Matt Dixon | Chief Product and Research Officer of Tethr, Sales and Leadership Expert, Best-Selling Author and Keynote Speaker

Matt Dixon

Chief Product and Research Officer of Tethr, Sales and Leadership Expert, Best-Selling Author and Keynote Speaker

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Matt Dixon
Biography

Matt Dixon is one of the world’s foremost experts in sales and customer experience.  Known for his ground-breaking research, he is a frequent contributor to Harvard Business Review and is the author of some of the most important business books of the past decade.  He is a founding partner of DCM Insights, a boutique consultancy focused on using data and research-backed frameworks to help companies a ract, retain and grow their customers. 

His first book, The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversa on (Portolio/Penguin 2011), was a #1 Amazon and Wall Street Journal bestseller and has sold nearly a million copies worldwide and has been translated into a dozen languages.  The Challenger Sale has won acclaim as “the most important advance in selling for many years” (SPIN Selling author Neil Rackham) and “the beginning of a wave that will take over a lot of selling organiza ons in the next decade.” (Business Insider).  He is also the author of The Effortless Experience: Conquering the New Ba leground for Customer Loyalty (Portfolio/Penguin 2013), which introduced the concept of customer effort reduc on and the Customer Effort Score to companies around the world, as well as The Challenger Customer: Selling to the Hidden Influencer Who Can Multiply Your Results (Portfolio/Penguin  2015), the celebrated sequel to The Challenger Sale.  His newest book, The JOLT Effect: How High Performers Overcome Customer Indecision, was released by Penguin in September 2022. 

Matt's work has been published in the print and online editons of Harvard Business Review on more than twenty occasions.  Among his noteworthy HBR ar cles are “Dismantling the Sales Machine” (November 2013) and “The End of Solution Sales” (July-August 2012), both of which appear in HBR’s 10 Must-Reads on Sales.  He is also the author of some of the most widely cited HBR ar cles on customer experience and customer service, including “Reinventing Customer Service” (November-December 2018), “Kick-Ass Customer Service” (January-February 2017), and “Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers” (July-August 2010).   

In addition to his research and writing, Matt is a seasoned practitioner having held executive leadership roles in strategy, new product development, product management, research and innovation for companies like Tethr, Korn Ferry Hay Group and CEB (now Gartner). 

He is a sought-after speaker and advisor to management teams around world, having presented his findings at a wide range of industry conferences as well as to hundreds of senior executive teams around the world, including those of many Fortune 500 companies. Matt holds a Ph.D. from the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh as well as a B.A. in International Studies from Mount Saint Mary’s University in Emmitsburg, Maryland.  He currently resides in the Washington, D.C. area with his wife and four children.   

Matt Dixon
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Matt Dixon
Featured Keynote Programs

The JOLT Effect
How High Performers Overcome Customer Indecision

From the bestselling co-author of The Challenger Sale, a paradigm-shattering approach to overcoming customer indecision and closing more sales. In sales, the worst thing you can hear from a customer isn’t “no.” It’s “I need to think about it.” When this happens, deeply entrenched business advice says to double down on your efforts to sell a buyer on all the ways they might win by choosing you and your business. But this approach backfires dramatically. Why? Because it completely gets wrong the primary driver behind purchasing decision-making: once purchase intent is established, customers no longer care about succeeding. What they really care about is not failing. For years, sales expert Matthew Dixon has been busting longstanding business myths. Now in The JOLT Effect, he and co-author Ted McKenna turn their trademark analysis and latest research to the vital and growing problem of customer indecision—and offer a shocking new approach that turns conventional wisdom on its head. Drawing on a brand-new, first-of-its-kind study of more than two and a half million sales conversations from across industry, they reveal the surprising truth that high-performing sales reps grasp and their average-performing peers don’t: only by addressing the customer’s fear of failure can you get indecisive buyers to go from verbally committing to actually pulling the trigger. The JOLT Effect is the playbook for any salesperson or leader who wants to close the gap between customer intent and action—and close more sales.

