On Being a Challenger

On Being a Challenger.

When you approach your customers, your partners and your world are you a challenger?  Sure, you’re a hard worker and you’re smart and interested in the customer’s success but do you challenge them.  This is an important question because it turns out that when you challenge you add value.

Some of the most interesting and counter intuitive business research over the past few years was done by the Corporate Executive Board.  They took all sales people and sorted them into 5 basic types.

Some of the types will be familiar to you.  The “Relationship” sales person who does the deals on the golf course, the hard-workers who rigorously follow up and the customer advocates who will do anything the customer says are a few.

The big news was a type of sales person that they called ‘the challenger’ type.  This type of sales person doesn’t just go along with what the customer wants.  This type of sales person challenges the customer to do things differently and better.

The interesting discovery was that these were consistently the most successful sales people.  They pushed their customers to move out of comfort zones and in doing so added value.  When there is more added value there follows an exchange of value and the challenger had higher value interactions.

What is our take away as business leaders?  Is it that we should just be obstinate and challenging in our business interactions?  No, of course not.  The challenges here were value added in the sense that they forced a partner to look at an opportunity from a different angle.

The first take away is that whether in sales or any other value added interaction you need to bring value to the table.  These challengers were able to challenge because they had well-studied and prepared information.  They were collecting industry best practices and bringing those with them to these interactions.

They were life-long learners who used their learning to add value to their relationships by challenging.

The second take away is that in order to challenge you need to have confidence in your positions and your abilities.  You need to cultivate an emotionally detached inner game.  Telling your business partners, the people who pay your bills, that they are wrong and that they need to change is uncomfortable at best and terrifying for the unprepared.

If you are to be a challenger you need to be comfortable in your own skin and be willing to navigate some discomfort to bring your partners to higher levels of value.

The final take away is for the customer on the other side of the table.  If you have a business partner who is challenging you, take the time to see if there is value in the challenge.  Are they trying to goad you out of your comfort zone to a place of higher value?

You can expand this research to all the interactions in your life.  This issue is 90% of us are not comfortable with being challenged or being the challenger.

Most people shy away from uncomfortable interactions.  But these are the interactions that add the most value.  These are the step-change interactions and the game changers.

You need to cultivate the ability to step aside mentally during the interaction and assess what it going on.  What typically happens is that you will start to feel uncomfortable and your dinosaur brain will want to fight or flight.  Your knee jerk reaction is that discomfort is bad so I need to find a way out either by running away (giving in), hiding (withdrawing) or getting angry (fighting).

You need to engage your big brain to step in and assess the situation instead.  “Hey! I’m feeling uncomfortable! This must be an opportunity!”  What can I learn?  How can I change the game?  Where is the value?

Next time you find yourself in an uncomfortable interaction look for the opportunity.

Don’t be afraid of challenge.  Where there is a positive challenge there lies a higher value for all partners in the interaction.