It doesn’t matter whether you like it, but job searching is a whole hell of a lot like sales.

Like… pretty much exactly like sales.

You have a product… you.

That product has features… your skills, abilities, experience, and network.

The features solve a problem for a target customer… the hiring manager or company.

The product has user reviews… your references.

You’re prospecting for companies in the market to purchase the product… companies that are hiring.

You advertise your product’s skills on a landing page… your LinkedIn profile.

You talk to friends and family to see if they know anyone interested in buying it… warm networking.

You do cold email outreach to inform others about your product… cold networking.

When someone is interested, you jump on a sales call… an interview.

Eventually, you find someone who wants your product, and they submit a letter of intent to purchase… an offer letter.

You and the customer negotiate a fair price for the product… the offer negotiations.

With all of these similarities, it pays to become a student of the world's most successful salespeople.

Now, I could tell you that the secret to your job search lies in analyzing data from sales calls but you don’t have time to that.

Thankfully on a recent episode of Lenny’s Podcast, host Lenny Rachitsky interviewed someone who has done it for you.

Matt Dixon and his team of researchers ran a study in 2020 that analyzed 2.5 million sales calls and the results they found could be exactly what you need to never get ghosted again, and instead, have offer letters piling in.

Full transparency this is a long post, one of my longest, but I promise that it’s packed full of useful information that could be the difference in you getting an offer.

WHO IS MATT DIXON?

Matt Dixon is an expert in sales and customer service. 

He’s a bestselling author of The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation, a frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review, and a highly sought after speaker for companies like Amazon, Salesforce, Deloittte, Marriott, HP, and United.

Matt does extensive research into what makes top-performing salespeople and customer service representatives different from their peers.

He spends his time deconstructing the performance of the best and brightest using massive data sets and sharing those results with the rest of the world.

THE STUDY.

In March 2020, Matt kicked off research on his new project to better understand the current state of sales.

If you remember, something else happened in March of 2020. 

Oh yeah… COVID. 

Previously, a significant number of sales calls were made in person, which made data collection harder.

But, with the lockdowns, every business moved to virtual sales calls, making that data much easier to collect and analyze.

His previous best-selling book, The Challenger Sale, used data from 6,000 salespeople, but this fully virtual change gave him more data.

Lots more.

Matt and his team ended up getting access to 2.5 million sales calls from 250,000 salespeople, and, as is the rage right now, he used machine learning to identify some surprising trends.

THE FINDINGS.

Indecision vs. Competition

Most people think that sales are lost due to competition.

A competitor comes in with a superior product or service or offers a better price and swipes that sale out from under you.

But, Matt and his team found that’s not the case.

In reality, most sales deals are lost not to competition but to customer indecision.

The sales person has a great call with the potential customer, everything seems to be going great, they have expressed a need, they have expressed that the product will solve that need, they seem excited about the potential of working together, and then… crickets.

So, where is that indecision coming from?

Three Primary Drivers of Indecision

The results showed that indecision comes from three main places.

Choice Overload

Customers are overwhelmed by too many options and fear making the wrong choice.

It’s the paradox of choice.

You think that giving the customer so many options will stack value for them and make you a clear winner but in reality it makes their decision even harder.

Anticipation of Regret

Customers worry they might learn new information after the purchase that could make the decision seem poor.

In the podcast, Matt gave an example of a company that signed a contract worth millions of dollars to implement a new piece of software.

However, days after signing the agreement a report came out that showed the product wasn’t the leader in the space but rather a middle of the pack option.

The CTO who had led the purchasing process was quickly overwhelmed by messages saying, “Did you see the report?” 

“It looks like the company we just signed up for was seen as so-so by the analysts.” 

“Have we talked to these competitors and those competitors?” 

“Why aren’t we going with the leaders?”

Eventually, the CTO backed out of the deal.

Uncertainty of Outcomes 

Customers are concerned they won’t achieve the projected return on investment and the decision will reflect poorly on them.

If you promise a 5x improvement but the improvement is 2x or 3x, then the person who led the purchasing decision will need to answer to the people above them.

In today’s environment, that one bad decision won’t just make them look bad but could lead to them getting fired.