The Challenger Sale
Taking Control of the Customer Conversation

What's the secret to sales success? If you're like most business leaders, you'd say it's fundamentally about relationships--and you'd be wrong. The best salespeople don't just build relationships with customers. They challenge them. The need to understand what top-performing reps are doing that their average performing colleagues are not, drove Matthew Dixon and his colleagues to investigate the skills, behaviors, knowledge, and attitudes that matter most for high performance. And what they discovered may be the biggest shock to conventional sales wisdom in decades. Based on an exhaustive study of thousands of sales reps across multiple industries and geographies, The Challenger Sale argues that classic relationship building is a losing approach, especially when it comes to selling complex, large-scale business-to-business solutions. The study found that every sales rep in the world falls into one of five distinct profiles, and while all of these types of reps can deliver average sales performance, only one-the Challenger- delivers consistently high performance. Instead of bludgeoning customers with endless facts and features about their company and products, Challengers approach customers with unique insights about how they can save or make money. Rather than acquiescing to the customer's every demand or objection, they are assertive, pushing back when necessary and taking control of the sale. The things that make Challengers unique are replicable and teachable to the average sales rep. Once you understand how to identify the Challengers in your organization, you can model their approach and embed it throughout your sales force. The authors explain how almost any averageperforming rep, once equipped with the right tools, can successfully reframe customers' expectations and deliver a distinctive purchase experience that drives higher levels of customer loyalty and, ultimately, greater growth. An acclaimed international bestseller, The Challenger Sale has been lauded as “the most important advance in selling for many years” (SPIN Selling author Neil Rackham) and “the beginning of a wave that will take over a lot of selling organizations in the next decade” (Business Insider). The Challenger Sale has sold nearly a million copies worldwide, been translated into 8 foreign languages and appeared on Amazon and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists on multiple occasions since its release.

The Effortless Experience
Conquering the New Battleground for Customer Loyalty

Everyone knows that the best way to create customer loyalty is with service so good that it surprises and delights. But what if everyone is wrong? In The Effortless Experience, Dixon and team turn their research and analysis to a new, vital business subject—customer loyalty—and once again turn conventional wisdom on its head, producing one of the most influential books ever to be published in the customer experience and customer service space. The idea that companies must delight customers by exceeding service expectations is so entrenched that managers rarely question it. Yet the careful research conducted by Dixon and his team proves the “dazzle factor” is wildly overrated—it simply doesn’t predict repeat sales, share of wallet, or positive word-of-mouth. The reality: Loyalty is driven by how well a company delivers on its basic promises and solves day-to-day problems, not on how spectacular its service experience might be. Most customers don’t want to be “wowed”; they want an effortless experience. And they are far more likely to punish you for bad service than to reward you for good service. The Effortless Experience takes its audience on a fascinating journey deep inside the customer experience to reveal what really makes customers loyal—and disloyal. In this presentation, Dixon lays out the four key pillars of low-effort customer experience, along the way delivering robust data, shocking insights and profiles of companies that are using the principles revealed by the research, with great results.

The Challenger Customer
Selling to the Hidden Influencer Who Can Multiply Your Results

The bestselling authors of The Challenger Sale overturned decades of conventional wisdom with a bold new approach to sales. Now their latest research reveals something more surprising: Being a Challenger seller isn’t enough. Your success or failure also depends on who you challenge. Most marketing and sales teams go after low-hanging fruit: buyers who are eager and have clearly articulated needs. But according to the latest research from Dixon and his coauthors— based on data from thousands of B2B marketers, sellers, and buyers around the world—the highest-performing teams focus their time on potential customers who are far more skeptical, far less interested in meeting, and ultimately agnostic as to who wins the deal. How could this be? The authors of The Challenger Customer reveal that high-performing B2B teams grasp something that their average-performing peers don’t: Big, complex deals increasingly require consensus among a wide range of players across the organization, the limiting factor is rarely the salesperson’s inability to get an individual stakeholder to agree to a solution. More often it’s that the stakeholders inside the company can’t even agree with one another. It turns out only a very specific type of customer stakeholder has the credibility, persuasive skill, and will to effectively challenge his or her colleagues to pursue anything more ambitious than the status quo. Challenger sellers do best when they target Challenger customers. The Challenger Customer unveils a research-based approach that will help sellers and managers to distinguish the "Talkers" from the "Mobilizers" in any customer organization. It provides a blueprint for finding and engaging them with disruptive insight and equipping them to effectively challenge their own organization.

