Ch 7: Taking Control of the Sale

across the sales process. Challengers are comfortable discussing money because they are confident in the value they will provide to the customer. There’s really nothing that instills confidence like knowing that you will deliver superior value to your customers—and Challengers have that confidence in spades. This means that the Challenger has no problem respectfully pushing back when the customer asks for a discount, looser terms, or increased scope without a commensurate increase in price (i.e., “freebies”). Remember, the value that the Challenger provides is built on the Commercial Teaching message. This isn’t the same confidence one feels knowing their company’s products and services are number one in the market. It’s confidence built on the knowledge that you’ve taught the customer about a problem they didn’t previously know they had. There’s now a burning platform—one you created—and it just so happens that you sell the only solution to that problem. Being number one in the market is great, but unfortunately it isn’t anything your customers really care about. Challengers also create momentum. Their deals don’t get stuck nearly as often in “no-decision land” the way typical core reps’ deals tend to. This is because a Challenger will push things along, always thinking ahead to the next step. When Relationship Builders come to the end of a customer meeting, they won’t push hard on next steps for fear of ruining what was otherwise a positive interaction. But Challengers understand that the goal is to sell a deal, not just have a good meeting; they are focused on moving ahead. This is also closely tied to the Commercial Teaching pitch. You’ve created momentum because you’ve created urgency around a previously unknown—or perhaps undervalued—opportunity

or problem. Now it’s time to press. Sounds straightforward enough, right? As any sales leader knows, these things (i.e., comfort discussing money, pressuring the customer) are easier said than done for the average sales rep. That’s why Challengers can be so hard to find. As human beings, our natural inclination is to seek closure, not postpone it, to reduce tension, not increase it. For sales reps, this translates into a tendency to agree with the customer, not present a different—and potentially unsettling—point of view. Yet Challenger reps have learned to do just that. Yet given our natural propensities as people, how in the world do you increase the willingness and ability of your sales reps—especially those reps most predisposed to reducing tension, your Relationship Builders—to take control? In this chapter, we’ll show you some very practical approaches to helping reps understand the best ways of taking control. But first, let’s explore this notion of taking control in more depth.

THREE MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT TAKING CONTROL We’ve spent a fair bit of time earlier dispelling false notions around some of the concepts in the Challenger Selling Model, but nowhere is there more confusion than around the idea of taking control. We generally encounter three main misconceptions:

Taking control is synonymous with negotiation.
Reps only take control regarding matters of money.
Reps will become too aggressive if we tell them to “take control.” Let’s take these one at a time. First, the common perception—given that the data suggests that Challengers are comfortable discussing money—is that taking control is synonymous with negotiation and that it is typically done at the end of the sales process. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

Misconception #1: Taking Control Is Synonymous with Negotiation One of the biggest misconceptions about taking control is that it’s about negotiation skills. But SEC research shows that Challegers take control across the entirety of the sales process, not just at the end. In fact, one of the prime opportunities for taking control is actually right at the beginning of the sale. Challengers know many sales opportunities that appear viable on the surface are little more than veiled “verification efforts” by a customer. In other words, they are cases in which the customer has already chosen a vendor to partner with, but feels the need to do some due diligence—to make sure they’re getting the best deal they can—so they entertain conversations with other vendors even though they have little intention of changing their minds. In cases like this, which our research shows can be nearly 20 percent of all sales opportunities, the customer will assign a more junior member of their organization to field an RFP and meet with other possible vendors. But again, because the customer has no intention of actually buying from these other suppliers, they only allow reps to meet with the junior contact, never permitting access to more senior decision makers. For most reps, this isn’t seen as a problem. In fact, most reps love these opportunities. What’s not to love? After all, the customer called us! The typical rep response is to continue to spend time with the junior contact in the hopes of turning that individual into an advocate, eventually clawing one’s way into the corner office. What we often hear from reps is something along the lines of, “We know money is going to be spent if there is an RFP out there, so it’s stupid for us to not put ourselves into consideration—we at least have a chance!” But even in this early stage of the sale, Challengers know better. They sniff out these “foils” immediately and press the contact for expanded access in exchange for continued dialogue. When these contacts don’t grant the access Challenger reps know will be critical to completing the sale, their response is to cut the sales effort short and move on to the next opportunity. It seems so counterintuitive to the average rep—after all, you’ve got a customer that has put an RFP out for a solution you can provide, so you know there’s funding for the purchase. They’ve also agreed to meet with the rep, and customer face time is so

