SPIN В2В. How to sell at a high price to an unmotivated client

I’ll give my definition through a picture. Here stands a house, and the house has a cold wall. You and I are looking at one and the same fact. This wall needs insulation — that is the need. And in this same wall, while there’s no insulation, lives a problem: every winter the owner overpays for heating. One fact — two dimensions. The need is «what I require.» The problem is «what hurts me while I don’t have it.»

Why is this so important? Because the client talks to you in the language of needs — and buys in the language of problems. Listen closely to what clients tell you. They speak positively: «Bring me insulation.» «I need a batch by Friday.» «We want a material that installs simply, without a highly skilled crew.» «Ship in small batches.» It sounds brisk, businesslike. Nobody calls you saying: «Hello, my life is a complete ambush.» But behind each of these brisk phrases hides somebody’s pain, and our work is to see it before the client himself does.

Let’s train. I name a need — you, before reading the answer, name the problem hiding behind it.

A dealer client says: I need a batch of insulation, and fast. What hurts him? The salespeople answer quickly: he’s losing customers. Exactly. Right now, while the goods aren’t in his warehouse, buyers turn around and walk to the neighbor. He doesn’t «want insulation» — he is bleeding money.

A site foreman says: I need to finish the project on schedule. What pain is under that phrase? One of my students, Yulia, unpacked it instantly: miss the deadline — get hit with the penalty. Let’s add: he loses money on this project, loses the next projects from this customer, loses reputation. One phrase — three stories of pain.

A customer says: we want a material that goes down easily, without a complicated wet screed. Where’s the pain? Here’s where: wet works can’t be done in winter. He’ll have to wait for spring. By spring the roof will leak, and the interior finish will be ruined. The schedule stalls — and stopping a construction site is very expensive. Plus a low-skill crew will botch a complicated technology.

A store says: ship in small batches. The pain? He has nowhere to store. Bring him a full truck — he’ll lose track of it, have it pilfered, freeze his money in it.

Feel your vision changing? That is the core skill of this section: behind every need, even the sweetest dream, hides a problem. And my task as a salesperson is to learn to work on the territory of problems.

But here one important caveat is needed, and almost everyone trips on it. Problems come in two sorts: those that help sell and those that hinder selling. Here’s how it looks live. I ask salespeople: what problem does your client have? Someone answers: our material is expensive for him. Stop. Is that a problem? It’s a problem. Does it help us? No — it drags us off into objection handling. It is a problem that hinders buying. Or: the client doesn’t understand how to work with our new product. For a minute I argued with the salesperson who proposed it, until I understood that he was right and I was wrong: the client doesn’t know — and we do. We can solve this problem. So it’s a helping one. I concede that defeat with pleasure — it produced a rule: we need the problems the client has without our product. Not problems with our material — problems without it. The roof leaks. The warehouse freezes. Buyers walk away. Deadlines burn. That is our territory.

Remember: the client speaks the language of needs and buys in the language of problems. Look for the problems the client has without your product — those are the problems that help sell.

CHECK YOURSELF

— How does a need differ from a problem — show the difference with an example from your business?

— Why is the client’s phrase «you’re expensive» a problem that hinders selling, and where does it drag the negotiation?

— What three typical problems do your clients have before meeting you, in the course of working, and after the purchase?

PRACTICE

Divide a sheet into two columns. On the left, write out the five typical need-phrases you hear from clients most often — in their exact words. On the right, opposite each, write the problem hiding behind it: what the person is losing, what he risks, what he overpays for while the need stays unclosed. This little table is a blank for the homework at the end of the chapter — don’t lose it.

6. The Salesperson’s Weapon: Strong Questions

So, we’ve established: the work must happen on the territory of problems. With what instrument? When I put this question to salespeople, they answer in chorus: questions. Of course. But here’s the trouble: everyone knows the word «questions,» and only a handful command the instrument. We’re about to fix that — and we’ll start with a game.

I’ve thought of a word. Your task is to find out which. You may ask questions, but with restrictions: you can’t ask what the word is, how many letters it has, or which ones. And the main wish: the more questions you ask, the worse. The goal is not to bury me in questions but to ask a few accurate ones. And you have only three attempts to name the word: name it wrong — lose a life.

