For fourteen years the SEC has carefully tracked what distinguishes best-in-class sales excellence. In all those years and across all the various research we’ve conducted, a relatively precise set of standards has risen to the top.
Chief among 
these many standards is the degree to which sales teams effectively challenge their customers to think about their business in fundamentally new ways. That, we believe (and our extensive data tell us), is the best predictor of sales success.
To help our members assess just how well they truly challenge their customers, we’ve built a new tool: The Anatomy of a World-Class Challenger Selling Model. This tool helps management teams assess their current state of practice against what we have come to understand as best practice.
Here’s a glimpse into some of the criteria… see how your organizations stacks up:
To what degree do you strongly agree or strongly disagree with the following?
Criteria #1: Identify Your Unique Value Proposition
We can clearly state why customers should buy from us instead of our competitors.
Criteria #2: Drive Constructive Tension with Customers
We convey (productively) disruptive ideas throughout the buying process.
Criteria #3: Collaborate with Marketing
We have formal feedback loops to keep positioning and messages fresh and relevant to the market.
Did you strongly agree with at least 2 of the 3? Kudos if you do! You’re well on your way. But if you’re like most sales organizations, these are tough questions to answer, let alone agree or disagree with.
These are just a sample of 15 criteria we use to define World-Class Challenger Selling, but they provide a sense of how we’ve come to understand sales excellence and how we’re engaging with our broader membership.
We’d love your ideas on what you would expect to see on the ideal assessment of sales excellence. What criteria would you add to this mini-assessment?
SEC members, for more information on leading with insight, see our key findings here. Additionally, see our other Anatomy assessments, ranging on topics from sales operations to channel sales excellence.
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