Neil Rackham graduated from the University of Sheffield (UK) with a degree in experimental psychology. Neil Rackham - partner consulting company Go To Market Partners (advises Motorola, IBM, Kodak, Honeywell corporations). Founder and CEO of Huthwaite Inc. (a leading sales consulting, training and research firm), author of several best-selling books, including SPIN Selling, Major Account Sales Strategy, and Building the Right Partnership (Getting Partnering Right).

A recognized pioneer, Rackham brought research and analysis to the field of sales management.

Books (3)

Strategy for working with clients in large sales

This is the third book in the SPIN series by Neil Rackham. It looks at the sales strategy from the buyer's point of view. Rackham defines the main stages of the buying process and shows how to develop effective strategy sales in order to achieve maximum impact on the purchase decision at each stage.

The book offers efficient way improving the activities of sales managers, sales coaches and salespeople involved in the sale of high-value products and services.

Selling using the SPIN method

The most recognized method of sales today. The method was developed on the basis of research conducted over 10 years. 35,000 customer meetings conducted by 10,000 salespeople in 23 countries were analyzed. Used by high-end salespeople worldwide.

It is generally accepted that in sales: - the right methods of closing the transaction increase your chance of success - it is necessary to tell the buyer about the benefits of your product or service - it is important to be able to work with complaints - open questions are more effective than closed ones "It's all insignificant," says Neil Rackham. He and his research team found that many of the methods designed to sell low-cost, small-scale products are ineffective when selling high-value products.

Rackham developed his own sales technique - the SPIN sales technique: Situational Questions, Problem Questions, Extraction Questions and Guiding Questions. SPIN sales technology provides the sales professional with a set of simple and practical tools. They have been tested and actively used in world-famous companies and have proven their effectiveness.

Selling using the SPIN method. Practical guide

This method has revolutionized complex and high-volume sales around the world… This method is used today by half of the Fortune 500 companies to train their sales representatives…

In this practical guide, you'll find the tools you need to master this revolutionary method... immediately. Written by the author of the acclaimed bestselling book Selling with the SPIN Method, this long-awaited book aims to facilitate the adoption of SPIN technology.

Learn from: - individual diagnostic exercises - case studies from leading companies - practical suggestions for scheduling meetings - Inspirational questionnaires - Examples of difficult sales situations.

Reader Comments

Igor Shubin/ 28.11.2014 The publication of the book “Sales by the SPIN method. A practical guide” was almost inevitable. The growing popularity of the original edition of SPIN Selling has also led to increased dissatisfaction. All large quantity The people who had read Neil Rackham's first book and were convinced of the correctness of its ideas now needed further help and advice on how to put the technology into practice. There was no description in the original edition. practical tools, which would make it possible to move from knowledge of theory to efficient use her in real sales. Readers were left with too many “How?” questions.

Headed by Neil Rackham, Huthwaite ran training programs aimed at mastering the SPIN method. AT large corporations, in whose interests the study was carried out, which became the basis for the creation of technology, there were no problems with the passage of trainings. However, most sellers do not work for large organizations. They had neither the resources nor the justification for undergoing costly training. Tools, exercises and practical advice to help salespeople turn the right concepts into productive sales is what this book is all about.
All Rackham books (and there are 4 of them), practical examples and tools for preparing for negotiations using the SPIN method - www.spin-sales.rf

How to win the trust of a client? As leaders avoid typical sales mistakes? Whether there is a distinctive features when selling a material product or an intellectual product? And most importantly, what is the strategy for success in sales? To these and other questions executive.ru answered Neil Rackham.

Read exclusive interview and a chapter fragment from books"SPIN sales".

executive.ru: What are the basic skills a professional should have?

Neil Rackham: It is persuasiveness, energy and enthusiasm. But everything is slowly changing. Creativity, listening and business strategy will be important in the future.

executive.ru: How win the trust of the client? What is more important - psychological skills, the ability to talk a lot, product knowledge or something else?

