Sales Technique - Challenger Sale

Winning with The Challenger Sale: Pipeliner CRM Behind You All the Way

The Challenger is one of five personas into which, according to the Challenger Sale sales methodology, nearly every B2BB2B B2B is an acronym for Business-to-Business, a model for selling, relationship-building, or engagement. salesperson fits. The others are relationship builders, hard workers, lone wolves, and reactive problem solvers.

According to Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson, authors of the bestselling book The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation, the challenger represented 40 percent of the top-performing reps in the authors’ study detailed in the book.

Unique Qualities

Because it is evident that the Challenger is by far the most successful sales persona, the authors take the time to isolate the qualities found in this type of salesperson and impart them to the other four personality types.

The Challenger follows a particular control process consisting of three basic factors.

Teaching

Challengers teach their prospects—not about the productProduct Product refers to anything (an idea, item, service, process or information) that meets a need or a desire and is offered to a market, usually but not always at a price. or service in question, but about larger business problems, new ideas, and astute insights. Challenger sales reps possess a keen understanding of the customer’s business and utilize that understanding to expand the customer’s thinking and impart to them something new about how their company can more effectively do business.

The challenger doesn’t win simply by understanding their customers’ world as well as their customers, but by actually knowing it better, and imparting wisdom to prospects about it.

So what sets a challenger apart is not so much the quality of their products, but the value of their insight.

Communication

Instead of having a set pattern, they tailor their communications to the person they are talking to. A B2B buying decision is rarely if ever made by one person; it is a “committee matter” made by consensus. If a rep is to win a deal, they must be able to effectively communicate with a wide range of customer stakeholders. Of course, this must be done with control, diplomacy, and empathy.

Being able to accomplish this, the salesperson then builds advocacy throughout the prospect organizationOrganization Organization is a cohesive group of people working together and formally bound by a shared identity (e.g., one team, company, club, etc.) and a common purpose (e.g., business growth, athletic victory, etc.).—a “network of advocacy” that will hold together in support of the deal. When it is time to make the decision, the buyerBuyer A buyer is an individual or organizational entity that purchases a product or subscribes to a service. wants to know they have the strong backing of the organization.

The conversations should have some common elements, however: they should illustrate through compelling stories about their business, teach them something new, then leadLead Lead refers to a prospect or potential customer (who can be an individual or organization) that exhibits interest in your service or product; or any additional information about such entity. to their differentiators.

Focused on the Goal

The challenger remains focused on the end goal rather than simply being liked; in other words, they’re not being afraid to push back on their customer. If the rep isn’t willing to do that, then the rep won’t be willing to convince the customer that the problem is urgent, and won’t be able to convince the customer it’s worth solving.

Of course, this push on the customer is conducted with respect and sensitivity to how the customer is reacting.

Behind You All the Way: Pipeliner CRM

The Challenger Sale only truly succeeds with a highly efficient CRM solutionSolution Solution is a combination of ideas, strategies, processes, technologies and services that effectively helps an organization achieve its goals or hurdle its challenges..

Ideally, the Challenger Sale has been carefully mapped out, based on the sales steps of successful reps who have succeeded in the past. CRM must be rapidly and easily adaptable to the broad stages of a company’s sales processSales Process Sales Process is a series of strategic steps or a set of activities aimed at driving sales growth through the alignment of personnel, market insight, methodologies, relevant business units, and technology., as well as the distinct steps (activities and tasks) to be taken at each stage.

With its completely visual, intuitive functionality, Pipeliner CRM meets and exceeds these qualifications and more.

Find out how Pipeliner CRM can totally empower your Challenger Sale efforts. Try our free trial.

Challenger is a trademark owned by CEB.