Friday, Apr 8 2016 8:30AM to 11:00AM

Monthly BIG Ideas Exchange

Friday, April 8, 2016

Location: Goodmortgage.com, 3325 South Tryon Street, 28217

http://www.goodmortgage.com/directions/

8:30 am to 9:00 am Continental breakfast and networking
9:00 am to 11:00 am Book Discussion

Free to Members and Guests of BIG: RSVP to terry@bigcouncil.com or register below.

Book: "The Challenger Customer: "Selling to the Hidden Influencer who can multiply your results" by Brent Adamson, Matthew Dixon, Pat Spenner, Nick Toman

Check it out here:   http://www.amazon.com/The-Challenger-Customer-Influencer-Multiply/dp/1591848156

Overview:

Four years ago, the bestselling authors of The Challenger Sale overturned decades of conventional wisdom with a bold new approach to sales. Now their latest research reveals something even more surprising: Being a Challenger seller isn’t enough. Your success or failure also depends on who you challenge.

Picture your ideal customer: friendly, eager to meet, ready to coach you through the sale and champion your products and services across the organization. It turns out that’s the last person you need.

Most marketing and sales teams go after low-hanging fruit: buyers who are eager and have clearly articulated needs. That’s simply human nature; it’s much easier to build a relationship with someone who always makes time for you, engages with your content, and listens attentively. But according to brand-new CEB research—based on data from thousands of B2B marketers, sellers, and buyers around the world—the highest-performing teams focus their time on potential customers who are far more skeptical, far less interested in meeting, and ultimately agnostic as to who wins the deal. How could this be?

The authors of The Challenger Customer reveal that high-performing B2B teams grasp something that their average-performing peers don’t: Now that big, complex deals increasingly require consensus among a wide range of players across the organization, the limiting factor is rarely the salesperson’s inability to get an individual stakeholder to agree to a solution. More often it’s that the stakeholders inside the company can’t even agree with one another about what the problem is.

It turns out only a very specific type of customer stakeholder has the credibility, persuasive skill, and will to effectively challenge his or her colleagues to pursue anything more ambitious than the status quo. These customers get deals to the finish line far more often than friendlier stakeholders who seem so receptive at first. In other words, Challenger sellers do best when they target Challenger customers.

The Challenger Customer unveils research-based tools that will help you distinguish the "Talkers" from the "Mobilizers" in any organization. It also provides a blueprint for finding them, engaging them with disruptive insight, and equipping them to effectively challenge their own organization. 

This engaging discussion will be facilitated by Chris Elmore, AvidXchange, and adjunct professor for entrepreneurship at UNC Charlotte.

As a reminder, you don't have to read the book to attend! Most do not, and we always have a very engaging discussion!

During this roundtable we'll:

· share our own experiences in this area in our businesses
· share best practices from our own personal experience or from industry thought leaders
· share ideas on how to improve the area within our businesses to fuel growth

Note: We are looking for people to facilitate book discussions for Oct and Dec of 2016 and full year 2017, so please don’t hesitate to contact me if there is a book that you’re passionate about and would like to share with the group. The meetings take place the second Friday of every month. Thanks!