The Challenger Sale

Source: CEB, CEB Sales Leadership Council, 2011. Figure 2.1. The Five Sales Rep Profiles (Location 378)

Source: CEB, CEB Sales Leadership Council, 2011. Figure 2.2. Core and High Performers by Profile (Location 437)

Source: CEB, CEB Sales Leadership Council, 2011. Figure 2.3. Challenger Versus Relationship Builder Profile (Location 483)

CHALLENGER IS defined by the ability to do three things—teach, tailor, and take control—and to do all of this through the use of constructive tension. (Location 537)

Source: CEB, CEB Sales Leadership Council, 2011. Figure 3.1. Key Skills Within the Challenger Selling Model (Location 575)

The act of delivering a teaching pitch is a skill, to be sure, but the content of a teaching pitch—the business issues you teach customers to value, the idea around which you reframe how the customer thinks about their business—must be scalable and repeatable, and as such, must be created by the organization (in most organizations, this is the job of marketing). (Location 585)

A Challenger’s assertiveness takes two forms. First, Challengers are able to assert control over the discussion of pricing and money more generally. The Challenger rep doesn’t give in to the request for a 10 percent discount, but brings the conversation back to the overall solution—pushing for agreement on value, rather than price. Second, Challengers are also able to challenge customers’ thinking and pressure the customer’s decision-making cycle—both to reach a decision more quickly as well as to overcome that “indecision inertia” that can cause deals to stall indefinitely. (Location 701)

Over and over we found that customers, generally speaking, see significantly less difference between us and the competition than we do ourselves. It’s not that they think most suppliers are particularly bad on brand, product, or service. It’s just that they don’t think they’re particularly different. So while we spend much of our time emphasizing subtle differences, customers tend to focus first on the general similarities. (Location 836)

Rep offers unique and valuable perspectives on the market. Rep helps me navigate alternatives. Rep provides ongoing advice or consultation. Rep helps me avoid potential land mines. Rep educates me on new issues and outcomes. Supplier is easy to buy from. Supplier has widespread support across my organization. (Location 882)

Essentially this is the customer—or 5,000 of them at least, all over the world—saying rather emphatically, “Stop wasting my time. Challenge me. Teach me something new.” (Location 902)

Sure, it’s great if a rep knows my needs as well as I do and can ask great questions to uncover those needs as quickly as possible. But what I really need is a rep who knows my needs better than I do—one (Location 913)

Commercial Teaching has four key rules: Lead to your unique strengths. Challenge customers’ assumptions. Catalyze action. Scale across customers. (Location 942)

“Why should our customers buy from us over anyone else?” That’s it. It’s disarmingly simple. But that one question can take your entire commercial leadership team to a very dark place as you realize it’s much harder to answer than you might have thought. (Location 987)

Source: CEB, CEB Sales Leadership Council, 2011. Figure 5.1. Deconstruction of a Commercial Teaching Pitch (Location 1106)

When you put it all together, it should sound something like, “We’ve worked with a number of companies similar to yours, and we’ve found that these three challenges come up again and again as by far the most troubling. Is that what you’re seeing too, or would you add something else to the list?” (Location 1114)

Note: In our case can add stats like 2fa adoption to the chaos view

Remember, the reaction you’re looking for here is definitively not, “Yes! I totally agree! That’s exactly what we’re working on!” but rather, “Huh, I never thought of it that way before.” If your customer’s first reaction to your insight is enthusiastic agreement, then you haven’t actually taught them anything. (Location 1139)

In a world-class teaching pitch a good ROI calculator calculates the ROI on solving the challenge you’ve just taught your customer they have, not the ROI on buying your solution. (Location 1157)

That fact that your newly designed XZ-690 runs 15 percent faster, quieter, cooler, and cheaper than the competition just isn’t that interesting to most customers. If it is, then why bother with a sales call at all? Just send them a quote and take the order over the phone. Better yet, sell it through an e-store on the Internet and get rid of your sales force altogether. (Location 1211)

Eighty percent of marketing collateral winds up in the trash, while 30 percent of sales time is spent reproducing the very collateral they just threw away. (Location 1318)

Source: KPMG, Neil Rackham. Figure 5.2. The SAFE-BOLD Framework (Location 1349)

Challengers, by contrast, “lead and simplify.” Rather than assuming that the customer knows how to execute the purchase of a complex solution—which can be a faulty assumption when it comes to solution selling—they teach the customer how to buy the solution. (Location 1910)

Source: CEB, CEB Sales Leadership Council, 2011. Figure 7.1. Rep Behavior Spectrum, Passive to Aggressive (Location 1948)