The surprising truth about what closes deals: Insights from 2.5m sales conversations | Matt Dixon (author of The Challenger Sale and The JOLT Effect)

22:34So 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 like 20 different cloud products. You bought like seven companies in the past three years. You have it 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 and, you know, are you fed?

23:07I mean, there is everybody's gotten opinion about you because you are the 800 pound girl and everybody's worked with you before. And they have opinions good and bad and people want to leave no stone attorney. And then lastly, 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 like not seven figure deals, eight figure deals, nine figure deals here customers. That increases the customer's anxiety that I really have to see return on this.

23:35And so you in many respects are getting whipsawed by these these factors in a way that the startups are not because they're not, they don't have as many choices, right? They don't, there's not as much coverage about that. The investment is lower. And so there's a little bit less risk for the customer. So you're not, you guys aren't immune just because you're the big brand. You're doing a great job making clear why it's so nerve -wracking to buy new software. There's just so many things that could hurt you as a person at a company. April Dunford, I think she, I think this is a part 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.

24:12Yeah, I think she's, I think she's on point now. I mean, it's, it's a, your customers are, yeah, they're really, really afraid of this not panning out. And it, what's so interesting, and it's, 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 which solves 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?

24:47Yeah, this is, I've 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. This episode is brought to you by Keith, the product analytics solution that shows you everything. Users do on your digital product, website, mobile product, or other digital surfaces. We all know a great digital experience when we see it. It's intuitive, it anticipates your needs, and it makes it easy for you to do your job. If you're trying to build that kind of experience for your users, you need up -to -date, reliable information about what your users do in your product and why they do it.

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26:08You have something I think you call the Jolt method? Yes. Let's get into it. The Jolt isn't an acronym, so it just so happened to work 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 they're worried about what might go wrong. We got Jolt them. We got Jolt them into action. Beautiful. 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.

26:35The third thing is we've got to get them to stop doing endless research and start trusting us and limiting what we call limit the exploration. The T is we've got to de -risk the deal. We've got to take some risk off the table. We establish that safety net for the customers. They feel like we've got their back. Let me talk about each of those. I'll start with the J because it's first.

26:56While it's linear, I wouldn't encourage listeners. Don't think about this as a process where it's like I do step one, two, three, four, JOLT. 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 T. Then we go back to the O because it comes up again. Think of it as sort of the what's got the customer nervous. And this is a really, really, really tricky thing because and I've likened indecision to like the carbon monoxide poisoning of sales. It's everywhere, but it's odorless. It's tasteless.

27:32You can't. But you need a carbon monoxide detector and that's what the J is. So how do we get fear of failure on the table? And the problem with this is that and I think most of your listeners will be familiar with this. Everybody, especially customers, sufferers and senior executives, especially, especially suffer from what's called the Dunning Kruger effect, which is they think they are 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 I 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'd make the tough calls.

28:10I manage from the gut, you know, I live on the edge as an executive making those big calls. But the research sells 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 of failure were 13%. So yeah, those people do exist. And by the way, if you find one of those people, you should sell them everything as soon as possible. They're making the decision quite literally on the dollars and cents and the ROI and you know, whether it makes sense for their business.

28:40It'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. And what's so tough about this is that it's not just done in 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. You know, they don't want to talk about like, God, I got to tell you like this better payoff because it doesn't.

29:09I'm already on thin ice with my boss. She doesn't like me already. This is going to be the last straw, you know, nobody's going to say that stuff. And so how do we get on the table? One of the things we don't think works particularly well are kind of 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. Like it's either not great over at just 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.

29:39And so 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. So think of like 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? How what speed are they about to torpedo us? All that good stuff. And what do we want to do the same thing in sales?

30:09So 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 concerned for that fire. So hypothetically, let's imagine we're talking about a purchase and we've had a lot of great conversations. I'm showing you a lot of demos. You guys would like to everything we show. We showed you partner options. We showed you different configurations. We did POC over here. We did all of them. But I'm kind of getting the sneaking feeling that you guys actually don't know what you want.

30:46And we've shown you a lot and we've probably made that problem worse. And so what I might say to you is, you know, 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 the art of 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.

31:17So you've got to decide what's nice to have and what's neat to have. I'm just curious, are you and your team clear on what would be in and out of the proposal? And 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 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? You know, 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.

31:49There's a lot of stuff you showed us. So 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 back down and figured 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. And so help me get grounded in what's a believable outcome for us, right? So that I can sell it and I can be confident we're going to actually hit it.

