Studies show that Challenger sales are very successful in closing high value and more complex deals. What are some of the qualities we can learn and adopt to achieve that same level of success?
It’s counter intuitive, but if you want your salespeople to challenge the status quo and create value with discovery questions, I believe they first need to know the answers before they are able to ask the questions.
Why? Imagine you’re directing someone to a destination: They’ve misinterpreted your directions, and they are now lost. How are you going to get them back on course when all you have are written directions?
After working as a business partner at one of the largest question based sales methodology companies for 5-years, it was my experience that most salespeople find themselves in the same dilemma when they try to direct customers to value with questions. The customer’s answers never follow the sequential nature of the questioning model, because it’s too inflexible to adjust to the fluidity of a business conversation.
To get customers back on course, salespeople don’t need better directions, they need a map. If salespeople, for example, know the answers behind the questions, the answers will paint a picture that salespeople can use as a map. With this map, they can guide customers with directed questions to unrecognized or misunderstood problems, and thereby, create value for their product.
It’s counter intuitive, but if you want your salespeople to challenge the status quo and create value with discovery questions, I believe they first need to know the answers before they are able to ask the questions.
Why? Imagine you’re directing someone to a destination: They’ve misinterpreted your directions, and they are now lost. How are you going to get them back on course when all you have are written directions?
After working as a business partner at one of the largest question based sales methodology companies for 5-years, it was my experience that most salespeople find themselves in the same dilemma when they try to direct customers to value with questions. The customer’s answers never follow the sequential nature of the questioning model, because it’s too inflexible to adjust to the fluidity of a business conversation.
To get customers back on course, salespeople don’t need better directions, they need a map. If salespeople, for example, know the answers behind the questions, the answers will paint a picture that salespeople can use as a map. With this map, they can guide customers with directed questions to unrecognized or misunderstood problems, and thereby, create value for their product.
A different way of continuing the call call through the prospecting cycle and into your pipeline. 58 pages, but again 20-25 pages are humorous and antidotal in nature. Perfect for a 4 hr session with your inside sales or sales rep group.
Rapid Ramp - Building an Effective Internal Sales Enablement ProgramSales Hacker
Rapid Ramp: Building an Effective Internal Sales Enablement Program
Misha McPherson
Sr. Director, Sales Enablement
Sales Hacker Conference New York City
In my Value Selling Workshop, I kick things off with this 20,000 foot level presentation "Eleven Essentials For Salespeople." (The full 4 hour workshop is chock-full of goodness and value selling learning, including 5 individual and team exercises. Suitable for sales & marketing groups of 9 or more).
How to Manage a Sales Team Like a Championship Football CoachSalesScripter
Have you ever noticed that there are some football coaches that always seem to have to get the most out of the players that they have and find a way to be competitive year in and year out?
What if you could run your sales team like one of those elite sports coaches? If you could get the most out of each rep? If you could establish consistent results and wins?
You might think that you have to have some unique personality or skill in order to manage a sales team like a championship level coach but there are actually a lot of small things that you can do to take you in that direction and we will discuss that in these slides “How to Manage a Sales Team Like a Championship Football Coach”.
Key Account Management (KAM) is a tailored specification sales approach, that allows you to work more efficiently with chosen construction clients. Identifying your key construction clients allows you to work with their Architects, Engineers and Contractors, taking a more holistic approach to your specification strategy for your construction product.
A different way of continuing the call call through the prospecting cycle and into your pipeline. 58 pages, but again 20-25 pages are humorous and antidotal in nature. Perfect for a 4 hr session with your inside sales or sales rep group.
Rapid Ramp - Building an Effective Internal Sales Enablement ProgramSales Hacker
Rapid Ramp: Building an Effective Internal Sales Enablement Program
Misha McPherson
Sr. Director, Sales Enablement
Sales Hacker Conference New York City
In my Value Selling Workshop, I kick things off with this 20,000 foot level presentation "Eleven Essentials For Salespeople." (The full 4 hour workshop is chock-full of goodness and value selling learning, including 5 individual and team exercises. Suitable for sales & marketing groups of 9 or more).
