachitsky: Okay, so it’s a legendary book in the world of sales. I imagine many people have heard of it, at least some people know the teachings. Let’s spend a little time there. If I were to summarize the big insight of the book, basically it’s the best salespeople challenge their prospects thinking and teach them about the market and what they should be doing versus just helping them get what they want.
Matt Dixon: Yeah, very well said. I think one of, just like the FOMO, FOMU kind of shorthand, here’s a shorthand I’d give to salespeople is most salespeople are trying to figure out what’s keeping the customer up at night, right? It’s classic solution selling needs, diagnosis, et cetera.
The Challenger approach is about showing the customer what should be keeping them up at night. What is the thing you know that they need to know? What is the way that other customers are using your solution to generate returns and benefit for their organization? What’s the risk that they don’t know about but you do because by the way, you’re going to talk to 10 times more customers, or I say you’re going to talk to 10 of that customer in a week or 10 times more than a week than they will all year.
You are a window into the outside world for them, and that’s what challengers really understand. It’s not free consulting though, because if you remember from the Challenger Sale, it’s not just about bringing these provocative ideas that reframe the customer’s understanding of the world. It’s about leading to your unique benefits. What you’re really trying to do is create a fire and then be the only person in town who sells the fire extinguisher that’ll put it out.
Lenny Rachitsky: Is there an example you could share of a Challenger sale type of sale?
Matt Dixon: Yeah, we wrote a sequel to The Challenger Sale called The Challenger Customer. In that book, we talk about a case from a company called Dentsply. Dentsply, as the name would suggest, manufactures or produces dental supplies, right? They sell equipment and product into dental practices and dental offices.
Years ago, Dentsply had developed, we all know, I think your listeners can all relate to this, when you go to the dentist and the hygienist is polishing your teeth or they’re using the water pick, or unfortunately, maybe the dentist is using the drill. That wand has a very heavy power cord that’s attached to it and it’s attached to this power base and that it feeds water through there and electrical current and all those things.
Dentsply had developed the world’s first lightweight, ergonomic, cordless wand that drill bits could be attached to cleaning, implements, et cetera and it was a total breakthrough. Actually, when they unveiled it was pretty interesting, they gave, you remember the scene in Pulp Fiction where they opened the briefcase and then it emanates like a light emits from it. They gave all their salespeople like this little aluminum briefcase thing with this eggshell foam and a wand in there.
I can’t remember what it’s called. Let’s call it the XP-9000 Wand, but it had one demo wand in there and they would go around to dental offices and be like, “Ah.” It was lit, literally, it had blue lighting inside…
Lenny Rachitsky: Wow.
Matt Dixon: … and it was really cool, the reveal and they’d take it out and they give it to the dentist or the head of the dental office and they would hold it and be like, “What? It’s so much lighter and it’s ergonomic and this thing is cordless? It’s amazing. It’s a revolution.” Then, the first thing they would ask is, “How much is it?”
When they told them it costs like three times more than the current old-fashioned wands they’re using with the heavy cord, they would gently put it back in the briefcase, close the briefcase, say, “Can you give me a price on new drill bits or new like polishing attachments?” They couldn’t get anybody to want to pay for this thing that was much more expensive than the old one.
They did a lot of work and they figured out, they knew that this was unique. They knew this was a unique product. Nobody else in the market made this. They’re the only supplier who had figured this out, total innovation, but they hadn’t given the customer reason to want to pay a premium for that innovation until they figured out the connection between the equipment that hygienists use and absenteeism and workers’ comp.
It turns out that one of the biggest professions that where you get carpal tunnel syndrome, shoulder and neck and lower back injuries is being a dental hygienist. The reason is that they’re standing, holding that heavy wand being dragged down by that heavy cord at an awkward angle all day long. That’s why dental offices really struggle to keep hygienists showing up, not calling in sick, not out for months at a time for reconstructive shoulder surgery, not with exorbitant health benefits claims and workers’ comp claims.
They came in and they revised their sales pitch. Now, when they come into the dental office, they sit down, they say, “I’d like to talk to you about your hygienist workforce. Are you guys seeing higher turnover? Have you seen any absenteeism due to carpal or lower back or neck or shoulder injuries? What are you guys doing about that? What’s the cost to your business?”
They get the dentist talking and the way they start talking about, “It is not just the insurance and workers’ comp costs, it’s stuff like when my hygienists get injured, and it’s a repetitive motion business and job, when they get injured and they call in sick, I’ve got to reschedule all these cleanings and all these appointments, and that’s a bunch of upset customers who end up then going to the practice down the street or saying bad things about me on Google reviews or what have you.”
There’s all kinds of ripple effects for the dentist. The cost of losing a hygienist is massive and the market for hiring them is very, very tight. What Dentsply does is start the conversation there, and then they say, “One of the things that we figured out is that, based on our own independent research, one of the primary drivers of all these bad outcomes, absenteeism, repetitive motion injuries, is related to the equipment that hygienists use. It’s because they’re holding that old fashioned heavy wand, attached to that big heavy power cable at an awkward angle doing repetitive motion all day, but what if you could solve for that? What if that was no longer a problem?”
The dentist says, “Well, how would you solve for that? There’s no other technology.” “That’s what we got. We’ve had the same equipment for 30 years. Let me show you the new XP-9000. We’re world’s first cordless, lightweight, ergonomic drill. We can show you that it is far preferred by hygienists because they don’t get injured as often because it’s much easier to hold and it doesn’t put stress on the joints and pinch points, if you will, where hygienists tend to experience these injuries.”
It’s just a simple example, but you see, again, they’re still selling a fancy wand, but before, they were leading with it. Let me show you this and talk about the features, benefits, and that led to how much does it cost. Now, they’re leading to it. They’re starting with an insight and giving the customer a reason to care about solving this business problem, and it turns out the only way to solve it is buying this XP-9000 drill from Dentsply.
Lenny Rachitsky: The key lesson from this book, and I know we don’t have a ton of time to dig into it, is start with an insight they may not be aware of. Give them a sense of where the things are going. Help them learn something about the future and the problems that they need to know about that they may not be aware of, and then transition to here is how we can solve that for you.
Matt Dixon: Yeah, that’s exactly right. Make sure those connections are really tight, right? Getting this right starts with answering the question, why should the customer buy from you instead of your competitor? It’s not because you’re more customer-centric or more innovative and possible to prove your competitors claim the same thing. It’s not that you’re the leading global solution provider of whatever you sell.
It starts with the product or the way you deliver the product or something about your service delivery that only your company does you are only capable of. Nobody else can touch with the barge pole. Then, the second question is, what would have to be true for the customer to want to pay us for that, to pay a premium ideally? That’s the core components, if you will, of a challenge or a conversation.
Lenny Rachitsky: Amazing. Matt, I promised I let you out here in time. Final questions, where can folks find your books if they want to dig in further and how can listeners be useful to you?
Matt Dixon: Well, thank you for the offer. I love being connected with folks who heard me on shows like this one. If you heard me on the podcast, “Hey, I heard you on Lenny’s Show,” shoot me a LinkedIn invite. I’m pretty active there, love being connected with folks, so please reach out to me.
If you want to learn more about JOLT Effect, so we do a lot of workshops and training around that methodology, visit jolteffect.com. There’s a ton of, there’s also a lot of free tools on there that you can download that help you put some of these concepts into practice with your sales teams or if you’re an individual seller. Then, of course, the books are available everywhere. Good books are sold, which I think is on the internet these days.
Lenny Rachitsky: Amazing. Matt, thank you so much for being here.
Matt Dixon: Thanks, Lenny. It was a blast. Thank you.
Lenny Rachitsky: Bye everyone. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lennyspodcast.com. See you in the next episode.
