The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation

Dixon and Adamson recall the Global Financial Crisis in early 2009. Despite a hostile market environment for B2B sales, a handful of sales representatives managed to close a surprising number of deals. This phenomenon prompted the SEC, the sales research arm of American advisory firm Corporate Executive Board, to conduct a study on these representatives’ productivity over the next four years. As a result of the study, the SEC arrived at three key takeaways that radically changed their perception of how to conduct sales.

The first takeaway is that all B2B sales representatives fit one of five behavioral profiles that determine their customer interaction approaches. The second takeaway is that based on sales performance statistics, one of the five profiles is an unambiguous overperformer while another is a clear underperformer. What is likely to surprise sales leaders is that the underperformer is considered the conventional favorite of the set. The last insight is that the most successful of the five profiles can close sales in spite of a poor economy. Their mastery of an advanced sales approach provides a versatile model for sales leaders. Dixon and Adamson refer to this profile as “The Challenger.”

Dixon and Adamson return to the inception of the SEC study in 2009, which sought to help B2B sales professionals survive the failing American economy. The pattern of successful Challenger sales during this period proved that sales executives could lead their teams to success regardless of the lagging economy. Key to this is their evolved skillset, which enables them to close deals in a highly complex sales model called the “solutions approach.”

Contrasted against product selling, which focuses transactions on individual goods and services, the solutions model envisions the sales representative as an “advisor” to the customer, offering targeted solutions for their pain points and business needs. As this model grew in popularity, suppliers offered increasingly complex, premium-priced solutions that dominated the B2B market. In turn, this trend prompted customers to behave more cautiously, weakening the effectiveness of many traditional sales techniques.

The authors discuss the difficulty of executing sales on this model due to the burden it places on customers and sales representatives alike. On the customer end, the supplier’s persistent need to discover customer pain points usually results in “solutions fatigue” among customers. Dixon and Adamson elaborate on this by citing four behavioral trends:

• Given the unclear return on investment, customers are likely to rely on consensus decisions to close a deal with suppliers. Suppliers must therefore make the effort to sell to each individual stakeholder rather than the decision-making executive alone.
• The customers’ need for payoff leads many suppliers to work toward meeting their customers’ performance metrics rather than their own.
• Customers demand that suppliers customize solutions at no cost, arguing that without customization, the solution fails to address the customer’s problem at all.
• Finally, the emergence of third-party consultants throughout various sectors in the United States absorbs some of the risk for customers by taking on the task of navigating the B2B market on behalf of their clients. On top of providing value to B2B customers, solutions businesses must provide value to third-party intermediaries as well.

These pressures mean that the shift to solution selling has led to wide performance gaps between core-performing and high-performing representatives. Solutions companies see a vast majority of their sales representatives fail to close deals while an elite few carry the bulk of the business. As sales models increase in complexity, the survival of businesses depends on their ability to close the talent gap between core performers and star performers.

To determine the replicability of successful sales representatives during the global financial crisis in 2008 and 2009, the SEC conducted a global study of B2B companies to determine their individual representatives’ common attributes and behaviors. After discussing the SEC’s methodology, Dixon and Adamson share three central insights that challenge common executive thinking around sales success.

First, the SEC identified five distinct personality groups that define the way representatives approach customers:

• The self-driven “Hard Worker” expends additional effort to yield the results they want.
• The “Relationship Builder” focuses their energy on developing strong professional connections with their customers.
• The “Lone Wolf” prizes instinct over formula, embodying a maverick attitude that rubs against systematic authority.
• The “Reactive Problem Solver” favors existing customer relationships over new ones, functioning closer to a customer service role.
• The “Challenger” utilizes their understanding of the customer to drive new ideas around what the customer’s organization can do.

