Who are Challenger Sales?

Are Challenger Sales different or remarkable?

In our article on the challenges of Challenger Sales, we highlight the pitfalls of its implementation. These range from overlooking the strategic conversations necessary to define what makes you unique, to misunderstanding the change management efforts that accompany it.

First and foremost, there’s a misunderstanding about the Challenger Sales profile. While some skills can be acquired, others are innate. They fuel a unique combination of skills, attitudes, activities and knowledge.

Before you set yourself the ambitious goal of turning all your sales people into Challengers, the first step is to understand “who’s got it or not”. Interestingly, the traits of the Challenger can be found in those individuals whom experienced project managers or scenario planners call Remarkable People.

Look for the Challenger’s innate traits:

The fundamentals of Challenger Sales can be learnt. As long as you excel at creating insights, Teaching and the Challenger Sales Choreography are simply unconventional techniques designed to offer your customers a unique and differentiated sales experience.

Just like Tailoring. Essentially, it’s the implementation of a well-crafted insight that resonates with key stakeholders’ personal drivers and can scale across the customer organization.

The same applies to Taking control Once Challenger Sales techniques have been integrated into the key stages of your sales process, and your reps are properly coached on providing a unique perspective and assessing the customer’s ability to change, taking control is a matter of coaching and discipline.

Unfortunately, it is not that simple. The art of creating constructive tension while positioning oneself as a trusted advisor can be coached to some extent. However, you can’t force someone to be more assertive, though you might coach them out of being overly “nice”. Similarly, you can’t compel someone to be more curious. Either you have it or not.

Implementing Challenger Sales without a thorough assessment of your sales force will probably result in average Challengers, which can still be considered a step forward.
However, in the worst case scenario, you risk pushing your sales force to the breaking point.

Look for remarkable people:

Vague definitions, such as “Challengers have a different view of the world”, do little to clarify matters. Instead, we recommend that you implement our in-depth assessment of your sales force. By default, it includes an assessment of Challenger Sales traits and can be integrated with other sales methodologies such as Sandler, Customer Centric Selling or Value Selling, among others.

You can always consider conducting your own assessment. . If you’ve managed complex projects, you likely had the wisdom to include someone with unconventional thinking to avoid group-think. If you’ve implemented scenario planning -either to challenge your business idea or anticipate possible futures – you’ve been seeking creative minds to generate fresh insights and innovation.

This kind of people can produce ‘Eureka’ moments, reframing situations from a completely different perspective. Similarly, Challenger reps spark ‘aha moments’ for their customers by presenting problems in ways they had never considered before.

In the world of Scenario Planning, these people are known as “remarkable people “. They are not authorities on conventional wisdom. Rather, they excel at throwing curve-balls. Their typical traits include namely:

• Masters of their field.
• Keen and unending curiosity.
• Standing out for their resourceful thinking.
• Ideas generators.
• Acute observers of the way the world works.
• Pushing the edges.

Mastering one’s field aligns with the Challenger’s deep industry knowledge and understanding of both business and personal value drivers. This is knowledge, so nothing special at first glance. However, even skills that initially appear within reach of the average salesperson are fueled by creative thinking aimed at problem-solving, paired with an exceptional ability to push boundaries.

Certain Challenger traits are deeply rooted in human nature and not every rep can become a Challenger. The good news is that not every sales organization needs Challengers. This is especially true if you’re not facing intense competition or the threat of commoditization.

In this case, before making drastic changes, consider alternative ways of improving performance: refining your value proposition, adjusting your positioning and segmentation, or improving your sales execution standards may be an easier way to boost your performance.

Looking for creative ways to boost your sales and operational performance?

Curious to know more about how we evaluate sales people?

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