Glossary
| English | 中文 |
|---|---|
| absenteeism | 缺勤率/缺勤 |
| analysis paralysis | 分析瘫痪 |
| April Dunford | April Dunford |
| business case | 业务案例 |
| carpal tunnel syndrome | 腕管综合征 |
| CEB | CEB(一家研究机构,后被 Gartner 收购) |
| deals | 交易(此处指销售成交) |
| delegation effect | 委托效应 |
| Dentsply | Dentsply(一家牙科用品制造商) |
| Dunning-Kruger effect | 邓宁-克鲁格效应 |
| FOMO | FOMO(错失恐惧) |
| FOMU | FOMU(搞砸的恐惧,Fear Of Messing Up) |
| Gartner | Gartner |
| Gartner Magic Quadrant | Gartner 魔力象限 |
| hygienist | 洁牙师 |
| inbound lead | 主动咨询(入站线索) |
| JOLT method | JOLT 方法 |
| Kahneman | 卡尼曼(Daniel Kahneman,诺贝尔经济学奖得主) |
| Lenny Rachitsky | Lenny Rachitsky |
| let a thousand flowers bloom | 让百花齐放(比喻初期提供大量选项) |
| limit the exploration | 限制探索 |
| loss aversion | 损失厌恶 |
| Matt Dixon | Matt Dixon(《挑战者销售》《JOLT 效应》合著者) |
| Neil Rackham | Neil Rackham |
| net revenue retention | 净收入留存率 |
| no-brainer | 毫无疑问的事 |
| omission bias | 遗漏偏差 |
| pings and echoes | ping 和 echo(声呐探测与回波) |
| POC | POC(概念验证,Proof of Concept) |
| post-decision dysfunction | 决策后失调 |
| professional services | 专业服务 |
| proof point | 佐证 |
| prospect theory | 前景理论 |
| reference call | 推荐电话(客户参考验证电话) |
| ROI | ROI(投资回报率) |
| solution selling | 解决方案销售 |
| SPIN Selling | SPIN Selling |
| stage gates | 阶段关卡 |
| tandem skydiving | tandem 跳伞(双人跳伞) |
| The Challenger Customer | 《挑战者客户》 |
| The Challenger Sale | 《挑战者销售》 |
| The JOLT Effect | 《JOLT 效应》 |
| trade show | 贸易展 |
| Tversky | 特沃斯基(Amos Tversky,认知心理学家) |
| weed whacker | 除草机(比喻削减选项) |
| white paper | 白皮书 |
| workers’ comp | 工伤赔偿 |
Reformatted by reformat_english.py
关于什么能达成交易的惊人真相:来自 250 万次销售对话的洞见 | Matt Dixon
逐字稿
Matt Dixon: 我们收集了两百五十万次销售电话,并用机器学习平台进行了大规模研究。
Lenny Rachitsky: 最大的洞见是,你大部分的销售交易输掉,不是因为竞争对手,而是因为客户的犹豫不决。
Matt Dixon: 而这种犹豫不决源于他们对失败的恐惧。加大 FOMO(错失恐惧)的力度在 87% 的情况下会适得其反。他们不是害怕错过,而是害怕搞砸。
Lenny Rachitsky: 那就来聊聊如何真正利用这些洞见来改进你的销售流程。你有一套方法,我记得你叫它 JOLT 方法?
Matt Dixon: 对,用 JOLT 推动他们前进。第一件事,我们需要判断他们犹豫不决的程度。第二件事,我们需要给出一个推荐方案。第三件事,我们需要让他们开始信任我们,我们称之为”限制探索”(limit the exploration),而 T 代表我们需要为交易降低风险,把一些风险从桌上拿走。
《挑战者销售》的核心理念
Lenny Rachitsky: 正好可以衔接到《挑战者销售》(The Challenger Sale),这本书基本上是上述内容的加强版。
Matt Dixon: 大多数销售人员试图弄清楚是什么让客户夜不能寐。而挑战者式做法是要向客户展示什么应该让他们夜不能寐——哪些他们不知道但你知道的风险。
嘉宾介绍
Lenny Rachitsky: 天哪,这将是我们做过的信息密度最高、干货最足的一期播客。今天的嘉宾是 Matt Dixon。Matt 是全球顶尖的销售专家之一,以开创性的研究闻名——研究最优秀的销售人员与其他人到底有什么不同。他的第一本书《挑战者销售》是《华尔街日报》畅销书第一名,全球销量超过一百万册。他的最新著作《JOLT 效应》(The JOLT Effect)在此基础上进一步延伸了他的经验和洞见,将改变你做销售的方式。
在本次对话中,Matt 基于对数百万次销售对话的研究,详细拆解了你的销售流程中可能存在的错误,然后告诉你如何调整流程来大幅提升成功率。这一期适合所有想提升销售技能或提高成交率的人。
好了,有请 Matt Dixon。如果你喜欢这档播客,别忘了在你喜欢的播客应用或 YouTube 上订阅关注。这是避免错过未来节目的最佳方式,也对播客帮助极大。
Matt,非常感谢你来做客。欢迎来到播客。
Matt Dixon: 很高兴来到这里。谢谢你的邀请,Lenny。
Lenny Rachitsky: 很高兴你能来。首先,非常感谢 April Dunford 帮我们牵线搭桥。她是你的作品的超级粉丝。她在自己做的那期播客里多次提到你。她很棒。
Matt Dixon: 是的,她人很好。
Lenny Rachitsky: 她确实很厉害。你基本上把时间都花在研究销售人员上,深入探究最顶尖的销售人员与其他人的区别,然后把这些经验提炼成真正可操作的建议,让任何人都能提升销售能力。对我来说,这简直是梦想成真——即使我不是专职销售人员,尽管我们中很多人都兼职做销售——但如果你是专职销售人员,那就更是如此了。
首先,为了让大家对您的工作有个概念,能不能谈谈我们即将讨论的这两本书背后的研究——我们将主要聚焦于《挑战者销售》和《JOLT 效应》。这些研究具体是怎么做的?
《挑战者销售》的研究方法
Matt Dixon: 好的。先从《挑战者》讲起,因为从时间线上它是最先完成的。我们实际上是在 2008 年底启动的那项研究,然后向客户发布了初步结果——当时我在一家叫 CEB 的公司工作,该公司在 2017 年被 Gartner 收购,是一家研究机构——我当时负责服务于全球销售负责人的业务部门。我们在全球有五六百家客户,在 08 年启动了那项研究。
我们在 09 年向客户发布了初步结果。我们持续收集数据,然后在 2011 年出版了这本书。这本书的数据基础是 6000 名销售人员的深度调查,我们不仅对这 6000 名销售人员做了深入调研,还收集了他们的业绩数据。这是一项全球性、跨行业的研究,涵盖了不同类型的公司——产品公司、服务公司、大公司、小公司、增长慢的、增长快的,应有尽有。
不过,这项研究一直在持续进行,我们不断收集数据。到目前为止,我估计我们已经收集了全球大约二十五万名销售人员的数据,我们不仅持续回去验证最初的发现,还观察事物如何变化,并在数据集变得如此庞大之后做各种细分分析。那是我们做的一项基于调查的研究。
《JOLT 效应》的研究方法
**JOLT 效应》的研究,我们实际上是在 2020 年启动的。确切地说是 2020 年 3 月,我想那个时间段大家大概都记忆犹新,心情可能很复杂,大部分不太好。我记得那时候大家都在看《虎王》、烤酸面团面包。几个月后这些就变得很无聊了,但一开始还挺新鲜、挺奇怪的——整个疫情这件事。但我们这群超级书呆子觉得,这倒是个做销售研究项目的好时机。
我们一直对 Neil Rackham 教授在七八十年代所做的 SPIN Selling 研究非常着迷。他和他的研究团队亲身旁听了三万多场销售电话,坐在那些会议现场做笔记。他们是一支心理学家团队,最终产出了 SPIN Selling 背后的研究成果。所以我们一直渴望能深入销售的最前线——也就是销售人员与客户面对面交谈的那一刻。
问题在于,这种研究很难获得资助,这种大规模的实地调研成本很高;更别提要被邀请进入那些会议了,因为很多关键的销售会议都是在客户办公室里进行的。直到 2020 年 3 月,一切都变了——地球上每家公司的整个销售流程都转移到了 Zoom、Teams、Webex 和其他虚拟平台上。
我们招募了几十家跨行业、遍布全球的公司参与一项大型全球研究,收集了两百五十万次销售电话,并用机器学习平台进行了大规模分析。这是一个非常不同的研究项目。老实说,作为一个研究人员,回顾《挑战者》那种手工调查、访谈的方式,再快进到今天——能够利用大规模数据集和先进技术来研究数百万次销售对话——真的很酷。
Lenny Rachitsky: 太棒了。所以第二本书,也就是最新的这本《JOLT 效应》,就是基于这两百五十万次销售对话。
Matt Dixon: 对,没错。
Lenny Rachitsky: 我特别喜欢来自海量数据的洞见,所以这真是太棒了。
《JOLT 效应》的核心洞见
Lenny Rachitsky: 让我们深入聊聊《JOLT 效应》的洞见。我的理解是,最大的发现是:你大部分丢失的交易并不是输给了竞争对手,而是输给了客户的犹豫不决。基本上,客户宁愿什么都不做,也不愿选择某个方案,因为他们害怕犯错。
Matt Dixon: 总结得很好。如果你赶时间的话,他说得比我简洁多了。我干这行已经有一段时间了,但你说得比我简洁得多。先回溯一下背景——每次我做《JOLT 效果》的研究分享时,我总会从一个数据点讲起:我们的分析显示,在普通销售人员合格的潜在客户管线中,大约有 40% 到 60% 最终会被标记为”关闭-失败,无决策”。注意,这些不仅仅是线索——有时候市场部门扔过来的线索质量确实参差不齐——我说的是合格的商业机会。这些人我们已经见过面了,是我们主动追求和接触过的客户,他们已经在销售流程中了,但其中 40% 到 60% 最终却没有做出任何决策。我认为这个数字实际上还在上升,尤其是在 SaaS 和更广泛的科技领域,过去一年半以来尤其明显。这真的很令人痛苦。
想象一下,作为一名销售人员,你 46% 的交易要投入大量时间、精力、资源,耗费公司大量的金钱和时间去追逐这些机会,结果最终却被客户彻底失联——你也不知道发生了什么,机会就这样蒸发了,他们对你玩消失,音讯全无,你根本不知道到底出了什么问题。
于是我们决定利用这两百五十万次销售对话的数据集来深入研究。这个数据集可以用来回答很多不同的问题,但我们特别着迷于两个问题。第一个是:为什么客户不做决策?因为作为销售人员你能理解这很令人沮丧,但对客户来说,这种行为本身也令人费解。他们走完了整个解决方案评估流程,其中很多客户还说”对,我想买”,然后就对销售人员玩消失,这太令人困惑了。为什么要浪费自己的时间去评估一个解决方案,最后却什么都不做?第二个,也许也是更重要的问题是:那些最顶尖的销售人员做对了什么?他们想出了什么办法来避免这种结果?
