Value Selling War Story #1: My Baptism into Value Selling (or, I was a Challenger Seller before 'The Challenger Sale' was Cool)

I debated on a title for this and had some options. I’ll save those for another time, baptism will do.

In fact, it’s perfect.

It was 1980 and I was a first year sales rep for Applied Data Research.

ADR was the first publicly traded software company, founded by Marty Goetz, holder of the first software patent and one of the great gentlemen of any time or industry. Marty was a visionary; he could also relate and make a poor, dumb sales guy like me feel valued. He was a firm believer in “right is right”. When ADR was a minuscule company, Marty successfully sued the IBM giant for monopolistic business practices and forced them to unbundle software they were giving away with their computers. In doing so, he gave birth to the software industry. Marty is the true father of the software industry; we all owe him a debt of gratitude.

Back to Value Selling in 1980. I had a meeting with Charles (real name), the Technical Services Manager of ITT North TSD in Gray, Tennessee. I was sitting alone in his office when he stormed in 15 minutes late and bellowed “what do you want???” I fumbled an introduction and was summarily dismissed along with my set of products as not being "state of the art”.

I was contemplating the wisdom of my career choice while trying to gracefully get the hell out of there when a distinguished gentleman walked into the office and introduced himself. The IBM salesman. It was 1980, and in those days the IBM salesman was king of the hill. In a brief conversation, I learned that the ITT location was planning to acquire a brand spanking new IBM 3033 computer, which would require them to exit their 370/158 lease 18 months early. The reason? They had 50 programmers and their current computer could only support 15 of them online at a time. I’m no finance wizard, but I knew that would be a $3-4M un-budgeted capital expense.

And I had a software solution called ROSCOE, thanks in part to a sharp product manager named Joe Allegra, and ROSCOE could support all 50 programmers on the existing computer.

I got out of there as fast as I could, found a pay phone and called my boss to validate my hypothesis and strategize the opportunity. Long story short, here's what happened: 

• I planned, practiced (and practiced and practiced) and executed a Challenger-style sales script to get their attention,

• We performed some TAS moves long before Target Account Selling, validated our solution and fought off a furious assault by IBM, a formidable competitor, as well as Pansophic and Candle trying to protect their turf.

• I closed a deal equal to 40% of my annual quota in 60 days (worth 35K commission! in 1980 dollars, 100G+ today),

• We got 3 competitive replacements (ADR/ROSCOE over IBM's TSO/ISPF, ADR/Librarian over Pansophic's Panvalet and ADR/LOOK over Candle's Omegamon),

• I got to celebrate by having dinner with Charles (who got a promotion), the plant General Manager (who avoided an un-budgeted $6M capital expenditure…I underestimated the financial impact) and the plant GM’s boss, a SVP from ITT corporate, at Skoby’s Restaurant (a historic place, closed a few years ago) in Kingsport, TN.

Lessons:

1. It’s not what your stuff does; it’s what it does for the buyer.

2. Business outcomes trump technology.

3. Financials matter, it’s the language of business.

4. Sales reps who connect 1, 2 and 3 get to the "trusted advisor" status, and power to do the un-doable (shoot down an IBM mainframe sale!),

5. The fundamental principals undergirding The Challenger Sale, TAS, Hypothesis, MEDDIC and other high-performance selling methodologies have been around a long time. They worked then; they work now. The don't guarantee personalized customer value alignment.

6. Value Selling is not restricted to the top 10% of reps. You can do it, and so can your reps. I was the greenest of greenhorn sales reps.

7. Loose lips sink ships. What if the IBM rep and Charles didn’t discuss the new mainframe in front of me???

8. Take calculated risks; don’t let pride and ego stand in your way.

9. Practice, practice, practice. I spend several hours scripting, polishing and practicing in front of the motel mirror that night my ‘Challenger’ hypothesis for a phone call the next day.

10. There are finally enablement capabilities and technologies. Much more than when I was a greenhorn rep. You can do it; we can help.

Thanks for sharing this trip down memory lane. The principles of this story are as relevant as ever, perhaps more so today.

Good (value) selling...Jim

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jim Berryhill is Co-Founder and CEO of DecisionLink Corporation. Jim has extensive experience in sales and executive management, in roles from individual contributor to leading sales organizations with several hundred sales professionals and $1 billion in revenue.

One of a handful of sales executives who has carried a quota for 125 quarters for publicly traded companies in the tech industry, he is an ardent believer in customer aligned value selling. Jim founded DecisionLink to bring automation and systemic support to what should be a core business function for all B2B organizations.

“Every deal we work on is associated with a customer project that has a business case. We should not expect high performance in our sales organizations if we as sellers don’t understand that business case, and the economic value of our solutions.”