The Challenger Sale

part. An hour and a half later, when they get there, they call you up and say,
“Hey, boss, they’ve actually got three of these things. You want that we
should buy another one, just to be safe?” Well, you never want to go
through 
this
again, so you tell them, “Just buy all three and get back here as
fast as you can!”
You use one part to repair the air conditioner, and you put the other two
in the back corner of the warehouse on a shelf Grainger likes to call the
“Parts Orphanage” where they just sit and gather dust. You probably won’t
need them next year. Or the year after that. And when you finally do, the
whole system is likely obsolete and needs to be replaced anyway. But if you
think about it, not only are those parts that you’ll never use, but more
important, that’s valuable cash you’ve just tied up in inventory that you
don’t actually need, simply because you never want to have to go through
the pain of having to buy that part again. And that’s cash you could be using
for far more important things that you actually 
do
need.
Dramatic? Yes. But Grainger’s story is completely believable and
credible. That’s because it’s based on real customer behavior (this is where
all those customer interviews really pay off). More important, however, it’s
dramatic for a reason. The story is intentionally designed to generate an
emotional response from customers. They need to see themselves in the
picture you’re painting. They should feel the pain as if it were their story
you were telling. As one customer put it when they saw the Pain Chain,
“Wow, you know us too well! We play a starring role in that movie every

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single day!” And that’s the point. To get the customer to “own” the story,
ensure that they see unplanned purchases as a problem that absolutely
applies to them.
Now the transition into step 5, where Grainger can paint the picture of a
New Way.
To get to the actual solution, Grainger transitions from the personal to
the organizational: “Now, that’s the problem with just one unplanned
purchase in one category. The kicker is, you do that again and again across
every category of MRO spend. So even if you were able to get your hands
around unplanned purchases in one category, the larger problem is still
there. And no company is structured to effectively manage this spend across
every category.
“But imagine if you could. The problem represents a huge opportunity
if you can get your hands around it. Unplanned purchases represent a huge
amount of unnecessary spend and unnecessary inventory costs. It’s money
you could be spending on more important things. And that’s a problem that

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Grainger—given its specific capability set—is uniquely positioned to solve
for you.”
At this point, the conversation turns to how Grainger can help. Finally,
we’re ready to start talking about Grainger’s solution. If you’re an existing
customer, they’ve got your actual data and can start mapping out a plan. If
they don’t work with you much, they use this conversation to suggest a
diagnostic of your unplanned purchases. Either way, all of the hard work
that Deb and the team did earlier to map out Grainger’s unique benefits is
now laid out, specifically in terms of how they help customers solve the
unplanned purchase challenge that Grainger has just taught them they have.
It’s an absolutely fantastic example of Commercial Teaching because
the heart and soul of the conversation is a set of insights designed to help
customers operate more profitably. That said, did you see where Grainger
and its capabilities first come up in the conversation? Not until the very
end. There’s no mention of Grainger’s capabilities, stores, Web sites,
history, size, product catalog, etc., 
anywhere
across the first two-thirds of
this conversation. That’s because this isn’t a story about Grainger; it’s a
story about the 
customer
and how they can put money back into their
operating budget that they didn’t even realize they were wasting. From the
customer’s perspective, the fact that Grainger has a solution to the problem
is more a happy coincidence. For them, the real value of the interaction is
the quality of Grainger’s insight.
Customers come away from this conversation thinking very differently
not only about their MRO spend, but also about the role Grainger can play
in significantly reducing that spend over time. Grainger is no longer the
place to buy $17 hammers, but rather the partner to work with in order to
avoid buying $117 hammers. By placing Grainger’s unique strengths in
context—at the end of a highly credible teaching pitch—the company
completely changes customers’ disposition toward their offering. But to get
there, there has to be a flow to the pitch, a specific “choreography.” And
that’s really the fundamental shift of Commercial Teaching. It’s a move
from leading 
with
your unique strengths to one where carefully constructed
teaching interactions very deliberately lead the customer 
to
your unique
strengths. Your solution isn’t the subject of your teaching but the natural
outgrowth of your teaching. Remember, from the customer’s perspective,

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the real value of the interaction isn’t what you sell, it’s the quality of the
insight you provide as part of the sales interaction itself.