Challenger Sale: Do you Reframe in 3-D?

March 17, 2013 Leave a comment

Magic EyeDo you remember when the Magic Eye pictures were all the rage back in the 90′s?

For those unfamiliar with Magic Eye artwork, a 3-D image was embedded into a picture that otherwise appeared to be nothing more than colorful, repeating patterns.

However, to the trained eye, when looked at in a different way, the 2-dimensional image would suddenly, and magically, ‘pop’ into a stunning 3-dimensional reality right before your very eyes.

There were two camps with these Magic Eye pictures – Those that could see the images and those that couldn’t. For those in the latter camp, they found it difficult…frustrating. In fact, it reminds me of how prospects often feel when Reframed to see a radically different picture of their own circumstances. They can really struggle at this stage…which can be very good!

A Different Picture of the Reframe
When considering Magic Eye art and comparing to the Reframe, there are some great parallels that may bring clarity to your understanding of what the Reframe does and how it feels to your prospect when they finally see what you want them to see. But first, a lesson on how to see the picture in this Magic Eye image above.

Viewing the Magic Eye Picture

There are two prescribed methods for seeing the picture in 3-D (i.e., A clipper ship in this case), although knowing you are looking for a clipper ship will not help as much as you think. Regardless of the method you choose, start by clicking the picture to enlarge and open in a separate tab of your browser.

Method 1: Relax your eyes and get real close to the screen as you stare at the picture. Don’t try to focus on the picture, but simply gaze through it in the same way that you do when you daydream. Begin to back away from the picture slowly after 5-10 seconds. You should start to notice your eyes feeling almost as if they are crossed as you move back, because the image will be out of focus. Once you are about 12″ away from your monitor, the hope is that the image will snap into view for you.  If not, be patient.

Method 2: This is the method I prefer. Position yourself approximately 12″ away from the image and look through the image, rather than at the image. For example, if there is a wall directly behind your monitor, look upon the image as if you were able to see through it like a window to the wall. This will relax your eyes and allow the magic to happen. Give it 5-10 seconds without blinking. One trick that helps me recognize when the image is about to snap into place is I slightly move my head from side to side (i.e., just an inch or two). If the image is still appearing flat, like a 2-D image, your side to side motion will reveal nothing. However, if your lateral movement starts to show some depth in the picture, it is about to happen for you.

For those that experienced the mysteries of the Magic Eye artwork for the first time, congratulations! It is truly amazing! For those that still can’t see it, practice. Most people fail to see the image because their natural tendency is to focus on the detail of the flat image itself. It will come once you start to learn the skill of looking through the picture.

Similarities between Magic Eye and the Reframe
What I love about this illustration of the Reframe is how analogous it is to conversations with prospects. From our perspective, having been trained for what to look for in our prospect’s circumstances, we see things more clearly…more deeply than they are able to see.

We may even be inclined to get frustrated ourselves because what is so clear and obvious to us, our prospects just can’t see in the same way. It is as if they are staring at the surface of the Magic Eye picture and all they can see are repeating patterns. But seeing the patterns alone will not move them off the status quo. It is deeper than that. See the similarities to a Reframe?

One Final Note about Reframes….
Being able to properly Reframe a customer is important, but it is not the goal. It is the entry point to getting deeper in conversations. If we don’t practice discipline in this area and recognize that fact, we can take a perfectly great insight and not move any further through the choreography.

Focusing on the insight alone is like staring at the surface of the Magic Eye picture. It is 2-D. Instead, look at the Reframe as looking through one stage to another…from how they have inaccurately seen their picture (Warmer) to the consequences of not changing their picture (Rational Drowning).

Here are a few tips to keep in mind:

  • Focusing on your insight puts you at the center of the story instead of the prospect
  • Instead, use the insight to focus on teaching prospects a new and different way to see their picture
  • Prospects will see the deeper picture at different times and in different ways; Be patient
  • Seeing the deeper picture for the first time requires discipline in looking at things differently
  • It is possible for a Reframe to be 2-D; This happens when you try to tell prospects what to see
  • Concentrate your Reframe instead on how to see for a 3-D experience they will never forget

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Filed under B2B, B2C, Challenger, Challenger Sale, Choreography, Commercial Insight, Commercial Teaching, Communication, Credibility, Emotional Impact, Experiential, Messaging, Process, Prospecting, Rational Drowning, Reframe, Sales (General), Sales Insights, Visual Sales, Warmer Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Implementing the Challenger Sale, Visually

March 2, 2013 7 Comments

Making a Powerful Impact, Visually

In January 2012, I was giving a keynote address on becoming a ‘Challenger’ to a room full of highly competent sales reps, who were self-described as Relationship Builders in their selling approach. In fact, this approach was reinforced by the whole organization as it had been centered around relationship building for more than three decades.

