1-Sentence-Summary: SPIN Selling is your guide to becoming an expert salesperson by identifying what the author learned from 35,000 sales calls and 12 years of research on the topic.
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Based on the 10,000-hour rule, you’ve got to work full-time for about five years to become an expert in something. Can you imagine how good you’d become if you studied your craft for 12 years? That’s just what Neil Rackham did.
He personally conducted over 35,000 sales calls. In the process, he developed a surefire way to sell effectively. It’s called SPIN and involves asking questions as well as exploring the situation, problem, implication, and need-payoff in every sales scenario.
Rackham explains the details of what this means in his book SPIN Selling. You’ll find out how to ask the right questions to make a successful sale. And it also teaches you how to lay the foundation for success from the very beginning of every call.
Here are 3 of the best lessons I got out of this book:
- To get more sales, use the SPIN method: situation, problem, implication, and need-payoff.
- Know the difference between features and benefits and when to use each.
- You have to practice if you want to become a better salesperson with the SPIN technique.
Are you excited to learn how to beat out the competition and become salesperson of the year? Let’s get right to it!
Lesson 1: The SPIN mentality for selling has four parts: situation, problem, implication, and need-payoff.
The key to becoming good at sales is to know your client’s needs and really understand them. To do this, follow the four-pronged SPIN mentality for asking questions:
- Situation
- Problem
- Implication
- Need-payoff
First, you need to identify the situation they’re in right now. Questions in this category are purely fact-based. You might ask “what type of computers do you use in your office currently?” to get the details. Don’t spend too long by asking a lot of questions on this step, though.
The next step is to dig deeper and find out what problems they’re having. Ask yourself what makes it difficult for them to use what they have now. You also want to explore why they might be dissatisfied with it. A question like “do you have any problems with the MacBook Pro’s that you currently use?” would be a good one to ask here.
Now it’s time to dive into the consequences of their problems with implication questions. To them, a little problem here and there isn’t a big deal, but this is your opportunity to shine. You want to ask questions that help them see the severity of the issue, especially what will happen if it’s not resolved soon.
Last is need-payoff questions, which are for discovering the client’s intentions for solving their problems. Asking the right questions in the previous steps makes this one easy. If you’ve done it right, they will see your option as the most effective and obvious for them.
Lesson 2: Benefits are not the same as features, and knowing the difference can make the process of persuasion go much better.
In Simon Sinek’s famous Start With Why, he outlines an important truth about people’s purchasing habits. Nobody buys items, they invest their money in a “why”, or a purpose. But how can you take advantage of this and sell the “why” instead of the “what?”
The key is knowing the difference between your product’s benefits and features.
A feature is merely a fact, and they don’t really sell. My MacBook Pro, for example, has 16 GB of RAM, a 512 GB SSD hard drive, and a 16” screen. On their own, these mean next to nothing. Most people have a hard time even understanding what some of these things mean!
It might be tempting to get caught in the trap of identifying advantages. These are better than features but not as powerful as benefits. Advantages identify what your product is going to do to help the customer. At the end of the day, these are just informative though.
What you need to do is understand and describe the benefits of a product. This is a matter of finding matching your client’s needs with what the item can do to make those possible. A good way to do this is to look at people’s values, or what is important to them.
Let’s say that you know that your client wants to help the environment and save money. When selling them a car, you’d show them the hybrid and talk about its savings in gas mileage and how it also helps save the planet, too. Instead of selling an item, you’re offering a solution to a problem they have.
Lesson 3: Using the SPIN technique requires practice.
Practice makes perfect, right? There are countless books on this topic for many different aspects of life. Learning how to use SPIN selling is no different.
It’s important that you don’t give up when trying. Just take things little by little. Don’t try to do the entire technique all at once. Instead, try one stage at a time. Wait to move on until you’re completely comfortable with each step. It will take a lot of repetitions of the same thing, but it’s worth it!
Remember that you’re not going to feel comfortable with it after the first try. In the author’s experience of watching 200 golf players try to play after their first private lesson, he found that many of them lacked confidence in their new skills. You will be the same way, so plan on trying each new thing at least three times.
You also want to keep in mind that quantity is better than quality while you’re learning. You’re going to mess up and that’s okay. Forget about perfecting every little thing and just try! You’ll get a lot further if you just practice a lot and forget about avoiding errors.
Be careful where you try these new techniques, however. When you’re still new to it, don’t try them on your biggest clients. It’s best to practice with the smaller, more regular ones because there’s less of a risk if you make a mistake with them.
Keep at it and in no time you’re going to see great successes from SPIN selling!
SPIN Selling Review
I don’t know a lot about sales, but the tips from SPIN Selling got me excited to try them. These seem like simple mindset shifts that can improve the success of anyone, beginner or experienced. Although this isn’t my area of expertise, I still enjoyed this book and I believe you will too.
Who would I recommend the SPIN Selling summary to?
The 45-year-old manager that wants a proven way to get more clients, the 22-year-old salesman who is having a hard time finding success, and anyone that wants to learn how to become more persuasive.
Last Updated on October 12, 2022
