Happy Wisdom Wednesday, everyone. So the book of the week this week is The Challenger Sale by Brent Adamson and Matthew Dixon. Now, many of you remember this classic book that I reviewed not too long ago.
And for those senior salespeople, you definitely know this book, which is Spin Selling by Neil Rachman. This is a classic, right? And Neil Rachman endorsed this book and said that every few decades or so, the way we do sales, is interrupted by a real breakthrough.
And he says that this book is definitely one of those things. So that caught my attention a few years ago. Now, many of you haven't read this book.
It's okay, I'm gonna get you caught up, but definitely go out and buy it. So what is the Challenger Sale about? So Matt and Brent, they work at a place called CEB Insights.
It's a big advisory company. They do a lot of research and corporate research. And so they spent thousands and thousands of hours and interviewed thousands of salespeople.
to get the insights as to what makes a great salesperson, like who rises above all. Now, what we're most used to, especially in the medical device industry, is the relationship salesperson, which makes about 21% of top-performing salespeople. The relationship type is the type of person who goes into, let's say, a business. Everybody knows them. They know everybody by name.
They're very eager to waste their time doing whatever the customer wants. You know, they have a good relationship with people. And a lot of times we hire salespeople based on that. But with the way business is changing, not only in healthcare, but all industries, we're moving away from that because guess what? Customers don't care about having a friendship with the people they do business with.
If that happens, that's great. But they're looking to do business with people. And more importantly, they're looking to learn something.
Now, they did a remarkable study where they checked brand loyalty when it came to... product, company, and service. And they found that this one company had really great product in the customer's eyes.
The customers rated it as superior service and a very well-respected brand. But loyalty to this company was very low. And they went back and asked these customers, why did you indicate that?
If all these things are good, why is your loyalty to this company down? And they said, well, that's because the competition also has... a really good product and really good service and a really well-known brand. So how do you differentiate yourself? Well, that's where the challenger sale comes in.
And the challenger salesperson is the type of person that doesn't just go in and debate with the customer, but more importantly, they act on the level as a peer with a customer. They're able to sit down and have a conversation to challenge the status quo, the presumptions that they have today and help them move to a better place to solve their current needs. problems.
Now, the challenger salesman, and I'll put the book down for a second, they really come up and make up three areas. One, they're able to teach specifically to that customer, right? And they're able to teach them something new.
This is a big thing to customers that was very important, that they're able to learn. The second thing is, of course, tailoring the message. You don't just show up and throw up your elevator pitch to every single person. You have to understand what is important to this one specific customer. What's the pain and desire?
Are you speaking to somebody who's going to be using the product directly, like in the cases of medical devices, a surgeon or a physician? Or are you speaking to somebody who is not going to use a product, but are going to see the effects of it, like the CEO, the CFO of the hospital, right? And the last part is that they're able to take control and guide the conversation.
They don't just show up and present an elevator pitch, but they guide the conversation. And more importantly, when they're hit with a little bit of resistance from a customer, They're able to challenge them and guide them through. And I want to focus on a framework, in my opinion, one of the most important parts, especially in medical devices, which is this framework and how do you teach?
What's the framework you use to teach a customer something new and give them a new perspective? Okay, so I'm going to walk you through. Now, on the X and Y axis, this is the level of emotion.
This is going to be the status quo right here. This dotted line, this is like normal emotion. Positive emotions are high. So this is high up.
And then bad and negative emotions, this is down below. All right. So first, we start off with a warmer, right?
Inquiring about what it is that they're trying to solve. Warming up the conversation to understand their perspective. And more importantly, share yours based on what you've been able to research and learn from other customers. Then, positive emotion, you have a reframe, right?
You take the problem and you reframe it. So let's just say in the case of surgery, Someone's trying to do surgery and they say yeah, these are the you know This is the parts of the surgery surgery takes about two hours to do we have 20 steps So what if you reframed it and said, well, doctor, what if I told you you can do that same surgery, but in 15 steps? That's a reframe, right?
