When your sales manager uses your personal life against you

Published: Wed, 08/31/22

August 31, 2022

TOGETHER WITH

Good morning. It’s the last day of the month, so you definitely don’t have anything better to do than read newsletters… right? Right?! In this week’s issue of The Quota, we’ll take a look at how indecision kills deals (and what you can do about it), share a Sales Fail about selling past the close, and give some advice to a rep with a manipulative manager. Let’s go!

NUMBER OF THE WEEK

48% of salespeople never even make one follow-up attempt.

Source: Invesp

SALES ROUNDUP

Here’s what’s happening in the sales world this week:

The metaverse might still be in development mode, but one Dubai-based company has already created the “world’s first meta salesperson,” a suit-wearing, mustached professional named “Mr. Musky.” The company says they will create avatars for other clients, so they can have a salesperson “working 24/7” for them in the metaverse. Uhhhh, ok… you can read about it here.
As companies look to increase efficiency, one group of door-to-door sales reps in North Carolina is speeding up the sales process by racing through neighborhoods on hoverboards. The reps, who are selling pest-control services, were caught on camera zooming from door-to-door, probably at their sales manager’s request. You can read about the speedy sellers here.

FEATURE

Customer-indecision: the silent deal-killer (and what you can do about it)

Salespeople are used to trying to overcome the “customer status quo” barrier when convincing a prospect to make a purchase, but it turns out that overturning the status quo isn’t necessarily the best way to secure a sale – minimizing the customer’s fear of purchasing is the key.

In a large-scale study of more than 2.5 million recorded sales conversations — including both transactional and complex sales — sales experts Matthew Dixon and Ted McKenna found that between 40% and 60% of deals today fail because customers who express an intent to purchase don’t follow through. And it’s not just customers in the first stage of the sales process – it’s customers who make it almost to the finish line, even past extended pilots or trials, but don’t cross it.

To combat this, salespeople may resort to using “FUD” — or, fear, uncertainty, and doubt — to harness the customer’s FOMO with the aim of securing the sale. But Dixon and McKenna’s research shows that this method can actually be counterproductive when trying to coax a customer across the finish line.

This is because there is a bigger problem that salespeople aren’t giving enough attention to: customer indecision. Behavioral research over the last few decades – and now, Dixon and McKenna’s research as well – has shown that indecision is actually one of the biggest reasons why prospects don’t complete that DocuSign.

Why is customer indecision such a big deal?

So what’s the difference between preference for the status quo and indecision? Well, they’re actually driven by two different psychological effects.

Preference for the status quo comes from a desire to stick with the comfortable and familiar despite better options being presented. Customer indecision is caused by omission bias, when people weigh the negative effects of action more heavily than they weigh the negative effects of inaction.

Dixon and McKenna discovered that the three biggest causes of customer indecision are valuation problems, lack of information, and outcome uncertainty. This is made worse by the fact that there are more options than ever out there, and more information than ever available to learn about those products.

Indecision is especially dangerous because it’s hard for salespeople to detect. Firstly, because customers are less willing to discuss the personal fears behind indecision than they are to discuss their preference to simply stay as they are. Secondly, customers might not even be aware they are dealing with indecision. Yet, Dixon and McKenna found that 87% of sales opportunities contain either moderate or high levels of customer indecision.

What sales reps can do to overcome indecision.

Top performing sales reps have actually been (unknowingly) developing their own playbook to overcome indecision. This “playbook” consists of four techniques that Dixon and McKenna have dubbed the “JOLT method.”

First, one should “judge the level of customer indecision.” In interviews conducted with high-performing sellers, they found that these reps assess prospects on their ability to decide as well as their ability to buy. Moderately indecisive? Forecast it for later. Too indecisive? Cut your losses and move on.

Second, you should offer your recommendation, focusing a customer on specific choices rather than laying out every possible choice and overwhelming them. Dixon and McKenna saw that when reps simply diagnosed their customer’s need and offered no recommendation, win rates were only 14%. But when they added a recommendation into the mix, win rates were 36%.

The third tactic is to “limit the exploration.” The more information a customer consumes, the more indecisive they are likely to become, as they usually end up with even more questions than answers. Demonstrating your own credibility on the topic while assuring the customer you’re not overselling them leads to win rates of over 42%.

Finally, to close a deal, look for ways to “take risk off the table” by offering safety nets that mitigate a customer’s fear about regretting their decision. This could look like any number of things, from opt-out clauses to more complicated legal language, but the key is to provide a tangible solution that dispels that fear and uncertainty.

