Ted McKenna is one of the world’s leading experts in sales, business development, and customer experience and a co-author of the bestselling book The JOLT Effect: How High Performers Overcome Customer Indecision. His research frequently appears in the pages of Harvard Business Review and he is a founding partner of DCM Insights, a boutique consultancy focused on using data and research-backed frameworks to help companies attract, retain, and grow their customers.

Ted is an expert in analyzing behaviours—of customers, doer-sellers, frontline sales & service agents, leaders, and board members—and applying analytics in various forms of content, products, and services. At Tethr, Ted worked on mining unstructured conversational data using advanced data science and leading AI/ML tools to build models, scores, and behavioural frameworks of which the most well-known model is the Tethr Effort Index. Previous roles called for deploying syndicated research methods to mine more structured sources such as surveys, diagnostics, demographics, and job data.

• “The Jolt Effect” is based upon studies of real buyer-seller conversations, using statistical and AI methods to understand what results in a sale, what factors result in negative effects, and what more successful salespersons can do differently when deals don’t seem to progress.
• One of the startling discoveries the author talks about is the fact that buyers are extremely jittery in making decisions precisely because there is an overload of information these days. To minimize risk, they often delay or abandon purchases.
• When buyers stall, sellers assume that they have not been able to convince the buyer with enough information. So they end up piling more information and somehow bring on the fear of missing out on an opportunity. This has negative effects since the buyer is already fearful of making a mistake they might regret later. Most of these engagements result in “no deal”. Instead, the seller must help the buyer as if they were advising their best friend on a purchase.
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Run time – 57.01 mins.