Front-Line Strategy
Comparison
Front-line Strategy Comparison Overview
Porter's Six Principles and Sun Tzu
SPIN Selling and Front-Line Strategy
Miller-Heiman and Classical Strategy
Miller-Heiman and Classical Strategy
The Miller-Heiman systems (strategic selling, conceptual selling, and its
large account management program) are some of the most broadly used selling
approaches in the world. Part of their success comes from the fact that they
share a great deal of the conceptual framework of classical front-line strategy.
However, they are specifically tailored to selling large, complex accounts where
many people affect the sales decision. Like classical strategy, strategic
selling and conceptual selling are based upon understanding competitive
positions, requiring the analysis of of competitive positions. Conceptual
selling specifically addresses the specific issues of solution selling and
differentiating products and services from competitors. As with classical
strategy, the Miller-Heiman system starts with the assumption that both buyers
and sellers have multiple options and that their decisions are based on
"positioning." Conceptual selling is designed to find a win-win situation
where both the seller and buyer meet their goals.
Classical strategy helps Miller-Heiman salespeople by giving them better
tools for making the small decisions that feed the sales procedures defined by
these management systems. Front-line strategic tools directly feed the
each of the four-steps in the Miller-Heiman process:
- The formulas of nine-step analysis providing a faster and yet more
in-depth systems to help salespeople understand their current position with
respect to their specific sales objective.
- Classical strategy's listening formulas give salespeople more insight into
their possible alternate positions by identifying openings.
- Classical strategy's aiming formulas for selecting opportunities allows
salespeople to more easily determine which alternate position would best
secure their objectives.
- Front-line strategic formulas for moving and claiming help Miller-Heiman
salespeople implement their actions plans especially in dealing with unique
situations, which cannot be be foreseen.
Classical strategy also opens up salespeople to strategic opportunities
working with their largest accounts in the large account management program
(LAMP). Most of Miller-Heiman's system was devised for
handling standard sales in a standard way. However, classical front-line
strategy looks at selling as a method for market exploration, which can identify
unique opportunities that must be handled in a unique way. It offers a
"big-picture" view of strategic positions, where organization can work with
customers in value creation that goes beyond standard selling cycles.
Classical strategy opens up the sales process to organizations leveraging each
other's core competencies to get the best from their relationship and create new
forms of products. Beyond merely creating win-win situations from controlling
the sales process, classical strategy views selling as a relationship between
equals which can work to create new value that neither could create alone.
Sales Goals
Like classical strategy, a large part of the Miller-Heiman system is designed
to organize the wealth confusing information associated with a complex sale and
put it into a meaningful framework. Both systems fill the often unrecognized
need for common vocabulary so salespeople and those working with them can easily
communicate the key elements involved complex situations. The Miller-Heiman
vocabulary is very useful for communicating the steps and position in a standard
sales process, while the Front-line Strategy is very useful language for
clarifying the multiple dimensions of competitive situations that make each
situation unique.
The two systems differ broadly in their goals, but both sets of goals are
critical to sales success. The Miller-Heiman strategic selling approach is
process-oriented with the specific goal of making sales more predictability by
reducing variation. The goal of classical front-line strategy is to enable
individuals to make better decisions on a day-by-day basis in a wealth of
unexpected situations dealing with a range of conditions that not covered by the
Miller-Heiman standard model.
In a sense, strategic selling and classical strategy are complementary
opposites. Miller-Heiman seeks to introduce better planning and control into the
sales process where classical strategy focuses on generating ideas, insights,
and opportunities that are missed within the traditional framework of sales
planning. While Miller-Heiman offers and excellent system for clarifying and
tracking sales progress based on clear standards, classical strategy generates
the insights that fueling that fuel the process of organization growth, creating
rapport and trust within the process.
Miller-Heiman salespeople are encouraged to analyze the values of their
accounts and their own values to find a good fit between them. However, this is
done at the same level of comparing the fit between people and their
personalities. In classical strategy, motivation is much more important than
personality so determining motivation is a much higher level task. People's and
an organization's values are the key to understanding their motivations. The
tools of front-line strategy give salespeople a more comprehensive way to
perform this analysis.
Much of the value of the Miller-Heiman system is that its systematic approach
makes it easy to identify specific "red flags" in a sales process. Red
flags can related to missing information, uncontacted buying influencers,
organization changes affecting the sales process and so on. While
classical strategy directs gathering information in certain areas, its methods
are much more focused on making good decisions in the absence of certain key
information. While the Millter-Heiman system puts a more absolute value on
specific information in a deterministic process, classical strategy balances
information in a relativistic way in a stochastic process.
