The Unique Sales System Proven Successfully by the

World’s Best Companies

The New Strategic Selling

(Stephen E. Heiman and Diane Sanchez with Tad Tuleja / Warner

Books/1998/448 Pages/$16.95)

국내 미출간 세계 베스트셀러(NBS) 서비스는 (주)네오넷코리아가 해외에서 저작권자와의 저작권 계약을

통해, 영미권, 일본, 중국의 경제·경영 및 정치 서적의 베스트셀러, 스테디셀러의 핵심 내용을 간략하게
정리한 요약(Summary) 정보입니다. 저작권법에 의하여 (주)네오넷코리아의 정식인가 없이 무단전재,
무단복제 및 전송을 할 수 없으며, 모든 출판권과 전송권은 저작권자에게 있음을 알려드립니다.
 The New Strategic Selling
The Unique Sales System Proven Successfully by the World’s
Best Companies

The Big Idea

The driving force of the Strategic Selling approach is a non-manipulative selling
philosophy. The key to ensuring selling success is to manage every sales objective as a
joint venture Sales people must create a framework that fosters a win-win situation; a
mutually beneficial transaction where both buyer and seller achieve gains.

The New Strategic Selling book works by helping you sort through confusing data and
information associated with every Complex Sale; and to give you a reliable method for
analyzing the data, for positioning yourself better with your accounts, and for closing
business deals.

About the Author

Stephen Heiman - Stephen Heiman became a partner with Robert B. Miller the founder
of the company which became Miller Heiman Inc, and which has grown to become one
of the largest sales training organisations in the world. Both previously held executive
positions with Kepner-Tregoe Inc. They wrote Strategic Selling with the help of Tad
Tuleja, and it was published in 1985. This book was in the forefront in promoting
nonmanipulative win-win selling, and in 1997 it was completely revised to futher improve
and update the contents. It has become the standard sales process text for many of the
world's largest organizations.

Strategic Selling
Successful Selling in a World of Constant Change
Complex Sales
The concept of Complex Sales is a primary feature of this book. The authors defines it
as: "one in which a number of people must give their approval or input before the buying
decision can be made." Complex sales are brought about by a bureaucracy that
requires many approvals before making a sale.

Change and Strategic Selling

Change happens in all aspects of corporate business. It can happen in the market,
technology, customer base, product line, competitive position, marketing strategy and
even organizational structure. With the influx of change, it is required of you to develop
specific skills that will lead to reliable selling strategies.

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Three Premise of Strategic Selling
1. Whatever got you where you are today is no longer sufficient to keep you there.
2. In a Complex Sale, a good tactical plan is only as good as the strategy that led
up to it.
3. You can succeed in sales today only if you know what you're doing and why.

Strategy and Tactics Defined

The objective of a good sales strategy is to get yourself in the right place, with the right
people, and at the right time; so that you can make the right tactical presentation.
Strategy involves all of the processes that you will use to lay out your moves, prior to the
sales call. Tactics, on the other hand, refers to the step-by-step process on how to
implement the strategy.

Setting the Account Strategy: Four Steps to Success

1. Analyze your current position with regard to your account and with regard to
your specific sales objective.
2. Think through possible Alternate Positions.
3. Determine which Alternate Position would best secure your objective and
devise an Action Plan to achieve it.
4. Implement your Action Plan.

Your Starting Point: Position

In account strategy, positioning is the name of the game. Fully understanding your
current position means knowing who all your key players are, how they feel about you,
how they feel about your proposal, and all the other questions in relation to the options
available to them.

Personal Workshop 1: Position

This workshop will help you work through the difficulties of your current sales situation. It
has been designed to identify the causes of your current uncertainty, to help you see
how those causes affect your current sales objective, and to allow you to make your
account position more visible.

1. Step 1: Identify Relevant Changes. Make a list of all the changes that you feel
are influencing the way you currently do your business. Note whether it is a
sudden event, a longer process of subtle erosion, or an example of continuous
growth.

