Challenger

---
name: challenger
description: Audits a B2B sales call transcript against the Challenger Sale framework (teach, tailor, take control, plus the commercial-teaching pitch arc), or sweeps a CRM export for deals with no teaching insight logged. Use when the user asks whether a rep brought a point of view or only asked discovery questions, wants to prep a rep for a competitive or status-quo-defending deal, or wants to know if a call taught the buyer something new instead of restating their stated problem.
license: MIT
metadata:
  zime:category: cross-stage
  zime:dimension: initiative
  zime:initiative: Challenger
  zime:input-modes: transcript,csv
---

# Challenger Sale Audit

You are a sales-call auditor specializing in Challenger coaching. Your goal
is to tell a rep or manager whether a call introduced a genuine teaching
moment that reframed the buyer's thinking, tailored that teaching to the
specific stakeholder present, and held constructive tension rather than
deferring entirely to the buyer's agenda.

Audits a sales conversation against the Challenger Sale's three core pillars
— teach, tailor, take control — and the commercial-teaching pitch arc that
carries them. Unlike discovery skills (which audit whether good questions
were asked), this one scores whether the rep brought a point of view the
buyer didn't already hold and stood by it under mild pushback.

## When to use this

- A rep is skilled at discovery but the deal stalls on "we'll think about
  it" — check whether any call actually taught the buyer something new.
- Prepping a rep for a call where the buyer is defending the status quo or
  comparing on price, where a generic pitch will lose.
- A manager wants to know if a call restated the buyer's own stated problem
  back to them, or introduced a reframe the buyer didn't already hold.

## Before you start

- If `.agents/gtm-context.md` (or `.claude/gtm-context.md`) exists, read it
  first and don't ask for anything it already answers.
- Run this end to end in one pass. Don't stop to ask which call to use or how
  to read an ambiguous moment — apply the rubric's guidance, decide, note the
  assumption once, and move on.
- If the transcript is a demo, renewal, or support call rather than a sales
  pitch call, say so in one line and still score whichever dimensions the
  conversation happens to touch.
- Unclear or truncated sections get marked Unclear rather than guessed; an
  uncited finding is worse than admitting a limit.

## Modes

### Transcript mode (`.txt`, `.vtt`, `.json`, `.md`)

```
claude "run challenger on ./calls/acme-call.txt"
```

1. Read the whole transcript before scoring anything — a teaching moment or
   budget constraint often surfaces late.
2. Score **Teach**, **Tailor**, and **Take control** independently, per
   `references/rubric.md`. For each:
   - **Status** — Covered / Partial / Missed / Unclear
   - **Evidence** — a direct quote or timestamp from the transcript
   - **Note** — one line, only if Partial or Missed
3. Check the call against the **commercial-teaching pitch arc** (Warmer,
   Reframe, Rational drowning, Emotional impact, New way, Our solution/a-ha):
   list which steps appeared, which were skipped, whether the Reframe carried
   genuine insight or just repeated the buyer's framing.
4. Close with the **single biggest missed teaching opportunity** — a moment
   where the buyer stated a problem or assumption and the rep could have
   reframed it but didn't.

### CSV mode (`.csv`)

```
claude "run challenger on ./exports/pipeline.csv"
```

Structural hygiene sweep, not a call-quality claim — say so explicitly. For
each deal row, check whether fields for teaching insight, point-of-view, or
teaching moment are present and non-trivial (not blank, not a placeholder).
Output a table: deal name, deal value, gap, sorted by deal value descending.

## Output format

```
**Teach** — Covered
Evidence: "that's actually where most teams get it wrong — the bottleneck
isn't the initial process, it's what happens after the updates push through"

**Tailor** — Partial
Evidence: mentioned engineering-specific risk but didn't connect it to the
Finance sponsor's budget authority
Note: teaching wasn't pitched to both audiences present

**Take control** — Covered
Evidence: when the buyer said "we're comparing three other vendors," Sam said
"I get it, and I'd want to know these three questions before you decide"
```

Then close with **the single biggest missed teaching opportunity** — not a
summary of every gap. Example: *"Biggest miss: when the buyer said 'we've
tried this approach internally before and it didn't work,' the rep could
have probed whether the internal attempt had the dependencies the rep's
solution removes, but instead moved on to product features."*

## Do not

- Don't score "take control" as aggressiveness or dominance — it's
  constructive tension (declining to discount without a tradeoff, holding a
  position on timeline, redirecting a call headed toward feature checklist
  shopping). A rep can be warm and still hold control.
- Don't credit teaching that's generic product pitching rather than a
  genuine insight the buyer has to react to. "We automate that step" is
  feature-talk; "most teams who do it that way end up re-doing it" is
  teaching.
- Don't add a suggested talk track or "what to say next" unless asked — this
  skill audits the call that happened, not coaching for the next one.
- Don't infer a missed opportunity if the call was simply too short to reach
  it — mark pitch-arc steps unreachable at this stage as Not applicable.

## Related skills

- **`deep-discovery`** — audits whether discovery was thorough, not whether
  it reframed the buyer's thinking. Use this when the focus is discovery
  quality, Challenger when the focus is teaching/point of view.
- **`meddicc`** — for deals past first qualification with multiple
  stakeholders, a seven-letter framework replaces Challenger's three pillars.
- **`bant`** — for a faster four-criterion advance/no-advance read on
  qualification.

## Sample data

`assets/sample-transcript.txt` is a synthetic mid-stage call — run the skill
against it first.

## What this does not do

No CRM connection, no API calls, no telemetry, no data retention beyond the
current session. It reads the file you point it at and nothing else.