hard to get these days. Why would you ever want to walk away from a situation like this? But that’s exactly what a Challenger does. Challenger reps know their time is better spent elsewhere. One SEC member, a global business services provider, has institutionalized this Challenger behavior across its entire sales force. This company teaches its reps to push for expanded access right from the get-go. Since much of their business is done through RFPs, they are almost always starting their sales conversations with lower-level functionaries within the customer organization, often on procurement. They tell their reps that an early litmus test of how serious a given customer is about partnering is whether they will agree to grant the supplier’s sales rep access to key stakeholders. It’s proven to be a remarkably accurate “tell” for a customer’s real intentions and has helped the company’s reps to avoid wasting time. Their reps are taught, at the close of the first interaction, to say, “You know, typically when we engage with a customer for this sort of solution, we need certain key executives to be involved in the purchase decision. Is that the case here?” When the customer says yes, the rep asks when she’ll be able to meet with those individuals. If the contact hems and haws or gives an unclear answer, the rep pushes and explains that if they can’t guarantee time with those key leaders, she’ll be unable to check that everybody is aligned on the value of the solution, and therefore it doesn’t make sense to continue engaging in further discussions. Neil Rackham shared with us a similar story from his research. “A big problem,” he explained to us, “is the customer who invites a salesperson to come in, analyze a problem, and generate creative solutions. Many sales organizations will spend well into the six figures to pursue a complex opportunity. All too often, though, the customer encourages this free consulting work until the best solution becomes clear, at which point they go shopping for the cheapest supplier.” This is a core difference between Relationship Builders and Challengers, in Neil Rackham’s assessment. “In my own research, I saw some reps losing more customers to cheaper suppliers late in the sale because they failed to take control early on. They steered clear of having a tough conversation about the commercial side of the interaction, fearing it would damage the relationship. Other reps, however, confronted the customer early in the sale, saying, ‘It’s going to cost us $200K to put our best thinking into your problem. We’re willing to do it, but we need some assurance that if we invest in you, you’ll invest in us.’ These reps had far fewer customers switch to cheaper suppliers late in the sales process.”

This kind of tactic seems to be a hallmark of sales high performers. A recent SEC study revealed that while all reps start their sales efforts by mapping out stakeholders within the customer organization, core performers then move to what would seem like the logical next step—understanding needs and mapping solutions against those needs. But high performers do something very different. They extend this part of the sales process by digging into these individual stakeholders’ varying goals and biases, as well as business and personal objectives. As we discussed in the tailoring chapter, they map out not just who the key stakeholders are, but what these stakeholders care about and why they care about these things. By doing this, the Challenger is in a much better position to be able to take control right from the beginning. Challengers find many other opportunities to take control during the sale— again, well in advance of arriving at the negotiating table. Even if a rep can successfully verify a customer’s real intentions at the beginning of the sales process, many deals will get bogged down nevertheless. Challengers distinguish themselves by building momentum within the customer organization— momentum that enables them to drive to a conclusion faster than the typical rep. In our interactions with Challenger reps, it’s clear that they have a better-than- average appreciation for how hard it is to buy from their companies in general. This complexity in the buying process has less to do with bureaucratic hurdles suppliers put in the way of customers—though that surely is an issue in many companies—but with the fact that customers often don’t know how to buy. Of course, customers don’t lack the basic know-how of buying a complex solution from a supplier, but standard purchasing processes and protocols break down when every solution is unique, touching different parts of the organization. Average reps see this complexity too, but their tendency—especially for Relationship Builders—is to “learn and react.” They let the customer (who, again, is likely to be confused by the complexity of purchasing the solution) take the lead. Better to defer to the customer than to rock the boat. The rep asks questions about whom to get involved and what steps to take, but the customer is as lost as the rep. Challengers, by contrast, “lead and simplify.” Rather than assuming that the customer knows how to execute the purchase of a complex solution—which can be a faulty assumption when it comes to solution selling—they teach the customer how to buy the solution. They extrapolate from past successful sales efforts and apply what they’ve learned to help the customer work through their purchase process. Instead of asking, “Who needs to be involved?” Challenger reps coach the customer on who should be involved. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? The Commercial Teaching approach, as you

