WTCS S3 | E11 2022 Year in Review

Episode hosts

Andee Harris

Chief Executive Officer

In this Episode 11, 2022 Year in Review, our new host, Andee Harris, CEO of Challenger recaps all of the top themes that disrupted the status quo of sales this year. Watch the top clips of each of our webinars to catch up on the content you missed or review the top tips from this season.

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by Challenger, Inc.

WTCS S3 | E10 Preparing for Negotiations

Episode hosts

Jen Allen

Chief Evangelist

Adam Maude

SVP Sales

In this Episode 10, Preparing for Negotiations, Jen Allen welcomes SVP of Sales at Challenger, Adam Maude to discuss the ways in which sellers can add value to negotiations and be prepared for curveballs to create win-win scenarios. In this episode, they walk through the 5 sources of “value leak” in negotiations and give tactical advice for how to approach these common curveballs.

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by Challenger, Inc.

Marketing Software | Sales Training

Revenue: $80+ million in funding

Employees: 400+

Client Challenge

Buyers have raised the bar for the experience they expect, and sellers need to catch up. When budgets are tight, deals heavily scrutinized, and objections real, sellers must get the sales experience right, to buyer’s satisfaction, or deals won’t happen. This is the need that Integrate recognized.

Solution

Integrate started its transformation effort on the right foot — investing time and critical thinking to build a development roadmap. It had three parts:

1. Objectives (clarity and vision on what to accomplish)
2. Methodology (a proven go-to-market and people development approach)
3. Toolset (the right tools for each required step)

The company then began executing the roadmap, integrating its objectives, methodology, and toolset.

Step 1: Build commercial messages: Integrate and Challenger worked together to redesign the company’s commercial choreography (or sales message) and build related content to support sales conversations.

Step 2: Develop fundamental skills: Integrate recognized the need to give sellers a fundamental skill set that aligned to the sales experience that most buyers look for. The company used Challenger’s set of virtual learning tools to develop these skills.

Step 3: Embed in workflow: Challenger partnered with sales enablement platform provider Showpad to provide Integrate sellers additional learning and resources. Sellers have direct access to relevant e-learning, tools, and message content in a system they use every day.

Step 4: Coach and test capability: Using Showpad Coach, Integrate developed specialized learning modules to help sellers learn and understand commercial messages and then practice delivering those messages using Showpad’s PitchIQ technology. Recorded videos of sellers presenting the commercial insight are shared with sales leaders who certify each individual’s ability to deliver the message effectively.

Step 5: Validate application: It’s one thing to certify a seller’s ability to deliver messages in a video practice environment. It’s another to observe sellers delivering the message in live customer conversations. Advances in conversation intelligence allow Integrate to confirm that sellers apply what they practice — and evaluate customers’ responses. This recorded video call data supports a continuous feedback loop between marketing and sales.

Step 6: Aggregate data and measure: Integrate can measure the full development process by hosting messages in Showpad, certifying a seller’s ability to deliver those messages using video-enabled practice tools, capturing real call application of skills using conversation intelligence, and tying it all to account records in the CRM. This allows the company to connect individual development investments (training and practice) to business outcomes and align to all four Kirkpatrick Method steps.

 

The Kirkpatrick Method is widely regarded as the most complete model for evaluating learning and development outcomes. First used in the 1950s and published in Don Kirkpatrick’s 1975 book, Evaluating Training Programs, this method defines four levels of learning evaluation.

Level 1, Reaction: Measures the opinion of the learning experience directly after an event or course completion, typically gathered via feedback forms. Integrate tracks the completion of Challenger training modules and completion of specialized modules around commercial insight. The company solicits feedback from participants on the quality of the learning experience.

Level 2, Learning: Measures the degree to which participants acquired the knowledge, skills, and attitudes the event or course was designed to provide. Challenger learning modules have built-in gamification and testing, which help to validate knowledge transfer. The use of a video-based practice tool (Showpad PitchIQ) provides additional data on how well sellers understand commercial messages and trained skills.

Level 3, Behavior: Measures the degree to which applied behavior changes as a result of learning and development. Both the Showpad PitchIQ tool and a conversation intelligence tool help Integrate validate sellers’ ability to present the message and apply the skills — both in a practice environment and in live sales conversations. Managers review and validate skill application.

Level 4, Results: Measures the tangible results of the development program on sales performance metrics (pipeline growth, average deal size, conversion rate, and cycle time) and the program’s return on investment. By collecting all the data from practice to application and feeding it into the CRM, Integrate can measure performance against the program’s predictive and outcome metrics.

Results:

Challenger messages provided to sellers on Integrate’s instance of Showpad Content are among the top 5% of all used content on the platform. Overall content views are up 152%. The average seller time spent on Challenger insight messages is 2X the time previously spent on content.

