When the buyer keeps asking for more, ask what it is for
When a buyer who wants the change keeps asking for one more demo, reference or data cut, ask what each request is for and say what will change the decision. When the same request comes back, name what is happening and be quiet.
Evidence: vendor data. The main numbers come from a company that sells a product or training for it.
What it is.
The buyer wants the change. They also want one more demo, one more reference, one more comparison, one more security document, and each one pushes the decision back another week.
Stop feeding the search and cap it. Before you fill a request, ask what it is for. Say which information will actually change the decision and which will not, and say plainly when the next thing they ask for will not get them any closer.
When the same request comes back in different clothes after you have answered it properly, another cut of the data or another look at a page you already sent, treat it as fear, not as a gap in the evidence. Describe in flat words what you see happening. Then stop talking and let the buyer answer.
The first half is the L in the JOLT method, the four things Matthew Dixon and Ted McKenna found top sellers doing with buyers who cannot decide. The second half comes from Peter Block's Flawless Consulting, which treats resistance as an emotional process that a third set of facts does not end.
What it looks like.
The authors' own description. Use your expertise to cut out exploration the buyer does not need, and keep them on a narrow path by telling them which information matters to the decision and which does not. The step only works on trust built earlier, and handing over every resource a customer asks for can make indecision worse. The page gives no wording. Dixon told Adrian Swinscoe that top sellers close off the "rat holes" indecisive buyers head down, and Lenny Rachitsky's write-up of his interview with Dixon adds the comparison with a good waiter, who does not ask what you are in the mood for but recommends a dish and says why.
The copyable lines come from readers of the book. Jeremy Donovan's summary gives the reply to a request for a reference call as a question back: will hearing from a customer who got the results the buyer hopes for be enough to get the deal done, or is something else giving them pause? Erik MacKinnon's notes word it as agreeing to set up the call and then asking what the buyer wants to check in it. Max Mednik's notes give a narrowing line, "this is our most popular configuration", and the habit of asking why behind a request until the concern under it shows. The authors publish no wording themselves, so these lines are second hand.
Peter Block's three steps, as his training company publishes them. Work out, in your own mind, what form the resistance is taking. Say it in neutral, non-judgemental words. Then be quiet. Describe the behaviour, not what you think it means.
How drug-education visitors answer a stall. NaRCAD's 2017 guide for the people who visit doctors to change their prescribing has a stall in which the doctor says a staff meeting next week will discuss it. The weak reply is "Great! I will follow up on Monday." The better one asks what the doctor's recommendation at the meeting will be, based on what you discussed today.
The nearest sales wording. David Priemer's line for saying the unspoken thing names a business concern: it sounds like you see the value but the payment structure does not fit your cash flow. Block's step names the behaviour in front of you instead.
Where it has been tested.
In B2B sales
The dataset the move comes from. Dixon and McKenna report in Harvard Business Review, from more than 2.5 million recorded sales calls, that 40% to 60% of deals are lost to buyers who say they intend to buy and then do not act. The calls were analysed on the platform of Tethr, which sells the analysis software. Challenger, which sells the JOLT training, puts medium to high indecision in 87% of deals, with a 30% win rate at medium indecision and 6% at high, and lists multiplying demo requests among the signs. The research compared winners and losers after the fact. Nobody assigned sellers to cap requests.
The chapter's own figures, second hand. Donovan reports sellers talking 58% of the time in won deals against 52% in lost ones, and Douglas Wick reports a 26% average win rate against 40% where the seller raised the objection before the buyer did. The authors publish none of these where they can be checked.
Gong's data agrees on winners and disagrees on losers. Gong, which also sells call analysis software, reports from 326,000 sales calls that sellers talked 57% of the time on won deals against 62% on lost ones, and asked fewer questions on won calls. In 67,149 recorded demos, successful sellers paused longer after an objection, while average sellers answered with a monologue of about 21 seconds. Both are correlations with no published method.
What stalling sounds like on real calls. Bogdana Humă and Elizabeth Stokoe transcribed 159 B2B cold calls and found buyers stalling by putting off contact, swapping a meeting for email, or making the purchase depend on a meeting with other people. They describe the buyer's move and test no reply. In the one experiment with real industrial buyers, Kathrin Schaffrath, Daniel Wentzel and Aras Erkin found that buyers who had to answer to colleagues were less satisfied choosing from a large range, which measures satisfaction, not whether they bought.
