The Challenger Sale

A WIDENING TALENT GAP
How does this solutions story play out for individual rep performance? The
impact has been nothing short of dramatic.
In a recent study, we conducted an analysis looking at the impact of a
company’s sales model—in other words, transactional selling versus
solution selling—on the performance distribution of their sales reps. What
we found was eye-opening and more than a little troubling.
In a transactional selling environment, the performance gap between
average and star performers is 59 percent. So the star performer sells about
one and a half times as much as the core performer. However, in companies
with solution selling models the distribution is very different. There, they
outperform by almost 
200 percent.
The gap is four times greater. Put
another way, as sales become more complex, the gap between core and star
performers widens dramatically.

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Source: CEB, CEB Sales Leadership Council, 2011.
Figure 1.2.
Core Versus High Performers in Transactional (Left) and Solution Selling (Right)
Environments
This leads us to three conclusions. First, as a solutions provider, you’ve
got to find a way to put a big corporate bear hug around your stars. They’re
carrying the day for you. One head of sales in business services told us
recently that of their hundred sales reps, 
two
were responsible for bringing
in 80 percent of the company’s revenue. While the situation in your
organization may not be as extreme, the shift to solution selling has
undoubtedly seen a dramatic rise in key-person dependency problems
across many sales forces. It’s not just that stars are carrying the day for you;
they’re often carrying the entire company.
Second, as your sales model becomes more complex, the value of
narrowing the gap between your core and star performers goes up radically.
In the transactional world, the value of getting someone just halfway from
good to great is a 30 percent improvement. That’s not bad. But the value of
the same move in a solutions environment is an almost 100 percent
improvement. Put simply, closing that gap is worth a lot more than it used
to be.
Finally, the penalty for not closing the gap is terrifying. As your model
evolves, left untended, the core will fall farther and farther behind, until
they ultimately can’t execute the new model at all.

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