Encyclopedia of Marketing. Spin method in sales, examples

People are constantly dealing with sales. He either sells something or buys something. But this is indispensable. Companies seeking to achieve success in sales are constantly looking for new ways, methods of development, communication schemes with customers, and so on. Neil Rackham's SPIN Selling is for all sales firms, although it's more focused on big sales. It explains which way the manager should go when communicating with the buyer in order for the transaction to be successful.

At the beginning of the book, the author talks about the differences between large and small sales, each of these types has its own approach. For example, it matters whether there will be communication between the seller and the buyer after the purchase is made and how important the new acquisition will be for the client. Rackham goes on to talk about what he thinks is most important in big sales: questions. The ability to ask the right questions in a certain pattern brings good results. The task is for the client to tell more, while understanding what he wants. It is not at all about the imposition of goods. It's about making sure that the client himself is convinced that he needs your product, and was satisfied with the purchase.

With the help of the book, you can learn how to sell at a high level, and the client will have a good impression, because there will be no feeling that he was deceived. This book should be read by all businessmen, executives, managers, marketers and salespeople - anyone who is somehow connected with sales.

The work belongs to the genre of Economics. Business. Right. It was published in 2010 by Mann, Ivanov & Ferber. On our site you can download the book "SPIN - sales" in fb2, rtf, epub, pdf, txt format or read online. The rating of the book is 3.58 out of 5. Here, before reading, you can also refer to the reviews of readers who are already familiar with the book and find out their opinion. In the online store of our partner you can buy and read the book in paper form.

How to check if managers have a problem with the formation of a customer's need?

• Do not use SPIN selling
• Give up when faced with competitors
• They hang up and do not form a need if they immediately refused to buy a product or service
• Waiting for a hot buyer.

To change the situation, implement SPIN technology. It helps to identify the needs of the client and convince him that your product will satisfy them. This technology dispels the client's doubts.

Neil Rackham wrote in detail about SPIN selling in his book of the same name. He conducted large-scale research on the effectiveness of sales departments: he studied the transaction market for 12 years, analyzed more than 35,000 meetings, summarized the experience of entrepreneurs from 23 countries. He managed to develop an effective SPIN sales technique, which includes a description of the behavior of sellers, techniques and strategies of the best companies.

SPIN sales: how does the technology work?

The analysis showed that the best sellers not only convincingly tell and offer their product, but also know how to create a desire to buy it. The secret is simple - they ask the right questions in a certain sequence using the SPIN technology.

SPIN sales help guide the buyer through all the stages and eventually get him.

There are 5 stages in the SPIN selling method that you have to go through:

1. Recognition of the need

This is the first stage of making a purchase, at which customers realize that the current situation does not suit them and they have a desire to change it. The buyer ponders whether something is really worth changing, whether there is a problem, and whether it deserves his attention. With the help of SPIN sales, the manager will be able to see the problem, develop the client's dissatisfaction with the current situation and offer his help. Therefore, SPIN sales suggests starting any conversation not with an offer, but simply with a conversation about current affairs. It is important to identify both hidden and surface needs.

2. Evaluation of options

The criteria for comparing offers on the market are determined and a choice is made in favor of 2-3 options.
The manager needs to understand on the basis of what criteria the client will make a decision and pay special attention to them. SPIN helps to highlight your advantages over competitors.

3. Resolution of doubts

The manager must deal with the doubts and objections of the client. The main mistake is to do nothing and just wait for the client's decision. You should not be passive - you need to ask questions about SPIN in order to dispel all doubts with your answers.

4. Decision making

After receiving answers to all questions, the client chooses you.

5. Introduction

The fact of the purchase and building further relationships.

SPIN Selling: What Questions Should You Ask?

Situational, Problematic, Extracting and Guiding Questions ((Situation, Problem, Implication, Need-Payoff Questions). This is how the SPIN selling technology is deciphered.

The task of using SPIN sales is to lead the client from simple to complex in negotiations.

Let's take a look at the questions:

situational

Needed to obtain information, facts to determine hidden needs. Example:

What is your situation?

How many employees do you have?

Who are you buying from now?

Distressed

Associated with information about problems, difficulties, dissatisfaction. The task is to immerse a person in "pain", to predict where there may be problems after a certain period of time. It is desirable to find 2-3 problems. Example:

Are there any difficulties?

