SPIN Selling
by Neil Rackham
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Book Reviews of SPIN Selling
Book Review: Buy this book and take notes
Summary: 5 Stars
Some sales theory books you can check out at the library to read for inspiration, other sales books are so good you buy them. This is a book to buy and to take notes. I had seen this book recommended several times throughout Amazon. I finally read it after seeing it recommended by Industrial EGO's Shamus Brown http://www.industrialego.com/index.htm . Usually sales books start with an inspiring success story that the author has experienced; I love the fact that Rackham begins his book with a failure (of sorts) when his firm Huthwaite's first big client discounted his sales analysis findings after trailing their sales reps in the field. It does take some careful concentration to read. The exercises are helpful and the author tries to inject some humor to shed light on his theories (see Quincy's Rule). I've just been promoted to strategic sales manager in the technical software field, selling a management platform. Our item is not a high-dollar item compared to our competitor's, but it does qualify as a larger sale and the sales cycle is usually 90+ days. I have been consciously trying to mimic the selling behaviors of our top sales reps. If I'd read this book before I would have been more successful earlier in my sales career. This along with "Selling to VITO" by Anthony Parinello and sales training at Industrial EGO Sales are great sales tools to use.Book Review: Selling vs Marketing
Summary: 5 Stars
There is a huge difference between Sales and Marketing. I can say this because I have been in marketing most of my career. I have been the VP of Marketing at two publicly traded companies and even been the VP of Sales and Marketing over a 300 person direct-store-delivery sales force. But as a marketing executive, I knew nothing about selling. That's why I needed SPIN Selling.
I now run a consulting firm where everyone in the firm has been a VP of Marketing at an operating company. But when it was time to sell our services, we realized that our marketers didn't know how to sell. We provide fractional or part-time Chief Marketing Officers to Growth and Mid-Size companies. We are therefore selling to CEOs and because we are selling experience and insights, feature and benefit selling is useless.
After reading SPIN Selling I purchased a copy for everyone in my company. The focus on structuring a sales call around leaning about your potential client and getting them to explain why they need us was golden. Just like the book says, the more we ask about the client's company, the more they believe that we care about their company and understand their problems. And the less time we spend telling them how smart we are, the smarter they think we are.
Art Saxby
Chief Outsiders
[...]
Book Review: Great book on asking the right questions
Summary: 5 Stars
A very good and interesting book and very easy to read. For me this book was very convincing for 2 important reasons: 1. SPIN selling is based upon scientific research of many sales calls for many years. 2. The idea of SPIN selling is about the fact that customers decide whether they buy somehting (or advance the sales call) upon their own ideas, their own beliefs, their own assumptions.
Neil Reckham offers you a guidline to find out what the assumptions and beliefs of a customer are by using SPIN questions. If you're the one who asks the questions in a salescall, you're in control of the conversation. Basically SPIN selling teaches you how to figure out what customers really need, and how you can emphasize this need so that customers believe that your product or service is worth the money. All of this is done by guiding the conversation in the direction YOU want, just by asking the right kind of questions.
These question-techniques are not just applicable for sales-people. There are many other situations where you want to get things done from people, and SPIN selling really helps you get it done!
I therefor recommend this book not just to salespeople, but in general to people who want to learn how to get things done just by asking the right questions
Book Review: The sales Bible
Summary: 5 Stars
If you sell big ticket items B2B, this is simply the finest sales guide ever written. It can be summed up this way:
1. Ask Situation questions to understand the buyer's context
2. Ask Problem questions to uncover pain
3. Ask Implication questions to rub salt in the wounds (gently and lovingly)
4. Ask Need questions to show them how your product will make the pain go away.
The book has a few shortcomings:
1. There is nothing about finding out the client buying process (cycle, budget, etc.)
2. If the client has no pain, there is no sale. There are 2 ways to take a prospect - down the pain path, which this book outlines well, but there is also another way to lead the prospect - how your product/service is going to help them get to where they want to be. An example of this would be selling prime/exclusive office space.
ex 1: Clients buying high rent office space are not motivated by pain - they are motivated by vision and image - where they are now vs where they want to be.
ex 2: You are selling marketing services, and the client is already meeting or exceeding his sales numbers. There is no pain here, but the client may buy anyway because he wants to take his business to the "next level"
Book Review: HELPFUL GUIDE TO THE SELLING PROCESS
Summary: 5 Stars
SPIN SELLING provides the steps to help us become more successful and effective in selling. It is a great self-reminder checklist for wherever you are in the selling process. I also use another process to help me generate new creative approaches. Both of these can be combined for even greater effectiveness. This process may be found in THE 2,000 PERCENT SOLUTION and includes the following steps. 1) Understand the importance of measuring 2) Measure everything that can be measured about your key activities to make sure you identify root causes of winning or losing sales 3) Identify the future best practice for your industry 4) Go beyond today's best practices to implement the future best practices for selling now 5) Figure out the ideal best practices (without resource, money, time or people constraints) and 6) Begin to approach that 7) Match the people, incentives and tasks, and 8) Repeat the process for even better ideas. I highly recommend that you buy SPIN SELLING and THE 2,000 PERCENT SOLUTION, look at what you do now and use these steps to climb to a more effective level more easily and effortlessly. You will be surprised at the time and money saved and while increasing the results 20 fold.