Being involved in complex sales processes for years, I found the SPIN concept elegant and very effective at the same time. It is one of the best books written in the area of major sales. Absolutely a classic!

When I first read "Spin Selling", shortly after its introduction, I found it enlightening. At the time I had been in office automation sales for 10 years and management for 5 years, and the book solidified many of my thoughts and theories on selling. Since then, I have read a lot of other selling books but none really deal with the underlying theory of selling as well as Neil Rackham's book does. Even now as I am self employed, I still re-read the book occationally to brush up. For those who feel that the author hasn't the field expereince to be credible, obviously they have never coached or mentored someone in complex sales. And for those reviewers who blame Kodak's current lack of succsess to SPIN, they might find it shocking that Microsoft uses SPIN too.

...this may help. It is one of a few books to use as a resource.

If Solution Selling: Creating Buyers in Difficult Selling Markets is the comprehensive guide to selling intangible, complex solutions, then SPIN Selling is the comprehensive guide to asking customers questions to find our what mattered to them most.

SPIN Selling is definitely NOT the first book that guides sales people in the art of asking questions, but it's definitely the one that puts it in the most elegant way.

That said, it will be a mistake to assume that SPIN Selling is the cure-all for asking customers. The Science of Influence: How to Get Anyone to Say "Yes" in 8 Minutes or Less! will be a good companion to better understand the human psyche.

I am account manager for an ERP Consulting company. This book really opened my eyes for the first time to the different styles of selling. Neil does an excellent job of exposing flawed selling styles and techniques in major account sales: such as using high pressure sales, using closing technigues, giving advantages and not direct benefits, and not solving problems for the client. I would highly recommend this book to anyone that is looking to learn how to do sales well; specifically in major sales.
Carlos Ekkert
http://www.majoraccountselling.blogspot.com/

Essentially all business organizations have some sort of selling division. As a recent MBA grad, even though I never plan on going into sales, this book provided priceless techniques on sales, understanding the customer, and even general tips on being a good leader/manager and influencing people. Though it's over 20 years old, Rackham's research and methodology still holds true today! Must read for ANYONE working in any business-related environment!

There are literally 1000's of sales books out there, but this is like no other. Its not so much a 'how to' book, but more like 'The Millionaire Next Door' for sales. Here is what the top producers do, here are the facts, do whatever you want, we don't care. Not fancy closes, secret words to put in your presentation, nothing like that. It truly is like no other sales book and I have listened to the audio version 3 times since I bought it and have picked up something new everytime.

SPIN is a classic, one of the books that revolutionized professional selling. It amazes me to read some of the negative reviews of this book posted here. Some of this I attribute to lack of knowledge of the history of our "profession," which bears few hallmarks of being a profession yet. Can you get a four year college degree in SELLING, the one thing every business must do well to survive, let alone prosper? Except for programs at a small handful of universities around the country, the answer is NO. Do we have peer-reviewed journals in our profession? NO. Do we have accepted standards and professional certification? NO.

What Neil Rackham, a behavioral researcher, did for selling was huge. He applied the techniques of research and analysis to our profession. Until then, no one could say definitively that "always be closing" was bad advice. But in business to business selling, in high-tech selling to educated professionals, the "ABC's of selling" is only one of many pieces of bad information that passed for "wisdom" before Rackham showed them up for what they were. Such sales tactics are the reason salespeople have been saddled with negative stereotypes.

Some reviewers condemn Rackham by saying that companies cited, such as Kodak, IBM, and Xerox have suffered business reversals since this book came out. Sorry folks, but good salespeople using good selling techniques will not, alone, save your company. MANY companies that were at the top of their industries in the 1970s and 1980s are either out of business or have suffered serious reversals in the years since. That is a different issue altogether, and if you are looking for explanations try STRATEGY books like "Good to Great" by Jim Collins or "Strategy" by Michael Porter. Someone on this site said that IBM's loss of computer business to other PC makers was evidence of the failure of SPIN...totally ridiculous. IBM passed on the operating system that became DOS, which in turn became the engine fueling MicroSoft's ascent to the heights. In hardware manufacturing IBM ignored lots of evidence that a paradigm shift was underway and PCs were becoming commodity items.

