Acknowledgments
Appendix A: Challenger Coaching Guide (excerpt)
Appendix B: Selling
Style Self-Diagnostic
Appendix C: Challenger Hiring Guide: Key Questions to Ask in the
Interview
Index
FOREWORD
THE HISTORY OF
sales has been one of steady progress interrupted by a
few real breakthroughs that have changed
the whole direction of the
profession. These breakthroughs, marked by radical new thinking and
dramatic improvements in sales results, have been rare. I can only think of
three of them in the last century. The first started
about a hundred years ago,
when insurance companies found that they could double their sales by a
simple change in selling strategy. Before this first great breakthrough,
insurance policies—in common with many other products such as furniture,
household goods, and capital equipment—were
sold by salespeople who
signed up customers and then every week visited each of them to collect
premiums or installment payments. After signing up a hundred or so people,
the salesperson was too busy collecting weekly premiums to do any more
selling of new business. Then some anonymous
genius hit on an idea that
grew into what we now call the hunter-farmer model. Suppose, instead of
one person both selling the policy and collecting the premiums, the two
roles were split. There would be
producers,
who
only sold, backed up by
less experienced—and therefore cheaper—
collectors,
who came behind to
look after existing customers and collect the weekly premiums. The idea
was a spectacular success and it changed the insurance industry overnight.
The concept quickly
spread to other industries, and for the first time selling
became a “pure” role, without the burden of collection.
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