SPIN Selling
by Neil Rackham
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Book Reviews of SPIN Selling
Book Review: Great Sizzle, Not Much Steak
Summary: 4 Stars
I absolutely love books based on research, and besides the catchy name, that is the single biggest selling point for SPIN Selling. Rackham is a researcher by profession, and he wrote the book after conducting an extensive research effort and then testing his theories as best he could.
The primary conclusions of Rackham's research are that people behave differently when making major purchases than they do when making minor purchases, so salespeople should adapt their approaches to this fact. He concludes that the best salespeople interview prospects carefully, and that, to sell high-ticket items, you must get the prospect to discuss both the pain associated with the problem at hand and the positive results of fixing that problem.
While his conclusions aren't anything new (after all, he learned all of it by watching individual salespeople do their thing), Rackham's logical approach to proving his theories should help sales managers convince salespeople to stop talking and start asking questions - eliminating a fundamental mistake made by most salespeople.
Anyone who is struggling with the sales appointment will find value in this book, because it proves you should ask questions instead of talking all the time. However, if you're looking for more than proof of what should occur, this book is probably not for you, because easily 85 percent of the content is devoted to proving the point, rather than to helping a salesperson learn how to fix the problem. In other words, Rackham stays true to his values by describing the situation, identifying the problem, demonstrating the implication and putting value to the payoff, but then falls short of actually providing the value he says is needed to keep customers happy. If you read SPIN Selling, you will definitely learn what's broken and should be fixed, but you will be left mostly to your own devices on how to fix it.
Enjoy,
Gill
Book Review: Questions vs. Stories
Summary: 2 Stars
SPIN Selling was the first book I read on sales where I didn't feel like I had to take a shower afterwards. Neil Rackham is the grandfather of making sales a respectable profession.
He helped a lot of salespeople out of the presentation ppt trap.
The problem was that he did this through questions. Although questions can work, I just feel stories are better. Here's why:
Buyers hate feeling manipulated and asking questions can feel like an interrogation painting the Buyer into a corner.
Also, salespeople can get lost in a sea of questions and lose sight of the story they are trying to sell.
Isn't it just easier to provide the Salesperson with the right message delivered through mini-stories to help the Buyer discover that the status quo is no longer acceptable. These stories work because they present a scenario that allows Buyers to develop awareness through their own sense of discovery. Buyers trust this discovery because they made it and they begin to trust the Story Seller for telling it. When the Buyer can picture the issues
in the real world scenario, it helps them see how the results may apply to them and they start to make sense- they gain insight. Stories transport the Buyer from the role of critic into the role of participant.
In short, Stories allow the Buyer to take your offering for a virtual mental test drive: Could you ask for more?
I feel that it's easier to help the Buyer decide to change through the use of use 5-20 mini-stories followed by a few basic qualification questions instead of 50-250 discovery questions.
Indeed, stories are easier to remember, faster to execute and more natural to deliver. This is nothing new, just look at the Bible, it's all about stories. Stories are how we make sense of the world. We know how to tell stories; we just have to make sure we tell the right ones. at InsightDemand
Book Review: Like Chewing Gum for your sales brain!
Summary: 1 Stars
Isn't it interesting how only the people who can't or don't sell give garbage like this 5 star raving reviews? Obviously they have never sold anything.
I used to work for a company a few months ago that was raving about this program. Spin Selling was the best and only way to sell they said. This company is a travel company, host and travel agency and had their amateur telemarketers use Spin Selling.
Whne I was there the companies sales were down 20% from 2004 and they had a 60% cancellation rate! Does that say anything about the value of Spin Selling?
The top sales people there were basically order takers getting laydowns. They had no clue how to conduct a professional sales presentation. From newest rep right through the supervisors up to and including the sales manager.
You could have attached a order pad to a dog and sent them to the homes of the people who had placed orders with these order takers and the dog could have closed them! The top sales reps here were "King of the 1-call laydowns." It was comical watching them try to utilize something close to a professional sales presentation.
I know some sales people who use spin as part of the sales process. I have tried it. By itself, Spin Selling DOES NOT WORK.
This book is a waste of time and money. Better off to read something with some meat like Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy or Tom Hopkins. If you use Spin at all, use it with a real sales system, not alone.
This book is like chewing gum for your sales brain and will gum up your sales career.
I will be glad to go one on one against anyone who uses the Spin Selling Method in any real and equal sales encounter. What? No challengers! Well I wonder why???
Book Review: Great book on sales tactics, but lacks strategic content....
Summary: 4 Stars
This was one of the better sales books I have read. It brings up a new perspective of questioning the customer. Rackham shows the reader how to take a seemingly small customer problem and develop it into a situation that needs immediate attention by the customer (i.e. he needs to buy your product). It dispels a lot of the common myths about selling - don't use all of those stupid closes that only sometimes work with inexpensive commodity items, etc. He also hammers home how to advance each sale by obtaining commitment of some sort - not necessarily a sale, but some commitment of furthering the sales process. The only possible drawbacks I noticed were that unless phrased carefully, the "rubbing salt into the wound" segment of the problem/implication questions can be taken the wrong way by some customers. Further, a lot of customers (at least in my industry) are probably already acutely aware of the problems they have and their implications. It is still a good read, though.
The book is definitely aimed at sellers of high-dollar, high value-add items and not at booksellers or used car salespeople. As the title of this review indicates, the book was great on the questioning tactics of a sales call, but it does not address the strategic aspects of which customers to target, how to get to know the players at each account, etc. For the other half of the sales picture, I would highly recommend "Strategic Selling" and perhaps even "Conceptual Selling" by Miller and Heiman. Those two books were the two best I have read on selling, but Spin Selling is definitely recommended as an addition to the complex product salesperson's library.
Book Review: A Book For The True Professional
Summary: 5 Stars
A breath of fresh air. The profession of Sales is plagued with all sorts of nonsense, most of it annecdotal at best. Little actual research has been done to identify good processes for sales professionals and consequently we get idiotic advice ranging from "Always Be Closing" and endless manipulative closing techniques for doing so, to recommendations on how to sell "anything to anybody." Such sales tactics are precisely the reason salespeople have been saddled with negative stereotypes.SPIN Selling is the result of extensive observation and analysis of sales calls by behavioral researcher Neil Rackham. His findings are both practical and useful, and are well presented in this book. As sellers, we might give some thought to how we would like to be treated as customers - something that should not be a revelation, but is. We should understand the customer's goals and objectives and help them be successful if we want to be successful. Forget your scripted sales pitch, leave your brochures in your briefcase, ask questions and listen to your customers to understand their needs BEFORE presenting your product. Surprisingly, this will actually shorten the selling cycle and will result in better long-term customer relationships. Rackham's concept of an "Advance" as an objective way to measure the progress of a sales call is, alone, worth the price of this book.
As a sales professional with many years' experience, and now as sales training manager for a division of a Fortune 500 company, I highly recommend this book and the methodology Rackham describes. There are other good books for salespeople - but if I could only recommend one, this would be it.