Matt Dixon
Matt Dixon is one of the world’s foremost experts in sales and the author of The Challenger Sale, which sold over a million copies worldwide and was a #1 Amazon and Wall Street Journal bestseller. His most recent book, The JOLT Effect, focuses on overcoming customer indecision—one of the biggest challenges to closing deals. Outside of writing, Matt co-founded DCM Insights, a boutique consultancy helping organizations understand customer behavior, and is a frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review, with more than 20 print and online articles to his credit.
Launch & Go-to-Market Skills
Sales deals are more often lost to a buyer's fear of failure (FOMU) than to a lack of urgency or competitive pressure.
"They're not afraid of missing out, they're afraid of messing up. Dialing up the FOMO backfires 87% of the time."
Effective sales require moving beyond needs discovery to proactively teaching customers about hidden risks they haven't yet considered.
"The challenger approach is about showing the customer what should be keeping them up at night. What's a risk that they don't know about but you do."
Recognize that 'relitigating' old concerns is often a symptom of underlying indecision rather than a request for more information.
"A lot of deals kind of go sideways in that moment and the way this comes across in sales calls is that customers start, if you will, relitigating concerns that they had asked and you thought you'd add..."