How to Manage a Sales Team Like a Championship Football CoachSalesScripter
Have you ever noticed that there are some football coaches that always seem to have to get the most out of the players that they have and find a way to be competitive year in and year out?
What if you could run your sales team like one of those elite sports coaches? If you could get the most out of each rep? If you could establish consistent results and wins?
You might think that you have to have some unique personality or skill in order to manage a sales team like a championship level coach but there are actually a lot of small things that you can do to take you in that direction and we will discuss that in these slides “How to Manage a Sales Team Like a Championship Football Coach”.
Key Account Management (KAM) is a tailored specification sales approach, that allows you to work more efficiently with chosen construction clients. Identifying your key construction clients allows you to work with their Architects, Engineers and Contractors, taking a more holistic approach to your specification strategy for your construction product.
MSP Sales Tactics | How to Create Effective Marketing MessagesDavid Castro
MSP sales tactics and marketing best practices. Including the following. An effective framework to help you organize your messaging strategy; Common IT management issues that you can solve using managed services; Common solution areas to help you differentiate your firm; Popular Calls-To-Action that reinforce your capabilities to solve IT management issues; A sample elevator pitch for your MSP firm; and 6-step sample email creative process that helps you get an appointment with a Prospect. Presented by Kaseya with MSP Sales Pros. May 2013.
Every sales manager knows that 80% of business comes from 20% of customers... than why is your company not on the right spot... is it so easy to lock-in a customer or to ward-off the competitors efforts to snatch away your key customers
How to Build an Outbound Sales Strategy in 60 Days - Bastiaan Janmaat, CEO & ...SaaStock
Bastiaan Janmaat presented "How to Build an Outbound Sales Strategy in 60 Days" on the Operator Stage at SaaStock 2016 in Dublin on September 22nd 2016.
SaaStock is Europe’s Conference for B2B SaaS at RDS, Dublin Ireland in September 2017
Watch the Video Here: https://www.saastock.com/blog/view/how-to-build-an-outbound-sales-strategy-in-60-days
B2B marketing is no longer a matter of delivering support tools and services to the sales organisation. The challenge for marketing is to take more of an independent role in B2B as a positioning driver. The loss of an extremely close, direct connection between sales and marketing also causes a loss in the alignment of sales and marketing investments for driving business. There isn’t necessarily sufficient marketing focus on generating revenue streams, as sales often ignores what will drive future revenue. B2B sales and marketing needs to re-align its objectives and priorities.
Sales/Marketing Strategy for the Startups Praveen K
A complte sales strategy and sales management for the Startups helps in building a good organisation.
Please contact for more info at : PRAVEEN22Y@GMAIL.COM
This is a presentation that I gave on developing sales channels to a group of entrepreneurs at the Technology Capital Network in July 2007 in the Boston area
Roadmap to winning b2b sales presentationFileboard
This presentation explains how to create a B2B sales presentation for sales teams wanting to present to their customers and looking to win more business.
Download the Sales Strategy Template
fourquadrant.com/product/strategic-account-plan-template/
Sales Strategy Template - The outline for s sales strategy plan should include an assessment of the customer’s business, opportunities that are prioritized, a summary of the team’s capabilities, an evaluation of relationships and a sales action plan.
Strategic Market Planning - Assessing a customer’s business is a fundamental element of strategic market planning. Start with a basic SWOT and then drill down to develop value statements that specific to specific business initiatives.
Sales Strategy Plan - The sales strategy plan should be centered around the opportunity area that provides high value to both the account and the vendor. Other opportunities may exist but win / win’s are the best possible outcome.
Marketing & Sales Strategy - Document the sales strategies and capabilities required to penetrate and or expand into the account.
Sales Tactics - The identification of key customer contacts required to advance the strategic and tactical aspects of the sales are key sales tactics. Formalize the collection of this information for the entire account team to leverage.
