Reading :: The Challenger Sale

The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation Hardcover – November 10, 2011 
by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson

Just a quick review for this one. One of my HDO students recommended this book to me after we discussed how early-stage entrepreneurs seek to understand and address problems faced by a narrowly defined target market, an approach that involves creating a relationship and co-designing a solution. “This sounds like a challenger,” she told me, and in our next class, she brought me the book. She indicated that although it was thick, it would be a fast read. 

And she was right! Like many business books, it was (as a colleague once told me) thin on the inside. The bottom line is that the authors examined sales performance during the pandemic and afterwards, once sales bounced back. They characterized sales reps according to their different behaviors: challengers, hard workers, lone wolves, problem solvers, and relationship builders. And they found that challengers — sales reps who take the time to understand customers’ lived problems, tailor their solutions to better serve these problems, and challenge the customers’ objections in a constructive way — tend to punch above their weight: they make a minority of the sales force, but have disproportionately high sales. Based on this, the authors advocate for hiring many more challengers and letting go many of the other types.

The student added that she thought the idea of only hiring challengers was problematic — and I agree. Challengers seem well suited for advocating for, and co-developing, customized solutions. But that’s near the beginning of the sales funnel, and it’s more applicable for certain types of products and services. It’s not great for maintaining a long-term relationship or for buying commodities rather than solutions. (It would be exhausting to be Challenged every time you want to buy a few boxes of paper from Dunder Mifflin.) 

Still, if you are interested in thinking through situations in which you want to customize a product or service for others, this book provides some good guidance. You don’t have to read it all — believe me — but the authors do a good job of summarizing key messages. Bookmark those pages and you’ll have valuable guidance.