N.R.: No way. Psychological skills are overrated. Yes, there is a set of psychological skills that motivate people to buy. Understanding customers is very important, but it is more about understanding the needs of the customer's business than a psychological understanding. Talking too much is bad. Successful meetings are characterized by the fact that they are spoken more by the buyer. In fact, most salespeople talk too much. Product knowledge is not as important as it used to be, because thanks to the Internet, this knowledge has become available to customers. Salespeople who win the trust of the buyer and listen to him, focus on the needs of the buyer, they are honest, do not exaggerate, and never pretend to know something they do not know.

How to check if managers have a problem with the formation of a customer's need?

• Do not use SPIN selling
• Give up when faced with competitors
• They hang up and do not form a need if they immediately refused to buy a product or service
• Waiting for a hot buyer.

To change the situation, implement SPIN technology. It helps to identify the needs of the client and convince him that your product will satisfy them. This technology dispels the client's doubts.

Neil Rackham wrote in detail about SPIN selling in his book of the same name. He conducted large-scale research on the effectiveness of sales departments: he studied the transaction market for 12 years, analyzed more than 35,000 meetings, summarized the experience of entrepreneurs from 23 countries. He managed to develop efficient technique SPIN sales, which includes a description of the behavior of sellers, techniques and strategies the best companies.

SPIN sales: how does the technology work?

The analysis showed that the best sellers not only convincingly tell and offer their product, but also know how to create a desire to buy it. The secret is simple - they ask the right questions in a certain sequence using the SPIN technology.

SPIN sales help guide the buyer through all the stages and eventually get him.

There are 5 stages in the SPIN selling method that you have to go through:

1. Recognition of the need

This is the first stage of making a purchase, at which customers realize that the current situation does not suit them and they have a desire to change it. The buyer ponders whether something is really worth changing, whether there is a problem, and whether it deserves his attention. With the help of SPIN sales, the manager will be able to see the problem, develop customer dissatisfaction current situation and offer your help. Therefore, SPIN sales suggests starting any conversation not with an offer, but simply with a conversation about current affairs. It is important to identify both hidden and surface needs.

2. Evaluation of options

The criteria for comparing offers on the market are determined and a choice is made in favor of 2-3 options.
The manager needs to understand on the basis of what criteria the client will make a decision and pay special attention to them. SPIN helps to highlight your advantages over competitors.

3. Resolution of doubts

The manager must deal with the doubts and objections of the client. Main mistake Do nothing and just wait for the client's decision. You should not be passive - you need to ask questions about SPIN in order to dispel all doubts with your answers.

4. Decision making

After receiving answers to all questions, the client chooses you.

5. Introduction

The fact of the purchase and building further relationships.

SPIN Selling: What Questions Should You Ask?

Situational, Problematic, Extracting and Guiding Questions ((Situation, Problem, Implication, Need-Payoff Questions). This is how the SPIN selling technology is deciphered.

The task of using SPIN sales is to lead the client from simple to complex in negotiations.

Let's take a look at the questions:

situational

Needed to obtain information, facts to determine hidden needs. Example:

What is your situation?

How many employees do you have?

Who are you buying from now?

Distressed

Associated with information about problems, difficulties, dissatisfaction. The task is to immerse a person in "pain", to predict where there may be problems after a certain period of time. It is desirable to find 2-3 problems. Example:

Are there any difficulties?

What would you like more?

What are you not getting?

Where is the discomfort?

extracting

Needed to clarify the consequences, increase dissatisfaction. They are considered the most effective questions. Example:

How might this affect the company as a whole?

How much money are you losing by not solving this problem?

What will it lead to if nothing is done?

How will this affect your reputation?

What will customers think if the situation does not change?

Guides

Needed to identify benefits and prepare to consider your proposal. They also help prevent objections. Example:

Tell me, what happens if it works?

What if your issue is resolved?

What results will you be able to achieve?

What prospects might open up?

SPIN sale: what is the difference between a large transaction and a small one

SPIN selling skills are universal and necessary for any transaction. True, in the sector of small transactions in the B2C segment, there are sometimes enough situational and problematic issues, that is, individual elements of SPIN. With an increase in the average check and the length of the transaction, the relevance of the described technology is steadily increasing.

