SPIN Selling [Hardcover]

My 6 year old clearly writes his thoughts better than the author does. That is not so say that the book does not offer any truths about the "big sale" but he could have easily written it in about 20 pages. The scripted conversations are ridiculously simple and in the "what not to do" scenarios the sales rep making suggestions would have lost their jobs in 1988 when the book was originally written (I love the references to the "big eight", that's what re-releases are for) or can be found today on some used car lot in the California desert.

This book reads like a consultant wrote it, a lot of words and wasted time determining what you already knew. If you're a sales manager looking for a book for your staff I would not recommend this one for anyone with more than a years experience if they made quota. If you have a rookie or someone making the transition from small commodity sales to larger ones then MAYBE at best.

P.S. no book deserves 1 star

Neil Rackham writes a book that summarizes the ground-shaking discoveries of his Company, Huthwaite. The Whole purpose of their research which lasted for a good Number of years was to discover what certain behaviors on the salesman's part helped In creating a successful purchase in the Major-Account sale, in which the item for Sale was usually expensive and requires a long after-sales relationship between buyer And seller.

Mr. Rackham turns the conventional sales knowledge upside-down and he does so very convincingly. He divides the sale into 4 phases; The Preliminaries, Investigating, Demonstrating Capability and Obtaining Commitment. He lays great emphasis in The Investigation phase, and it is in this phase that the SPIN Model comes into action.

SPIN is an acronym for the different types of questions that a seller must use in order to properly establish the last two phases of the sales call. Situation questions are simple straightforward questions about the buyer's company and current situation they are general questions that basically aim to establish context for the next questions. Problem questions are those which aim to pinpoint the exact problems of the buyer so that it becomes easier to uncover his implied needs. Implication questions take us a step further into examining the consequences of the buyers problem more closely and trying to make him more acutely aware of their ramifications so that we can start asking Need-Payoff questions which basically deal with the value and utility that the buyer perceives in a solution. The Need-Payoff questions lead to the development of Explicit need in which the buyer Has been led to clearly understand the context of his exact need to fix a particular Problem. Only after the SPIN questions have been successfully used to define Those explicit needs can a seller start demonstrating capability. With knowledge Of the needs of the buyer the seller can therefore more easily demonstrate solutions Which satisfy those explicit needs, i.e. the benefits of the product or service.

Mr. Rackham describes the different phase in the different chapters of his book and provides very useful information to discredit many misconceptions that have long Been held holy by salesmen, such as the importance of closing, the true meaning of Benefit as opposed to advantage and feature, the relative value of openings and first Impressions and most of all the value of the investigating phase.

An Essential book if you have anything to do with Sales.

This is a classic sales book going back about 20 years. In that time, customers really haven't changed, people still think of Sales as a bipolar relationship whereby you're meant to be 'friendly' whilst taking advantage of the customer. Whether it's a product to a business (eg. HP high-end servers) or to a consumer (eg. Kobe's latest basketball shoes), or it's actually a service (like a travel agent, or an airline), the mindset should be the same: offer tremendous value, and make sure the price comes well below that value.

Okay, before I get too deep in the marketing speak. Here Value is 'all the ways you can make the customers life easier/better by using your product.' This is awesome if you can put a dollar value amount on it.

So that's it, and the salesman's job is to rattle off enough features that turn into (in the customer's mind) 'value', right? Nope. Actually the popular approach of just listing features (or reading them to the customer!) doesn't really work. It's like you're speaking Swedish, and you're expecting your prospect to be able to do the translation himself. He doesn't want to, he wants to talk to someone who will do the translation for him'either you or.. one of your competitors.

It turns out that features are only really interesting on very simple, low-end products. Cheap products or commodities rely on features to differentiate themselves (or, shall we say, de-commoditize themselves?). Do you want the red pen or the blue one? Should it be re-fillable? Does it have a comfortable rubberized grip? Ok. Done. These are decisions that you can make in a few seconds, and don't need to consult anyone over.

But if you have any success at all in sales, you'll want to move on to bigger and better products, where the commissions are nice and fat. If you bring that 'feature' based approach with you, you won't last. All 'listing features' does is increase your customer's expectation of a higher and higher price, getting you away from the value-based approach. Turn the attention to the customer.

Rackham breaks down the research and the new method of Spin selling. Yes, you have to do a little research before sitting down with each customer, but it's worth it. Link the questions to value, get the customer to think about what might go wrong, and how much the solution is worth to them. Sales skills are important in every job. Persuasion is important to everybody. Value is important to everybody. This isn't really about money, it's about listening to people. Your task, whether you're selling a car, or persuading your friends to go to a particular nightclub is not to shoot down alternatives (competition, other nightclubs) but to ask the questions that will elicit values. You get people to declare their needs clearly, and then offer them the solution (eg. your product).

This isn't about tricking people into buying bad products. This isn't a fight, and it's not something to be nervous about. It's not about hypnosis, and it's something you should be ashamed of. Your job is not even about money, it's about communication. What you really want to do is analyse the customers situation and find multiple ways your product can benefit them. After having done that, hopefully the value is much higher than the ticket price. If it is, you shouldn't have trouble closing the sale.

Not only do you sell the product, you sell yourself in this way when you're looking for a raise, or applying for a new job. This is the core of decision making, and what value means to people. Showing others the tremendous value that is already right there in front of them.

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