The challenger sale target
THE CHALLENGER SALE TARGET DRIVERS
Challenger reps cultivate loyalty across the organization by tailoring the teaching to individual stakeholders based on their value drivers and economic drivers. Closing a deal requires nurturing stakeholders across the organization. The actual solution to be proposed is predefined, by creating a set of solutions that are tailored to common needs of customers.ĬEB’s research shows that the top concern for decision makers was consensus across their organization on the sale. The conversation outline is prescripted from the hypotheses to the solution. In Commercial Teaching, the supplier organization supports Challenger reps by prescoping customer requirements by relying on market segmentation and customer analysis. The heart of the Commercial Teaching pitch is the answer to the question “What’s currently costing our customers more money than they realize, that only we can help fix?” Identifying the supplier’s unique capabilities lies at the core of the Challenger model. A CEB survey of B2B customers showed that only 35% of companies are able to establish themselves as preferred over their competitors. Only 14% of the apparently unique benefits offered by the company were perceived to be unique by customers. The key to effective teaching is to identify the supplier’s unique value proposition. Customers place the greatest value on actionable insights given by suppliers that help them save or make money differently. A massive 53% depended on the overall sales experience. Better value for money accounted for a mere 9%. This makes Challengers crucial to the success of a sales force.Ĭhallengers are defined by their ability to use constructive tension to do three things - teach customers to compete more effectively, tailor for resonance for every stakeholder, and taking control of the overall sale process.Ī CEB survey of 5000 individuals at client customer organizations showed that brand, product, and service accounted for only 38% of customer loyalty. In complex sale scenarios, the dominance of Challengers is 50% of star performers while the share of Relationship Builders drops to nearly zero.
Rep fall into five distinctive profiles - the Hard Worker, the Relationship Builder, the Lone Wolf, the Reactive Problem Solver, and the Challenger. The value in narrowing the performance gap halfway from good to great results in a 100% performance jump. In solutions selling, the gap widens dramatically to nearly 200%.
In transactional-selling, the performance gap between average and star performers is 59%. Top performers are incredibly valuable in Solutions Selling. This has made selling much more challenging than before. Solution Selling has led to increased complexity and risk for the customers who increasingly seek consensus-based sales, demand customization, hire third-party consultants and shift a part of the risk to the supplier. This model was driven by suppliers seeking to escape the pressure of being commodified by making it harder for competitors to replicate their offerings. Solution Selling is the shift from transactional sales of single products to creating bundled-offerings based on consulting.