Teaching the Customer How to Buy
Beat indecision by de-risking the buyer's decision, not by piling on FOMO
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 93%
Most lost B2B deals are lost to customer indecision, not to a competitor — 40-60% of purchase processes end in no decision because the buyer can't choose confidently and fears getting fired for a mistake. The counterintuitive fix is not FOMO (which makes indecisive buyers worse) but reducing their risk: give them a map of the market, teach them the purchase criteria, and take risk off the table with guarantees, smaller pilots, and support.
Origin
April Dunford, drawing on Matt Dixon's book The Jolt Effect, which analyzed 2.5 million recorded sales calls and found that adding FOMO to an already-indecisive buyer lowers close rates. Also connected to Bob Moesta's Jobs to Be Done ('help the champion do the job of deciding without getting fired').
Core principles
- 01The buyer's real fear is not missing out; it is being blamed for a bad choice
- 02FOMO piled on an indecisive buyer increases paralysis and lowers close rates
- 03Buyers rarely have a clear picture of the market even after doing their own research
- 04Give them a map: what are the approaches, where do products fit, what should their criteria be
- 05There is a second job to be done — the champion needs to decide without getting fired
How to run it
- 1
Recognize indecision as the real competitor
Accept that most lost deals go to 'no decision,' not to a rival or to status quo being better. The buyer defaults to 'let's delay to next year' because that is the safe, risk-free move for whoever is on the hook.
Watch out Do not assume the buyer rejected you on merit — most often they simply couldn't choose confidently.
- 2
Give them a map of the whole market
Reduce overwhelm by bucketing the entire market into a few approaches so any vendor slots into one bucket. The buyer no longer needs to learn every feature of every product to feel oriented.
Pro tip 'There's shared inbox, there's help desk software, and there's us' — a three-bucket map lets the buyer place any competitor instantly.
- 3
Teach the purchase criteria, not just your pitch
Tell the buyer what a good solution for someone like them should require — 'for customers like you, you just have to worry about these three things.' You are teaching them how to buy, which lowers their stress.
Watch out Resist the urge to add FOMO or pressure; on an indecisive buyer it backfires and drives paralysis.
- 4
Take risk off the table
Actively de-risk the decision: split a big deal into smaller pieces, offer a money-back guarantee, and name the services and support that will catch them if things go wrong.
Pro tip Frame it as helping the champion cover themselves if the choice turns out imperfect — that is the job that unlocks the money.
In the wild
Lenny recounts buying community forum software: sales teams pushing 'what's the next step, who else needs to buy in,' IT insisting on Salesforce integration, until the original goal (the best, most differentiated tool) collapsed into 'fine, let's just go with the thing that works with Salesforce.' The stress of deciding drove the default choice.
→ Illustrates how buyer stress defaults toward the safe market-leader pick; the challenger loses not on merit but on the buyer's risk aversion.
Common mistakes
Leaning into FOMO with an indecisive buyer
The Jolt Effect data on 2.5M calls shows adding 'competitors are all doing it' pressure to an already-stressed buyer makes them less likely to close — they put their head in the sand and do nothing.
Assuming the buyer understands the market
Even a buyer '80% through their journey' may be 80% of the way to buying nothing; they are usually overwhelmed and lack a clear market picture, so failing to orient them leaves them paralyzed.
Is it for you?
Best for
B2B sellers losing deals to 'no decision' and stalled pipelines, especially challengers against a default market leader
Not ideal for
Simple low-risk purchases or transactional sales where buyer decision-anxiety is not the bottleneck
From the transcript
“40 to 60% of B2B purchase processes end in no decision”
“the majority of those is they couldn't figure out how to make a choice confidently”
“if a customer is indecisive, throwing FOMO into the mix makes it worse”
“this idea of teaching a customer how to buy is one way to take that stress down”
“customers being more afraid of screwing up than missing out”
From the episode
A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins
April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch)