Developing sales people is one of the top three investment priorities for most commercial organizations. And we can understand why. As customer decision-making becomes more complex, they set a higher bar for the skills that they want to see from salespeople. And seller performance in these key skills is down by an average of 40%.

Challenger is the premier sales training, technology and consulting firm that supports the high-performing seller behavior that leads to successful B2B sales. Our approach is backed by years of ongoing quantitative research and based on the best-selling books The Challenger Sale and The Challenger Customer – the most recognized innovations in sales and marketing in the last 30 years.

 

Learning Delivery

Our sales training programs are designed with a holistic learning journey in mind. This involves a mix of learning modalities that are essential for deep learning and retention – and transformation. We engage different learning styles and activate multiple senses to deepen learning, and make it easier to remember and apply.

Instructor-Led Training

Instructor-led sessions and workshops are configured to your business, and built on sound learning principles blended with guided practice and application.

eLearning

We offer a host of on-demand professional sales courses on our Challenger Activation platform. These build foundational knowledge and opportunity to apply skills to active opportunities.

Hybrid Courses

Our blended learning sequences combine dynamic virtual content, deal-based exercises for real-world application, and virtual coaching with expert Challenger Advisors.

JUMP TO ALL COURSES

Featured Courses

CHALLENGER NEGOTIATIONS

The Challenger Negotiations sales training program is purpose-built to give B2B sales professionals a full-funnel strategy for managing negotiations.

CHALLENGER SELLING FOUNDATIONS

This professional sales training course helps sellers learn the skills high performers need to be successful, building their ability to Teach, Tailor, Take Control and manage Constructive Tension.

DEAL ACCELERATOR

More than just a sales training seminar, this program will help you accelerate pipeline opportunities and reinforce learning by applying Challenger principles using peer and expert facilitator support.

Sales Transformation Made Easy

 

Challenger Activation is a tech-enabled platform and service solution designed to support transformation around the Challenger approach.

 

WATCH THE VIDEO

Diagnostics

Diagnostics and assessments allow you to set baseline measurements, focus on the right metrics, and document success over time.

Advice

The Challenger team of consultants and advisors is always available to guide you and your team. We prescribe pathways and give answers to pressing questions as they arise.

Tools

Our on-demand suite of tools, frameworks and templates embed Challenger behaviors in your organization’s daily workflow.

eLearning

A robust eLearning library or sales training courses allows you to deliver a flexible, yet engaging, learning experience across your entire organization.

Coaching

A library of coaching-specific virtual sales coaching programs, tools, and exercises support managers in their critical role as Challenger coaches.

Events

Become part of the Challenger Connect community. Learn together with peers from other organizations in live and virtual events, and an invite-only online discussion forum.

Looking for Individual Training Courses?

We have partnered with ScholarSite to provide individual salespeople with the opportunity to learn the fundamentals of the Challenger approach directly from Matt Dixon (co-author of “The Challenger Sale”) and Ramsey Jay, Jr. (one of our most acclaimed Challenger Advisors) in a public cohort on the ScholarSite platform. Click here to learn more.

Find Your Course

To provide the ideal learning experience, Challenger training use a combination of digital learning, in-person (live or virtual) workshops, industry and sales model expertise and support resources for sales organizations. We make sure what your people learn is easy to understand and simple to apply.

Challenger Insight Design

Create the Commercial Insight You Need to Propel the Deal Forward.

Learning Outcomes
Leading with insights is a proven method to get your customers to take action with you. This sales training class will help you apply the Challenger Methodology to build the right insights. You’ll learn what a Commercial Insight is and how it’s different from other, less compelling types of information. You’ll also build that insight into a conversation framework that is particularly effective at shifting your customer’s mindset.

Challenger Marketing Foundations

Enhance Your Messaging and Marketing Content to Capture Attention and Create Demand.

Learning Outcomes
When sales and marketing teams work together, your organization is better positioned to win. Challenger Marketing Foundations helps your team apply a Challenger approach to marketing efforts in alignment with overall commercial goals. Participants will explore the components of Commercial Insight and how they are applied to construct a Content Roadmap. The Content Roadmap is the blueprint for content creation and campaigns. It enables a customer learning journey that changes customer perspective, aligns soundly with sales efforts, and uniquely favors your solutions.

Challenger Negotiations

Take Your Negotiation Skills to the Next Level.

Learning Outcomes
The Challenger™ Negotiations program is purpose-built to give B2B sales professionals a full-funnel strategy for managing negotiations. Participants learn to create value through each stage of the sales process by leveraging proven Challenger™ Selling skills as part of their negotiation strategy (“Sizing the Pie”) , then capturing this value using frameworks built specifically for B2B selling (“Protecting the Pie”).

Challenger Foundations: Challenge Yourself

Start Your Challenger Journey.

Learning Outcomes
The Challenger Approach has been proven to help sellers win even the most complex deal. This course will help you lay the foundation for becoming a Challenger seller, learning the fundamentals of our approach through practical tips and applicable resources. You’ll learn the key skills of a Challenger, focusing on Commercial Teaching and building Constructive Tension. You’ll also learn how to Tailor and Take Control of your customer conversations to drive action.