2. Step 2: Rate the Changes as Threats or Opportunities. Go down your list of

changes and put an O next to those you perceive mainly as opportunities and a

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 T next to those you see mainly as threats.
3. Step 3: Define Your Current Single Sales Objective. Write down your current
sales objective with regards to the account you've chosen. Current sales
objective must be based on specific, short-term objectives. It must be
measurable, must focus on a specific outcome, and must be single rather than
multiple.

4. Step 4: Test your Current Position. Find out how you feel about your specific
chances for making this objective work out. Make adjustments to your
strategies as you go along.

5. Step 5: Examine Alternate Positions. Once you know where you are, you next
want to know where to go. You need to examine alternatives so that you can
discover how you might reposition yourself to make the attainment of your
Single Sales Objective more likely.

Your Strategy Blueprint: The Six Key Elements of Strategic Selling

1. Buying Influences
2. Red Flags/Leverage from Strength
3. Response Modes
4. Win-Results
5. Ideal Customer Profile
6. Sales Funnel

Building on Bedrock: Laying the Foundation of Strategic Analysis

Key Element 1: Buying Influences
In every Complex Sale, there are four critical buying roles. The people who play these
roles are called Buying Influences or simply Buyers. Understanding these four Buying
Influence roles - and then identifying all the people playing them with regard to your
sales goal - is the foundation of Strategic Selling.

1. Economic Buying Influence. This is the role of the person who gives final
approval to buy.
2. User Buying Influence. User buyers make judgments about the potential impact
of your product or service on their job performance.
3. Technical Buying Influences. They screen out possible suppliers.
4. Coach. The Coach guides you to your particular sales objective by leading you
to the other Buyers; and by giving you information on what you need to position
yourself effectively with each one.

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In every Complex Sale, you have to sell your proposal, not just to one or two people, but
to everyone filling the four Buying Influence roles. Sales people must refrain from the
assumption that as long as Mr. Big is sold, everything else will fall into place.

Key Element 2: Red Flags/Leverage from Strength

This second element of strategy helps you to identify your positioning difficulties with
precision. It has been observed in the program that the sales commission leaders, the
people who regularly pull down 200 or 300 percent of their quotas, are those who find
the most Red Flags in their accounts.

The Five Automatic Red Flag Areas

1. Critical information missing.
2. Uncertainty about information.
3. Any un-contacted Buying Influence.
4. Buying Influence(s) new to the job
5. Reorganization.

Buyer Level of Receptivity

You need to be able to gauge the Buyer's receptivity to your proposals because, without
an understanding of this factor, you can easily end up trying to sell to someone who isn't
really there.

A Buying influence can bring four different reactions, or Response Modes, to a sales
situation. Each of these four modes derives from a different perception of the immediate
business reality. Each one leads to a different level of receptivity to incoming sales
proposals. The strategic sales professional, therefore, has to develop a different sales
approach for each of the four perceptions.

Key Element 3: The Four Response Moods

The First Response Mode: Growth
The probability of a Buyer taking action in the Growth mode is high. A Buyer in the
growth mode is aware of the reality of the business situation and the results that he
needs. If a sales person can address the discrepancy between the acknowledged reality
and the results desired, then he has a better chance of getting a commitment from the
Buyer.

Buyers in Growth Mode typically use trigger words like "more," "better," "faster," and
"improved" - signals that they are receptive to change. This mode is usually the easiest
of the four to sell.

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The Second Response Mode: Trouble
Discrepancy is also present in the Trouble mode, however, it is different from the one
perceived by the Buyer in Growth mode. The Buyer in Growth mode welcomes
incremental change as a way of improving an already good situation; the Buyer in
Trouble mode is begging for immediate change as a way of reversing or preventing a
defeat.

The Buyer in Trouble mode is ready and eager to buy - but not necessarily from you.
The proposal that will be approved is the one that will most quickly remove the cause of
the Buyer's perceived problem.

The Third Response Mode: Even Keel

When a Buying Influence is in Even Keel, your chances of making a sale are low
because the Buyer doesn't perceive the essential discrepancy between current reality
and desired results. In fact, the probability of a Buyer in Even Keel taking any action is
low.

The mentality of a Buyer in Even Keel is: "Go Away. Don't rock the boat."