It’s clear that Challenger commercial insight is content that sellers want to use and find valuable. The program has put Challenger strategy right at sellers’ fingertips, giving them the resources they need to perform better and to give customers the sales experience they are looking for.

The change in message and behavior is also leading to a more powerful sales experience and to impressive performance for the business. Integrate has seen a 23% increase in the number of deals sold over 2019. A recent product launch with commercial insight messaging led to a 462% increase in deals sold with that product.

Not only is Integrate seeing greater deal volume in an environment where many companies struggle, but the company also has the proven messaging, skill, and commercial strategy needed for new products to explode in the market.

Before Challenger

  • Integrate’s Demand Cloud is a scalable solution that B2B marketing organizations like Red Hat, Adobe, SFDC Akamai, Splunk, and ServiceNow rely on to unify disconnected, disparate demand gen channels, processes, data, programs, and tools.

After Challenger

  • Top B2B marketing teams are taking back their time and making their paid media and events budgets go much further with improved lead-to-pipeline conversion numbers. What others must realize is this effort starts with connecting, then streamlining, then standardizing top-funnel paid media and events channels, programs, data, sources, processes, and systems. It’s a change in mindset and a commitment to transform for bigger, better results.

by Challenger, Inc.

WTCS S3 | E9 Creating a Mutual Close Plan

Episode hosts

Jen Allen

Chief Evangelist

Guests:

Dan Flood

VP, Major Accounts Management, Challenger

Alex Schrager

VP, Sales, Challenger

In this Episode 9, Creating a Mutual Close Plan, our host and Chief Evangelist Jen Allen welcomes Dan Flood and Alex Schrager, two of Challenger’s sales leaders. The three experts discuss how to map out the strategy to successfully work with and for your customer on the final steps toward closure of a deal.

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by Challenger, Inc.

WTCS S3 | E8 Driving Urgency for Change

Episode hosts

Jen Allen

Chief Evangelist

Guest:

Matt Dixon

Co-Author, The Challenger Sale and The JOLT Effect

In this Episode 8, Driving Urgency for Change, our host and Chief Evangelist Jen Allen welcomes Matt Dixon, co-author of The Challenger Sale. They discuss what happens when a deal falls apart in the mid to late stage and the impact that has on an individual salespersons’ productivity and the cumulative effect across the organization. Learn how to motivate action in the late stages of an opportunity, especially when progress stalls.

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by Challenger, Inc.

WTCS S3 | E6 Turning Interest into Advocacy

Episode hosts

Jen Allen

Chief Evangelist

In Episode 6, Turning Interest into Advocacy, our host and Chief Evangelist Jen Allen starts by outlining a very familiar scenario to the audience: the experience of having a prospect who was extremely interested at first, says all the right things during the process, and still ends up with the dreaded “no-decision” or “call me back next year.” This episode is not about how to eliminate that completely, but how to decrease frequency by engaging and educating that stakeholder to promote your offerings within the broader buying group.

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by Challenger, Inc.

WTCS S3 | E7 Resolving Buying Group Conflict

Episode hosts

Jen Allen

Chief Evangelist

In Episode 7, Resolving Buying Group Conflict, our host and Chief Evangelist Jen Allen speaks to a core topic that Challenger has been researching for more than a decade: group consensus and group buying. In 2015, research showed there was an average of 5.4 customer stakeholders involved in a buying decision; in 2020, that number jumped to 11.2. Today’s episode explores how to lead this ballooning group of stakeholders through candid conversations about business problems to keep the deal moving.

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by Challenger, Inc.

WTCS S3 | E4 Opportunity Prioritization

Episode hosts

Jen Allen

Chief Evangelist

In Episode 4, Opportunity Prioritization, our host and Chief Evangelist Jen Allen focuses on sellers’ overreliance on traditional measures for opportunity prioritization. The more traditional tactics don’t take into account the emerging behavior of “no-decision” from customers. Learn how to prioritize the right pursuits and get comfortable disqualifying the wrong ones early and often.

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by Challenger, Inc.

2022 Pulse 6 Survey Results

Challenger conducts regular Pulse surveys to explore and examine seller perception, the state of sales and everything in between. We share our findings with the sales community to drive effective strategies and solutions.

In the Pulse 6 survey, we examine current sentiment in the sales industry and uncover a promising new approach to break through the noise: sales evangelism.

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by Challenger, Inc.

2021 Pulse 4 Survey Infographic

In the 4th Pulse Survey, we focus on the tactics sellers are using to create effectiveness messaging and pipeline.

Since April 2020, Challenger conducted a series of regular pulse surveys to get a feel for how the landscape was impacting sales, and sellers. In 2022, we continue this exploration into seller perception, the state of sales, and everything in between.

The fourth Challenger Pulse Survey of 2022 is focused on how sellers build their pipeline and messaging.

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by Challenger, Inc.