Lenny Rachitsky: 好的,我们来聊聊后面这个部分,帮助大家理解”为什么”。因为听起来像是——好吧,这种现象确实存在——但我想帮大家理解它为什么会发生。为什么人们害怕犯错,以至于完全不做决策?
Matt Dixon: Lenny,让我先退一步来讲。我们之所以会提出你刚才问的那个问题,是有原因的。原因是这样的——当我们审视销售通话时,如果你把典型的销售流程或采购旅程看作三个阶段:第一阶段,客户处于现状之中,也就是他们目前的做法。他们可能在用竞争对手的产品,可能在用自建的方案,也可能从来没觉得需要你这样的解决方案——但那就是他们当前的状态。第二阶段,我们需要让他们认同现状已经不可接受,必须以一种新的方式推进。我们把这称为”愿景共识”——我们需要获得他们推进变革的意愿。第三阶段,你得让他们真正购买。这是行动阶段,他们执行 DocuSign,在虚线上签字,把合同发回来。
这是一个简单的三步流程。而我们在分析中发现,大量交易从这个流程中脱落的环节,恰恰出在”意愿”和”行动”之间——在客户说”听起来很棒,我被打动了,我们谈谈吧”之后,到交易真正达成之前。很多交易就在这个时刻出了岔子。在销售通话中,这表现为客户开始重新翻出那些你以为早已解决过的顾虑——比如”可能会出什么问题”、“这真的适合我们吗”?这让销售人员非常困惑,因为感觉交易就在自己眼前一点一点滑走了。我以为已经稳了,我以为你说了要推进,结果你现在又问我们三个月前就讨论过的问题,到底怎么回事?
客户犹豫不决的真正原因
销售人员的惯常做法是——因为他们一直被灌输的观念是:客户犹豫的唯一原因,就是你还没有消除他们的现状偏见(status quo bias)。我们都知道,作为人类,不仅仅是客户,也许客户尤其如此——我们都容易陷入现状偏见,也就是说我们倾向于懒惰,倾向于什么都不做,因为这更省事,这就是惯性。继续维持现状总比改变行为要容易得多。改变真的很难。而销售人员一直被教导,现状才是他们最大的竞争对手。如果客户开始打退堂鼓,那一定是因为他们仍然认为目前做的事情已经够好了,你提出的方案不足以构成 compelling 的变革理由,或者对他们或他们的组织来说这并不是首要任务——必然是这些原因之一。
因此,销售人员被武装的策略就是加大 FOMO,让客户感到一点焦虑。他们首先会说:“Lenny,还记得演示和概念验证试用时你有多兴奋吗,还有那些收益——你得签约才能得到它们。除非你签署协议,否则你不会为你的组织获得所有那些好处。“如果这招不管用,我就会尝试通过放大恐惧、不确定性和疑虑来吓唬你采取行动——“Lenny,你跟我说过你们业务中的这些问题,你们现在真的很挣扎。顺便说一下,我有没有提过,我们正在和你们所有的竞争对手合作,他们从我们的产品中获得了巨大的收益,而你要被甩在后面了。还有你跟我提过的那些问题,它们可不会自己解决。”
**Matt Dixon:**我试图为客户营造一点紧迫感,让他们意识到不行动的代价。什么都不做是有代价的。如果这两招都不管用,大多数销售人员的杀手锏就是——仅限本季度的九折优惠。这是价格驱动的紧迫感,也许这一招能帮你冲过终点线。但让我们极其惊讶的是——这也引出了你之前提出的那个问题,Lenny——87% 的情况下,当销售人员在那种时刻加大 FOMO,尤其是面对那些嘴上说准备推进、却开始退缩、犹豫、动摇的客户时,加大 FOMO 反而适得其反。换句话说,它反而增加了交易因客户不做决策而失败的概率。
如果不是因为这一发现,我们根本不会去追问——为什么交易会因为客户不做决策而失败?客户为什么不做决策?但这个发现确实令人困惑,因为它与我们之前所有的结论相悖,坦率地说,包括《挑战者销售》中的结论。我们曾讨论过,挑战者之所以卓越,在于他们能够打破客户的现状偏见,让客户认识到维持现状的痛苦大于变革的痛苦——克服那种不仅是个人层面、组织也同样深受其害的惯性。挑战者在这方面确实非常擅长。但在这里,我们看到那些通常与挑战者相关的策略反而适得其反——作为《挑战者销售》的作者,这让我多少有些不安,不过我们后面再谈这个。我认为我们最终意识到的是:我们说对了,但只说对了一半。
无决策失败的真正驱动因素
我们深入数据,提出了一个稍微不同的问题:交易为什么会因客户不做决策而失败?驱动因素是什么?我们发现,确实有很多交易失败是因为客户确实更偏好现状——这就是现状偏见。他们认为目前的做法已经够好了,你提供的东西不足以构成令人信服的变革理由,或者这根本不是当务之急。这些都是现状偏好的原因。但事实证明,这类原因只占无决策失败的 44%。
56% 的无决策失败,是那些想买却买不了的客户——他们陷入了犹豫不决的泥潭,而这种犹豫本身就源于对失败的恐惧——你之前就点到了这一点。这是我觉得最引人入胜的部分,于是我们深入研究了心理学文献,阅读了大约 30 年的认知心理学期刊论文,其中很多来自荷兰的大学——我觉得这很有意思,荷兰学者在这方面研究颇深——以及大量卡尼曼(Kahneman)和特沃斯基(Tversky)关于损失厌恶和前景理论的研究等等。
遗漏偏差:比现状偏差更强大的偏见
我们发现的一个重要结论是:实际上存在一种比现状偏见更强大的人类偏见,它会冒出来作祟、导致犹豫不决,那就是遗漏偏差(omission bias)。遗漏偏差,简单来说,就是人们不愿意因为做出导致损失的决策而被追责。在人类的心智中,我们考虑的损失分为两种。我们都希望避免损失,但并非所有损失都一样。有些损失发生在我们什么都不做的时候,有些损失则是因为我们做了某事——我们做了一个决策,选择了一个供应商,签署了一份合同,然后出了问题。
事实证明,在人类的心智中,人们对错失是可以接受的,但对搞砸并因此被追责是无法接受的。这一点非常强大,正如我所说,它甚至比现状偏见更强大。
FOMU 比 FOMO 更重要
对销售人员来说,简而言之就是:加大 FOMO 在克服现状偏见方面可以非常有效,但要知道每一个人——包括你所有的客户,我把他们也归入人类的范畴——都绝对害怕如果事情出了差错自己会被追责。FOMU 其实比 FOMO 更重要。FOMU 是搞砸的恐惧(Fear Of Messing Up),或者在你这档不适合工作场合的播客里,我会说是 FOFU,但你的听众可以自己琢磨那代表什么。不过这确实对销售人员来说非常重要。
你看,如果你试图通过吓唬客户来促使他们行动——“你会错失这些好处的,你会错失解决这些问题的机会,你现在不签约以后就要花更多的钱”——你实际上是在使用恐吓策略,但你正在吓唬的是一个已经害怕的人。问题在于,他们害怕的不是你以为的那个东西。他们不是害怕错失,他们害怕的是搞砸。
作为销售人员,我们必须解决这个问题。我们必须帮助客户建立信心,让他们相信自己正在做出一个明智的决定。“我会为你撑腰,你会成为英雄,而不是傻瓜”——这正是《JOLT 效应》所要讲的,它讲述的是最顶尖的销售人员是如何做到这一点的。不是说《挑战者销售》错了,只是那个故事还不完整。你必须打破现状偏见——如果你做不到这一点,你根本不会遇到犹豫不决的问题。但即便你克服了客户的漠然和现状偏见,你还有第二场仗要打,那就是你必须建立信心,让他们对即将迈出的这一步——坦率地说,这是一次信念的飞跃——感到安心。而他们的恐惧,你必须应对那种恐惧——如果出了问题,他们担心自己会被追责。
从具体案例谈起
**Lenny Rachitsky:**我们稍后会谈到你开发的、用来实际执行这些策略的方法。但首先,为了让这一切更加具体,我在想一个例子。比如说 CRM——一个更好的 CRM 产品。假设有人已经安装了 Salesforce,现在觉得可能外面有更好的产品,应该评估一下。然后从试图打造更好 CRM 的初创公司的角度来看,总有这样一个建议:你必须好十倍,才能引起任何人的注意。我认为这正好印证了你所展示的发现——产品需要好到如此程度,以至于这种恐惧被降低。你能不能谈谈一个具体案例,不管是这个还是其他的,让这一切更加具体?