32:24So it's again, it's not designed to embarrass the customer. It's designed to get this on the table so it can be recognized. It's dealt with and contextualized. You're not, you're totally normal. Everybody struggles with this. You know, there's a lot of stuff we throw in front of people and they, you know, it ends up doing some harm. They don't know what to pick. Let me be of service and value to you. And so that's the first thing that we point to. And that's going to tell us, okay, is it a choice problem? They don't, they're overwhelmed. They don't want to choose like that example. Just use is that they're just doing endless research and they feel like they haven't really come down the learning curve yet around this purchase.

32:56Or is it, no, I don't, 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 that we get twice a Sunday. And I don't think it's going to be a 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 on that journey. If that makes sense. Yeah. Awesome. So the advice there's basically get a sense of how clear they are internally on knowing exactly what they want. That'll help them make a decision. So there's kind of this like moment of, okay, let's just help me understand.

33:26I think question the way you phrase that are you and your team clear on what would be in or out of this proposal. Yeah. And that's, 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. Right. And you're just worried that like you just aren't going to be able to accomplish that. So that thing might sound very different. It might be, you know, we've been having a discussion about like you've been asking for multiple terms of the ROI calculation and changing parameters and really trying to make it bullproof.

34:00But you know, a lot of customers struggle with that a little bit because that's a big thing. You're putting your name against that. And so 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 expectation. So you feel really confident going to the CFO and in lobbying for investment here. So that ping could go in, but it's based on what I think is holding you up. Got it. So it's just like at this point, many customers have this question.

34:32And that may be comes from the thing that you think is probably blocking them. Yeah, I think that's perfect language. At this point, most customers like you are thinking about this or they're kind of worried about that or they're getting a little anxious about this. Let's have a conversation about it. Awesome. You know, okay. Cool. Let's go to step two offering your right. Sure. Oh, yeah. So this is this was right with that example we talked about before. You know, options are options are really a double edged sword. What we know from the research is that options are great early on. So if you're meeting at the trade show and the customers are swinging by your booth or you're doing a first demo or first set of like, let a thousand flowers bloom.

35:10But if you want the customer to actually make a decision, you got to get the weedwacker out and like call it down to a manageable set of choices. And the science is very clear on this that too many choices at some point will overwhelm the customer and at least 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 want to work with you, but you put so many options in front of us like, 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.

35:37But now I'm learning more and people are asking hard questions and maybe I need to go revisit this and and hey, Lenny, we're going to we have to scrap that agreement and start over because I don't think we can figure this right away. So we have to be we have to there's a time in place to offer options and a time in 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. And salespeople get a little bit anxious about this.

36:07I 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. And so they worry about that. And so salespeople have grown up in this world that like it's the customer's choice. The customer's always right. Let me just guide them, but they're the one should make this decision. But sometimes the customer can't. And they don't know enough about these decisions. Like we know the stuff was we eat, sleep, and breathe it every day as salespeople, we work in this industry. They don't. And so we are in a much better position to be able to guide them toward like, you know what, you don't really need X, Y and Z.

36:40You 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 to 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. The here's an analogy. I often tell people think about the last time they went to a fancy restaurant and they looked at a menu with like some expensive entrees and everything looked delicious, right? But they didn't know what to order. So you ask 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?

37:12Like 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, you know, if you want my opinion, I love this dish. And I 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. Those big portion. If you're in the mood for something lighter, there's a vegetarian option. It doesn't get as much play on you. But I love this one. It's absolutely delicious. It's one of our kind of dark course favorites, if you will. But remember, everything we make here is delicious.

37:42So 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 on the shoulders of the decider, that burden is now shared. Now think about it. If you order the dish, the wait person recommended, 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. So you feel like there's some safety in getting that recommendation, that endorsement.

38:11It's a really simple example, but it works in complex sales as well. Customers are looking for somebody to share in the risk, in the burden of making a bad decision. And having that, you know, partner who's guiding them toward what they should care about, 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 increases the odds of getting some kind of decision from them. 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.

38:40And then we'll talk about the Challenger sale, which is basically this on steroids, this idea on steroids. The last two, so L is about, you know, this customer who's doing endless amounts of research every salesperson seen this customer like they're never happy with the number of reference calls or the, you know, the amount of research they've done, they want to talk to more and more people.

39:00They're just you, we might call analysis paralysis mode, because at some point they're just, 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. And so what sales people 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. So they believe the salesperson's 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.

39:37You're not going to do, you're not going to get introduced to any of the customers who, hey, you, you're only going to get introduced to the customers, we love you, and we know we're going to say great things about us. So that's what the customer thinks, right? That is what is in the customer's mind. And so you've got to actually shift, get the customer to stop trying to be an expert and start trusting you as an expert. And they're two keys to that. The first one is you've got to establish some trust. And I know that sounds like a platitude, but we found in the analysis, there are specific things that sales, great salespeople do very early on.