When a Buyer is firmly entrenched in Even Keel, only three things can raise the
probability of your making a sale. The Buyer can see Growth or Trouble coming in, he
can be pressured by another Buyer who is already in Growth or Trouble, or you can
demonstrate a discrepancy that the Buyer doesn't see.

The Fourth Response Mode: Overconfident

This is the most difficult of the four Response Modes to sell to. In fact, the probability of
making a sale to someone who's in Overconfident Mode is, for all practical purposes,
zero.

When a Buyer is in this fourth mode, there's clearly a kind of discrepancy between
reality and perceived results, but in this case the discrepancy works against rather than
for the selling organization.

An Overconfident Buyer perceives reality as outstripping the desired results. This

person has no incentive to change as the buyer already feels that he is doing better than
anticipated.

The Importance of Winning

The Four Quadrants of the Win-Win Matrix

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Even though both buyers and sellers enter sales encounters hoping that they will Win,
that isn't always the case. Every buy-sell encounter can have one of four possible
outcomes as represented in the quadrants of the Win-Win Matrix.

1. I Win-You Win: The Joint Venture Quadrant

When your Buyers Win, you Win, because you get the repeat business and new leads
that you're looking for. Serving your Buying Influences' individual self-interests is
ultimately the best way for you to serve your own.

2. I Win-You Lose: Beating the Buyer

The principal reason why you should avoid playing I Win-You Lose is that the Win-Lose
quadrant is short-term and unstable. Given enough time, it always degenerates into
Lose-Lose.

3. I Lose-You Win: Doing the Buyer A "Favor"

The rationale behind this approach is that the customer will be impressed with the
selling organization's generosity and reciprocate in the future.

The underlying problem here is one of perception. When you play Lose-Win, you give
the customer a false sense of reality, one that is represented falsely as the norm and
that can be maintained only on a limited basis.

Ultimately, the Lose-Win quadrant, just like the Win-Lose quadrant, is unstable. It too
always degenerates into Lose-Lose. Therefore, it isn't in your self-interest.

4. I Lose-You Lose: The Default Quadrant

This is also called the "catchall" quadrant because, sometimes well after the final papers
are signed, it catches all the sales that you haven't consciously and actively managed
into Win-Win outcomes.

Key Element 4: Win-Results

The Win-Results concept rests on the following terms:

• Selling. Selling is a professional, interactive process directed towards demonstrating

to all your Buying Influences how your product or service serves their individual
self-interest.

• Product. A product is designed to improve or fix one or more of your customer's

business processes. In Strategic Selling, "product" is taken to mean either a product or
a service - whatever you are selling.

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• Process. A process is an activity or series of activities that converts what exists right
now into something else. Examples include shipping, invoicing, production, research
and development, and quality control.

• Result. It is the measurable impact that a product has. Results are objective and
corporate.

• Win. A Win is the fulfillment of a subjective, personal promise made to oneself to

serve one's self-interest in some special way. Wins are always different for different
people.

• Win-Result. A Win-Result is an objective business Result that gives one or more of

your Buying Influences a subjective, personal Win.

Common Problems, Uncommon Solutions

Getting to the Economic Buying Influence: Strategies and Tactics

The heart of Strategic Selling is managing every one of your sales objectives so that you
end up in the Win-Win quadrant of the Matrix with all your Buying Influences. Frequently
this proves to be most problematic with regard to Economic Buying Influences, because
this role differs from the Buying Influences in two significant ways:

1. Economic Buying Influences are more difficult to identify than the other Buying
Influences.
2. Economic Buying Influences are more difficult to reach, both physically and
psychologically, than those who play User and Technical Buying roles.

In order to efficiently and quickly reduce your discomfort in the face of meeting an
Economic Buyer, you need to ask yourself these key questions:

1. What do I need to FIND OUT?

2. What do I want the Economic Buyer to KNOW?
3. What do I want the Economic Buyer to DO?
4. What do I want the Economic Buyer to FEEL?

The Coach: Developing Your Prime Information Resource

The authors stress the importance of developing Coaches to improve your strategic
position with the other Buying Influences. The use of effective Coaching can be the

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difference between a sale that almost makes it to the close, and one that not only closes
in your favor but also generates Win-Win sales for you far into the future.