**Matt Dixon:**我们遇到过大量的案例。你提到初创公司很有意思——我之前和一家大型企业软件公司交流时,把这个研究成果展示给他们的一些销售领导者看,房间里有人说:“我很庆幸我们是现在的我们——我们就是这个领域的 800 磅大猩猩,尤其是在目前这样的市场环境下。“因为有句老话——虽然原来说的不是 IBM,但大家都知道:没有人因为买了 IBM 的产品而被开除,对吧?
这家公司就是他们那个领域的 IBM,是那头 800 磅的大猩猩。他们有品牌实力、有声誉,他们是安全的选择。这支团队对此感到相当宽慰,尤其是在当前这样竞争激烈的环境下——市场上到处都在争夺交易、争夺注意力、争夺胜利,尤其是在科技行业。
驱动购买恐惧的三大因素
**Matt Dixon:**但我要说的是,你们得记住——这一点可能是对的,而且我认同,对初创公司来说确实如此,你需要好上十倍才能获得客户的关注。要让客户愿意在你身上押注,可能甚至需要比十倍更多。因为选择一个未经市场验证的供应商本身就存在固有风险。但我对这些人的提醒是:“那么请记住,驱动失败恐惧和犹豫不决的因素到底是什么?”
事实上有三个大的因素。第一个是:我有没有做出正确的选择?我知道我想和这家供应商合作,但我有没有把方案配置对?合同期限合适吗?实施方式对不对?用例选得对吗?集成方案呢?所有那些专业服务还是自己来做的选择,所有这些大问题。
客户担心的第二件事,也就是第二种失败恐惧,是他们担心在合同签署之后会了解到一些新的信息,让这个决定看起来不那么明智。我举一个非常具体的例子。不久前,大概一个月前,我和一家科技公司聊过,他们拿下了公司成立以来最大的一笔交易。这是一家早期阶段的公司,七位数的交易额,对这家公司来说是改变格局的存在。他们击败了一些大型老牌竞争对手,这是一场巨大的胜利。
他们出去庆祝了。简直太棒了——他们的第一个大型企业级客户胜利,第一笔七位数的交易,第一次打败那些老牌厂商。但不幸的是,在他们赢得这笔交易大约两周后,他们所在领域的新一期 Gartner Magic Quadrant 发布了,他们的表现嘛……怎么说呢,对吧?他们不是领导者,大概处于中游水平。
一笔因 Gartner 报告而告吹的交易
突然之间,签了协议的客户那边,CTO 被所有人轮番质问:“你看到 Gartner Magic Quadrant 了吗?看起来我们刚砸了七位数的那家公司,在 Gartner 分析师眼里也就一般般?我们有没有跟那些公司、这些公司谈过?为什么我们不选领导者?“诸如此类。
最终他们退出了合同,因为 CTO 说:“我每天都在跟其他关键利益相关者解释,试图说服他们我们确实做了充分的尽调,但人生苦短,我们大概还是会选一家大厂商。抱歉。“这真是一个令人痛苦的故事。但客户就是这样——他们会不断继续做调研,因为他们不想在某些新信息浮出水面时被打个措手不及。这是第二种主要的失败恐惧驱动因素。
第三个因素是客户担心自己看不到 ROI。他们拿不到全部收益。你可能为他们预测了销售效率提升五倍的效果,但如果最终只实现了两到三倍呢?而我的名字签在协议上,CFO 过来问为什么我们没有达到预期收益?在当今环境下,那可不仅仅是颜面扫地的问题,你可能因此被开除。
大厂商同样无法幸免
这些客户真正需要的是供应商能替他们撑腰,确保他们能看到销售过程中所展示和承诺的那些收益。我对这家大型企业技术公司说的是:“各位,是的,现在做初创公司很艰难,早期公司风险确实很大,但谁提供的选择更多——是他们还是你们?你们有合作伙伴生态系统,有二十种不同的云产品,过去三年收购了七家公司,你们拥有海量的选择,而这恰恰加剧了买家的焦虑——他们担心自己没有选对东西。”
第二,你觉得关于你们的报道多,还是关于他们的多?关于你们的报道能塞满一整个足球场。因为你们就是那头 800 磅的大猩猩,每个人都有和你们合作过的经历,都有各自的看法,无论好坏,人们都想做到万无一失。
最后一点,事实证明你们的定价要高得多,因为你们已经从像那些小虾米初创公司一样卖简单产品,转向了卖大型企业级解决方案。你们卖给客户的不是七位数的交易,而是八位数、九位数的交易。这加剧了客户的焦虑——他们必须确保这笔投资能看到回报。
在很多方面,你们比初创公司更容易被这些因素夹击——因为他们没有那么多选择,关于他们的报道也没那么多,投资额也更低,所以对客户来说风险反而稍微小一些。你们并不能仅仅因为是大品牌就高枕无忧。”
**Lenny Rachitsky:**你把为什么购买新软件如此令人焦虑这件事说得很清楚了。作为公司里的一名采购者,有太多可能让你栽跟头的地方了。April Dunford——我想这个说法借鉴了她的表达——她谈到如今买软件实际上比卖软件压力更大,正是因为你提到的这些因素。