The negative reviewers are looking for a silver bullet in many cases: SPIN will not transform you into a president's club winner by reading it. It is how you apply and practice it that will enable your success. Becoming expert in the use of this simple framework requires work and thought. What Rackham showed us is that the WORDS we use are important, along with HOW WE USE THEM. We must understand THEIR goals and focus on being part of THEIR success if we are to be successful in a sustainable, long-term partnership. Also that we must not be manipulative or treat other people (aka "customers" or "prospects") in ways we would not want to be treated ourselves. The acronym "SPIN" was coined before Washington politicians gave the word the negatie connotation it now has.

SPIN is not the only good refenence book for salespeople, but it is a landmark book, the result of research that has not, to my knowlege, been replicated since. It should be a held in great esteem by any sales professional. Rackham's concept of an "Advance" as an objective way to measure the progress of a sales call is, alone, worth the price of this book.

By the way, I have been in sales for 30 years, as a salesperson, sales manager, and director of training for a Fortune 500 company. I still have a lot to learn. But one thing I do know: there is tremendous value in this book for any salesperson with an open mind and the desire to continue growing, learning and improving as a sales professional.

This book is a simple guide to improve your effectiveness as a sales professional in high-value direct enterprise sales situations. Regardless of culture and language, people on the other side of the table from a sales person have an instinctive judgment to mis-trust any characteristic that seems contrived or unnatural. Genuineness is a pre-requisite. Therefore, like with any sales theory, rote learning and implementation of the theory is futile. Having said that, internalizing the fundamental premise of this book in my everyday life as a sales-person has been rewarding over the years and across geographies, cultures, languages and types of product/service being sold.

SPIN selling goes well with approaches that talk about Values-Based Selling, Solution Selling and Rackham's own Major Account Sales Strategy.

Huthwaite (Rackham) has done a phenomenal job of monetizing this simple concept by way of selling sales training and books. However, you may find the book too "salesy" at times. It is common idiom with any good speech, presentation or book; first you tell them what you are going to tell them, then you tell them, then you tell them what you told them. The book does a great job of steps 1 and 3, but leaves you wanting more in step 2.

The basic concepts about stages of a sales call, focus on customer needs and benefits, situation-problem-implication-need-payoff line of questioning, objection handling/prevention, sound closing techniques and post-sales are well articulated. The promise of increasing effectiveness in "major sales" is largely fulfilled. However, the emphasis on "it's based on research" goes unsubstantiated for the most part. You find the author insisting that "it's based on research" and providing simplistic graphs "based on research" than actually providing rigorous insights into the research. It also does not help that business theory is presented as a first person narrative. Blurs that fine line between theory-based opinion and opinion-based theory.

All said, the technique is highly effective and serves as a great foundation for approaching sales calls at various stages in the cycle. I've found myself going back to this book multiple times over the years. Always a good sign for books that you want to own rather than just read once.

The sales guru Zig Ziglar once said "People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care." To me, that means that you've got to understand people before you can persuade them. If you're to understand someone, they have to talk to you. And the best way to get them to talk is to ask questions. But are there some questions that are more highly correlated with successful selling than others?

Published in 1988 and still one of the best researched sales books on the market, SPIN Selling by Neil Rackham has the answer: Yes, some questions do increase your chances of sales success more than others. More importantly, these client interviews- what SPIN Selling calls the Investigation stage- have the greatest effect on the outcome of the sale. The book outlines the four types of questions that salespeople ask during the Investigation stage:

Situation: What is going on here? How do things work?

Problem (Pain Points): What are the problems you are experiencing?

Implication (Implied Needs): What effect do these problems have on results (cost, quality, delivery, customer service)?

Need-Payoff (Explicit Needs): What improvement in results could you make by resolving these problems with these specific capabilities (perceived value)? Are there other benefits? How important are these benefits to you?

