The Status Quo Bias

Salespeople talk a lot about losing to the status quo. We think about, and try, lots of different tactics to move our prospects away from it. Many of us have learned to do this by dialing up the FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) or digging for pain. We think that if we can show that “the pain of same is worse than the pain of change” then we’ll get the sale.

But there are so many instances where we dig for pain with a qualified prospect, gain alignment that our solution is better than the status quo… and yet we don’t win the deal. My team currently has 4x more deals in our pipeline under “Lost - Did Not Select Any Software” than we do “Lost - Selected Competitor”. So what’s going on here?

The Status Quo Bias which drives prospects to want to keep things the same is not the only obstacle that salespeople must overcome.

The Omission Bias

We must also overcome customer indecision. This is different than the status quo bias. We see lots of qualified prospects who know our solution is better but they don’t make the leap. Because it feels like a big scary leap for them. They’re indecisive because they want to avoid making a mistake and are scared of messing up. It’s the Omission Bias.

Customer indecision is a big problem that’s only getting bigger. Increasingly our prospects have more options, more access to information, and more things to research. More, more, more. It’s paralyzing. And it leads to indecision. And ultimately what happens is that many of our prospects decide to do nothing.

How do we Overcome Indecision?

We decrease the fear of purchasing. This is very different from overcoming the status quo bias where we want to increase the fear of not purchasing. If we use the status quo playbook on a prospect who is struggling with indecision, we will actually make them more indecisive.

And how do we decrease the fear of purchasing? Stay tuned for my next post.

Additional Resources

• Podcast: Overcoming Customer Indecision and Challenging Conventional Sales Wisdom with Matt Dixon (YouTube Link and Spotify Link)

• Readings:

  • The JOLT Effect by Matt Dixon

  • Sales EQ - Chapter #27 : “Turning Around Objections”