When you’re starting a sale, what’s your goal? If you’re thinking it’s just about selling a product, then here’s the bad news: you’re looking at it the wrong way. According to Neil Rackham, the creator of the SPIN selling method, the aim isn’t just to make a sale but to start a relationship. Except for a few famous brands, no product is going to fly off the shelves just because of its features. Instead, you’ve got to build a connection with the customer and figure out together how to solve their problems.

This is very true in business-to-business (B2B) sales where sales teams need to switch gears and become more like advisors – learning everything they can about their customers to offer the best solutions. It all starts with listening. Asking the right questions is key for a salesperson to understand a customer’s situation, figure out their needs, and build trust.

However, sometimes it’s tricky to know what questions to ask. That’s where Rackham’s SPIN selling method comes in. It’s a first-class strategy that helps sales reps choose meaningful questions to probe their prospects. With SPIN selling, you can uncover what the customer really needs, find out what’s frustrating them, tackle their concerns, and close more sales.

SPIN Selling Overview

SPIN selling is a method that helps salespeople close complex deals. In SPIN, each letter represents a type of question to ask.

• Situation
• Problem
• Implication
• Need-payoff

Salespeople are often known for talking a lot about what they’re selling without really listening to the people who make the decisions. However, the SPIN selling method changes this. Instead of doing all the talking, SPIN is about asking the right questions and really paying attention to what the potential customers have to say.

The Origin of SPIN Selling

In 1988, Rackham authored “SPIN Selling.” In his book he lays out a plan for salespeople to ask the right questions at the right times – whether they’re meeting in person or talking on the phone – to close more deals. He also talks about the importance of sales reps becoming trusted advisors, aiming to teach them how to build strong, trustworthy relationships with customers through good sales practices.

The SPIN selling method has been a hit since it came out. The method it describes is still widely used in sales today.

Examples of SPIN Selling Questions

To figure out why the best salespeople were so good, Rackham and his team at Huthwaite looked at over 35,000 sales conversations for several years. They realized that there are four kinds of important questions that can help you sell more.

• Situation questions
• Problem questions
• Implication questions
• Need-payoff questions

Every type of question serves a specific purpose in the sales journey. SPIN selling questions work together to help sales reps achieve their main aim: closing the deal.

Below are examples of 34 SPIN questions (organized by stage) that you can try out in your next sales conversation.

SPIN: “Situation” Questions

Situation questions help sales reps understand what’s happening with each prospect right now. They’re asked at the beginning of a sale.

At this point, situation questions gather info that’ll be useful for dealing with objections later on. Just remember not to ask simple questions that you could find answers to easily through research.

• How are you doing [insert process] right now?
• Why does your company do [insert process] this way?
• How much money do you have for [insert process]?
• How big of a deal is [insert process] for your company?
• What tools do you use to help with [insert process]?
• Who handles [insert process] the most? What do they require?
• How often do you need to do [insert process]?
• How much [insert resource] do you usually use in a day/week/month?

SPIN: “Problem” Questions

Problem questions dig into what’s bothering prospects and what difficulties they’re facing. These questions come up in the investigation step.

Once you get to this part, you ask specific questions to find out about the prospect’s goals and the things that are getting in their way. This chat should help them realize the problems they have now and might face in the future, which your product or service could fix.

• How much does it cost to do [insert process]?
• Are you happy with how you do [insert operation]?
• Do things sometimes go wrong with these processes?
• How much time does [insert process] take?
• Have you ever run out of [insert resource]?
• Have you ever not been able to get [insert resource]?
• Has a past problem with [insert process or operation] caused you to lose resources?
• Has the cost of [insert process or resource] ever stopped you from [insert operation]?
• Who deals with problems with [insert process or operation]? How does it affect their workload?
• What’s the hardest part for your organization when it comes to [insert process or operation]?
• What are the bad sides of your current way of doing [insert operation]?

SPIN: “Implication” Questions

Implication questions let prospects talk about the problems they mentioned earlier. You ask these questions when you’re ready to show how your product or service can solve those problems.

