Revolutionize Your Sales Strategy with the Spin Sales Technique

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spin selling was one of the the first ever books that i read on sales and it shaped the beginning of my career in likely thousands and thousands if not hundreds of thousands of other sales professionals careers as well but it's now 31 years old i was literally two when this book was published now let me give you some context here because the year that spin selling was published the average house price in america was 60 000 pubs in the uk were allowed to open during the day for the very first time and of course the internet didn't exist at all so the world has clearly moved on since spin selling first hit the bookstores but should your sales process move on as well or is spin selling still relevant for the modern b2b salesperson because the thing is a lot of traditional sales trainers around the world are still teaching spin selling like it is absolute gospel like it's the only thing that exists and sales managers who were taught spin selling over 20 years ago are still coaching their sales teams on this spin selling process today so is it all effective is it worth using in the modern b2b sales process well stay tuned because in this video i'm going to very briefly explain what spin selling is and if you should be using it today [Applause] [Music] [Applause] hi my name is will barron i'm the founder of salesman.org where we help salespeople crush their quotas so before we uncover if spin selling is relevant in the internet age let's take a look at the fundamentals of what spin selling actually is now neil rackham the founder of spin selling uncovered the top performing sales people usually asked a series of specific questions in a specific order to get deals done so spin is just an acronym for these questions and it comes down to one said you asian two problem three implication and then number four which is a bit of a hack just to make the acronym neck need pay are so number one situation number two problem number three implication and number four need payoff now situation questions these are questions designed to uncover our buyers needs pains and their competitive plans as well so the questions we could ask for example would be who is responsible for xyz why do you do this thing in this particular way and how important is this thing to your business next up we have problem questions and with problem questions we're looking for opportunities where we can potentially help the buyer so these questions can be how expensive is it to do one two three thing does this process ever fail and are you happy with whatever supplier you're with right now and we're already halfway through spin selling right now so now that we've got some background information from your situation questions and you've found a place that you can help your buyer by using problem questions is now time to ask what we call an implication question and implication questions highlight how serious the problem that you've identified for the buyer really is so we could ask what is the the cost of doing it the way that you're currently doing it when was the last time however you're doing it right now failed and is this issue stopping you from hitting your business goals so that's situation problem and implication questions next we've got need payoff questions and these are what pulls spin selling together it's what makes it effective need a pair of questions bait your buy into agreeing that you as a salesperson can help them and the best way to explain a need payoff question is by running through a quick example that includes all of the previous questions as well so let's say i'm calling on a vp of sales called jerry and i'm selling our salesman.org sales accelerator program so i'd start with a situation question i'd say is improving your performance of your sales team something that's important to you and then jerry turns around and says yes this is something that i've been thinking a lot about recently so then i'm going to ask a problem question i'm going to ask what's holding your team back from their potential right now jerry's gonna say well well i don't think they've got a sales process or a sales method to follow next i'm gonna ask an implication problem so i'm gonna say jerry it sounds like without a sales process or sales method in place well it's going to be difficult for your team to scale their sales success how much do you think this is going to cost you in lost revenue each quarter jerry's going to say hmm i estimate it's going to cost a good 100 grand each quarter them that i'm losing because the team don't really know what they're doing if i'm being honest so now finally after those three questions are wrapped up we're going to ask what's called a need payoff question and we're going to bait jerry into agreeing that we can help him so a need power question in this example could be well if we could teach your team a systematic selling process in the next 42 days using our sales accelerator program do you think that that could substantially drive up your revenue and of course to a question like that following on from the previous questions jerry pretty much has to say yes we'll you're my hero take all my money here's a wheelbarrow full of cash go spend it wisely and that's what a need payoff question is and that's how all these questions fit together now says nation does all of this make sense and i'm gonna kind of stop here for a second and just say that i feel with spin selling you do need to be careful with each of these questions because each set of them can sound condescending or even a bit slimy and manipulative if you use them in the wrong way but without said the big question is this process still relevant today should you be spin selling well the answer is it depends first off i'd say spin selling does work and it's a it's a nice framework if you're brand new to sales and if you're brand new to sales make sure to click that subscribe button so you don't miss anything that we've got coming up there's a few changes that i'd suggest if you're going to implement spin selling in a modern b2b selling strategy first up you've got to look at your situation questions because there's new data that shows that they are now negatively correlated to sales success so the more or worse situation questions you ask the less likely the buyer is going to open up and actually want to work with you and this comes from the horse's mouth so here's the author of spin selling neil rackham to explain today they're actively positively negatively correlated that is you ask a lot of situation questions and the customer will become really impatient they'll say you should have done your homework you should have known that because a lot of the things that you found out with the spin model 30 years ago you found out face to face with the customer because there was no other way to do it and look let's get real here 90 of the spin selling situation questions the answers can be researched online before you even speak to the buyer and really the remaining 10 percent of stuff that you'd want to get from the buyer that can be researched from calling up other people within the account the end users so when in finance or procurement they can give you all of the rest of the information that you need to get the deal done before you even speak to the buyer and on the modern b2b buyer well they expect you to have you know quote unquote done your homework before you even speak to them and why is this are they just being arrogant idiots that don't want to share their time with us maybe sometimes but most of the time i think that you've got your your buyers that you're trying to engage with here right and there's way more way more way more sales people trying to reach out to them than ever before because you can now sell globally so prospects that you would never reached out to 20 years ago you can now reach out to really comfortably and through the different economic downturns over the years these individuals are doing more and more and more work probably for longer hours with less pay than ever before and so they genuinely are busy if you're connecting to the actual real buyers within an account so let me say this if you're not going into your sales meetings prepared knowing all this data beforehand then prepare to have some unsuccessful sales meetings and finally problem questions are less relevant in the age of modern b2b sales now as well in in most industries well most products are now super reliable they're affordable and they're somewhat commoditized therefore when you ask a buyer a question like does this process ever fail 20 years ago they might have said yeah every now and again and it cost us a ton of revenue it's a pain in the ass every time whereas now the answer is more likely to be no it's it's pretty reliable which when you get a no at this stage of of spin selling when you ask your problem questions spin selling just stops there's no there's no way to break through this which is essentially an objection so what's the modern way what's the the alternative way to ask problem questions well it's simple ask your buyer about the future problems not just the present problems because this is best explained with an analogy so imagine you've just jumped out of a plane you've fallen to the ground and you've got no parachute now after some frantic mid-air googling there might be 100 sales people that you could call that might be able to sell you a parachute now after even more frenzied research you as the buyer you uncovered that you've well there's only really ten sales people that could somehow deliver on this promise of getting a parachute to you before you hit the ground and well mid-air delivery isn't a bad value proposition for these 10 sales people they're probably on to something here because clearly you as the buyer you fall down from the sky you don't want to become a flat human smoothie embedded into a random field right so the value proposition here is pretty strong but what's a better value proposition well this comes from the the one superstar salesperson who calls you before you jump and tells you that the whole jumping thing about parachutes is a dumb idea and you shouldn't be doing it and so you need to be this salesperson this high performer who's asking future problem questions that really add some value to the buyers rather than reacting like everyone else is doing so yeah spin selling long story short can work but you need to eliminate situation questions and you need to redefine your problem questions to focus on your buyers better future so there we have it i hope you enjoyed this video about spin selling if you did make sure to give it a thumbs up and why not watch one of the videos that are on the screen right now i always look as if as if i can see them hopefully they're on the screen to the my left maybe you're right who knows watch one of the videos that are over there and continue your sales education