recall, is about getting away from the “What’s keeping you up at night?” question and instead bringing unique insight to the customer about what should be keeping them up at night. It’s the same idea here. None of this is to suggest that taking control doesn’t happen at the end of the sale, when both parties are sitting across from each other at the negotiating table. Of course it happens there. We know from the data that Challengers shine in negotiation settings. In fact, we’ll study this very thing in more depth when we look at a negotiation training best practice from DuPont later in this chapter. That being said, it’s a mistake to equate “taking control” with “negotiating.” It is far more accurate to think of the latter as a small, albeit important, subset of the former. What’s more, a Challenger knows that the average sales rep will seek to take control only at the end of the sale—at the negotiating table—and so Challengers differentiate themselves by taking control from the start. Customers value this because they see the Challenger as a confident partner in the sales process, not a nervous rep crossing their fingers in the hope of making a sale.

Misconception #2: Reps Take Control Regarding Only Matters of Money The data tells us that Challengers are “able to push the customer.” Sure, they can push the customer on financial terms and aspects of the selling/ buying process, but more important, they push the customer in terms of how they think about their world and their challenges—as well as the solution to those challenges. This is the essence of Commercial Teaching, which we discussed earlier in the book: the ability to reframe the way the customer thinks about their world. Why is it important to take control around ideas? Because it’s extremely unlikely that a customer—especially a seasoned executive—is going to roll over and accept the reframe that the Challenger delivers without a healthy does of skepticism. More likely, he’ll push back. He’ll ask why. He’ll ask to see the supporting data. He’ll say his company is different. These are the questions that make Relationship Builders’ knees go weak. Seeking to defuse tension, the Relationship Builder will acquiesce, caving on the argument and hoping to salvage what’s left of the conversation, in the end relegating himself to a price- driven conversation about products and survival rates rather than the bigger, more valuable solution that could have been. But it’s this kind of dialogue that the Challenger lives for. The Challenger will use constructive tension to her advantage. Instead of giving in at the first sign of resistance to her argument, the Challenger pushes back: “You’re right, your company surely is different, but so are the other organizations we work with . . . and I can tell you that this insight has helped them to rethink the way they run their operations. With your permission, let’s explore this idea in more depth and then circle back to make sure I’ve adequately addressed any concerns you might have.” Commercial Teaching puts the Challenger in a position to take control by bringing new ideas to the table—ideas the customer hadn’t thought of before. But customers are savvy and conventional wisdom didn’t get to be conventional by being easy to topple. There will be pushback, even if the Challenger is armed with compelling insights and supporting data. The Challenger’s response when confronted with this pushback, however, is to take control of the debate. But taking control of the debate around ideas is critical not just because it shows that the sales rep isn’t going to be a pushover, but also because those

ideas the Challenger brings to the table (i.e., the new problems or opportunities the rep has taught the customer to value) are directly connected to the solutions that the supplier can offer to the customer. If the rep isn’t willing to convince the customer that the problem is urgent, then he won’t be able to convince the customer it’s worth solving.

