Banking... TL's Experience

Sales Strategy - SPIN Selling

SPIN = Situation, Problem, Implication, and Need-payoff. These questions come into play during the lengthy "investigation" phase of any sales meeting.

When you SPIN sell, you still follow the basics of a

I) regular meeting:
- some preliminary small talk and finding out how much time your prospective client has for the meeting
- then establish that you have to ask them some questions.

Then go on to part 2 --
II) the lengthy investigation phase -- this is where the spinning happens.
Four basic PIDO phases of an ordinary sales meeting -- a simple sales agenda:
a) Preliminaries - Warming up events at the start of the call - How are you? Weather? Play golf? Keep these questions short. Don't drag.
b) Investigation - Gather facts, information and needs. How will your company perform this year? How do you monitor performance of your people? Lengthy phase. Different SPIN® strategies are employed here.
c) Demonstrating Capability - demonstrate that you can solve their problem - list examples etc. Prospect must have stated Explicit need that your demo solves. Hint "I think image-based workflow system could help me control potential cheque fraud."
d) Obtaining Commitment - to a more advanced sale stage. Make sure that all of the prospect's key concerns are met. Summarize your benefits. Propose the next level of commitment.

SPIN (Investigation Phase):
Situation Questions - Facts about the background and what the customer is doing. Prior homework/research is important to find answers to these facts. It is not quite productive and bore the prospect. You may have to ask a few of them to find out stuff -- place them well to lead you down the SPIN but use them sparingly. example situation questions - Tell me about your company? How many transactions do you get? What type of database servers do you house here?
Problem Questions - Questions about the customer's difficulties or dissatisfactions. Problem questions give good results in small sales, however, they don't help us much here. H ere are some examples also use them sparingly. example problem questions "Is it frustrating to lose sales to ABC Bank? How difficult is it to use Cognos? How do you manage when the frontline workers go on strike? Do you keep track of all your meeting hours with customers?
Implication Questions - Questions about the consequences or effects of a customer's problems. This is the crucial line of questioning and lead to many successes. The goal of using these questions is to persuade the customer to EXPLICITLY state a need that you can solve. Like Socrates's, you ask many of these questions to get someone to realize that they have a problem. Every business can be improved one way or another. Ideally, you ask these questions to get a customer to admit a costly problem. The ultimate goal is to increase the customer's perception of the value of our solutions. Implication questions are so important that it's often helpful to break down the problems of a specific customer, example "What happens when your managers neglect the prescribed process? Do you lose customers when system is down? Do you think it hurts your sales efforts if your campaign is based on old data with duplications and errors? How much money do you lose when you lose a customer? How much does it cost you to get a new customer? What's the lifetime value of your customers?

Need Payoff Questions - Questions about the value, usefulness, or utility that the customer perceives in a solution. Like Implication Questions, Need-payoff Questions are strongly linked to success in our type of sale. The customer has to confess to a need first. If not, customer can deny that there is a need which you claim to solve. Example "How would it help if your offices were linked via highspeed broadband 24hours/day? Why is it important to get have 24hour uptime? Would it be useful if your system can self-maintain and alert you when necessary? Is there any other way that this could help you? Do you see the value in knowing which customer contributes the most revenue?
After investigation and getting the customer to admit to some explicit need , present the solution. Demonstrating your capability after the need is expressed. It is more effective that way. Finally attempt to address all of the prospective client's concerns, and ask them if they have any more concerns. Summarize the benefits of your service. Propose the next appropriate level of commitment.
Sales calls - most important is to know "to what end is the question being asked". It doesn't matter if it is open or closed questions.

Labels: Sales

posted by PlaThai @ 7:45 AM