FOFU - Fear of Fucking Up

This leads us to the major underlying factor in this indecision, what Matt calls FOFU or Fear of Fucking Up (or FOMU, Fear of Messing Up for those who don’t like cursing).

In the classic book “Thinking Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman, he uncovered something called the status quo bias.

The status quo bias is a cognitive bias that leads individuals to prefer things to stay the same.

It causes people to resist change and choose options that keep existing conditions, even when better alternatives present themselves.

But Matt says that status quo bias, while incredibly powerful, isn’t what is at play here.

Rather, it’s a bias called omission bias.

Omission bias is where individuals judge harmful actions as worse than equally harmful inactions.

In short, it’s the fact that people don’t want to be blamed for making decisions that lead to a loss.

THE JOLT METHOD.

So, the research showed that the real issue you’re trying to overcome is indecision due to the person’s fear of being blamed for making a bad decision.

Thankfully, Matt revealed the method that top salespeople use to overcome the indecision.

He calls it the JOLT method.

• Judge the level of indecision.

• Offer a recommendation

• Limit the exploration

• Take risk off the table

Judge The Level of Indecision

Judging a person’s level of indecision is one of the hardest things you can do because everyone thinks they’re great at making decisions.

The issue is that you can’t ask, “How indecisive are you?” because the person will say, “I’m not indecisive.”

That’s why Matt calls this the carbon monoxide of sales.

It’s tasteless, odorless, and you can’t see it, but it’s there and if it’s present in high enough amounts it will kill you (or kill your sale).

So, what can you do to overcome this indecision?

Pings and Echoes

Instead of asking a person straight up about how indecisive they are, the best salespeople ask questions to confirm or refute whether what they have said concerns the buyer.

The question can look something like this…

“I’m just curious if we could calibrate here for just a moment, and there’s a reason I’m asking this, which is a lot of the customers at this point in our process of working together, they get almost overwhelmed with all the options, and look, I probably made this worse. We’re very proud of what we do. I want to paint the art of the possible, but I also know if we’re going to do business together, you told me right away budgets are limited and you can’t have it all. You’ve got to decide what’s nice to have and what’s need to have. I’m just curious, are you and your team clear on what would be in and out of the proposal?”

The goal is to get everything on the table so it can be recognized and dealt with.

By structuring the question in this way, you’re showing them that they’re totally normal, everyone struggles with this, and you want to be of service to them.

Offer A Recommendation

The second step in the JOLT process is to offer a recommendation.

In the sales process, you might attract them and get them excited to jump on a call because of all the potential options available in your product, but when they’re making a decision, all those choices can lead to paralysis.

Instead of keeping all of those options on the table, it’s best to provide them with a recommendation of a smaller set of options that you, as the expert, know will help them most effectively.

Think of yourself as the waiter at a fancy restaurant.

If a customer asks you, “I’m having a hard time making a decision, what do you recommend?”

The worst thing you can say is, “Well… what are you feeling like tonight?”

You just offloaded the thinking back onto them.

Instead, great waiters will say, “I love this dish because it’s the chef’s specialty, and it always sells out, but it’s a lot of food, and if you’re in the mood for something lighter, then we have a great vegetarian option which is also incredible.”

This allows you to share the burden of the decision with the customer and cements you as a partner whos guiding them toward what they should care about and what they shouldn’t.

Limit The Exploration

The third step in the process is to limit the exploration.

This is for the customers reviewing the endless options available to them.

They do this so they’re not surprised and because they don’t trust the salesperson to be forthcoming.

They believe the salesperson is paid to sell them more than they need and hide any deficiencies in the product or service.

Your goal is to get the customer to stop trying to be the expert and start trusting you as the expert.

There are two ways to do that.

Establish Trust

The first way is to establish trust by being blatantly transparent.

“The best salespeople are brutally transparent with customers like, ‘Hey, I know you were interested in this capability. I got to be honest, we get mixed reviews on that. It’s kind of an early capability for us. We’re still trying to iron out the kinks.”

This shows the customer that you’re not here to pull one over on them but rather there to get them to a great decision.

To the great salesperson, it doesn’t matter whether the customer buys from them, doesn’t buy from them, or buys from a competitor.

