The Challenger Approach to Opportunity Management

It may have taken less than a day; or perhaps a week, for those on vacation. What took so little time? The time lapse between CEB’s introduction of the Challenger model and when the first member asked, “How can I put this into my sales process?” or, “How do I embed this in my CRM?”

We’ve come a long way since our original Challenger research study, and indeed, there is a right (and wrong) approach to sales process using Challenger capabilities. But before we get there, why the chorus of companies so desperately needing the answer?

Our research has surfaced four major stumbling blocks to effectively managing individual opportunities through the sales process:

Poor sales process – perhaps the most stunning finding is just how few members have a well-documented, strongly adopted sales process designed for an Insight Selling environment. On our recent webinar, nearly 50% of participants copped to having a sales process that had poor adoption at best, with another 20% having no sales process at all. It’s no wonder The TAS Group’s benchmarks have found it takes 65% longer to lose a deal than win one.
Pursuing the wrong deals – a natural outgrowth of poor process, too many organizations focus on deal quantity over deal quality, with core performing reps spending far too much time with prospects who will never buy. Instead of shaping demand through insight, these sellers gravitate to customers with pre-defined needs – a siren song leading to many RFPs and low win rates.
Pursuing the wrong customer stakeholders – we all know the archetype of a ‘coach’ or ‘advocate’ that will help our sellers win each deal, right? Wrong. That stakeholder doesn’t exist, yet core performers try desperately to leverage stakeholders who talk a good game, but won’t lift a finger to change their organization’s perspective.
Offline tools not embedded in workflow – the seller refrain is all too common for our friends in sales enablement. “Anything that takes away from my time in front of a customer isn’t worth it.” Sellers will reject opportunity management and sales process tools that aren’t embedded in what they do day-to-day, and more importantly, don’t help them close larger deals faster.

We knew we needed to solve these challenges for our members, and we’re very excited to announce the launch of CEB Challenger Opportunity Manager. The product is designed to embed Challenger behaviors at the right stages of the sales process to provide sellers with a replicable approach to each opportunity. In particular:

Prescribing how Challengers approach each opportunity, and how the critical behaviors of teaching, tailoring, and taking control manifest at different stages of the sales process
Using rigorous qualification screens and customer verifiers to focus on ‘emerging demand,’ those deals where sellers are uniquely positioned to deliver insight and shape customer thinking, leading to larger and more favorable deals
Identifying and capitalizing on Mobilizers, the customer stakeholders that drive change in the organization and can help shepherd the opportunity through to completion
Embedding the application in seller workflow, specifically, native on Salesforce.com, to create a one-stop portal for all opportunity-related data and insight.

Developing Challenger behaviors in your sales team will greatly improve the value of customer-facing time; embedding them in your approach to opportunity management and sales process can support their use at the right time and with the most impact in every deal. For more information on Challenger Opportunity Manager, contact Doug Hutton directly at dhutton@executiveboard.com.