Sales as I see It or The Challenger Sale (Part 02)

A SURPRISING LOOK INTO THE FUTURE:

Opening the scene with the 2009 global economical recession when it was logically that sales reps can’t perform their tasks.

Yet therein lay the mystery. Staring directly into the teeth of the toughest sales environment in decades—if not ever—a small but uniquely gifted number of sales reps were selling.

In fact, they were selling a lot!

In that time when CEB (now Gartner) launched their research on sales rep productivity, fueled with tones of data and 4 years studying, they have come to 3 core insights:

1. Five distinct profiles: The research has found that B2B reps often fall into one of these profiles defined with a certain set of skills and characteristics.
2. A very clear winner and a very clear loser: there is only one winner from these profiles who likely to survive and thrive in a tough economy
3. Mastering the complex sale: This winner not just excelling because they mastered the complex economy but the complex sale which enabled them to drive sales and deliver customer value in any kind of economic environment.

We call these winning reps... Challengers!

THE EVOLVING JOURNEY OF SOLUTION SELLING:

With CEB results, we can find a rep profile that can sell in one of the worst economies in decades. As looking deeper into the data retrieved, they found that those reps were not excelling because of economical factors but rather because their ability to succeed in a complex sales model often referred as “Solution Selling”.

So, what is really solution selling?

It is moving from individual product selling to a focus on broad-based consultative sales of “bundles” of products and services. The key to its success is the creation of bundled offerings that not only meet broader customer needs in a unique and valuable way, but also that competitors cannot easily replicate.

THE CUSTOMER BURDEN OF SOLUTIONS:

So, to do solution selling, rep must ask the customer a lot of questions to get a full understanding of the customer challenges as the customer is expecting a real solution to those challenges

This complicated and often rather protracted process requires a huge amount of customer involvement at each stage, placing two kinds of burden on the customer: The first is time, and the second is timing. Which led to “Solutions Fatigue” as customers are differently engaging with suppliers which produced 4 trends on complex deals:

1. The Rise of the Consensus-Based Sale: If you have tried to reach the CEO rather than the IT, most probably he asked you to speak with the IT and you may wonder why, The thing is even the CEO with significant decision-making authority are unwilling to go out on a limb to make a large purchase decision without the support of their teams. So, rep must go through a lot of activities to get support from the customer individual stakeholders and each one is expecting a real solution to his department challenges.
2. Increased Risk Aversion: with more complex and expensive solution, customers have higher demands to get more data about how this solution would help solving the challenge and this data should show ROI to avoid the risk of aversion that rep might face from his customers.
3. Greater Demand for Customization: since deals get more complex, as well the demand for customization. Suppliers see it for cost perspective and customers see it from as a part of the commitment for the solution. Customization: Everyone wants it; no one wants to pay for it.
4. The Rise of Third-Party Consultants: Customers increasingly are looking for third-party consultants to help them “extract maximum value from the purchase decision.” As a result, the sale became much more complex, and rep has to deal with this complexity.

By looking to those 4 trends in customer buying behavior, selling hasn’t gotten any easier and demand to highly qualified sales rep has raised.

A WIDENING TALENT GAP:

In a recent study, we conducted an analysis looking at the impact of a company’s sales model on the performance distribution of their sales reps.

From this study, we can come up with 3 conclusions:

1. It’s not just that stars are carrying the day for you; they’re often carrying the entire company.
2. The value of narrowing the gap between the core and star performers goes up radically in complex sales model.
3. The penalty for not closing the gap is terrifying. As your model evolves, left untended, the core will fall farther and farther behind, until they ultimately can’t execute the new model at all.

A NEW WAY FORWARD:

So, we need to do something to adapt to the new complex?customer purchasing behavior to face this aversion risk with agility to any economical changes.

Here is where we advocate of the Challenger Sale model.

What’s the challenger sale model? Will it make me hi-performance sales? Can you be a challenger rep or it something you’re born with? What are the skills needed? How can I get there?

In the next article we are going to explore the five profiles and their characteristics