50 pages • 1-hour read
SPIN Selling: Situation Problem Implication Need-payoff
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Chapter 7-Appendix AChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary: “Preliminaries: Opening the Call”
Though preliminaries are the first part of a sales call, SPIN Selling addresses them last. Preliminaries have the most negligible effect on a sales call, at least in larger sales. Major salespeople typically talk with new customers less than 5% of the time. Therefore, the initial impression is less important than the continued relationship.
While the chapter stresses that it is worthwhile for salespeople to dress nicely when meeting new clients, attending to minor details is less important. Initial meetings involve a flood of information, and the client is less likely to remember small details. Preliminaries are exceptionally difficult for data gathering because so many factors are involved. Instead, looking at sales transactions from start to finish revealed that first impressions do not necessarily impede large sales. However, they do affect small sales.
Conventional sales training focuses on preliminaries as a critical part of sales transactions. These trainings tell salespeople to connect with clients’ interests and “make an opening benefit statement” (139). These statements include “I know a busy executive such as yourself is concerned with increasing productivity. Our product has been proven to increase productivity by at least 15%. Aren’t you curious how our product can boost your company’s productivity?” (139). Both tactics have proven ineffective in larger sales. Years ago, buyers would buy from salespeople they liked, but now the focus is on buying the best product for the least amount. Major buyers complain that salespeople are wasting their time by discussing personal interests. It also makes clients feel like the seller is trying to manipulate them. The opening benefit statement is effective in smaller sales in which the call is generally short. For example, a pharmaceutical company’s sales averaged six minutes a call. However, larger sales averaged 40 minutes per call. In these cases, the opening benefit statements did not affect larger sales.
In worst case scenarios, opening benefit statements can harm sales. This is particularly true when salespeople use the same statement on multiple calls. As larger sales require multiple contacts, reusing these statements will only irritate the buyer. Additionally, opening benefit statements focus on the product rather than the client. This approach is ineffective in larger sales because it forces the seller to discuss features and advantages too early in a call.
SPIN strategy suggests that salespeople focus on the purpose of the call. The salesperson’s first goal should be to move to the next stage of the call, the investigating stage. Sellers start the call by introducing themselves, explaining their reason for contacting the buyer (without discussing product details), and establishing their “right to ask questions” (144). Sellers should focus on moving to the investigation stage as soon as possible, as preliminaries are the least productive part of any call. Salespeople should also avoid talking about the product too early in a call and focus on questions rather than wasting time with preliminaries. Salespeople who are awkward and less polished in the preliminaries are generally just as successful as more polished salespeople when they follow the rest of the strategy.
Chapter 8 Summary: “Turing Theory Into Practice”
The final chapter translates theoretical concepts into practical application. The key to mastering the SPIN method is intense practice. To facilitate this process, the chapter provides four golden rules for learning skills applicable to SPIN selling and any new skill.
The first rule is to focus on one skill at a time rather than attempting to master all aspects of the SPIN method simultaneously. By concentrating on a specific area, sellers can achieve mastery before moving on to the next skill. The second rule advises trying the new behavior at least three times, recognizing that initial attempts may feel awkward and not yield immediate success. Persistence is critical to becoming comfortable with the method.
The third rule highlights the importance of quantity over quality during practice. Sellers should prioritize asking many questions over obsessing about the perfection of each question. Research indicated that those who focused on quantity were more successful than those fixated on the quality of questions asked. The fourth rule stresses practicing in safe situations and avoiding using critical sales encounters as practice sessions. This approach ensures sellers feel comfortable and confident in their skills before employing them in critical sales scenarios.
The chapter further outlines the stages of a sales call: preliminaries, investigating, demonstrating capability, and obtaining commitment. The investigating stage, which incorporates the SPIN method, is particularly critical. Here, situation questions provide factual background information, while problem questions uncover client issues and dissatisfactions. Implication questions explore the consequences of identified problems, and need-payoff questions assess the value of the offered solution.
Sellers should prioritize mastering situation and problem questions before proceeding to more challenging implication and need-payoff questions. Analyzing current selling patterns and gradually incorporating more questions into the sales process helps sellers become comfortable with asking. Moving on to implication questions requires listing arguments to convince clients of the seriousness of their problems, which can take time and practice.
Next, sellers focus on need-payoff questions, aiming to have clients articulate the product or service’s benefits. Rather than emphasizing features or advantages, sellers should highlight the problems the offering solves to facilitate question planning. After each sales transaction, sellers conduct a thorough analysis, evaluating well-received behaviors and areas for improvement. Attention to detail and continuous refinement of selling performance are crucial for success.
The final stage of SPIN selling, entelechy (realization), emphasizes turning theory into practical application through intensive practice. The four golden rules provide a valuable framework for skill development, applicable to SPIN selling and any new skill acquisition. By mastering the stages of a sales call and focusing on the investigating stage, sellers can effectively employ the SPIN method and build stronger connections with buyers.
