Brent Adamson's Blog, page 19

Why It’s Hard to Coach for Challenger Skills

The ability to teach, tailor, and take control is what distinguishes sellers in the Insight Selling era. But these skills are difficult to develop and even more difficult to coach.

The difficulty lies in two separate but related issues:

Tacit Skills—Unlike the ability to know products’ features and benefits, Challenging requires judging the unstated needs and signals of the buyer. This can be difficult to develop as it’s often situation-specific and the ways that reps’ internalize requirements can vary widely.


Inter-Related Skills—Teach, tailor, and take control are distinct skills, but the combination is what creates the powerful impact. Breaking the skills into component parts in order to coach each separately can be difficult for managers who don’t know what to look for.

SEC recommends three things that can combat the unique difficulties of coaching to Challenger:

Planned Coaching Interactions: In many instances managers parachute in to save deals, or give retrospective coaching. Using a framework like PAUSE helps managers prepare for coaching interactions and is particularly helpful for skill development. It focuses the interaction on the particular skill to be developed and gives both manager and rep a goal at which to aim.


Hypothesis-Based Coaching: It is also helpful if reps and managers understand what an ineffective behavior looks like. Instead of focusing on what is not happening but should be, it is much easier to identify what is happening that should not be. Arming managers with a list of behaviors seen as ineffective can help them understand which skills require attention.


Create a Challenger Training Eco-System: Even if reps are able to demonstrate early mastery of a skill in training or coaching interactions, the long-term application requires something more from your organization. Strategically positioning resources and opportunities around developing the three skills has a large impact on the longevity of Challenging within your organization.

To support you in this effort, we have created an Ineffective Challenger Behaviors Heat Map that will help managers hypothesize which skills need development based on the current behavior and point in the buying cycle. Listen to the upcoming webinar where we will preview the heat map and explain how it can be used.

SEC Members, register for the upcoming webinar Coaching the Challenger Rep. Also, review our resources to support managers’ coaching efforts and see The Challenger Starter Kit for more ideas on how to promote Challenger in your organization.

What Channel Partners Want Most From Suppliers

[image error]In today’s increasingly complex and risk averse world of sales, capturing channel partner mindshare is not getting any easier. In fact, CEB Research shows that only 15% of channel partners are captive, making it paramount for suppliers to develop a differentiated value proposition that trumps those of their competitors’ should they want to leverage indirect distribution channels to expand their market reach and drive top-line growth.

But capturing partner mindshare is only one part of the indirect selling equation—research from one of SEC’s sister programs, the Enterprise Council for Small Business, shows that channel partners rank “ease of doing business” as the most important component of a supplier-channel relationship. So beyond understanding the channel partner’s business—incenting the right channel partners by measuring metrics that focus on long-term sustainable growth and ensuring that you have great channel managers—truly successful channel relationships are driven by how suppliers arm partners to make selling their products and services as easy as possible.

To do this, progressive organizations equip channel partners to challenge their end customers. By upskilling distributor reps to exhibit Challenger behavior, not only are channel partners better positioned to charge higher prices and make larger sales, but you are also more likely as a supplier to get the commercial results you need out of that relationship. At a high-level, arming channel partners to challenge has two main components:

Commercial Messaging: Before your partners can challenge end customers, you will need to teach them why they should care about your product or service, and why you are best positioned as a supplier to help them realize superior commercial outcomes. This teaching pitch should also highlight the value partners will realize from the Challenger upskilling and messaging you can provide their reps with as a supplier. Once you’ve developed the messaging for your channel managers to challenge partners with, develop Challenger messaging that your distributor reps can use to be more successful in selling to customers.
 Challenger Training and Certification: Equip your channel managers to train and coach distributor reps towards Challenging customers with your newly developed commercial messaging that conveys your product or solution’s differentiated value in a compelling way. Help ensure distributor reps exhibit Challenger behavior and can articulate your messaging in the long-term by certifying them on their newly-learned Challenger skills. 

