Miller Heiman : The New Successful Large Account Management

The New Successful Large account Management is the third book in the Miller Heiman series of strategic selling. The focus is on the large customers which constitute more than 50% of the total revenue.

One of the main messages is how important it is in the new competitive environment to climb as high as possible on the Buy-Sell hierarchy in order to maximize the relationship and value potential moving away from the commoditized product selling status.

The Buy-Sell hierarchy consists of 5 levels:
- Deliver commodity that meets specifications
- Deliver good products and services
- Provide good service and support
- Contribute to business issues
- Contribute to organizational issues

The whole book is centered on building an account plan that can deliver this promise and which contains the following elements:

- Field of Play
- Account team
- Buy-Sell hierarchy
- Strategic players
- Trends and Opportunities
- Strengths and vulnerabilities
- Charter statement and Goals
- Focus investments and Stop investments
- Revenue target

Large account management is a team effort that transcends the pure selling function: it increasingly becomes an entrepreneurial , external business unit driven style of activity.

As in the previous Miller Heiman books the same principles are advocated:

- importance to strive for win/win value creation
- importance to follow a process driven and constantly reviewed methodology

Miller Heiman: The New Conceptual Selling

"The New Conceptual Selling" complements "The New Strategic Selling" as it deals with the tactical implementation of the sales strategy. It provides guidelines and tools for the sales professional how to prepare, conduct and assess sales calls.

The sales call is split into 3 different parts:

- Getting information

- Giving information

- Getting commitment

The main focus points are:

- Product versus Concept sales

- The four question types

- Golden silence

- Basic issues

- Joint venture versus unilateral selling

- Valid business reason

- Differentiation and Unique Strengths

- Best/minimum action commitment

- Credibility

The main principles are the necessity for the sales person to do everything from the buyer’s point of view and to always strive for a Win/Win result.

The usual Miller Heiman teaching method is followed: theory is complemented with personal workshops during which a practical case is prepared.


 

Jim Holden: The Selling Fox

The third book in Holden's Power Base series zooms in on the tactical aspects of fox-like selling. It is a field guide for the top-performing sales professional providing techniques and methods needed to become a selling fox. This book is very different from the 2 previous ones - Power Base Selling and World Class Selling - which take a high-level, strategic view of modern selling. The Selling Fox comes down to the field, showing how selling foxes react in real live situations. It is an important complement to the Power Base theory as any selling activity inevitably involves hands-on face-to-face contact with the prospective customer. 

Main topics:

- Closing, trial close, blocking and trapping
- Indirect sales strategy
- Loss recovery plans and techniques
- De-installing a competitor
- Qualifying opportunities

The ultimate aim of the book is to teach how to become a Selling Fox using assessment tools and personal development plans.

Jim Holden: World Class Selling

World Class Selling builds on the "Power Base selling" bestseller introducing the concept of Value Chain Management and the need for integrated sales, marketing, human resources and technology functions as required by the currrent day market place. The book is written according to the new technique of personal dimensioning which helps to convey the messages more powerfully.

A key concept throughout the book is the Four-Stage Customer model which describes 4 stages in the value chain model:

- Commodity Value Level

- Solutions Value Level

- Business Value level

- Strategic Value level

The aim for every company should be the move their sales approach up the value chain helping customers deliver more value to their customers. The strategic level involves building partnerships which takes sales well beyond the transaction level, getting involved in helping building the value strategy of the customer. In order to be able to do this the supplier needs to transform its organisation towards a truly value centered structure where marketing and sales cooperate at the value level, technology ensures a cost-effective automation of the value driven sales processes and human resources guarantees the right sales currency and competencies are available.

Throughout the whole book the political dimensions of the value-centric transformation are at the forefront, with special attention to the role of foxes and the power base.

Jim Holden: Power Base Selling

Since its introduction in 1990, the Power Base Selling methodology has been one of the most effective and popular sales tools. Unlike e.g. Miller Heiman sales strategies,Power Base Selling is largely focused on how to beat the competition. Competition is at the heart of the Power Base Selling model. In the book many analogies with warefare are described.

As important is the attention to internal politics of the buyer organisation. It is key for the sales professional to get to know the informal, political organisation structure of the buying organisation, which is called the Power Base, and to ally with and take advantage of the political agendas of the key players to help forward the solutions offered and beating the competition. At the center of the Power Base is the Fox, the ultimate influencing factor.

A range of strategies are described to confront competitors:

1. Direct Strategy based on superior products, company selling or installed products
2. Indirect Strategy based on altering the buying criteria
3. Divisional Strategy to salvage part of the business
4. Containment Strategy to postpone the decision to increase chances

But Power Base Selling is about more than just strategy. It also provides tactics to keep competitors at a distance e.g. by securing an order won by advertsing it and covering it with the Fox. Simarly, by setting up "traps" early in the sales process competitors will not be allowed to fight back eiher on price, via contacting superiors or by talking negatively about competitors.

The book concludes with 13 criteria to determine whether a sales opportunity is worth fighting for and what the chances of success are. Access to upper management, understanding the decision-making process, compatibility of philosophy and political alignment are key to winning.

Miller Heiman: The New Strategic Selling

The all time Miller Heiman Sales Strategy bestseller has been revised and updated in 2004, but the sales methodology has largely stood the test of time. Unique about Miller Heiman is the view on sales as a repeatable and ongoing process based on 6 "Key Elements":

1. Buying Influences (Economic, User, Technical, Coach)
2. Red Flags / Leverage from Strengths
3. The Four Response Modes (Growth, Trouble, Even Keel, Overconfident)
4. Win-Results
5. Ideal Customer
6. The Sales Funnel

The New Strategic Selling focuses on sales strategy and the preparation needed before going into a sales call. Another Miller Heiman book - The New Conceptual Selling - focuses on Sales tactics and face to face sales skills.

