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Summary: From A Professional Sales Rep, Get This Book!
Review: This book was an optional text for a college level course on "Personal Professional Selling".Rackham does a fine job of dispelling the myth of the 1920's straw hat tactics used by the lounge-lizard sales forces. I am in direct, in-home consumer sales and this book has helped me refocus my questioning technique to a finer art. Now my qualified customers are more likely to go with me simply because I've uncovered their Problems and used Implication questions and finally gave them a few Need-Payoff questions. Along with Rackham's book, I think you'll enjoy _The Confidence Course_ which is a book that helps you overcome your anxieties and this has helped me in selling. A sales person who cannot prospect is not much of a sales rep at all! Finally I highly recommend this book and it's compaion volume _SPIN Selling Fieldbook_ by Rackham as it will help you develop the questions you need to be asking your customers and prospects. Put down the Ziglar and Hopkins books and pick up the NEW generation of Sales books!
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Summary: Great for "non-sales types"
Review: If you need to sell but are not the "sales" type, I think you'd really like this book. I've just started a business and have been deeply dreading going out and selling my services because of what I've read about "closing" and "overcoming objections" and all that. Whenever I'd read Tom Hopkins, Zig Ziglar, et. al. and I would just think, "I CANNOT SAY THAT!" Pushy sales people make me want to puke. I am so glad to have found the alternative. Plus, I really like the fact that this is not just somebody's THEORY - it's based on research.
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Summary: My 6 year old clearly writes his thoughts better...
Review: My 6 year old clearly writes his thoughts better than the author does. That is not so say that the book does not offer any truths about the "big sale" but he could have easily written it in about 20 pages. The scripted conversations are ridiculously simple and in the "what not to do" scenarios the sales rep making suggestions would have lost their jobs in 1988 when the book was originally written (I love the references to the "big eight", that's what re-releases are for) or can be found today on some used car lot in the California desert. This book reads like a consultant wrote it, a lot of words and wasted time determining what you already knew. If you're a sales manager looking for a book for your staff I would not recommend this one for anyone with more than a years experience if they made quota. If you have a rookie or someone making the transition from small commodity sales to larger ones then MAYBE at best. P.S. no book deserves 1 star
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Summary: The teacher will appear when the student is ready.
Review: I'm a sales trainer/consultant and see a lot of sales people in action. This book is at the top of my recommended reading list for clients. Rackham set out to figure out why a small percent of sales people are consistently more successful than the majority of sales people - and he reveals one of the most important keys to effective selling (or communication of any kind) in this book. Still most sales people don't do what he suggests. The teacher will appear when the student is ready. If you sell, you have to know what Rackham's research reveals. But then you have to master the skills to make it happen. So read this book, but don't stop there!
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Summary: Easy to read, easy to use
Review: As a salesperson involved in very large sales, I found this book to be very helpful since it lacked the gimmicks you find in so many other books. He didn't suggest outrageous things that might only work once and that every other person calling on the customer is trying to use. He backs up his findings with "research" (I'm no research expert, but I think that most groups weren't statistically significant) but it helped to get across the point of the book. I would really recommend this book because you can read it very quickly and use his advice to further your sales right away. I read it before an important meeting with a CIO and used his tactics, which opened the door to advancement and a product demo. I think I'll be much more successful this year than last.
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Summary: An excellent approach to "selling"
Review: I am a personal coach and I offer a high-cost service - I am not a sales professional and I do not like to "sell." This method is just what I've been looking for. I have listened to the audiocassette a couple of times and I find the SPIN Selling approach easy to understand and effective. The only thing that prevents me from giving this book 5 stars is the information sounds more like a research paper than a book - it's a bit dry, academic and takes longer to get to the point. But, the value of the useful information presented makes it worthwhile. A big thumbs up!
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Summary: The SIMPLE things RIGHT, OVER and OVER again
Review: As many people have pointed out, SPIN selling is the de facto standard in high value sales. The big problem with so much training is that you go, you try, and within three weeks you forget most of what you were taught and get back into the old ways. By listening to this cassette in the car every three months or so, I keep myself fresh.
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Summary: Yes, but what is exactly a "large sale" ???
Review: Great book, excellent ideas that make sense even when they go against mainstream habits and notions for the business to business sale. The author explains he did not spare efforts to come up with research that backs up the content of the book and puts great care in the definition of the terms used. One central concept however is not defined: large sale. At what amount does it start? Does it vary by activity? By company? By purchaser? Do seller and purchaser perception of large go always hand in hand ? What are the practical consequences when that is not the case? But by all means buy the book - it is well worth your time and money.