SEC Members, to learn more about Challenger and channel sales, visit the Challenger Selling and Indirect Channel Sales topic centers. Also make sure to check out SEC’s exciting new research topic for 2013: Driving Effective Sales Transformation.

What Channel Partners Want Most From Suppliers

In today’s increasingly complex and risk averse world of sales, capturing channel partner mindshare is not getting any easier. In fact, CEB Research shows that only 15% of channel partners are captive, making it paramount for suppliers to develop a differentiated value proposition that trumps those of their competitors’ should they want to leverage indirect distribution channels to expand their market reach and drive top-line growth.

But capturing partner mindshare is only one part of the indirect selling equation—research from one of SEC’s sister programs, the Enterprise Council for Small Business, shows that channel partners rank “ease of doing business” as the most important component of a supplier-channel relationship. So beyond understanding the channel partner’s business—incenting the right channel partners by measuring metrics that focus on long-term sustainable growth and ensuring that you have great channel managers—truly successful channel relationships are driven by how suppliers arm partners to make selling their products and services as easy as possible.

To do this, progressive organizations equip channel partners to challenge their end customers. By upskilling distributor reps to exhibit Challenger behavior, not only are channel partners better positioned to charge higher prices and make larger sales, but you are also more likely as a supplier to get the commercial results you need out of that relationship. At a high-level, arming channel partners to challenge has two main components:

Commercial Messaging: Before your partners can challenge end customers, you will need to teach them why they should care about your product or service, and why you are best positioned as a supplier to help them realize superior commercial outcomes. This teaching pitch should also highlight the value partners will realize from the Challenger upskilling and messaging you can provide their reps with as a supplier. Once you’ve developed the messaging for your channel managers to challenge partners with, develop Challenger messaging that your distributor reps can use to be more successful in selling to customers.
Challenger Training and Certification: Equip your channel managers to train and coach distributor reps towards Challenging customers with your newly developed commercial messaging that conveys your product or solution’s differentiated value in a compelling way. Help ensure distributor reps exhibit Challenger behavior and can articulate your messaging in the long-term by certifying them on their newly-learned Challenger skills.

SEC Members, to learn more about Challenger and channel sales, visit the Challenger Selling and Indirect Channel Sales topic centers. Also make sure to check out SEC’s exciting new research topic for 2013: Driving Effective Sales Transformation.

Be a Starfish, Not a Spider

[image error]Last week at the Sales and Marketing Summit in Las Vegas, Ori Brafman, talked to 600 of SEC’s members about the principles of an adaptive organization, or what he calls the starfish organization. But first, why should sales organizations care about becoming adaptive?

At this year’s summit we argued that one of the clear implications of SEC’s last four years of research is that the world of sales has drastically changed. One catalyst for such a shift in the sales environment was the way in which customers’ buying habits changed.  In a world of increasing buyer sophistication and price-driven sales, it will be those organizations capable of quickly adapting their selling approach (to teach customers commercial insights) that will ultimately survive this change.

As outlined in his book The Starfish and the Spider, Brafman argued that there are two types of organizations:

The traditional “spiders”―characterized by top-down leadership and hierarchical structures, and
The adaptive “starfish” organizations―which rely on the power of peer relationships.

The analogy refers to the fact that if you cut off a spider’s head, it will die. But if you cut off a starfish’s leg, it will grow a new one in its place. Brafman brought to life several examples of starfish companies such as Napster and Craigslist having commercial wins over spider organizations such as the record labels and the newspaper classifieds industry.

Even more interesting were the examples of traditional spider-like organizations such as IBM or the US Military, adopting starfish principles to increase their adaptability and in turn their ability to compete with the starfish companies of the world.

Brafman highlighted that companies that successfully embed starfish principles in their organizations:

Build an adaptive culture that changes the loss-adverse mentality of their employees
Empower all members of their organization to affect change, realizing that the best ideas are often the result of grass-root initiatives rather than top-down policies
Capitalize on the adaptive nature of the starfish generation (generation Y)
Build trust. In order to build adaptability, organizations must first build trust among their employees and create a culture of personal ownership and contribution.

