The Challenger Sale

A LOOK IN THE MIRROR

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This teaching choreography allows you to very concretely audit and
improve the sales conversations you’re having with customers right now.
How closely does 
your
pitch follow this path? Does it lead with, or lead to?
Here’s a short quiz to compare your current approach with what you see
here. Think right now about whatever piece of collateral, or slide deck, or
capability brochure you typically take into a customer meeting. Specifically,
think about the first four or five pages. What are they about? Most of the
time it’s something like this:
What you believe in as a company. (Top favorites include “a
cleaner world,” “serving our customers,” “innovating for the
future,” “our 150 years of experience,” “our team of
experienced professionals dedicated to helping our
customers achieve their goals.”)
A review of all of your capabilities. (After all, you took the
time and money to build out a solutions capability, and you
want to make sure your customers understand all of the great
ways you can help. There’s nothing more frustrating than
customers who don’t fully appreciate all the great things you
can do for them.)
A list of your top partners and customers, preferably
accompanied by as many of their full-color logos as
possible. (Nothing conveys credibility better than a long list
of well-known customers who have placed their trust in you,
right?)
A map of all of your locations all over the world. (If your
customers are going global, you want them to know you’re
right there with them, wherever that might be.)
Sound familiar? Are the first four pages of your sales materials all about
you, or about the customer? Almost inevitably, it’s the former. Not only do
most reps lead with, rather than lead to, but almost all of the sales tools at
their disposal do the same thing. It’s a trend as predictable for organizations
as it is for individuals.

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So if you’re going to build Challenger reps and ask them to teach your
customers, for many companies one of the first steps will inevitably have to
be a pretty significant review of the materials you provide them with to do
that.