CMOs discuss FOMU (Fear of Messing Up) with author Matt Dixon

Are your deals stalling due to a lack of understanding or a lack of confidence? How is your sales process proactively addressing customer indecision?

Such a treat to get two hours with Matt Dixon last week, sharing highlights with the CMO Coffee Talk community about his new book The JOLT Effect. Links to the book and some great summaries are below along with highlights from the Zoom chat in each session.

If you are in the CMO Coffee Talk community, you'll find more from Matt in the #swipefile channel.

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People buy for emotional reasons and justify rationally.

A common phrase from my sales team in a previous life was: "No one gets fired for buying IBM" very similar FOFU

J - Judging the level of indecision

O - offering your recommendation.?Choice overloads a decision.?Narrow the consideration set so customer

L - limiting the expiration.?Avoid the analysis paralysis.?Next MQ, next months webinar, next demo, …

T - take risk off the table.?Set expectations and create a safety net for the customer.

Buying doesn’t stop when the contract is signed.?The onboarding process is mission critical…I signed a contract last week for rev tech (to help their year end. I stuck my neck out killing the competitor desired by my peer.?And they have yet to reach out - even after I have sent them 2 emails.?Buyer’s remorse is a real thing.?I look like a nincompoop internally!!!

1) choice overload 2) info overload 3) outcome uncertainty

lots of companies don't transition from sales to onboarding well at all

Inaction is also tied to a lack of building trust and credibility. Not asking good questions based on customer needs/goals. Because most sales reps lead with spewing their product specs.

It also will affect the dark social as well!!??Reputation management through positive CX is even more important than before

your point in the book about helping them buy was a great point. We train our teams on “the power of no” but I am going to start couching that under the Jolt Effect going forward.

Instill confidence in your customer?= make them the hero

https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/dunning-kruger-effect

The boss is the budget!

buyers are people too.!?So are execs

And when you have spent that political capital, taken the risk, and the post signature experience sucks…you loose credibility.?Which really sucks and makes you rethink future campaign runs/sales cycles with other vendors.

https://a.co/d/iKEZdBL

To help secure wins with some of our major enterprise customers, to get past the fear of failure, we included a contract exit clause (with a lot of parameter detailed) to get that signature done. Took A LOT of convincing at the internal executive level but worth it for some deals. It also enhanced our internal motions toward onboarding and helped to change our process to the positive.

https://www.thecoast.net.nz/trending-now/this-plate-optical-illusion-has-left-the-internet-divided-which-way-up-do-you-see-them/

The salesperson has to show that they have the customer's best interests in mind. Selling, by definition, is helping people make a buying decision that is in THEIR best interests.

I literally told a rep yesterday I won’t be ready to repeat purchase until Q3, yet they insisted on sending their MNDA and asked for data.?Happy ears need to listen too.

Judging the indecision, Offer your recommendation, Limiting the exploration, Take risk off the table.

Take risk off the table is the thing way to many sales people dont realize or know how to do

This is all so fascinating, and I shared a few highlights with our CRO just now. What can the marketing team do to best support salespeople who try this approach? (From a positioning, messaging, and campaign perspective)

we are working on an entire content stream and messaging around derisking the decision, derisking implementation

https://www.jolteffect.com/resources

Need mutual accountability on both sides between marketing and sales!

The 500 case studies are not enough give me more

More demos into a crappy conversion engine never the answer. But more demos into a good conversion engine…that’s the money. Takes leaving all egos at the door ??

The exploding discount that doesn’t actually explode is my favorite

84% chance FOMO tactics will kill the deal.

After much pressure from a sales rep, I agreed to sign at the end of their FY on Jan 28.?Haven’t heard from anyone at the company…apparently they give everyone the first week of the new FY off.?In the meantime, I took a political risk, pushed for this vendor which was more expensive AND killed the one the head of sales wanted.?Moral of the story - the post sales cycle HAS to align with the sales cycle sense of urgency.

that lack of focus on early customer experience is so frustrating.

part of the sales vetting process going forward will be “what is the experience after we sign”!?I guess I expected this vendor in particular to be top of the pile on CX, given it’s what they sell!

Fear of commission - Free Trials - I assume that helps here for some folks "a risk free" approach

1) too many options 2) too much information 3) fear of under delivering

This resonates - the idea that your champion no longer trusts their company to be smart enough to use you correctly.

FOMO vs FOMU

I’m re-reading Blink by Malcom Gladwell. Lots of discussion about decision making. As I listen to Matt, there’s some strong alignment on how people make decisions consciously and subconsciously and the data/information that helps/hinders.

Scare tactics to someone who is already afraid #boom

Fear paralyzes action

or they are not mature enough to take on advanced solutions…. (Like when your MAP is not connected to CRM and leads are routed MANUALLY) and your sfdc admin took 7 hours to make one field change in a report…not that I have any experience with this LOL

In that case “decision-maker” is a psychographic attribute, not an attribute of role/title/level.

Is "indecision" defined as after reviewing the proposal and understanding the onboarding process and then they don't make a decision??If yes, did you see any data that indicates that sending the proposal was not the correct step at the time??In other words, the sales person sent the proposal but the customer did not "really' want the proposal?

What people forget is that EVERYONE is human. It doesn’t matter who you, what your title is, what your role is, what your budget is, humans all have similar attributes. No one gets up in the morning and says, “I feel like failing today”.

We have all had the boss that believed in us and we felt confident and the one who has not…..

This is going back to the : I won’t be fired for picking this known vendor (IBM/Microsoft/Gartner MQ leader/etc). If you’re new, you’re a risk and they made a bet on you vs if you pick the known entity that the ‘market’ has validated, you have some air cover

it is the bigger challenge of startups and growth stage companies that are not as known and/or big

The sequel to JOLT should be JILT - based on the 2.5M interviews of the sellers who lost to indecision!

Jolt was the Liquid Death of its day - marketing itself as the opposite of what the established players in the category were doing.

Limit expiration. I am not motivated by traditional hacks on expiration. What else can we do to create urgency.

i think most marketers already struggle with getting “true” closed lost reasons - especially if it might reflect on sales tactics. curious how you are collecting this data. maybe the book details that?

Me agreeing to “send the agreement to legal” is simply buying time to figure out how to say “no.”

Take the risk off the table

Given that onboarding takes time/resource for us as a complex solution, we use that as an L. “We have just a couple of onboarding slots left for February.” Not perfect, but better than the fake “this offer expires 1/31.”

“I get to update the CRM” - no AE ever

When you talked about Fear of Failure, my thoughts immediately went to “Post Sales solution support”. Ie., ensuring the customer is successful implementing and using your product successfully.

https://hbr.org/2022/01/sensemaking-for-sales

If we suspect fear of failure, shouldn’t we simply ask, “what are your success metrics, and how can we help to make you successful post-sale?”

What a novel concept…sell on value!?I am rewriting the entire pitch because we currently sell on function only.

If 80% of the research is done before they speak to us, can we address the FOMU in that research cycle

I heard a great quote last week: renewal begins at onboarding