Beyond the Challenger Sale Part 2: Focus on Value & Make your Product Easy to Buy (with Brent Adamson, Author ”The Challenger Sale” & ”The Challenger Customer”)
One Knight in Product2 Okt 2022

Beyond the Challenger Sale Part 2: Focus on Value & Make your Product Easy to Buy (with Brent Adamson, Author ”The Challenger Sale” & ”The Challenger Customer”)

Brent Adamson is a former Harvard professor turned Wall Street Journal award-winning author and sales researcher. He co-authored "The Challenger Sale" and "The Challenger Customer" with my former guest Matt Dixon, and these days is challenging us to concentrate on making products easy to buy, not easy to sell.

Here are some of the highlights of our discussion:

1. The Challenger Sale shook up the world of sales, but The Challenger Customer was the inevitable follow up

They did further research after the first book and identified a new protagonist, the "Mobilizer", who can be your best advocate within the company (but not a champion!)

2. It takes 5.4 people within an organisation to make a purchase decision & the number's rising

It's getting more & more complicated selling into organisations, and the buying journey has become like spaghetti. Finding the "economic buyer" is no longer enough to land the sale.

3. There's a difference between emerging demand and established demand

If you're going after established demand and known solutions you're going to get dragged into a price-based bake-off. Challengers find unknown pains, challenge the status quo & break the frame

4. Some customers don't even know how to buy any solution, let alone your solution

Buyer journeys are complex & some customers can be surprised when things get held up. But you're not, you've seen it all before! Give them the info they need to help close the sale from their side.

5. It's not good enough to just be insightful anymore, The smartness arms race ended in a draw

Being really insightful is table stakes. You need to be able to help your customers frame their decision and give them confidence in the decisions they're making for their company.

.. And much more!

Check out Matt's episode

I interviewed Brent's co-author and co-conspirator Matt Dixon about his work and how customer indecision is a critical problem for B2B sales. Check out the episode here.

Buy "The Challenger Sale"

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

Check it out on Amazon.

Buy "The Challenger Customer"

"In The Challenger Sale, Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson overturned decades of conventional wisdom with a bold new approach to sales. Now they reveal something even more surprising: the highest-performing sales teams don't focus on friendly, attentive customers. Instead, they target challenger customers. Challenger customers are sceptical, less interested in meeting and ultimately indifferent as to who wins the deal. But they also have the credibility, persuasive skill and will to challenge the status quo that will get a deal to the finish line far more often than customers who are easier to connect with."

Check it out on Amazon.

Contact Brent

You can hit Brent up on LinkedIn.

Episoder(269)

How to Manage Imposter Syndrome in Product Management (with Phyllis Njoroge, author ”From Fraud to Freedom”)

How to Manage Imposter Syndrome in Product Management (with Phyllis Njoroge, author ”From Fraud to Freedom”)

An interview with Phyllis Njoroge. Phyllis is a product manager, cognitive scientist and now author of "From Fraud to Freedom". Phyllis wants us all to know that imposter syndrome is something that ca...

21 Des 202137min

Product Leadership is Hard - Let‘s Get Better At It (with Ebenezer Ikonne, author ”Becoming a Leader in Product Development”)

Product Leadership is Hard - Let‘s Get Better At It (with Ebenezer Ikonne, author ”Becoming a Leader in Product Development”)

An interview with Ebenezer Ikonne. Eb is an experienced product leader and social scientist who wanted to contribute to the product leadership community. To support this goal, he's recently published ...

19 Des 202140min

Building Effective Technical Skills for Product Managers (with Irene Yu, founder @ Skiplevel)

Building Effective Technical Skills for Product Managers (with Irene Yu, founder @ Skiplevel)

An interview with Irene Yu. Irene is a former software developer for up-and-coming everything store Amazon, where she found herself mentoring non-technical product managers to help them get better at ...

15 Des 202136min

Leading & Evolving Product Teams Through Hyperscale (with Brian Shen, Product Director @ ClickUp)

Leading & Evolving Product Teams Through Hyperscale (with Brian Shen, Product Director @ ClickUp)

An interview with Brian Shen. Brian is Product Director and head of Product Ops at ClickUp, an all-in-one productivity platform that you've definitely seen an advertisement for recently. ClickUp are t...

12 Des 202134min

Breaking Down Silos in Product Development (with Sigurd Seteklev, co-founder @ Kitemaker)

Breaking Down Silos in Product Development (with Sigurd Seteklev, co-founder @ Kitemaker)

An interview with Sigurd Seteklev. Sigurd is the co-founder of Y Combinator backed Kitemaker, a startup that is trying to enable true cross-team collaboration and empowered product development teams. ...

8 Des 202133min

Can Sales & Product Really Get Along? (with Brendan McAdams, author ”Sales Craft”)

Can Sales & Product Really Get Along? (with Brendan McAdams, author ”Sales Craft”)

An interview with Brendan McAdams. Brendan is a long time Enterprise SaaS salesman and author of "Sales Craft", a book he hopes will help salespeople and even tech founders get better at selling their...

1 Des 202138min

Protecting Vulnerable Users by Designing for Safety (with Eva PenzeyMoog, author ”Design for Safety”)

Protecting Vulnerable Users by Designing for Safety (with Eva PenzeyMoog, author ”Design for Safety”)

Trigger warning: Please be aware that this episode contains references to domestic abuse An interview with Eva PenzeyMoog. Eva is a designer and former volunteer rape crisis counselor, who wants to en...

28 Nov 202139min

Creating Sustainable Products with Conscious Design (with Ian Peterman, co-author ”Conscious Design”)

Creating Sustainable Products with Conscious Design (with Ian Peterman, co-author ”Conscious Design”)

An interview with Ian Peterman. Ian is the CEO at Peterman Design Firm, where he aims to help design more sustainable & ethical products. He's also trying to bring this thinking to the world with his ...

25 Nov 202135min

Populært innen Business og økonomi

stopp-verden
dine-penger-pengeradet
lydartikler-fra-aftenposten
e24-podden
rss-penger-polser-og-politikk
rss-borsmorgen-okonominyhetene
pengepodden-2
finansredaksjonen
tid-er-penger-en-podcast-med-peter-warren
livet-pa-veien-med-jan-erik-larssen
morgenkaffen-med-finansavisen
rss-markedspuls-2
pengesnakk
utbytte
lederpodden
rss-pa-konto
liberal-halvtime
rss-fa-makro
rss-investering-gjort-enkelt
rss-impressions-2