Let’s play it out along the lines of a real match with my students. The first question they asked me was: what field is the word from? I answer: it’s from the world of machinery — cars, motorcycles. The second question — and note how good it is: tell us, what do you need it for, where do you use it? I answer: this thing holds air back. In the wheel of a car, a motorcycle, a bicycle — while riding and while parked. Third question: what does it look like? From above — round. From the side — several little cylinders of different widths stacked on one another. And the fourth question, after which everything became clear: what happens if this thing fails?

The tire goes flat.

And instantly the answer sounded: the valve stem. Yes. Four questions — and a word impossible to guess by brute force is opened up like a tin can.

And now — why we played. Out of this simple game grow three lessons on which all the further technology stands.

Lesson one: stupid questions exist. Whatever anyone says about «there are no stupid questions» — in sales there are, and how. «Is it alive — not alive? Edible — inedible?» — the standard rubbish people usually bury this game under. Ask an empty question — get an empty, uninformative answer. This works in negotiations too: the quality of the client’s answers equals the quality of your questions.

Lesson two: you must listen, not guess. In that match one player couldn’t hold back after all: I said «this thing doesn’t clean the air, it holds it back,» and a second later he blurted out — «the cabin filter!» I had just said: doesn’t clean. Minus one attempt. Write down a term — I coined it for exactly this: the fantasy about the client. It’s when I’ve composed in advance what the client thinks, and I no longer care what he actually says. A salesperson with a fantasy about the client doesn’t listen — he waits for a pause to insert his prepared piece. The client feels it with his skin.

Lesson three, the main one: if weak questions exist — then strong ones exist too. Questions with which I influence the other person, move him toward a decision. Did you notice what the question «what happens if this thing fails?» did to the game? It instantly cracked open the essence of the object. Memorize its form — in a few pages you will recognize in it the king of the entire technology.

Now let’s take questions apart by their construction, the way a gunsmith takes apart a rifle.

The first level: closed and open. A well-worn topic, it would seem — but don’t rush to flip ahead. I’ll tell a story against self-assurance — my own. For many years I studied open and closed questions, considered myself a specialist, and trained hundreds of people in this. And then one day I went to study myself — a long coaching program. First module, the trainer calls me up: go on, ask your partner questions. I ask. The trainer says: Alexey, those are closed questions. I was stunned: come on, that can’t be, I’m a master of open questions, I was training people in this before you opened your coaching school! He calmly repeats: Alexey, those are closed questions. And then it hit me — the very thing I’m telling you this story for: knowing that open questions exist does not make you a master of asking them. Between «I know» and «I do» lies an abyss, and the bridge across it is called training.

So let’s train. Technically it’s simple. A closed question presupposes a «yes» or «no» answer, and the stress in it always falls on the verb: do you LIKE coffee? do you HAVE children? did you SELL today? An open question begins with the words who, what, where, when, how, why — attach any of them to the same phrase and it swings open: what kind of coffee do you like? how many children do you have? how did today’s sales go?

An exercise — try it at speed. I give a closed question; your task is to return it open, out loud, without stopping to think. Do you have a car? — What car do you have? Did you hit last month’s plan? — What numbers did you close the month with? Do you need delivery? — How would it be most convenient for you to receive the goods? Easy? Now catch the nuance: «tell me about your car» doesn’t count. That’s not a question, that’s an appeal. It has to be a question proper.

And one more variety for completeness: the test closed question. In form it pretends to be open, but it slips in ready-made options: which tea will you have — black or green? The places of «yes and no» are taken by «black and green»; the essence is the same. Test questions can be useful in negotiations; every type of question has its place and time. But right now I want to focus you on something else — on what almost nobody talks about.

Open questions come in weak and strong. And this is already the masters’ territory.