How is your organization adapting to changes in the sales environment?

SEC members, read more about our 2013 Research Study to learn why organizations with spider-like cultures are destined to fail.

Be a Starfish, Not a Spider

Last week at the Sales and Marketing Summit in Las Vegas, Ori Brafman, talked to 600 of SEC’s members about the principles of an adaptive organization, or what he calls the starfish organization. But first, why should sales organizations care about becoming adaptive?

At this year’s summit we argued that one of the clear implications of SEC’s last four years of research is that the world of sales has drastically changed. One catalyst for such a shift in the sales environment was the way in which customers’ buying habits changed. In a world of increasing buyer sophistication and price-driven sales, it will be those organizations capable of quickly adapting their selling approach (to teach customers commercial insights) that will ultimately survive this change.

As outlined in his book The Starfish and the Spider, Brafman argued that there are two types of organizations:

The traditional “spiders”?characterized by top-down leadership and hierarchical structures, and
The adaptive “starfish” organizations?which rely on the power of peer relationships.

The analogy refers to the fact that if you cut off a spider’s head, it will die. But if you cut off a starfish’s leg, it will grow a new one in its place. Brafman brought to life several examples of starfish companies such as Napster and Craigslist having commercial wins over spider organizations such as the record labels and the newspaper classifieds industry.

Even more interesting were the examples of traditional spider-like organizations such as IBM or the US Military, adopting starfish principles to increase their adaptability and in turn their ability to compete with the starfish companies of the world.

Brafman highlighted that companies that successfully embed starfish principles in their organizations:

Build an adaptive culture that changes the loss-adverse mentality of their employees
Empower all members of their organization to affect change, realizing that the best ideas are often the result of grass-root initiatives rather than top-down policies
Capitalize on the adaptive nature of the starfish generation (generation Y)
Build trust. In order to build adaptability, organizations must first build trust among their employees and create a culture of personal ownership and contribution.

How is your organization adapting to changes in the sales environment?

SEC members, read more about our 2013 Research Study to learn why organizations with spider-like cultures are destined to fail.

Development Dollars (Needlessly) Down the Drain

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Of all corporate functions, Sales consistently spends the most money on a per person basis for training and development. From technical product courses to negotiation or Challenger skills, sales rep development often goes unquestioned as critical to achieve sales outcomes, even after factoring rep time away from customers. Then how do sales leaders square that truism with clear data that training often has limited impact on performance and widespread dissatisfaction persists with current development offerings? SEC research shows that 84% of sales executives rate their sales training programs as being only “somewhat effective” or “not effective” – not a rosy picture for what is likely the largest line item after headcount.

Why are current sales training programs so ineffective?  A figure like 84% certainly has multiple culprits, but long-time CEB Sales Executive Council members likely recall the primary reason: sales reps forget 70% of the information they are taught within a week, and 87% within a month, without subsequent on-the-job coaching and reinforcement. We cannot reasonably expect that 13% of training curricula can truly move the needle when it comes to sales performance.  The next logical question becomes this – how can we prepare both sales reps and their managers for successful development experiences to boost the amount of retained knowledge?

The answer is surprisingly simple: individual applicability.  Research from CEB Learning & Development has found that training’s relevance to urgent individual skill gaps is one of the most impactful drivers of both a rep’s motivation to apply learnings, and (unsurprisingly) corresponding improvement in rep performance. The member imperative becomes this: putting a clear view of those urgent skill gaps in the hands of each rep before training, and providing sales managers with the tools to coach to those gaps afterwards.

