Why is it crucial to ask the right and relevant sales questions?

Have you ever been sold something? Imagine a cheesy insurance representative calling you and shooting at you with an overwhelming load of information whilst you are just waiting for him to make a pause so that you can cut him off. Do you feel good and understood in those situations? And even as important: Would you like to buy from that person?

The clear “No” to these above stated questions is a natural reaction – we like to buy things but we don’t like being sold something.

The SPIN-technique tries to make use of that phenomena. Instead of bombarding clients with info about our products and offerings it takes the different approach of asking questions and let the potential clients discover the value of your offerings by themselves.

Gather intelligence by listening

In a sales call, 70% of the talking should be done by the buyer – and accordingly only 30% by the sales person. This brings several advantages:

We as sales people can gather valuable insights into the client’s situation, discover additional opportunities to create value and set up arguments based on the facts that the client provided us instead of making assumptions about their situation (nobody understands the customer better than the customer himself)
The buyer will get a feeling of being valued, understood and comfortable with you as a conversation partner (We people like talking)
Who asks, leads: By listening closely to what the customer tells us, we can aks specific questions directing the conversation and the focus of the potential client to make him “discover” the value of our offerings (make him feel that the solution was his idea and start brainstorming together about potential solutions/ ways of working together)

SPIN Questions are a powerful framework to ask relevant questions to gather intelligence

SPIN is an acronym for Situational, Problem, Implication and Need-payoff.

Situational Questions: ask about the current situation of the client, e.g.

How do your currently operate your business/ your xyz department/action?
How

Problem questions: ask about potential difficulties and challenges that the customers are/ might be facing given the current situation, e.g.

Are you facing any specific challenges in the process?
How long does it take to…?
How much resources are needed?
Where are you currently located (stuck) in the project?

Implicational questions ask about the possible implications/ impacts/ risks of the current situation if nothing is changed, e.g.

How does this impact your KPIs?
What does this cost you per month/year?
What might happen if you do not manage to solve this challenge?

Need-payoff questions ask about the possible positive impact of solving the problem and make the person discover its positive effects, e.g.

How would your life change if that problem was resolved?
Which benefits would come from solving this problem (e.g. money, additional time, additional resources, additional value for clients…)?
Which opportunities would open up from the additional financial/capacity (etc.) that would be set free by solving this issue?

Of course, not all of these questions can be applied 1:1 in every customer call. Especially the Implication and Need-payoff questions cannot be standardized and should be adjusted to the specific situation but to use the framework of SPIN to guide the direction of the conversation can be a very effective approach.

With a few adjustments, the concept can be wrapped up as follows:

Use open questions (especially in the beginning) to make the customer talk, to bring him/her in a comfortable situation with you and to gather valuable insights into their situationGuide the focus of the customer and the direction of the conversation by asking questions
When you see a potential use-case, state how our offerings could be used in the particular case and the value that can be created for the customer by it

Establishing rapport and trust is crucial for the application of SPIN

One big challenge for the practical application of SPIN is to get the client to “open up” and to establish an environment in which your client feels comfortable enough to and sees value in providing you that (partly sensitive) information.

If you’d like to know how to establish this environment and rapport with the client, stay tuned by following us on LinkedIn or contact us for more information.