SPIN does not sell directly. You don't pressure a non-client. You are simply asking questions. This is a technology for building long-term relationships. In large transactions, there is no such factor as impulsive purchase. And nothing will convince the decision maker better than his own answers and a fully realized need for the proposed product.

SPIN helps to focus the customer's attention on the product much more effectively than an enchanting presentation of benefits and benefits.

SPIN sale example

Let's analyze the option of successful negotiations on the purchase of software using the SPIN technology:

Seller: what software are you currently using?

Buyer: We use the company's productX.

How easy is it for you to work? Can you get the insights you need quickly?

- The product is complex, we could not set everything up perfectly. But we are already used to it, and, in general, it suits us.

- And how does this affect the result of work?

— I don't think so. I have two specialists who can sort everything out.

- Is there a problem that only two out of 10 managers know how to use the program?

- No, there is a problem if one of them goes on vacation or goes on a business trip.

- That is, you can lose analytics if these two employees are not at the workplace for some reason?

- Yes, other managers will not be able to quickly figure it out. They do not like this program, although its data helps to accept right decisions in the sales process.

How much money do you think you lose because not all managers see important data?

- There are 8 of them. Sales of two managers who understand everything are 30% higher per month. That is, each of the remaining ones does not bring about the same amount of revenue.

- So, from your words it follows that due to the fact that you use a program that is difficult to understand, you lose about 2.5 times more revenue per month than you have now.

Yes, that's probably a big problem.

We have a solution that can change everything.

SPIN Selling: Summing Up

So, selling with the help of SPIN questions is always a clear sequence. Situational questions allow you to find out the details, the details, to establish contact with the client. No need to “dig” much, try to find out the necessary information in 3-5 questions. And then proceed to the next stage - problematic questions.

They fix the client's attention on the problem. It's great when these questions are interconnected with the beginning of the conversation: remember what the interlocutor concentrated on (quality, money, service)?

A block of eliciting questions reinforces in the client the realization that the problem is not as simple as it seems at first glance. And guiding questions will help them decide that your product will make a difference. better side. When selling on SPIN, you need to use another technique - active listening: not to speak for the client, but to absorb information and use it to your advantage.

Current page: 1 (total book has 17 pages) [accessible reading excerpt: 4 pages]

Neil Rackham
SPIN sales

From the partner of the Russian edition

"One and a half billion Chinese people can't be wrong!" - this was the slogan of one of the Moscow restaurants of Chinese cuisine on Tverskaya Zastava Square.

Can Most Sellers Be Wrong 22 large companies in 23 countries of the world during 35,000 negotiations over 12 years? Some certainly can, most probably not. Unless, of course, their companies are successful.

Can our acquaintances and friends be mistaken, for whom Neil Rackham's books are desktop? Maybe, but we trust them.

Can those who completely sold out the previous Russian editions of this book be mistaken, so that for several years there has been no way to find it? They voted for it with their money - and thus doomed us to look for the English-language original in foreign stores.

Are those who left their reviews of Rackham's book on amazon.com wrong, and those who, when buying, elevated it to the rank of a bestseller? There is an opinion that the culture or, if you like, the art of sales in the West (in particular, in the States) is at a very high level, so perhaps the choice of these people should be trusted.

Perhaps our former colleagues from the headquarters of Navision (later Microsoft Business Solutions) were mistaken in including the description of the SPIN Selling methodology in the sales methodology recommended for their resellers? Absolutely not. This is what we found out on own experience work at Navision and later at Microsoft.

In this preface, we would not like to talk about the history of writing this book or about its significance: the author will do it better. We would like to take this opportunity to address you with three wishes.

1. If you are in charge of sales, then we want to wish you, of course, the fulfillment of your company's sales plan and complete satisfaction with the tools used in your work: starting with work methods (for example, SPIN) and ending with the right CRM system (for example, the one that we use ourselves and offer you to use).