Misconception #3: Reps Will Become Too Aggressive If We Tell Them to “Take Control” People also confuse taking control—that is, the Challenger’s tendency to be assertive during the sale—with aggressiveness. But these are actually two very different things. This is the last, but arguably most critical, misconception to address. If we think about sales rep behavior along a spectrum, we can array it as you see in figure 7.1, with “passive” behavior on one end and “aggressive” behavior on the other. Passive behavior, of course, is relatively self-explanatory. The rep gives in to the demands of others, uses accommodating language, and allows his personal boundaries to be breached by the customer. Sound familiar? These are the hallmarks of the Relationship Builder. The passive rep’s primary goal is to please the customer. That desire is so powerful that Relationship Builders will do things that are not in their best interests or in their company’s best interests— for instance, proactively offering a discount when the customer hasn’t even asked for one. Source: Sales Executive Council research. Figure 7.1. Rep Behavior Spectrum, Passive to Aggressive There’s little confusion among sales leaders about what passive behavior is; the real confusion is between assertive and aggressive.

The primary difference between the two is one of posture. While aggressive people will pursue their goals by attacking others and using antagonistic language, assertive individuals are much more constructive, using strong language, perhaps, but not so strong that it’s off-putting or offensive. So the rep pushes the customer, but does so with respect and sensitivity to how the customer is reacting. The rep doesn’t blindly pursue his own agenda, but instead moves purposefully, always sensing and responding. Take the example one of our members shared with us. One of his company’s sales reps was selling paint to a large production line in early 2009. His company had poor margins due to the competitive environment exacerbated by rapid escalations in raw material costs. The rep for the paint supplier sent a price increase letter to purchasing and followed up with a visit to discuss the justification and to gain agreement for a price move at the beginning of the next quarter. The purchasing manager, however, flatly refused to take a price increase on the basis that business was bad (which it was). But the Challenger rep did not roll over on his price. He stood his ground during the initial visit and two others, citing the dramatically improved productivity at the paint plant due to the supplier’s installed equipment and dedicated staff. Despite threats from purchasing of dire consequences for the increase (senior leadership involvement, cancellation of a long-term contract, etc.), the rep didn’t cave. The rep made an appointment with the plant manager of the facilities affected by the increase, which were also the main consumers of the paint and the beneficiaries of the service. He laid out the issue and the need for the increase. He then reviewed all of the projects that his company had completed to improve productivity at the sites. The plant manager called in his leadership team to confirm what the sales rep was telling him. They supported his value claims. The rep then asked the plant manager to set up a joint meeting with the rep and purchasing to gain support for the increase. He did so and the increase was ultimately accepted. In this case, the rep stood his ground and was extraordinarily assertive, but not aggressive. While he was certainly close to the edge with purchasing, he made his value case and stuck with it. Now, what’s interesting about this continuum is how concerned sales leaders are that their sales reps are going to drift too far to the aggressive end of the spectrum. The general fear is that if you tell your reps to take control by being more assertive, they’re going to jump over the middle of the continuum and move straight to aggressive. But in reality, we find that almost never happens. More often than not, reps will continue to gravitate to the passive end of the continuum rather than move

to the right at all. They get stuck seeking to resolve tension with the customer, rather than maintain it. Why does this happen? First, there is a perceived power imbalance in the rep- customer relationship. Reps think that the customer has significantly more power in the relationship. Therefore, they give in to customer demands for better terms and conditions because they feel they have no choice. They often back down before they even understand fully why the customer is making the request! For the average rep, it’s either acquiesce quickly or lose the deal. But as real as that perception may be, it turns out that reality is totally different. A recent survey by BayGroup International of sales reps and procurement officers determined that 75 percent of reps believe that procurement has more power, while 75 percent of procurement officers believe that reps have more power! At the very least, this data tells us that if reps are giving in because they believe the customer to have more power, they’re just plain wrong. Again, this is something Challenger reps seem to instinctively know. They don’t back down in the sale, because they know there’s always more room to negotiate than a core performer would ever believe. The Challenger just knows how to finesse—or tailor—it the right way. We find that many sales professionals undervalue their contribution to the customer. They marginalize the tremendous value of their company’s resources —not just technical expertise, but implementation and change management know-how—and overestimate the value of every objection raised by the customer. This is often an ah-ha! moment for sales reps when we deliver our Challenger training. We tell reps to think about the resources they have at their disposal to help their customers get better. To quote one of our SEC Solutions facilitators: “Think about it. You are teaching your customers things that they didn’t know before. You have practical experiences from hundreds, if not thousands, of implementations, while this may be the first such implementation for your customer. Taking control means that you know the value of those resources and you don’t bring them to bear willy-nilly on a customer who isn’t serious about the decision. If the customer asks for a case study, or to talk to a reference, a Relationship Builder says, ‘Yes!’ A Challenger says, ‘Sure, but let me ask you if this is the very last confirmation you need before we agree to work together and you sign the paperwork.’ Why? Because the Challenger is confident in the value he and his company bring to the customer.” Another reason most reps naturally gravitate to a more passive posture is a perceived erosion of control in the supplier-customer relationship generally speaking. This is more of a temporal phenomenon, brought on by challenging economic conditions. In a tough economy, a rep is happy to take any business.