**Matt Dixon:**是的,我认为她在这点上说得非常到位。客户确实非常、非常害怕这件事不能成功落地。这真的很有意思——销售人员可以举出无数次这样的场景:客户购买你的产品完全合情合理,会让事情变得好很多,能解决他们的大问题。
他们对现有方案如此不满,买你的产品简直是毫无疑问的事。客户看了也会表示认同——但最终还是不做决定,就是因为那些”万一呢”。
**Lenny Rachitsky:**是啊。创始人听了肯定很崩溃,心想:“拜托,我们的产品明明好那么多,你们在搞什么?“但我认为这恰好解释了他们可能正在面临的很多挑战。
JOLT 方法
**Lenny Rachitsky:**这正好可以过渡到接下来要讨论的话题——如何实际运用这些洞察来改进你的销售流程。你有一套方法,我记得你叫它 JOLT 方法?
**Matt Dixon:**是的。
**Lenny Rachitsky:**好,我们进入正题。
**Matt Dixon:**JOLT 是一个缩写。恰好拼出来就是这个效果,但我很喜欢它——既容易记住,又恰如其分地描述了正在发生的事情。我们的客户卡在犹豫不决的状态里,他们想从我们这里购买,但就是迈不出那一步,因为担心可能出问题。你得把他们 JOLT 一下,推动他们前进。我们要给他们一个 JOLT,让他们付诸行动。
**Lenny Rachitsky:**漂亮。
如何执行 JOLT
**Matt Dixon:**具体怎么做呢?第一步是判断他们的犹豫程度,搞清楚我们面对的是什么状况。第二步是给出一个推荐。第三步是让他们停止无休止的研究,开始信任我们,限制——我们称之为限制探索。T 是我们必须给交易去风险化,把一些风险从台面上拿掉,为客户建立起一道安全网,让他们觉得我们在替他们兜底。
我们可以逐一展开聊聊。我从 J 开始,因为它是第一个字母,但我也想说明一点——虽然它看起来像是线性的,我想请听众们不要把这当成一个”我先做第一步、第二步、第三步、第四步”这样的 J-O-L-T 流程。你可以把它理解为:从 J 开始,而 J 会告诉你下一步该做什么。是 T?是 L?是 O?还是先做 O,然后再处理 T?接着又要回到 O,因为它又出现了。
把 J 想象成一根探矿杖——我们如何找出让客户紧张的东西?这是一件非常非常非常棘手的事情。我一直把犹豫不决比作销售中的一氧化碳中毒——它无处不在,但没有气味、没有味道,你需要一个一氧化碳检测器,而 J 就是这个检测器。
如何把失败恐惧摆到台面上
我们怎么把对失败的恐惧摆到台面上来谈?这个问题的难点在于,我相信你的大多数听众都了解这个现象——所有人,尤其是客户,尤其是高管,都深受所谓邓宁-克鲁格效应(Dunning-Kruger effect)的困扰,即人们认为自己比实际更擅长某些事情,而果断决策就是其中之一。买家会说、也认为自己很果断。
事实上,如果你去调研你的客户——他们并不建议你这么做——你找一百个人问他们是否认为自己果断,大概九十九个会说:“当然,我敢拍板做艰难的决定。我凭直觉管理。我作为高管就是在刀尖上做那些重大决策。“但研究数据讲述了一个截然不同的故事。在我们研究的两百五十万次销售通话中,87% 的买家表现出中等或高度的犹豫不决。
不担心失败恐惧的人只有 13%。是的,这些人确实存在。顺便说一句,如果你找到这样的人,你应该立刻把所有东西都卖给他们,因为他们做决策纯粹就是看金额、ROI,以及对业务是否合理。对他们来说这是一个理性决策,但对于其余的人,他们在应对大量情绪,而这些情绪全都与失败恐惧纠缠在一起。
这件事之所以如此困难,不仅仅是因为邓宁-克鲁格效应让我们自以为比实际更果断——即便你的客户知道自己犹豫不决,或者担心失败,或者担心如果这笔采购不成功老板会怎么看自己,他们也不愿意谈论这件事,因为这很尴尬。他们不会说出”天哪,我得跟你说,这东西最好能回本,因为如果不行的话,我在老板那里已经很危险了。她本来就不喜欢我,这根稻草压上去就完了”这样的话。
声呐探测法:pings and echoes
我们怎么把它摆到台面上?我们发现有一种方法不太管用——经典的开放式问题,比如”Lenny,你去芝乐坊的时候,是因为点不了菜而饿着肚子离开,还是吃得满意?“我猜,这种方式用在客户身上效果不好,你会很快结束这笔销售,因为同样地,你的客户会觉得这有点冒犯。他们更愿意把自己看作果断的人。
我们发现了一种技巧——实际上这不在书里,是我们写完书之后发现的——高绩效销售使用的一种方法,叫做 ping 和 echo(声呐探测与回波)。想象一下水面舰艇用声呐探测水中的潜艇:它们向水中发出一个 ping,然后用声呐聆听反射回来的回波,回波能告诉它们——是友方潜艇还是敌方潜艇?只是一头鲸鱼?是朝我们开来还是远离我们?速度多快?它们是否即将发射鱼雷?诸如此类的信息。
我们在销售中想做同样的事。它的运作方式是,销售人员尝试表述出一种担忧——但不是要揭客户的短,而是要获得确认或否认,即他们所表述的确实也是买方的顾虑。
假设我们在讨论一笔采购,已经进行了很多很好的对话,我给你做了很多演示,你们对我们展示的一切都很满意。我们展示了合作伙伴选项、不同配置方案,在这边做了概念验证,在那边做了试点。你们把这些照单全收,但我隐隐觉得你们其实并不知道自己想要什么,而我们展示了这么多东西,可能反而把这个问题弄得更严重了。
这时候我可能会对你说:“Lenny,我很好奇我们能不能在这里校准一下。我这么问是有原因的——很多客户在我们合作流程走到这个阶段时,都会被各种选项淹没。说实话,我可能还加剧了这个问题。我们对自己的产品很自豪,想把一切可能性展示给你看,但我也知道,如果我们最终要合作,你一开始就告诉我预算有限,不可能全都要。你得区分哪些是锦上添花,哪些是必须实现的。我很好奇,你和你的团队是否已经清楚在方案中什么是该包含的、什么是不需要的?”
接下来会发生几种情况。一种是你可能会说:“你知道吗?不,我们确实不清楚。你们展示的东西我们都很喜欢,但正如你说的,我们不能全都要。所以我们很想了解,跟我们类似的公司都是从什么开始的?怎么上手?哪些东西可以先不要,以后再加?“另一种情况是客户会说:“不不不,我们只是在客气。你展示的很多东西我们其实没那么大兴趣。挺酷的,但不适合我们。我们非常清楚自己想要什么。让我现在就告诉你吧。不过,我真正担心的是,一旦我们把规格、配置和价格都定下来了,我要拿去给 CFO 审批,因为需要她批准。我没法拿你们说的提升销售生产力 10% 这样的承诺来构建我们的商业方案,她会把我从办公室笑出来的。帮我理清楚,对我们来说什么样的结果才是可信的,这样我才能去推销,也才能有信心我们真的能达成。”
再次强调,这不是为了让客户难堪,而是为了让这些顾虑浮出水面,被认识到、被处理、被合理化。你很正常,每个人都在这件事上挣扎。我们给客户面前摆了太多东西,结果反而造成了伤害——他们不知道该选什么。让我来为你提供服务和价值。
诊断客户的决策障碍
Matt Dixon: 这就是我们首先会指向的东西,它会告诉我们:好的,这是一个选择问题吗?客户是不是被选项淹没了,不知道该选什么,就像我们刚才举的那个例子。还是说他们只是在无休止地做调研,觉得自己还没有真正走完这笔采购的学习曲线?又或者,不,实际上我不确定我们能不能物有所值——我们搞砸这种事简直是家常便饭,我不觉得这次会有什么不同,然后我还得背锅——所以帮我控制一下下行风险。它会告诉我们接下来在这段旅程中该往哪个方向走,如果这么说你能理解的话。
Lenny Rachitsky: 对,很棒。这里的建议基本上就是去了解客户内部是否清楚知道自己想要什么,这能帮助他们做出决策。就像你提出的那样,那个关键时刻——“帮我理解一下,你和你的团队是否清楚这个方案中该包含什么、不包含什么?”
Matt Dixon: 对,那只是一个例子。那是在我假设客户确实在选择上很挣扎的情况下。而我的假设也可能是:客户知道自己想要什么,已经做了大量调研,但真正担心的是 ROI,担心自己根本无法实现那个目标。
这个 ping 听起来可能完全不同。可能我们一直在讨论中,你在反复要求 ROI 计算中的多个参数,不断调整变量,试图让它无懈可击。但很多客户在这方面都会有点挣扎,因为这是一件大事——你把自己的名字署在上面。也许我们应该聊聊这是否是你的一块顾虑。是不是存在一个可信度差距?你是不是担心你那边或我们这边的执行落差?
