I've said it before and I'll say it again. A lot is happening right now. Sales and marketing is more than ever integrated with each other (or more accurately, many companies want an integrated organization). It is difficult to go from words to action. To conduct is notoriously perhaps the most difficult.

Everything is connected
What I see every time I give a keynote or am at a sales meeting with a client is that everyone wants to transform into the modern sales and marketing organization. Everyone wants to start implement systems. They want to start generating leads and close deals. What we're missing from the equation is that none of the activities will be any good if we don't start at the right end.

A product or service is designed to have a number of benefits and to solve a number of problems. We want to add value with our product and that is the sole reason for its existence. The problems start when we begin to focus on the wrong things, like features and even benefits instead of looking to the horizon and into the future. What is the main result we want to deliver with our product?

The most obvious thing in a product is which features, buttons and technical characteristics it contains. Therefore, it is mostly here we start when we meet customers, by presenting the product and the features. It may feel like a natural way to go, because after all, we have developed a product that customers should be able to use to solve their problems, right?

Challenge your customer!

This is the latest trend in sales. I have been talking about Insight Selling since Structsales started almost five years ago and to be honest, most of the successful sellers have done this for years. To challenge the customer is however still one of the best approaches you can have if you want do differentiate from the competition, if you are positioned in a way that allows you to be a challenger...

What does it mean to challenge your customer?
To question the customer to get him to change direction is extremely important. What Adamson and Dixon are missing out on throughout their book The Challenger Sales is the digital journey. I would like to say that the Challenger Sales is something that marketers should take more advantage of than we do today. Maybe this is even more a marketing methodology than a sales methodology?

Content and Inbound Marketing is something that works very well using a challenging approach. A challenging sales approach done by the right person at the right time with the right audience correctly is unbeatable. Why I even mention the marketing side in all of this is for the simple reason that marketing allows us to continue our communication with the client even when the seller is not sitting face to face with the customer. But back to the core question: what is The Challenger Sales all about in my opinion?

Let's be completely honest and agree upon the fact that nowadays most of us are talking about aligning sales and marketing. However, it's one thing to talk about it and quite another to implement it. Theory is all well and good but the real results are shown when things are implemented and acted upon.

A workforce in decay
Today most sales reps are selling in the same way as they have always done. This includes calling and booking meetings and conducting meeting with customers. Usually without having any idea at all about where the customer is in their buying process or which problem they are looking to solve.

A standard sales meeting begins with a presentation of the vendors products solutions and customer references. This goes on in the same way, except for the one thing that somewhere going down this path the sales rep heard that he was supposed to ask questions during the meeting. This then leads to the seller boring the heck out of the customer with questions that could have been answered by doing a google search before the meeting.

Not only that - the seller has heard of a new sales technique based on challenging the customer. The only problem is that the sales rep lacks the basic trust necessary for the customer to listen and accept to be questioned. The meeting is going overboard and the customer becomes irritated.
It all ends up with the seller leaving the meeting with his tail between his legs after trying to sell the products as a last way out and by lowering the price of the same in a last effort in trying to close a deal.

Adapt or die
As a sellers, it's more important than ever to position ourselves as experts in order to stay relevant now and in the future. Working smarter not harder is one of the things that successful sellers do. To understand the digital playfield is another.

Have you ever thought about the fact that the millennials in a few years time will be your customers. How are you preparing for this? Do you use LinkedIn or do you think it's irrelevant and not applicable on your business?

Robots and automated processes - and your marketing department
Today, clients go through the buying funnel on their own in mostly without talking to a sales representative at all. How will you differentiate yourself from the competition when the customer eventually calls you (if he ever calls)? The buying process is basically completed in this phase and the only thing you have left to negotiate about is your price. And as we all know, this is not where we want to be. Did you know that in several countries automated processes and robots are starting to replace sales reps? Did you also know that they are doing this successfully?

So is everything lost for you as a seller in the future? Absolutely not. But to be able to stand out and to deliver value in the future, you have to team up with your colleagues in the marketing department and develop a plan on how you can reach customers before they get too far in their buying process, because as I've mentioned before, the customer usually has no idea what he needs.

By starting to work with processes, automated workflows and ROI on marketing and sales, you can reach the customer at an earlier stage and start selling insights. The vendors who still will be relevant in the future, are the ones who not only adds value but who actually are the vale! Decide now that you will be the value so that you won't be out of a job in the near future.