What would you like more?

What are you not getting?

Where is the discomfort?

extracting

Needed to clarify the consequences, increase dissatisfaction. They are considered the most effective questions. Example:

How might this affect the company as a whole?

How much money are you losing by not solving this problem?

What will it lead to if nothing is done?

How will this affect your reputation?

What will customers think if the situation does not change?

Guides

Needed to identify benefits and prepare to consider your proposal. They also help prevent objections. Example:

Tell me, what happens if it works?

What if your issue is resolved?

What results will you be able to achieve?

What prospects might open up?

SPIN sale: what is the difference between a large transaction and a small one

SPIN selling skills are universal and necessary for any transaction. True, in the sector of small transactions in the B2C segment, there are sometimes enough situational and problematic issues, that is, individual elements of SPIN. With an increase in the average check and the length of the transaction, the relevance of the described technology is steadily increasing.

SPIN does not sell directly. You don't pressure a non-client. You are simply asking questions. This is a technology for building long-term relationships. In large transactions, there is no such factor as impulsive purchase. And nothing will convince the decision maker better than his own answers and a fully realized need for the proposed product.

SPIN helps to focus the customer's attention on the product much more effectively than an enchanting presentation of benefits and benefits.

SPIN sale example

Let's analyze the option of successful negotiations on the purchase of software using the SPIN technology:

Seller: What software are you currently using?

Buyer: We use the company's productX.

How easy is it for you to work? Can you get the insights you need quickly?

- The product is complex, we could not set everything up perfectly. But we are already used to it, and, in general, it suits us.

- And how does this affect the result of work?

— I don't think so. I have two specialists who can sort everything out.

- Is there a problem that only two out of 10 managers know how to use the program?

- No, there is a problem if one of them goes on vacation or goes on a business trip.

- That is, you can lose analytics if these two employees are not at the workplace for some reason?

- Yes, other managers will not be able to quickly figure it out. They do not like this program, although its data helps to make the right decisions in the sales process.

How much money do you think you lose because not all managers see important data?

- There are 8 of them. Sales of two managers who understand everything are 30% higher per month. That is, each of the remaining ones does not bring about the same amount of revenue.

- So, from your words it follows that due to the fact that you use a program that is difficult to understand, you lose about 2.5 times more revenue per month than you have now.

Yes, that's probably a big problem.

We have a solution that can change everything.

SPIN Selling: Summing Up

So, selling with the help of SPIN questions is always a clear sequence. Situational questions allow you to find out the details, the details, to establish contact with the client. No need to “dig” much, try to find out the necessary information in 3-5 questions. And then proceed to the next stage - problematic questions.

They fix the client's attention on the problem. It's great when these questions are interconnected with the beginning of the conversation: remember what the interlocutor concentrated on (quality, money, service)?

A block of eliciting questions reinforces in the client the realization that the problem is not as simple as it seems at first glance. And guiding questions will help them decide that your product will make a difference. When selling on SPIN, you need to use another technique - active listening: not to speak for the client, but to absorb information and use it to your advantage.

Neil Rackham

SPIN sales

From the partner of the Russian edition

"One and a half billion Chinese people can't be wrong!" - this was the slogan of one of the Moscow restaurants of Chinese cuisine on Tverskaya Zastava Square.

Can the majority of sellers of 22 large companies in 23 countries of the world be wrong when conducting 35,000 negotiations over 12 years? Some certainly can, most probably not. Unless, of course, their companies are successful.

Can our acquaintances and friends be mistaken, for whom Neil Rackham's books are desktop? Maybe, but we trust them.

Can those who completely sold out the previous Russian editions of this book be mistaken, so that for several years there has been no way to find it? They voted for it with their money - and thus doomed us to look for the English-language original in foreign stores.

Are those who left their reviews of Rackham's book on amazon.com wrong, and those who, when buying, elevated it to the rank of a bestseller? There is an opinion that the culture or, if you like, the art of sales in the West (in particular, in the States) is at a very high level, so perhaps the choice of these people should be trusted.

Perhaps our former colleagues from the headquarters of Navision (later Microsoft Business Solutions) were mistaken in including the description of the SPIN Selling methodology in the sales methodology recommended for their resellers? Absolutely not. We learned this from our own experience at Navision and later at Microsoft.