To create an impetus for changing what had been endorsed as the preferred selling approach (a.k.a., status quo) for decades, I had to create a constructive tension in a visually compelling way.

This post is aimed  at showing how I did so in a way that resonated with 5 different sales teams that didn’t know this was a problem.

Background: The Sales Team’s Profile
As aforementioned, the 5 various team types (i.e., B2B, B2C, B2I, 501(c)(3), and licensing/franchise sales), were comprised of highly competent professionals. Most of the team had tenure between 5-20 years and knew their customers, their issues and aspects about how the products, services and solutions would benefit customers more significantly than any competitive offering.

Due to a very unique, well-defined marketplace that is not very large, the relationships that had been formed over many years with customers were very strong. From the customer’s point of view, the reps were highly regarded. Furthermore, these reps were instrumental in taking market share from competitors year after year.

Why Change?
After a deep dive into the metrics, processes and behaviors, I saw an opportunity to go from good to great, especially after identifying that the intentional behaviors were not leading to predictable and repeatable results. As a side note, whenever I see leaders and/or teams that don’t have these 3 characteristics (intentionality, predictability and repeatability) in their performance, I see risk and ripe opportunities.

Additionally, having worked years ago with a 100 year-old company who mistakenly believed that relationships were key to their successful sales, I saw this as the Achilles heel, that not only would bite them, but already had some overlooked signs of performance drains.

Relationship Builders
When it comes to the Relationship Builder, statistically, this sales profile has the lowest probability of success for becoming high performers, particularly in a higher complexity sales environment. According to the Sales Executive Council’s research, only 4% of Relationship Builder’s are likely to be high performers in a complex sales environment, whereas the Challenger profile, at 54%, was very likely to succeed in a complex sales environment. (See Fig. 2.4 from the SEC below).

Challenger Sale Effectiveness

A Visual Case for Change
As with any change effort, it is never just one thing. There are many aspects to leading a successful change effort, much of which is not described in this post. That said, I wanted to share of one specific and practical way to illustrate your point in an experiential and visual way.

With the data shown above in Fig. 2.4, and my diagnosis of where these teams stood to make transformational improvements in their performance, I did the following. I made a life-size bar chart on the stage as the backdrop for my keynote address. I used stacks of the company’s products to make the representative bars for each respective sales type (i.e., One stack for the Relationship Builder, one for the Problem Solver, and so on for the Hard Worker, Lone Wolf and Challenger).

Each product represented 5% within the stacked bar . I took the organization’s most iconic product, which measured approximately 14 inches high in its package, and made the graph with the Relationship Builder profile at 4% on one end and the Challenger profile at 54% on the other end.

There were two aspects of the visual representation that made the effectiveness of each sales profile particularly hit home:

  1. First, the Challenger bar stood over 10 feet high, towering over me as I made my points
  2. Equally as stunning, was the Relationship Builder bar – The fact that I had to cut 20% of the product off the top to accurately represent 4%, since each product represented 5%, had a sobering effect

The stark contrast between the two ends of the life-sized bar chart not only was visually stunning, but resonated with each of the reps who recognized the gaps between what had been and what should be for them.

Challenger Profile Statistics

Life-size bar chart of Challenger statistics

The Results?
A year after The Challenger introduction and implementation, performance improved across all teams. Following are some stand out achievements from three different teams:

  • Team A had a 22% performance improvement from the year prior with all reps far exceeding quota, and within 1-2 points from one another
  • Team B sells registrations, of which post-sale cancellations are also expected. They used the Challenger approach to reduce cancellations, which led to the lowest cancellation rates they had ever seen
  • Team C had an individual from the team that went from being ranked dead last in performance, to consistently #1 or #2 for 6 months in a row by changing to Challenger behaviors

Reflections:
Many leaders wait until they see problems before they initiate a change effort. How about you?

  • Do you know what to look for?
  • If so, do you know what to do about it?
  • Are you challenging the status quo?
  • Does your team know which behaviors to be intentional about that lead to predictable, repeatable results?

An answer of “No” to any of the questions above can have dire consequences if not addressed. If that describes you, seek out a trusted resource, colleague or other business professional with a solid track record of improving performance in these areas.

