The Challenger Sale

Commercial Teaching Rule #2: Challenge Customers’
Assumptions
If the first rule of Commercial Teaching is all about the connection between
insight and supplier, the second is about the connection between insight and
customer.
It feels like an obvious point, but we’ll say it anyway. Definitionally,
whatever you teach your customers has to actually 
teach
them something. It
has to challenge their assumptions and speak directly to their world in ways
they haven’t thought of or fully appreciated before. The word we like to use
here is “reframe.” What data, information, or insight can you put in front of
your customer that reframes the way they think about their business—how
they operate or even how they compete? That’s what your customers are
really looking for. Remember what we saw in our customer survey?
Rep offers unique and valuable perspectives on the market.
Rep helps me navigate alternatives.
Rep provides ongoing advice or consultation.
Rep helps me avoid potential land mines.
Rep educates me on new issues and outcomes.
There’s nothing on that list about “confirmation” or “validation.” Yes,
customers appreciate it if you can confirm what they already know to be
true; there’s value there to be sure. But there’s vastly greater value in insight
that changes or builds on what they know in ways they couldn’t have
discovered on their own.
That kind of insight is not necessarily easy to achieve. You have to
know your customers’ business better than they know it themselves—at
least that part of their business that speaks to your capabilities. It sounds
like an impossibly high bar but the reality is that most suppliers actually 
do
understand their customers’ business better than customers do themselves—
when viewed specifically through the lens of that supplier’s capabilities. A
company that sells printers to hospitals, for example, may not know more
about health care than the hospital administrators they sell to, but they
certainly know more about information management in a hospital setting. A

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company that sells consumer packaged goods probably knows more about
how and why consumers buy groceries than most of the retailers they sell
to.
Wherever the insight comes from, you’ll know if you’ve actually
reframed your customer’s thinking based on their reaction. And this is
where some reps really fall into a trap. Ironically, if your customer reacts to
your sales pitch with something like, “Yes, I totally agree! That’s 
exactly
what’s keeping me up at night!” well, then you’ve actually failed. That may
feel counterintuitive, but it’s true nonetheless. Sure, you’ve found an issue
or insight that 
resonates
, but it doesn’t 
reframe
. You haven’t actually taught
them anything. This is exactly where we see Relationship Builders struggle
all the time. They return from a sales call excited about the “connection”
they established with a customer because they “nailed the issue match.” “It
was like I was reading his mind! Everything I put on the table was
something he was focused on!” But then they’re surprised when that
customer hasn’t returned their calls two weeks later. They assume that their
successful diagnosis of the customer’s needs was sufficient to win the
business. But that’s not the case. Rapport and reframe are not the same
thing. Just because you “get” the customer’s business doesn’t mean you
automatically 
get
the customer’s business. Not by a long shot.
Challenger reps, on the other hand, are looking for a different customer
reaction altogether. Rather than, “Yes, I totally agree!” they know they’re
on the right track when they hear their customer say, “Huh, I never thought
of it that way before.” The best indicator of a successful reframe, in other
words, isn’t excited agreement but thoughtful reflection. You’ve just shown
your customer a different way to think about their business—perhaps a land
mine they’d overlooked, a trend they underappreciated, or an alternative
they’d prematurely dismissed—and now you’ve got them curious. They’re
wondering, “What exactly does this mean for my business?” or even better,
“What 
else
don’t I know?”
This is the pivot point of any effective Commercial Teaching
conversation. When your customer says, “Huh, I never thought about it that
way before,” they’re clearly telling you they’re engaged, maybe even a little
unsettled. And as customers themselves have told us, that’s exactly what
they were hoping for when they sat down with you in the first place. That’s
when the conversation itself becomes something worth paying for.

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Still, just because we’ve helped them 
see
things differently doesn’t
mean we’ve necessarily persuaded them to 
do
things differently. That’s next
—and it’s just as important.