In this preface, we would not like to talk about the history of writing this book or about its significance: the author will do it better. We would like to take this opportunity to address you with three wishes.

1. If you are in charge of sales, then we want to wish you, of course, the fulfillment of your company's sales plan and complete satisfaction with the tools used in your work: starting with work methods (for example, SPIN) and ending with the correct CRM system (for example, the one that we use ourselves and offer you to use).

2. If you sell yourself, then we want to wish you, of course, regular overfulfillment of the plan, big bonuses, excellent teamwork and work in an interesting industry with innovative solutions (for example, in the field of information technology with innovative CRM and ERP solutions in our young and ambitious team).

3. If you are in the purchasing business, we would like to wish you more meetings with salespeople who have read this book.

This is absolutely sincere.

Evgeny Zozulya,

Microsoft Dynamics Practice Director,

Manzana Group

From publishers

With the release of this book, we continue the practice of reprinting previously published works that are fundamental to running a successful business. This time the book is about big sales.

In a series of hundreds of books on sales, Neil Rackham's work, in our opinion, stands apart, since it is based on scientific research conducted by the author over 12 years to identify key behaviors of successful sellers of expensive goods and services. During this time, 35 thousand negotiations of sellers with customers in 22 companies from 23 countries of the world were analyzed.

The results were unexpected. The conventional wisdom that the key to success in sales is mastery of a special technique for closing the transaction was refuted. It has been found that low-price sales methods are ineffective for large deals, and successful salespeople ask more questions than less successful salespeople. Moreover, they use each question in a special way and for a specific purpose.

Nowadays, when a competent customer can easily and quickly choose quality goods at the best price using the Internet, the role of sellers is changing dramatically.

Those who master the SPIN method proposed by the author have every chance of succeeding, increasing their income to hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. We recommend this book not only to novice salespeople, but also to those who consider themselves sales bison. We learned a lot of new and useful things from it. Even though some of the examples look outdated, the principle itself works flawlessly.

This book is on the required reading lists of most leading business schools. Its first edition in Russia was quickly sold out, and then forgotten for a long time. We decided to correct this mistake and are re-publishing SPIN Sales.

There are many definitions of big sales. I'm sure that whatever term you use - whether it's sales to large customers, sales of high-value products, system sales, wholesale sales, or just "big sales" - you will know what a big sale is when you encounter it.
I would like to briefly describe some of the characteristics of large sales from the point of view of the psychology of the buyer. Such sales differ in the specific perception and behavior of the buyer. Let's take a look at these differences and see how they can affect your sales.

Life Cycle Length

A simple, low-cost sale can often be done in one meeting, while a major deal can require several meetings and many months of cooperation (one of my former classmates who worked in aircraft sales had not had a sales contract for three years). It may seem to you that I am stating the obvious - it takes more time to close a big deal. But something else is important: the psychology of sales that require multiple meetings is fundamentally different from sales from one meeting. For example, in a single-meeting sale, the buying decision is usually made during a meeting in the presence of the salesperson. In a sale that requires multiple meetings, the most important discussions and reflections continue in the absence of the salesperson between meetings. Let's say I'm a great speaker and can really compellingly describe a product. I am good at selling from one meeting because my client, fascinated by what they hear, says yes right on the spot and places an order with me.
What happens if the sales life cycle is longer than one appointment and I don't receive an order immediately after the product is presented? What part of the information will the buyer remember in the morning, the day after I leave? Can he reproduce my polished presentation to his boss? Questions like these prompted us to do some research at a company that sells office products. The company has prepared a "fixed" scenario demonstrating the eight most compelling benefits of their new word processor. The script was written by professionals - employees of an advertising agency and fully met all the requirements. The initial inspection delighted the entire company. The pilot groups of buyers rated the demo scenario very highly. The company's marketing management was looking forward to developing strong relationships with the customers who attended these demonstrations.
Unfortunately, only a small part of the expectations came true. We were invited to find out the reasons. We asked a group of potential buyers to watch a demo and immediately answer a few questions. The scenario seemed to be very successful - on average, buyers remembered 5-7 key points out of 8 possible. A week later, we visited each of them, and it turned out that more than half of the information was lost (see Fig. 2.1).
Worst of all, immediately after the presentation, buyers rated the likelihood of purchasing the product highly, but after a week, the average rating of the same buyers clearly indicated that they were unlikely to buy the product (Figure 2.2).
What does this mean and what to do with sales from one meeting? As a result of research, I have come to the conclusion that an excellent presentation of a product can have a temporary effect on the buyer, which usually lasts a week. If it's possible to convince a customer to make a decision on the spot—and with one-meeting sales it's often possible—there's no reason not to take advantage of the short-term effect of a product presentation to whet the customer's enthusiasm and advance your business. But woe to you if there is no instant solution. Within a week, your customers will have forgotten almost everything you said, and their enthusiasm for the product will plummet.

