The Challenger Customer: Selling to the Hidden Influencer Who Can Multiply Your Results

The folks at CEB have done it again—written a book that challenges traditional thinking about B2B sales and introduced a new character in the long-running conversation about understanding and influencing the customer’s decision making process.Trying to briefly describe the ideas in The Challenger Customer reminds me of the guy who took a speed-reading course and then bragged that he had read War and Peace in an hour. When asked for a synopsis of the book, he said: “It’s about Russia.”In that spirit, The Challenger Customer is about helping your customers buy. In sales, we lament how hard selling is nowadays; buyers have far more knowledge earlier in the sales cycle and use it to drive even complex solutions to commodity status. The problem with that is that often it’s not in the buyer’s own best interests to buy the lowest-cost solution, yet many buyers make the sub-optimal decision because they can’t help it: buying is harder than ever before.Buying is harder because more stakeholders are involved: an average of 5.4 stakeholders in complex B2B deals, according to the book. That’s complicated by the fact that the most important attribute that senior decision makers consider when choosing a supplier is widespread support across the organization.The traditional sales response to this challenge is to simply work harder. If you need to get more yesses to close the sale, you just have to call on more people and get their buy-in, right? The revelation—at least to me—is that, that strategy will actually make it less likely that you will get the sale. In other words, 1+1+1=0! That’s because each stakeholder will support the deal for their own reasons, and the overlap among interests becomes harder to achieve as the number of stakeholders rises. As a result, the decision gets driven down to the lowest common denominator: either status quo or the simplest, cheapest choice.The challenge, then, is not to get a serial collection of yesses, but a collective yes, in which each stakeholder converges around a common vision. It’s like the parable of the six blind men and the elephant. Each one sees only a small part of the whole, so someone needs to make them see the entire elephant. That’s a daunting task for any salesperson, but fortunately there’s a solution: enter the Mobilizer.The Mobilizer is the internal Challenger, the person who is willing to make waves to and drive the vision. They will only do it if they perceive that the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change. The book explains in great detail how to identify the three types of mobilizers, get them to agree on the need for change, and then coach and equip them to sell the need internally.I give The Challenger Customer five stars for three reasons:• It’s very much about what I call outside-in thinking: start from the customer’s perspective, understand their need to change, and don’t lead with your product.• Just like their first book, The Challenger Sale, it’s backed up by tons of primary research, very credible examples, and detailed implementation suggestions.• The third reason is why I didn’t like the book on first reading, and then I did: the approach and techniques are devilishly difficult. You have to learn how to identify mobilizers, tailor your approach to each of the three types, help them get the message across effectively to the other stakeholders, produce the right materials, and a host of other challenges. But by the second reading, I realized that the difficulty is actually the best reason for a company or even an individual sales rep to adopt the approach. If it were easy, anyone could do it, and then it would not be an advantage anymore.That said, this is not really a book for salespeople. Only a select few would be able to master the techniques on their own. It takes a joint effort by sales and marketing to generate the insights and produce the materials to equip the Mobilizer to sell the insights internally, and it won’t happen overnight.I suggest you read this book, study it, challenge it, and most importantly, use it to change the way you sell.

