The Challenger Sale

part of what truly sets star performers apart, capture that magic, and export
it to the rest of your sales organization? Imagine a world where all your reps

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—or at least many more of them—performed like stars. What would that be
worth to you? What would it mean for the overall performance of your
company?
Well, in 2009, in a world where only the stars were selling to begin
with, it could mean the difference between bankruptcy and survival. And it
was in this high-stakes world that we first set out to answer the question:
Which skills, behaviors, knowledge, and attitudes matter most for high
performance?
IN SEARCH OF ANSWERS
To figure this out, we surveyed hundreds of frontline sales managers across
ninety companies around the world, asking those managers to assess three
reps each from their teams—two average performers and one star performer
—along forty-four different attributes. And while the initial model was built
on an analysis of the first 700 reps for whom we had data—representing
every major industry, geography, and go-to-market model—we’ve since
increased that number to well over 6,000 reps all over the world as we
continue to run this diagnostic survey. Among other things, continuing that
work has allowed us to determine whether or not the story in the data has
changed over time, especially in light of the recent slow but steady
economic recovery. And for reasons we’ll review momentarily, we’ve been
able to establish quite clearly that these findings hold true irrespective of
economic conditions.
So what exactly was in this survey? The table 
below
 provides a sample
of the rep attributes we tested as part of this work. We asked managers to
assess attitudes, including the degree to which their reps seek to resolve
customer issues and their willingness to risk disapproval. We asked about
skills and behaviors, like the reps’ level of business acumen and needs-
diagnosis ability. We looked at activities, like reps’ tendency to follow the
sales process and thoroughly evaluate opportunities. And, finally, we asked
about reps’ knowledge of their customers’ industry as well as their own
companies’ products.

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In terms of demographics, the study covered a wide range of selling
models, everything from hunters to farmers, field reps to inside sales reps,
key account managers to broad-based account reps, as well as both direct
sellers and indirect sellers. That said, we carefully controlled for things like
rep tenure, geography, and account size to make sure that the results apply
not only universally across the entire sample, but also broadly across the
wide range of the companies represented in our membership.
Finally, because we were working with sales reps, we had a very
practical means of measuring actual performance, namely each individual
rep’s performance against goal. When you put it all together, what all of this
work gives you is a very robust data-driven snapshot of rep performance
that allows you to answer the question, “Of all the things a sales rep 
could
do well, which ones actually matter most for sales performance?” It’s an
extremely thorough picture of what “good” looks like when it comes to
sales rep skill and behavior.
We should also point out what we did 
not
study. This work is
definitively not an examination of sales rep personality types or personal
strengths. That kind of thing is hard to measure and even harder to do

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anything about. If we were to tell you that “charisma” is hugely important
to sales success, you might not disagree, but you’d likely struggle to know
what to actually 
do
with that information. Sure, over time you might find
new homes for all of your noncharismatic reps and hire more outgoing ones
instead. But while that may in fact help performance tomorrow, it would be
awfully difficult to execute practically, in order to improve performance
today. Instead, first and foremost, we wanted to provide advice around what
you can do right now with the reps you 
already
have (though there is
certainly a hiring story that comes out of these results as well).
To that end, looking back at the list of variables, you’ll notice that all of
the attributes we tested were focused on reps’ 
demonstrated
behaviors
. In
other words, how much more or less likely is a rep to do “X”? Or how
effective is a rep at doing “Y”? We did that because skills and behaviors 
are
things you can do something about right away. You may or may not be
charismatic, but through better coaching, for example, I can help you do a
better job of following the sales process. Or, through better training and
tools, I can improve your product or industry knowledge.
This is a survey about getting things done. It wasn’t designed so much
to determine why your stars are better, but rather to determine how to make
your core better. Think of the potentially huge commercial value currently
locked up in the middle 60 percent of your sales force. What would it be
worth to make each of those reps even just a little bit better? Our survey
focused on the things you can do right now to help the core performers you
already have act more like the stars that you wish they were.
So what did we find? Which of these many attributes matters most? At
the highest level, the story revolves around three key findings, each
representing a radical departure from how most sales executives think about
how to drive sales success. Let’s take them one by one.