Rice. 2.1. How much information from the presentation is remembered

Rice. 2.2. Changes in customer enthusiasm for the product

Our other finding, which we'll explore in more detail a little later, is that in a single-meeting sale, the salesperson has the ability to make the sale by showing all the benefits of the product, overcoming all objections, and closing the deal at the expense of the business relationship. For sales with multiple meetings, this style is unacceptable, and its use usually leads to the failure of the transaction. Why? Perhaps your personal experience as a buyer will help answer this question. For example, I remember visiting a car dealership a few months ago. The salesman turned out to be one of those pushy types that predominate in the car trade. After a couple of quick questions, he showed me a really tough sell using all the classic tricks in the book. I wasn't ready to make a decision, so his onslaught seemed aggressive and annoying. In the end, I fled, vowing never to return to this hall. I am sure that each of you had a similar experience. Few buyers want to come back and experience pressure from the seller again. The rule is this: you can be assertive if you have the opportunity to take an order here and now; but if you part with a customer without receiving an order from him, being assertive will reduce your chances of ultimate success. And because the buyer won't re-engage with you, you may never know where you went wrong. So, pushy and tough style works for small one-time sales, and it usually works against you if it takes several meetings to close the deal.

Scope of the buyer's obligations

Large purchases, by definition, require serious decisions from the buyer, and this affects the psychology of the sale. With a small sale, the buyer thinks less about value. As the size of the sale increases, salespeople must build perceptions of the value of their products and services. Building perceptions of value is perhaps the single most important skill for making big sales. We have studied it in detail, and the next few chapters of this book are devoted to how to increase the value of your offer for buyers.
A few years ago, we started a study that was never completed due to a reorganization of our clients' sales force structure. Annoyingly, because the study dealt with the problem of the ratio of the increase in the size of the sale with the increase in the need to sell the value of the product. A client who sold high-end products asked us for advice on hiring new salespeople with experience selling only low-value products. By the time the project was put on hold, we had prepared some interesting responses. We found that sellers who failed to successfully transition to large sales had difficulty increasing the buyer's perception of value.
I remember meeting one of these workers at Buffalo Airport (later we held several meetings with his customers together). He sat on a bench with his briefcase open and surrounded by enough product literature to run a paper mill for months. He sadly explained that he was studying the features of the product, because he believed that this would help sales success. “In my last job,” he said, “I sold consumer goods; product knowledge played an important role.” Maybe this man was right; but an hour later, when he unsuccessfully tried to convince the office manager to buy a large copier system, it was product knowledge that blocked his path to success. The buyer was justifiably nervous at the thought of having to spend tens of thousands of dollars. The salesperson tried to overcome his resistance by detailing the product and demonstrating his freshly acquired knowledge of the product. But nothing helped. The customer was reluctant to purchase the product because they did not see enough value to justify such a major decision. In the end, the existing copier also works well. Of course, it is not completely reliable and the quality of copies leaves much to be desired, but does this justify spending a five-figure sum on a new copier? Not in this life. And all the knowledge about the product, carefully stored in the memory of the seller, was powerless to affect the basic fact that the buyer does not perceive the value of the product. How should this meeting be held? Later in the chapters on the SPIN method, I will show in detail how to increase the value of the product in such cases. For now, I note that the meeting in Buffalo only confirms the validity of my theory that methods that work for a small sale can turn against you in a large transaction.