The second major finding of the SEC study was that Challengers statistically outperformed the other profiles. What sets them apart are a number of attributes that enable them to do three things: “teach for differentiation […] tailor for resonance […] [and take] control of the sale” (24). Relationship Builders, whom customers and supplier executives alike conventionally favor, were the least represented profile among high-performing representatives. While Dixon and Adamson qualify that relationships with customers are necessary, centering it as a sales strategy can lead to disastrous results. The performance gap between Challengers and Relationship Builders reflects the fact that they adopt opposite behaviors. While Relationship Builders spend time serving the customer to integrate themselves into the customer’s comfort zone, Challengers rely on tension to help the customer to think about their business in new ways and realize value.

The study’s third major finding was that the complexity of the solutions model parallels the Challenger’s approach to the customer. Since the solutions market is characterized by disruptive solutions, it requires customers to think about their business in innovative ways, which only the Challenger can facilitate. The authors assert that Challengers will remain relevant so long as solutions selling remains a dominant market model. They also acknowledge that companies that rely on simple, transactional business can invest in other profiles, particularly the Hard Workers.

Recalling the Challenger’s unique skillset, Dixon and Adamson introduce the Challenger Selling Model as a sales approach that will allow other profile types to emulate the Challenger. The authors outline four principles that enable the model to work.

First, they state that every personality type possesses Challenger attributes. Any sales team can learn to harness the skills they lack to better emulate Challengers. Thus, adopting the Challenger Selling Model does not require wholesale replacement of skills and behavior.

Secondly, no individual skill is enough to make one a Challenger. While training in a particular skill may lead to some improvement, sales representatives must combine the full scope of abilities to effectively emulate a Challenger. A well-rounded combination of Challenger skills is more likely to maximize results than exceptional skill in one area.

Next, the model adoption process requires more than individual skill training. The company must invest in developing organizational capabilities that upskill and equip sales representatives across the board. Giving sales teams total autonomy may cause representatives to form disjointed sales techniques. Honing organizational capabilities allows representatives to effectively engage with customer stakeholders and identify issues that the organization is equipped to solve.

Finally, the authors stress that adopting the Challenger Selling Model takes time, especially since both individual sales representatives and the organization as a whole must embrace various behavioral changes for the model to work. Shortcuts will lead to failures in the long run, and the sales model will be seen as a novelty whose value has worn off. Dixon and Adamson compare their sales model to a new operating system on a computer, which requires a longer adjustment period than a minor software update might.

The authors take a detailed look at each of the unique skills that serve as the pillars of the Challenger Selling Model. To teach for differentiation, the sales representative must get the customer to think about how their business can compete more effectively in the market. Dixon and Adamson share three examples to demonstrate this insight. In the first, a sales representative in office furniture uses her product knowledge to teach a customer about unforeseen design issues that prevent the customer from maximizing the use of their office space. In the second example, a pharmaceutical company has its representatives connect with physicians by teaching them about issues that arise during the illness life cycle. In the third example, a services company uses a guidance session to renew customer interest in their services, subverting the latter’s intention to end their contract.

Another skill, tailoring for resonance, requires deep knowledge of the customer’s organization and business priorities, including their desired outcomes and the economic drivers that influence them. Challenger suppliers can easily modify a sales pitch to fit their customer’s preoccupations; not only must they have an acute knowledge of the customer’s business, but they must also be agile enough to tailor their pitch to the particular customer. Dixon and Adamson once again provide an example to illustrate this pillar, involving two business service suppliers who use their knowledge of their customer’s business priorities to inform a tech-driven, cost-friendly outsourcing proposal.

Lastly, asserting one’s control over a sale requires a careful balance of pressure and prudence. Challenger representatives typically direct the conversation of pricing, leveraging value as the arbiter of how much a solution should cost. They also use challenges to force the customer into making decisions, avoiding the “indecision inertia” that sometimes stops deals-in-progress. Pressure is a crucial element of this pillar, as Challengers bring customers out of their comfort zone to view their business from a different perspective. Nevertheless, Challengers must also possess a skill for empathetic negotiation.

Quoting a former chemical manufacturer executive, the authors suggest product feature ranking as a way to direct the conversation toward value instead of price. The executive relates a story about how a supplier leveraged this technique to convince a customer to maintain their account despite a substantial price increase.

The chapter ends with a road map outlining the content for the remaining chapters of the book.