Unlock the power of the challenger sales model for Accounting

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[Music] in their book The Challenger sale Dixon and Adamson tell us the surveys suggest that customers place the highest value on salespeople who make them think who bring new ideas to them and who find innovative ways to help their business customers expect salespeople to teach them things they don't know and these are the core skills of Challengers the new type of salesperson we should employ join us for the next 10 minutes as we find out more about the Challenger and how to take control of the customer conversation lesson number one sales reps are us Dixon and Adamson suggest there are five types of sales reps type one hard workers hard workers show up early stay late and are always willing to go the extra mile they have their nose to the Grind stem down are self-motivated and don't give up easily type two relationship Builders these reps focus on building and nurturing personal and professional customer Advocates a latte and a friendly chat is their bread and butter type three are the lone wolves lone wolves are so confident they follow their own instincts and break every one of our rules they bring in the sales but not in a way we would be confident to repeat type four are reactive solvers these reps are high reliable and detail focused they make sure all promises are kept once the deal is done finally type five The Challengers Dixon and Adamson identified Challengers as reps who understand the customer's business and make them think deeper and differently Challengers are not afraid to be controversial so here's the question which of these types are prevalent in your Workforce logic tells us that the relationship Builder should be the most successful profile and this seems to be born out out of a large number of companies but not so says Dixon and Adamson they tell us and their research supports the fact that customer decision makers want to be served by the Challenger with their unique perspective on the customer's business and their ability to engage in robust two-way dialogue Challengers are able to grow the customer's own knowledge during the sales interaction because Challengers possess a superior understanding of a customer's economic and value drivers they're able to deliver the right message to the right person within the customer organization Challengers can also ensure that the right fee is achieved they're comfortable discussing money and compress the customer to take the sale at the seller's best asking price on the other hand however strong a customer relationship may be familiarity alone isn't enough to win the business as Dixon and Adamson say a check-in call with a customer can be a great way to find business but it's not very good way to make business as a result in a world where easy found business has disappeared relationship Builders are doomed to fail lesson number two I'd Like to Teach the World to buy Dixon and Adamson believe teaching in sales is all about offering customers unique perspectives on their business and communicating those viewpoints with a passion to draw the customer in sales engagements often start with visits to find out what the customers want but what if customers don't know what they need what if a customer's greatest need is actually to figure out what they need in that case rather than asking customers a better technique might be to tell customers that's what Challengers do they win not by understanding their customers world as well as the customer knows them themselves but by actually knowing their customer's World better than their customers know it themselves teaching them what they don't know but should the challenge for the challengers is to teach the customer something new if we don't change how a customer thinks and acts we've not taught them anything so how do we ensure that our sales teaching efforts what Dixon and Adamson call Commercial teaching will actually lead to more business here are three rules rule number one lead to our unique strengths commercial teaching must tie directly back to something where we outperform our competitors if so our teaching will lead back to what we do better than anyone else putting us in the best position there are two notes however we need to actually be the best and we need to know actually what we're best at unless we can ultimately connect the insights we teach our customers back to capabilities only we can offer we're much more likely providing free Consulting than commercial teaching rule number two challenge customers assumptions whatever we teach our customers has to challenge their assumptions and speak directly to their world in ways they haven't thought of before whatever Insight we provide must change their perspective Dixon and Adamson give us a good way of recognizing this if a customer responds with a thoughtful pause we've hit the mark they're wondering what exactly does this mean for my business or even better what else don't I know rule number three kickoff action we've got to get them to act customers are easily distracted so our message needs to be so compelling they remain focused if not they become like Doug the dog in the Pixar movie up distracted by every squirrel lesson three the end solution so how can we make that compelling teaching pitch Dixon and Adamson give us six steps a great commercial teaching pitch starts with a sound statement or demonstration of our assessment of the customer's position forget about asking the hack need question what's keeping you up at night we should tell them what we're seeing and hearing as the key challenges of similar companies share our stories from engagements with other companies that align to their experience Dixon and Adamson suggest it will feel to the customer much more like a get than a give they get our informed perspective rather than having to educate us with information we should have been