HBR Article discounts the sales “Relationship Builder”
My buddy Steve Carlisle of MarketSource sent me an article from the Harvard Business Review with the provocative title “Selling is Not About Relationships”. Provocative because relationship selling has been considered by most of us in the profession as the preferred selling style.
But the authors identify the Challenger, not the Relationship Builder, as the sales profile that outperforms all others noted. Their takeaways are culled from a global study conducted by the Sales Executive Council. Good stuff, check it out.
The Challenger approach brings a “finely tuned sense of customer objectives and value drivers”. That’s why teleprospectors, the professionals that conduct outreach to B2B target contacts, are Challengers.
Teleprospecting professionals must deliver a value message in seconds that either qualifies or disqualifies the prospect. Decision makers are busier than they were 15 years ago, and they have little time to discuss how they’re doing or whether they have time to speak. They don’t.
“Challengers win by pushing customers to think differently,” say the authors, “using insight to create constructive tension in the sale.” Exactly. Many times when my BDR deliver the client message to a prospect, they are forced to consider that they didn’t realize they had this problem, that it is a problem and that they should probably do something about it.
The best teleprospectors aren’t focused on relieving tension, but creating it in order to get the prospect to choose a position. Either in or out, we don’t care, as long as the choice is made.