2. If you sell yourself, then we would like to wish you, of course, regular overfulfillment of the plan, big bonuses, an excellent team and work in an interesting industry with innovative solutions (for example, in the field of information technologies with innovative CRM and ERP solutions in our young and ambitious team).

3. If you are in the purchasing business, we would like to wish you more meetings with salespeople who have read this book.

This is absolutely sincere.

Evgeny Zozulya,

Microsoft Dynamics Practice Director,

Manzana Group

From publishers

With the release of this book, we continue the practice of reissuing previously published works that are fundamentally important for the conduct of successful business. This time the book is about big sales.

Among hundreds of books on sales, Neil Rackham's work, in our opinion, stands apart, since it is based on scientific research conducted by the author for 12 years in order to identify key features behavior of successful sellers of expensive goods and services. During this time, 35 thousand negotiations of sellers with customers in 22 companies from 23 countries of the world were analyzed.

The results were unexpected. The conventional wisdom that the key to success in sales is mastery of a special technique for closing the transaction was refuted. It has been found that the methods of selling inexpensive goods are ineffective in large transactions, and successful sellers ask more questions than their less fortunate counterparts. Moreover, they use each question in a special way and for a specific purpose.

Nowadays, when a competent customer can easily and quickly choose quality goods at the best price using the Internet, the role of sellers is changing dramatically.

Those who master the SPIN method proposed by the author have every chance of succeeding, increasing their income to hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. We recommend this book not only to novice salespeople, but also to those who consider themselves sales bison. We learned a lot of new and useful things from it. Even though some of the examples look outdated, the principle itself works flawlessly.

This book is on the required reading lists of most leading business schools. Its first edition in Russia was quickly sold out, and then forgotten for a long time. We decided to correct this mistake and are re-publishing SPIN Sales.

In conclusion, I would like to note that Rackham's book is not from the category of business pop, so get ready for some serious work.

The result is guaranteed.

Mikhail Ivanov,

editor-in-chief of the publishing house

"Mann, Ivanov and Ferber"

From the author

When SPIN Selling was first published by Gower in 1987 under the title Big Selling, no one, myself included, imagined it would become a worldwide bestseller. The original hardcover edition was beautiful but expensive and aimed at the business market. Attempts to publish the book in the United States were unsuccessful, with several publishing houses rejecting the manuscript as too controversial. One of the mildest refusals ended with the words: “… such ideas are not recognized by other experts in the field and leading consultants. The book is written in a peculiar style that is likely to annoy the reader; it contains too much research information to confuse or bore the reader."

Taking such an unfavorable start, the book then sold in different languages ​​around the world. In the United States, it was published in 150,000 copies in hardcover. More than 50 of the world's largest industrial corporations train their salespeople using models developed from the research described in this book. The book was included in a recent list of the ten most influential business publications, where it is described as "a revolution in classic sales by which all subsequent sales books will be judged." So what has changed? Three factors have made the SPIN sales method the most successful project:

1. Sellers are more sophisticated. The SPIN Selling book does not adapt to its readers, and this appeals to high-end sales professionals. They welcomed the study, which critics said was too difficult to understand. Highly professional salespeople also liked the fact that the book's emphasis was on relationship building, rather than on the gimmicks that abound in many sales publications. This new generation of salespeople understood that selling is not magic, but hard labour and therefore it is necessary to develop basic sales skills. In addition, these people perceived "SPIN sales" as practical guide, which can help them become more successful, and purchased several copies at once. I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that only a few readers saw controversial points in the book. From all over the world, letters came to my office from sellers who, in essence, said: “There is nothing shocking or unusual about this, you just put into words what I have been doing for a long time.” There can be no better response from readers for the author.

2. Customers have changed. Experience gained not only sellers, but also buyers. At the time of the book's publication, wholesale buyers were on the brink of a buying revolution that reduced the number of suppliers and brought closer relationships with those who remained. A new generation of buyers has moved away from the antagonistic, "business" approach to sales, turning their attention to business partners who understand customer concerns. The SPIN model was designed specifically for this kind of relationship. Companies that followed the advice in SPIN Selling developed stronger relationships with customers and thrived as a result.

