Buyer Indecision + Family Values

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This was one of those weeks that brought me back to pre-COVID days when I was on a plane almost every week and travelled over 2 million miles in less than 10 years.  

I trained in Boston on Tuesday and in Seattle on Wednesday and Thursday. I took the Redeye home Thursday night so I could do two remote sessions on Friday morning. Now, I’m trying to catch up on all the emails and write this newsletter before I pass out. 

As much as travel beats me up these days, there is just something different about in-person training compared to doing it remotely. 

With the two groups I trained, the energy in the room was great, and the desire to learn and improve was even stronger, which always gives me the energy I need to keep pushing. 

I also get to have many more side conversations with reps to get a sense of their real challenges.  

Many of the challenges revolve around lengthening sales cycles, increased buying committees and losing to no decision, while others are more along the lines of work-life balance, values and priorities, so I'll try to address both in this week’s newsletter. 

SALES FROM THE STREETS: Revisiting core values 

TACTICAL TIPS: No decision versus indecision 

Sales from the Streets:

Family Values

Like I said, this week brought me back to pre-COVID days, when I was on a plane almost every week for over ten years.

My daughter was born in 2010, so I was pretty much a weekend dad for the first 10 years of her life. 

When I was flying around the world, I convinced myself that I was doing it for my family so that my wife and I could live the type of life we wanted and my daughter could have all the opportunities she needed to excel.  

At least that’s what I was telling myself to feel better about not being around.

When my dad passed away in early 2021, I needed to reevaluate many things, so I got a business coach. One of the first things we did was go through the “core value” exercise. 

For those of you who have never been through it, you basically get a list of 50 words that represent different values. You have to identify the five that most resonate with you and then prioritize them.

“Family” ended up in my top five, and when I went to prioritize them, I asked my business coach, " Isn’t family the default #1 for everyone?”

He said absolutely not. If you want family to be your number one value, then you need to write it down and ask yourself - “how is this going to impact my family?” with every decision you make. 

Then it hit me like a ton of bricks. 

I wasn’t flying around the world and being a weekend dad for my family. I was doing it because I was really good at it, and I liked being “the guy.”

It was a hard pill to swallow but now that I’m clear on my priorities and values, the question “how will this affect my family?” is one I ask every time I make a decision these days.  

This is why I don’t travel nearly as much as I used to, and I’m a lot more present today with my wife and daughter.

I think we all need to reset and clarify our core values to make better decisions about what is really important to us.  

Here’s the worksheet I used to refine my core values. I highly recommend you spend some time going through it. 

Tactical Tips 

No decision versus indecision 

In my 28 years of selling, I’ve never been in a Sales environment quite like this one.

As a Sales professional, you can do everything “right” throughout the sales process and get the client to agree that your solution is better/faster/cheaper than what they’re doing now, and they still won’t make the switch. 

After reading the book Jolt Effect, I now understand why.

Most of us think that our biggest competitor is “no-decision” or “status quo,” but the real issue is actually “indecision.” 

Things are moving so fast these days and there are so many different options to choose from, clients are scared to even make a decision.

Very few people get fired for not making a decision, but plenty of people get fired for making bad decisions.  

This is also why so many more people are involved in the buying process these days.

The “decision maker” rarely wants to be the main one who makes the decision on implementing a new solution because if it fails, they don’t want to be the only one to blame. This is why they’re bringing more and more people into the process to deflect some of that blame if it goes wrong. 

This is why we need to shift our approach to selling. Once we get the client to agree that their current state needs to change, we need to shift to de-risking the decision for them as much as possible.

I highly recommend reading The Jolt Effect to gain deeper insights into addressing indecision, but I'll give you some very tactical advice on how I’m trying to apply it here.

Most of us are pretty good at reverse timeline selling.

For instance, if the client wants to “go live” on August 1st, we discuss how long it will take to complete legal, onboarding, and everything else necessary to make that timeline happen so we can tell them when they need to sign the contract.

The question I added to that process a while back to try to address the “no-decision” issue is: " Just out of curiosity, what’s the impact to the business if we don’t go live on August 1st?”

There are only two answers to this question. One is a real answer with real business impact, and if you get that, you have all the leverage you need to push to get the deal done. 

The other answer (which is far more frequent) is something to the effect of - “I guess we’ll just keep doing what we’re doing.”

If you get that answer, you are either not talking to the right person, or I would definitely not forecast that opportunity.

However, because of the growing “indecision” issues, I've started to ask another question—“What happens if you make the wrong decision?” or " When was the last time you made a decision to implement a solution like ours and it didn’t go well?”

I ask this because I know it’s what they’re thinking about and want to avoid. 

The more detail they give, the better because now I know what I'm really selling against. 

I’m having Ted McKenna, the author of Jolt Effect, on the podcast soon to take a deeper dive into this but in the meantime, read his book and start focusing on how you can derisk the decision for the client. 

ADDITIONAL WAYS YOU CAN LEVEL UP YOUR SALES GAME 

• The JB Sales Membership gives you access to my live training, workshops, AMAs, and OnDemand catalog, so you can level up your sales skills every day! 3,000+ Sales pros have already joined. Are you next?

• The industry-leading Make it Happen Monday Podcast, where you’ll get insights and inspiration from some of the most interesting and influential people in the world of Sales and business. (this is where you’ll hear the Guy Kawasaki episode on May XYZ)

• The JB Sales YouTube channel with practical tips that you can apply immediately to drive results along with interviews and content that is guaranteed to get you to think differently.