As mentioned in an earlier post, CEB is excited to announce our newest service, CEB Challenger Selection & Assessment. Not only can this offering help organizations make more objective hiring decisions, the Challenger Assessment can determine the specific competencies correlated to high performance for particular roles and develop a deep understanding of current skill gaps. This will enable you to deploy targeted, applicable sales training to groups of reps with similar skill gaps.  Not only will this save you money by not allocating resources to ineffective training, it will also highlight to employees your intent to provide them with thoughtful, impactful development opportunities.

By assessing your sales reps across a wide variety of competencies, each rep will receive a tailored individual development report, complete with guidance on how to improve Challenger skills and their overall selling ability. Sales managers will then have a roadmap to help each rep close critical skill gaps, while sales leadership can allocate resources most appropriately for training and development.

For more information on this new offering and to begin adding more Challengers to your sales force, please click here to send us an e-mail; we will reply within 24 hours to schedule a subsequent conversation.

SEC Members, to learn more, visit the Challenger Selling topic center and review the Challenger Rep Starter Kit. In addition, look at the Talent Development topic center for best-in-class practices on training, coaching, and developing managers.

Why Short Sales Cycles are Overrated

[image error]This is a guest post by Shelley West of the Marketing Leadership Council, our sister program for marketing professionals.

If you type “shorten the sales cycle” into Google you get over 200,000 hits with tips and tricks to get customers to close faster. The advice ranges from making your value proposition more compelling to better targeting potential buyers to using the latest technology to cyber-stalk your prospects. Each of these things is generally a good idea and I won’t argue against any of them (but be careful on the stalking, no matter what the context, people don’t like to feel like companies are spying on them). But I will argue that a shorter sales cycle actually shouldn’t be your goal. I realize this may cause your sales metric dashboard to implode, so let me explain.

There is nothing inherently wrong with a quick close. But the way customers buy has changed so drastically in the last few years that a short sales cycle can be one of the signs that you are capturing the wrong kind of demand. More on the different kinds of demand in a bit – first let’s examine how the purchase process has changed.

We know that customers are doing a ton of research on their own, and that most of what they are looking at doesn’t come from you. In fact, a new study of over 500 B2B customers conducted by the MLC earlier this year found that only 47% of the information a customer consumes during his or her purchase research actually comes from suppliers (and to really bring the doom and gloom, that 47% accounts for all suppliers, not just you – so if the average customer is researching three or four suppliers for a given purchase, that means your individual mindshare is more like 10-15%).  And we know from last year’s study that customers are, on average, 57% of the way through the purchase process before seriously engaging Sales. That means they are making a whole lot of decisions with only minimal influence from your commercial team – they are scoping their problem, setting their purchase criteria, determining performance thresholds, and comparing suppliers.

At this point there is very little left for the supplier to influence.  Customers show up with their orders in hand.  They know what they want to buy, how much they need, and what they are willing to pay for it.  To the average sales rep, this might actually seem great (“Awesome! Sold another 10 units and all I had to do was take a few phone calls and offer a little discount. From contact to close in 2 weeks!”).  But in this scenario, Sales has become the fulfillment department. While the sales cycle feels short, which seems like a win, the rep has done nothing but filled established demand – and almost always at a discount.

Instead, what the best commercial teams know (and I say “commercial teams” instead of “reps” because to do this right it takes both Marketing and Sales), is that they should be working to develop emerging demand.  That is, customers who haven’t yet fully baked their needs, specs, and price expectations.  These are the customers who are more open to change and more willing to consider alternatives including your suggestions for why the problem they think are trying to solve might not be the whole story.  And they are not as hung up on price because you are able to teach them why what you are offering is a necessary and unique solution to their challenges.  The kicker is, one of the keys to developing emerging demand is getting in early and doing the work to shape and change customers’ understanding of the challenges they are facing and the solutions to those challenges.

So, while shorter sales cycles sound good in theory (and often get your core-performing reps to fill their pipeline), they might be a sign that you are settling for sub-optimal, discount-driven deals.

SEC Members, read the full study on how to target opportunities based on emerging demand. Also, download SEC’s qualification scorecard to help identify emerging demand opportunities.

