SPIN Selling

Provides a template for closing bigger sales

As a sales and marketing trainer and coach for professionals, I discovered Neil Rackham's book while looking for a simple way of explaining the techniques that distinguish larger, more complicated sales from small quick sales.

This book provided exactly what I was looking for. SPIN is an easy way to remember to ask more questions--and more meaningful questions--and the discussion of how to raise the level of need from "implicit" to "explicit" and then sell to the "explicit" need was a brilliant way of explaining what the best professionals I've worked with have learned to do.

In my own book,The High Diving Board: How to Overcome Your Fears and Live Your Dreams, I used a simple 10-step template like this to help people overcome the fears that keep them from doing what they need to do to be successful.

Rackham supports his template with hard research, but anyone who watches top professionals sell their services can instantly recognize the accuracy of what he presents.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

The best I've read

Whether or not the SPIN approach is the best for selling potato peelers, it certainly is the best for big ticket items. I have been in sales since 1975 and am now semi-retired. In the course of those years, I have read literally every book in my local library on sales, plus every book that pertained to real estate sales that I could find 'more than 400 by actual count'. Although this was neither of the above, I found my way to it as well. This book focuses on making the sale even though it may take days, weeks or months. It is not a book that tells you which data base to get or that a certain time is best to call prospects 'the best time to call is when the prospect is awake'. Unlike so many of the early books on sales, it is not a book of gimmicks ''Roll the pen at the customer, s/he'll pick it up, then getting him/her to sign is easy'... what BS'. Rather this is the psychoanalysts book of sales in the sense that the sales person asks the questions needed to allow the client to uncover his or her own hidden needs and biases. Then, still often using a questioning technique, the sales person helps to customer to see, both logically and emotionally, that the product offered effectively meets those needs. By leading the customer/client to draw the conclusion rather than the sales person drawing it for the customer, the customer becomes vested in the outcome, to the benefit of both. It won't work for you if you are selling a grossly inferior product. But if that's the case, why not find a better company to work for? The work book (separate from this book) is also a worthwhile investment in addition to, not instead of, this book.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

This book is AWESOME

I am new to sales, but I have read a number of other books including How to Master the Art of Sales and Sales for Dummies, however those books teach an approach that made me feel like a car salesman. This book breaks it down into 4 types of questions, and what his research showed works the best. He also talks about the best way to get commitment, how to dodge objections, (most sales training teaches you that objections are good but his research shows that most objections are caused by what the seller has said to the prospect and that it is not good and results in fewer sales) It's hands down the best sales book I've ever read and I've already used it in two real life situations with positive outcomes. If you digest the information in this book and apply it you will see a major return on your minor 30 dollar investment.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

A Must Read for All Salespeople

Finally a sales book worth reading. I highly recommend this book to anyone in sales with a lot of experience or none at all. The SPIN selling technique is the most simple, practical and useful sales tool that I have ever learned.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Complex Selling Both a Tactical and Strategic Endeavor

Unlike most developers of sales training, Neil Rackham methodically backs up his claims with in-depth research. To build the flexible, adaptable SPIN model, Rackham has observed and analyzed a large number of high dollar value sales made around the world. Rackham convincingly demonstrates that successful salespeople marketing high dollar value products and services do not rely on the sales tactics geared towards low dollar value sales that are traditionally taught to salespeople. Successful salespeople typically go through four stages that Rackham has identified as: preliminaries, investigating, demonstrating capability, and obtaining commitment. 1. In analyzing 'Preliminaries', Rackham first warns salespeople that although first impressions count, they are less important that too many of them imagine. Furthermore, Rackham recommends that salespeople get down to business quickly and avoid talking about solutions too soon. Raising areas of personal interest with buyers can sound suspicious. Talking about the benefit of a solution before understanding buyer's needs and building value to satisfy these needs, can also be an invitation for trouble. Unfortunately, Rackham does not remind his audience enough that this approach to preliminaries, though perfectly appropriate in the American culture, can be perceived as offensive in others. Salespeople doing business abroad beware. 2. In looking at the critical 'Investigating', Rackham advises that salespeople not only use situation questions and problem questions but also implication questions and need-payoff questions. Salespeople usually ask the first two types of questions to uncover implied needs unless their customers or prospects tell them upfront that they have an explicit need for a specific solution to their problem(s). In high dollar value sales, salespeople must leverage the uncovered problems to make them bigger by exploring their implications. Buyers can indeed perceive an imbalance between the price of the solution and the severity of their problem(s). Because that type of questioning can sound negative or depressing to buyers, salespeople must follow with need-payoff solutions to make their customers or prospects feel good about the proposed solution to their problem(s). To his credit, Rackham reminds his audience that the SPIN model is not a rigid formula. The type of questions to be used and their relative importance depend on the circumstances of the specific high dollar value sale at hand. 3. In examining 'Demonstrating Capability', Rackham makes the distinction among features, advantages, and benefits. Rackham convincingly shows that offering benefits is key to meet explicit needs expressed by customers or prospects. Selling only features can be a risky value proposition because that tactic potentially makes customers or prospects more price sensitive than they should be. Resisting that temptation can be particularly daunting in the high tech industry that sometimes suffers from 'feature creep.' Selling only advantages can also backfire against salespeople because that tactic is eventually an invitation to objections raised by customers or prospects. To his credit, Rackham emphasizes objection prevention and not objection resolution by bringing customers or prospects to the insight that the product or service being offered meets the needs expressed by them. 4. In investigating 'Obtaining Commitment', Rackham demonstrates with panache that there is an inversely proportional relationship between the number of closing techniques and the success of high dollar value sales. Traditional closing techniques such as assumptive closes, alternative closes, standing-room-only closes, last-chance closes, and order-blank closes can easily generate objections from customers or prospects who are not yet ready to act on their implied and expressed needs. Progress in high dollar value sales is measured in actions on which customers or prospects agree so that salespeopl

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Proven steps to sucess... a MUST read.

Neil Rackham has put together an invaluable tool for sales professionals. Any sales manager or trainer who has not read this book is very likely teaching outdated, and probably damaging techniques to their team. I especially appreciated the research proving, and at times disproving effectiveness of the various actions sales people take. I will be practicing these skills and developing some new training for the sales people I work with right away!

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

The BEST Sales Manual I've Ever Read - Bar NONE!

This book was an optional textbook in my college's 'Personal Professional Selling' course. The material is based on years of research by Huthwaite and all of it documented. This blows the lid off the traditional nonsense about 'closing techniques', 'warming up clients' and 'digging for objections'. I sell bulk delivered foods direct to consumers in-home. Spin Selling and it's companion volume _Spin Selling Fieldbook_ have helped me understand the value of questioning correctly and in what particular order. This has helped me make better use of my time with consumers and show them that I do care about them by focusing on their issues and what my Need-Payoff benefits are.

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