Push Your Sales Team to Get Out There and Prospect Like Champs

The Challenger sales approach

For some salespeople, the word telemarketing can be frightening. However, an effective telemarketing campaign will generate sales. It requires perseverance and courage.

I recently finished reading "The Challenger Sale" by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson, which has become a must-read for sales professionals at many companies in the USA. Unfortunately, it has not yet been translated into French. It's a shame because it offers a highly relevant perspective on new business challenges.

According to the book, if your salespeople hate prospecting, it's for one simple reason: They don't know how to prospect.

According to the book, 53% of customer loyalty depends on their experience with salespeople (Sales Experience); it does not rely on price, service, brand reputation, or even the product. What matters most is how we sell, not what we sell. In other words, it’s the interaction between salespeople and prospects.

If you want to help your salespeople prospect effectively, you’ve come to the right place.

Given the upheaval in the sales world, it is crucial to support them in improving their approach and achieving more sales.

How to Be a Challenger

According to this book, for your salespeople to develop a competitive advantage and generate real value for prospects, they must have the ability to:

to educate their prospects with new insights that significantly enhance the prospects' performance;
to tailor their value proposition to the prospects' expectations so that the prospects feel it perfectly matches their needs
to take control of the sales process to prevent it from dragging on and becoming stagnant

Unique value proposition

To achieve this goal (educating the prospect, tailoring the value proposition, and taking control), it is essential that you have defined in advance your unique value proposition. It must meet three criteria:

It is unique and more effective than what your competitors have to offer.
It has concrete economic value for your client (saving time or money).
It is proven, and you can explain how you are better than your competitors through concrete examples.

Now that your unique value proposition is ready, you will start building your sales pitch focused on "Education."

Let's delve into the three capabilities that a Challenger salesperson must possess:

Educate prospects with something valuable and new so they can become more competitive in their market

According to the book, the "solution selling" approach practiced by many companies no longer works. This means that prospects will no longer waste time helping salespeople define their needs. Instead, salespeople must offer new perspectives, provide advice, and educate prospects with new information and issues they were unaware of.

3 essential next steps: :

Start with a focus on your client, their problems, and their needs
Change the way your client perceives the world around them
Select the elements of your value proposition that best address the specific needs of the client you are facing

Instead of starting with your differentiators, guide your prospect towards them. In the end, it will be natural for them to seek out an offer that meets their needs as they now perceive them. You will naturally be in the best position to address those needs...

Adapt their value proposition to the client's expectations

When you start your pitch, it’s important to tailor it to the prospect’s problems and their perception of the world around them. Your pitch should resonate. The prospect will feel that it perfectly matches their needs.

Take control of the sales process

Taking control does not mean being aggressive, but rather explaining to your prospect the real added value you can offer and what differentiates you from your competitors without resorting to price differentiation. The idea is to advance your prospect through the sales process to avoid stagnation. Maintain a constructive tension with your prospects.

“There is no impregnable fortress, only poorly conducted attacks.”

As Vauban aptly put it…

Always be prepared. Teach your telemarketers to always be prepared before calling prospects. They should anticipate possible objections and prepare appropriate responses. Remember that a prospect only raises objections about issues that are important to them, not about something they don't care about. The objection they raise points to something that isn't (yet) clear to them, which is why their concern may sometimes come across as aggressive.

Rather than getting discouraged, let’s (internally) thank the prospect for sharing this point of misunderstanding and giving us the opportunity to respond. This allows us to reassure them.

Let’s not forget one important detail: the speed at which an objection is handled (immediately) and the posture when delivering the response. These are key elements in building customer trust.

The world of telemarketing is a constantly evolving sector. At Leads Provider, we continuously optimize and adapt our solutions to offer our clients the best approaches to prospecting and lead generation..