Ongoing Research Into the AI-Era Buyer

The book told the individual half of the story.

The JOLT Effect began as a study of 2.5 million recorded sales conversations and a playbook for sellers. Four years of research later, the harder problem is organizational. Indecision is a mindset gap, and it reshapes the fundamentals — how you qualify and disqualify, how you run discovery, what a proposal has to do, and what a forecast is actually worth.

Meanwhile the buyer has changed underneath all of it — equal parts driven by AI and distracted by it, moving through a market where the buying dynamics shift faster than most sales organizations can adapt. That's the work now.

Read the research More about the book

Every lost deal is one of two customers: the one who never wanted to change, and the one who wanted to and couldn't commit. More than half are the second kind — and almost nobody is selling against them.

87%

of opportunities carry high or moderate indecision driven by fear of failure.

56%

of losses come from fear of messing up, not from preferring the status quo.

73%

of the time, sellers misread a fear-based objection as a value-based one — and make it worse.

2.3x

the win rate for sellers who work the indecision instead of the value case.

Want the peer-reviewed version? The research was published in Harvard Business Review.

"Is JOLT a methodology?"

The question we get most. Short answer: no — and that's the point. JOLT sits on top of whatever you already run: MEDDPICC, Challenger, SPIN, or something you built yourself. What four years of research since the book has taught us is that you don't replace the status quo playbook — you run it differently once you really understand indecision.

See how it fits

Where you go from here

Depends whether you're sharpening your own skills or trying to change how an organization sells.

Individual sellers

Build the skill yourself

Your buyer isn't afraid of missing out. They're afraid of messing up.

Learn to spot that fear inside a live deal and work it, using the four behaviors the research found in high performers. Self-paced: 100+ micro-learning videos from the authors, practical exercises, and certification on completion.

See the course →

Sales leaders

Change how your organization sells

Indecision isn't a training gap. It's a mindset gap.

Understanding it changes how you qualify and disqualify, how you run discovery, how you present a solution, how you build mutual action plans, and what a forecast is worth. That's organizational work — and we don't rip your foundation out to do it. We build on it, elevating what you already have so it aligns with how today's buyers decide and how the highest performers actually sell.

Three ways in with SellingInnovations, depending on where your team is today.

Every team engagement includes the self-paced course for each participant.

See the three options →

Teams Putting the Research to Work

Who's behind the research

The JOLT Effect is based on a study of 2.5 million recorded B2B sales conversations, conducted by Matt Dixon and Ted McKenna. Dixon is also the co-author of The Challenger Sale, The Challenger Customer, and The Effortless Experience.

The research is ongoing, and it is delivered to sales organizations by SellingInnovations, which Dixon and McKenna co-founded with Dave Anderson and Rory Channer.

SellingInnovations was spun off from DCM Insights and focuses exclusively on B2B sales. The two remain sister companies under shared ownership. Readers who see DCM Insights referenced in the book are looking at the same research and the same people.

Losing deals to "no decision"?

Tell us where deals are stalling and we'll point you at the right starting place — or tell you if none of this is what you need.

Start a conversation Reader of the book looking for the tools referenced inside? They're here.