How to Maximize Your New Hire’s Potential

I came across a whitepaper from CareerBuilder the other day, which stated that U.S. and U.K. employees cost businesses an estimated $37 billion every year because they do not fully understand their jobs, according to IDC. Their recently released white paper, “$37 billion: Counting the Cost of Employee Misunderstanding,” commissioned by international intelligent assessment company Cognisco, quantifies the losses that occur as a result of “actions taken by employees who have misunderstood or misinterpreted — or were misinformed about or lack confidence in their understanding — of company policies, business processes, job function, or a combination of the three.”

Effective onboarding helps workers understand their roles and the company they work for, thereby significantly cutting these losses.

This reinforces a study by our sister program for HR Recruiting execs, CEB’s Recruiting Roundtable, a quantitative analysis to uncover the biggest drivers of new hire performance and engagement. Out of all the variables they tested, it came down to three key drivers:

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I want to focus on the first of the three – balancing scalable and personalized content.  While some things are non-negotiable for all new hires (training reps on company policies, business processes, job function, etc), the rest is not necessarily required.

We’ve seen sales academies or universities (which typically pick up after onboarding) evolve over recent years to switch away from a “supply and demand” view of training (supply the training and demand all sales reps attend) to a “demand and supply” approach (supply training only when demand has reached a critical mass).   They do this by using assessments to identify skill gaps, and only recommend trainings to reps that help them close an identified gap in a core competency.

Why not do the same for new hire onboarding?  In fact, the state of recruiting is such that many companies employ sophisticated assessment tools of candidates’ skills and competencies prior to hiring them.  Why not use that data to fast track the onboarding process?  Train them on the non-negotiables, and then customize the rest of their onboarding based on your assessment of their skill gaps.  Get your employees out of the classroom and up to speed more quickly.  And save your organization money and resources along the way!

SEC Members, see how BEA Systems used assessments to customize their onboarding plan to each new hire. Also, visit our Onboarding Topic Center for more resources and onboarding ideas.

Two Ways to Manage Uncertainty

[image error]As I speak with sales leaders and their teams, a common theme emerges – uncertainty.

It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about the North American market (upcoming elections, continued fiscal and monetary policies, regulatory changes), the European market (ongoing negotiations within the European Union), or the Asian/Pacific market (evolving growth forecasts from China and emerging market countries), the environment is one of constantly, and rapidly, changing expectations for the future.  Indeed, in many cases, an answer reached today seems to yield additional questions tomorrow.

In fact, the Wall Street Journal recently reported that companies are, “widening the range of their profit, revenue or other projections,” in response to this global economic uncertainty.

In this more fluid environment, we are still responsible for leading our businesses and, at the end of the year, hitting our number. We also have to continue to report to our internal peers where we think the year is going to net out.

The problem is many organizations seek to solve this uncertainty by mining through data they already have. The thoughts here are that the truth is out there somewhere in the data – we just have to go out and find it. Unfortunately, unless we’re starting from scratch, many of these analytical ventures yield little more than what we already know.

In response, we have seen leading companies focus on this problem from a different angle.  Rather than trying to generate better certainty from the information they already have, they seek to gather better information that improves their opportunity to generate this certainty.

Specifically, here are two ways to help manage as best as possible the effects caused by uncertainty:

Gathering Customer-Generated Information During the Sales Process – We cannot rely upon internally generated information when tracking our sales pipeline, especially when reporting to internal peers in finance and operations how we are tracking against our own expectations.   Instead, we have seen several companies begin to track customer actions rather than our activities.  These customer actions are clearly defined and demonstrate a customer’s moving forward in their buying process rather than our internal sales activities.


Leveraging the Market of Information – This is tapping the collective intelligence of the people who are closest to the market – our sales force. Here we’ve seen companies do this in two ways.  The first, developed by NBC Universal, sought to gather group feedback through their CRM system by embedding social media platforms into the system creating a more seamless way for their reps to enter and track this “unstructured” information. The second is by using Prediction Markets inside the sales organization. These markets, like Intrade, ask individual to “bet” on the likelihood of certain outcomes, resulting in the “best guess” your organization can make on a future event (like a new product launch).

