Strategic Selling

What is Strategic Selling?

Strategic Selling is a method for complex sales that maps every buying influence on a deal and each one's role in the decision. Robert Miller and Stephen Heiman built it at their firm, Miller Heiman, and published the book Strategic Selling in 1985. Its central idea is that large deals are won by learning what each influencer needs from the outcome and planning around all of them.

Why it matters to a revenue leader

Complex deals often stall because of someone the rep never met, such as a finance lead, a safety officer or a procurement manager who can block the purchase. Strategic Selling gives managers a common way to ask who is involved, how much weight each person carries and where the plan is weak. The method now sits within Korn Ferry's sales practice.

A fire protection company pursues a sprinkler retrofit for a hospital system. The rep's contact is the facilities director, but mapping the buying influences surfaces the infection control lead, the CFO and an outside construction consultant, each with different concerns. The rep plans a separate conversation with each of them before the proposal goes in.