In other disciplines
A hard choice makes people search more and decide less. In Amos Tversky and Eldar Shafir's 1992 experiments, 66% of people bought a Sony CD player on sale for $99, while adding a top-of-the-range Aiwa at $159 sent 46% of another group away to look for more information. Students paid to return a questionnaire returned it 60% of the time with a five-day deadline, 42% with three weeks and 25% with no deadline. Alexander Chernev and colleagues' review of 99 results found that more options hurt only under certain conditions, such as a hard task and uncertain preferences, so the plain claim that more is always worse does not hold on its own.
More information raises resistance; naming the feeling lowers it. Gerald Patterson and Marion Forgatch coded therapy sessions in 1985 and found that when therapists taught or confronted, parents resisted more, and when they supported, resistance fell. Alisa Yu, Justin Berg and Julian Zlatev ran six studies, including a survey of 246 intensive care staff and five experiments in which the whole treatment was the line "You seem upset". Naming a feeling raised trust, more so for negative feelings, and even naming the wrong feeling beat saying nothing.
Silence does work that talking does not. Jared Curhan and colleagues found in 2022 that pauses of three seconds or more went with better deals for both sides in negotiations, and that telling people to pause produced them. One limit: where status differences were obvious, silence helped the higher-status party and not the lower.
Caveat.
The JOLT findings are patterns inside a private set of calls analysed by a company that sells call analysis, and nobody has assigned sellers to cap a buyer's requests or to name the pattern. The naming and silence evidence comes from hospital staff, online participants, therapy sessions and negotiation exercises, not from a buyer whose budget and reputation are at risk. And a seller who names the wrong thing in front of a committee pays more for it than a colleague does.
Takeaway.
Ask what each request is for before you fill it, say which information will change the decision, and when the same request comes back in a new form, describe what you see in flat words and then stop talking. Two vendors' call data agree that top sellers do something like this, and outside research shows that more information does not move someone whose problem was never information. Nobody has tested it in a real deal.
Sources.
Recommended by
- Matthew Dixon and Ted McKenna · The JOLT Effect: How High Performers Overcome Customer Indecision · 2022 · book
The authors set out the JOLT method, four things they found top sellers doing with buyers who cannot decide. The first half of this card is its L step, limiting the exploration.
- Peter Block consulting · Flawless Consulting: A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used · 1981 · book
Block's book for consultants treats repeated requests for more information as resistance, an emotional process that another set of facts does not end. The second half of this card comes from it.
- Matthew Dixon and Ted McKenna · What is the JOLT Effect? Everything You Need To Know · 2022 · post
The authors' own post describes the L step: use your expertise to cut out exploration the buyer does not need, say which information matters, and know that handing over everything can make indecision worse. It gives the card its rule, with no wording.
- Adrian Swinscoe · The problem of customer indecision and how to get over it - Interview with Matt Dixon · 2022 · post
In this interview, Dixon says top sellers close off the "rat holes" indecisive buyers head down. It is where the card takes Dixon's own words on the step, because the book text is not online.
- Lenny Rachitsky · The surprising truth about what closes deals: insights from 2.5m sales conversations, Matt Dixon · 2023 · newsletter
Rachitsky's write-up of his interview with Dixon compares the step to a good waiter, who recommends a dish and says why instead of asking what you are in the mood for. It is the clearest free statement of the card's first step.
- Erik MacKinnon · Book Notes: The JOLT Effect · 2023 · post
MacKinnon's notes word the reply as agreeing to set up the reference call and then asking what the buyer wants to check in it. It is another copyable line for the card, from a reader of the book.
- Max Mednik · Notes on The JOLT Effect by Matthew Dixon and Ted McKenna · 2023 · post
Mednik's notes give a narrowing line, "this is our most popular configuration", and the habit of asking why behind a request until the concern under it shows. They are a third reader's version of the card's first step.
- Designed Learning consulting and organisation development · Choosing the Path of Most Resistance · 2021 · post
Block's training company publishes his three steps: work out what form the resistance is taking, say it in neutral words, then be quiet. It is the card's second half, in the closest thing to Block's own statement that anyone publishes openly.
- NaRCAD academic detailing · Introductory Guide to Academic Detailing · 2017 · post
NaRCAD's guide for people who visit doctors to change their prescribing answers a stall by asking what the doctor will recommend at the coming meeting. It is a published example, from outside sales, of asking what a request is for instead of accepting it.
- David Priemer · Supercharge Your Persuasive Power by Saying What Your Customer is Thinking · 2018 · post
Priemer's line for saying what the customer is thinking names a business concern, such as a payment structure that does not fit their cash flow. It is the nearest sales wording for the card's naming step, though Block's step names the behaviour in front of you instead.