I’ll explain not with a definition but with a sensation — the way it happens live. I ask my students: ask me any open questions, and we’ll listen closely — is it weak or strong? They ask: what time do you wake up? Feel it — weak. Why? I know the answer by heart; I don’t need to think: six thirty, next. They ask: what motivated you to take up training people? Oh, that’s moving toward strength — here I’ll have to dig into myself. And then one of them noticed the plant behind my back and asked: what energy do you get from that plant? And I froze. No idea! I had to search for an answer that wasn’t in me — to create it right there in the conversation.

There’s the whole difference for you. A weak question is about facts a person recalls easily. A strong question is one that cannot be answered from memory. Answering it, the person thinks, hunts for hidden meanings, creates something new. And now the main consequence for sales: while the client answers from memory — you are not influencing him. Influence begins where his thinking begins.

Let’s land it on money. Take the question salespeople ask most often and which, frankly, I’m not fond of: what’s your budget? A weak question, a questionnaire question. The client names a figure — and what has changed? Nothing. Once I proposed that my students strengthen it, and we climbed the whole ladder live. First attempt: are you prepared to spend on a quality product? Rejected — that one’s outright closed. Second: how much are you prepared to spend? Open now, but still weak — the answer lies ready-made in the client’s pocket. Third, from Olga: and where does this budget of yours come from? Oh, warmer — the client has to explain the workings of his money. And finally someone formulated: and how could we expand your budget? Stop — there it is. In what way could you and we together increase your purchasing budget? The client cannot recall the answer to such a question — the answer doesn’t exist. He is forced to create it: to think about reserves, about a credit line, about deferred payment, about reallocation. Hear it? He is already looking for a way to buy more from you. That is what a strong question does.

And so you don’t conclude that a strong question is always good, I’ll gift you an anecdote from practice. We’re drilling weak situation questions, and one salesperson delivers to the client: «Last week you ordered two truckloads of insulation from us. How are they feeling?» I couldn’t hold it in: that question is so strong it’s a brain explosion. How are the truckloads of insulation feeling?! What am I supposed to answer — they’re depressed? They’re in emotional ecstasy? The strength of a question must be appropriate. Sometimes you need a simple weak question about facts — and that’s fine. But we will move, train, and reach in the direction of strong ones.

Remember: a strong question is one the client cannot answer from memory. He has to create the answer — which means think. Influence over the client begins where his thinking begins.

CHECK YOURSELF

— What is the «fantasy about the client,» and at what moment of a negotiation have you caught yourself in it?

— How do you turn any closed question into an open one, and on which word does the stress fall in a closed question?

— How does a strong open question differ from a weak one, and why does a strong question influence the client’s decision?

PRACTICE

Take the three questions you ask clients at every meeting — your stock, habitual ones. Write them down. Now classify each: closed, open weak, or open strong? Rewrite each one a rung higher: closed into open, weak into strong. Tomorrow, ask the client the new versions and watch how the length and depth of his answers change.

7. The Dog on a Nail

Now — the strongest SPIN metaphor I’ve met in twenty years. We’re approaching the core of the technology, so read this story slowly.

On the porch of his house sits an old man. Beside him lies his dog, softly whimpering. The old man sits all day — he’s content, nowhere to go; he just sits and enjoys himself. The dog lies there and whimpers. Neighbors pass by and hear it. In the evening, coming back from the field, one can’t take it anymore:

— Listen, why has your dog been whimpering all day?

— What do you mean, why, — the old man replies. — It hurts. She’s lying on a nail.

— On a nail?! Then why doesn’t she get up?

The old man shrugs:

— It hurts enough to whimper. But not enough to get up.

Reread that last phrase one more time. It hurts her enough to whimper, but not enough to get up. Now a question for you: who is this story about? Who is the dog?

Many salespeople answer at once: that’s our client! Correct. But don’t rush — the answer goes deeper. Once, an answer sounded that was more precise still: aren’t we ourselves the same dog? Of course. The dog on the nail is every one of us. Tell me honestly: are there areas of your life about which you’ve been saying «this doesn’t suit me» for years — and doing nothing? The extra weight. The smoking. Too little time with the kids. The vacation you haven’t taken in three years. You complain about it to friends, colleagues, yourself — that is, you whimper. But you don’t get off the nail. If we were sitting in one room, I’d ask for a show of hands — and a forest of hands would rise. It is a normal, natural human state. Which means — your client’s state too.