Challenger Deal Accelerator

Accelerate the Momentum of Your Sales Using Challenger Skills.

Learning Outcomes
Accelerate the velocity of your deals by applying Challenger skills to specific sales opportunities. You’ll learn how to apply Commercial Teaching to your accounts, refining and practicing the key skill of disrupting the conversation to upend the status quo. You’ll evaluate your current strategies and uncover fresh ideas to manage critical deals using best practices from the Challenger approach.

Commercial Teaching and the Sales Conversation

Refine Your Commercial Teaching Skills to Win.

Learning Outcomes
A powerful insight that disrupts a customer’s thinking can be the difference between a win and loss. A Challenger seller understands how to use Commercial Teaching and Insight to reframe a customer’s status quo and show the cost of inaction in the customer’s terms. This program focuses on these skills, refining and honing your ability to take control of the conversation to move towards the close.

Activating Customer Mobilizers

Create Success by Developing Stakeholders.

Learning Outcomes
Closing the deal means finding and engaging the right stakeholders to help you sell. This program helps sellers learn what to look for in stakeholders and how to take control of the process by commercially coaching the stakeholder most likely to take action.

Coaching to the Challenger

Deepen Understanding of Challenger Skills and Coach for Success

Learning Outcomes
This learning course helps managers identify effective Challenger behaviors across their sales teams and shows them how to prepare to coach across various learning styles and sales situations. Coaches will learn how to appraise their team against the Challenger Skills of Constructive Tension, Teaching, Tailoring and Taking Control, and personalize coaching approaches to each direct report’s situation and to specific Challenger skill opportunities.

Take your Challenger skills to the next level with our advanced learning options: Level Up Workshops. Instructor-led, small-group working sessions designed to help sellers identify and execute in the moments that matter across the sales cycle.​

Aligned to our TEMPO (TARGET, ENGAGEMENT, MANAGE, PLAN TO CLOSE, OPERATE & GROW) framework, your sellers will put their skills into action as they prepare for real-life situations using foundational Challenger principles.

Level Up: Prospecting

Aligns to TARGET

Learning Outcomes
Learn how to use research and industry trends to help you understand your buyers’ needs and prepare for real-life situations.

Level Up: Outreach

Aligns to ENGAGE

Learning Outcomes
Learn how to capture attention with cold outreach and get buyers take a meeting.

Level Up: Discovery

Aligns to ENGAGE

Learning Outcomes
Learn how to prepare powerful questions and requests that you can use in upcoming discovery calls.

Level Up: Demo

Aligns to ENGAGE

Learning Outcomes
Learn to develop a tailored outline with key talking points that help buyers link your solution to their outcomes.

Level Up: Business Case Building

Aligns to MANAGE

Learning Outcomes
Learn to identify and demonstrate the cost or risk of your buyers’ unresolved business issue.

Level Up: Group Meeting Facilitation

Aligns to MANAGE

Learning Outcomes
Learn how to facilitate your next group sales meeting and reach consensus.

Level Up: Objection Handling

Aligns to MANAGE

Learning Outcomes
Learn to anticipate and understand the root of buyer objections and manage it strategically by creating reaction statements for common objections in any stuck opportunity.

Level Up: Preparing for Negotiations

Aligns to PLAN TO CLOSE

Learning Outcomes
Learners will learn how understand the unstated pressures that impact negotiations and the ways to mitigate them.

Level Up: Urgency Drivers

Aligns to PLAN TO CLOSE

Learning Outcomes
Learn how to move stalled deals forward by creating urgency for your buyer to act by exploring the root cause of the hesitation and revisiting their pain point, demonstrating to your buyer that the cost of delay is greater than the cost of their current pain.

Level Up: Territory (Growth) Planning

Aligns to OPERATE & GROW

Learning Outcomes
Learn how to focus efforts across a wide range of opportunities by creating a comprehensive segment-based territory plan to prioritize and develop insights to drive growth in the highest potential accounts.

Looking for Individual Training Courses?

We have partnered with ScholarSite to provide individual salespeople with the opportunity to learn the fundamentals of the Challenger approach directly from Matt Dixon (co-author of “The Challenger Sale”) and Ramsey Jay, Jr. (one of our most acclaimed Challenger Advisors) in a public cohort on the ScholarSite platform. Click here to learn more.

What Our Clients Say

“Our sales force has embraced the Challenger Approach, which has enabled them to engage the customer in a Conversation Choreography comprised of Insight and thought leadership.  These impactful conversations have resulted in big wins around the globe.”

Michael Adley, Director, Global Sales Enablement, Ericsson

“The Challenger program has given us a way to provide even more focus in our commercial messaging and reduce the amount of projects where we have to negotiate on price alone. The program has allowed us to improve the capitalization on our R&D investment as we can better discuss our key differentiators.”