Dealing with Change
Unlike many other strategic systems, Miller-Heiman strategic selling deals
directly with change (in classical terminology, "the climate") as a key part of
the sales situation. It teaches that change is the only constant because
technology, customer base, product line, competitive position, marketing
strategy and even organizational structure all change. It is this change that
creates the uncertainty that Miller-Heiman seeks to control through its
processes. Like classical strategy, Miller-Heiman seeks to leverage change
within the target account. Also like classical strategy, it connects these
external changes with internal emotional states that it calls "response modes"
that measure the level of need each person within the process feels about making
the decision.
Both Miller-Heiman and classical strategy recognize that change is an
on-going process that includes the gradual erosion of positions, sudden events,
and trends. Classical strategy, however, offers a deeper analysis that includes
leveraging both the value of predictable, cyclical change, especially
one-direction "trends" that must be, in reality, self-balancing. While
Miller-Heiman trains salespeople to categorize change either as opportunities
and threats, the view of classical strategy is that changes that are the most
likely to be seen as threats are the most likely to represent real opportunity.
Front-line strategy puts a much heavier emphasis on moving into empty territory
opened up by change as opposed to duplicating past success.
The Sales Process
Since the goal of Miller-Heiman system is to make the sales process more
predictable, an important element of this system is the sales funnel. The funnel
is used to categorize accounts in terms of how much information has been
gathered about them. If information suggests an account might be a potential
fit, the account is at the "prospect" level. After sales contact, if information
suggests that there is a potential order, the account is at the "qualified"
level. As more information is collected, if the data verifies a potential order,
the account moves to the "cover the bases" level. When the steps for securing an
order are identified, the account moves to the "close" level. It moves to the
final, "order" level when the deal is done and little or not luck is required to
proceed. Salespeople are expected to work the funnel and have sales objectives
in every stage for every account all of the time.
Nothing in classical strategy conflicts with this sales tracking system, but
the purpose of front-line strategy is quite different. The goal of classical
front-line strategy is to identify the best possible response to a given
situation. Complex sales campaigns are seen in terms of the specifics that
require position changes on the part of salespeople. While the Miller-Heiman
system asks salespeople to look for alternative positions, classical strategy
define the specifics. While there are nine "stages" in a campaign that tend to
come early, middle, and late in the sales process, none of these stages are
certain. The salespersons responses depend on the specific nature of the
competitive situation rather than how certain the sale is to result in an order.
In the Miller-Heiman system, the salesperson is expected to have a sales
strategy for each account. This strategy comes from analyzing the current
position, analyzing changes as threats or opportunities, defining a specific,
measurable sales objective, and then testing that position. This process is very
similar to the listen, aim, move, claim cycle of classical strategy but
classical strategy brings in many more specific, concrete highly organized tools
into this process. These tools give salespeople many more small "edges" to work
in terms of moving a sale position forward in small but significant ways. Many
of these tools also prescribe specific responses to certain situations once they
are defined. The entire process is designed to find the easiest path
forward in situations that are, by definition, a unique constellation of
elements.
The Roles of People
One of the great values of Miller-Heiman is the clarity it provides in terms
of understanding the complex sales process and the roles that people play as
"buying Influences" in the process. Its four key influencing roles are 1)
economic buyers who release the money for a specific sales objective. 2)
user influences who judge the impact on their job. 3) technical
influences who just technology, and 4) coaches who can be users or technical
influencers and want you to succeed. As these people are identified, they can be
graded by their level of influence, response mode (the emotional reaction the
perceived needs as growth, trouble, even keel, or over confident) and their
advocacy level as a plus or minus.
Classical strategy is also focused on people's roles but because its focus in
on finding opportunities rather than planning, it see each organization as
unique constellation of decision-makers and established methods. Buying
decisions are made within the constrains of established methods, but decisions
can also change those methods. Some decision-makers can determine some
types of methods and some methods determine who makes what kind of decision. A
given individual can affect a sale in three ways: 1) in their role as
implementers of established methods, 2) in their role as a decision-maker
creating new methods, or 3) in their role as in information source about methods
and people. This analysis doesn't
Miller-Heiman classifies people's personalities as either: 1) charismatic,
who are motivated by ideas that keep their companies competitive, 2) thinkers,
who take time to think through plans to avoid risk, 3) skeptics, who distrust
others and worry about not winning, 4) followers, who prefer proven, tested
ways, or 5) controllers, who avoid change unless it is their idea. Classify
people in this way allow the salesperson to choose the appropriate way to
position the sales proposition to appeal to a given personalities
decision-making style.
Classical strategy's character analysis is much more specific, but it gives
the salesperson an additional angle from which to address issues of character.
Classical strategy evaluates the individual characteristics of intelligence,
courage, trustworthiness, discipline, and caring. It rates each of these five
areas as a weakness, a strength, or an excess. Since each of these personality
traits relates directly to one of the five key aspect defining a position, this
analysis reveals a number of specific, specialized approaches that can be used
with individuals. In classical strategy, "fit" is determined by adapting to
specific weakness and strengths of personality, rather than categorizing any
individual by generalities.
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