While no one can predict the future with 100% accuracy, these two methods can help to better manage the amount of uncertainty there is today in the market.

SEC Members, read more about how to improve sales predictions in a volatile business environment. Also, review our key findings on social selling and prediction markets.

The Path to Finding Mobilizers

[image error]It’s the end of the quarter, the stakes are high, and you’re patiently waiting for those forecasted deals to finally come through. You’ve been talking with the same customer who loves your product, and have that gleaming closing call on the books at 5 o’clock on Friday. It’s totally going to come in – and you can’t wait to announce you’ve hit goal.

Then you hang up the phone, and another unique story of why the deal flopped unfolds. Turns out, he didn’t actually have the purchasing authority, or it had to go to procurement, or worse…it went to the board.

The plague of failed customer consensus has struck. In this world, you need to find a different-in-kind customer to build agreement on your behalf. What you need is a Mobilizer.

But this kind of contact can be difficult to find in a sea of seemingly effective stakeholders that want to take your calls, set up follow-up conversations, and then take more conversations without actually moving a deal forward. We call these kinds of contacts Talkers – and despite any level of seniority, you’re not going to want to forecast your deals against recurring meetings that lead your solution into the no-man’s land of indecision.

SEC’s research found that star performing reps use a different-in-kind playbook to build organizational consensus to move deals through the pipeline. While it’s easier to gravitate towards stakeholders that want to have a sales conversation, stars actively identify and activate Mobilizers by detecting very specific cues from whomever they are meeting with.

Like the best poker players, stars don’t just read signals from stakeholders well – they force “tells” to separate Mobilizers from Talkers. These concrete tells reveal whether a contact has the credibility and organizational know-how to drive consensus. Specifically, stars look for four things in a stakeholder:

Healthy Skepticism: A stakeholder who asks challenging, thought-provoking questions indicates they have the internal credibility needed to enable others to act. The key to this tell is presenting disruptive insight in front of the customer – while we know Challengers lead with insight, your best customers will demand evidence and prod at a new idea to pressure-test it’s true credibility.
Interested in the Greater Good: Contacts who speak in terms of the company’s benefit are often looked to as credible sources of advice. On the other hand, those who are only looking for personal gain are often distrusted by others, and not credible carriers of your message.
Communication Style: While not indicative of Mobilizer potential, a contact’s tendency to speak in terms of facts or stories helps determine what type of Mobilizer a contact is and how a sales rep will need to interact with them.
Follow Through: The final test of Mobilizer potential is whether a contact can follow through on promises; proposing next steps helps gauge the ability and commitment of a Mobilizer to build consensus.

Using these distinct tells, you can teach core performers to emulate these behaviors by helping them identify the key tells of Mobilizers. To break down the thought process stars take to identify Mobilizers, SEC built an interactive decision tree that details how to test and read the customer stakeholders you’re targeting.

But after a stakeholder has been qualified, how do the most successful sellers approach each customer stakeholder type? As we know, finding the right stakeholder is only the first step of driving organizational consensus – finding the Mobilizer in an organization doesn’t mean you have a closed deal.

In fact, SEC’s research on star rep behavior revealed that the best sellers treat Go Getters, Skeptics and Teachers quite differently to activate their Mobilizer potential.  After following each step in the decision tree, the tool provides guidance on how to approach each of the 7 stakeholder types once they’ve been identified – including how to use each kind of Talker to garner information that may lead to the true Mobilizer.

SEC Members, see how star performers identify true Mobilizers with the Interactive Stakeholder Identification Tool. Also, don’t forget to register for the upcoming teleconference, Mobilizer 2.0: Working with the Right Stakeholders on November 28th at 11:00am EST.