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what works in small sales can hurt your success as the sales grow larger
customers who told us immediately after the presentation that they were likely to buy had lost most of their enthusiasm for the product within a week.
if you pressure a potential customer, then he or she won’t want to meet you again.
So while a pushy or hard-sell style may work in smaller sales, it generally acts against you when several calls are needed to take the business.
with the larger decision, seller and product become much harder to separate. Although I liked the computer system, there was no way I could buy it without also buying a relationship with the seller.
Figure 1.1. The four stages of a sales call.
Success in the larger sale depends, more than anything else, on how the Investigating stage of the call is handled.
The more you ask questions, the more successful the interaction is likely to be.
we found no differences in the mix of open and closed questions between top and average performers.
In summary, the SPIN sequence of questions is:
traditional closing techniques have no place in larger sales.
If I’m asking you to make a very small decision, then—if I pressure you—it’s easier for you to say yes than to have an argument. Consequently, with a small decision, the effect of pressure is positive. But this isn’t so with large decisions. The bigger the decision, the more negatively people generally react to pressure.
if closing techniques become ineffective in a $109 sale, then they are likely to be even more ineffective as the size of the decision climbs into the tens or hundreds of thousands.
the sellers who had been trained in closing had lower satisfaction ratings
Most people are less satisfied with decisions that they feel they’ve been pressured to make than with those which they believe they’ve made entirely of their own free will.
An inexperienced salesperson is afraid to bring the call to a conclusion and, as a result, the customer is getting impatient.
In larger sales the most common objective of closing would normally be to obtain an Advance. Successful closing in the major sale starts by knowing what Advance you can realistically obtain from the call.
John C.’s reaction is typical of inexperienced sellers. He thinks he’s closed the call successfully because he received some positive strokes from the customer.
Don’t be content with objectives like “to collect information” or “to build a good relationship.”
always include objectives that result in specific action from the customer—objectives like “To get her to come to a demonstration,” “To get a meeting with his boss,”
The most effective people we observed were the ones who did an outstanding job of building needs during the Investigating stage.
The most natural, and most effective, way to bring a call to a successful conclusion is to suggest an appropriate next step to the customer.
The Investigating stage: Asking questions and collecting data about customers, their business, and their needs.
Value equation: If the seriousness of the problem outweighs the coast of solving it, there is a basis for a successful sale.
as the sale grows larger, it becomes increasingly important to obtain Explicit Needs, not just Implied Needs.
You can’t just rely on problems, you’ve got to have something stronger. That’s why I think that the big skill in selling isn’t so much getting the customer to admit to problems. Almost everyone I call on has problems, but that doesn’t mean they’ll buy. The real skill is how you grow those problems big enough to get action. And when the customer starts talking about action, that’s when I hear “buying signals.”
The purpose of questions in the larger sale is to uncover Implied Needs and to develop them into Explicit Needs.
Situation Questions
Buyers quickly become bored or impatient if asked too many Situation Questions.
Problem Questions
Problem Questions predict success in simple sales.
Implication Questions
This is the central purpose of Implication Questions in larger sales. They take a problem that the buyer perceives to be small and build it up into a problem large enough to justify action.
Sellers who ask lots of Implication Questions may make their buyers feel negative or depressed.
Need-Payoff Questions
Basically, they ask about the value or usefulness of solving a problem.
Need-payoff Questions are important because they focus attention on solutions, not problems. And they make customers tell you the benefits.
“Implication Questions are always sad. Need-payoff Questions are always happy.”
Implication Questions are problem-centered; Need-payoff Questions are solution-centered.
Figure 4.10. The SPIN Model.
your role in a sales call is that of problem solver.
Features are facts about a product and are unpersuasive, whereas Benefits—which show how Features can help the customer—are a much more powerful way to describe your capabilities.
Features are neutral. They don’t help the call, but they don’t harm it much either.
It’s better to use Benefits than Features.
salespeople who used Benefits rather than Advantages increased their dollar volume of sales by 27 percent.
“Do a good job of developing Explicit Needs and the Benefits almost look after themselves.”
When selling new products, the tendency is toward promoting the product, not on customer needs.
many customers will encourage you to present solutions in the absence of any information about needs. “Just come and make a presentation about your product,”
Figure 6.3. A low-cost product rich in features.
A high-cost product. Listing features is a negative.