40:06They are brutally transparent with customers about like, hey, I know you were interested in this capability. I get to be honest, it's, you know, 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 use case, but I have to be honest, we're actually not the best in the market at that. Our competitor is much better at that than we are. You know, so 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.

40:39So that's step number one is building that trust. And the seventh or two is you got to demonstrate some expertise.

40:50And people 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. And what happens in that moment is is dangerous for the salesperson. The customer, it sounds like they're loving it, right? They're loving that I'm talking to 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. And if they don't sound like any more than a glorified MC or a coordinator, then that's kind of all the customer will perceive them as.

41:21So what right or ability would you have to guide the customer on what to choose if you've offered no value or expertise? You've got to at least you don't have to be as deep as the product people are. So you're not going to be your salesperson, you're not a product person, but you do have to be deeper on the customer. And you do have to demonstrate that expertise. And so those are the keys again, the customer to stop trying to be an expert and start trusting you as their expert. And then the T is taking risk off the table. Two keys to doing that. I think the first one happens really early actually.

41:49And 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. Like that sounds great. And that that company is in our industry. Amazing. Like that's a slam dunk business case for us. In the average salesperson 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.

42:16What great salespeople do though was they know that while they'll stand by those claims, those case studies, those proof points, they try to kind of underpromise and overdeliver. And they might say something on the lines of, you know, Lenny, absolutely. That is that is a great case. I was involved in that sale. But we also need to understand is everything went perfectly. They resourced it to the hill. They had no integration issues, no hiccups. It was beautiful and seamless. And I don't think you and I can think of many technology implementations that happened that way. And so what it rather we do is build your business case around a 5x improvement in sales productivity because we see that at least that in a 100 % of our implementations.

42:55And then let's set up to overdeliver 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 I don't want you to just walk in in and promising 10x improvement sales productivity. If we finished the year and were at 7x, in the CFOs now asking her questions, when in absolute terms, she should be thrilled with 7x. So let's make sure we set ourselves up for success. The other thing you've got to do, those establish some safety net options. So there are lots of different shapes and forms these can take. Everything from, you know, before the deal is closed, pulling the implementation team onto the caller, the customer success team or the account management team.

43:33So we can start road mapping. 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. 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. It 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, but especially like you think about tech purchase.

44:02I'm not saying give it away for free, but you will find that high -performing salespeople will also add on professional services, but it's not just because they're selling more, which they are because they're high -performing salespeople. It's the way they position that. They usually position as an insurance policy. Hey, Lani, I know you guys want to DIY. This is one of the great things about our solution. You totally can. You get 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.

44:31Our A team is lined up in case anything slips. And if it does, we get you back up on track. The last thing we want is for you guys to be upset that you're losing ground and you're not going to get delivered 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 or an option, not very common in B2B, but in some cases, you can offer those or specialize contract carveouts, for instance. There's lots of different things we can do to create that safety out 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.

45:05Amazing. And all of this, especially this last step is coming from they are probably not going to decide anything, but that's what you're fighting is to strike them. That's right. Be less worried about messing up. Yeah, that's right. I especially love this point about underpromising 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. We are data set 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 suggests it's kind of an easy target, but it is rife within decision these days.

45:40And 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, firm services, businesses that cut across. So this is pretty prevalent and consistent across industries. So with the underpromising 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.

46:14Yeah. It's not delivering what we thought. Amazing. Okay. Any last piece of wisdom to leave listeners with around the Joel defect before we move on to the challenger sale? Yeah, the only thing I would suggest is that for anybody, I mean, I think it just do it as this is that you should hit the pause button when that customer, because the customers we all know are going to get cold feet, often late stage, and it can be very frustrating. And the knee jerk reaction for almost every salesperson out there this happened like in our analysis, 75 % of salespeople we studied would immediately go out to dialing up the film.

46:47I would like to go back to doing that. Like, 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 like delivery, window -based urgency driver to get the customer to move forward. But just remember that if the customer is already convinced that the status quo is suboptimal and they've already got the intent that you're basically again, you're using fear on top of a customer, selling into a customer is already afraid, and you're actually making it worse. So 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?

47:24And those are actually two very different things. Amazing. I know you have a meeting in 10 minutes. So we're going to, this is going to be the most action high -density podcast episode we've done. We've got 10 minutes talking about challenger sale. First of all, how many copies of this book have you sold at this point? I think it's about a million. 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 sales people challenge their prospects, thinking and teach them about the market and what they should be doing versus just helping them get what they want.