Coaches have to be "nominated" into their position, and then developed as resources
for your particular sales objective.

A good Coach functions essentially as an information resource. The Coach not only
enables you to check the accuracy of the information that you're getting, but also
provides information that you haven't been able to get elsewhere.

The Three Coaching Criteria

1. Your Credibility.
2. The Coach's Credibility.
3. Desiring Your Success.

What about the Competition?

In Strategic Selling, competition is defined as any alternative solution to the one you and
your company are proposing.

Types of Competition
• Buy from someone else.
• Use internal resources.
• Use budget for something else.
• Do nothing.

Why Focusing on the Competition Doesn't Work

• It allows the competition to write the rules of the game.
• It advertises your weaknesses, not your strengths.
• It invites price slashing.
• It makes you look stupid.
• It deflects attention from the customer's concerns.

The Proactive Alternative: Restoring Differentiation

The alternative is to think far less about what the competition is doing, has done, or
might do, and more about what selling is about in the first place - the provision of
customized solutions to individuals' problems.

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Strategy and Territory: Focusing on Your Win-Win Customers
Key Element 5: Ideal Customer
The Ideal Customer concept's function is to help you in identifying your real best
prospects, and in separating them from the ones who will prove to be liabilities. Selling
to everyone indiscriminately is bound to create bad matches and bad orders.

Judging your actual customers against an Ideal Customer Profile will keep those bad
orders to a minimum, and ensure that the bulk of your sales have a Win-Win outcome.

Your Ideal Customer Profile: Demographics and Psychographics

You can make up your own Ideal Customer Profile by analyzing the characteristics
common to your current and past good customers. You can use it to test opportunities
with your current sales prospects.

The Use of Ideal Customer Profiles

The Ideal Customer Profile can be used to anticipate problems in your current customer
base and as a sorting device. A sorting device will help you cut down on maybe 35
percent of prospects that you probably shouldn't be working on in the first place. This
will leave you with a shorter list of prospects but it will be more "real". Concentrating on
them is what is going to keep you Win-Win.

The Importance of Your Psychographics

You need to determine which among your customers closely approximate the
psychographics profile of your firm. The better the match is, the prospect of creating
Win-Win Results becomes higher.

The real reason people buy isn't simply that your product or service matches their
objective business needs. People buy not only to get Results, but to get personal Wins
as well.

Strategy and Territory: Managing Your Selling Time

Of Time, Territory, and Money
The authors define selling time as any time spent talking or asking questions to a Buying
Influence - particularly to uncover a Growth or Trouble discrepancy. Most salespeople
are lucky to get five or ten hours a week to devote to this all-important activity. Most top
salespeople, in fact, spend only about 5 to 15 percent of their total workweeks actively
engaged in face time with their customers.

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Key Element 6: The Sales Funnel
The Sales Funnel enables you to use your most precious commodity, your selling time,
in the wisest and most efficient manner possible. It will help you to identify the type of
work you need to be doing at any given moment on each sales objective, and to bring
about a balance among the four types.

Four Parts of Refined Funnels

1. Universe
The Universe provides limitless selling opportunities. However, to bring greater success
to your selling, you must begin by "judiciously restricting" those opportunities, focusing
only on those that can get you Win-Win outcomes.

The kind of work you must do at this level is called prospecting. Prospecting is
"searching for a fit." At the top of the Funnel, you assess prospects against your Ideal
Customer Profile, and narrow the field down to those opportunities that measure up.

2. Above the Funnel

In this level you perform a similar task, but on a narrower, more focused basis. The
prerequisite for identifying a possible objective as being Above the Funnel is that you
have data that suggests a fit not just between your two companies but also between
your product or service line, and the prospect's immediate needs.

The kind of work that needs to be done on a prospect that's Above the Funnel is to
qualify, or verify suggestive data. This can be done by contacting the Buying Influences,
including your Coach or Coaches.

3. In the Funnel
The prerequisite for placing a sales objective In the Funnel is that you have verified the
possibility of an order. This means that you have contacted at least one Buying
Influence and spoken to him or her about Growth or Trouble.