The last thing they’re going to do when a deal is on the table is push back on pricing. The rep just wants to get the thing closed before the customer changes their mind altogether. In difficult economic times, normally assertive reps behave more passively—and reps who are normally passive to begin with cave altogether. It’s a buyer’s market in large part because reps make it so by creating favorable negotiating conditions that tip the scales well into the customer’s favor. A second reason that we see reps becoming more passive with customers— and this one hits close to home—is that you’ve told them to act this way. How so? As it turns out, management strategies exacerbate the tendency for most reps to “go passive.” If managers tell reps to focus on serving the customer and advocating for their needs—to “sit on the customer’s side of the table”—this message is often interpreted by salespeople as “give the customer whatever they want.” We’re hearing now more than ever before that sales leaders are urging their sales organizations to “place the customer first.” The term “customer-centricity” is back in a dramatic fashion. The assumption is that if companies want to grow coming out of the recent downturn, they’re going to have to ensure that everything they do delivers maximum customer value. The problem, however, is that while companies have been emphatic about their customer-centricity, they’ve been equally vague with their sales organizations about how to actually do that. There are several ways to be “customer-centric” that are actually bad for business. Two examples of this that we hear frequently from our members are discounts (or other terms and conditions that undermine profitability in exchange for little long-term gain) and assuming an order-taker posture with the customer (i.e., taking short-term orders when the customer is pushing for them, instead of getting the customer to think about longer-term business). These are things that drive companies crazy, but the messages they send out to their sales force do little to dissuade reps from the notion that these are good things to be doing for customers. These drivers of overly passive rep behavior are the things that sales leaders need to overcome if they want to build Challenger reps capable of taking control of the sale. The real question isn’t how to stop reps from being too assertive, but rather how to get them to be assertive enough.

EQUIPPING REPS TO TAKE CONTROL How do companies shake reps out of their passive posture? Getting this right requires that they tackle the main obstacle that gets in the way of the average rep’s being able to effectively take control: a strong desire for closure. Reps naturally seek closure. Like most people, they are fundamentally uncomfortable with ambiguity, particularly because it’s that ambiguity that typically stands between them and their commission checks. There is a natural human tendency—one that reps have to overcome—to want closure in uncomfortable situations. Succumbing to this tendency is one that absolutely kills the average rep. Challengers, by comparison, thrive in ambiguity. They know how to navigate it and understand how it can be leveraged to their advantage. They display a remarkable level of comfort with silence during the customer conversation, as well as with keeping negotiation points and customer objections open and on the table longer than one normally would. It might be a bit of an overstatement to say they “like” tension, but it probably isn’t that far from the truth. Admittedly, this is a tough barrier to overcome. It isn’t realistic to expect reps who do not like tension and ambiguity to suddenly start liking these things. At some level, this sort of response is hardwired in most of us. Either we are comfortable with these things or we aren’t. And if we aren’t, we’ll look for any excuse to avoid them. But while you can’t realistically change human behavior, you can help make reps aware of their natural tendencies and give them some practical tools for making sure that they don’t prematurely cave when it comes to intense value discussions. This is where the DuPont practice comes in. They’ve developed some really smart negotiation training and tools for helping reps to avoid premature closure.

