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. The best salespeople don’t just build relationships with customers. They challenge them.
My third pillar to sales success is The Challenger Sale. I like information based on research and this was based 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 Challenger Sales representatives approach customers with unique insights. They tailor their sales message to the customer’s specific needs and objectives. Rather than acquiescing to the customer’s every demand or objection, they are assertive, pushing back when necessary and taking control of the sale.
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.
My takeaways from this read is that for a complex sale we need to move past the relationship and become the consultant; this is not the most astonishing insight. However, a consultant is respected and not always agreeable to the way an organization currently does things. They provide wow statements that provide new perspective.
We must equip our core sales force with the proper tools. Again, not ground-breaking but I am surprised with how many companies with robust marketing and research departments that have technical writers allow their sales force to create the messaging. To enable a complex sale, the company has to own this responsibility and provide what is important to specific industries and how their solution(s) can address the needs of their customers.
To gain the respect of your customer you must have the ability to challenge them and provide unique perspectives. This may be the most earth-shattering takeaway. Sale representatives and their managers typically believe they have to grow a relationship with their customer and so contesting the customer’s opinion was negatively perceived. Even offering a dissenting opinion internally in your organization is sometimes referred to as a negative attitude. There are ways to deliver a message that challenges our customer without offending them and this is referred to as constructive tension or constructive criticism. Equally important is understanding that feedback is important to every successful process.