Neil Rackham - The SPIN® Selling Fieldbook: Practical Tools, Methods, Exercises, and Resources

MAJOR ACCOUNT SALES STRATEGY

SPIN SELLING

GETTING PARTNERING RIGHT: HOW MARKET LEADERS ARE CREATING LONG-TERM COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE (authored with L. Friedman and R. Ruff)

Copyright 1996 by the McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a data base or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978-0-07-136882-7
MHID: 0-07-052235-9

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Using the SPIN Fieldbook

Instant SPIN Model

Check It Out!

Four Stages of a Sales Call

Putting SPIN to Work

Focusing on Buyer Needs

Situation Questions

Problem Questions

Implication Questions

Need-payoff Questions

Demonstrating Capability

Sharpening Your Skills

Getting Help and Helping Others

The success of SPINSelling took me by surprise. While I was writing it, I had an uneasy feeling that the book might not be well accepted. And initial events made it seem that my unease would prove correct. My original publishers, who had persuaded me to write the book, cancelled the contract when they received the manuscript. It conflicts with generally accepted sales ideas, they explained. Other publishers wouldnt touch it because they too thought it went against conventional sales wisdom.

Finally, McGraw-Hill agreed to publish the manuscript and SPINSelling became a best seller. Even more satisfying, it wasnt a flavor of the month book. Each year it has gained more new readers than the year before. The SPIN model has become widely accepted in major corporations. In fact, half of the Fortune 100 companies use it to train their salespeople. Universities and business schools teach it, and the underlying research on the effectiveness of the SPIN model has become a widely quoted case study in textbooks on evaluation methodology.

I say this not to brag but, oddly enough, to register a growing dissatisfaction. Although our work has influenced large and leading corporations, Im constantly reminded that the majority of salespeople dont work for big organizations. Most salespeople, whether they sell products or services, work for small companies. My firm, Huthwaite, gets letters, phone calls, and e-mail every day from sole practitioners, individual professionals, and one- or two-person salesforces. These are people who have read SPINSelling, who are convinced that the ideas in it are right, but who now need further help and advice on how to put the concepts into practice. They dont have the resources or the numbers to justify attending Huthwaites customized training programs, but they do need practical tools to help them take the next step.

I talked with many of these peoplewith an architect from New Mexico, a software developer from San Diego, a sawmill owner in West Virginia. I tried to be helpful and to answer questions but knew, as I put the phone down, that they needed more than just a few words of advice. Gradually the idea of The SPINFieldbook evolved. It would consist of tools, exercises, and practical advice. It would help people struggling to turn good concepts into productive sales. It would particularly appeal to those in smaller organizations who didnt have access to our customized training programs. The only problem was finding the time to put it together.

My colleague Leni Gurin volunteered to search through thousands of pages of the books, articles, and programs I have written over the years and to cull from them useful material to help people sell better with the SPIN model. With the addition of several new chapters, she has synthesized and expanded that material into a practical, step-by-step implementation guide. The SPINFieldbook is the result.

Let me introduce Leni to you. Before Leni joined Huthwaite, she ran her own consulting practice for almost ten years, learning the hard way what it means to be an individual out there selling for a small company. Shes also worked for large consulting practices, including two Big 6 accounting firms. Her practical experience in managing change and implementing performance improvement programs has given her a real sense of how to help people develop skills. She worked hard to communicate the ideas and suggestions in this