May 09, 2023

A Conversation with Jennifer Allen

46 minutes

Jennifer Allen is formerly Chief Evangelist of Challenger and now Head of Community Growth at Lavender. She's joining me today, along with my occasional co-host, Howard Brown, founder and CEO of Revenue.io. Jennifer discusses the psychology of no-decision and why buyers who choose the status quo are actually making a decision, just not the one you want. She also gives an introduction to the Challenger Sale and the 5 sales mindsets they discovered, as well as gives tips on what sellers can do to ensure a buyer actually makes a buying decision. Jennifer also talks about The Challenger Loop to get quick feedback from the customer about what went right and wrong in the deal.

HIGHLIGHT QUOTES

A better product does NOT convince a buyer to make a decision- Jennifer: "[Better] is my least favorite word in sales now because I think it's the number one word that led to a lot of my status quo, no decision deals because what I failed to realize is people don't always want better. Like, good, in most cases, especially in markets like this, is damn good enough."

Show the buyer the cost of action - Jennifer: "One of the most eye-opening experiences is my job as a seller is not to show why it's better. My job is to show the cost of an action. What is the cost of the status quo before I ever start going off about what I have to offer and what that looks like."

ROI is not compelling enough to move away from the status quo - Jennifer: "I would talk about here's the ROI of changing; it's 15 times ROI. Guess who else is saying that? Every other vendor competing for that dollar. It means almost nothing.

And I'm not saying there's not a time and place for ROI, but compelling a business to exit the status quo is incredibly difficult. And just like the doctor's example, they need to feel that the risk of staying the same is actually far greater than the risk of change."

Find out more about Jennifer in the link(s) below: