Clive Miller

Clive Miller is a UK-based sales consultant and trainer who has spent nearly 30 years helping people sell complex, high-value solutions into other businesses. He reconnected with Julia Feng on The Adaptive Edge podcast for the first time in twenty years, since Clive delivered enterprise-selling training to Julia's clients in Shanghai and Beijing.

Clive is candid about a formative low point in his own business: after the September 11 attacks cancelled several of his contracts, he later borrowed against his home to try to scale his boutique consultancy into a full training business, sank roughly £400,000 into the effort, and ultimately had to stop and rebuild. It's the story behind why he first came across the term VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous), coined in 1987, and one he says applies more than ever today.

At the heart of his work is the CLEAR framework for complex, multi-stakeholder B2B sales: Circumstances, Leverage, Expand, Advantage, and Requirement, built on three rules: make no assumptions, declare your intent to make no assumptions, and don't talk about your solution until you've genuinely earned the right to. He explains why salespeople instinctively rush to pitch (because it feels like progress) and why that instinct is exactly what causes deals to go quiet, what he calls "the black hole," where a prospect stops returning calls because the seller gave away their only reason to keep talking.

Clive's advice, shaped by his own career: listen more than you talk, ask questions and get out of the way, and know that in a complex sale you're managing two "herds of cats," your own organization and the customer's, not just delivering a good pitch.

🔗 The Sales Success Formula (free)
🔗 The Sales Professional Toolkit
🔗 The Power to Speak in Public (free)
🔗 Watch Clive on The Adaptive Edge Podcast