The Challenger Sale: How To Take Control of the Customer Conversation

Three elements I like to share after reading this book: Positive element: B2B sales, complex sales, product selling versus solutions selling, and insights based selling...winning business even when there is a down market....and hard study data providing some very interesting insights on how you could improve your sales overall (study data: n=700 first, later n=6000). Myself I liked reading on the 5 types of sales reps (the hard worker, the challenger, the relationship builder, the lone wolf and the reactive problem solver) and on how successful each type of sales rep actually is. It is a nice to know that the challenger sales rep makes actually 54% of total high performers (at least in a complex sales environment), thus making the challenger profile very likely to succeed in a complex sales environment. The book illustrates further the 6 attributes that these challengers have in common (44 attributes tested): - offers the customer unique perspectives - has strong 2-way communication skills - knows the individual customer's value drivers - can identify economic drivers of the customer's business - is comfortable discussing money - can pressure the customer. The book builds also on elements what contribute to customer loyalty -> the purchase experience: - offers unique valuable perspectives on the market - helps me navigate alternatives - provides ongoing advice or consultation - helps me avoid potential land mines - educates me on new issues and outcomes - supplier is easy to buy from - supplier has widespread support across my organization. And the book builds on how to provide those insights as sales rep, on how to tailor your message, on how to take control of the sale (and negotiate the sale), on how to manage your sales reps and on how to implement these challenger sale changes in your organization. The book delivers very nicely on providing hard data, the importance of these data, and changes needed to excel in a complex sales. Negative element: A classic problem with sales books is that all claim to give you the most advanced and most unique sale system on the planet. The authors do give a data solid case for their method, still it has to withstand the test of time. On the other hand, the book is complete from A to Z. And the data gives some really nice (and yes perhaps even unexpected) insights on how complex sale could improve. Interesting element: The authors here made a great effort not only to give you the data but also to "respectfully" teach the reader how to implement these insights (as obtained from the study). Therefore they actually sell the reader these insights just according to the principles uncovered by the study. The book itself is really a complete "product". I could not find unnecessary chapters or paragraphs for example. Well written, great editing and excellent structure: combined this makes this book a very nice read on how complex sales could improve - for yourself, for your client, for you as manager or coach and organization. Really nice done! Contents: Introduction: a surprising look into the future 1. The evolving journey of solution selling 2. The Challenger - Part 1: A new model for high performance 3. The Challenger - Part 2: Exporting the model to the core 4. Teaching for differentiation - Part 1: Why insights matters 5. Teaching for differentiation - Part 2: How to build insight-led conversations 6. Tailoring for resonance 7. Taking control of the sale 8. The manager and the Challenger selling model 9. Implementation lessons from the early adopters Afterword: Challenging beyond sales Acknowledgements Appendix A: Challenger coaching guide Appendix B: Selling style self-diagnostic Appendix C: Challenger hiring guide: Key questions to ask in the interview Index

If you are looking for quick, simple tips to improve sales performance look away or look elsewhere. This is presented as a long term directional change to the way you equip your sales (and other functional) teams with the right attitude, approach and tools for a more insightful sell. I would challenge a couple of points in the book, and I'd also question if it's all revolutionary thinking, but it certainly presents good solid ideas, built from real data and insight in a way that encourages you to think differently. I'll certainly take ideas away and the real review should be written in 12-24 months.

Great book for people selling product in companies who found PMF. Not really applicable for early-stage startups, just in case.

We all love Brian Tracy, Zig Ziglar, Neil Rackman etc etc but this book is a real 201x sales book and the Challenger model make so much sense. More for a business than an individual, if you are looking for new ideas for your business on how to increase sales through real value differentiation this is a great concept and if everyone works together can make a massive difference. Also good for an individual, I am trying to use the tactics in my solution selling process. Must read for ANY sales professional.

Given to me as a present by someone at LinkedIn following a conversation we had about maximizing opportunities and potential, this is an interesting concept and approach, thoroughly researched. At times it reads a little bit like an academic paper, with numerous references like ‘more of this in chapter X’ or ‘as we discussed in X’, but the message is clear, the identification is well made and the joint authorship flows well. Curiously, for me at least, the book doesn’t follow the challenger sale concept in talking about the potential of the CEB (formerly the Corporate Executive Board), but maybe that is because I have experienced its services first hand and so I already know about the benefits it offers.

As all sales professionals know: sales is a profession & a career, which you can always expand learning & insight. this book achieves this. The world of business is changing & so to is professionals selling, this book provides a brave & different approach in adapting to the new economic world. Highly recommend this book to all sales professionals who want to keep ahead of their game.

Like many, I've had all of them; TAS, SPIN, NLP, and all of the other variations on the theme of "how to make gazillions in sales" The thing that intrigued me was the suggestion that we should challenge customers for best results ultimately. For sure relationships, etc. are key the premise of this book is that customers will see value in a person/organisation that takes time to understand their business and then challenge the accepted wisdom where appropriate. Whilst still midway though the book, it is an interesting read and I'll reserve judgement til the end - although so far, so good.

In my CRM (Customer Relationship Management) business, I have struggled for a while to develop a sales strategy. This book managed to summarise very succinctly why it is so difficult to sell a complex solution, and provided insights that have had an immediate impact. Well written with very practical explanations, it had me nodding my head from page 1. And I absolutely must disagree from the detractors (some scoring this book as a 1-star?!). I have a small business, with less than 10 employees, and The Challenger Sale is very, very relevant to me. If you are looking for some quick sales steps and guidelines to sell (uncomplicated) widgets, then perhaps this is not the best starting point. If you are a business owner / manager, or a sales professional of ANY description, this is a must-read. I have recommended this book to 5 other people (so far!).

buen producto, entrega rapida, lo recomiendo

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Stop wasting time with no effective sales. Read this Change your life. Give it a go. Thank you love it. Would like to talk to the author

J'ai ainsi réalisé que j'étais un Challenger depuis des années. Mais ce livre m'a permis de bien comprendre mon processus commercial. Un seul (gros) défaut : le très faible nombre d'exemples et de cas concrets. A moins d'avoir son propre vécu pour faire le lien, je vois mal comment ce livre peut permettre à un non-Challenger de le devenir...

Provides good insight but writing quality is poor, its repetitive and says the same thing over and over, it feels like they didn't really have that much material to charge for a full book so they just padded it with repetition. For a book that's 200 pages thin, it probably should have done with a great deal more copy editing and slimmed down by about half.