The challenger sale breaks the winning elements of this powerful approach into a set of teachable skills that can take even a top sales team to a new level of results delivery dan james former chief sales officer dupont this is a must read book for every sales professional. They challenge them matthew dixon brent adamson and their colleagues at ceb have studied the performance of thousands of sales reps worldwide and what they discovered may be the biggest shock to conventional sales wisdom in decades the challenger sale argues that classic relationship building is the wrong approach. The challenger sale is the first non fiction book by matthew dixon brent adamson and their colleagues at ceb inc the book was published on november 10 2011 by portfolio penguin in the text the book argues that relationship building is no longer the best sales method. The challenger sale is not a bad book especially when directed to the right audience but that is where i had trouble with it i picked it up as a general manager of a small business and found that although some of the ideas were good and the research interesting it was not very applicable in my situation