Market Development Strategy - The market development strategy must document the tangible, objective, quantitative measures of success. These sales metrics are typically expressed as subscription, bookings or revenue.
Download the Sales Strategy Template
fourquadrant.com/product/strategic-account-plan-template/
Studies and results show that Challengers are much more performant than relation builders, problem solvers or any of the other typical sales types. How can you finetune your challenger skills and become a high value sales pro?
Start Up Sales - Launching New Ventures - Columbia Business SchoolJeremy Seltzer
Start up Sales from Columbia Business School's Launching New Ventures course. Generating leads, sales pipeline, increasing close rates, tips and tricks.
You Know Me: Privacy in the Era of Customer Experience ManagementJahia Solutions Group
Traditionally, marketers make promises to customers and prospects, and the rest of the organization has to scramble to keep the promises. In today’s customer-centric era, that’s no longer tenable. Customers demand a seamless and cohesive experience. The entire organization must work as one, identity with the customer and ensure that expectations match reality.
The technical architecture that delivers customer experience must protect the customer relationship as well as flex to fulfill as-yet-unknown requirements even as it provides continuous value to each customer and internal user.
Together, empathy and agility form the crucial foundation for today’s competitive digital enterprise.
Join Tim Walters, co-founder and principal analyst at Digital Clarity Group, and Serge Huber, Chief Technology Officer at Jahia, for a lively discussion about the power of organizational empathy and agility in delivering quality customer experience.
Discover the following (and more!) in this dynamic one-hour webinar:
- How re-imagining customer relationships can drive enterprise-wide transformation.
- The power of Conway's Law
- The importance of your organization reflecting the experience you want to offer.
- What future-proofing your technology means in practical terms.
- The critical elements of agile architecture.
A day in the life of a LinkedIn social sellerBlack Marketing
Pioneering LinkedIn sales executives are changing how sales is done. Their social selling techniques are reshaping prospecting and turning the conventional sales process on its head. Hear firsthand from three of the top performing members of our sales team — salesperson to salesperson — as they reveal how they run sales at LinkedIn, the tools they use, and their top tips for success.
Pioneering LinkedIn sales executives are changing how sales is done. Their social selling techniques are reshaping prospecting and turning the conventional sales process on its head. Hear firsthand from three of the top performing members of our sales team — salesperson to salesperson — as they reveal how they run sales at LinkedIn, the tools they use, and their top tips for success.
How To Modernize Your Sales Approach To Drive Business Growth in Cyber SecurityJane Frankland
How to Modernize Your B2B Sales Approach to Drive Growth
This presentation is available as a 60-minute Master Class. It's right for you if you’re a business owner and want to increase your revenue. ONLY attend if you want to understand how to modernize your sales methods to drive growth, better communicate with your buyers and leave your competitors squabbling over your leftovers.
During the class we’ll be looking at how sales is transforming and why now is the time to use modern sales tools to gain an advantage. We’ll also be going through strategy and implementation, which most master classes don’t cover. By the end of this class I guarantee that you’ll be left hungry for more information and curious as to what more your missing!
REGISTER for the master class on business development here: https://jane-frankland.leadpages.net/modern-selling-master-class/
Join this webinar with Peter Armaly, Senior Director and Adviser for Customer Success at Oracle, who will share his experiences, discuss some research, and offer guidance and opinions on the issue of Customer Success programs not being treated equal to its Sales peers.
Join this webinar with Peter Armaly, Senior Director and Adviser for Customer Success at Oracle, who will share his experiences, discuss some research, and offer guidance and opinions on the issue of Customer Success programs not being treated equal to its Sales peers.
Increasing our value to the Ipod generation
Rick A Dolezal, ABB
Plant Managers and key decision makers in our business going forward will be products of the Ipod generation. You may recall, other electronic music players started this craze. RIO had the best selling portable MP3 player a decade ago, but they have not had the success Apple has had with the Ipod. The Ipod succeeded because it was easy to use.
