Trulia.com may be a great resource for staying up to date on real estate but did you know they also publish also a lot of general information applicable to any industry? Trulia’s Matt Dollinger recently posted this article, Challenge Your Salesforce – Change Their Mindset, and we thought it provided stellar insight relevant to any small business owner.
Key takeaways:
There are five types of sales reps / workers: Relationship Builders, Hard Workers, Lone Wolves, Reactive Problem Solvers, and Challengers. Each has distinctive characteristics.
For example, Relationship Builders develop strong personal and professional relationships and become customer advocates while Hard Workers go the extra mile and work hard to resolve tensions in a relationship. Lone Wolves break or bend the rules and Reactive Problem Solvers are highly reliable and detail-oriented. But it’s the Challenger that really stands out in terms of performance.
While most would think relationship builders take the cake in selling success, it’s the Challenger that develops an understanding of their customer’s business, helps the client think out of the box and takes control of the sales conversation.
According to research cited by Dollinger, ‘Challengers win because they push customers to think differently, using insight to create constructive tension in the sale whereas Relationship Builders focus on relieving tension by giving into the customer’s every demand.’
In sales these days, leadership trumps feel-good relationships when it comes to getting the deal done. So how does a manager support this mindset? Dollinger recommends reading The Challenger Sale by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson as a resource to tackle this question.
