The Challenger Sale

particular company was looking to break through and become the supplier
that physicians prefer to spend time with. However, customer survey data
clearly indicated that in the eyes of customers, suppliers were
indistinguishable from one another.
To cut through the noise, the company in question worked to arm its
reps to teach physicians new insights—not about their products, but about
how to improve their own effectiveness as medical practitioners. Relying on
the company’s wealth of knowledge on disease management, their
marketing team built a series of “patient journeys” that reps could share
with doctors. These journeys looked at the entire cycle of an illness, from
the time symptoms appear to treatment and, finally, follow-up.
For a doctor, seeing the full life cycle of an illness can be pretty eye-
opening. For example, the company knows that patients with a certain
illness have an average of 2.5 exacerbations—frequently requiring a visit to
the emergency room—a year. However, the family physician for these
patients might never know that these emergencies occur between visits. As
a consequence, they are treating the patients for a much less severe medical
condition than the patients actually have. Once they learn this new
information, they can change the patient’s treatment to avoid or
substantially reduce these exacerbations, which really improves the quality
of patient care the physician can deliver. This is insight physicians value,
and it’s helped this particular supplier gain access to physicians in a way
they never enjoyed before.
One last example. In sales these days, there’s a lot of discussion about
how reps can “get ahead of the RFP.” This story illustrates how teaching
can be used effectively not just to get ahead of an RFP, but to actually
reshape an RFP in a given supplier’s favor.
The story comes from a supplier of employee benefit management
services who was recently informed by a longtime customer that the
company had decided to put the contract for the business out to bid in an

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attempt to save money. Frustrated that this longtime customer was trying to
pull them into a price war, the supplier told them that they weren’t
interested in that kind of partnership with a client, i.e., one based on price.
So they told the customer that they would respectfully decline to submit a
bid in response to the forthcoming RFP. But not before they made a rather
unique gesture.
They told the customer that since they weren’t going to be participating
in the bidding process, but valued the long-term working relationship they
had, they would be happy to help them think through the construction of
their RFP to ensure that they were requesting the right things out of their
next supplier.
Appreciative of the free consulting the supplier was offering, the
customer invited them down for the day, where they spent a few hours
outlining what should be in the bid. The discussions included advice along
the lines of, “If any supplier tells you the following three things, they’re
wrong. And here’s why.” “If they say you need these four things, you
actually don’t, and here’s why.” “No matter what, make sure that your bid
includes the following two things, and here’s why.” “If any company tells
you those two things aren’t necessary, tell them they’re wrong. And here’s
why. They’re just trying to get you to buy what they want to sell, but here’s
why you need to insist on these two key things.”
The customer found the advice to be hugely valuable, as these were
points they wouldn’t have thought to consider on their own. Once the RFP
was built, the supplier’s account team looked at it and said, “Okay, well, if
that
is the bid you’re going to put out there, then we’d like to participate
since it describes exactly the kind of partnership we’d like to have with
you.”
This last example in particular illustrates why this teaching approach
works so well. The content of the rep’s teaching pitch is carefully linked to
the supplier’s unique capabilities. The ability of a sales rep to deliver this
kind of unique insight is arguably the most powerful weapon in the
Challenger’s arsenal and actually the biggest driver of B2B customer
loyalty. We’ll focus on building this kind of teaching capability in 
chapters
4
 and 
5
.

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