They just want them to make a great decision.

Demonstrate Expertise

The second way to limit exploration is to demonstrate expertise.

Many salespeople will bring in experts from product or engineering to speak with the customer. 

What that is really doing is decreasing the status of the salesperson in the customer's mind from expert to coordinator.

Do those things, and you’ll get the customer to stop trying to be the expert and trust you as the expert instead.

Take Risk Off The Table

The final step in the JOLT process is to take risk off the table and there are two ways to do that.

Resetting Customer Expectations

Great products will have case studies showing the best results they delivered for a customer. 

The customer gets pulled in by that 10x improvement but what happens when in reality they end up with a 5x improvement… or a 2x improvement?

The average salesperson will just say, “Yea, we did that 10x improvement and we can do the same for you!”

The best salespeople will stand by those claims and results but will also present a realistic picture to underpromise and overdeliver.

Here’s an example of what that sounds like…

“That is a great case. I was involved in that sale, but what we also need to understand is everything went perfectly. They resourced it to the hilt. They had no integration issues, no hiccups. It was beautiful and seamless. I don’t think you and I can think of many technology implementations that happened that way. What I’d rather we do is build your business case around a 5x improvement in sales productivity because we see at least that in 100% of our implementations. Then, let’s set up to over-deliver against that because I think we’re going to do better than that based on what I know about your organization, easily 6, 7, 8, 9, maybe even 10, but we don’t want you to just walk in promising 10x improvement in sales productivity. If we finish the year and we’re at 7x, then the CFO will be asking questions, when in absolute terms, she should be thrilled with 7x, right? Let’s make sure we set ourselves up for success.”

It’s still showing confidence in the results you can drive and owning the success driven for other clients but making it clear that you want to set a realistic goal and then do everything possible to beat that goal to make them look even better.

Give Them A Safety Net

The second way the best salespeople de-risk the purchase is to give them a safety net.

Those safety nets can come in multiple forms, but Matt highlighted three.

Creating A Roadmap: Before any agreement is signed putting a plan in front of them that highlights what the next six months together will look like. Including the value they can expect, what you will do, what they will do, the metrics you’ll be monitoring, how often you’ll connect with each other, etc. Roadmaps are highly effective because they show the customer this isn’t your first rodeo and that you’ve done this before.

Providing Additional Support: In the sales world, many products are DIY, so having someone there to support them and walk them through the implementation and troubleshooting process can make them feel more secure and that they’ll actually be getting the results they promised.

Opt-Out Clauses: When making a purchase, customers can get scared by the length of the agreement. If they make a bad choice, they could be stuck with that choice for months or years. So, offering them the ability to opt out of the contract in less time if they aren’t satisfied can de-risk the purchase.

APPLYING IT TO YOUR INTERVIEWS.

So, that’s how the best salespeople do it.

Now, let’s put everything into the context of the job search so you can use these best practices to crush your interviews and land more offers.

Indecision vs. Competition

If you make it to the interview process, just like sales, more offers are lost due to indecision than competition.

I can’t tell you how many candidates I’ve interviewed who have fallen in the bucket of, “They’re ok, but I’m not really sure they’re the amazing fit we’re looking for.”

What ends up happening is that we tell the recruiter to “put the candidate on ice” or stall them in the process so we have a chance to interview more people who could be a great fit.

People get ghosted because they fall through the cracks when the team hasn’t made a decision and is looking for more options before telling a candidate “no”.

So it’s not necessarily the fact that you weren’t a great candidate or that there was a better candidate in the process who clearly beat you out.

It’s likely that the hiring manager just isn’t sure that you’re the perfect candidate they need to fill the role on their team.

Drivers of Hiring Manager Indecision

Where is that hiring manager indecision coming from?

Choice Overload

ATS systems are being overwhelmed by applications.

There are hundreds of applications for an opening within days of it hitting the internet, and it’s a herculean task for the hiring manager or recruiter (if the startup is large enough to have a recruiting team) to sort through all of those different options.

In their mind, there are an endless number of potentially perfect candidates, which makes it hard to make a decision.

Anticipation of Regret

Hiring managers worry they might learn something about the candidate after they’re hired that could make the decision seem poor.