TAKING CONTROL CASE STUDY: DUPONT’S CONTROLLED NEGOTIATION ROAD MAP As we go through the DuPont case, bear in mind that this practice focuses exclusively on taking control in negotiation settings. While Challengers take control throughout the sale, the negotiating table is still a great place to study this notion. And DuPont offers a terrific example of how to equip reps to push customers in an assertive but not aggressive manner. Taking control is all about creating constructive tension—about challenging the way a customer sees their world, and pushing back constructively in tough negotiations. At DuPont, they’ve employed some powerful tools to help reps overcome their natural inclination to give in to customer demands too early in the sale. DuPont worked with negotiation training vendor BayGroup International, though it is worth noting that several vendors offer robust negotiation training products that SEC members have been happy with. The goal in DuPont’s case is very straightforward. This is about taking control —the third key ingredient to building Challenger reps—and an area where we can have a huge impact if we follow a recipe like this.

Purposeful Planning DuPont is the provider of a wide range of innovative products and services sold across many industries, including agriculture, electronics, transportation, construction, and safety and protection. The key to DuPont’s approach to equipping reps to take control at the negotiating table is this: You’ve got to have a plan. The only way that reps are going to have the confidence to not back down from challenging the customer is if they’ve built a strategy for doing that in advance of the sales call itself. DuPont provides reps with a simple template for prenegotiation planning based on BayGroup International’s Situational Sales Negotiation™ (SSN™) methodology. The SSN template itself is brief, but the range and value of information that’s collected is what’s critical here (see figure 7.2) as all of this information together provides powerful perspective, and puts the rep in a significantly better position when it comes time to negotiate. This tool is all about ensuring that reps have the skills and tools to negotiate effectively rather than give in when the customer asks for concessions. The SSN template asks reps to note the relative “power positions” of the supplier— everything from products to brand, pricing, service, and relationships. The idea here is to get down on paper all of the areas in which we have relative strengths with the customer and all the ways that we have relative weaknesses. Done well, the detail in this first section alone will provide the rep with a better sense of the larger value her company brings to the table and will build the rep’s confidence to demand a greater price for that value.

Source: SSN Negotiation Planner™ and © 2009; BayGroup International, Inc., Sales Executive Council research. Figure 7.2. Negotiation Analysis and Action Plan The SSN template also forces DuPont reps to think in advance about all of the information they need to get from the customer and to list the specific questions they’re going to ask to find those things out. Likewise, it asks the rep to detail the information the customer is likely going to want to know so that the rep is ready in the meeting to provide it or protect it, as the case may be. Next, what difficult questions and objections is the rep likely to get from the customer and how exactly does the rep plan to respond? It’s always better to prepare answers in advance, rather than be forced to come up with a response on the fly, because that almost inevitably leads to giving in way too early to customer demands. This is followed by an examination of the specific things the supplier is looking for in the deal—things they can negotiate on and a series of hypotheses around the customer’s needs as well. Finally, the SSN template asks reps to do an analysis of possible concessions to offer to the customer and concessions to request from the customer. For example, the customer might ask the rep to give in on price and the rep might ask the customer to give in on some of their customization demands. Here, the template asks the rep to score the value of those concession items for both the supplier and customer. For example, the rep might determine that offering the customer a price concession reflects a 5 in terms of cost to the supplier, perhaps because they run on very thin margins, but only a 2 to the customer in terms of value, since they’re primarily concerned not with price but with the quality and

workability of the product. As you consider this planning method, ask yourself how many of your reps take the time to map out this kind of information prior to a negotiation, particularly one where price is likely to come up as a sticking point. Remember, winning those conversations is what really sets the Challenger apart. The Challenger rep has a scorecard like this wired into her brain. This is how she sees the world, and it’s what allows her to push back on the customer when the time comes. Put another way, the SSN template is a proxy for what Challenger reps do naturally. This is how you capture the magic of Challenger rep pre-call planning and put it on one sheet of paper. Asking your reps to use a tool like this puts you one step closer to giving them the confidence to hang tough when the conversation turns more difficult. It also forces them to play out the next few interactions in the negotiation. Sales Executive Council research shows that one of the biggest differentiators of high- performing reps is the amount of time they spend planning—this is a prime example. Like a great chess player, high performers are focused not just on the current move, but on the scenarios that will play out several moves ahead. Dupont found that for most reps, being assertive takes practice and planning. This is how you put a structure around both. If you were to give this sheet to ten of your reps next week—right before they called on a customer—would they be able to fill it out? If the answer is troubling, chances are extremely good that your reps are giving in to customer demands too early because they’re not equipped to push back in the moment. They’re not equipped to challenge. What else can you do to equip reps to challenge the customer’s demands once they’re in the sales call itself and the customer starts placing demands on the deal?

