Your biggest competitor is called indecision
An analysis of 2.5 million sales calls showed that 40–60% of deals in play end not with a competitor, but with a decision not to decide. What to do about it.
When a deal falls through, we ask: who beat us? For their book The JOLT Effect (2022), Matthew Dixon and Ted McKenna analysed two and a half million recorded sales conversations and found a more uncomfortable answer: 40 to 60 percent of deals in play end neither with a competitor nor with a “no.” They end with the customer not deciding at all.
The fear of messing up
The interesting part is why. According to the data, indecision doesn't stem mainly from love of the status quo but from fear of error — the authors call it FOMU, fear of messing up. The customer already believes your product is good. What they don't believe is that they themselves will make a good decision: what if they choose wrong, overpay, embarrass themselves in front of the boss? And that fear grows with every additional presentation of benefits.
More persuasion makes it worse
That's the book's most annoying finding: the techniques that work on objections make indecision worse. Bombard a customer with more benefits and urgency, and their sense that there's something to fear only grows. The winners in the data did the opposite — they subtracted: fewer options instead of more, a clear recommendation instead of a catalogue, a smaller first step instead of a big leap, guarantees and pilots instead of pressure.
Be a guide, not a catalogue
Practically: stop asking “what else do you need to know?” and start recommending — “for your situation I'd take this and start here.” A customer stuck in indecision doesn't need more information. They need someone to share the risk of choosing. And if the decision falls asleep anyway: don't chase with “have you decided yet?” — come back with something that makes deciding easier.
What to take away
Count how many of this year's “lost” deals went to a competitor — and how many simply fizzled out. For the second pile, a better pitch isn't the cure. Patience, recommendations and timely, calm returns are.
Fizzled-out deals are exactly the ones that stage-based systems lose track of. In Lemnio the relationship runs on after “not now” — try it free.