SPIN Selling
by Neil Rackham
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Book Reviews of SPIN Selling
Book Review: Absolute must read
Summary: 5 Stars
intially the Name "Spin Selling" came across to be as some cheesy and manipulative model being taught by the author.after reading various books and attending seminars and workshops i was consistently referred to this book.
also i researched some of the high-performance Sales Professionals and most of them had training on SPIN Selling, so
i finally decided to read Rackham's book "SPIN Selling" and
i'm glad i did and yes this book i feel is the Foundation of all the Modern Sales Training out there.
His Training is backed with extensive proof and facts and every single advice is backed by extensive research conducted by huthwaite. very impressed.
"Situation - Problem - Implication and Need-Payoff", these are the four types of Questioning you will learn and the Value and relative importance of each and in what order to be used effectively.
the biggest lesson for me is the Difference of a "Implied Need" compared to "Explicit Need" and how it all boils down to uncovering "Explicit Needs" and to communicate with customers about "Benefits". this book also clears a very common mistake a lot of us do, to look at a product or solution's advantages and convey that as Benefit to customer. As per the author a "Benefit" is one that solves a Customer's "Explicit Need".
don't be discouraged by any review that writes off the book's style of writing to be research oriented, the book is around 190 Pages and it's worth the weight in gold.
Book Review: Use 20 year old sales strategies that don't work?
Summary: 2 Stars
This book came out in 1988 which means it was probably written in 1986-1987. Interesting that about that same time, IBM one of the companies listed here as endorsing The Spin Method had just lost market share to then up and coming Compaq. The other companies mentioned Kodak, AT&T and Citicorp didn't fare much better.
Considering the turnover in sales, I would like to see a followup on the sales people who were involved in this study and at least, a followup with the companies listed as using "Spin." I wouldn't be surprised if all have abandoned this theory. If you read the financial pages, you already know how IBM, Kodak and AT&T are doing and how they did 1988 to 2005.
The concept of using questions is not new. The late, great J. Douglas Edwards was teaching this over 50 years ago. Tom Hopkins and Zig Ziglar have been teaching this for the last 30+ years.
This book offers interesting theory but won't work in the real world. I bought a copy at my local used book store for $2.50 and feel that it was a total and complete waste of money.
Would recommend Back To The Future In Sales by J. Douglas Edwards and Tom Hopkins, Ziglar on Selling by Zig Ziglar and How To Master The Art of Selling Anything along with Low Profile Selling by Tom Hopkins.
I noticed that a lot of telemarketing companies are now using "Spin" as a method to move away from the usual robotic, canned scripted technique. "Spin" may be an improvement and useful to those types, but not real professional, sales.
Book Review: Re-reading the Classics
Summary: 5 Stars
The canon of Sales Lit goes back only a couple of decades. In that canon, Neil Rackham's first "Spin Selling" takes a special place as one of the classics or founding texts. So, if you need help preparing a meeting with one of your largest accounts, take the time to re-read this classic text.
Sure, we all know how to ask questions, but Neil is the first to make the point that the wrong kinds of questions will more likely kill the deal than win it.
Neil's classic distinction between "implicit" and "explicit" needs -- what I like to call "surface" vs. "deeply-held" need -- will help focus any salesperson's line of questioning. With each deeply-held need uncovered, the likelihood of closing the sale rises exponentially.
For instance, I recently went into a meeting with one of my largest accounts knowing the company needed an easy-to-use storage software solution. If I based my proposal on this explicit need, the meeting would have gone nowhere fast.
But, during the meeting, I uncovered the deeply-held needs that the software needed to work with the Mac and Linux OS's, and be localized for Chinese and Japanese, as the company was preparing for the Asian market.
As I walked out of the meeting, I felt secure in the knowledge that I had uncovered more than three deeply-held needs. Confident of my line of questioning in that meeting, the rest of the sales process went swimmingly.
Anyone who manages large accounts needs to keep reading -- and re-reading -- Neil's classic text.
Book Review: An Execellent Book on Sales Process for Large Corporate Sales
Summary: 4 Stars
In large complex sales, all deals are different when looking at specifics. The right thing to say or do will be different with each opportunity you encounter. However, if you look at a higher level (the forest rather than the trees), across these opportunities a pattern will emerge, pointing the way to a successful sales process that will markedly improve your performance.
That's what Neil Rackam has done in his book Spin Selling. Spin Selling is not an agonizingly perscriptive book on what to say or do. Considering the variability encountered when engaging each prospect or customer, that would be of little value. The value of this book is in describing the bigger picture. Neil takes a refreshingly different approach by describing a (high level) process that research has shown to be successful in larger sales. No doubt about it, the SPIN process will improve you chance of winning, but only if used in conjunction with your own knowledge and instinct (Neil says this much in the book). The SPIN process is meant to be melded with the specific best practices of your business, industry, etc. When these best practices are modeled using the SPIN methodology, great things happen.
Plan your sales calls around this methodology. But as Neil points out, don't be dogmatic with it. While SPIN is a process that has been scientifically shown to be successful, use SPIN to guide your instinct, not replace it.
Book Review: Not Just Another Book on Sales
Summary: 5 Stars
"SPIN Selling" is a welcome departure from the genre of books on selling. Actually, I found the book valuable as a good source of advice on the subject of "Persuasion". Many sales books focus on the same basic tenets in sales, the sales opening, closing, handling objections, or some aspect of them. Neil Rackham addresses "sales" where the decision to buy is not made in the presence of the one doing the selling. Much of the decision-making occurs without the rep present to handle objections in person or to enable him/her to make an effective close. As a consultant, many of my opportunities to "sell an idea, concept, or approach" occur over time and the ideas gain acceptance often without me present. Selling my ideas and convincing a client that my idea is better than someone else's contradictory idea requires the insights that Neil Rackham presents and he presents them in a light-hearted approach that enables a reader to convince himself that the ideas presented are effective and presents a way for the reader to use the advice in bits and pieces, an approach that was effective for me. As I used his concepts on a daily basis, and even from the start before I became more adept at using his concepts, I could see dramatic improvement in results, even when I recognized that I wasn't very good and needed more practice. His ideas may seem radical, but in the appropriate situations they are dynamic!