Long term relationship
Major sales generally involve a long-term relationship with the buyer. This is partly due to the fact that major transactions typically require some post-sales support, meaning that the buyer and seller meet once or more after the actual sale. People who sell high-value products or services usually close deals by building relationships with existing customers. In contrast, a small sale often occurs in one meeting, and the buyer never meets the seller again.
How does this affect the psychology of decision-making by the buyer? I will illustrate the answer to this question with my own example. Today, as the head of the company, I buy more often than I sell. A few weeks ago, as a buyer, I saw an excellent example of how long-term relationships associated with a large sale can influence decision making. I became a member of two sales in one day. The first sale was small: we needed a new projector, and I asked a local supplier to send a sales representative to my office. The nasty guy who showed up to me could have made a brilliant career in the pornography trade in the outskirts of Rio. “You're in luck,” he began, “I'm sure you can't wait to find out what little thing I'll offer you now!” In fact, I was itching to get rid of it as soon as possible. But he offered a good price, I needed a projector, and I was glad at the prospect of never seeing the man again. So I interrupted his eulogy in mid-sentence, ordered a projector, and sent the guy home exactly five minutes later. For him, the deal was a good one. In every sense, it was successful for me, the buyer. I got a new projector for good money - and for nothing more than five disgusting minutes.
On the same day, I became a participant in a much larger sale. We were thinking about changing the software and hardware of our accounting system, which involved getting a couple of new computers, an integrated accounting software package, and spending six months implementing it. I estimated the possible costs at least 70 thousand dollars. The salesperson turned out to be quite sensible, a little superficial and overly eager to make a deal, but overall, an order of magnitude better than the projector reseller I had dealt with a little earlier. Nevertheless, during the meeting, doubts began to overcome me. The price, as in the first case, was right, I needed a new system, but I felt an increasing reluctance to continue the meeting. “We will think it over and let you know,” I replied to the seller. Subsequently, after analyzing what had happened, I realized that the doubts that arose during the meeting, related not so much to the purchase itself, but to the need to enter into a relationship with this person. Unlike the projector case, where I didn't face another reunion with the salesperson, here I had to make a decision that would result in me having to work with the salesperson for several months, and I wasn't sure I wanted to.
What is the conclusion? Once again, we find that small sales methods are not suitable for larger deals and decisions. In a small sale, it's pretty easy to separate the seller and the product. I hated the projector seller, but I liked his product so much that I bought it. In the case of a large transaction, the seller and the product become almost inseparable. I liked the computer system, but it was impossible to buy it without establishing a relationship with the seller. Because big decisions usually involve developing a long-term relationship with the customer, they require a different style of selling. In the following chapters, we will analyze the difference between work styles and determine how to use these styles to build long-term customer relationships.
If you are a salesperson working with large clients (and I work with such people), then at some point you will feel like a tiny cog in a huge and impersonal sales machine. It is often difficult to see that your work has any measurable impact on the overall cause, so it must be nice to know that as sales grow, the buyer puts more emphasis on the personality of the seller when making a decision. In a large sale, the product and the seller are often perceived by the buyer as a single entity.

Risk of making mistakes

When Emotional Selling Occurs
I saw a great example of this sale a few years ago in San Francisco. The salesperson is a charming individual with an extraordinary ability to build strong interpersonal relationships with prospective buyers. People were really drawn to him and were ready to do business with him, without even realizing the reason for such a desire. The seller, for his part, knew how to penetrate the rational human principle and accurately find the levers to control the behavior of the interlocutor. He would say something like: “I know the main thing is that your boss likes this solution, and I’m here to help you with this,” or “Let's try, John, you want to do business with me because I don’t don't care." And once I heard him say about a competitor: “They have a great product, but the seller is a bore - but it’s interesting with me.”
With small sales, when his interlocutor could make a decision on his own, the deal was successful. This man knew how to get people to do business with him, and it worked. However, in large sales, if a potential client had to consult with someone, the result was mediocre. The people involved in the decision didn't think the deal should be done just because the salesperson was an interesting guy or would put their colleague in a good light.
The story has a happy ending. The salesperson was smart enough to understand that in a big sale, the buyer has to justify his decision to his colleagues, and therefore changed the way he works. If a decision was made by several people, he built a suitable chain of rational explanations. “In my heart,” he said, “I’m still the same old sensitive balabol, but now I understand that a potential client who is convinced only on the level of emotions is only an obstacle in the way of convincing others. If I see that the decision is risky enough that the buyer will involve other people in making it, I focus on presenting sound, business-like reasons for making the purchase. As a result, I've been more successful in big sales."
You may find this tip helpful. If the decision clearly requires consultation, the focus should be on the rational, business side of the issue. This does not mean that the emotional side is missing or should be ignored. But the salesperson who successfully pulls off a big deal is usually the best at equipping the buyer with rational business reasons for deciding in favor of the deal. As the size of the sale grows, the importance of rational elements increases.