(From page 91) "The SPIN model taps into the psychology of the buying process: buyers' needs move from Implicit to Explicit. The questions provide a roadmap for the seller guiding the call through the steps of need development until Explicit Needs have been reached. The more Explicit Needs you can obtain from buyers, the more likely the call will succeed."

Following the model gets customers to tell you how what you're selling helps them. It makes you partners instead of opponents in the value discovery process. And by helping clients develop the benefits in their own words, you avoid objections and make it easier for clients to sell internally for you.

I speak around the world on lead generation and SPIN Selling" to give you a roadmap on how to master business to business selling.

There is no other resource I can think of where you can "easily perfect" your selling approach and strategy.

Neil gives you step-by-step plan that anyone can follow in their quest to excel at selling their products or services.

The one caveat is I would adopt the "SPIN" Model to "SPAIN" with the "A" emphasizing "Agitate" to put more focus on what the problem is costing your prospect without your specific solution.

I would also add that the SPIN Field Book is a great resource.

Joe Heller, Trust Cycle Selling

Great Book. Good buy for any sales professional who has to use the phone at work.

SPIN Selling was based on research done by Neil Rackham on thousands of salespeople in several countries over an extensive period of time. The results of the research provided an insight into how the best salespeople operate. Like the discovery of NLP in the 1970's then SPIN techniques were already being used in the field, they just hadn't been broken down and named so they weren't being taught as such.

Even before SPIN most salespeople knew that they ought to ask questions and listen more ("Two ears, one mouth"!) but many perhaps did not know where to go with their questions to get the most effective results. Rackham for example explains how after speaking with many decision makers he discovered that simple Situation based questions can turn a decision maker off as they feel that they are educating the salesperson. Previously most salespeople may well have believed that these were building rapport!

In the SPIN methodology Rackham outlines how the salesperson should progress from Situation questions to Problem questions to Implication questions to Needs questions. This method is well explained and easily executable by someone with reasonable intelligence and a commitment to practising the techniques. The material will need tailoring for the individual and the industry however this would be expected with any methodology aimed at salespeople in general. Purchasing the SPIN Selling Fieldbook at the same time is worthwhile and will certainly help you to do this as it gets you to create your own questions and is full of tests and checks to ensure that you really have understoood the concepts and can apply them.

Like all research however SPIN Selling throws up some strange anomalies... In my opinion Rackham over majors on these (to get publicity and a USP?) rather than remaining on his strong S-P-I-N ground...

E.g.

Rackham argues that objection handling skills make little difference to whether the end sale is made or not. This may be true when you are already in front of and in rapport with a decision maker but thousands of cold callers would quickly tell him that the ability to handle sales objections when cold calling can massively increase your ability to stay on the phone and therefore get an appointment. How can you ever get to the sales meeting if you cannot deal with an, "I have an existing supplier objection" when you are on the phone?

Rackham also argues that closed questions are no worse than open questions. Now I happen to agree with him that open questions are over-hyped however, and it's a big however, if someone wants to shut you down saying something short and to the point it is much easier to follow up on an open question answer than a closed one i.e. "That's interesting John, other people have said that to me. What do you mean by...?" You can hardly say, "What exactly do you mean by No?", now can you?

Despite this however SPIN Selling is in my opinion a MUST READ for salespeople as the vast majority of sales systems in the marketplace today span off from SPIN (despite what some of them might say!). If you haven't got your own copy of SPIN then you should get one and read it.

Footnote: Some peoople deride SPIN saying that it is now outdated and has been improved upon. I disagree. True there are other options out there including my own "Ingham Sales System" and these systems are all slightly different with different structuring and key points however... I would still recommend all salespeople to read SPIN. If there were "must-read" texts for salespeople this book would still be in my top 10.

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"

This is a great book with solid techniques for building relationships for selling to large accounts.

This is a great book with solid techniques for building relationships for selling to large accounts.

