Three Essentials of Large Account Selling

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by Miller Heiman

First, define what portion of the large account you are selling to. Why should you focus on a limited, designated field of play within your targeted large accounts? The answer is simple. You can't shake all eight arms of an octopus at once (even if you wanted to), and you can't sell to a corporate octopus in its entirety.

Consider the case of one of our clients -- a leading-edge data services company that provides credit information to the financial and insurance industries. One of its most lucrative accounts is American Express; the account brought in nearly eight figures in revenue last year. But "American Express" is not a uniform entity. It's composed of five major subsidiaries: Travel Related Services, IDS Financial Services, Shearson Lehman Hutton, American Express Bank, and the AMEX Information Services. Each of these subsidiaries is in turn a huge, multi-armed concern employing thousands of people worldwide. TRS alone manages businesses in cards and traveler's checks, data based services, direct marketing, merchandising, and publishing. Nobody sells -- nobody could sell -- to all these businesses in the same way or with the same account strategy. Trying to do so would be confusing and self-destructive. So when our client targets "the AMEX account", it practices what Tom Peters and Bob Waterman call "chunking", setting one strategy for IDS, one for Shearson, and so on. It's got to start by asking "Which AMEX?"

The AMEX case is hardly unique. Most companies today grow by subdividing and merging. Even the ones that say they're sticking to the knitting tend to define knitting in broad, diversified terms. Johnson & Johnson, for example, now sells not just its traditional Band-Aids and baby products, but analgesics, contraceptives, mouthwash, diapers, and shampoo -- with a different management structure for each one. The typical large account today resembles what a friend of ours calls the corporate octopus.

That's why the first step in setting a strategy for a large account is to define a manageable field of play.

The second step is to decide what you should be placing with this customer in this field of play. This is a more subtle process than merely itemizing your products and services. Presenting your customers with a laundry list implies that you've got minimal interest in their needs and that you'll sell anything to anybody, any time. Selling effectively to large accounts means reviewing what you've sold them in the past, distinguishing the good sales from the bad ones (we've all had our share of bad ones), and discovering which of the many items in your product or service line have a genuine fit to each customer's needs. Sometimes it also means rewriting the "menu" you can offer your customers based not on what you've been selling them but on that product/need fit.

We have run Large Account Management Process programs for several major suppliers of information systems -- systems that include hardware, software, and a vast array of support services. At a recent program, a district sales manager said in frustration, "You know, narrowing things down is a tricky business. We could probably find a reason to sell this account everything our company makes. Software, hardware, vaporware."

Laughter from his colleagues let us know that "vaporware" was an inside joke. We asked what it meant.

The district manager explained. "It's company code for 'total solution' selling. 'Promises, promises.' When a customer knows zip about computers, and when he doesn't really know what he needs, you can sell him on almost any package -- convince him that it will do everything and anything. 'Our systems are infinitely expandable to any configuration.' The Spandex pitch. Solid as vapor."

"What happens when he finds out you've oversold him?" we wanted to know. "Does the vaporware sale ever come back to haunt you?"

Laughter again. "Every time," the manager admitted. "We've gotten stung selling vaporware. In the long run it's much smarter to be specific."

Our point exactly, we acknowledged -- and not just in the software/hardware game. We're firmly on the side of "solution selling," but true solutions are the answers to specific problems, and no product or service, no matter how "expandable," solves all problems. Even Spandex snaps if you stretch it too far -- half the time right back in your face. Identifying which of your products or services really ties to your customer's problems leads directly to the final step: determining what contribution you can make to your customer's business.

His or her business. Not yours. To effectively manage a large account, you've got to see "contribution" through the customer's eyes, and deliver value that enhances his or her bottom line.

This is neither natural nor easy. When you're selling what you believe to be a good product, it's natural to assess its value "from the inside". But, as Adam Smith pointed out two hundred years ago, a market system doesn't tolerate "natural" value: A product's value is what you can get for it, and that is determined, almost exclusively, by what customers think it can do for them. That's why it's essential to reverse the "natural" order of vendor thinking and state value from the account's point of view.