Are these differences important??
We've discussed some options for changing buyer behavior—and hence sales skills—as the size of the deal grows. I've given you some preliminary arguments suggesting that you need a completely different style of selling to be successful in big deals. But are these differences really important? Can you be sure that reading the remaining chapters of this book will be a worthwhile investment of time?
In response, I might emphasize that some of the leading trade organizations are paying millions of dollars to gain access to the material published here. I could tell you the success stories of thousands of people who have taken our SPIN course. I could even show you some of the sales experts' testimonials about our work. I will do this later, but now I will give you convincing evidence that this book is not just worth reading, but reading very carefully as a useful guide to action.

Newcastle Study
The evidence I want to present comes from early work we did in England, in the city of Newcastle, for a subsidiary of a major multinational company. This study, and not one of the more complex ones that I will discuss a little later, was chosen because we conducted it when our methods were still new and we ourselves sometimes doubted their value. Careful validation of the results of this study convinced companies such as IBM, Honeywell, Exxon, and Motorola to choose Huthwaite's methods to train their salespeople in dealing with large accounts.
Let's take a quick look at the background of our study. We were convinced that big sales required a completely different set of skills than those taught in a traditional sales training program. As you will see in later chapters, our research found that many standard sales techniques—such as closing, handling objections, and using open and closed questions—did not work for large sales. We had done a few preliminary studies that indicated the possibility of new, more effective ways to handle a big sale, but when we started the study, we had no practical evidence of the effectiveness of our new method. Our client suggested that we take a trial, an experimental sales branch, and use it to test our theories. Now, a few years later, I can confess that I did not like the idea of ​​testing in practice. I was a competent enough consultant to convince people that they were acting wrong. Another thing is to teach them to act correctly. I was terribly nervous, although at the same time I knew that I would probably never again get a better opportunity to test the theories we were developing.
I will not describe the Newcastle test in my own words, as I want to offer you a more objective assessment of our find. British magazine Marketing published a full-length report on Huthwaite's work in Newcastle. Let me give you a short excerpt from this report.
“Confirmation that Huthwaite is moving in the right direction came when Xerox decided to test new theories. Barry Payne, Xerox's sponsor of Huthwaite, recalls: “The early studies were controversial. They crossed out a huge number of existing ideas about sales and, naturally, caused skepticism and opposition within the company, so we decided to test the workability of the new theory. If it turns out to be true, people who study this theory will sell better. We selected a pilot sales unit and trained its employees using Huthwaite's methods and insights.”
The essence of the experiment. Xerox chose the city of Newcastle in England for the test, where they had a rather weak branch of the company with 35 employees. “We decided to evaluate the results of our training two ways,” says Barry Payne. “First, they first took the summary tables of productivity of the branch, so that you could compare it with the rest of the departments that did not receive training” (Fig. 2.3).

Rice. 2.3. Newcastle Branch Productivity Changes

“Secondly,” Payne explains, “we took into account the number of appointments needed to get each order, which became a way to measure the quality of appointments.” The results were impressive (Figure 2.4).
Rice. 2.4. Newcastle. Changes in the ratio "meeting / order"

Newcastle rose to become the best branch in the country and held that position until the rest of the company was trained in the same methods. “I remember our excitement when the ratio of appointments to orders changed,” says a Huthwaite spokesperson. “It is easy to improve sales performance in a short period of time by increasing activity, motivating people to do more of the same work—the so-called Hawthorne effect. But the problem is that this effect, alas, is short-term. We wanted to improve skills, which meant getting more business from the same number of meetings.”
In fact, the number of appointments required to receive an order has been cut in half, from 48 to 24.
However, such striking results should be treated with caution. Barry Payne cautions: "At Xerox, we conducted an independent study that found that while changes in sales skills did occur, Newcastle's improvement in 5 out of 16 points could be attributed to other marketing factors."