Overall Impression of this Book

At 192 pages--47 of these in the appendices--the book is short and a quick and easy read. It does make useful distinctions between small and large sales and the differences in approach that should be used for each. The SPIN method of questioning makes logical sense and is a technique that can be applied to other forms of selling, such as landing a job or selling an idea to a group of coworkers or friends. Overall this book presented a convincing way to be successful in large sales. The one drawback is that the book claims that the SPIN technique is validated by studies of over 35,000 sales calls. The book's presentation of the data is less than convincing and incomplete. Bar diagrams are too simplistic and do not present significant amounts of underlying data, explanation of collection methods, or statistical measurements. The skeptic will likely have less confidence in the book as a result, doubting the usefulness of the information.

Chapter One: Sales Behavior and Sales Success

Selling cycle can be divided into five segments: the opening, investigating needs, giving benefits, objection handling and closing. (The four stages of a sales call are preliminaries, investigating, demonstrating capability and obtaining commitment.)

The author makes a distinction between effective sales methods depending on size of sale, small versus large.

In his research, the opening is perhaps effective in small sales, but not for larger ones. Investigating needs is the most important component of selling, for large sales. For small sales it is much less important. Giving benefits works well once needs are uncovered, but benefits are defined in a very particular way. Objection handling is not important to large sales success, while they may be effective for small sales. Closing techniques can be effective for small accounts, but are counterproductive in large sales.

In summary, for large sales the most important aspects are the uncovering of needs and offering benefits. Everything else tends to take away from sale effectiveness.

In uncovering needs, the author describes four types of questions that will lead the salesmen to an effective sale: situation, problem, implication and need-payoff. These describe the SPIN model, or the sets of questions that lead to sales success. Situation questions are data gathering questions about facts and background. Too many will bore the listener. Problem questions address or explore potential problems, difficulties and dissatisfactions. These lead to implication questions which aim to get the customer to explore possible implications of problems on his operation overall. Need-payoff questions are ones that lead the customer to propose the correct solution himself to the problem at hand and to help him deduce the need for the product that is being sold.

Chapter Two: Obtaining Commitment: Closing the Sale

In this chapter the author says that the traditional emphasis on closing techniques is misplaced. The closing has little correlation to sales success in big sales. Two conclusions are noted: 1. by forcing the customer into a decision, closing techniques speed the sales transaction, and 2. closing techniques may increase the chances of making a sale with low-priced products but with expensive products the opposite is true as the chances of making a sale are reduced. If a client detects that a seller is using closing techniques he becomes much less likely to buy.

An important point is brought up in this chapter, that of furthering the sale. Large sales do not close with one phone call but are instead part of a developing process that will likely take several steps. A failed sales call is one that produces either a no-sale or a continuation, where no new development to further the sale has been brought forth. A measure of a successful sales call or visit is either an order or an advance, something that furthers the sales through a follow-up meeting or some similar commitment from the potential buyer. A good salesperson will always strive to advance the sale.

A successful obtaining commitment strategy is composed of four parts: giving attention to Investigating and Demonstrating capability, checking that key concerns are covered, summarizing the benefits, and proposing a commitment.

Chapter Three: Customer Needs in the Major Sale

The author again makes the distinction between small sales and large ones and explains that needs develop differently for each type of sale. Needs are defined as any statement made by the buyer that expresses a want or concern that can be satisfied by the seller.

There are two different kinds of needs: implied and explicit needs. Implied needs are statements of problems, difficulties and dissatisfactions. Explicit needs are specific customer wants and desires. It is the satisfaction of explicit needs that result in successful sales calls. The purpose of questions in the larger sale is to uncover implied needs and to develop them into explicit needs.

Chapter Four: The SPIN Strategy

This chapter examines how the four SPIN questions--situation, problem, implication, and need-payoff--can be used to help the need-development process.

Situation questions are simple questions to establish facts. Too many of them will bore the buyer. They are not positively related to success, but are often needed to find information. Do not ask unnecessary situation questions.

Problem questions probe for problems, difficulties or dissatisfactions and invite customer to state his implied needs. Sample questions might include: "Are you satisfied with your present equipment?"; "Isn't it difficult to process peak loads with your present system?"; "Does this old machine give you reliability problems?". Experienced salespeople ask a higher proportion of problem questions. Problem questions are effective in small sales but not necessarily in large ones. These questions are asked so as to uncover the customers implied needs. Only when implied needs are converted to need-payoff questions (explicit needs), are sales likely to succeed.