According to Rackham, prospects really become engaged when you ask SPIN implication questions. At this point, Rackham says, you “start to find out things where you [the salesperson] might be able to help a lot.” He says these questions help sales and support teams come up with “better and richer solutions” for possible customers.

Use these questions to guide prospects towards making a purchase:

• What resources does it take to do [insert process] this way?
• If you had more resources, what could you achieve?
• How would you use more money (give specific examples) each quarter?
• How does your problem with [insert process or resource] affect your team?
• Does [insert process] ever stop you from reaching your business goals?
• If you didn’t have the problem with [insert process or resource], would it be easier for you to reach your goals?
• What would happen if [insert process or operation] never happened?
• Have you had this problem with [insert process or resource] before?
• Where do you find the most problems with [insert process or resource]?
• Are there any hidden costs like training, equipment, etc. linked to [insert process or resource]?

SPIN: “Need-Payoff” Questions

Need-payoff questions ask buyers how much they need to solve their problem and what good things would happen if they did. This is a closing technique used at the end of a sale.

When you get to this point, ask SPIN need-payoff questions to get the prospect to talk about how useful your product or service would be in their own words. If you do it right, these questions will help the prospect see the value of your company and they’ll decide to buy.

• Would it help you reach your business goals if you did [insert process]?
• Do you think doing [insert process] would be helpful?
• Do you believe fixing your problem with [insert process or resource] would benefit your organization?
• Why is it important for your organization to be able to do [insert process or operation]?
• How do you think solving [insert process or resource] would help your team?

The 4 Steps of a SPIN Sale

Rackham says there are four main steps in every sale:

• Opening
• Investigating
• Demonstrating capability
• Obtaining commitment

The SPIN selling steps work together and match up with a group of SPIN questions. These steps might all happen in one sales call or spread out over a few months – it just depends on the customer and how things go.

Step 1: Opening

• Don’t rush to sell your product.
• Concentrate on forming a genuine relationship.
• Get as much info as possible.
• Ask questions and show interest in your leads.

At the beginning of the SPIN selling method, avoid pushing your products or services onto leads. Instead, focus on gradually building a sincere relationship. Gather as much information as you can about them – their role, their frustrations, and so on.

CRM software can help with this learning phase and improve the quality of sales relationships by making it easy to manage customer information and track interactions.

Let’s say you sell time-tracking software, and you meet a brand-new lead. At this stage, don’t start by explaining how much more productive your software can make their team. Instead, gather information by asking high-level questions like:

• Who’s in charge of tracking time?
• How does your team currently track time?
• Why did you decide to track time in that way?

By showing genuine interest in your customers as individuals – rather than just viewing them as a way to make money for your company – you’re more likely to build trusting relationships.

Step 2: Investigating

• Discover what has made your prospects upset before.
• Look into problems to gain trust and credibility.
• Make your prospects feel confident that you care about them.
• Deal with any doubts or concerns they have.

In the previous step of the SPIN selling method, you built a real relationship with the prospect. In this step you’ll dig even deeper by asking questions to find out about the prospect’s problems (ones your product or service might be able to fix). By learning about what the customer needs and struggles with, you’ll show that you know your stuff and can be trusted.

To stick with our time-tracking software example, a salesperson should focus on problems by asking these questions in step 2:

• What problems do you have with how you track time now?
• How difficult or expensive is it for your team to track their time accurately?
• Has your current way of tracking time ever not worked?
• What are the biggest issues your company faces when it comes to tracking time?

When you understand what’s frustrating your prospects, you’ll be ready to explain how your product or service can get rid of those obstacles.

Step 3: Demonstrating capability

• Connect your solution to what the prospect needs.
• Show how valuable and capable your solution is.
• Highlight its features.
• Give demonstrations of the solution.

By now you’ve built a strong relationship with your prospect. It’s now time to show them how your products or services can help them. During your sales call, guide them through the features and explain how those features can make their company better.

For example, if the prospect said their company has employees all over the place, you could point out that your time-tracking software is on the cloud. That means users can get to their info from any device, no matter where they are.