让我们谈谈这个问题,这样我就能设定合理的期望,让你在去找 CFO 争取投资时真的有底气。这个 ping 就可以这样发出去,但它是基于我认为是什么在拖住你。
Lenny Rachitsky: 明白了。就像是在这个阶段,很多客户都有这个问题……
Matt Dixon: 是的,没错。
Lenny Rachitsky: ……而这个问题可能来自你认为阻碍他们的那个原因。
Matt Dixon: 对,我觉得这个表达非常准确。就是:“在目前这个阶段,大多数像您这样的客户都在思考这个,或者担心那个,或者对此开始有点焦虑。让我们来聊聊吧。“
第二步:给出你的推荐
Lenny Rachitsky: 太好了。好,酷。让我们进入第二步,给出你的推荐。
Matt Dixon: 当然。对,这正好跟我们之前讨论过的那个例子相关。选项真的是一把双刃剑。我们从研究中了解到,选项在早期是非常好的。如果你在贸易展上跟客户见面,客户路过你们的展位,或者你在做第一次演示——“让百花齐放”吧。但如果你想让客户真正做出决策,你就得拿出除草机,把选项削减到一个可控的范围。
这方面的研究结论非常明确:在某个临界点之后,过多的选项会让客户不知所措,并导致一系列糟糕的结果。会导致客户根本不做决策,因为他们不想做出错误的决定。“我不想和你合作了,但你在我们面前摆了这么多选项,我不想因为选错了而背锅。“它还会导致所谓的”决策后失调”——就是我本来以为做出了正确的决定,但现在了解得越多,人们问的问题越刁钻,也许我需要重新审视这件事。“嘿,Lenny,我们得作废那个协议重新来过,我觉得我们搞不清楚正确的方式。”
我们必须认识到,提供选项有它的时机和场合,收窄选择也有它的时机和场合。对销售人员来说,这里简单的指导原则是:你必须从询问客户想要什么、仅仅诊断他们的需求,转变为真正向他们推荐应该怎么做。我发现销售人员对此会有些紧张,因为他们不想让人觉得——“我告诉你应该选 A”,但客户说”我不想选那个,我想选 B”,然后感觉双方就对立起来了。
他们担心这一点。销售人员一直成长在一个信条中:这是客户的选择,客户永远是对的,我只需要引导他们,但最终应该是他们来做决定。但有时候客户做不到,他们对这些决策了解得不够。我们懂这些东西,因为作为销售人员,我们每天都在吃、睡、呼吸这些。我们在这个行业里工作,他们不在。
我们处于一个有利得多的位置,能够引导他们——“你知道吗?你其实不需要 X、Y 和 Z。可以把这些从方案里去掉。像你们这样的公司,都是这样起步的。让我给你放三个选项。我会选中间那个,因为我真的觉得那对你们第一年来说是最好的,然后我们可以从那里扩展。”
打个比方,我经常让大家回想一下上次去一家高级餐厅的经历。你看着菜单上那些昂贵的主菜,每道看起来都很美味,但你不知道该点什么,于是你问服务员有什么推荐。如果服务员对你说:“嗯,您今晚想吃什么口味的?“——这完全没有任何帮助,对吧?你离做出决定并没有更近一步。他们基本上就是把问题又扔回给了你。
但一个真正厉害的服务员会这样说:“如果您想要我的意见,我非常喜欢这道菜,而且我大概会说它是我们最受欢迎的。每天晚上都能卖完,现在还有,您运气不错。不过分量很大,是大份的。如果您想吃点清淡的,有一道素食选项。它在 Yelp 上没那么火,但我很喜欢,绝对美味,算是我们这里的一匹黑马吧。不过请记住,我们这里做的每道菜都很好吃。如果您不喜欢这两个选择,选任何一道都不会出错,但这俩是我个人的最爱。“
委托效应
Matt Dixon: 在那一刻发生的事情,心理学家称之为委托效应(delegation effect)。也就是说,做出错误决策的负担不再完全压在决策者一个人的肩上,而是被分担了。想想看,如果你点了服务员推荐的菜,结果不喜欢,这是谁的错?严格来说,是你的错,因为是你点的;但某种程度上也是他们的错,因为是他们推荐的。
你会觉得得到了那个推荐、那个背书,就有了一种安全感。这是一个很简单的例子,但它在复杂的销售中同样适用。客户在寻找一个能分担做出错误决策的风险和负担的人。有一个合作伙伴在引导他们——什么该关注、什么不该关注,什么该考虑、什么该从方案中去掉——这实际上让人非常安心和宽慰,也提高了从他们那里获得某种决策的可能性。
Lenny Rachitsky: 太精彩了。这个过渡非常自然,正好可以引出《挑战者销售》——我们接下来就要谈到它。但让我们先把最后两步走完,然后再聊《挑战者销售》,那个基本上就是把这个理念发挥到了极致。
L:限制探索
Matt Dixon: 最后两个步骤。L 是针对那种在做无穷无尽研究的客户。每个销售都见过这种客户——他们对推荐电话的数量或已完成的研究量永远不满意,想跟越来越多的人交谈。他们处于信息过载模式,或者说是我们所说的分析瘫痪(analysis paralysis)模式,因为在某个时刻他们永远无法满足,总觉得所有答案都在下一篇白皮书里、下一个推荐电话里、或 LinkedIn 上下一个交谈的人那里。
要阻止这种情况,销售人员需要理解客户为什么会这样做。他们不想被意外”惊吓”——这是最主要的原因。但他们也不信任销售人员会如实相告。他们相信销售拿的工资就是用来卖给他们超出需求的东西,用来蒙骗他们,把难看的一面藏起来,只谈平台上好用的部分,不谈不好用的部分。
你不会介绍那些讨厌你的客户,你只会介绍喜欢你的客户,而且我们都知道他们会为我们说好话。这就是客户心中的想法。你必须真正实现转变——让客户停止试图成为专家,开始信任你作为专家。做到这一点有两个关键。
第一,你必须建立信任。我知道这听起来像是老生常谈,但我们在分析中发现,优秀的销售在非常早期就会做一些具体的事情。他们对客户极其坦诚——比如”嘿,我知道你对这个功能很感兴趣。说实话,我们在这方面的评价褒贬不一。这对我们来说还是个早期功能,我们还在解决一些问题。“或者”我知道你对这个用例感兴趣,但我必须诚实说,我们在这方面并不是市场上最好的,竞争对手比我们强得多。”
这类时刻向客户表明你不是来蒙骗他们的,你是来帮他们做出一个好决策的。对销售来说,客户是买你的、不买你的、还是买竞争对手的,其实没什么区别——你只是想帮他们做出一个好的决策。这就是第一步,建立信任。
第二,你必须展示专业能力。我们在很多销售互动中看到,尤其是在科技领域,销售人员会带着一支”小丑车”式的专家团出场——领域专家、解决方案工程师、产品人员、高管赞助人——然后把话筒直接交给这些人。
在那个时刻,对销售人员来说其实很危险。客户听起来好像很喜欢,对吧?他们很享受——我在跟那些真正懂行的人交谈。但与此同时正在发生的是,销售人员正在被主动降级到他们听起来所是的那个位置。如果他们听起来不过是一个高级主持人或协调人,那客户对他们的认知也就仅此而已。
如果你没有提供任何价值或专业知识,你有什么资格去引导客户选择什么?你不需要像产品人员那样深入——你也不可能做到,你是销售,不是产品人员——但你确实需要比客户更深入,你确实需要展示那种专业能力。这就是关键——让客户停止试图成为专家,开始信任你作为他们的专家。
T:消除风险
然后,T 是把风险从桌面上拿走。做到这一点有两个关键。我认为第一个其实在很早期就会发生,那就是重新设定客户的期望。普通的销售很喜欢收到客户的主动咨询——客户说”嘿,我在你们网站上看到了那个案例研究,那家客户的销售效率提升了10倍,我们想要那个,听起来太好了。“那家公司跟我们同一个行业,太棒了。这对我们来说是一个十拿九稳的业务案例。
普通销售的想法是:“如果你对这个很兴奋,我不会打消你的念头,因为那意味着你会兴冲冲地拿去给 CFO 看,兴冲冲地签合同然后启动。”
但优秀销售的做法是,他们知道虽然自己会为那些声称、那些案例研究、那些佐证背书,但他们会尽量低承诺、高交付。他们可能会这样说:“Lenny,没错,那确实是一个很好的案例。那笔销售我也参与了,但我们还需要了解的是,那个项目一切都很完美。他们投入了充足的资源,没有集成问题,没有任何波折,过程完美无缺。你我恐怕想不出多少技术实施是那样完成的。