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Summary: A convincing Model on how to handle the Mjor-Account Sale
Review: Neil Rackham writes a book that summarizes the ground-shaking discoveries of his Company, Huthwaite. The Whole purpose of their research which lasted for a good Number of years was to discover what certain behaviors on the salesman's part helped In creating a successful purchase in the Major-Account sale, in which the item for Sale was usually expensive and requires a long after-sales relationship between buyer And seller. Mr. Rackham turns the conventional sales knowledge upside-down and he does so very convincingly. He divides the sale into 4 phases; The Preliminaries, Investigating, Demonstrating Capability and Obtaining Commitment. He lays great emphasis in The Investigation phase, and it is in this phase that the SPIN Model comes into action. SPIN is an acronym for the different types of questions that a seller must use in order to properly establish the last two phases of the sales call. Situation questions are simple straightforward questions about the buyer's company and current situation they are general questions that basically aim to establish context for the next questions. Problem questions are those which aim to pinpoint the exact problems of the buyer so that it becomes easier to uncover his implied needs. Implication questions take us a step further into examining the consequences of the buyers problem more closely and trying to make him more acutely aware of their ramifications so that we can start asking Need-Payoff questions which basically deal with the value and utility that the buyer perceives in a solution. The Need-Payoff questions lead to the development of Explicit need in which the buyer Has been led to clearly understand the context of his exact need to fix a particular Problem. Only after the SPIN questions have been successfully used to define Those explicit needs can a seller start demonstrating capability. With knowledge Of the needs of the buyer the seller can therefore more easily demonstrate solutions Which satisfy those explicit needs, i.e. the benefits of the product or service. Mr. Rackham describes the different phase in the different chapters of his book and provides very useful information to discredit many misconceptions that have long Been held holy by salesmen, such as the importance of closing, the true meaning of Benefit as opposed to advantage and feature, the relative value of openings and first Impressions and most of all the value of the investigating phase. An Essential book if you have anything to do with Sales.
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Summary: A Business "Classic" Revisited
Review: I read this book when it was first published (in 1988) and havesince re-read it several times. What is to me remarkable is that it"holds up" so well over time. Obviously, as the reprintingsindicate, it has been immensely helpful to salespersons as well as to those who train them and to those who supervise them. With the recent and accelerated development of online merchandising, however, I wondered, "Has the SPIN System lost any relevance?" So I re-read the book again. My answer is "Yes" and "No." "Yes" in that online merchandising relies so heavily (almost exclusively) on technology to provide information and then to process orders. By the time most prospective buyers visit a website, they have already examined their situation (S), identified a problem (P), considered the implications of that problem (I), and determined the desired need-payoff (N). However, the core principles of SPIN Selling are nonetheless invaluable to those who design the systems by which to expedite online merchandising. For example, the principles can assist with the formulation of feedback mechanisms which enable the prospective buyer to sharpen the focus on her or his specific Situation, Problem, Implication, and Need-payoff. The reality is that "customized" commodities are still commodities, of course, but a buyer's perception of them may be otherwise. But "No" in that so many so-called "Big Ticket" purchases necessarily involve a salesperson. Moreover, there is usually a direct correlation between the amount of the purchase and the length of the sales cycle. In addition, many of these purchases also involve a "circle of influence" which complicates the situation even more. Use of the SPIN System, therefore, must be sufficiently flexible to accommodate a sometimes wide variety of different (perhaps contradictory) perspectives on the given Situation, Problem, Implication, and Need-payoff. My own rather extensive experience suggests that it is and it does. The latest re-reading also suggested to me, in ways and to an extent previous readings hadn't, that the principles of SPIN Selling (with only minor modifications) can be effectively applied to situations in which nothing is for sale. For example, during the hiring process, when a promotion is being negotiated, or after a major crisis has occurred and must be resolved. Yes, yes, I know. There are excellent reasons why Rackham's book bears the title it does. The title is certainly appropriate. All I presume to suggest is that, for me at least, the principles of SPIN Selling have applications wholly unrelated to the selling process...unless we extend the meaning of "selling" to include persuasion in almost any context. This is a business "classic." Like all other such classics, it deserves to be re-read periodically, both to remind us of what we may have forgotten and to reveal to us what we may have failed to understand before. Within a turbulent global marketplace, moreover, the principles of SPIN Selling have achieved a matrix of relevancies which perhaps even Rackham could not have anticipated in 1988.
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