SPIN selling is a selling method developed by Neil Rackham and described in his book of the same name. The SPIN method has become one of the most widely used. Using this method, you can achieve very high results in personal sales, Neil Rackham was able to prove this through extensive research. And despite the fact that recently many have begun to believe that this sales method is becoming irrelevant, almost all large companies use the SPIN sales technique when training salespeople.

What is SPIN selling

In short, SPIN selling is a way of leading a customer to a purchase by asking certain questions one by one, you are not presenting the product openly, but rather pushing the customer to come to the decision to make a purchase on their own. The SPIN method is best suited for the so-called "long sales", often these are sales of expensive or complex goods. That is, SPIN should be used when it is not easy for the client to make a choice. The need for this sales technique arose primarily due to increased competition and market saturation. The client has become more selective and experienced, and this has required greater flexibility from the sellers.

The SPIN sales technique is divided into the following blocks of questions:

• WITH situational questions (Situation)
• P problematic questions (Problem)
• AND enticing questions (Implication)
• H directing questions (Need-payoff)

It should be noted right away that SPIN sales are quite labor intensive. The thing is to put this technique into practice, you need to know the product very well, have good experience in selling this product, in itself such a sale takes a lot of time for the seller. Therefore, SPIN sales should not be used in the mass segment, for example, because if the purchase price is low, and the demand for the product is already large, then it makes no sense to spend a lot of time on long communication with the client, it is better to spend time on advertising and.

SPIN sales are built on the fact that the client, when the seller directly offers the goods, often includes a protective mechanism of denial. Buyers are pretty tired of the fact that they are constantly selling something and react negatively to the very fact of the offer. Although the product itself may be needed, it’s just that at the time of the presentation, the client doesn’t think that he needs the product, but that why is he being offered it? The use of the SPIN sales technique forces the client to make an independent purchase decision, that is, the client does not even understand that his opinion is controlled by asking the right questions.

SPIN Sales Technique

The SPIN sales technique is a sales model based not only on but on their. In other words, to successfully apply this sales technique, the salesperson must be able to ask the right questions. To begin with, we will analyze separately each group of questions of the SPIN sales technique:

situational questions

This type of questions is necessary for the full and definition of its primary interests. The purpose of situational questions is to find out the experience of using the product that you are going to sell, his preferences, for what purposes it will be used. As a rule, about 5 open-ended questions and a few clarifying ones are required. As a result of this block of questions, you must liberate the client and set him up for communication, which is why you should pay attention to open questions, as well as use. In addition, you must collect all the necessary information to pose problem questions in order to effectively identify key needs worth using. As a rule, the block of situational questions is the longest in time. When you have received the necessary information from the client, you need to move on to problematic issues.

Problematic issues

When asking problematic questions, you should draw the client's attention to the problem. It is important at the stage of situational questions to understand what is important to the client. For example, if a client is always talking about money, then it would be logical to ask problematic questions regarding money: “Are you satisfied with the price you pay now?”

If you have not decided on the needs, and do not know what problematic questions to ask. You need to have a set of prepared, standard questions that address various difficulties that the client may encounter. Your main goal is to identify the problem and the main thing is that it is important for the client. For example: a client may admit that he overpays for the services of the company that he uses now, but he does not care, because the quality of services is important for him, not the price.

Extraction questions

This type of questions is aimed at determining how important this problem is for him, and what will happen if it is not solved now. Extractive questions - should make it clear to the client that by solving the current problem, he will benefit.

The difficulty with extraction questions lies in the fact that they are not thought out in advance, unlike the others. Of course, with experience, you will form a pool of such questions, and you will learn how to use them depending on the situation. But initially, many sellers who master SPIN sales have difficulty asking such questions.

The essence of extractive questions is to establish for the client of causes an investigative link between the problem and its solution. Once again, I would like to note that in SPIN sales, you cannot say to the client: "our product will solve your problem." You should formulate the question in such a way that in response the client himself will say that he will be helped to solve the problem.

Guiding questions

Guiding questions - should help you, at this stage the client should speak for you all the benefits that he will receive from your product. Guiding questions can be compared to a positive way to complete the transaction, only the seller does not summarize all the benefits that the client will receive, but vice versa.

Guiding questions, in my opinion, are among the simplest, all you have to do is ask what benefits the customer will get from your product and how it will help solve their problem.