Matthew Dixon

Matt Dixon, an executive director of strategic research at CEB, has an unrelenting drive to find the answers to questions senior executives often take for granted. For more than 15 years, Matt has worked to uncover the truth behind many pillars of conventional wisdom in sales and customer service, often overturning long-held assumptions that are costing companies dearly in terms of wasted money and lost market opportunity.

As a senior member of CEB’s global research team, Matt has overseen dozens of original quantitative and qualitative research studies on all aspects of customer service strategy and sales productivity. Matt has presented these compelling findings to hundreds of senior executives and management teams around the world, including those for many Fortune 500 companies.

In a landscape dominated by motivational speakers offering little more than personal anecdotes and reinforcement of conventional wisdom, Matt challenges leadership dialogue with presentations packed with counterintuitive insights and wrapped in a story-telling format that keeps his audiences scratching their heads and debating long-held assumptions.

The work of Matt and his research team has been featured in Harvard Business Review and most recently in his newly published book, The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation. Matt is also one of the authors behind CEB’s recently released book, The Effortless Experience: Conquering the New Battleground for Customer Loyalty, which was published in September 2013. He is also a frequent contributor on sales and customer services topics on Harvard Business Review’s blog as well as on CEB’s sales and customer service blogs.

Matt holds a Ph.D. in political economy from the University of Pittsburgh and a B.A. with honors from Mount Saint Mary’s University in Emmitsburg, Md. He resides with his wife and four children in Silver Spring, Md. In his free time, Matt is an avid triathlete, competing at the elite level for the past several years.