In the same way, our marketplace going forward is looking for ease of use and an ease of doing business. As we package our marketing message to our sales force, it must be quick to understand, show immediate benefits and communicate a sense of urgency. We'll show how you can set up a marketing plan and the sales message that results in sales in this evolving environment.
BIO - Mr. Dolezal is the Director of Sales and Marketing for ABB’s Process Automation Business in the US. His role includes setting and managing sales results, developing the marketing strategy, coordinating market access, and implementing new marketing programs. With 28 years of industry experience, Rick’s background in process control and automation systems has involved product development, delivery, marketing and sales. Rick spent 17 years at Rockwell Automation before joining ABB in February of 2009. Rick graduated from the Ohio Institute of Technology in Columbus, Ohio with an electrical engineering degree.
Similar to Stuff we can learn from the Challenger Sales Pro (20)
Getting on in life is much about being aware of where you want to go, make that destination as shiny as possible and next gather the resources to get there step by step.
This keynote inspires in three areas :
- your personal shiny goal
- your company's shiny goal
- shiny goals in business projects
Hans Demeyer is Master NLP practitioner, published auther and keynote speaker
Discovering hidden treasures of your pirate brainHans Demeyer
1,5 hour inspiring and interactive keynote during which participants gain and experience ready-to-use insights that bring them closer to full situational mastery
Sustainable Entrepreneurship with Sustainable TechnologyHans Demeyer
Sustainability is tree-fold : how can we respect
1. Nature
2. People
3. Processes
The slides accompany an animated 2h workshop delivered at HoGent for Students in Information technology
In this Story, we follow Sophie in her life and job. In her new job, she meets Marco, who chose Microsoft Solutions to be as compliant as possible with GDPR.
If you want to hear the story behind the slides, feel free to get in touch via www.thedataprotectionoffice.eu
Experience with several 1000s of sales professionals, managers, team members and private persons show how complex it is for most of them to have conversations that lead to the desired result in the shortest of times.
A good conversation reduces the cycles and processes and brings people much faster to their desired common goal.
These slides are a selection of materials I use during my one day CONVERSATION STYLING workshop that makes the difference
Whether it is with customers, team members or friends and family, it is experienced as useful when one can lead conversations to a common goal. The deck includes the slides of one of my workshops on this theme
From Sales Person to Facilitator of a Buying ProcessHans Demeyer
Presentation delivered at Microsoft's WPC2013 in Houston on July 9, 2013.
Theme : Forget about being a sales person and focus on being the coach who guides the customer towards siging the order form. Since few of us want to be sold to, but all of us want to buy, it becomes increasingly important to build compelling conversations with the customers and focus on an effective balance between ratio and emotion. This presentation highlights some tips and tricks to do so. Feel free to get in touch with me to discover how the Suppliers of Optimism and Inspiration can coach you in each of the steps.
Slides of the motivational Sales Pitch during the TechData Touch Tour in Belgium.
Objective : motivate sales people and give them insights in the opportunities attached to Windows 8, touch devices, cloud vs on premise solutions and Microsoft Office
3. Timing Topic
09:00 Introduction – expectations - game
09:30 The microsoft cloud – history
10:30 BREAK
11:00 Customer reality (BCM)
11:30 Microsoft solutions to fit
12:00
6. Who scores the best?
• Always willing to go
the extra mile
• Doesn’t give up easily
• Self-motivated
• Interested in feedback
and development
• Always has a different
view of the world
• Understands the
customer’s business
• Pushes the customer
• Builds strong
advocates in customer
organization
• Generous in giving
time to help others
• Gets along with
everyone
• Follows own instincts
• Self-assured
• Difficult to control
• Reliably responds to
internal and external
stakeholders
• Ensures that all
problems are solved
• Detail-oriented
16. I have always
done it like that
I am not able to
and I do not
know that I am
not able to
I am not able to
and I DO know
that I am not
I am able to, and
it sure asks an
effort to do it
U.C
U.I
C.C
C.I
17. Call sheet
Objective :
Customer contact details
Contacts I want to know – names
Number of people at work
Who are their customers?