Core to the Miller Heiman Sales Strategy is the establishment of a win-win long term relationship both with the buyer organisation and the individual buying influences. The book exclusively deals with complex sales which are defined as sales situations in which more than 1 buying influence is present. The ultimate reward for establishing win-win relationships is repeat business and referrals.

The key driver for sales opportunities is the ability of the product or service offered either to help grow the business of the customer or to solve existing problems. This is called the discrepancy between the desired solution and the existing one. But the solution has to provide both "objective benefits" to the buyer organisation as "subjective benefits" to the individual Buying Influence. Huge emphasis is put on the establishment of credibility.

Surprisingly, very little attention is given to Competitive issues though a special chapter is now dedicated to competition in the revised version. The explanation for this is that exagerated attention to competitors can easily detract the focus away from studying the needs of the customer, which is basic to the Miller Heiman strategy.

However, the sales professional is urged to constantly review and adapt his strategy in the light of ever increasing rates of change in the corporate environment.

Finally, some attention is given to the organisation of the daily sales activities based on the Sales Funnel principle and the prioritisation and allocation of the different types of sales activities. This is both aimed at optimising the use of the available time and the creation of a reliable and predictable flow of constant sales revenues.

Typical in this book is also the large number of "Personal Workshops" in which the sales methodology is applied on a concrete sales objective using charts and tables. Sometimes this takes the form of a drilling exercise, endlessly repeating the main principles of the methodology. But this is exactly what is aimed at : the 6 Key Elements have to become second nature to every sales professional!

The New Strategic Selling basically turns the sales profession into a marketing function, though it is marketing done on the micro level of the account. If anything, it shows that sales at the highest levels now requires a large number of skills way beyond the traditional tips & tricks taught by traditional sales trainers.

Word of Mouth the #1 Influence on Business Buying Decisions

Acoording to the Keller Fay group Word of mouth is the "#1 influence on business purchase decisions and is best leveraged through face-to-face marketing efforts". Still according to the survey "word of mouth has more than twice the influence of advertising, direct mail or press coverage on purchase decisions". Other favourable environments for word of mouth are seminars, conferences, events,...and the Internet. The main requirement is the degree of interactivity which occurs.

SPIN Selling

The SPIN Selling Strategy has been developed by Neil Rackham to address issues with conventional sales training programs for large, complex sales in major accounts. SPIN focuses on 4 basic factors:

1. Situation
2. Problem
3. Implication
4. Need-payoff

At the center of the SPIN methodology is the ability to systematically ask the right questions, starting with general questions about the Situation of the customer.
In a second phase questions are asked to identify existing Problems the potential customer is facing and which might be solved by the products or services the sales person can offer.
This is further elaborated upon in the third phase where Implication questions increase the awareness of the customer about the potential consequences of the problems. Preferably, it is the customer himself who discovers these consequences!
Finally, in phase 4, the customer is stimulated to formulate the need-payoff relationship between his problems and the solution offered by the sales person.
In summary, by asking the right questions in the right sequence, the sales person helps the customer to discover and accept the solution offered as the way forward for his company.

Jeffrey Gitomer's Sales Bible

The "Sales Bible" from Jeffrey Gitomer is refered to all over the world as one of the reference works on the sales profession. The book reads very easily and stands out from many other books thanks to its format : it is basically a collection of instructions organised in lists complemented with lots of anecdotes and examples.The main messages (slogans) are repeated in big print. If anything it makes the book the perfect document for future reference, using it on a regular basis as an aid during the daily sales activities.

The sales profession is presented as the new new sales compared to the old hard-selling practices of the eighties. It is about consultative sales where listening to the customer in order to understand his problems and propose solutions is the key skill. A number of basic skills is repeated throughout the book:

- positive attitude
- use of humour
- listening and asking questions
- importance of follow-up and persistence
- need to ask for the sale (closing)
- role of developing friendships, networking and long term relationships

The Sales Bible is filled to the rim with practical advice and is interesting reading material for a wide audience far beyond the sales profession.

First published in 2003, the book is in need for an update (scheduled for this year) as becomes apparent in the chapters on sales tools where focus is on letters and the use of fax, email not being talked about. Though the importance of use of the internet is definitely mentioned, the subject is not elaborated upon in detail.

Indeed, the sales profession may well be on its way to the next revolution, where the traditional face to face sales situation is increasingly complemented - if not replaced - by the use of digital information and communication. The wealth of information available on the Web is becoming an alternative for the consultative sales skills of the salesman. Testimonials, product and price comparisons, detailed information on companies and the service they offer,... is available at your fingertip. Smart internet agents go a long way to help the customer decide which product best suits his or her needs. To some extent one could state that the buying process has become more rational and predictable.There is much less room for the sales person to influence the buyer or at the very least everthing he says can be easily verified. This does not mean that all traditional sales aspects are becoming obsolete, but at the very least they need to be repositioned in the context of the new digital world. It will be interesting to see how the next version of the Sales Bible will deal with this.

Jeffrey Gitomer's website has a lot of usefull information (weekly column, weekly ezine Sales Caffeine,...).

New Sales and Business Development Blog

This new blog is aimed at providing information about the latest developments in the business fields of sales and business development. It will focus on best practices, methodologies and processes and will provide links to the main resources about these fields. While this blog will be as general as possible, emphasis will be on business to business sales in a technological environment (ICT).