Bring out your sales challengers

Business Growth, sales process, sales, challenger, leaders, Technology

 

The Perfect Bad Situation:  

But the complexity of things always has a constructive insight to take from.

If analysed carefully, it discovers the gaps, flaws, as well as the strength of the followed system or process. In a sales organization, it additionally uncovers even the true potential of a salesperson.

You would be surprised to see, in a stagnated market and the wave of cutting costs and downsizing, you can find salespeople actually signing good deals. They get to shine in this period because the average salespeople’s light was dimmed from the challenging situation and the complexity of the current sales.

A research by CEB sales Leadership Council on sales reps in many countries representing major industry, geography, and go-to-market model, resulted in the following: “In all sales organization especially in solution selling models, the star salespeople outperforms the core performers by 200%”.

When the sales become complex, the gap between core and star performers widens dramatically.” 
As a business leader, it is important to take advantage of this difficult economic situation as it sets an amplifier on the gap between core performers and actual star sales executives or The Challengers (as Mathew Dixon calls them in his book “The challenger sale”), and whether they even exist in your sales organization.

What Are These Challengers Doing Differently?

Simply put, they are bolder, more straight forward (but not disrespectful), assertive (but not aggressive), they challenge the customers’ thinking by “teaching” them new insights and important views on the customer’s business effectiveness.

Today’s customers are more powerful with their advantage and control over their buying process. They are hammered with products, information, and even sales trials; so they are now eager to learn something new, and will only be captivated by the sales executive who adds a valuable awareness to a certain matter, a unique perspective, a desire to change behavior. 

Another two important matters that identify Challengers:

First is their extreme comfort with critical discussions especially price and money related conversations. It transmits their high confidence and belief in the value of what they are offering.

Second is their control over their sales process from start, through middle diverges, till the very end. And opposite of the common thinking, the best control is in the beginning of the sales process. This control generates as well two sub-competencies:

1.  Their High Value of Time, where they do not accept wasting selling activity time with no decision makers or purposeless dialogues and tasks. They are not afraid to cut sales effort short and focus on the next opportunity, even if a customer is requesting for more time and info.

2.  Their Ability to Create and Keep the Momentum rolling. Human nature seeks closure as fast as the moment presents itself, especially the negative closure; and so do average salespeople. But challengers thrive to re-open every closing door and increase tension to solve it.

How We Could Help

It is indeed easier said than done. Building Challengers is not a training or a manual, it is a tough but rewarding journey for the salesperson and consequently to the sales organization. 

Leaders who employ Sales Enablement will indeed gain significant advantages.

Hence, HEED in partnership with the Science of Sales Institute, has taken the ownership to aid your sales organization into elevating your potential sales executives into a challenger level to be thriving in today’s tough economy as well as the promising future, with the following solution:

Implementing a Complete Sales Development Program for your Organization.

Take the 1st Step in Sales Enablement Today

Take the first step and contact us for a fruitful discussion on how this can aid your sales revenue growth.

Senior Consultant
norma@heed-mm.com
A subject matter expert specializing in the study of technology and digital implementation in the area of sales and marketing. As a senior consultant at HEED, she successfully covers a broad spectrum of application areas following best practices and data-driven analysis of integrating science into the art marketing and business growth.

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