Anatomy of a Successful Negotiation Navigating tough customer conversations is one of those things that always seems a little bit like magic. Some people just seem to be able to do it incredibly well—but it’s never completely clear how. But what tangible steps can you take to help reps take control in the conversation itself? DuPont has demystified the process by boiling it down to a four-step framework based on BayGroup International’s methodology and then used the framework to put reps through a two-day Situational Sales Negotiation workshop focused on breaking sales reps’ tendency to give in too soon.

Acknowledge and Defer
Deepen and Broaden
Explore and Compare
Concede According to Plan Think of this as a road map for maintaining constructive tension within a negotiation. This is the kind of stuff your Challengers do naturally and the place where everyone else needs exactly this kind of concrete guidance. How does it all work? Let’s start with Acknowledge and Defer. How do you defer a customer demand for a concession—say a price discount —without threatening the deal? Here, DuPont has done something very smart and very straightforward. They’ve given reps the actual words to say when that moment comes. While it doesn’t have to be verbatim, reps are encouraged to say something like, “I understand that price is something we need to address, but before we do, I’d like to take a moment to make sure I completely understand your needs—so we can make sure we’re doing everything we can to make this deal as valuable as possible for you. Is that all right?” It’s a relatively simple request, but there’s a lot going on here. The rep has promised closure—which the customer wants just as much as the rep—but has also won permission to proceed, assuming she gets it. And that’s important, because you have to win the customer’s permission to defer. If you don’t, they’re not going to listen to anything you say next. This is a key mistake non- Challenger reps make all the time—they rarely seek to defer at all. And if they do, it’s without customer consent, which means they risk coming across as

dismissive, or worse, aggressive. Once she has permission to continue, the rep is on to the next two steps: Deepen and Broaden and Explore and Compare, which we’ll examine in parallel. At this point, the rep has bought some time but has also created some tension in the conversation. So now the rep needs a way to manage that tension and have the confidence to push forward. DuPont trains reps on a specific technique to get the deal to a better place when a customer pushes back on price. As we go through it, you’ll see that what makes it so powerful is that it’s a straightforward, repeatable technique that can be copied and learned by non-Challenger reps. For Deepen and Broaden, DuPont provides reps with tactics for uncovering the customer’s underlying needs, and for Explore and Compare, reps are trained on tactics for comparing and evaluating the additional needs identified during the conversation. The primary idea here is to expand the customer’s view of the things that are important to them. What else besides price matters? Maybe it’s the warranty, or the service plan, or expedited shipping, or installation. Get it all out on the table so that price is no longer the only negotiable in play. During the Deepen and Broaden phase, the DuPont sales rep often starts with getting the customer to simply restate things the rep already knows the customer likes about the DuPont offering. Once the rep has broadened that universe as much as possible, she can start to shrink it back down, coming back to price, but in a very specific manner. In this technique, reps don’t run directly to “I can give you 10 percent, not 20 percent.” Instead, the conversation starts with, “What are you looking to achieve with a 20 percent price reduction?” The idea is to uncover the rationale for the request, as the appropriate response will depend on that rationale. Often the reason for the request is something that can be addressed in some other way—as it’s often driven less by economic need and more by the customer’s desire to achieve a specific business outcome, such as production cost reductions. So look at what you’re negotiating over now. It’s not just price, but all of the other ways in which the supplier creates value for the customer and helps to solve their key challenges. Doing this, the rep has significantly expanded the options for negotiation. The rep’s now in a much better place to offer concessions that are less painful to their top-line revenue—and potentially options the customer values more. As they move to comparing various trade-offs with the customer, this is where all the prep work they did with the pre-call planning tool becomes so incredibly important. If they’ve done their homework

