The Challenger Sale

DOES THE CHALLENGER SELLING MODEL WORK?
Soon after we began sharing the findings from our research, we began
hearing stories back from our members about how their reps were
employing the principles of the Challenger Selling Model with customers—
often to outstanding effect. Let’s look at each of the pillars of the model in
turn to give a sense of what it looks like when done well.
Teaching for Differentiation

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The thing that really sets Challenger reps apart is their ability to teach
customers something new and valuable about how to compete in their
market. Our research on customer loyalty, which we’ll discuss in depth in
the next chapter, shows that this is the exact behavior that wins customers
for the long term.
Teaching is all about offering customers unique perspectives on their
business and communicating those perspectives with passion and precision
in a way that draws the customer into the conversation. These new
perspectives apply not to your products and solutions, but to how the
customer can compete more effectively in their market. It’s insight they can
use to free up operating expenses, penetrate new markets, or reduce risk.
To see how this teaching approach works in practice, we’ll give you a
few examples. The first is from one of our members at an office furniture
manufacturer. A senior member of the company’s sales leadership team told
us the story of a rep who was struggling to gain traction with a prospective
customer. The customer had just built a new headquarters facility and one
of their competitors had been selected to furnish the building. The company
seemed to have been cut out of the business, but the rep—a brand-new hire
—still felt there was an opportunity to gain a foothold in the new building
before the company took delivery from their competitor. After some
persistence, she landed a meeting with the company’s head of real estate
and facilities.
One of the key priorities for this company was to create collaborative
spaces where employees could more effectively interact with one another.
In looking at the architect’s designs, she was able to tell him, “Well, we
have robust data that indicates that collaboration doesn’t happen in groups
of eights. It happens in twos and threes, and when you get to seven it stops
being productive. You may be building the wrong size conference rooms.”
“That’s great to know,” responded the customer, “but the conference
rooms have already been built. What can we do about that now?”
Leveraging her product knowledge, the rep explained how they could
put up a movable wall down the middle of the conference rooms, creating
two rooms that would fit smaller groups of three and four. Then she talked
about a product the company offers that could help facilitate collaboration
for them. She started from an insight, taught the customer about a problem

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they didn’t know they had, developed interest, and changed the whole
direction of the account.
Another good example comes from a global pharmaceutical company.
Anybody who knows pharma knows about the arms race that the industry’s
big players have been locked in for years—too many reps fighting to get
face time with too few doctors. In this tough sales environment, this