3. Big sales are really specific. One of the most controversial points in the book was the assertion that the skills necessary for the success of large sales are completely different from the skills that contribute to success in the case of smaller transactions. Before SPIN selling, there was a common misconception that selling is selling: whether you're selling peaches or power plants, the basic skills for successful selling are pretty much universal. My book has changed this point of view. Detailed research provided a strong case for specializing in large sales in terms of the skills needed to make them. As a direct result of the study, major corporations have changed the way they train their salespeople and managers. Again, those who followed the advice of the author of the book achieved the desired, and sometimes exceeding expectations, in terms of sales performance. So, the word went to the masses, and now our Cinderella has turned into a princess - this story is able to compete with many fairy tales.

There is one question left. Should you consider this book as a classic of the genre, worth honoring just to pay tribute to its place in sales history? Or is the book still relevant today? Since then, nothing has happened that could affect the validity and popularity of the ideas in this book. Further studies by other experts only confirmed the author's conclusions, and now the main models are supported by additional evidence. Changes in business-to-business sales and buying have heightened the need for a more sophisticated approach to sales that has grown out of the original SPIN research. Hundreds of examples of recent corporate and individual sales success testify to the past. practical value SPIN models.

Neil Rackham, Huthwaite Inc.

Whitland Manor, Purcellville, Virginia 22132 USA

1. Huthwaite research

It was a stormy January evening. I dealt with my first important client and after a difficult working week the dream was about returning home. My head was full of recent events, and as I boarded the train, I barely noticed the only fellow passenger in the compartment. However, three hours later, when the train stopped because of the fog, between me and a stranger began one of those heart-to-heart conversations that sometimes happen between travelers who find themselves in an unforeseen situation. I said that I had recently left research at the university to start my own research advisory office. “Well, how does it work out?” the interlocutor asked. “The case turned out to be much more difficult than expected,” I admitted. “The problem is that research is much harder to sell than anything tangible that you can touch.” “I also sell,” replied the stranger. - Like you, I recently changed jobs, and now it's very hard for me. I was in the previous place the best employee, and now ... it seems to me that I'm doing everything wrong.

As it turned out, my unfortunate fellow traveler used to sell inexpensive goods. Among the 200 sellers, he was the third in terms of sales. Feeling the potential for larger operations, he moved to another company that sold expensive machine tools. A year later, he was in a terrible position. “It's like day and night,” the stranger complained. - I used to be in the top three, but here I found myself in the very tail and I don’t understand why. How is it possible to sell one product so successfully and another so unsuccessfully?

I didn't know what to say, other than the usual platitudes like there are black and white stripes in life. At the next stop, he got off, an old-fashioned stooped figure in a shroud of mist. The rest of the way, I pondered his problem. As I told him, no one has done any serious research on the reasons for successful sales that could explain why someone succeeds in one type of sale and absolutely fails in another.

At that moment, I was even more confused than the stranger. As a research psychologist, I hated this state of confusion. The interlocutor asked me a practical question about human behavior, and I did not even know where to begin with the answer. Since then, I've been thinking about a solution to this problem.

Perhaps that trip gave impetus to the study of sales effectiveness by the Huthwaite research group. Since our conversation with the stranger, my colleagues and I have spent 12 years analyzing over 35,000 sales situations. We studied 116 factors that may play a role in sales performance and conducted research effective sales in 23 countries. Our research has become the largest study in the field of sales success. After spending a million dollars on systematic research, we found answers to my fellow traveler's questions. If I met him now, I could tell him that:

Many of the skills that made small sales successful prevented successful small sales. big deals;

- the style of conducting large sales, requiring several meetings to establish business relations, is significantly different from the style of the transaction based on one meeting;

- as the volume of sales increases, the behavior of the buyer changes significantly and requires different skills from the seller.

There is much more I could tell my chance companion about the causes of his difficulties - all this you will find in the book. But most importantly, now I could tell him what to do to increase the number of successful sales.