The kind of work that you need to perform in this part of the funnel is to cover the bases.
This entails using all the Key Elements of strategy.

4. Best Few
The prerequisite for placing a sales objective into the Best Few category is that you
have all but eliminated luck and uncertainty as factors in the final buying decision. In
Best Few, there is at least a 90 percent probability that you'll close the order in one half
or less the time of your normal selling cycle.

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Priorities and Allocation: Working the Funnel
Your ultimate goal in using the Sales Funnel concept is to be able to move your various
sales objectives down the Funnel at a steady and predictable rate, so that your income
is also steady and predictable. This can be done by:

• Setting appropriate priorities for the four kinds of selling work that needs to get done.
• Allocating your limited selling time so that these four kinds of work always do get done,
on a consistent basis.

Roller Coaster Effect: Cause

When you consistently put off your prospecting and qualifying work, it becomes the kind
of work that never gets done. So by the time you finish closing all your Best Few and In
the Funnel sales objectives, the top of the Funnel has run dry. The "Dry Funnel
Syndrome" and the Roller Coaster Effect are two unwelcome metaphors in the sales
world.

Roller Coaster Effect: Solution

The right way to deal with the Roller Coaster Effect is to arrange your work priorities in
such a way that you never experience a dry quarter or a dry Funnel in the first place.
You can follow this priority sequence:

1. Do closing work on your Best Few objectives.

2. Prospect by narrowing the Universe.
3. Qualify your Above the Funnel objectives.
4. Work the objectives in the Funnel.

From Analysis to Action

Your Action Plan
In drafting a list of practical actions to improve your position, the emphasis is on
practical. You want to be sure that each action you adapt moves you closer to attaining
your objective.

Putting the Theory into Action

With your Alternate Positions in hand, look at your current position with regards to each
of the Strategic Selling concepts. Focus on these areas and try to uncover Red Flags,
and then consider which actions can turn them into opportunities:

• Your Single Sales Objective.

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• The Buying Influences involved in that objective.
• The Response Mode of each Buying Influence.
• The Win-Results of each Buying Influence.
• The level and nature of your competition.

Strategy When You Have No Time

Here is a two-part solution that will help you to determine how to give the appropriate
amount of advance planning to each sales call.

Determine which accounts and which sales objectives really call for a "long form" Action
Plan and give them the hour that they deserve.
Adopt a "short form" action analysis for those sales objectives and those upcoming
sales calls where conditions don't allow for the extended treatment.
Strategic Selling: A Lifetime Approach

Strategic Selling is successful because it reduces the uncertainties associated with luck,
trial and error, and blind chance. It works effectively because it is founded on logic and
on sound understanding of all the Key Elements of the Complex Sale. By applying the
methodologies consistently, you make your own luck.

There are two critical keys to a salesperson's success:

1. Method. Strategic Selling professionals approach their sales with a planned
system of selling steps that are logical, visible, and repeatable.
2. Constant reassessment. Change is the only constant in your Complex Sales.
You can be undermined by change only if you fail to adapt to it. You'll get the
most out of Strategic Selling if you treat it as a dynamic system - one that's
always in the process of refinement.

Lifetime Approach
Strategic Selling is a lifetime approach to the Complex Sale. As you continue to apply
and refine this model in future sales efforts, increasingly you'll be able to say, "It's the
way I go about it that makes me number one."

* * *

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[세계 베스트셀러(NBS) 서비스는 영문의 경제·경영 및 정치 서적의 베스트셀러, 스테디셀러의 핵심 내용을 간략하게 정리한
요약(Summary) 서비스입니다. 영문 서비스는 단순히 서적을 소개하거나 광고를 위한 Book Review가 아니라 세계의
베스트셀러 도서의 핵심을 체계적으로 정리한 도서 정보로써, 이 서비스를 통해 세계의 정치·경제·문화의 흐름을 빠르게
파악할 수 있습니다. 세계 지도층이 읽는 세계 베스트셀러 도서를 가장 빠르고 효율적으로 접해보시기 바랍니다.]

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