3 Steps to Becoming a Challenger Organization

As David Bowie so eloquently put – “Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes”. Sums up the world of selling pretty well these days, doesn’t it? In fact, it also sums up the world of customer buying pretty well too. Which is why, we, in Sales, are going through some changes. Certainly, customer buying has fundamentally changed: as they are increasingly engaging us as late as they possibly can.

Our reaction in this more commoditized, price driven space, cannot simply be attempting to differentiate on price. In this world, we’ve seen Challengers and the Commercial Insight that they bring to sales conversation be the critical market differentiator; which is why so many of you have decided to go down the Challenger path or still look at the possibility of it. This is also another major change, in fact, a critical change in the approach of the entire commercial organization.

How can we effectively begin to change into a Challenger organization? In working with a variety of member organizations, we’ve seen a pretty typical process play out. Becoming a Challenger Commercial Organization occurs in three steps:

Pilot Challenger for proof points
Broaden Challenger adoption
Embed Challenger as a capability

For each of these three steps, we need to think about six critical organizational capabilities throughout.  Here are those capabilities:

Positioning—the focus here is identifying your unique strengths, creating Commercial Insight and institutionalizing this for the long term
Demand Generation—as it sounds, how does the commercial organization create demand in the market (all three steps are marketing led)
Sales Messaging—here, it’s about enabling the sales organization and those in the field to have a teaching conversation with customers and prospects
Talent Management—here’s the skill and behavior development, i.e., training and coaching
Sales Enablement—ensuring the sales tools and processes align with the Challenger approach
Change Management—since this is a long-term shift and takes time, this last step is critical. We’ve got to own it as sales leaders. We’ve got to show the successes and wins that this new approach has created. Some of our insights might not be as strong as we first thought, so we might need to refine and change our approach.

It’s a lot to think about. It’s a lot to manage. It’s a BIG shift in your commercial organization; it truly is a journey. To help you, the SEC is here to support you. And in fact, this year, we have put all of this together into a Challenger Commercial Roadmap, and you also have the opportunity to take this as a diagnostic to help give you specific guidance, based on your situation.

SEC Members, register for one of the upcoming workshops on Challenger Messaging and Challenger Skills Adoption. Also, visit the topic center to learn more about the Challenger Selling.