Appendix A Summary
The first Appendix discusses how the Huthwaite team proved the effectiveness of the SPIN method. They found that most sales training programs claim fantastic success rates, but these sales increases are just as easily attributed to product and policy changes. The SPIN method had similar problems when Huthwaite tried to verify its effectiveness. In one case, a company experienced a 58% jump in sales after SPIN training. However, the company also launched two new products, and much of the trained staff was promoted to larger territories, thus boosting their selling potential.
After several failures, Huthwaite adjusted its measurement method. Rather than trying to prove the effectiveness of the SPIN method, they attempted to disprove its efficacy. They created a plan in which they would first observe sellers, identify if they used the SPIN method, and evaluate the call’s success. Then, the team would train sellers in the SPIN method. After training, the team would observe the sellers to see if they were still using the skills. Finally, the team would compare productivity before, during, and after training against a control group.
The next step was to find someone willing to fund this test. Motorola Canada agreed, and Huthwaite followed 42 salespeople before training and found that SPIN behaviors were used in more successful calls. They also observed a 42-person control group. They continued to monitor these groups during and after training. At the end of this observation period, the control group’s orders were down 13%, and the SPIN group’s orders were up 17% from the initial observation. New business orders fell 16% for the control group but rose 63% for the SPIN group. The SPIN group also had a 5.3% increase in the dollar value of sales versus the control group’s 22.1% fall in dollar value.
Huthwaite cites two possible flaws in this data. First, the control group was slightly less effective in using SPIN methods before the data collection, and second, the Hawthorne effect is the change in data that occurs when people are aware they are being observed. They conducted another study to overcome these possible flaws. With matched control groups, the control group saw a 21% drop in orders, whereas the SPIN group saw a 16% increase. Their attempt to isolate the Hawthorne effect still resulted in positive numbers for the SPIN group and negative numbers for the control group. Despite possible variables, the study showed through the data that the SPIN method proved its effectiveness.
Chapter 7-Appendix A Analysis
As with every section, the final chapters emphasize that Traditional Methods Are Not Always Effective. In Chapter 7, this theme is apparent in the dismissal of preliminaries as an important part of the sales call. As a counterexample, Rackham’s friend, who was selling Christmas cards for a charity organization, demanded that the volunteers wear their best clothes. After this change, their sales went up 20%. While it is not in the best interest of any salesperson to look unkempt, this kind of sales jump is only possible in small sales.
The chapter also questions the traditional method of opening calls. One standard opening involves the salesperson building a relationship through the buyer’s interests. For example, if the seller sees sports paraphernalia, the seller should try to connect to the buyer through sports. In small, rural sales, sellers that connected to the buyer in this way were more effective. However, this method did not impact the sale in an urban environment, where the products were significantly more expensive. In addition, this technique can actually backfire in larger sales. Professional buyers tend to be suspicious of salespeople who try this route, and rarely do they have the time to discuss personal interests. While this sales method has been taught since the 1920s, the SPIN method puts its efficacy into perspective.
Traditional sales training also recommends salespeople use opening benefit statements. These statements should be brief and businesslike: “Customer, as a busy professional, we know that saving time is of the utmost importance. Our product has helped clients such as Big Company and Even Bigger Company shave at least 10% off their average ticket times. Wouldn’t you like to see how much time your company could save?” These quick statements intend to draw in the customer. They have a proven track record in smaller sales, but, once again, this traditional method falls flat in larger sales. Worse, they often steer the conversation toward features and advantages too early, which can be problematic for the sale.
While SPIN Selling is highly critical of traditional advice on preliminaries, it does not offer an alternate technique. Huthwaite’s research found no similarities in how successful sellers open a call. While the book generally provides precise advice on how sellers should proceed, advice in this area is markedly lacking. Instead, it suggests the seller move to the investigation stage quickly and establish their role as a questioner. This is problematic, as the book gives no examples of how a seller might do that.
This criticism of traditional methods continues in Chapter 8, which provides ideas on how the seller can practice the SPIN method. The theory here is that quantity is more important than quality when learning a new skill. However, stating that quantity is more important in all new skill acquisition is problematic. In learning new math facts or formulas, for instance, it is important to ensure students learn correctly, as it is easy to fall into patterns of wrong methods and answers. In weightlifting, repetition without the correct form can be dangerous. While quantity is certainly more important when practicing the SPIN method, generalizing that quantity is more important when learning any new skill is, like all generalizations, incorrect.
This section also focuses on The Importance of Relationship Building in these chapters. To accomplish this, the seller should view their product and service as the problems it can solve instead of a list of features and advantages. Ultimately, this problem-solving approach builds the relationship with the client. The buyer and seller have defined roles in this relationship. The buyer is the one who asks questions, and the seller is the one who provides information, highlighting the theme of The Power of Effective Questioning. This is very similar to the teacher-student relationship found in the Socratic method. To ask effective questions, the seller must do their homework beforehand to research potential problems the client might experience and brainstorm ways to develop their needs. This is part of the relationship-building key to a larger sale. This research indicates that the seller is interested in the buyer and their problems, not just the product. While relationship building is just one sales component, ensuring that the client views the seller as a teammate rather than just a salesperson can only help future sales.
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