47:59Yeah, very well said. I think one of the, just like the the Somo -Somu kind of shorthand, here's a shorthand that gives us salespeople is like the most, most salespeople are trying to figure out what's keeping the customer up at night, right? It's classic solution selling, needs diagnosis, etc. 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?

48:30But you do. Because by the way, you're going to talk to, you know, 10 times more customers than the, or I say, you're going to talk to like 10 of that customer in a week than, you are 10 times more than a week than they will all year. So you are a window into the outside world for them. And that's what challenges 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, all right? So what you're really trying to do is kind of create a fire and then be the only person in town who sells the fire extinguisher that'll put it out.

49:05Is there an example you could share of a challenger sale type of sale? Yeah, I, there's a, in, we wrote a sequel to challenger sale called the challenger customer. And in that book, we talk about a case from a company called Densefly. Densefly, as the name would suggest, manufacturers, produces dental supplies, right? So they sell equipment and product into dental practices and dental offices. And years ago, Densefly had developed, we all know, I think your listeners can all relate to this. When you go to the dentist and the hygienist is, you know, polishing your teeth or the using the water pick or the unfortunately, maybe the dentist using the drill.

49:41And that wand has a very heavy like power cord that's attached to it and it's attached to this power base. And that if feeds water through there and electrical current and all these things, Densefly had developed the world's first lightweight, ergonomic cordless wand. That drill bits could be attached to, you know, cleaning, cleaning implements, etc. And it was a total breakthrough. They actually, when they unveiled it, it was pretty interesting. They gave, you remember the scene in Pulp Fiction where they opened the briefcase and it emanates like a light amidst front. So they gave all their salespeople like this little aluminum briefcase thing with this egg shell foam and a wand in there.

50:19I can't remember what it's called. Let's call it the XP 9000. What? But it had one demo wand in there and they would go around to dental offices and be like, and it was lit literally it like light had blue lighting inside and it was really cool. They're a reveal and they 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, wow, it's so much lighter and it's ergonomic and this thing is cordless. It's amazing. It's a revolution. And then the first thing they would ask is how much is it? So when they told them it costs like three times more than the current old fashion wands are using with the heavy cord, they would gently put it back in the briefcase, close briefcase, say, can you give me a price on new drill bits or new like a ball of swing attachments?

51:01It's so they couldn't get anybody to want to pay for this thing that was much more expensive than the old one. So they did a lot of work and they figured out they knew that this was unique. They knew this is a unique product. Nobody else in the market made this. The only supplier who had who had figured this out, a total innovation. But they haven't 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.

51:42And 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. So 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 soldier shoulder surgery, not with exorbitant health benefits claims and workers comp claims. And so they came in and they revised their sales mission. Now when they come into the dental office, they sit down and they say, you know, like to talk to you about your hygienist workforce, are you guys seeing higher turnover?

52:18Have 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? And 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, you know, when my hygienist get injured and this is pretty, it's a repetitive motion business and job. And 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.

52:52So 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. So what dense white does is start the conversation there. And then they say, you know, one of the things that we figured out is the primary, based on our own independent research. Though, when 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.

53:30But 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 that's what we got. We've had the same equipment for 30 years. Let me show you the new XP 9000s world's first cordless lightweight ergonomic drill. And 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 kind of pinch points, if you will, where hygienists tend to experience these injuries. So it's just a simple example, but you see, again, they're still selling a fancy, fancy wand, right?

54:03But before they were leading with it, let me show you this and talk about the features and benefits. And that led to how much it cost. Now they're leading to it. They're starting with an insight of that and giving the customer 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 DenseBuy. So the key lesson from this book, and I know we don't have a ton of time to begin to 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.

54:37And then how transition to here is how we can solve that for you. Yeah, that's exactly right. And 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? And 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.

55:07You are only capable. Nobody else can touch with the barge pole. And 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. And that's that's kind of the core components if you will, the challenger conversation. Amazing. Okay. Matt, I promised I let you out of here in time. So final questions, working folks, find your books if they want to dig in further. And how can listeners be useful to you? Well, I thank you for the offer. I love being you know, I love being connected with folks who heard me on shows like this one. So if you heard me on the podcast, I heard you on Lennie show, shoot me a LinkedIn invite, I'm pretty active there.

55:42I 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 Jolt Effect .com. There's a ton of it. 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. And then of course, the books are the books are available everywhere. Good books are sold, which I think is on the internet these days. So amazing. Matt, thank you so much. Thanks for being here. It was a blast.

56:13Thank you. 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 a leaving review as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at LenniesPodcast .com. See you in the next episode.