Most sales leaders have heard it before: ‘no decision’ is a bigger enemy than your competitors.
The stats will be familiar too: 40% (or more) of deals end in no decision.
But while many B2B sales organisations understand the power of ‘no decision’, fewer seem to understand its causes. And because of that, firms are not properly equipping their sellers to tackle indecision.
The approach sellers are taking is not beating buyer indecision – it’s making it worse.
But there’s good news: there’s a smarter way. Beating ‘no decision’ to make a high-value sale doesn’t require a method that’s more complex or more arduous. In fact, for high-performing teams, it all revolves around one theme: simplicity.
In B2B sales, we’ve known for a while that a high proportion of deals end in no decision.
The latest research, involving analysis of over 2.5 million sales conversations, shows that at least 40% of bigger deals “end up lost to customers who express their intent to purchase, but ultimately fail to act”.
Buyer indecision is killing deals – especially higher-value deals.
In behavioural terms, this indecision is often rooted in omission bias: the fear of getting things wrong. Buyers don’t want to make a decision that leads to a loss, so they don’t make a decision at all.
Up to half of buyers worry they’ll lose respect if they can’t attract support for a deal, and 12% think their job could be on the line if a high-value purchase proves unpopular.
Omission bias is exacerbated by the modern-day buying environment.
Buyers have access to a near-infinite amount of information. They spend 70% of their buying journey doing their own research. And they consult with more colleagues than ever before: there are 11 decision makers involved in the average bigger deal ($1m–$5m).
As information piles up and the stakes rise, indecision hardens. The result: buyers do nothing.
Most sales teams are aware that ‘no decision’ is the enemy. But most are using the wrong tactics to beat it.
They mistakenly think that more information will help the buyer make a decision. An eye-opening 86% falsely believe that ‘helping the customer consider all possible options and alternatives is important’.
Sellers are also failing to help customers with internal buy-in. When 5,000 B2B customers were surveyed by CEB (now a part of Gartner), 80% said they wanted “more support from suppliers in communicating the value of solutions they championed”.
This misguided sales approach costs millions in missed opportunities.
We conducted analysis based on research by Forrester, Bain & Company, KeyBanc and Gartner. It shows that a $200 million-revenue company loses up to $20 million each year to buyer indecision. This is made up of $9 million in lost new-logo growth and $11 million in lost growth from existing clients.
The smarter way of tackling buyer indecision stems from an understanding of its causes: that innate omission bias is amplified by the complexity of modern-day buying.
The solution? Make buying simpler. Especially if you’re selling a higher-value, more complex deal.
In the words of Patrick Pando, VP of AI at Baker Hughes, “Complexity is the biggest barrier to your deal. It’s indecision in disguise, and the cost of it is extremely high. The more complex the problem, the simpler your proposition must be.
“Simple wins fast,” as Patrick writes in Simplify Complexity, our free-to-download top quartile sales playbook.
Simplify Complexity: The Top Quartile Sales Playbook
To make buying simpler, top-quartile sales teams embrace simplicity at all points through the conversation. Their aim is to cut through the complexity of B2B buying.
They do this in four main ways:
For each principle, high-performing sellers use proven content and tools to deliver their simple message.
Here’s how each principle works:
In a Gartner survey of 1,000 B2B buyers, 43% said they’d prefer a rep-free buying experience.
That’s why high performers use sales content created specifically for buyers who are too overwhelmed to talk to them.
A proposition ebook is a great example. It’s a clear, readable guide that tells the story behind a simple sales proposition – something that will cut through and be easy for the buyer to share with colleagues.
Case studies also do this job. They back up the narrative with factual success stories: ‘this has worked for others like you, and it’s saved them this amount of money’. Everyone on the buying committee can quickly understand the evidence.
We mentioned earlier that 50% of buyers worry about their personal reputation when they make a decision, and 12% think they might lose their job if they get it wrong.
This is why, at each stage of the conversation, top-quartile sellers seek to validate the buyer’s decision to choose their solution.
Interactive calculators provide easy-to-understand validation in money terms: the costs a buyer’s organisation are wasting with their existing solution, and the increase in revenue they could achieve with the seller’s solution.
Later in the conversation, business case templates allow sellers to demonstrate ROI, again reassuring the buyer that they’re making the right decision for their organisation.
“Big deals attract big decision-making teams,” says Patrick Pando. “If there’s even one person who doesn’t understand your proposal, the whole group will return to the comfort of familiarity.”
That’s why it’s important to help customers to get internal buy-in – especially when 80% say they want sellers to support them more in this area.
Top-quartile teams use simple content geared at buyer alignment.
Buyer guide ebooks walk prospects and their stakeholders through their buying criteria, to ensure they’re all on the same page.
Buyer alignment ebooks allow the buyer to clearly lay out the benefits of the purchase to their internal committee.
And in the latter stages, proposal templates ensure alignment with all messages delivered through the journey.
“If there’s even one person who doesn’t understand your proposal, the whole group will return to the comfort of familiarity”
In another of our blogs, we discussed the importance of a consistent message through the buying journey.
It makes customers feel more confident about making a decision, which in turn makes them 157% more likely to make a high-quality purchase.
Simplicity aids consistency. A simple message is far easier to repeat through the conversation.
High-performing teams keep their message consistent through all their content. They present and unpack it in easy-to-understand sales presentations, for example, and reiterate it at each touchpoint.
We create indecision-busting sales content with simplicity at its heart – for every stage of the buying journey.
We do this because we know that simplifying complexity gives sellers a much better chance of winning higher-value deals.
In fact, our content creates more than £500 million in opportunities for our clients every year.
If you’d like to talk about beating buyer indecision, and how we can help you do it, get in touch.