Implication questions serve to probe the nature of the customer's problem and help reveal its true costs and rundown effects. In larger sales, implication questions take a problem that the buyer perceives is small and build it up into a larger problem enough to justify action. Some examples might be uncovering issues of: ease of use, transaction costs, turnover, overtime costs, cost of outside work, and loss of quality. Implication questions are especially effective in selling to decision makers because they are skilled at seeing underlying effects and consequence.

Need-payoff questions are used to turn implied needs into explicit ones. They typically ask about the value or usefulness of solving a problem. Questions such as "Is it important to you to solve this problem?; "Why would you find this solution so useful?"; "Is there any other way this could help you?" are good examples. Need-payoff questions achieve two things: they focus the customer's attention on the solution to the problem, and they get the customer to tell you the benefits.

Need-payoff questions reduce objections in big sales. This is because for big problems, there is usually less scope for a perfect solution and by pointing out how you can solve the problem you may actually bring attention to the imperfect match between your product and the problem. By allowing the customer to make his own deduction, you can get him to tell you which elements of the problem your solution can solve. This approach makes the solution more acceptable and less objectionable.

Need-payoff questions rehearse the customer for internal selling. Rarely in large sales does one contact make the customer purchase the product. Instead the product is sold internally as employees or decision makers convince other decision makers about the value of the purchase. It is much easier for employees to do this if they have figured out for themselves what benefits the product will bring.

Need-payoff questions are important because they focus attention on solutions, not problems and they make customers tell you the benefits. Need-payoff questions are very powerful in large sales because they increase the acceptability of the solution. Success in large sales depends on internal selling by customers on your behalf and need-payoff questions successfully rehearse the customer in presenting these solutions convincingly to others.

The author suggests preparation as a key tool to successful selling. A sales call should be prepared in advance through writing out possible problem questions and potential implications that may result.

Avoid need-payoff question early in the call as they will put of the customer in the larger sale. An example of this might be starting the call with: "Would you be interested in processing your accounts faster?"

Avoid asking need-payoff questions when you don't have the answers or possible solutions.

Practice, practice, practice.

Chapter Five: Giving Benefits in Major Sales

This falls under the Demonstrating Capability phase of a sale.

The author makes a distinction between features, advantages, and benefits. Features are simple facts, data or information about the product. Listing features has a positive effect for small sales success but as the sales size increases, success rates diminish for listing features. This is because as the price tag rises, the customer becomes more acutely aware of the value proposition and features to the extent that they do not provide direct value through immediate benefits are discounted in the mind f the customer. Advantages show how products can be used to help the customer. Benefits show how a product or service will meet the customer's explicit need. Advantages have a positive and slightly positive effect on small sales and large sales, respectively. Benefits have a very positive effect for all sales.

Chapter Six: Preventing Objections

The author writes that preventing objections is all about preventing the underlying symptoms. Instead of selling features and advantages, the salesman should be selling benefits, identifying explicit needs and telling the customer about the best ways that those needs will be met. This allows the customer to more easily see the value of solving his problem.

Chapter Seven: Preliminaries: Opening the Call

In larger sales first impressions are less important than in smaller sales. This is partly because openings are much less important. Traditional sales methodology has focused on openings by teaching that it was important to relate to buyer's personal interests and to make an opening benefit statement. The author's research has shown that neither is important. The framework to a successful call opening is telling the buyer who you are and why you are there and establishing your right to ask questions. The author advises getting down to business quickly, not talking about solutions too soon, and concentrating on asking the SPIN questions.

Chapter Eight: Turning Theory into Practice

In this chapter the author says that the SPIN techniques can be easily learned. Instead of concentrating on quality, focus on quantity. Start by choosing one behavior to work on. Make safe practice calls to smaller accounts. Concentrate on using a lot of the behavior rather than using it well. Trying it at least three times before judging the method's effectiveness.

Appendix A: Evaluating the SPIN model

This appendix talks about some of the case studies and data gathering the author used in discovering the effectiveness of methods described in the book.