If you would like to receive other insights on The Challenger Sale and how to get intentional, predictable, repeatable results from your team, follow my blog.

Filed under B2B, B2C, Challenger, Challenger Sale, Communication, Credibility, Emotional Impact, Experiential, Leadership (General), Messaging, Phone Sales, Presentation, Presentation Insights, Rational Drowning, Reframe, Sales (General), Sales Insights, Stories, Visual Sales, Warmer Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

Communicating with Impact

November 9, 2012 Leave a comment

Exercise in FutilityRecently, 2,500 Children’s Ministry Directors from around the country convened in Chicago to attend KidMin, a conference dedicated to their profession. I had the distinguished privilege of leading a workshop for an audience in which was far different from those I have traditionally worked with before.

Nevertheless, my objective was the same regardless of profession, topic, or other. My primary goal was to create dissatisfaction with the attendees’ status quo and compel a different way of thinking about and solving their issues.

This did not mean giving a compelling ‘speech’ or ‘presentation,’ but rather creating an impactful experience. This is often easier said than done.

“Experiencing the gravity of their problems is different from talking about the gravity of their problems!”

It is easy to stand up front and tell people about the problems they are experiencing. At best, you will earn credibility, but that is not enough to compel people to change. The status quo can feel pretty comfortable to most people. Despite the gravity of a person’s problems, significant behavioral change rarely comes from the safety of a shared observation, but rather from their own experience. Experiencing the gravity of their problems is different from talking about the gravity of their problems.

Experiential vs. Presentation
In order to help these Directors better understand the gravity of what they were dealing with, and the impending consequences of not addressing the issues in a different way, I needed to create a constructive tension between their current status (Status Quo) and where they were aiming to be.

Therefore, I created an experience that would help the attendees ‘feel’ the impact of the problem rather than tell them about the impact. The experience was as follows.

Creating the Experience
When we went to our breakout session, I organized people into smaller groups giving each group five different sized boulders (larger than a softball, but smaller than a bowling ball).

The first part of the exercise was to discuss within their group the biggest issues they were all facing. They would then agree on the top 5 issues and use a marker to write their biggest problem on the biggest boulder, using a word that best described the issue they were facing. Then they would do the same with the 2nd through 5th issue on each respective boulder.

As we reconvened, I selected one volunteer to come to the front to serve as our representative Director. We loaded a backpack full of the five boulders, identifying each one as they went into the pack. Then I had her put the backpack on and describe the immediate impact. She shared that it was heavy, but she was okay for the moment. A term for what she was experiencing, coined by the Corporate Executive Board (CEB), would be Rational Drowning.

I went on to talk with her about how she dealt with each of these issues on a daily basis and the impact this had in shifting her focus from where she was aiming to take her ministry, compared to the urgent focus of trying to solve the problems (i.e., The boulders in her backpack). During our discussion, she shifted her weight and adjusted the pack due to the weight. Here I used the physical impact to lead to her Emotional Impact, another CEB term.

Standing on stage, she described [through tears] that she was incapable of solving those issues. They were too overwhelming for her to handle all at once. She also realized that these issues were lessening her effectiveness with her children in the ministry as well as supporting her volunteers. you could have heard a pin drop from the other attendees, because in large part, this was their story too.

The Moral of the Story
As you can imagine, there is a lot more to this story and what we unpacked in our sessions together at the convention. But the point of this article is merely to call out the importance of what we communicate and how.

As I mentioned at the beginning, I could have easily stood up front and ‘presented’ the scenario by talking about it. Heads would have nodded in agreement that the problems are real, and “Yes, I should do something about it,” but few would leave the convention changed, just inspired…or motivated. But we know where that leads.

Before I could talk with them about ‘Solutions,’ I had to effectively communicate in a way that would compel a change in their behaviors, away from the comfort of the status quo.

For those whose business requires communication with others (e.g., Sales, Marketing, Business, Ministry, etc.), consider creating experiences that draw people into the center of their own story.

In CEB’s Challenger model, this would be the process of leading them from Rational Drowning, where they recognize the story (with a sense of distance), into Emotional Impact in which they recognize it is their story. It is at this point where change begins to occur.

I would love to hear your stories of how you have created experiences to deepen the message you were communicating.

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Filed under Business (General), Business Insights, Challenger, Challenger Sale, Communication, Credibility, Emotional Impact, Experiential, Leadership (General), Leadership Insights, Messaging, Presentation, Presentation Insights, Rational Drowning, Stories, Visual Sales Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

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