B2B sales research and data
- Jeremy Donovan · The JOLT Effect (book summary) · 2022 · post
Donovan's summary of the book gives a reply to a request for a reference call: ask whether hearing from such a customer will be enough to get the deal done, or whether something else is giving them pause. It is one of the card's copyable lines, second hand, and it carries chapter figures the authors publish nowhere checkable.
- Matthew Dixon and Ted McKenna · Stop Losing Sales to Customer Indecision (Harvard Business Review, June 2022) · 2022 · paper
The authors report from recorded sales calls that a large share of deals are lost to buyers who say they intend to buy and then do not act. It gives the size of the problem this card treats, from authors who sell the training.
- Tethr vendor · Tethr announces JOLTRx, conversation intelligence dashboard to analyze sales conversations · 2022 · vendor data
Tethr's announcement of its JOLT dashboard shows that the JOLT research ran on Tethr's own platform. Tethr sells that software, which is the conflict of interest behind every JOLT figure on this card.
- Challenger vendor · Why are you losing to customer indecision? · 2023 · vendor data
Challenger's page on the JOLT research finds indecision in most deals, with far lower win rates where it runs high, and lists multiplying demo requests among its signs. It is the vendor evidence that the card's stall is common, from the company that sells the JOLT training.
- Douglas A. Wick · The Jolt Effect: Limit Exploration · 2023 · post
Wick's summary of the limit-exploration chapter carries win-rate figures the authors publish nowhere checkable. It is one of the second-hand sources for the chapter's numbers the card reports.
- Chris Orlob vendor · Mastering the art of handling sales objections (Gong Labs) · 2018 · vendor data
Gong found in recorded demos that successful sellers paused longer after an objection, while average sellers answered with a long monologue. It supports the card's last step, being quiet, as a correlation from the vendor that sells the software.
- Bogdana Humă and Elizabeth Stokoe · Resistance in Business-to-Business “Cold” Sales Calls · 2023 · paper
The authors transcribed real B2B cold calls and describe the ways buyers stall on them. It is the only study the library found of how buyers stall in real sales talk, and it tests no seller reply.
- Kathrin Schaffrath, Daniel Wentzel and Aras Erkin · Purchasing for someone else in a b-to-b context: Joint effects of choice overload and accountability · 2018 · paper
In an experiment with industrial buyers, those who had to answer to colleagues were less satisfied choosing from a large range. It is the nearest B2B test of the card's premise, though it measured satisfaction, not whether they bought.
Only the abstract is free to read.
From other disciplines
- Amos Tversky and Eldar Shafir psychology · Choice under Conflict: The Dynamics of Deferred Decision · 1992 · paper
The authors show in experiments that adding a second good option makes more people put off the choice and go looking for more information. It is the evidence behind this card's first step, which is to stop feeding the buyer's search.
- Gerald R. Patterson and Marion S. Forgatch clinical psychology · Therapist Behavior as a Determinant for Client Noncompliance: A Paradox for the Behavior Modifier · 1985 · paper
The authors coded therapy sessions with parents and found that teaching and confronting raised resistance, while support lowered it. It backs this card's advice to stop supplying more once the same request comes back.
The full text is paywalled, so the link goes to a library record.
- Alisa Yu, Justin M. Berg and Julian J. Zlatev organisational behaviour and psychology · Emotional acknowledgment: How verbalizing others' emotions fosters interpersonal trust · 2021 · paper
The authors show in six studies that naming what another person seems to feel raises their trust, and that even naming the wrong feeling beats saying nothing. It is the closest test of this card's step of describing what you see happening.
- Jared R. Curhan, Jennifer R. Overbeck, Yeri Cho, Teng Zhang and Yu Yang negotiation · Silence is golden: Extended silence, deliberative mindset, and value creation in negotiation · 2022 · paper
The authors found in negotiation exercises that long pauses went with better deals for both sides. It is the measured case for this card's last step: say what you see, then stop talking.
Who says do not
- Gong vendor · Mastering the talk-to-listen ratio in sales calls · 2024 · vendor data
Gong's analysis of its call data found that sellers talked slightly less on won deals than on lost ones. It is the check on taking "talk more" as the lesson of the JOLT chapter, whose figures point the other way.
- Alexander Chernev, Ulf Böckenholt and Joseph Goodman consumer psychology · Choice overload: A conceptual review and meta-analysis · 2015 · paper
The authors reviewed 99 results and found that more options hurt only under certain conditions, such as a hard task and uncertain preferences. It is here because it stops the card from claiming that more information is always worse.