Member Spotlight: How Does "Challenger" Translate Globally?

(This is a guest post by Bill Skaggs, Global Director of Sales Excellence at Solae, LLC. Bill has more than 30 years of experience in the sales excellence and enablement function.)

Our company, Solae, has embraced the SEC's rep behavior profiles research since it was introduced several years ago and has actively begun developing the Challenger behaviors in our sales force.  Over a number of years, our Go-to-Market process and selling tools had been defined and refined to sell complex solutions to our targeted customer base.  The definition of "Challenger" reps and the data to support the actions of these high performing Account Managers appeared to be the missing piece to bring all our marketing strategy, account strategy, and tactics to the execution at the account.

In good style, we had our SEC Executive Advisor bring the concepts to our global management team.  There was great enthusiasm and excitement for training the global commercial teams on this research. We designed material and workshops to introduce and train the behaviors of high performers during the regional meeting that was kicking off a new fiscal year.

Reality hit when the behaviors were introduced in the regions though. Outside of North America, the Challenger behaviors ran into some roadblocks.  

The first major issue was the understanding of Challenger by people for whom English is not their primary language.  I have trained in a number of countries and to lots of people who struggle with receiving training in English, so I feel that I have sensitivity to the issue.

However, the level of resistance to presenting Challenger behavior was surprising.  In digging deeper, we uncovered some of the major issues were with the perception of what it really meant to be a Challenger account manager.

People who have English as their second (or even third) language tend to be more literal in translation.  As in all communication, there is the literal and the emotional impact to the understanding.  To most people, this was an aggressive, pushy behavior that conjured a mental picture of John Wayne. Even sales professionals in the US do not want the connotation of being pushy or aggressive. In other cultures, it is taboo.

Another issue is that a global audience receives the rep profiles as mutually exclusive behaviors.  Being a Relationship Builder, a Hard Worker, or a Problem Solver were not perceived as being bad working profiles by most of the people.  There are a lot of positive connotations in those behavior descriptions.

We found that there were three things we could do to help get past the resistance and translate Challenger for a global audience:

1)  Focus on the behavior concepts, not the words themselves.  It takes some time to describe what it means to be a Challenger, but it is well worth the time.  Be sure to test sales teams' understanding by asking how they perceive how to be a Challenger and what sets Challengers apart from the other profiles.

Demonstrating a sales call as a Challenger or using analogies (such as Are Your Reps Bartenders or Personal Trainers) help to deliver the message.  Ask the local sales teams how they would implement the concepts in their market.

2) Make sure the sales teams understand what a Challenger is and is not. Being a Challenger does not mean that it isn't important to work hard, build relationships, or solve problems.

3) Show the sales teams that Challenger behavior is driven from the customer, not from internal expectations. We use the drivers of Customer Loyalty to begin the discussion from the customer's perspective and then lay in the Challenger Behaviors to align with the customer expectation.  Most sales professionals want to give the customer experiences that they want.

It takes time to explain, reinforce, and evolve towards the Challenger profile, particularly across global groups. The literal definition of the "words" can get in the way of the concepts. The concepts do have global application, but have to be executed in alignment with local cultures.

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SEC Members, for more information, tools, and resources on building and developing Challenger reps in your organization, be sure to check out our new Challenger Rep Starter Kit.

You can also listen to a reply of our recent webinar Key Lessons on Developing Challenger Reps® or register for the upcoming December 14th Q&A session on Challenger Selling.