SPIN Selling – is a sales technique that Neil Rackham has published through his books. It is a technique to close a sale by asking questions to find out the customer’s needs.
If you walk into a supermarket, department store or market, you will see many salespeople urging you to buy from them. Each of them has different sales methods, some of which are so surprising that we have to turn around and look at them, while others use the same old methods that we see and just walk past.
From the buyer’s perspective, you already know what you’re buying and what kind of salesperson will win your heart. But from the salesperson’s perspective, closing the sale is their primary goal. While many fail to achieve this goal, many have a more interesting challenge. Great salespeople don’t just want to sell, they want to sell well. Even customers who didn’t initially have their product in mind will stop, listen, and make the decision to include those products in their purchase in the end.
SPIN Selling is a questioning technique developed by Neil Rackham, a British author, consultant and academic. He is the founder and former chairman of Huthwaite, Inc., a company that specializes in marketing and sales training for businesses. The technique is based on 35,000 sales observations of experienced salespeople and sales professionals. It has been proven by organizations like Microsoft, which have professional sales teams in their offices. This book presents a groundbreaking and pioneering approach to consultative selling that will make you think and act differently in your next sales presentation.
“Quality of questions asked by salespeople”
The key to closing better sales is the questions that salespeople choose to ask their potential customers. Good, relevant questions will speed up the sales process, while bad, irrelevant questions will stall the sale because they are not meeting the customer’s needs.
“Don’t start by bombarding people with questions, but start by building a relationship.”
There are so many sales methods and techniques in today’s world that it can overwhelm a sales manager. SPIN selling is all about building a close relationship with your prospects to know their needs and then presenting your product as a way to meet those needs. SPIN selling technique involves asking 4 different questions, each of which will persuade and motivate even those who were not at all interested in your product to become interested in becoming your customers.
- SITUATION questions – Used to analyze customers, target basic and important issues, address needs and desires arising from dissatisfaction with services or products.
- PROBLEM questions – Make customers see the problems. Focus on solving the problems customers have while using the product or service.
- IMPLICATION questions – Expand on customer issues, present the future of service and the long-term impact on consumers.
- NEED-PAYOFF questions – Find solutions to customers to determine how much the product meets their needs or solves their problems. It also helps to learn about the changes to their things.
“Get beyond the blanket sales pitch, ask the right questions for each individual target.”
Most sales techniques focus on the smaller scale without any value. SPIN selling is much larger in scale. It only becomes visible when the customer base increases. The product is targeted to a wider audience. Most people who are not aware of this technique tend to ask the same questions to sell the same products. SPIN selling tells you to move beyond the blanket sales technique and look to ask each of your potential customers the right questions to make them your customers.
“Getting more information about your prospects will help you build more trust and value with them.”
The SPIN technique helps salespeople have engaging conversations with prospects, meaning they are carefully navigating the conversation by asking the right questions with a list of questions to ask, and taking the right amount of time to get the best answers back. This method of timing and questioning makes it easier to engage prospects in real conversations, and salespeople get more factual answers than if they were to recite a script to the customer.
“SPIN Selling promotes smooth operations to ensure that salespeople close deals with a much higher success rate.”
Successful sales can only happen when sales reps are more involved in researching the product and the target consumer to formulate the right questions that are strategically positioned throughout the sales process. These questions are important because they help to better understand the potential customer’s pain points, understand their most important needs, enable the salesperson to determine which products they are likely to buy, and give the salesperson an opportunity to build trust with the target audience.
“The main goal of the SPIN technique is not always to close the deal.”
Using the SPIN technique does not guarantee that you will always close a deal. If you focus on closing the deal, you may end up selling aggressively and you may lose the prospect instead. Most salespeople are taught to start with open-ended questions to find out more about the prospect. But the truth is, the best questions are those that have a time limit and are aimed at getting a concise answer. The number of open-ended questions does not change or affect the success rate of closing. Successful salespeople are more successful when they ask closed-ended questions.
“While the SPIN technique is useful, there are some drawbacks to using it in your sales approach.”
There are many benefits to using SPIN. It elicits customer needs, motivates them to prevent or find solutions, directs the salesperson to the root of the problem to provide the best possible assistance to the customer, and convinces the customer of the need to use the product or service being offered. It often leads to the successful completion of a large and complex sales process. It is also a technique that has been studied in many industries and countries. However, there are still reasons why SPIN should not be used. For example, it requires a lot of learning and understanding, so it requires a lot of research and man hours. It also aims to build trust and value for the product or service, so it does not promote the growth of new products. However, despite these disadvantages, SPIN can still be useful in closing complex deals easily.
Conclusion
The SPIN technique has been in use for the last 30 years and its continued use is proof that it is a truly effective sales technique. Most traditional sales techniques are rigid and try to approach the prospect with the idea that they should ask open-ended questions that are most likely to be successful. However, these never guarantee the overall success of the salesperson’s goals.
To develop your SPIN technique skills, start by practicing one technique at a time. Don’t try to do several at once, and don’t move on to the next one until you are confident that you can do the first technique correctly. Practice a new technique at least three times, paying attention to the little behaviors you use when you sell, and continue to develop your selling skills. You will eventually become a salesperson who can close deals with ease.
“A good salesperson asks the right questions at the right time and listens actively.”
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The Challenger Sale – Important Techniques That Today’s Salespeople Must Know and Understand
To sell is Human – Born as a human, you must know how to sell.
