Selling Innovations is a B2B sales research, training, and advisory firm co-founded by Ted McKenna, Dave Anderson, Matt Dixon, and Rory Channer. The company helps commercial teams scale high-performance selling through research-backed programs that improve win rates and reduce sales cycle times. Our team wrote or co-wrote some of the most well-known pieces of research in B2B sales over the last 25 years, including The JOLT Effect, The Activator Advantage, The Challenger Sale, The Challenger Customer, and The Effortless Experience. We are researchers at heart, on a mission to help sellers all over the world lean more often in the direction high performers do instinctually.

Matt, Rory, and Ted also co-founded DCM Insights (DCMi) in late 2021, focused on helping professional services firms improve business development.

The JOLT Effect is a research study—the largest study ever conducted of sales losses, comprising 2.5 million B2B sales calls. The research, published in the book The JOLT Effect: How High Performers Overcome Customer Indecision by Ted McKenna and Matt Dixon, found that the biggest reason deals stall is not competition or status quo — it is buyer fear of failure due to indecision. Even customers who agree they need to change often fail to commit because they fear making a mistake and the perceived blame that follows. Thousands of sales organizations now use elements of JOLT as part of their sales methodology to forecast and qualify opportunities, prevent indecision from creating deal stalls, and reducing buyer fears they will mess up. This helps increase win rates, improves sales productivity, and speeds up sales cycles.

The Challenger Sale is a body of work that began in 2007, just as buyers began using the internet to educate themselves, forever changing the nature of conversations with sellers. Those studies, conducted over a period of roughly 8 years, focused on how high-performing sellers create demand for change by teaching customers something new about their business and pushing them out of their status quo. It was the first of several studies—most recently validated again in our Activator Advantage study—that helped us understand how and why buyers value a seller’s ability to bring insight to the table. In many ways, The JOLT Effect complements elements of Challenger by unearthing a new playbook we didn’t previously realize needed to exist: once a customer agrees they need to change, JOLT addresses why they still fail to act.

The truth is, our past experiences AND our expectations about what will transpire are the root of the toughest objections sellers face. It's not enough to convince a buyer that pain--even pain that you can solve best--is on their immediate horizon. The research is quite clear: high performers are, at once, making buyers fearful without them and fearless with them. This is THE big separator between high performers and others. And why that gap is growing at an accelerating pace.

Selling Innovations deal workshops help sellers make differentiated cases for change that account for and treat these potent fears, risks, and regrets that are top of mind for so many buyers.

SellingInnovations offers three core development experiences: (1) JOLT Skills Program — training commercial teams of all types how to spot and overcome buyer indecision, (2) Generating Fearless Buyers Workshop — training commercial teams how to make a differentiated case for change to modern B2B buyers, and (3) Sales Leader Academy — trains managers to drive accountability down to the frontline with higher seller development and execution expectations, delivered through a disciplined operating cadence.

Ted McKenna is co-founder and CEO of Selling Innovations. He is co-author of The JOLT Effect and The Activator Advantage, with research published in Harvard Business Review. He previously held executive roles at CEB (Gartner), Tethr, and Russell Reynolds Associates. Dave Anderson is a co-founder and COO of Selling Innovations. He and Ted were both Practice Leaders at CEB during The Challenger Sale and Challenger Customer research, and Dave then was an Executive Director at Vista Equity Partners helping portfolio company CEOs scale their go-to-market teams.

Buyer indecision is the phenomenon where B2B buyers agree they need to make a change but ultimately fail to commit and choose "no decision." Selling Innovations' research across 2.5 million sales calls found that 40-60% of qualified pipeline is lost to indecision. This represents the single largest source of lost revenue for most B2B sales organizations, yet most sales training and methodologies do not address it.

The Activator Advantage is the latest research from Matt Dixon and Ted McKenna, along with fellow co-authors Rory Channer and Karen Freeman, published as a book in April 2025. The research studied nearly 3,000 partners across professional services firms (law, accounting, consulting, investment banking, executive search, and public relations) and identified five partner profiles. Only one — the Activator — drives consistent business development growth. While the study focuses on “doer-sellers” found in professional services, with implications for the leaders running those firms, the findings have direct and indirect implications for B2B sales leaders and teams.

Selling Innovations works with B2B commercial organizations across technology, SaaS, manufacturing, heathcare, financial services, and other complex-sale industries. Our programs are best fit for organizations where teams are facing new complexity (new products, new buyers, new markets, etc.) or deals that typically involve multiple stakeholders, longer sales cycles, and higher-stakes purchasing decisions.

Selling Innovations programs are designed to drive measurable business outcomes — specifically win rate improvement and cycle time reduction. Programs include workflow tools, deal-level coaching frameworks, and leader accountability systems that extend beyond the classroom. We measure impact through pipeline metrics, deal outcomes, and seller behavior change beyond training satisfaction scores alone.