我更希望我们把你的业务案例建立在5倍销售效率提升的基础上,因为我们在100%的实施案例中至少都能达到这个水平。然后让我们在这个基础上超额交付,因为根据我对你们组织的了解,我认为我们的表现会更好,轻轻松松6倍、7倍、8倍、9倍,甚至10倍。但我们不想让你直接走进去承诺10倍的销售效率提升。如果到年底我们做到了7倍,CFO 反而开始质疑了——而从绝对值来说她本应对7倍感到欣喜,对吧?我们要确保为自己设定好成功的条件。”
另一件你需要做的事情是建立安全网方案。这有很多种不同的形式。可以是在交易成交之前就把实施团队拉到电话会议上,或者客户成功团队、客户管理团队,这样我们就可以开始规划路线图:“嘿,一旦签署协议,以下就是我们接下来六个月要怎么合作,确保你们获得期望的全部价值,甚至更多。以下是我们需要做的事情,以下是阶段关卡,以下是各个负责人,以下是我们将要监控的指标,以下是我们联系的频率。”
这会让客户非常有信心,因为感觉像是:“哦,你们以前做过这个,对吧?你们经历过了、做过了,帮助过像我这样的其他客户获得价值。“从这类事情,到添加专业服务支持——尤其是当你想到一笔技术采购的时候。我不是说免费提供,但你会发现高绩效销售也会加上专业服务,这不仅仅是因为他们想卖更多——虽然他们确实想,因为他们是高绩效销售——关键在于他们定位这些服务的方式。
他们通常把它定位为一份保险政策。“嘿,我知道你们想自己动手做。这是我们方案的优点之一——你们完全可以。你们有所有的培训支持、所有的视频、你们需要的所有赋能内容。但我知道这对你们来说是一个重要的优先事项,我认为划出一部分专业服务工时是很明智的,这样我们的 A 团队就会随时待命,以防出现任何闪失——如果真的出现了,我们会帮你们迅速回到正轨。因为我们最不希望看到的就是你们因为进展受挫而不高兴,无法兑现你向老板承诺的成果。所以,让我们把这个安排好。“
安全网与退出条款
我们可以用很多种不同的方式来创建安全网。在某些行业中,退出条款是一个选项。这在 B2B 中不太常见,但在某些情况下你可以提供这类条款,或者专门的合同豁免条款等。我们可以做很多不同的事情来建立这张安全网,让客户觉得自己不是一个人从飞机上跳下去,而你是那个带他们 tandem 跳伞的教练,会安全地引导他们着陆。
Lenny Rachitsky: 太棒了。所有这些,尤其是最后这一步,本质上你面对的问题是——他们很可能不会做出任何决定,你真正在对抗的就是这一点,帮助他们……
Matt Dixon: 没错,没错。
Lenny Rachitsky: ……减轻对搞砸的担忧。
Matt Dixon: 对,没错。
Lenny Rachitsky: 我特别喜欢关于”低承诺、高交付”这一点,因为很大一部分——而且你接触的大多是 B2B SaaS 软件公司,对吧?B2B SaaS 公司?
Matt Dixon: 我们的数据集涵盖了很多行业,不过 SaaS 领域确实是我们目前看到犹豫不决最严重的地方。这并不只是说 SaaS 是个容易中枪的目标,但它确实充斥着犹豫不决。而不幸的是,我认为它同样充斥着销售人员犯的那些实际上会让情况变得更糟的错误。不过我们的数据也来自制造企业、服务类企业等各行各业。这种现象在各行业中普遍存在且高度一致。
Lenny Rachitsky: 关于低承诺、高交付,我觉得这对大多数公司想达到的目标尤其有力——即净收入留存率超过 100%,这样你就可以在组织内部进一步扩展。帮助他们打好基础,让他们感觉”哇,这比我们预期的还要好”,这非常有意义。而不是……
Matt Dixon: 完全同意。是的。
Lenny Rachitsky: ……而不是”交付的东西不如我们预期的”。太棒了。在进入《挑战者销售》之前,关于《JOLT 效应》还有什么最后的智慧想留给听众的吗?
暂停按钮:区分冷漠与犹豫
Matt Dixon: 我唯一的建议就是——当客户出现这种情况时,请按下暂停键。因为我们都知道,客户会临阵退缩,通常是在后期阶段,这确实让人很沮丧。几乎所有销售人员的本能反应——我们的分析显示,我们研究的 75% 的销售人员会立刻转向加大 FOMO 的力度。
回到老一套——“你拿不到这些好处了,你会继续陷在现在这种糟糕的状态里。“加大不作为成本的力度,或者试图用一些基于价格或其他交付时间窗口的紧迫感驱动因素来推动客户前进。但请记住,如果客户已经认同现状不够理想,而且你已经有成交意向——那本质上你是在一个已经害怕的客户身上叠加恐惧,你实际上是在让情况变得更糟。
按下暂停键,稍微反思一下这里真正发生了什么。是他们不关心,还是他们犹豫不决?这其实是两件非常不同的事。
《挑战者销售》
Lenny Rachitsky: 太棒了。我知道你十分钟后还有一个会议,所以这将会是我们做过的信息密度最高的一期播客。我们还有十分钟来聊聊《挑战者销售》。
Matt Dixon: 好的。
Lenny Rachitsky: 首先,这本书到现在卖了多少本?
Matt Dixon: 大概一百万本吧。
Lenny Rachitsky: 天哪。
Matt Dixon: 是的。
Lenny Rachitsky: 太疯狂了。
Matt Dixon: 确实很多,是的。
Lenny Rachitsky: 好的,所以这是销售领域的传奇之作。我想很多人都听说过它,至少有些人了解其中的理念。我们花点时间聊聊。如果让我总结这本书的核心洞见,基本上就是——最优秀的销售人员会挑战客户的思维方式,教他们认识市场和应该怎么做,而不是仅仅帮他们得到他们想要的东西。
Matt Dixon: 说得非常好。就像 FOMO、FOMU 这种简写一样,我给销售人员的一个简写是——大多数销售人员试图弄清楚的是,是什么让客户夜不能寐,对吧?这是经典解决方案销售的思路——挖掘需求、诊断等等。
而挑战者的方式是向客户展示什么应该让他们夜不能寐。你知道哪些他们需要知道的东西?其他客户是如何利用你的解决方案为他们的组织创造回报和价值的?有哪些他们不知道但你知道的风险——因为你要在一周内和十个类似的客户交谈,而这个数量比他们一年里见过的还多。
你是他们了解外部世界的一扇窗口,这正是挑战者真正理解的东西。不过这不是免费咨询,因为如果你回想《挑战者销售》里的内容,它不仅仅是抛出这些颠覆性的观点来重新定义客户对世界的理解。它还要导向你独有的优势。你真正要做的是制造一场火,然后成为城里唯一卖灭火器的那个人。
Lenny Rachitsky: 能分享一个挑战者式销售的案例吗?
Dentsply 案例
Matt Dixon: 可以。我们写了《挑战者销售》的续作,叫《挑战者客户》(The Challenger Customer)。在那本书里,我们讲了一个来自 Dentsply 公司的案例。Dentsply,顾名思义,生产牙科用品。他们向牙科诊所和牙医办公室销售设备和产品。
几年前,Dentsply 开发了一款——我想大家都能感同身受——当你去看牙医时,洁牙师在给你抛光牙齿,或者在用水枪,或者不幸的是牙医在用钻头。那个手柄连着一根很重的电源线,接到一个电源底座上,里面有水流和电流通过等等。
Dentsply 研发了世界上第一款轻量级、符合人体工程学的无线手柄,可以接钻头、清洁工具等等。这是一个彻底的突破。实际上,他们揭幕的方式挺有意思——你还记得《低俗小说》里打开手提箱,然后光芒从中散发出来的那个场景吗?他们给每个销售人员发了一个类似的铝制小手提箱,里面有蛋壳形的泡沫内衬,放着一只手柄。
我不记得它叫什么了,就叫它 XP-9000 手柄吧。但里面有一只演示用的手柄,他们会拿着去各个牙医办公室展示。它里面真的有蓝色灯光……
Lenny Rachitsky: 哇。
Matt Dixon: 揭幕环节非常酷。他们会把手柄拿出来,递给牙医或诊所负责人,他们握在手里会说:“什么?轻了这么多,手感也好,而且是无线?太不可思议了。这是一场革命。“然后,他们的第一个问题就是:“多少钱?”
