New Research Shows Most Buyer Indecision Is the Result of Fear of Messing Up

When prospects balk or get cold feet, sellers tend to go back to what they were taught for decades. They assume that it must be that they have not overcome the prospect’s status quo bias. The salesperson assumes that the prospect is just not fully aware of how their solution will address their issue, or the prospect does not see enough daylight between the company’s solution and those offered by the competition.

When push comes to shove, these salespeople dial up the Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD) to tap into the prospect’s Fear of Missing Out (FoMO). They share what the prospect stands to lose if they do not buy today by creating a kind of burning platform that the prospect has no choice but to abandon. Unfortunately, recent studies have indicated that this tactic no longer works. In fact, dialing up the FoMO has become counter-productive in today’s world.

Most salespeople dial up the FoMO because they consider the status quo their biggest competition because, for decades, that is the central tenon that salespeople have been taught. If the prospect starts to waffle, gets cold feet, or begins to talk themselves out of the solution, the salesperson believes they have not put the option of maintaining the status quo to bed.

Conventional sales wisdom is that when a prospect wants to avoid a buying decision and wants to maintain the status quo, it is because of one of three reasons:

• What the prospect has today is good enough
• What you are offering is not compelling enough to make the prospect leave what they are doing and adopt your solution (The juice is not worth the squeeze)
• Or, they have other priorities at this time, so considering your offer is a distraction

In summary, the prospect believes the “Pain of Same is less than the Pain of Change.”

While a salesperson still needs to make a convincing pitch to overcome a prospect’s status quo bias, new research has discovered a new chasm that the salesperson needs to help the prospect cross. 

Without this knowledge of this new chasm, the salesperson assumes that any resistance is because the prospect is stuck on the status quo.

Most salespeople handle these situations in three ways.

• The carrot approach. “You must have missed how much you will save and do not fully appreciate how our solution will help you, so let me show you again.”
• The stick approach. Salespeople resort to FUD and create the burning platform to compel the prospect to act. They highlight that their competitors already use their solution and show the prospect the cost of their inaction.
• The disappearing carrot. “Did I mention that we are offering our solution at a 10% discount for this month only? After that, it will only be available at full retail.” Or they introduce scarcity, saying that soon we’ll be sold out.

With all three of these tactics, the salesperson is dialing up the FoMO to make the prospect realize the cost of inaction. These salespeople have been taught this based on the assumption that the prospects have not yet felt compelled to leave the status quo. 

What Matt Dixon and Ted McKenna discovered after reviewing 2.5 million sales calls was that in 84% of the sales calls, dialing up the FoMO made matters worse, not better. This single piece of insight changed everything about sales and was the revelation that led to his ground-breaking book, “The JOLT Effect,” to discover why FoMO was often counter-productive.

Dixon’s research discovered that there are two types of sales lost to no-decision that a prospect can experience. One is that the prospect is committed to the status quo for the abovementioned reasons. For these prospects, dialing up the FoMO is often required to make that sale.

However, the research also discovered a second no-decision loss, which accounted for nearly 60% of indecision situations. This second type of no-decision lost sale was a function of three things.

• Too many Options. The prospect does not know which solution to pick. This is what Barry Schwartz, in his book The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less, discusses when he says, “Choice overload can make you question the decisions you make before you even make them, it can set you up for unrealistically high expectations, and it can make you blame yourself for any and all failures.” Basically, when a prospect has too many product or service vendors, plan options, terms, configurations, etc., they become paralyzed and glued to the status quo. For the prospect, it becomes an exercise in what not to buy rather than what to buy, and they worry about making the wrong choice. For example, if they pick plan A and it is an irreversible choice, such as replacing a company’s phone system with yours, and then they later discover that plan B was a better option, it reflects poorly on them as the decision-maker.
• Lack of information. The prospect feels they lack enough information to make an informed decision. The irony is that today there is so much information on the Internet that the prospect feels that they need to consume more before making a truly informed decision. They feel that the next article will have all the answers necessary to be a smart consumer, so they continue to delay the decision.
• Outcome uncertainty. The prospect feels that they will not get all the outcomes that they were promised. They may have built a business case for a ten-times Return on Investment (ROI) and then only get a five-times ROI. There are no guarantees or assurance that they will see the returns they expected. They feel the salesperson is asking them to take a leap of faith without a safety net. Without some type of assurance, the prospects feels it is too risky and makes no decision.

Note that the status quo bias does not appear in any of these three functions. While a prospect could be fully committed to departing from the status quo, they more often fail to make a decision out of Fear of Messing Up (FoMU), which personally reflects upon them and their decision-making ability. When a salesperson dials up the FoMO, they can actually make the prospect’s FoMU much worse, further stalling any decision. Many prospects are so motivated by not screwing up they choose to make no decision at all.

Next time you encounter a prospect that conveys hesitation in making a buying decision, it is essential that you determine if their reluctance is based on a status quo bias or a fear of messing up. Depending upon the source of their indecision, it requires a different set of sales tactics. Applying the wrong tactic to the situation can make matters worse.

Is your prospect’s indecisiveness the result of a status quo bias or a fear of messing up?