Amazon

What's the secret to sales success? If you're like most businessleaders, you'd say it's fundamentally about relationships-and you'd bewrong. The best salespeople don't just build relationships withcustomers. They challenge them.

The need to understand what top-performing reps are doing that theiraverage performing colleagues are not drove Matthew Dixon, Brent Adamson,and their colleagues at Corporate Executive Board to investigate theskills, behaviors, knowledge, and attitudes that matter most for highperformance. And what they discovered may be the biggest shock toconventional sales wisdom in decades.

Based on an exhaustive study of thousands of sales reps acrossmultiple industries and geographies, The Challenger Sale arguesthat classic relationship building is a losing approach, especially whenit comes to selling complex, large-scale business-to-business solutions.The authors' study found that every sales rep in the world falls into oneof five distinct profiles, and while all of these types of reps candeliver average sales performance, only one-the Challenger- deliversconsistently high performance.

Instead of bludgeoning customers with endless facts and features abouttheir company and products, Challengers approach customers with uniqueinsights about how they can save or make money. They tailor their salesmessage to the customer's specific needs and objectives. Rather thanacquiescing to the customer's every demand or objection, they areassertive, pushing back when necessary and taking control of the sale.

The things that make Challengers unique are replicable and teachable tothe average sales rep. Once you understand how to identify theChallengers in your organization, you can model their approach and embedit throughout your sales force. The authors explain how almost anyaverage-performing rep, once equipped with the right tools, cansuccessfully reframe customers' expectations and deliver a distinctivepurchase experience that drives higher levels of customer loyalty and,ultimately, greater growth.