And the reason why that's a positive emotion, I'm going to go here to Jim Davey's book. Jim Davey is a psychologist. He wrote this book called Riveted.
I'll review this book one day. It has six principles on what gets people psychologically riveted. One of those things is novelty.
If you look at any of the psychology books that I end up reviewing or any psychology texts, Novelty is something that immediately brings up alertness, right? It's not just happiness, but it's a high state of emotion. Okay?
We're biologically wired for that. So that's the reframe. But then of course you're going to hit a wall and they're going to challenge you on that.
And that's where you get to rational drowning. I think in healthcare this is really important and rational drowning. What that means is starting to talk more specifically about the problem, right? To illuminate, you know, how how difficult it is, how inconvenient it is, to amplify it, right?
And you also, that's where you can use studies. Let's say your company doesn't have a whole lot of research on your product just yet. This is where you can point to studies that show specific areas that are done in medicine in terms of clinical technique that your product has as a feature that have improved outcomes, for example. That's just a small example of that.
So you use the rational drowning to start unpacking this, right? And giving the, you know, the rational brain what it wants. We make decisions based on emotions, but we start to, you know, use the logical and rational side to defend ourselves.
Like, oh, we need more proof, we need more studies, right? Which, that's perfectly fine, and that's where you use the rational drowning. And then, this is where you take them a little deeper into the hole here, and that's the emotional impact.
Which is you really start to uncover the pain points of that thing. So it's not just that the procedure is longer, right? You have to understand why is that a pain point for them. So say, you know, you ask them things like, you know, how has this procedure impacted your ability to do other surgeries and maybe see more patients, right? You know, how has this prevented you from progressing the way you want in your career?
Whatever kind of goal the customer might have, medical devices or anything else, right? You take them down. So you start with a rational drowning, which is the logical side of the problem. But as you do that, you start to uncover the pains that they need, that they have, right?
That's the kind of thing that gets a customer to move forward, to be open to a new way of doing things. And that's when you bring them back up with the value proposition, not of your product, but of the new way of doing things, right? This idea of, let's say, in the example I gave you of doing surgery in 15 steps instead of 20, you say, well, if you eliminated... These areas of the procedure right and you decrease this much amount of time Here's how it's gonna benefit the patient right shorter time in the OR right less bleeding less anesthesia Hopefully a faster recovery for the hospital.
You're gonna have better operating efficiencies for the hospital, right? If you have a shorter case time, maybe you'll be able to do two cases that day You'll be able to help patients sooner So instead of one patient having to wait a full day to see you to have that surgery You can get two done in a day, right? And more importantly, your team's going to be a lot more efficient.
They're going to be happier, right? So that's the new way of doing it. You're focusing on the impact and the effect, the result.
That's the thing that people buy. And then finally, and this is again, this is where the novelty comes in. That's where you can talk about your solution, how it fits in that worldview. Because throughout this period, you've gathered information.
You're not jumping based on assumptions. You're gathering information based on when you reframe, when you do the rational drowning, you're uncovering the pains, desires, and the words specifically that they're using to describe them, which you will use when you present your solution. And part of your solution, you'll talk about the implementation plan, what that'll be like, and you'll be honest with them.
One of the things in surgical robotics is that, you know, it went a lot farther when you talked about the implementation plan, let's say for a surgical robot, and you said that, you know, This does have a learning curve, doctor. It does take sometimes two to three weeks, but I'll put you in touch with other surgeons who got over that learning curve. They can give you their tips on how to do that. And they'll tell you how much better their patients are doing and how much more efficient their OR is from implementing this solution. So that's the Challenger Sale Framework.
Again, it's a fantastic book. I only gave you a little bit of a teaser because these reviews are meant to be a supplement, not a replacement to buying and reading the book. So- support the authors buy this book for your team you're gonna love it because they have a lot of i know sales people like these a lot of nice pictures and diagrams hey i like that as well too so that's the book of the week happy wisdom wednesday and as always i'll see you next week