How mobile are they?
Satisfaction rate with current systems
When latest change?
Why latest change?
Familiar with cloud computing?
Familiar with Office 365?
…..
19. Challenge
1. Listen actively
2. Isolate components
3. Check what is NOT said
4. Challenge the components
Example
“That looks too complex. We won’t need all this”
+ 4 items to challenge
25. Interesting to hear. Do
you mean not interested
as in
- I have no time right
now,
- I am not the right
person to talk to about
this
- We have other
Sorry, we are not
interested
28. Dream.Lead.Grow.
sales force, hunter, farmer
strategy
buying coach,
guide
Disconnected approach
Metric driven
Focus on quota
Sell to similar customers
Product focus
Sales skills are key
connected sales model
Customer centric
New metrics and KPI’s
Sell to extended buyer set
Business value focus
Business insights and communication
skills are key
Sales
Manager
Team
Leader
Editor's Notes
start with the anecdote of the sport shoes
introduce myself
use the learning circle graph illustrates what I do, but the people in the room will experience, and what they can learn from this with regard to their customers who they themselves are continuously in one of the four mental states when having conversations with them.
Doug about the changing markets. Use a slide with the three faces and what how why flow to illustrates that we can no longer start with the bottom end with why we should do so the other way around
challenge the audience to write down their why statement
briefly discuss the results of the research done by the sales Council research and show that the challenger sales today the most performance salesperson of the five types highlight so what can we learn from the challengers? What is it they do we can easily replicate and do ourselves?
I would like to share with you seven tips that will help you in improving your results
Reminder on where customers go for their information
Let's have a look at the five archetypes of sales people. You will probably recognise them.
The first one is the hard worker. He is always willing to go the extra mile, quite self-motivated, gets joy from feedback you give and from training is he can follow anyone give up that easily.
The second one is a challenger. Sometimes they are referred to as Mismatchers because they will always have a different view of the world. The challengers turn out to have a good understanding of the customer's business and it will not be afraid to push to customer in a certain direction.
Perhaps the most easy to recognise will be the relation builder. The type of person who gets along with everybody, who is appreciated by everybody and walks through life as probably the most sympathetic guy in town. We all know at least one of them.
Next there is the lone wolf. As the name implies he's difficult to control, very self-sufficient both in learning as in following instincts.
And finally the problem solver whose main source of personal satisfaction is finding answers to other people's questions. They will even go far beyond the extra mile to find a solution and they will do so in detail. Their surroundings are aware of this and so will often turn to them with questions and problems.
Very interesting to see your results.
Now let us watch the results of research done by the sales executive Council.
The figures that we will be looking at will show to things. The dark green area shows the performance of the core. This means on average looking at the average deal, who is doing best. The Light green shows the percentage of high-performance. Put the outstanding more complex and more profitable deals, who are the ones that outperform the others. Let's discover. click
Now that you see the results, what profile would you prefer to have in your sales team?
To me the answer is pretty obvious : I would go for the challenger. The challenger does not necessarily have to be the archetype challenger who some days may be flirting with arrogance. I am much more thinking of challenger's behavior. It means that if today you have relation builders or you have lone wolves are hard workers, you can develop the challenging part in them and increase their performance.
Challenge your vocabulary (sales –> coach, Product experience, Customer, ...
Challenge your mindset (customer reflex, quota = old school, experiences are in, ex linkedin)
Challenge your listening skills (active listening) - delete, deform, generalize
Challenge your questioning (logical levels)
Challenge your reply habbits
Challenge your strategy
CHALLENGE YOUR CUSTOMER
Challenge your vocabulary (sales –> coach, Product experience, Customer, ...