Matt Dixon
Featured Books

The Effortless Experienceby Matt Dixon

The Effortless Experience

by Matt Dixon
Everyone knows that the best way to create customer loyalty is with service so good, so over the top, that it surprises and delights. But what if everyone is wrong?


In their acclaimed bestseller The Challenger Sale, Matthew Dixon and his colleagues at CEB busted many longstanding myths about sales. Now they've turned their research and analysis to a new vital business subject--customer loyalty--with a new book that turns the conventional wisdom on its head.


The idea that companies must delight customers by exceeding service expectations is so entrenched that managers rarely even question it. They devote untold time, energy, and resources to trying to dazzle people and inspire their undying loyalty. Yet CEB's careful research over five years and tens of thousands of respondents proves that the "dazzle factor" is wildly overrated--it simply doesn't predict repeat sales, share of wallet, or positive wordof-mouth. The reality:

Loyalty is driven by how well a company delivers on its basic promises and solves day-to-day problems, not on how spectacular its service experience might be. Most customers don't want to be "wowed"; they want an effortless experience. And they are far more likely to punish you for bad service than to reward you for good service.


If you put on your customer hat rather than your manager or marketer hat, this makes a lot of sense. What do you really want from your cable company, a free month of HBO when it screws up or a fast, painless restoration of your connection? What about your bank--do you want free cookies and a cheerful smile, even a personal relationship with your teller? Or just a quick in-and-out transaction and an easy way to get a refund when it accidentally overcharges on fees?


The Effortless Experience takes readers on a fascinating journey deep inside the customer experience to reveal what really makes customers loyal--and disloyal. The authors lay out the four key pillars of a low-effort customer experience, along the way delivering robust data, shocking insights and profiles of companies that are already using the principles revealed by CEB's research, with great results. And they include many tools and templates you can start applying right away to improve service, reduce costs, decrease customer churn, and ultimately generate the elusive loyalty that the "dazzle factor" fails to deliver.

The rewards are there for the taking, and the pathway to achieving them is now clearly marked.

The Challenger Saleby Matt Dixon

The Challenger Sale

by Matt Dixon

What's the secret to sales success? If you're like most business leaders, you'd say it's fundamentally about relationships-and you'd be wrong. The best salespeople don't just build relationships with customers. They challenge them.

The need to understand what top-performing reps are doing that their average performing colleagues are not drove Matthew Dixon, Brent Adamson, and their colleagues at Corporate Executive Board to investigate the skills, behaviors, knowledge, and attitudes that matter most for high performance. And what they discovered may be the biggest shock to conventional sales wisdom in decades.

Based on an exhaustive study of thousands of sales reps across multiple industries and geographies, The Challenger Sale argues that classic relationship building is a losing approach, especially when it comes to selling complex, large-scale business-to-business solutions. The authors' study found that every sales rep in the world falls into one of five distinct profiles, and while all of these types of reps can deliver average sales performance, only one-the Challenger- delivers consistently high performance.

Instead of bludgeoning customers with endless facts and features about their company and products, Challengers approach customers with unique insights about how they can save or make money. They tailor their sales message to the customer's specific needs and objectives. Rather than acquiescing to the customer's every demand or objection, they are assertive, pushing back when necessary and taking control of the sale.

The things that make Challengers unique are replicable and teachable to the average sales rep. Once you understand how to identify the Challengers in your organization, you can model their approach and embed it throughout your sales force. The authors explain how almost any average-performing rep, once equipped with the right tools, can successfully reframe customers' expectations and deliver a distinctive purchase experience that drives higher levels of customer loyalty and, ultimately, greater growth.

Matt Dixon
Featured Reviews

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