Our first mistake

Generals write about their victories, doctors about cures, and researchers about successful projects. We all hide our failures. In the early stages of our project, we made a number of costly mistakes. Most of them I can now safely ignore, but one deserves careful consideration. Put yourself in my place. Here I am, ready to study sales performance. I was able to convince several multinational client companies that they needed a deeper understanding of the success factors of large sales. I had a budget, but how do I manage it? Where would you start researching success factors for large sales if you were me?

Perhaps you would do the same as we did - find a few high-level sellers and ask about the secrets of their success. Like us, you would find that top performers never know for sure what makes them so effective. This applies not only to the sphere of sales, but also to any field of activity in general. For the same reason, few top athletes become top coaches. Good performers often act intuitively, without even realizing what makes them different from others. To those around them, such people try to pass on some additional skills that they have developed on purpose, and not the basic skills that they carry out without hesitation.

I raised this issue for two reasons. First, he set our study back at least a year; but even now, many researchers waste precious resources in an unsuccessful search for the right skills through surveys and interviews. The second reason is more significant. How did you learn to sell? Most of us use our own trial and error and the advice of people we consider successful salespeople. Therein lies the problem. How useful are the tips given to us? The experience of our research shows that one should be very careful with the advice of experts, whether it is a book from one of the "most top sellers in the world” or an oral presentation by a highly professional specialist at a sales conference.

Let me give you some friendly advice first: don't trust the words of high-class professionals. All our research experience proves that there is a huge difference between what successful salespeople say about their work and what they actually do. If you want to find out how experts make sales, watch them in action, and don't rely on their stories about these events.

Don't trust the experts: case study

Looking back at all those useless interviews, I now realize that even then I could have avoided such a mistake. A few years earlier, I did some research on catching smugglers, which clearly showed the unreliability of advice like "This is how I did it ...". My company, the Huthwaite Research Group, was asked by two government agencies to identify the reasons why some customs officers were so much better at spotting violators than others. We found twenty-three customs agents, all of whom regularly and successfully located and detained smugglers. We interviewed them all, trying to find out the secret of such success. Eighteen of them unanimously declared: “It's all about the eyes. Look people in the eye and you can see an admission of guilt." We, unsuspectingly, believed them and even arranged a training for the less fortunate customs officers, during which people honestly looked into each other's eyes. It was very embarrassing for everyone, and as far as I know, those trainings did not affect the capture of smugglers in any way. After some time, we switched to another method and instead of interviews, we began to observe advanced customs officers in action, using a hidden camera. As a result, it turned out that the best customs officers were looking for signs of tension, self-control, and not guilt in people. Even the old lady, whose honesty was the talk of the town, looked guilty under the scrutiny of the customs officials. Those who were really guilty gave themselves away by some signs, such as a more upright posture and tension in the muscles of the neck. These were the signs of self-control that experienced customs officers were looking for. They had nothing to do with guilt or the look in their eyes.

At the same time that we were starting to research sales, the BBC produced a series of films called The Experimenters, which featured people who took an unusual approach to scientific research. The first program was based on our search work best practices detection of smugglers. During the shoot, I discussed our research questions in front of the camera. “Remember,” I said confidently, “if you want to know what makes people successful workers, look at them in action, and don’t make discussions and polls.” Later, as I reviewed the tape, I was horrified to realize that we had neglected this principle in our study of sales. We used survey and interview methods. Don't fall prey to our mistakes - never trust skill descriptions from professionals.

Sales study

If the method of interviewing experts does not work, then what training methods are available to you? It's easy to say, "Go and see how people work," but it's not easy to do. What should you look for and what should you pay special attention to when watching a professional work? How to stay objective? How to make observations? The Huthwaite research group pioneered a method called "behavior analysis".

The general principles of the behavior analysis method are shown in fig. 1.1.

1. Choose your type of behavior. Select an aspect of behavior in the sales process that you think can be associated with success. For example, you might subscribe to the theory that sales success can be increased by banging your fist on a table in front of a customer.