Appendix B: Closing Attitude Scale

A list of 15 statements about how the reader might feel about closing. The 15 questions are scored and an attitude score is developed. A positive attitude to scoring means that the salesman is more suited to small sales success. A negative attitude indicates a salesman might be more successful in big sales as closing techniques are a liability under these circumstances.

SPIN Selling illustrates the validaty of the method by showing how real Fortune 500 sales forces have improved by asking the right questions to uncover customer pain.This book will enlighten sales managers and any representatives who manage large sales transactions. Also, executives can benefit from the insights about large sales. I have personally improved my sales numbers greatly after utilizing the ideas in SPIN Selling.This book deserves a place in all-time sales manual classics.

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.

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.

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

SPIN Selling illustrates the validaty of the method by showing how real Fortune 500 sales forces have improved by asking the right questions to uncover customer pain.This book will enlighten sales managers and any representatives who manage large sales transactions. Also, executives can benefit from the insights about large sales. I have personally improved my sales numbers greatly after utilizing the ideas in SPIN Selling.This book deserves a place in all-time sales manual classics.

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

I read this book in a couple of days. This is the first sales book that I have read that had methods of selling that were backed by scientific evidence. The book makes a ton of sense and it is written in a way that makes it somewhat easy to remember the tactics and approaches mentioned. This is by far the best sales book I have ever read!

I read this book in a couple of days. This is the first sales book that I have read that had methods of selling that were backed by scientific evidence. The book makes a ton of sense and it is written in a way that makes it somewhat easy to remember the tactics and approaches mentioned. This is by far the best sales book I have ever read!

Written by a British research psychologist based on thousands of observed sales calls to corporate clients, this delightfully written study presents the correlations between certain types of questions and successful selling. It is particularly useful for consultants, trainers and other professionals who want to maintain integrity, credibility and values in the sales process. Tells you how to create a relationship with the client that advances the sale a step at a time and sets the stage for values based pricing. Shows how to write the most effective questions. The last chapter is an invaluable guide on how to implement the questions systematically in your sales calls. All trainers who have ever claimed their training has had impact - especially sales trainers - should read the Appendix about doing research in the real world.

Identifies difference between large and small selling. Overall does make a few good points but the author could have summarized in less than 20 pages. My recommendation: do browse through the book but don't spend more than day or two reading it.

Summery: Implication and need-payoff are the most important stages of large selling. More you work on these questioning stages better you will get at large sales, as you will learn objection prevention Vs handling.

A great handbook based on extensive research that deals primarily with the large sale. It provides the power tools for making the most of a sales call. This book guides you to form the questions required prior to making each call. Working this system will produce extraordinary sales results.

'Spin Selling' is based upon research carried out on actual salespeople in actual sales calls. The book contains many very useful and practical ideas that anyone can use to improve their selling. I consider 'Spin Selling' to be one of the top ten best books ever written on the subject of selling.

Simon Hazeldine
Author of 'Bare Knuckle Selling' & 'Bare Knuckle Negotiating'

This book is a great handbook for making the most of your sales calls. It is based on extensive research and points out that your questions to your customer should be well thought out before haphazardly firing questions or product knowledge out of your mouth. I have also found that these tactics can be applied successfully to other realms of your life.

A lot of good thought provoking information is presented in this book. Old ideas are studied and evaluated for their effectiveness when selling big ticket items. Even if you are in a small ticket market you will pick up something that may be useful in your next sales call.

I like the book on CD because it makes "productive use" of drive and fly time.

Before you buy into some of the very negative recent reviews, take note of the overwhelmingly favorable reviews of this book that have been posted over the years. I personally think the book is awesome. I have a pharmaceutical sales background and for the past eight years have taught a personal selling course at the university level. I have used this needs-based selling book extensively in that course. Perhaps the poor reviews are due to the fact that effective implementation of the SPIN system is not easy, as it requires questions be thoughtfully and carefully formulated prior to making each call. However, those willing to work the system in an analytical manner may be rewarded with exceptional sales results. If you prefer a more pushy and rah-rah "check up from da neck up" approach to sales, perhaps you should look elsewhere.