able to figure out on our own step two stir the Hornet's Nest having made the customer sit up and perhaps even nervous given our Insight make the challenge even bigger by introducing a new perspective that connects those challenges to either a bigger problem or a bigger opportunity than they had ever realized they had if they're perhaps able to shrug off the first statement of threat they will certainly be bor noticeable of the bigger unknown step three the evidence is clear the third step is where we lay out the business case for why the challenges of step two are worth our customers time and attention this is the time for facts and figures the PowerPoint slides often shown in the first minutes of a traditional pitch now it's time for the true often hidden cost of the problem or size of the opportunity they'd completely overlooked we've all used this before the fud Factor Fear uncertainty and doubt step number four make it personal the customer must be in the picture step four is all about making sure the customers sees themselves in the story we're telling what we need to avoid is a counterargument stating interesting but we're different so how do you counter the we're different defense You Begin by painting a picture of how other companies just like theirs went down a painful path by engaging in behavior that they will immediately recognize as typical of their own company step number five A New Hope then you have to convince them of your solution this is a point-by-point review of the specific capabilities they would need in order to make money save money or migrate the risk that we've just convinced them they're facing step six we've just the tonic the goal of Step six is to demonstrate how our solution is better than anyone else's to equip them to act differently as Dixon and Adamson say if our competition is still in the running at this point then we've either failed to to identify capabilities that are truly unique or we failed to lead them as convincingly as we'd hoped don't lead with lead to bring them to your solution lesson number four We Are One well we might have assumed that things like price and willingness to customize a solution would top the list for decision makers these features are significantly less important to the decision maker than widespread support and ease of doing business it turns out the p the sales rep needs to take in order to earn a decision maker support is one via the customer team identifying nurturing and encouraging key customer stakeholders across the organization so how do we make this journey one of the biggest obstacles a normal sales rep meets when it comes to consensus-based buying is how to tailor the sales message to different stakeholders to achieve maximum resonance Dixon and adson suggests we should start at the broadest level the customers industry and work our way down through through the person's company the person's role and finally to that individual person difficult yes but the vast majority of sales messaging being used in the market is not contextualized at any level let alone at each of these levels for each kind of stakeholder so we need to get together with our marketing team and find out what's going on in terms of Industry Trends and current events has a big competitor folded has there been a meaningful merger is the customer rapidly gaining or losing share what about regulatory changes what do the company's recent press releases and earning statements suggest about strategic priorities Dixon and Adamson suggest Challenger reps aren't focused on what they are selling but on what the person they're speaking to is trying to accomplish the product is the tool to achieve the goal lesson five taking control of the sale the following scene takes place millions of times in a business day a relationship Builder comes to the end of a customer meeting pregnant pause what next they won't push hard on next steps closing the sale for fear of ruining what was otherwise a positive interaction on the other hand Challengers understand that the goal is to sell a deal not just have a good meeting they're focused on moving ahead Challengers take control across the entirety of the sales process not just at the end in fact one of the Prime opportunities for taking control is actually right at the beginning of the sale we have to agree that that many sales opportunities that may have appeared viable on the surface were little more than veiled verification efforts by a customer in other words the customer already has chosen a vendor to partner with but feels the need to do some due diligence to make sure they're getting the best deal because the customer has no intention of actually buying from these other suppliers they only allow reps to meet with the junior contact never permitting access to more senior decision makers but even in this early stage of the sale Challengers know better they sniff out the these foils immediately andess the contact for expanded access in exchange for continued dialogue if the customer isn't interested then neither is the Challenger they'll not waste their time they've moved on to the next opportunity do you have the confidence to say enough is enough Challengers lead and simplify rather than assuming that the customer knows how to execute the purchase of a complex solution they teach the customer how to buy the solution as a challenger we are teaching our customers things they didn't know before we have practical experiences from hundreds if not thousands of implementations while this may be the first such implementation for them taking control means that we know the value of these resources and we don't bring them to Bear willy-nilly and a customer who isn't serious about the decision before they buy our solution the customer has to buy us in our perspective of the solution and there you have it everything you need in order to get started bringing the Challenger sale perspective to your [Music] team