The New Strategic Selling: The Unique Sales System Proven Successful by the World's Best Companies

This is the BIBLE for customer focused consultative selling! If you are a sales professional or manager interested in revving things up and taking your sales team to the next level this is the program to do it! Step by step instructions for detailed account management , opportunity assessment , identification and how to build trust, get the customer to help you understand their needs and then to help you close the deal! The system is like all Miller- Heiman programs- very detailed and filled with examples. This is perfect for helping salespeople who tend to go to one person at a client and not expand into the account- learn about other people and how they can influence decisions. Underlying message is the more your know- the less you hear "NO!" I first did this program as a salesperson over 10 years ago- since then I have taught the program 4 times- I personally learn each time I do so. Other programs by Miller-Heiman are all built upon this program and its sister program Customer Focused Selling. Their advanced LAMP ( Large Account Management ) program requires this as a pre-requisite. Clients of Miller-Heiman include big pharmaceutical companies, top automotive manufacturers and suppliers, I took a class in Chicago with the sales team responsible for selling the big 3 transmissions! Telecon companies use Miller-Heiman. Electronics mega-sellers use the system. Can your business benefit from the system designed to maximize the output of every sales call? Then buy with confidence! Great book to read before your sales team meeting. --.

Stephen E. Heiman, Diane Sanchez, and Tad Tuleja provide a practical, dynamic framework to approach complex selling from both a strategic and tactical point of view. Like a general, a salesperson must first master the art of planning his/her forces before being able to approach a customer/prospect effectively. Heiman, Sanchez, and Tuleja rightly recommend that their audience think about one complex selling situation that they have dealt with and analyse it using the six key elements to consider in a complex selling. The six elements are the following: buying influences, red flags/areas of strengths, response modes, wins/results, ideal customer profile, and sales funnel. Although the audience can first consider that exercise a chore, they will derive a lot of value from it by internalizing the author's framework. Heiman, Sanchez, and Tuleja correctly remind their audience that the salesperson needs to have a broad understanding of his/her competition. Competition includes not only direct competitive offerings and substitutes, but also customer/prospect's options such as doing nothing, in sourcing, or resource reallocation for other purposes. Furthermore, Heiman, Sanchez, and Tuleja recommend that their audience adopt a "side" strategy and not a "face" strategy by focusing first on customer/prospect's needs and not primarily on a narrowly defined competition. With a little bit of practice, the framework described above becomes second nature and allows the audience to eventually use it in a multitude of settings. For example, applying for a job is often similar to complex selling. The job seeker needs to make a mutually beneficial value proposition not only to the hiring manager(s), but also to the assistant (s), the receptionist and any other relevant persons who can make a difference in hiring him/her or not. Similarly, a fundraiser could use the above-mentioned framework to raise funds on behalf of his/her non-profit organization.

If knowledge is power, then the knowledge in this book will make you soar. Amazing how liberating and purifying insight can be! This book, in my opinion, found a perfect balance between theoretical framework and hands-on, immediately applicable knowledge. They say that knowledge is a dispeller of darkness, and that is exactly what I experienced. Although for the last five years, I am more or less successful in the sales arena, I, for the most part, never really understood the underlying sales process and the importance of a strategy, but was lost in the little techniques and good people skills. Uncertainty, and thereby fear and luck, were ruling almost all my sales efforts. What this book provided me with is a straight-forward, structured and repeatable sales system that takes out most of the uncertainty and replaces it with knowledge about oneself and the customer, and shows a practical path to creating value-based, long-lasting and satisfying customer relationships.

I've been using "Strategic Selling" in my engineering sales practice since the original edition of this book hit the bookshelves. This is a great method for people who don't want to consider themselves "salespeople", but who indeed sell. Engineers, architects, high-tech products sales consultants, and other professionals, will find this to be a low pressure, ethics-based approach to selling. I call it "the engineers approach" to sales because it provides such a methodological approach. For the professional salesperson, it puts into a repeatable process what they have been doing instinctively. But why leave it to chance? The list of major companies who use the Strategic Selling process to drive their sales is extremely impressive.

_Strategic Selling_ is a valuable book, especially for those of us who are not "salesmen" in the classic sense, but have to operate in the Complex Sales environment. Consultants and Client Relationship Managers will find it especially valuable. _Strategic Selling_ provides valuable insight into how to set up "Win/Win" situations: it begins by identifying the different kinds of "Buyers" in every sales situation, the roles they play, and what constitutes "Value" to them. It then provides a mechanism for identifying what you do not "know" about the various Buyers, with the objective of finding out. It is an approach which helps you paint a complete picture of the dynamics at work in a selling situation, so that you can operate effectively within it. Finally, it provides a mechanism for "keeping the sales funnel full" -- a challenge which most people operating in cyclical industries can identify with. Following this methodology can help you ensure that you do not blunder around in ignorance in a Complex Sales environment -- you will know at least as much as the next guy, and probably much more. And you will be actively doing something about it. Rackham's _SPIN Selling_ is a good complementary book to _Strategic Selling_, as it provides a tactical approach -- the "How To" as opposed to the "Why". _Strategic Selling_ is an interesting -- though not uncomplementary -- contrast to Holden's _Power Base Selling_. Both approaches can provide insight into the inner workings of the Complex Sale; however, _Strategic Selling_ focuses less on manipulating the political forces at work, and may thus be more palatable for some