Challenger Selling is when a Salesperson uses a Business Insight to Challenge a Customer which enables a process of discovering and developing Vales with the Customer. The Value Proposition, made by a Challenger Salesperson, is constructed from the Customer Identified Value and the Salesperson’s Capability to deploy and deliver these Values to the Customers organisation.
It is not easy.
In fact, some of my Clients are finding it difficult to even get started.
Here is a solution which BMAC Consultants have successfully deployed to Big Software. Their basic difficulty was: “What is the “insight” we deliver which leads our existing Customers to re-deploy Enterprise Software into The Cloud?”
Well I am not going to tell you their insights;
they are confidential.
But, I will tell you how BMAC Consultants solved their problem!
We introduced “The Five O’clock Club.”
They meet usually on Wednesdays or Thursdays at Five o’clock. The core group are ‘volunteers’, one salesperson, one marketing person and one product person. To get ‘volunteers’ you need to invite people along to the first few meetings.
BMAC does this with beer and snacks!
You pose the problem “What insights can we offer our Customers which will support a selling cycle taking them from Enterprise software to Cloud based software?”
Then use a variety of brainstorming techniques with the talent in the room.
BMAC facilitate these, but you could use the ideas from “a whack on the side of the head!”
OK, by now ‘the question’ has transformed into a range of completely different “questions”,
about us, our competition, our customers, their competition, our capabilities,
our ability to deploy and deliver value that Customers WANT.
That is when BMAC turnover the whole process to the Core Five O’clock Group,
by now you have volunteers and their substitutes!
They can invite guests (including Customers)
and now they pay for their own beer!
Officially the meeting ends at six o o’clock,
but you will find that sometimes they run longer, don’t disturb them.
Look at their output, let them bulletproof their own ideas,
don’t be an “idea crusher.”
The groups which really zing are based on:
Account Manager, Marketing Executive and Product Support Specialist.
If Sales Managers, Marketing Managers and Product Managers want to “generate insights”,
they do NOT have to wait for Thursday at five O’clock that is their DAY job,
they can do it any time they want.
However, DO NOT STOP The Five O’clock Club.
This is a low cost, Customer (and Segment) based insights machine. You will find that more than enough Insights are being generated AND time wasting “internally generated insights” are discarded before they are communicated to disinterested Customers.
If you would like more details on a Five O’clock Club e-mail brian.maciver@gmail.com
.