In startups, because things change so rapidly, the hiring manager might also worry that they’ll soon learn something about the actual needs of the company and that those needs won’t align with what they just hired for.

Maybe it’s that the person doesn’t really have the skills they thought or they said they did.

Maybe it’s that the person doesn’t fit with the team culture or working style, or they butt heads with all of the existing employees.

Maybe it’s that they hire you and, in a week, learn that a candidate who has done exactly what they’re looking for and has a referral from someone inside the company is looking for their next role, and that person might have been a better hire than you.

They’re worried that you’ll be hired and that within the first few days or weeks in the company, they’ll start to get messages saying, “You really need to dial in your new hire. They’re causing all sorts of issues with the team.”

Uncertainty of Outcomes 

The final driver of hiring manager uncertainty is the uncertainty of outcome.

Will you be able to do what you said you could do and what they need you to do?

Are you going to mesh well with the existing team?

Hiring Manager FOFU

It all leads to the hiring manager’s fear of fucking up.

To them, it’s not just the fact that they’re going to look bad and that they might get fired.

It’s also that they’re going to have spent valuable time and money that they can’t afford to waste.

Re-starting the hiring process after letting someone go is painful and takes significant energy and attention away from solving the critical problems that make the company run.

In a large company, this is annoying but manageable.

In a startup, it could kill the company.

If you’re interviewing with the founders, I guarantee this is something on the back of their minds, especially in the earlier stages.

CLOSE MORE SALES OFFERS.

Now, let’s apply the JOLT method to give you actionable steps to get more offers.

Judge The Level of Indecision

Asking a straight up question like, “Is there anything you’ve heard today that makes you question that I’m the right person for the role?” is more likely to elicit a non-answer than something valuable.

It puts the interviewer on the spot to either deliver critical feedback to someone they just met (many people won’t do that) or sugarcoat it and tell them everything is fine (which isn’t useful to you).

Instead of that, ask a question like, “I know making the right hire at this critical stage of the company is important and I also know that right now hiring teams are overwhelmed with the number of candidates applying to positions and the endless options that produces. I’m very proud of my results and what I have been able to do for the companies I have worked for in the past but I also know that you’re looking for the best candidate, and if we’re going to work together, I want to make sure that we’re as clear and transparent with each other as possible. From everything in the job description and everything we’ve spoken about already, do you and the team have a clear understanding of what’s a nice to have in this hire and what’s a need to have?”

With that question, you’re far more likely to receive a clear response that you can use to your benefit.

You can also dig deeper into the psychology of why the must haves are must haves and the nice to haves are nice to haves.

If you check all the must have boxes you can emphasize those in your response to their answer and provide background details of your results in those areas in a thank you email after the interview.

If you don’t check all the must have’s you can lean into the establishment of trust through transparency.

Importance of Recommendations

The best salespeople recommend a limited set of options or price points of the product to help the customer make a decision.

In the hiring process, you’ll be recommending yourself, how you’ve worked with others, and the impact you’ve made to make yourself stand out as the best hire.

This is where video testimonials can make a massive swing in the decision of the hiring team.

To do this, I recommend you get video testimonials from former coworkers, managers, and mentors and share those in a Google Drive folder or using software like allUP with your application and with your cold email outreach.

It’s easy to fake written testimonials.

It’s very hard to fake video testimonials.

Recommendations like these will help to offload the burden of the decision from the shoulders of the hiring manager.

Also, almost no one will be willing to ask people for video testimonials, so if you have the courage to first request them and then send them, it will make you stand out even more.

Effective Interview Transparency

Your goal with transparency is to limit the hiring manager’s exploration of other candidates.

You want them to stop trying to be the expert in the field they’re hiring for and, instead, trust you as the expert.

Establish Trust

If they have identified must haves or nice to haves that they’re looking for in this hire and if you do not fully meet their expectations then being blatantly transparent will create trust between you.

Transparency could look something like, “I’m an expert at go to market strategy and execution for new markets and products and building out operational processes but, to be honest, I have some exposure to financial modeling and I have created them in the past and they have been effective but it’s not the thing I’m the best in the world at.”