2. Watch salespeople meet with customers and count as often repeated chosen by you aspect of behavior. Attending meetings of buyers with sellers, note how often the latter hit the table with their fists. Record each such instance so that you can later say, “He banged the table 11 times in this meeting, and 17 in the last meeting.”

3. Divide meetings into those that have led to success and those that have ended in failure. This step is more difficult than it seems at first glance. How can you tell if a meeting is successful? We will discuss this issue in more detail a little later, but now let's assume that the meeting is successful, as a result of which the buyer places an order or which helped to establish business relationship with him. So, divide all the meetings during which you observed the pounding of the fist on the table into two categories; put all successful meetings in one, and all failures in the other.

4. Analyze the difference in frequency. Determine the average number of punches in successful matches and compare it with the same number in unsuccessful matches. If this aspect of behavior has a positive effect on sales performance, you will see that it was repeated more often when successful sales. If the average number of occurrences of this aspect is about the same in both categories, you will conclude that it is not related to success - in other words, it does not affect sales performance in any way. Finally, if the number of cases of fist-pounding in unsuccessful meetings exceeds the number of such cases in successful meetings, we can conclude that this style of behavior negatively affects the outcome - the more you knock your fist, the less likely it is to succeed.

However, everything is not so simple. To conduct this kind of research, you need to have objective methods and precise definitions. Even in the example I've given, your researchers need to have a standardized definition of banging a fist on a table. They must agree, for example, on whether this includes tapping fingers on a table or hitting a chair with a fist. They will have to attend many meetings to collect statistically significant samples and control for other variables. It may take a month of observation, attendance at a hundred meetings, and 10 thousand dollars to formulate conclusions about even something as simple as hitting a table with your fist!

Rice. 1.1. Analysis of successful behavior in the sales process

Despite the many advantages of the behavior analysis method, it has not found wide application among researchers due to its high cost, because often the research budget is less than what is needed to implement this method. Conducting research based on behavioral analysis is possible only if an independent research corporation like Huthwaite raises additional funds from large clients. This book is the first publication of a study that required many years of work from us. Before publicizing our findings, my Huthwaite colleagues Simon Bailey, Linda Marsh, and Bernard Midgley spent several years rigorously testing their findings by analyzing the activities of the world's leading trading companies. In the following chapters, I will present to you the important discoveries that we made during the course of the study, such as:

– Closing techniques. Closing techniques that work with small clients will lead to loss of business in the case of large sales. Most of the common closure techniques are in fact ineffective, so I will describe them instead. best ways obtaining commitments from customers in large sales.

– Research methods. Classical survey methods using open and closed questions are justified for small sales, but will not help you in the case of larger ones. I'll introduce you to the SPIN exploratory questioning method we developed by analyzing several thousand successful customer meetings and observing some professional salespeople in action.

– Objection management. In large sales, objection handling skills will do little to help sales effectiveness. Successful salespeople focus on objection prevention, not objection satisfaction. We analyzed their actions, and a little later I will describe ways that will allow you to reduce the number of customer objections by more than half.

– New types of benefits. We have been taught since the 1920s that a benefit refers to how a particular feature of a product can be used by the customer. This type of benefit can be very effective in small sales and completely frustrating in large ones. I will introduce you to a new type of benefit that is suitable for large-scale transactions.

You may not agree with my words. I'm used to it. However, this book is not Neil Reckhaman's personal view of big-selling success, but is based on a painstaking analysis of the success of many thousands of salespeople, resulting from the most extensive research ever done in the field of big-account trading.

In this book, I give examples of both small sales and large sales, sometimes to show the difference between the two, and sometimes simply because small sales are a better way to illustrate a point. In addition, I take a closer look various situations sales. Business meetings, which we have studied, cover more than fifty industries and hundreds of different products and services. In exploring this diversity, the common factor has been the analysis of success. What are the skills that contribute to the success of one meeting and the failure of another (regardless of whether you are selling professional services, means of production or complex systems)? This is the question that I will answer in later chapters.

