The Challenger Customer

Selling to the Hidden Influencer Who Can Multiply Your Results

By: Brent Adamson, Matthew Dixon, Pat Spenner, Nick Toman

Narrated by: Steve Kramer

Length: 8 hrs and 40 mins

Publisher's summary

Based on an exhaustive study of hundreds of sales reps and thousands of customers across multiple industries, the authors found that every potential customer contact falls into one of seven distinct profiles. While many are worth talking to, the highest performing reps concentrated their time on a specific few. Most sales reps prefer to approach customers who are open and eager to meet with them, people with clearly articulated needs that make them easy to connect to solutions. The authors call these customers Talkers. The high performers spent their time, instead, with customers who were less eager to meet, generally skeptical and difficult to manage, and much more apt to be agnostic about one supplier over another. They call these customers Mobilizers.

High performers understand what their average-performing colleagues don't: in a world in which complex deals require widespread consensus across a diverse - and typically dysfunctional - set of customer stakeholders, only Mobilizers have the skill and the will to fight for large-scale, disruptive change and, ultimately, help win the deal. Challenger sellers, in other words, target Challenger customers.

The authors unveil research that identifies Mobilizers and provide a roadmap for how sales and marketing teams can find them, engage them with disruptive insight, and leverage them to drive consensus across the customer organization.

Once you have identified the Mobilizers among your customers, almost any rep, with the right coaching, tools, and marketing support can start a chain reaction that leads to a whole organization getting on board with even the most provocative ideas.

©2015 Brent Adamson (P)2015 Penguin Audio

Great selling advice / approach

I would recommend this to all new sales specifically B2B, in order to help with the overall sales process & approach.

great read for all sales pros

this is a great read and resource for all sales pros. it provides updates on old ideas and creates new frameworks for managing complex sales processes.

Love it, invaluable business resource!

Great addition to the challenger sale. A must know for all sales and business professionals.

Very Informative!

As a B2B Marketing professional, I found this book to be very useful in aiding me create marketing content.

Excellent, can't wait to try it out!

I have been in the software sales business for 20 years and have been to many sales training courses in that time. this is the first program I have experienced that comes at the sale from the eyes of the customer and what happens after I leave there office. I have always tried to think of the sale from the customers eyes, not knowing ultimately what they are up against because they wouldn't give me 100% of the story . I guess they thought they would loose leverage by being 100% traspatent and now I don't need to wonder any more. This book takes their red tape away. thank you

Sensible Must For Startup Selling

Challenger makes so much sense, you continue to study it, not just read or listen, or in this case both.
The Challenger Customer is now among my short list of must-employ schools of thought, like Lean Startup, Pitch Anything and Simon Sinek's work, among others.
Consider Challenger a short cut to understanding the competitive state of introducing change with customers, or, risk either losing to "do-nothing" or falling to others using this as a competitive advantage.
Challenger is the heart of how I'll approach the market from now on. Reading it will reveal so many answers.

Complex sale explained

Fantastic deep insights into the world of complex B2B sales. Supported by numerous studies it changes a perspective on this topic and provides a list of specific steps and guidance how to improve go to market iniciatives of a modern sellers.

Solid sales business book

Interesting concept expanded beyond the challenger sale. Good experience and a build up on top of the cult classic original!

Packed with great content... so many bookmarks

Would you consider the audio edition of The Challenger Customer to be better than the print version?

For many business audio books - I know that they are really good if I then want to go and purchase the print version. This is one where the print version is being delivered tomorrow.

Any additional comments?

So much of the day in and day out reality these days has to do with working through the committee purchasing process within organizations... this book provides excellent information on how to work within that dynamic and to enable them to escape some of the dysfunction.

Demand Gen & Content Marketers: Pay Attention

More invaluable research and insights from the team at CEB. This book challenges the conventional wisdom on content marketing and demand generation practices in a way that's hard to ignore. A must read for those in both sales and marketing.