Case Study

Summary

This company manufactures continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) devices and masks for patients with obstructive sleep apnea. The company also makes a host of respiratory equipment such as concentrators, ventilators, and nebulizers. The publicly-held Pittsburgh, PA-based company employs more than 4,000 people worldwide and has annual revenues of $1 billion.

To help its salespeople better understand their customers' needs before going on sales calls, the company rolled out Miller Heiman's Conceptual Selling® for more than 200 of its salespeople in August of 2006.

The issue

According to the company sales trainer and Miller Heiman Client Associate*, although the company had a great sales team, it did not have a solid pre-call methodology in place. "To help increase revenues, we wanted to give our salespeople a game plan for going into a sales call," says our contact. "When a lawyer goes into a courthouse, he or she goes in prepared with a game plan. Everyone has a game plan in life. And salespeople need a game plan too."

Why did they choose Miller Heiman? "In our research we learned Miller Heiman had trained more than 1 million salespeople in the U.S. and U.K.," says our contact. "Miller Heiman was well put together and very supportive, with lots of materials and ongoing long-term support." The company was impressed that Miller Heiman doesn't just show up, conduct a workshop and then disappear.

The Strategy

Their salespeople participated in a four-hour online training session followed by a full day of training for their certification in Conceptual Selling®. Part of the program is learning how to use Green Sheets to get a good grasp of a customer's needs, interests and issues prior to the sales call. Based on what salespeople learn and how they fill out their Green Sheets, they know what questions to ask their customers.

Prior to training on new product offerings, the Client Associate customized a Green Sheet specific to the company's business by pre-populating the sheet with pertinent information and questions that helped salespeople prepare for their sales calls. Essentially, this created a "model" for each sales call by pointing salespeople to the appropriate questions on the Green Sheet. This best practice encouraged the salespeople to use the Green Sheets and adopt  Conceptual Selling® methodology – especially after they began to see how well this technique worked!

In addition to training its sales force, the company provided Conceptual Selling® training to marketing as well. In this manner, marketing and sales speak the same language and share some of the same methodologies.

The Solution

In Conceptual Selling®, salespeople learn to use "Golden Silence," a technique where the salesperson asks a question and then allows three or four seconds of silence afterwards. Through its extensive research and experience, Miller Heiman learned that when faced with a Golden Silence, buyers will often open up and share an insight that helps both the buyer and the seller get a better grasp on the buyer's needs. Often, this leads to another question (based on the insight) followed by more silence and more insights. In this manner, salespeople are able to guide a meaningful, in-depth, and on-topic discussion that leads to a win-win where the customer's actual needs are met through a solution, not just through a product.

One of the challenges the company faced when it announced the  Conceptual Selling® training was a sense of skepticism from some of its tenured salespeople. They'd been to training sessions before, they already knew the main selling techniques, and they felt that they were losing valuable time in training sessions when they could be out there meeting with customers and making sales. "We told them to look at Tiger Woods – one of the greatest golfers in the world," says our Client Associate. "Prior to a tournament he trains for five hours a day – and he works with trainers too." It should be no different for professional salespeople than for professional athletes, she says.

The Result

While it is too soon for documented outcomes, anecdotal results are quite positive: "Right now we are getting feedback and collecting success stories," says our contact. "It's only been less than a year, but we're hearing that Conceptual Selling® is getting our salespeople's minds back where they need to be. Green Sheets get people focused and Golden Silences keeps sales calls on track. We get important things done in sales calls."

Our Client Associate notes that people want to be sold to in this manner. "I think it helps in building a relationship because it creates a win-win situation." 

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