![]() And sometimes - speak it softly - they simply aren’t smart enough to grasp the new realities of marketing.Īny of these factors by themselves can scupper a Challenger Selling initiative, but if they are compounded together, you’ve probably got no chance of pulling the initiative off. To compound the issue, marketing is often still measured and rewarded by the number of leads they generate and not on the number of qualified opportunities that end up in the sales pipeline. Or, even if they do manage to create some insightful pieces, they see the job as being done when the material is published, and do nothing to equip the sales people to conduct the subsequent sales conversation in a way that personalises the problem or dramatises the opportunity for the prospect. One of the most common reasons for failure is that marketing isn’t up to the task: it remains fixated on traditional feature-function-benefit product marketing and simply isn’t close enough to either their customers or the sales people to craft the necessary compelling insights. ![]() Here are a few of the most common reasons… WHAT IF MARKETING ISN’T UP TO THE TASK?Ĭhallenger Selling is a mind-set that must be adopted and embraced by everyone in marketing as well as everyone in sales, because marketing has to provide the fuel - in the form of compelling insights - that drives the Challenger Selling engine. Unfortunately, a number of naïve and simplistic summaries of the book have concluded that relationships don’t matter in selling ( they do!), and that because the average prospect is 57% through their buying cycle before they want to engage a sales person, that we should not try to get involved any earlier ( we must!).īut even for the organisations that have guzzled the Challenger Selling Kool-Aid and avoided these dangerous misinterpretations, there are still a number - maybe even a majority - of Challenger Sales projects that haven’t come close to achieving their potential. Finally, they confront the traditional idea that sales is primarily about relationships - and conclude that “the best sales people don’t just build relationships with customers - they challenge them”. This mantra is often summarised as teach > tailor > take control. They go on: “Rather than acquiescing to the customer’s every demand or objection, they are assertive, pushing back when necessary and taking control of the sale”. Here’s what the authors have to say: “Instead of bludgeoning customers with endless facts and features about their company and products, Challenger sales people are supposed to approach customers with unique insights about how they can make or save money, and then tailor their sales message to the customer’s specific needs and objectives.” It requires the full commitment of both sales and marketing if it is to succeed. ![]() ![]() ![]() The first thing to make clear is that you can’t hope to successfully implement any sales methodology by simply sending people on a training course or (even worse) giving them a book to read, but this is particularly true for Challenger. In a number of instances, Challenger Selling has transformed sales performance - but in others, it has failed to achieve the hoped-for results. “The Challenger Sale” by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson has been one of the most talked-about sales books of the past decade - and has been described by no less an authority than SPIN-Selling author Neil Rackham as “the most important advance in selling for many years”.īased on an impressive body of research, the book sets out an attractive and seductive formula for achieving sales success - and it’s attracted the attention of a significant number of CEOs who are looking for a way to differentiate their organisation from the competition and accelerate revenue growth.īut as many have discovered, adopting Challenger is neither a miracle cure nor a sure-fire recipe for success. ![]()
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