When Dixon and McKenna compared the win rates of salespeople who use the JOLT method with those who didn’t, the results were significant. The former were able to convert 57% of deals with moderately indecisive customers, whereas the latter could only convert 26%. And with highly indecisive customers, the percentages were 31% and 6%, respectively.

One thing is clear – successfully navigating the indecision problem in the sales industry will require some serious rethinking of sales strategies, not just on an individual basis but at the very highest levels of sales organizations.

You can pre-order Dixon and McKenna’s book The JOLT Effect: How High Performers Overcome Customer Indecision here.

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MEME OF THE WEEK

Source: Instagram -- Sales Humor

QUIZ

Before becoming CEO of Starbucks, what did Howard Schultz sell?

A. Appliances
B. Dry cleaning supplies
C. Chemicals
D. Amusement park rides

SALES FAILS

Each week, we bring you the most cringe-worthy sales moments from across the web. To submit your sales fail story for consideration, click here. (Don't worry, you'll remain completely anonymous).

“My biggest sales fail wasn’t even my fault. A few years back, I was an AE for a fairly new tech startup. We had literally less than twenty employees, and I was probably the most experienced seller except the CEO.

About a year into my time there, I was working a medium-sized deal with another tech company which I had sourced. They were within a 2 hour drive of our office, so the CEO suggested that I go out there in person for the sales presentation (this was before Covid) and bring our head of engineering along so that he could answer any technical questions that might come up.

Our head of engineering was actually a pretty outgoing guy for an engineer, so I wasn’t worried about him. Everything was going great. I made the sales presentation to four managers and executives at their office, and we answered all their questions, including technical questions which were mostly from their CTO.

Once we had covered everything, their CTO said that everything looked good and that they were going to go ahead and do the deal. I was pumped, and so was my head of engineering, who started getting super excited and talking fast about everything we had on the horizon. Well, while he was having his verbal diarrhea, he also mentioned that we were working on some bug fixes (facepalm) and I could practically see the buyers’ eyebrows going up.

I tried to get him to stop talking but there was no real polite way to do it, especially considering he was in a higher position within our company than I was. We finally got out of there, but I had a feeling that something had changed. A few days later, they told us they didn’t have the budget. Let this be a lesson: once you close the deal, shut your mouth and stop talking!

Anonymous Location withheld

GRAPH OF THE WEEK

Source: LinkedIn Poll -- August 2022

WORTH A PEEK

Sales conversations have so many moving parts that it can be hard to remember what to say and what not to say. If you need a quick refresher on the latter, here’s an easy-to-read article on 33 things you should avoid saying on sales calls. While you might not agree with the entire list, you can at least take the ones you do agree with, and avoid them like the plague.

ASK THE QUOTA

Want to submit a question and be featured in our advice column? Click here. (Don't worry, you'll remain completely anonymous).

Dear Quota Team,

My sales manager is super manipulative, and he goes about it in a really weird way. He cozies up to people in order to find out as much as possible about them, then turns around and uses it against people when it suits his purposes.

For instance: I once told him that my late father had a gambling addiction, and that he used to spend money at the casino that my mother had been trying to save for necessities. I thought we were having an honest, personal conversation, and I was fine with opening up about it.

Well, he took that and used it against me when I was having a hard month, saying that I had an opportunity to be better than “other people in my family,” and that if I stepped it up, I’d be able to change my family’s life and break the cycle. The way he said it was really sneaky too, framed in a positive way so that it was hard to call out as being disrespectful.

That is only one example, but it’s pretty inappropriate, and I’m not the only one on my team who thinks so. Do you have any advice for how to deal with such a person? Is he a sociopath or what?

Uncomfortable in Florida

Dear Uncomfortable,

It does sound like your sales manager is willing to cross the line, and to use things said in confidence against you. But who knows if he’s machiavellian, or just doesn’t understand what’s appropriate and what’s not – either one could be true (though we’re probably being a bit charitable here).

The lesson here is not to share anything in a professional setting that you wouldn’t want others to know. The boundaries between our work lives and personal lives often get blurred, and most of the time it’s for the better (friendships), but there’s also a downside, and you’re living it now.

But what’s done is done, and if you do think your manager is a schemer, then you should find another job. In the meantime, keep the truly personal stories to yourself. While most people wouldn’t dream of using them to embarrass you, there are some people, like your manager, who lack the emotional intelligence (or possibly human emotion) to be decent people.

Quiz Answer: A

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Today's email was written by Ken Kupchik, Erica Furgiuele, Steve Rado, and Emily Hill.

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