Gurdeep Sadera, Director of Sales Operations, Genetec

“Not only are we pleased with the training and support provided by Challenger, but they also provide an incredible follow-up survey and reinforcement experience that allows me to clearly articulate ROI to senior business leaders. We have seen a 13x return on our investment with Challenger. “

Steve Cannella, Financial Services Marketing Manager, Global Technology Company

“We went through virtual training with Challenger in March.  As a company that knows firsthand the common pitfalls of virtual demonstrations, we were thrilled with how our Challenger facilitator kept everybody engaged throughout the session.  Our team felt like we had just experienced the future of training in this virtual environment. ”

Tracey Gatland, Managing Director, GRAPHISOFT North America

“It was impressive how a well-prepared Challenger approach worked with this important customer which hadn’t considered us for several years. The team identified the right moment to attack, collaborated with the customer to resolve their issues, and finally closed the deal!”

Bernd Stenger, President, Heraeus Epurio

“When questioned about the increase in our scores, I shared that it’s all about having great people who now have great strategies.  With the Effortless Experience™ skills, we can insulate the customer from all of the back office noise.  You can trust your people to stand in that gap.”

Marian Favors Director, Customer Support, Karl STORZ

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

Professional Sales Representative, Kimberly-Clark

“It is hard to find programs that actually work and deliver on what they promised.  It is especially difficult in the “soft-skills” area where so much is dependent on the actual rep. This program makes that easier.”

Pablo Valcarcel, Associate Director, Customer Care – Americas, Lonza

“This investment in coaching, and the overall development of our people, has changed the culture of our call center. You can see it in the data and out on the floor every day in how we help customers.”

Jim LeMere Director, Northwestern Mutual

“What we hadn’t expected was the level of enthusiasm that would begin to permeate the call center well beyond the pilot group…the program has increased our center’s feedback culture, and has impacted our collaboration climate for the better. There is greater knowledge-sharing across the frontline and a greater sense of purpose in the work of serving the customer.”

Location Manager, Nuon

“We chose Challenger at a time when the industry is competitive, products are being commoditized, and buyers are looking to sellers for much more than product knowledge. Integrating it through Sales, Marketing, and Service helps us have a common understanding of how we approach our industry and has differentiated us. After our first full year with it, we’re even more excited for the future.”

Barry Swihart, Senior VP of Sales, Odysseyware

“What has stood out to us about Challenger, was the opportunity to learn and develop the skills at our chosen pace. This has been accomplished through the eLearning options for content that used to require 2 or 3 days in a classroom.  In addition, they’ve helped us pivot to virtual offerings of facilitator led sessions without any drop off in engagement or degradation of the learning experience.  The flexibility of the Challenger team to meet our team member needs and the needs of our business has been exceptional. “

Joe Berry, Chief Learning Officer, Pinnacol Assurance

“Challenger Selling has significantly contributed to our revenue streams from both new opportunities and additional business generated from existing customers. SAP’s global, unified rollout of Challenger to our sales organization and management was the key driver to delivering extensive customer impact.”

Rainer Stern, Global VP Sales Leadership Programs, SAP

“The Challenger Deal Accelerator was a truly engaging session that encouraged the team to look at their current pipeline from different angles with the Challenger approach. It was stimulating hard work, that challenged our thinking and led to some tough debates led by an expert Challenger Advisor. It was a key step in supporting our journey to continue sustaining and embedding Challenger skills within SICIT.”

Alessandro Paterniani, Chief Commercial Officer, SICIT

“The combination of virtual and onsite training has been helpful for our teams. The premises of Challenger training are critical components of any sales conversation.”

Head of Sales, Software Industry

“The Challenger approach has important foundations that exemplify how we at Standard Bank prioritise our clients and provide them with a value driven experience at every point.”

Standard Bank Representative

“Simply put, if you fully commit to the Challenger journey in both your sales and marketing strategy, you will see significantly improved sales performance.”

Gerry Romanelli, Chief Commercial Officer, Triose

“As a premium provider in our space, our service experience is a true opportunity to differentiate. We saw a 20% reduction in escalations, which means we are solving customer problems the first time around. In fact, our customer VOC reflects that our reps are proactively solving problems before they are a challenge for our customers.”

Randy Kobat, SVP Retail Solutions vAuto

“Watching our best & brightest embrace the techniques of Challenger to disrupt the Status Quo was rewarding as well as enlightening.”

Jennifer Caldarella, Managing Director, Willis Towers Watson

“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

MEET OUR ADVISORS

Challenger’s global advisor team is comprised of functional experts in Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service. Since 2013, our Advisors have completed over 15,000 training days in 58 countries across the world.

BLAIR GOULET

Specialist in Tech & Financial Services Sales

High-performance leader with proven success in start-up, rapid growth and turnaround organizations

TYRONE EDWARDS

Former Chief Sales Officer, Merck

25+ years managing and mentoring sales teams in emerging growth & Fortune 500 companies

OLIVIA LOCKWOOD

Executive Coach and Trainer

25+ years of sales and executive coaching with a focus on developing human potential

TONY ANTICOLE

Marketing & Sales Advisor

Highly-experienced coach with experience advising 100+ organizations on their Challenger Journey

CHRISTINA RICHTER

Certified Professional Coach and Sales Expert

Sales executive with 25+ years in BD, operations, training and sales management

Get In Touch