The Challenger Story

We challenge conventional thinking to unlock growth and enable an uncommon customer experience.

Challenger is dedicated to driving exceptional growth by changing behaviors in Sales, Marketing and Service teams. Our commercial transformation programs, including message creation, skill development and implementation support, have provided performance improvements and significant financial results to hundreds of clients around the world.

Each program is supported by ongoing research and backed by our best-selling books The Challenger Sale,The Challenger Customer and The Effortless Experience.

OUR STORY

Our History

  • Shifting the Loyalty Curve

    A new stream of research from our Marketing Practice reveals counterintuitive truths about what B2B customers value most when evaluating supplier purchases. As it turns out, the sales experience itself is the strongest predictor of customer engagement and loyalty.

    2008

  • Low Effort / High Performance

    Engineering the Low Effort Service Experience makes waves in the customer service industry.  Meanwhile, our Sales Practice is busy debuting ‘Replicating the New High Performer’, where sales leaders are officially introduced to the “Challenger” seller profile – the only one of five distinct seller profiles that consistently delivers high performance.

    2009

  • The Newly Empowered Customer

    While our Sales Practice is advising CSOs on how to identify Challenger sellers, the Marketing Practice discovers a new trend in customer purchase behavior: delayed engagement with suppliers. It is revealed that customers now wait until they are, on average, 57% of the way through the purchase process to engage with supplier sales reps.

    2010

  • One Book Changes Professional Selling Forever

    The Challenger Sale hits the shelves and offers sales leaders a new playbook for delivering distinctive purchase experiences that drive higher levels of customer loyalty and greater growth. Professor Neil Rackham, author of SPIN Selling and the Foreword of the book, sees Challenger as: “The most importance advance in selling for many years”.

    2011

  • The End of Solution Sales

    Harvard Business Review publishes “The End of Solution Sales”, a provocative article building on the insights revealed in The Challenger Sale, which details the important commercial strategy shift organizations must execute if they’re going to succeed in an increasingly complex selling environment.

    2012

  • The Effortless Experience

    We take our never-ending search for counter-intuitive truth to the world of customer service and turn conventional wisdom on its head with The Effortless Experience. A fascinating journey deep inside the customer experience to reveal what really makes customers loyal – and disloyal.

    2013

  • Breaking Down Silos

    An important study, Delivering on Marketing’s Promise to Drive Sales, is published and pushes Marketing and Sales leaders to look across functional silos with an eye towards commercial integration as a key growth imperative in the new B2B landscape.

    2014

  • A Sequel That Doesn’t Disappoint

    The Challenger Customer, the encore to The Challenger Sale four years in the making, is published and delivers a reality check: simply being a Challenger seller isn’t enough. Your success or failure also depends on who you challenge. The book introduces important new insight into how to identify and engage customer Mobilizers, customer stakeholders particularly adept at driving organizational action and forging consensus in buying groups.

    2015

  • Gartner Acquires CEB

    CEB is acquired by Gartner, Inc., the world’s leading information technology research and advisory company. The integration of CEB’s Sales and Marketing Practices allows Gartner to become the Leading Global Research and Advisory company for all major functions in the enterprise.

    2016

  • Global Growth

    The Sales and Marketing Solutions business continues to grow, implementing Challenger across more teams, companies, and countries than ever before. The groundbreaking research continues as well, as we dive deeper into topics like Accelerating Digital Marketing Proficiency and Driving Growth through Smarter Account Management. 

    2017

  • Acquisition

    Challenger becomes its own company, owned by Marlin Equity. Driven by our mission to empower people and drive growth, and backed by continuous research, we are the global leader in training and consulting to win today’s complex sale.

    2018

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Our Locations:
A global network of offices serving clients in over 50 countries

Our Customers

See what our customers have to say

“The Challenger Sale speaks to the core of how we’re engaging with our clients. We want our sales force to deliver insight and value, not sales pitches. That’s why our entire organization is being trained on the skills and behaviors that make Challengers successful. “

Kevin Warren, President US Client Operations Xerox

“Customers felt that I was bringing value and knowledge to their business.”

Professional Sales Representative, Kimberly-Clark
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