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Summary: Perfect Introduction
Review: A clear, concise guide that is as informative as it is practical. The book is centred on a thesis of sales made in partnership with the client through collaborative and symbiotic relations. One of the best sales books I have read, no hype just basic strategy and tactics. Unlike other texts, there are no formulas or step-by-step solutions for all situations, however the questions posed are sufficiently provocative to help any sales person define the problem and select tactics for its solution. An entertaining read that should be obligatory reading for all sales professionals.
Rating: 
Summary: Get what you're looking for-
Review: A great book for the large, multimillion-dollar corporate, government, B2B complex sales executive looking to enhance, hone and build their sales strategies. The New Strategic Selling system focuses on the big fish. Many tactics and ideas may apply to smaller business sales opportunities but the main focus is toward major corporate accounts where the sale must funnel through multiple channels before closing versus smaller business accounts.
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Summary: Recommend the 2 Day Instructor Led Class
Review: After sitting the class with the Miller Heiman instructor, Bob Pisant (he's very good!) the book and its recommendations provided greater tangible "how-to's". Worthwhile investment for the career sales professional engaged in complex sales cycles.
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Summary: Simply Excellent!
Review: Heiman shows detailed experience and education regarding complex selling. Previously being involved in technology sales and now generating sales leads for other businesses, I understand how important these methods and this plan is. Their is a reason why this is one of the bestselling!
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Summary: Sales meets risk mitigated engineering
Review: I am not a full time sales person, I am a software engineer and researcher who gets involved in some pre-sales consulting. I bought this book to become more educated on the Miller Heiman sales approach that is now standard for all of our sales people. I found this book very helpful and feel as though I now have a basic working knowledge of the sales system we use.The Miller Heiman training is rather expensive so I did not attend the actual classes with our regular sales staff.
The approach of this book came naturally to me. This sales strategy is much like engineering decisions in using continual review of risks and generating ideas to mitigate those risks while simultaneously advancing toward the closing of the project (a sales deal). There are many lists and sublists within the method that are pretty well known by now so I won't try to list many of them here. The terminology is important and very memorable - "Coach", "Economic Buyer", "Funnel", "Best Few", etc.
The book is clear about what it is not and I appreciate that too since sales is not my background. It is not a book of sales tactics, that is, how to literally sell someone something face to face in the "sales event" as the book calls it. The book assumes the reader is an experienced sales person and is already perfecting this skill (a fair assumption). It also does not try to teach skills in deal closure/contracting since that subject is already covered by many other books and is another assumed skill.
What the book does talk about at length is approaching each deal as a unique project that has its own risks, dynamics and yet can be managed within a systematic framework for success. "This entire book can be seen as an analytical machine designed to produce one meticulously tested product - your Alternate Positions list." (p171) The Alternate Positions list is essentially a list of ideas of what things you might try next along with the accompanying rationale for each idea. The ideas are very specific so they can be tested for pass/fail, they are not vague notions. Updated "Alternate Positions" are continuously needed because your current position is assumed to be in need of constant improvement until you win the sale, from beginning to end. When applied to an actual case, the strategy means to shake-out undue sales optimism with realism on specific important aspects of getting THIS deal, not just any deal generally, this one deal specifically.
There are plenty of real life sales examples throughout the book that put flesh on the theoretical framework. I relate to the systematic, risk mitigating approach, but I was reminded of my own shortcomings in reading and managing the dynamics of people who can be fluid, dynamic, fickle, irrational, etc. yet very important to winning the account. This is the sales persons' chosen medium (people skills) and it is more tricky and unfair than dealing with things. However, the engineering, project oriented, framework makes sense in both of these worlds and the book does a great job of prompting sales people to think a bit more like engineers. Relentless information gathering (and analysis for adding to actual knowledge) is the bottom line to succesfully navigating through a complex project of any type.
I particularly like the way the book views competition as those who run the race against you trying to get to the sale first, instead of being the ones standing in front of you who must be defeated to surely win the customers business (definitely not a sure approach). Miller Heiman stresses focusing on the prospect from first to last, not the competitor. Competitors and the risks they entail must be managed, but not become the focus. The message is, carry out the Miller Heiman system (run the race) better than they do and you will typically win the business over them.
This is an easy read and really a nice page-turner especially if you're new to sales reading like I am. It's good it's a page turner though because the book is a bit too long and redundant for the ground it covers. It is all useful info but I think at least 15% of the book could be eliminated since it is driving home the same fundamentals over and over again from slightly different perspectives like you were sitting in the classroom. I understand the merits, but my reading time is valuable to me so I subtracted a rating point for failure to streamline the book a bit more. I expect successful complex sales professionals will recognize many of the ideas here, but the information is very well organized and probably a good purchase for anyone connected with sales, especially uninitiated tech types like me.
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Summary: People who follow the examples shown in this book will sell
Review: I have many years of industrial sales experience, and I started my own manufacturing business with venture capital financing (Big time selling). This book has the best approach to strategic selling that I have encountered. I read it to get recharged and check my practices. I recommend it to all new sales people.
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Summary: Get What You Want Out of Life!
Review: I purchased this book a couple of years ago when I was trying to break into medical sales. I didn't get the job I was interviewing for, but this book has subsequently rewarded me in ways I couldn't have imagined at the time. It's not just a book about completing the complex sale. It's a book about how to get what you want out of life. Or perhaps more accurately, it's a book that opens your eyes up to how many important things in your life are actually a complex sale. This book is filled with specific instructions to help keep you focused on the outcome you desire, and prepared to manage the influences that can either help you or hurt you along the way. Nothing is left to chance. Red flags are identified, strategies are developed, and win/win solutions are created all the way around. The natural result is good will, and customers who feel like you helped them fill the gap between where they were, and where they needed to be. This book is perfect for anyone who has developed a lot of technical expertise in a given field, but might be a bit inexperienced or even naive when it comes to politics. We've all had great ideas shot down by people whose motives were less than laudable. Don't waste precious time and energy getting angry that these people have rank and authority. Learn how to manage them! This book shows you how. Highly recommended.
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Summary: Combine it with "Conceptual Selling" and start selling!
Review: I read this book to prepare myself for a salescourse at the company where I work. As it turns out I am no salesman, but the trainer did note that I had a very good insight into the salesprocess. So good, in fact, that he advised me to become a selling consultant for my company instead of a salesman. All that, thanks to having read this book in combination with "The New Conceptual Selling" (also by Heiman). If you really want to start selling, you must read this book!
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Summary: Great for engineers, high-tech sales, professionals...
Review: 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.
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Summary: Wow!Wow!Wow!
Review: 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.
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