One of the most successful sales techniques is SPIN sales, developed by Neil Rackham in 1988. SPIN is based on 12 years of hard work and detailed analysis of more than 30,000 successful transactions, which were completed by about 10,000 sellers in 23 countries around the world. Let's take a look at what the Spin Selling technique involves and why it has gained widespread acceptance among the best trainers and sales managers around the world.

SPIN method, replaced the idea of ​​\u200b\u200b"", which had five stages and on which more than one generation of managers studied. New technology rejected the notion that a sale has stages, they now began to believe that any transaction consists of a funnel of questions, which subsequently ends in a successfully completed sale. Neil Rackham put the following philosophy into the basis of the method: you do not impose a product on the buyer, but sell exactly what the client needs, and for this you need to understand the client. In this regard, in the SPIN technique, great emphasis is placed on identifying needs and on providing complete and reliable information.

The spin technique consists of four types of questions:

Situational - The main task of situational questions is to find out the maximum information about the client, for a better understanding of the acquisition objectives on the part of the buyer. For clarity, we will give examples of situational questions: “For how long do you plan to rent a room and in connection with what, do you want to rent an office for a while, and not buy it?”, “For what purposes are you buying a car?”, “Describe what functions and properties of the goods are extremely important for you, which ones are desirable to be present and which are the least important for you?

Thus, we are trying to identify the needs of the client. There is one small nuance with situational questions: you can’t ask a lot of them, because. the client may lose interest in the deal, and they will simply tire the busy person and he will decide to refuse the purchase just because your consultation takes too much time and effort. In this regard, situational questions should be open-ended and should be posed in such a way as to get maximum information from each question. At professional managers during the dialogue with the buyer, 70% of the time the buyer speaks and a maximum of 30% the manager speaks. The reason for this is that successful salespeople get in touch with the buyer and identify needs to the maximum, and if everything is done correctly, then the presentation takes much less time and the positive effect from it will be much more!

Problematic - a type of questions that allows us to identify why and what the customer is dissatisfied with using the current product. At the same time, problematic questions allow you to find out all the problems and dissatisfaction of the client, the solution of which will be the product we offer. This group should also be given maximum attention, because. how accurately we will find out all the dissatisfaction of the client depends directly on how we offer our product. Examples of problematic questions: “What exactly did not suit you in the previous office?”, “What features do you lack in your phone”, “How is your project progressing during the crisis?”

Extracting - the most difficult type of questions, their task is to focus the buyer's attention on current problems and their significance. With the help of extractive questions, we do not receive information, but indirectly influence the client, forcing him to think about the consequences of current problems if they are not addressed immediately. Examples of extraction questions: “You said that your car often breaks down, how do you think this affects your safety and the safety of those around you?”, “How will your partners react if you do not fulfill your obligations?”

Guides - questions of this category are applied only after the buyer has realized the seriousness of the situation and has come to the conclusion that something urgently needs to be changed. The purpose of the guiding questions is to encourage the client to buy, we lay in them options for solving the client’s problems, for example: “Do you think if you purchased equipment for the plant that would allow you to produce 20% more products, how would did it affect your business?”, “If you buy an apartment close to work, will you save a lot of time on the road to work from work?”, “Would an air-conditioned car help you to endure hot weather more easily?” Thus, by raising the question, we offer the buyer another benefit from the purchase of our product (the benefits have already been written in articles and)

As you can see, the SPIN sale is built, like the “classic sale”, on a series of questions posed in a certain sequence. The advantages of the spin technique seem to be obvious: A more detailed identification of needs allows us to study in detail the client's expectations from the purchase, the sale itself occurs with the help of guiding questions, each of which presents the required benefits and advantages to the buyer, with the SPIN approach it is much easier to sell.

But do not forget that any sales technique has its drawbacks and SPIN is no exception. The SPIN method is only effective when negotiating (if you need to negotiate regularly, learn how to do it) and for large sales such as real estate, cars, wholesales, etc. For small retail sales, this technique will be less effective, because is simply not designed for them, in this case it is worth using the “classic sale”, in which no one forbids the use of SPIN elements.