Integrating Sales Forces: Case Study #2

The Issue 

Eight of the top 50 e-services consulting, creative, and technology companies joined to form this client company - eight separate companies with eight separate sales forces combined into one. Our contact was the CEO of the largest company. He understood that a sale is a process and that to effect a smooth merger, the newly combined sales teams would need to be on the same page with a common sales methodology. When our contact was appointed EVP for corporate development for the newly formed company, he knew that he had to bring these eight companies together through common language and process.

The Solution

Applying the methodology they learned from Miller Heiman's Strategic Selling®, the newly formed team began working very closely with their client to really understand what their needs were. They got the go-ahead to make a presentation to a panel charged with making the final decision. The meeting was to take place in the afternoon. That morning, the team met and went through a dry run of the presentation. They walked through the sales plan and identified all the people who were going to be in the meeting and what messages they had to get to each one of those people. They asked confirmation questions to determine that everyone in the room was on the same page. Before the presentation, everyone was that they had covered all of the bases.

The Result

How Miller Heiman helped this client is succinctly expressed by our contact:

"The Blue sheets and the Green sheets were tremendous for facilitating clear communication among the members of the team that led to this success.

Now, salespeople throughout the company are talking about Economic Buyers, Red Flags, Blue Sheets, and Confirmation Questions [components of the Miller Heiman Sales System]. It's becoming part of our language and becoming part of our culture. It will be so embedded that it will simply be how our company does business. We're not there yet, but we've got a great start and we're training more of our top people all of the time."

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