Matt Dixon, an executive director of strategic research at CEB, has an unrelenting drive to find the answers to questions senior executives often take for granted. Matt’s latest books are The Effortless Experience: Conquering the New Battleground for Customer Loyalty and The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation.
Related Transcription and Podcasts: Dixon on The Challenger & Customer Experience
Joe: When I try to explain the challenger approach to someone, I say it’s the salesman or the sales team that’s going to meet with the customer and are going to do new math. Instead of one plus one equal to two, they want to make one plus one equal to three. Is that a good way to explain it?
Matt Dixon’s response:
It is. Since the book’s come out, I’ve heard so many people tell the story just like you are in their own words, and it’s always exciting to hear people kind of put it in their own terms. I think that’s definitely a way you can put it. Just the other day I was talking to the head of sales and said the challenger for this person, for this guy, the head of sales at this pretty large company, global company. He said, “When I think of my challenger salespeople, these are the people who go in, and they make the customer blink.” They bring that new idea to the table. They bring a new way to save money or to make money, or to avoid risk or to steal market share or to engage employees.
Whatever the outcome is that you are promising to deliver for the customer they bring a new way to get there, the new idea for getting there and accomplishing that objective, and they put it on the table. It’s often an idea the customer themselves hadn’t thought of before, and it makes them blink and it makes them do a double take. Surprisingly, they actually generate some pretty skeptical reaction from that customer. The customer says, “Hey, I don’t know about that. That’s a pretty bold claim or I don’t know if that’s going to work here what you just laid on the table. I’m not sure. I think we’re a little bit different.”
The challenger is able to hold their ground, drive forward and use that idea as a wedge to open up new terrain and surface new area in conversation. I do like your description though, and I’ll file it away for later use and maybe pay you royalties on the description later.
Related Transcription and Podcasts: Dixon on The Challenger & Customer Experience
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