well, they know the cost-to-value trade-off for each one of the solution elements for their company. This brings us to the final mile of negotiation: Concede According to Plan. This isn’t just a fun play on words. Reps are taught the importance of proceeding according to a carefully planned negotiation strategy that trades away low-value solution elements first before defaulting to price. In other words, determining what you’re willing to concede is important . . . but what is often overlooked is how and when in the negotiation those concessions should be given. There are many different ways to make concessions to a customer; each can send a very different message to the customer, even when you ultimately achieve the exact same results. DuPont teaches their reps to avoid certain concession patterns—such as starting with small concessions and then offering bigger ones as the negotiations progress, or putting a “take it or leave it” offer on the table—because these approaches are not just risky, they can leave the customer feeling cheated. Instead they teach reps to concede negotiables in an order and an amount that ensures both parties feel they’re winning. For instance, they teach reps to start with a meaningful concession and then to offer smaller and smaller concessions as negotiations continue. Techniques like this help DuPont reps manage tension in a constructive manner. That’s not something non-Challenger reps would have known how to do otherwise. The point here is to give them the information they need to make better choices when it comes to negotiation and to understand the implications and possible repercussions of employing one of these strategies versus another. This is how you set them up for success when they challenge. To really get the feel for the difference, during the Situational Sales Negotiation skill-building workshops DuPont reps role-play different concession patterns and then discuss how they feel when the negotiation ends. This serves to illustrate the effect that different concession patterns will have on customers and ultimately gives reps the confidence that they have a smart plan to getting to an agreement—one that will leave the customer feeling that they won, rather than that they got cheated.

A WORD OF CAUTION While the DuPont case focuses on taking control within the negotiation phase of the sale, an earlier point in this chapter bears repeating here: Taking control happened throughout the sales process, not just the end of it. In our Challenger Development Program, much of the “taking control” module is not focused on negotiation at all. It’s a point we really hammer home: Taking control has to happen throughout the sale, lest it end up feeling “fake” (or, worse, disingenuous or off-putting) to the customer. We share several practical examples and techniques for doing this. One of the basic techniques we focus on is making powerful requests, which should be done throughout the sale. Making powerful requests helps the customer understand that the rep is here to move things forward; it is a great tool from the Challenger’s “taking control” toolkit. How does it work? Here’s a quick example: A rep has showed his customer that they are wasting millions on facilities costs because of their inefficient server management. The proposed solution will save the customer a good deal of money, but others need to be involved in the purchase decision if it’s to move forward. A powerful request might sound something like this: “From our discussion, we’ve agreed that the implementation of a rack-based server solution would save you $5 million a year. For you to reap these savings in the current fiscal year, we really need to install the new hardware soon. So to get started, I will need a signed contract from Dave by next week, which will allow us to bring the implementation engineers onsite and start the process so you can hit your savings target.” This is just one example, which is focused on closing, but there are many others that help reps understand how to take control even earlier in the sales process.

PULLING IT ALL TOGETHER Taking control is the one pillar of the Challenger Selling Model that strikes most sales leaders as more nature than nurture. But while it’s true that it helps for reps to have been born with the “assertiveness gene,” it is by no means a requirement for them to be successful. The solution to overcoming passivity is straightforward: Teach reps the importance of clarity of direction over quick closure, and teach them how to create real value within the sales process. When combined, these skills can help any sales rep to create a powerful proxy for natural assertiveness.

8 THE MANAGER AND THE CHALLENGER SELLING MODEL SO FAR WE’VE focused on the rep skills and organizational capabilities required to implement the Challenger Selling Model. But anybody who’s ever attempted to execute large-scale change within a sales organization will know there’s one glaring omission to this story: the frontline sales manager. As a research organization devoted to improving sales performance, we’ve studied nearly every topic in the sales world, and the message in the data is