According to a 2024 report from Salesforce, more than half of sellers say it’s harder to sell now than it was a year ago. In the face of constantly changing headwinds — not to mention dynamic technology, rising expectations, and unrealistic quotas — sometimes all a seller needs is a little advice.
That’s why we invited retired global sales leader and longtime Challenger champion Charles Forsgard to join us for a special “ask me anything” episode of Winning The Challenger Sale. As a leader at companies like Honeywell, GE, and Schneider Electric, Charles Forsgard saw it all. So, he came well-prepared to answer viewer-submitted questions running the gamut from using data to protect your team to preparing yourself for the next level of leadership. A few of his most thought-provoking answers (condensed and edited for length) are below. Check out the on-demand episode, “A Fireside Chat with a Fortune 500 Sales Leader,” for the full interview.
Q: Are great salespeople born or developed?
“If you don’t have some core things in your personality in terms of how you’re wired, no amount of training will turn you into a great salesperson.
If you’ve got those core things then training, and coaching, all those things can make you an incredibly good salesperson, and you can get progressively better and better and better. But there is a reality that there are a lot of people in this profession who, I think, are beating their head against a brick wall because they’re handicapped by the attributes they’re missing.
And so, they must artificially try to do it. And I think you can force your way to succeeding. But I think the problem that you get into if you take that approach is there’s probably something you really are wired to do that, A., you’d be a lot better at, and, B., you’d be a lot happier doing…
… [In those cases, it’s up to managers] to guide them into something else. That doesn’t mean you have to fire them. They might be a great asset for your company. They’re just in the wrong job.”
Q: How do you balance upper management’s interest in deal development without putting too much pressure on your team or overpromising results?
“As a sales leader, it’s your job to do two things.
I used to work with this fantastic CMO, and she called this ‘feeding the beast.’ So, as a sales leader, you serve two audiences. Right? You had to feed that beast up top and give them what they need. And then you had to send the right message to your folks. You had to send the message that leadership wants going out to the salespeople.
But you could always, you know, insulate them from a lot of the constant “boom, boom, boom, boom, boom,” so that they can stay focused on what they need to be focused on. And that’s really the key thing I think you have to do with leaders. ‘Am I getting the right information about the folks up there so they can do their job? And am I allowing the folks down below me to focus on the right things and guiding them to focus on the right things?’
It’s a question of balance of, you know, what I do up there and what I do down here, and how I make sure everybody’s staying focused on the things that that they should be focused on.”
Q: What’s the key to getting senior leadership to use analytics and show their value to the entire organization?
“I think the answer to that question is: if you expect someone else to do something, you better be doing it yourself. So, if you want other people to use analytics, you should be using them and proving through your use of them that it’s a valuable approach.
I’m a big proponent of customer relationship management software [CRM]…because if you’re using it correctly, as a salesperson, it can drive effectiveness through the roof.
And the analytics you get from it help you in so many ways because they tell you what to focus on. So as a sales leader, you should be using those analytics to help enable your salespeople to focus and predict ‘This is what I think is going to happen by the end of the month, the end of the quarter, etcetera.’
If you’re doing that just inherently in how you run your business, and not just doing it for show, and you make it part of your personal operating system, whoever’s above you, whoever’s above them, whoever’s above them, is going to notice. They’re going to say, ‘Wow. That team knows what they’re doing.’
I can sit there and tell senior leadership all day long, oh, you should believe my number, or you guys should really use analytics. Well, I only do that when I’m using them [myself], and the results show.”
Q: In your experience, how is Challenger different from other sales training programs?
“The beauty of Challenger to me is that I know it works because I know it’s based on data. I know it’s based on what has worked best. You can look at anything that the Challenger methodology asks a salesperson to do, and you can point back to the data that said “this is why that’s so.”
If I’m trying to convince a salesperson to enhance the way they’re going out and selling, I’m asking you to change, and change is hard. And I want you to make that investment in yourself to not just sit through the class but go do something different next Monday.
I’m not asking you to do something different because I think it’s a good idea. I’m asking you to do something different because the data says if you do it, you will get a better result.”
Q: How did you introduce the Challenger Sale in the companies you worked in as a sales leader?
We started with an introduction where we worked with Ramsey Jay Jr., who’s just incredible in front of the room. We started off with “The JOLT Effect,” with Ramsey doing a ninety-minute kickoff. Then we did the full-blown sales kickoff that was based entirely around the [in-person] training.
But what made that piece of it that much more powerful, because we were doing it at a sales kickoff, was having a bunch of early adopters who we pulled on the stage to talk about what it meant to them. The great thing about these early adopters was that although they were very successful salespeople already, they were [initially] very skeptical of needing to do anything different. And rightfully so – they’re already successful without doing it.
People are going to listen to another salesperson more than they’re probably going to listen to me about this stuff. But the best part was this one salesperson telling this great story of how he won this deal, and he kind of was stuck on how he’s going to move the deal forward. And he said, well, I’m going to give it a try. And this is a guy who said ‘I don’t like tension.’
But, he realized he had to create that tension. And when he did, boom, the deal came through.
So I think if what you do is reinforce it with data, cases of people that went and did it and it worked for them (not just the statistics in the book or the background from it, but people in your own organization who are succeeding with it and how it’s changing things), that will then build on itself as you go to launch it.
Q: What advice do you give to mid-career sellers interested in transitioning from individual performance to effective sales leadership?
“This will sound trite, but I mean it: be a leader without the title. In a sense, your peers are the ones who are going to promote you. If you’re someone that your peers lean on and go to for advice all the time and you’re always, you’re that coach of your peers, that’s going to get noticed by the people above.
And the reason I say that’s so important is that I can tell you, except for the first time I stepped up, every other promotion, every other step-up job I got in my career, I was tapped on the shoulder. And it’s because I was demonstrating what they wanted to see in what I was doing with my current job.
So, do a great job in your current job if you want to get that next job. But part of that is creating a situation where you’re showing those leadership skills they want to see, and leading when you don’t have the title is the hardest form of leadership.
So if you do that, you will get noticed, and it will happen. Now, I’m not saying you don’t have to, you know, still do the things that will drive you forward, but it starts with you don’t have to have the job to be a leader.”
More sales Insights from a Fortune 500 leader
Wish you could hear more insights from Charles? Tune into the full episode of Winning The Challenger Sale to hear more from Charles on dealing with upper management, implementing Challenger, accelerating your sales career, leveraging data, and more.
Challenger, Inc.
Challenger is the global leader in training, technology, and consulting to win today’s complex sale. Our sales transformation and training programs are supported by ongoing research and backed by our best-selling books, The Challenger Sale, The Challenger Customer, and The Effortless Experience.
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