The gist of the book is as follows:#1 Challenge buyers by showing them their status quo is not good enough and is cutting into profit, wasting effort, and/or increasing risk.#2 Partner with and enable "Mobilizers" inside the buying organization to drive consensus around the problem, the solution, and vendor selection.Like The Challenger Seller, I gave this book 5 stars for the quality of the overall insights. Of the two books, this one is better (and is inclusive of the content in its predecessor). Also, like The Challenger Seller, this one suffers from a LOT of redundancy and out of order content - a natural consequence of having too many authors without painstakingly meticulous editing. Unlike The Challenger Seller, the Challenger Customer does a much better job of justifying conclusions & recommendations by providing references to studies with decent sample sizes.Here is a more detailed summary:Closing a complex deal requires collective consensus from, on average, 5.4 decision makers as they march through the three main stages of the buying cycle: (1) problem definition (2) supplier-independent solution identification (3) supplier selection.“On average, customers are 57 percent of the way through a typical purchase process prior to proactively reaching out to a supplier’s sales rep for their direct input on whatever it is that they’re doing.”Successful reps:a. Challenge customers’ beliefs with a new and compelling insight to make money, save time, or lower risk. This insight must provide a compelling reason to take action now by explicitly laying out why the customer’s current behavior is not “good enough” and is costing them time or money in ways they never realized.b. Leverage (online) diagnostics and pain (not ROI) calculatorsc. Partner with buyer stakeholders, called “Mobilizers,” who are able to (i) drive change and (ii) build consensus. Mobilizers can be identified because they do all of the following: (i) ask challenging, thought providing questions rather than just listening & agreeing, (ii) focus on the greater good of the organization rather than their personal goals, and (iii) agree to take on research or tasksd. Enable Mobilizers by providing THEM with sales tools, workshops, proof points, stories, etc.e. Find the strategic overlap between the each stakeholder’s goals and then facilitate/build convergence to get to a collective yes around a single, overarching business goal/vision.f. Identify and convert Blockers, especially by leveraging supportive buyer stakeholdersg. Align the stages of the buying process with verifiers / buying signals. These are expected actions the customer must take. Examples include: commits to analysis, commits to seller demo, & states we are the preferred vendor.

Good insights to start thinking about how to align the sales and buying processes. Also highlights the need for strong collaboration between marketing and sales.

I have started what I have learnt in my everyday sale role and already seeing value

The hard cover doesn't have colors like you migth supouse, it comes with a paper cover over the hard cover.

Very insightful and a necessary read in follow-up to the challenger sale. Augments the first and provides in valuable insight into the customer / decision makong side of the equation

Untermauert werden die Inhalte durch CEB Untersuchungen. Dabei wurden mehrere Tausend B2B Marketer, Verkäufer und Einkäufer befragt. So zeigt sich, dass in einem Käuferprozess durchschnittlich 5,4 Käufer involviert sind. Längst gehört es der Vergangenheit an, dass nur eine Person über eine größere Investition in einem Unternehmen entscheiden kann. Neben dem CFO sind oftmals die IT sowie eine oder mehrere Fachabteilungen an der Entscheidungsfindung beteiligt.„The Challenger Customer“ plädiert für ein käuferzentriertes Vorgehen im Verkaufsprozess. Schließlich ist die aktuelle Situation auch noch gut genug und somit lässt sich eine Investition nur schwer rechtfertigen. Deshalb ist es wichtig den Kunden zum Lernen zu motivieren. Der Kunde muss selbst zu dem Entschluss kommen, dass eine Veränderung für ihn notwendig und besser ist.In „The Challenger Customer“ wird verdeutlich, dass eine gute Zusammenarbeit zwischen Marketing und Sales signifikant ist. Synergien müssen genützt werden, um so für beide Abteilungen das Optimum zu realisieren. Dennoch beschäftigt sich „The Challenger Customer“ für eingefleischte Marketer wie mich zu sehr mit den Aspekten des Sales. Immer wieder wird gezeigt, wie das Marketing die Verkäufe unterstützten kann. Allerdings handelt es sich herbei eher um Ermutigungen für die Verkäufer auch aktiv Unterstützung, Unterlagen und Content vom Marketing zu fördern.„The Challenger Customer“ geht explizit auf die Herausforderung im B2B Verkauf ein und zeigt einen Lösungsweg bzw. einen Verkaufsprozess um diese Herausforderungen zu händeln. Allerdings war für mich, als Marketer der Fokus zu sehr auf den Verkauf ausgelegt. Dennoch konnte ich viele interessante Erkenntnisse gewinnen. Auch den ein oder anderen Tipp, denn ich im beruflichen Alltag anwenden kann, konnte ich mitnehmen.

Recomiendo leer este libro para todos que buscan ideas de cómo mejorar el proceso de venta, cómo entender los diferentes perfiles del cliente y cómo buscarse aliados dentro de la empresa.