Challenge your mindset (customer reflex, quota = old school, experiences are in, ex linkedin)
Challenge your listening skills (active listening) - delete, deform, generalize
Challenge your questioning (logical levels)
Challenge your reply habbits
Challenge your strategy
CHALLENGE YOUR CUSTOMER
Challenge your vocabulary (sales –> coach, Product experience, Customer, ...
Challenge your mindset (customer reflex, quota = old school, experiences are in, ex linkedin)
Challenge your listening skills (active listening) - delete, deform, generalize
Challenge your questioning (logical levels)
Challenge your reply habbits
Challenge your strategy
CHALLENGE YOUR CUSTOMER
Challenge your vocabulary (sales –> coach, Product experience, Customer, ...
Challenge your mindset (customer reflex, quota = old school, experiences are in, ex linkedin)
Challenge your listening skills (active listening) - delete, deform, generalize
Challenge your questioning (logical levels)
Challenge your reply habbits
Challenge your strategy
CHALLENGE YOUR CUSTOMER
Challenge your vocabulary (sales –> coach, Product experience, Customer, ...
Challenge your mindset (customer reflex, quota = old school, experiences are in, ex linkedin)
Challenge your listening skills (active listening) - delete, deform, generalize
Challenge your questioning (logical levels)
Challenge your reply habbits
Challenge your strategy
CHALLENGE YOUR CUSTOMER
There is one final important feature of Challenger not to forget : he is a champion in building good reports.
Here is well the good news is that it is not difficult. Let me share one simple trick you can apply as of tomorrow and you will immediately see a positive effect.
When you are talking to people and you feel like saying : "yes I understand, but...." Take a deep breath and say : "now that is interesting, and....." followed by a question to get more insight in what has just been said.
That is how you build report. You create involvement in your profile yourselves as a coach of the other one. By the way, this does not prevent you from giving your opinion, or your feedback. Just leaving out the 'but' creates a totally different environment in which your opinion will be much more appreciated.
Challenge your vocabulary (sales –> coach, Product experience, Customer, ...
Challenge your mindset (customer reflex, quota = old school, experiences are in, ex linkedin)
Challenge your listening skills (active listening) - delete, deform, generalize
Challenge your questioning (logical levels)
Challenge your reply habbits
Challenge your strategy
CHALLENGE YOUR CUSTOMER
So far in the shiny goals journey, we have shared methods to develop shiny goals and list priorities for the coming years.
Next we shared tips and insights to adapt your offering to a recurring model and invent new offerings that will replace or complement the existing and or obsolete ones.
We looked at how we can increase the profitability of the new offering
In todays session we discussed the impact on our sales model.
Translating theory into practice will require quite some effort. However, you will be surprised by the speed with which you can get into a positive spiral, with only a few minor changes as the offset.
We have seen the power of “interesting, and” replacing the “yes, but” and you can do much more.
The world is not what it is. the world is what we make of it. The only meaning of events, objects or people is the meaning we give to them. And to give meaning to things we use words. These words often reinforce the content and the meaning of the event, object or person to such an extent that it becomes a generally accepted truth that subsequently determines our behaviour which leads to reactions (that are often expected, since they come with the package) and as such create a spiral of events and consequences.
Are you still with me?
Words like Sales, farmers, hunters have been great to give meaning to concepts and persons, in the same way an arch and arrow have been great references for modern arms centuries ago.
These obsolete words cause feelings and trigger actions that through the years have inherently been associated with the words. A sales should now the products, gets stress from quote to achieve, needs excellent sales training and objection handling training, talks a lot, manipulates (I sometimes hear); ….
Change the title into buying coach or guide and feel the change in associations and subsequently in behaviour. Try and consider your selves no longer as sales manager, but become for instance a team leader.
Write down the new associations and behaviours. They may in all of the cases automatically lead to new KPI’s, new actions.
How do you do this? What are the typical behavioral features of a challenger?
There we share with you a very easy to copy approach into understanding the success of the challenger.