Be A Challeger, Not A Jerk w. Brent Adamson

This is the first of two episodes in which Justin McMenamy interviews Brent Adamson, acclaimed author of The Challenger Sale.   

Justin leads off the conversation by sharing how The Challenger Sale helped codify Precision Planting’s customer-education approach to sales and marketing, highlighting that concepts of the book permeated both the global growth strategy as well as employee recruiting and onboarding.  

Adamson goes on to describe his career transition from Michigan State German professor to sales researcher at CEB, framing his throughline as researching and teaching. They discuss wrestling through career identity uncertainty, relational and professional experimentation as a means of discovering one’s talents, and the mental-health benefits of exercise.  

Adamson explains Challenger as selling “change,” using an A-to-B model where influence requires breaking down the costly “A” (status quo) before building “B,” including spending the time and energy to empathize with others’ perspectives and long held beliefs.  

They define Challenger sellers vs. other seller types, stress adaptability across corporate cultures while also noting that cultural fit issues do exist and can require proactive changes.  The conversation closes by teasing the topics of the second episode of the conversation including Adamson’s more recent work, The Framemaking Sale.