Step 4: Obtaining commitment

• Get them to agree and pay for your solution.
• Sort out the paperwork.
• Thank your the new customer.
• Celebrate the win!

Here the salesperson has turned the prospect into a paying customer. The buyer picks the product or service that suits them best and gives payment details.

This is also when the sales team should think about what worked and what didn’t. Learn from each customer experience to make future deals better. When this stage is finished, it’s time to celebrate a job done well.

SPIN Selling Best Practices and Techniques

Sales don’t happen in a bubble. Every year, the market changes because of financial shifts, socio-economic changes, and new technologies. The SPIN selling method is a powerful tool. To boost your sales with it, you need to make sure you’re following the latest and best ways to use it.

Coordinate SPIN with Your Customer Experience Plan

The first steps of SPIN selling focus on finding out what bothers your prospects. But you might already have that info from researching customer experiences. Instead of not using SPIN you should focus on the later steps. Use what you know about your prospects to shape how you use SPIN later on.

Incorporate Technology

While SPIN is all about building relationships with prospects, it doesn’t mean you can’t use technology too. You can chat with prospects before diving into a serious sales call. You can also use sales tracking software to see how well you’re doing with sales numbers and goals.

The sales world is always changing. No matter what sales plan you’re following, use all the tools you have.

Add a Fifth Stage

In SPIN selling, stage four ends with a closed deal (and hopefully, some celebration.) However, in real life it isn’t always that simple. Prospects aren’t just “closed”, “pending”, or “lost” – there are other possibilities too. That’s why we suggest adding a fifth stage to SPIN: “Analysis.”

According to Rackham, there are four possible outcomes for a SPIN sale:

• Advance: The prospect decides not to buy but is still interested in progressing.
• Continuation: The prospect opts not to make a purchase but asks you to stay in touch for future contact.
• Order: The prospect buys the product or service.
• No-sale: The prospect refuses to make the purchase.

The last two outcomes are pretty clear. However, the first two need some consideration. If you’re in the fourth stage of SPIN and a prospect isn’t ready to buy but still wants to move forward, you have to know what to do next. Should you show them a demo? Should you schedule a meeting for later to give them time?

If they don’t buy but also don’t say no, what do you do then? Do you need to talk about their problems again? Or maybe speak to someone else in their company?

Coming up with different plans for different situations is crucial for improving your SPIN selling method and getting more paying customers.

Sales Training for SPIN Selling

Like any other specialized sales strategy, SPIN selling needs unique sales skills and training. This kind of training is so specialized that it’s offered by organizations focused on SPIN sales.

The training includes hands-on activities throughout the customer journey that help your salespeople develop their sales skills. While SPIN selling involves many of the questions we talked about before, it’s also about making quick decisions and confidently handling tough conversations.

Some skills covered in SPIN selling training include:

• Knowing when to change tactics.
• Figuring out why sales didn’t work and how to do better next time.
• Building confidence in yourself and your sales team.
• Starting conversations with clients who haven’t shown interest yet.
• Using SPIN techniques in different sales situations.

If your company is new to SPIN selling, you might have to adjust your sales plans to fit these new methods. Stay open-minded and be ready to try different approaches during the sales process.

Conclusion

One-sided conversations don’t make sales happen – they kill them. Think about it: if you’ve ever been with a friend or on a date where the other person only talked about themselves, you probably felt ignored. It’s the same for prospects when a salesperson doesn’t ask them anything. With the SPIN selling method, you can make your sales process more real and be the kind of salesperson who listens more than they talk.

To make SPIN sales work, you have to be flexible. Listen to what the client says and pick your next questions based on that. The SPIN model isn’t set in stone – use its flexibility. Adjust your approach as the conversation goes on. For the best salespeople, using SPIN questions feels natural. They react to what the client says, moving smoothly from one type of question to another.

Looking to take your sales team to the next level by learning how to ask the right questions at the right time with SPIN?  AIM Consulting has you covered with our first-class sales training.  Contact us today!