The material presented in this book is based on the research of more than 35,000 sales calls and outlines in detail successful selling techniques for "Major Sales".

The SPIN Model is a "Need Development" model and will work quite well in many, but not all, "Smaller Sales" situations.

I will give the author credit for one thing, he came up with the right title for this book - SPIN because it spins what real selling is all about.

Borrow it from you library for FREE and save your money for good quality books on selling or take a sales seminar from people qualified to speak on the subject. Certaintly not Rackham.

And don't take these five star reviews with so many helpful votes seriously, just another form of spin; five star reviewers coming back and voting for their own posts to jimmy the ratings of the book and their reviews. Only at Amazon!

I purchased this book after receiving a recommendation from a friend that also works in sales. What a waste of money. This may be the most overrated, redundant sales book that I have ever read. I can summarize the entire book in one sentence: "Techniques used in small sales will be ineffective during large sales, and we have the research to prove it." Don't waste your time or money on this book.

While I appreciate the effort to create a book on consultative style selling, this book just doesn't cut it. It may be a little better than the hardsell techniques espoused by some sale trainers, but it doesn't hit it.

Obviously this book was written by people who have never sold anything besides books and overpriced seminars. Also quite obvious, is that the reviewers giving this book 5 stars have never sold anything either and are merely creating aliases and giving themselves "helpful" votes to earn points for an "Amazon Top 1,000 Rating" which is about as worthless as this book.

One reviewer made a challenge here sometime ago. Doesn't look like he/she got any takers. Now I wonder why?

I have always belived that Ziglars & Hopkins are not effective in Industrial marketing.

There are very few books available in Industrial selling or B to B selling & still very few books with some kind of research as a backing on what is written in the book.

Here is one path breaking book with a totally new concepts & approach. I think its worth investing in this book. The concept written in the book are backed by RESEARCH. This book will change your view about questioning (open & closed).

I would also recommend The SPIN Selling Fieldbook (sequel to Spin Selling). Field book reinforces the concept you learn in SPIN SELLING. I like this book because for the first time somebody has differentiated between one time selling & repeat selling (industrial marketing is infact repeat selling).


I also recommend two books Conceptual Selling & Strategic Selling written by Stephen E. Heiman.

One of the best CDs on Sales. I can strongly recommend the ideas and the suggestions in the CD. Very easy to understand and applicable to day to day selling.

One of the best CDs on Sales. I can strongly recommend the ideas and the suggestions in the CD. Very easy to understand and applicable to day to day selling.

Notice that Kodak layed off several thousand more employees today. Kodak (ticker symbol:EK) was one of the biggest laggards on the DOW and slowed down substantially circa 1987, the same time this book came out.

Notice that the current print of this book in hardback is dated 1988. Despite all of the hype and cheerleading, there have been no new printings for nearly 20 years!

SPIN has a place in selling, no doubt about it. But there is much more to selling than just SPIN. If you doubt me, just ask Kodak.

I can see where this book might make supplemental reading, but it is so obvious that the author and his subjects are not real sales people.

The most useful part of this book was the section on implication questions. The problem is it leaves you with some decent questions to ask, but, now what the heck am I am supposed to do?

And the concept is not new. Zig Ziglar has been teaching the same process along with his top trainer, Brian Flanigan. Ziglar calls it POGO and you can read about it in Zigler on Selling. You will also find more useful information th an what is available here. Perhaps that is because Ziglar and Flanigan are real salesmen and have taught hundreds of thousands of successful salespeople techniques that work now for over 40 years.

Perhaps Rackam took a Zig Ziglar seminar or bought his book and is trying to pass his ideas as being original.

If you want to see this book, go to your local library where you can borrow it for free or buy it for $2.50 or less at a used bookstore.

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.

I found that after using The Spin Method for awhile, I was making more friends and actually kept prospects interested for a longer time but was actually making less sales. The customer was talking more but it didn't impact my bottom line.

This book may be useful in social situations such as parties and so on but not very useful in making sales.

Recommend Strategic Selling, Relationship Selling and other consultative selling books instead.

