Dan James, former chief sales officer, DuPont The Challenger Sale breaks the winning elements of this powerful approach into a set of teachable skills that can take even a top sales team to a new level of results delivery.” “The amazing thing is that the Challenger sales rep has been hiding in plain sight all these years. Professor Neil Rackham, author of SPIN Selling, from the foreword You, and your organization, will be glad you did.” My advice is this: Read it, think about it, implement it. On the face of it, their research has all the initial signs that it may be game-changing. Which brings me to The Challenger Sale and the work of the Sales Executive Council.
These breakthroughs, marked by radical new thinking and dramatic improvements in sales results, have been rare. “The history of sales has been one of steady progress interrupted by a few real breakthroughs that have changed the whole direction of the profession. 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.
Once you understand how to identify the Challengers in your organization, you can model their approach and embed it throughout your sales force. The things that make Challengers unique are replicable and teachable to the average sales rep. Rather than acquiescing to the customer’s every demand or objection, they are assertive, pushing back when necessary and taking control of the sale. They tailor their sales message to the customer’s specific needs and objectives. 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. 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. And what they discovered may be the biggest shock to conventional sales wisdom in decades.īased 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 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. The best salespeople don’t just build relationships with customers. 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.