Any experience with Miller Heimen sales training?

cantdrv55 · 01-22-2011, 10:20 AM

If you've had their training, please let me know your thoughts on it? What are the blue and green sheets and are they useful to you? Thanks.

Rick Lee · Rick Lee's Garage

Oh yeah. I went through it in Denver the for four solid days in December and some more last week in Vegas. I'm usually extremely skeptical of this stuff, as these things tend to be led by a lot of "teachers" and not "doers." But the MH stuff is top notch and I found myself listening instead of looking at my watch. I green sheeted about seven meetings in LA the week before last and will be blue sheeting a bunch in Seattle in a few weeks because my boss will be with me and these are large accounts. I think our company paid them close to $1 million for a three year deal and their two trainers are at all of our company gatherings. I found them both very inspiring. Again, I'm extremely skeptical of this stuff and MH won me over on the first day.

What I fear, however, is that our senior leadership will start leaning hard on the sales people to show results quickly. For the kind of money we dropped on this, the parent company will be expecting some serious ROI soon.

Noah930 · Noah930's Garage

I read that as "Herman Miller" and thought you could get us some deals on furniture. Sigh.

cantdrv55 · 01-22-2011, 07:48 PM

I have an interview coming up with an orgarnization that uses MH sales training. I am trying to find more info on the blue and green sheets but all I'm coming up with are short, vague marketing blurbs. Can you give me more about the sheets? I think I read that blues are used for strategic selling and green for conceptual.

Rick Lee · Rick Lee's Garage

Green sheets are mostly for initial meetings where you have an SSO (single sales objective) and benchmarks like best case scenario and minimal acceptable action. You have to try to get the client to do something for you so you know they're serious. It can be asking for access to others in the org. involved in the decision-making process, legal dept., IT, finance, etc. It gives you a goal for best and minimum you'll take away from the meeting. It also helps you determine whether the person you're meeting with is the EB (economic buyer), UB (user buyer) or TB (technical buyer).

Blue sheets are where you map out where you are in the relationship and sales process and do an honest assessment of whether you're wasting your time or have a good chance of closing. You determine your buyer's attitude, the organization's mode (are they looking to make a change, fix a problem or stay as is).

It's very methodical and, so I'm told, if you do this all correctly, you'll know for sure whether you'll close the deal or need to walk away and focus your attention on other accounts.

Then they get to a "funnel score card" where you assign a numerical score to a bunch of questions about an account and deal. Below 30 and you need to walk. Above 70 and you will almost certainly close.

If you're really serious, I can scan my laminated keys to the green and blue sheets and funnel score card and send them to you. But don't think you're gonna be able to fake your way through an interview if you've claimed to have been through MH training. It's a lot to digest and, again, I was totally taken by it and I usually hate this stuff. It's not a Kool-Aid thing at all.

cantdrv55 · 01-22-2011, 09:32 PM

I'm very interested Rick. I'll PM you my personal email address and fax number. I'm not trying to fake my way through the interview. I just want to know as much as I can about the organization, memorize a few buzz words, basically just doing my homework. Thanks and I'll let you know how the interview went afterwards.