Does anybody actually know of anybody that is making money with this program?

Isn't it interesting how only the people who can't or don't sell give garbage like this 5 star raving reviews? Obviously they have never sold anything.

I used to work for a company a few months ago that was raving about this program. Spin Selling was the best and only way to sell they said. This company is a travel company, host and travel agency and had their amateur telemarketers use Spin Selling.

Whne I was there the companies sales were down 20% from 2004 and they had a 60% cancellation rate! Does that say anything about the value of Spin Selling?

The top sales people there were basically order takers getting laydowns. They had no clue how to conduct a professional sales presentation. From newest rep right through the supervisors up to and including the sales manager.

You could have attached a order pad to a dog and sent them to the homes of the people who had placed orders with these order takers and the dog could have closed them! The top sales reps here were "King of the 1-call laydowns." It was comical watching them try to utilize something close to a professional sales presentation.

I know some sales people who use spin as part of the sales process. I have tried it. By itself, Spin Selling DOES NOT WORK.

This book is a waste of time and money. Better off to read something with some meat like Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy or Tom Hopkins. If you use Spin at all, use it with a real sales system, not alone.

This book is like chewing gum for your sales brain and will gum up your sales career.

I will be glad to go one on one against anyone who uses the Spin Selling Method in any real and equal sales encounter. What? No challengers! Well I wonder why???

I absolutely love books based on research, and besides the catchy name, that is the single biggest selling point for SPIN Selling. Rackham is a researcher by profession, and he wrote the book after conducting an extensive research effort and then testing his theories as best he could.

The primary conclusions of Rackham's research are that people behave differently when making major purchases than they do when making minor purchases, so salespeople should adapt their approaches to this fact. He concludes that the best salespeople interview prospects carefully, and that, to sell high-ticket items, you must get the prospect to discuss both the pain associated with the problem at hand and the positive results of fixing that problem.

While his conclusions aren't anything new (after all, he learned all of it by watching individual salespeople do their thing), Rackham's logical approach to proving his theories should help sales managers convince salespeople to stop talking and start asking questions - eliminating a fundamental mistake made by most salespeople.

Anyone who is struggling with the sales appointment will find value in this book, because it proves you should ask questions instead of talking all the time. However, if you're looking for more than proof of what should occur, this book is probably not for you, because easily 85 percent of the content is devoted to proving the point, rather than to helping a salesperson learn how to fix the problem. In other words, Rackham stays true to his values by describing the situation, identifying the problem, demonstrating the implication and putting value to the payoff, but then falls short of actually providing the value he says is needed to keep customers happy. If you read SPIN Selling, you will definitely learn what's broken and should be fixed, but you will be left mostly to your own devices on how to fix it.

Enjoy,

Gill

As a Proposal Process Consultant i discuss sales and proposal processes with noumerous corporations.
I bought Spin Selling along with a range of books on sales and proposal methodologies. Spin Selling is in many ways the grandfather of Key Account Selling and bring good tools to the table. When comparing this book and methodology to others, however, I find it to be inferiour. In terms of actual tools that will help salespeople Solution Selling is far superiour.

It is a good book, yet, if you are pressed for time read solution selling.

I have read quite a few books by various authors; however, these books were mainly targeted at consumer sales.
B2B selling is totally different and Neil Rackham reveals that...

I have always belived that Ziglars & Hopkins are not effective in Industrial marketing.

There are very few books available in Industrial selling or B to B selling & still very few books with some kind of research as a backing on what is written in the book.

Here is one path breaking book with a totally new concepts & approach. I think its worth investing in this book. I would also recommend The SPIN Selling Fieldbook (sequel to Spin Selling). Field book reinforces the concept you learn in SPIN SELLING. I like this book because for the first time somebody has differentiated between one time selling & repeat selling (industrial marketing is infact repeat selling).


I also recommend two books Conceptual Selling & Strategic Selling written by Stephen E. Heiman.

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.

If you are in sales and have read most of the popular books on selling, this will give you a different insight into the sales process. It's based on extensive documented research and takes you to the next level in the sales process.