Three Key Challenger Skills for Motivating Buyers

Every seller knows that sinking feeling: realizing a deal they thought was progressing apace has slid off the rails. Maybe your main contact suddenly went dark, or procurement appeared out of nowhere, or the window you thought you had before year-end suddenly closed up.

Unmotivated buyers can frustrate the most skilled sellers. Getting them moving once more can be nearly impossible. What gives?

Buying groups are growing, making it harder to pinpoint the right point of contact and more likely that an unknown stakeholder can step in to stall a deal. When we surveyed a large sample of B2B buyers in 2019, we saw the typical buying group increase incrementally every few years from 5.4 in 2009 to 6.8 to 10.2 to just under a dozen in 2019. Moreover, Gartner research shows buyers spend less time than ever with vendors, with 75% preferring an entirely rep-free buying experience.

Another looming factor is unspoken indecision. In 2020, research published by Matt Dixon and Ted McKenna in “The JOLT Effect” showed medium to high levels of indecision in as many as 89% of all deals. Shockingly, 40-60% of lost deals can be attributed to indecision.

While indecision is best battled by following The JOLT Effect playbook, sellers struggling broadly to motivate decision-makers can return to three key Challenger skills: identifying Mobilizers, honing Constructive Tension, and emphasizing the Cost of Inaction.

Leverage Mobilizers

One of the most troublesome missteps in a stalled sales journey comes earlier than you might think, way back when sellers are identifying their target buyer. In the “The Challenger Customer,” authors Matt Dixon, Brent Adamson, Pat Spencer, and Nick Toman interviewed 700 customer stakeholders across hundreds of organizations to determine who could most successfully drive action around a large-scale corporate purchase or initiative.

They uncovered seven distinct customer profile archetypes: The Go-Getter, The Teacher, The Skeptic (collectively known as “Mobilizers); The Friend, The Guide, and The Climber (Collectively known as “Talkers”); and Blockers (whose title speaks for itself).

The biggest revelation was that the most successful reps target the three profiles known as Mobilizers because they move their organizations toward consensus and build a framework for change.

Importantly, this doesn’t always make them the easiest profiles to work with. The Skeptic, for instance, may require more up-front convincing than the more easily-impressed Friend.

But, in the long run, only Mobilizers have the internal capacity to drive action and the know-how to help move a stalled deal forward. To avoid being stuck with an unhelpful Blocker or a useful but not drien Talker, high-performing reps target these profiles early and often. And they shouldn’t stop until they’ve found their organization’s Mobilizers.

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.”

Wield Constructive Tension

We say that how you sell matters more than what you sell. The original Challenger research (and our subsequent research, conducted in 2019) showed that the sales experience drives 53% customer loyalty. That’s more than brand, reputation, service, quality, and price combined.

Challengers create that desired experience by Teaching, Tailoring, Taking Control and using Constructive Tension. Among these skills, we hear that Constructive Tension is the hardest to get right. More Challenger clients (97%) ask for extra help with this skill than any other we teach.

In case you need to brush up on your “Four T’s,” Constructive Tension is a productive force used to compel a customer to act. It’s used strategically and empathetically to examine conventional ways of thinking, explore assumptions, probe for answers, and deliver a Commercial Insight.

Many sellers shy away from Constructive Tension because they mistake it for something they must create between themselves and the buyer. But when it comes to motivating change, Constructive Tension is queen. The best-performing sellers intentionally create and expertly wield Constructive Tension to help customers realize they need to make a change. This skill is about creating tension within the buyers themselves.

That tension tells buyers that they shouldn’t settle for the status quo – and helps them move forward.

For more on how John Round, SVP of Commercial Fleet Sales at Wheels, deploys this skill to draw buyers in instead of pushing them away, check out this clip from our recent Winning The Challenger Sale webinar, “Motivating Buyers to Act.”

Clarify the Cost of Inaction

Sometimes, even successful Mobilizers and solid Constructive Tension can’t save a deal from a misunderstanding of the business case for change. In these cases, sellers can get deals back on track by emphasizing a customer’s Cost of Inaction (COI). Where traditional return on investment (ROI) calculations focus on future savings, COI helps customers understand what they lose right now if they don’t make a change. This framing works precisely because it drives urgency.

How important is emphasizing the cost of inaction? As John shared on our recent webinar, it’s one of the two essential components he looks for in on-track deals.

“If I was to get hit by a truck tomorrow, my team should be able to get through a deal if they know who the Mobilizer is and they can figure out the Cost of Inaction,” John said.

But that’s more than a calculation. Before jumping into a solution (what we call the New Way) Challengers can use the Cost of Inaction to aid in the Rational Drowning portion of the Challenger choreography.

“It’s really being able to explain a good story about what the current state is costing the company, the individual, daily,” John said.

For a simple formula you can use to calculate the Cost of Inaction, check out this clip from our on-demand webinar, “Creating Buyer Urgency amid Indecision and Uncertainty.”

Uncover the true reasons stalling your deals

Moving stalled deals forward is often a matter of addressing the root cause behind the lack of urgency, such as ballooning buying groups or misunderstanding the repercussions of standing still. By double-checking that they’ve identified the right Mobilizer, deploying Constructive Tension, and clarifying the cost of inaction, your sellers can start pushing deals forward before it’s too late.

For more tactical Challenger insights from guests like John Round, explore our latest on-demand and upcoming live Winning The Challenger Sale webinars.