Matt Dixon: 当他们告诉对方,这个价格是传统有线重手柄的三倍时,牙医们会轻轻把它放回公文包,合上包,然后说:“能不能给我报个新钻头或者新的抛光附件的价格?“他们完全无法让任何人愿意为这款比旧款贵得多的产品买单。
他们做了大量工作,弄清了一个关键点——他们知道这款产品是独一无二的,市场上没有其他人能做出来,他们是唯一攻克了这个难题的供应商,完全是颠覆性创新。但他们一直没有给客户一个愿意为这项创新支付溢价的理由,直到他们发现了洁牙师使用的设备与缺勤率和工伤赔偿之间的关联。
结果发现,腕管综合征、肩颈和腰部损伤发病率最高的职业之一,正是牙科洁牙师。原因在于,她们整天站着,以别扭的角度举着那根被沉重线缆向下拖拽的手柄。这就是为什么牙科诊所很难留住洁牙师——她们频繁请病假,一休就是几个月去做肩部重建手术,还产生高昂的医疗保险理赔和工伤赔偿。
于是他们重新设计了销售话术。现在,当他们走进牙科诊所,坐下来会说:“我想和您谈谈您的洁牙师团队。你们是否注意到人员流失率在升高?有没有因腕管、腰部、颈部或肩部损伤导致的缺勤?你们目前是怎么处理的?这对您的业务造成了多少成本?”
他们让牙医开始谈论这个问题。牙医们会说:“不仅仅是保险和工伤赔偿的费用,还有当洁牙师受伤的时候——这本来就是重复性动作的工作——她们一旦受伤请病假,我就得重新安排所有的洁牙预约和其他就诊,结果就是一堆不满的客户,他们可能会跑到街对面那家诊所去,或者在 Google 评价上说我的坏话。”
对牙医来说,连锁反应是方方面面的。失去一名洁牙师的代价是巨大的,而招聘他们的市场又非常紧张。Dentsply 的做法是从这里切入对话,然后说:“我们发现,根据我们自己独立的研究,导致这些不良后果——缺勤、重复性动作损伤——的一个主要驱动因素,与洁牙师使用的设备有关。正是因为她们整天举着那根老式沉重的手柄,连着那根又重又粗的线缆,以别扭的角度做着重复性动作。但如果这个问题可以被解决呢?如果这不再是一个问题了呢?”
牙医会说:“那你们怎么解决?目前没有其他技术啊。""我们用的设备三十年来就没变过。让我给您看看新的 XP-9000。这是全球首款无线、轻量化、人体工学洁牙手柄。我们可以向您展示,洁牙师们明显更偏好它,因为她们受伤的频率大大降低了——它更容易握持,不会对关节和容易受伤的压迫点造成压力。”
这是一个很简单的例子,但你可以看到,他们卖的仍然是那款精巧的手柄——只不过之前,他们一上来就亮出产品,介绍功能、好处,然后对话就直接跳到了”多少钱”。而现在,他们是把产品作为终点来引出。他们从一个洞察切入,让客户产生解决这个业务问题的意愿,而结果就是,唯一的解决方案就是购买 Dentsply 的这款 XP-9000 手柄。
关键经验
Lenny Rachitsky: 这本书的核心教训——我知道我们没有太多时间深入展开——就是以客户可能尚未意识到的洞察作为起点。让他们了解事情的发展趋势,帮助他们认识到那些他们可能还不知道的、需要关注的问题,然后再过渡到”以下是我们如何为您解决这个问题”。
Matt Dixon: 没错,完全正确。要确保这些关联非常紧密。做好这件事,首先要回答一个问题:客户为什么要买你的产品而不是竞争对手的?不是因为 你更以客户为中心或更创新——你的竞争对手也完全可以这么声称。也不是因为你是你所售产品的”全球领先解决方案提供商”。
它的起点在于你的产品,或者你交付产品的方式,或者你的服务交付中某个只有你的公司能做到、你有独到能力的地方。其他任何人都碰都碰不到。然后,第二个问题是:什么条件成立时,客户才会愿意为此付费——最好是支付溢价?这就是一次挑战式对话的核心要素。
推荐与收尾
Lenny Rachitsky: 太精彩了。Matt,我答应过按时放你走。最后几个问题——如果大家想深入了解,在哪里可以找到你的书?听众怎样才能帮到你?
Matt Dixon: 谢谢你的好意。我很乐意和在像这样的节目里听到我的人建立联系。如果你是在播客上听到我的,发个 LinkedIn 邀请过来说”我在 Lenny 的节目里听到了你”就行。我在上面挺活跃的,很乐意和大家建立联系,请随时联系我。
如果你想了解更多关于 JOLT Effect 的内容,我们围绕这套方法论做了很多工作坊和培训,可以访问 jolteffect.com。上面有很多免费工具可以下载,帮助你把这些概念在自己的销售团队中落地实践,或者你是个人销售也可以用。当然,书到处都能买到,只要是卖好书的地方——我觉得现在基本就是互联网了吧。
Lenny Rachitsky: 太棒了。Matt,非常感谢你来。
Matt Dixon: 谢谢你,Lenny。非常愉快,谢谢。
Lenny Rachitsky: 大家再见。非常感谢收听。如果你觉得这期节目有价值,可以在 Apple Podcasts、Spotify 或你喜欢的播客应用上订阅。也请考虑给我们评分或留下评价,这真的能帮助更多听众发现这个节目。你可以在 lennyspodcast.com 找到所有往期节目或了解更多关于这个节目的信息。下期再见。
术语表
| 原文 | 中文 |
|---|---|
| absenteeism | 缺勤率/缺勤 |
| analysis paralysis | 分析瘫痪 |
| April Dunford | April Dunford |
| business case | 业务案例 |
| carpal tunnel syndrome | 腕管综合征 |
| CEB | CEB(一家研究机构,后被 Gartner 收购) |
| deals | 交易(此处指销售成交) |
| delegation effect | 委托效应 |
| Dentsply | Dentsply(一家牙科用品制造商) |
| Dunning-Kruger effect | 邓宁-克鲁格效应 |
| FOMO | FOMO(错失恐惧) |
| FOMU | FOMU(搞砸的恐惧,Fear Of Messing Up) |
| Gartner | Gartner |
| Gartner Magic Quadrant | Gartner 魔力象限 |
| hygienist | 洁牙师 |
| inbound lead | 主动咨询(入站线索) |
| JOLT method | JOLT 方法 |
| Kahneman | 卡尼曼(Daniel Kahneman,诺贝尔经济学奖得主) |
| Lenny Rachitsky | Lenny Rachitsky |
| let a thousand flowers bloom | 让百花齐放(比喻初期提供大量选项) |
| limit the exploration | 限制探索 |
| loss aversion | 损失厌恶 |
| Matt Dixon | Matt Dixon(《挑战者销售》《JOLT 效应》合著者) |
| Neil Rackham | Neil Rackham |
| net revenue retention | 净收入留存率 |
| no-brainer | 毫无疑问的事 |
| omission bias | 遗漏偏差 |
| pings and echoes | ping 和 echo(声呐探测与回波) |
| POC | POC(概念验证,Proof of Concept) |
| post-decision dysfunction | 决策后失调 |
| professional services | 专业服务 |
| proof point | 佐证 |
| prospect theory | 前景理论 |
| reference call | 推荐电话(客户参考验证电话) |
| ROI | ROI(投资回报率) |
| solution selling | 解决方案销售 |
| SPIN Selling | SPIN Selling |
| stage gates | 阶段关卡 |
| tandem skydiving | tandem 跳伞(双人跳伞) |
| The Challenger Customer | 《挑战者客户》 |
| The Challenger Sale | 《挑战者销售》 |
| The JOLT Effect | 《JOLT 效应》 |
| trade show | 贸易展 |
| Tversky | 特沃斯基(Amos Tversky,认知心理学家) |
| weed whacker | 除草机(比喻削减选项) |
| white paper | 白皮书 |
| workers’ comp | 工伤赔偿 |
此文档由 AI 分片翻译(translate_long_document)