FOMU
Fear of messing up: stronger than fear of missing out, and the reason 40 to 60% of qualified deals end in no decision.
Dixon and McKenna studied two and a half million sales conversations and found that between forty and sixty per cent of qualified deals are lost not to a competitor but to no decision at all. The cause is not fear of missing out. It is fear of messing up, FOMU, and it is stronger, because a buyer who does nothing keeps their job and a buyer who chooses wrong may not.
The remedies are the opposite of what a nervous seller does. Do not offer a menu; make an honest recommendation. Limit the evaluation rather than encouraging it. Offer a pilot, a staged rollout and a clean exit, so the safe choice and the best choice are the same choice. All of which is assurance, the corner of the proposition that most suppliers leave until the customer asks.
Set out in full in: Dixon and McKenna, The JOLT Effect (Portfolio, 2022); Creating Customer Value Propositions with AI (Kogan Page, 2027), chapter 8.
Related terms
High-impact value proposition
Speaks to a problem the customer actually has, is specific enough to be hard to copy, and carries proof.
Value selling
Selling the proposition twice: first inside your own company, then to the customer's decision-making unit in their financial language.
Assurance
The corner of the proposition that answers why should I believe you: credibility, return on investment, and the measures both sides will use.
See the method run on one real account in three days: the One Page Proposition.