Beat the Status Quo. Overcome Customer Indecision.
There’s only one thing buyers fear more than change — and that’s making the wrong choice. With Challenger and the JOLT Effect, your sellers can overcome both the fear of making a change and the drivers of indecision, all to win more deals.
Contact Challenger to learn about our research-backed playbooks for building high-performing sales teams
The size of your "no decision" problem is bigger than you think
Sellers face an increasingly difficult market — and buyers hold most of the power.
57%
of the buying journey complete before reaching out to sales
Buyers are extremely well-informed before reaching out to a sales rep. They start due diligence on their own, aligning on their needs, priorities, and requirements and leaving suppliers to compete largely on price (which is never a winning strategy).
6-11
external stakeholders involved in a buying decision
There are more individuals involved in buying decisions than ever before. The more stakeholders involved, the less likely they are to purchase… the buying group can’t even begin to agree with each other on next steps, much less on what to buy.
Your biggest competitor isn't who you think it is — customer indecision is killing your deals
90%
of sales conversations show some level of buyer indecision
Every sales call has some level of indecision present. But more than 90% of sales calls had medium or high degrees of indecision. It’s more pervasive than you think.
40–60%
of lost deals end in
“no decision”
Traditionally, the most successful sellers showed buyers why they needed to disrupt their status quo, led them to agree on a vision, and then followed up with a signed deal. But over the past few years, as many as 40-60% of lost deals ended in no decision, NOT the competition.
How should sales leaders adapt to this new reality?
One playbook is no longer enough. High-performing sales teams are using the tried-and-true Challenger playbook to disrupt the status quo together with the JOLT Effect approach to overcome customer indecision.
Buyers told us in the original research that powered “The Challenger Sale” that the sales experience was the #1 driver of customer loyalty. Customers don’t want transactional relationships with B2B sellers — they want a trusted advisor who understands their business, helps them see problems in a new light, and offers them guidance to build support for change at their organization. By adopting Challenger behaviors and skills, your sellers can win more in the increasingly complex B2B sales environment by making the status quo intolerable.
Challenger-trained sellers are already primed to disrupt the status quo. To sell effectively in 2024, they must also understand how to react as more buyers get cold feet about purchasing. The JOLT Effect playbook outlines the specific behaviors that alleviate buyer fears and keep the deal on track to close.