Being transparent and confident in your abilities and shortcomings show the interviewer that…

• You know the value of your experience

• You’re self aware

• You’re not there to trick them

• You want to work with them but you’re really looking for the best fit

• You’re not desperate because you know that your skills and abilities are a fit somewhere

• You just want them to make a great decision

I say all of this while recognizing that transparency will not make up for gaps in must have characteristics, skills, or experience.

If you admit you aren’t the best at SQL and the job is 99% SQL then you’re likely not a great fit.

Demonstrate Expertise

One thing I’ve seen kill job seekers is defering their impact to other people or to the team as a whole.

If you want the hiring team to stop looking for other candidates it’s important that you cement yourself as an expert in the area they’re hiring for.

I’m not saying to take credit for things that you didn’t do, but I am telling you that it’s critical to speak about what YOU did, the results YOU drove, and the impact YOU had on the company.

It’s important that they view YOU as the expert.

And one more thing…

Instead of them having to take your word for it, demonstrate to them what you’re capable of either through proof of prior work or by creating a value deliverable that demonstrates your capabilities and solves a problem for them.

Send these to them in initial cold outreach emails or in follow up emails throughout the process.

These are absolute gamechangers.

De-Risking The Hire

Finally, you want to de-risk the hiring manager’s decision so there’s almost no downside to them choosing you as a candidate.

Here are some ways to do that using the JOLT research.

Resetting Hiring Manager Expectations

Get a clear understanding of the current state of affairs inside the company.

Make sure that you understand the timeline they’re expecting and the resources available (people, money, tools) so you can set clear expectations.

Then, give a realistic picture of what they can expect based on your experience.

For example, when I took my role as VP of Operations at my last startup I could have said that we would have incredible internal data visibility, beautiful dashboards that updated everything in real time, clear process documentation for all internal operations, a 100% customer net promoter score, and automations that reduce our need for operational headcount all within the first three to six months.

I had seen all of those things created at Uber and I could implement those changes.

But… the reality was that none of those things existed in this new company so everything would need to be created from scratch and we had way fewer resources (people, money, tools) to execute them.

So, instead, I focused on the things I would be able to clean up and improve immediately (in this case it was day to day warehouse operations and processes) and go from there.

Hiring managers want people to be optimistic but if you’re too optimistic they’ll get the sense that it’s too good to be true.

Giving Them A Safety Net

There are a few great ways I have seen people give hiring managers a safety net.

Creating A Roadmap: Just like in the sales example, I have seen people present a detailed 30-60-90 day play that highlights what the first six months of them in the role will look like. They make it specific to the company and include things like metrics they’ll monitor, the names of specific team members they’ll work with, and examples of communication cadence and structure so the hiring team can clearly see what it will be like to work with this person.

Providing Free Work: In certain cases I have seen people successfully offer to work for the company for free for a period of time (a few weeks or a month) in order to ensure that it’s a good fit. More often than not, the company won’t take you up on this offer for fear of any legal issue but sometimes it’s worth a shot and just the offer itself displays a level of confidence in your work that’s hard to match. Additionally, value deliverables serve as free work that allow the team to see what you’re capable of and are especially impressive due to the fact that you’re operating limited information because you’re not inside the company yet.

Opt-Out Clause: In sales you insert an opt out clause so the company can back out of the deal if they want to. In the hiring process the company can back out of their employment contract with you at any time because of “at-will employment” but that doesn’t take into account the messiness of going through the termination process. So, another flavor of this is that makes it more favorable to the employer is offering to start as a contractor so you both can better understand what it’s like working together and if, for whatever reason it’s not a good fit, you both can go your own way without a messy breakup.

I know that was a lot. 

But after hearing the interview with Matt Dixon and learning about all of the game-changing unlocks he found with his extensive research, I had to write a comprehensive piece first showing you what this looks like in the sales process and then tying that back into your job search.

As I said in the intro, the job search and sales process are a one-to-one comparison.

Adopting the best practices of those who close the most sales will give you the best chance at closing more offers.

Matt Dixon’s JOLT method and its application to your interviews are a proven step-by-step process for doing just that.

Let’s go get you that job!

Kyle

Watch the full interview with Matt below.