Now watch what the client — the dog on the nail — looks like in negotiations. Take a corporate customer, a developer. He agreed to meet you. He sits across from you, drinking your coffee: «Well, tell me what you’ve got. New roofing materials?» You tell him: it lays down like this, here it’s easy, there it’s fast. He nods: «Neat. And what does it cost? Uh-huh… You see, my friend, I’m used to doing a concrete screed. Everything works fine. Everybody does it that way.»

A classic. Now let’s parse it through the metaphor. Why do I say he is a dog on a nail? Where is the nail? The nail is his current technology with all its sores: wet works, winter, deadlines, crews. He lives with it. And where is the whimpering? Here’s the subtle point; people almost never see it at once. Many suppose: the whimpering is his «I’m used to it, I don’t want to change anything.» No. The whimpering is the fact that he agreed to meet with you at all. He let you into his office. He is listening. He asks «well, what’s new out there.» Understand? If the nail didn’t prick him at all, you would not be in that office. It hurts him enough to whimper — that is, to meet, to listen, to be curious. But not enough to get up — that is, to say: «Agreed. Starting with the next project I drop the screed, chase off that crew, and lay only your material.»

And here is the central question of the whole book: what must be done for the dog to get off the nail?

The variants I hear from salespeople are usually about motivation, about «showing the benefit,» about «giving a discount.» All wide of the mark. The answer is unpleasantly simple: it has to hurt her more. The dog must be pressed. But — attention, here is the whole salt of it — if you kick the dog, she will bite you. A kick in negotiations is «everything’s falling apart over there!», «you’re losing heaps of money, how can you not see it!» The bite is «goodbye, we don’t need anything.» Therefore the dog must be petted. Petted with pressure. You pet her — and the nail goes in a little deeper, it hurts more, and she gets up on her own. And most likely won’t even bite — you were petting her, after all.

Let me translate from dog language into negotiation language. To pet with pressure means, benevolently and with sincere interest in the client’s life, to ask questions that make his own situation ever less comfortable for him. Not to press with statements — to ask. So that he himself, in his own words, tells himself how it really feels to lie on that nail. And then he himself will say: «Right — tell me more about what you’ve brought. This is interesting.»

Remember: the client hurts enough to whimper but not enough to get up. Your work is to pet the dog with pressure: with benevolent questions, intensify the pain until the client gets off the nail himself.

CHECK YOURSELF

— What in your typical client’s behavior is the «whimpering» — by what signs can you tell the nail does prick him?

— Why must you not «kick the dog» — what happens in negotiations when a salesperson presses on the pain with point-blank statements?

— What nail are you lying on yourself — and what is it that «hurts enough to whimper but not enough to get up»?

PRACTICE

Choose one real client who «whimpers»: he meets, shows interest, but doesn’t buy. Describe his nail — three to five concrete discomforts of his current situation that he tolerates. Not what’s bad in his life in general, but what pricks him without your product. This is the map you’ll follow in the next sections.

8. Four Letters: Meet SPIN

Time to decode the abbreviation we’ve been circling all chapter.

A little history — it’s useful. In the seventies and eighties of the last century, the researcher Neil Rackham and his team did an enormous piece of work for giants of the Xerox and IBM class who needed to grow sales. What did they do? A brilliantly simple thing: they listened. Thousands of real negotiations by real salespeople. And they recorded which questions the salespeople asked and what happened to the deal afterward. All the questions sorted into four groups — and it turned out that these groups influence the sale in completely different ways: some move the client toward the purchase, others don’t move him at all. From the first letters of those four groups, SPIN was assembled: Situation, Problem, Implication, Need-payoff.

Don’t be frightened by the scholarly words — I’ll now give you each group as one simple formula, and you’ll see you already know all of it. More than that — you’ve already used all of it in this chapter.

A situation question is, in essence, the question «how are things?» Any question describing the client’s situation. How’s business? What are you using now? What volumes? When do you need delivery? Where do we ship? Remember the first questions to the diner owner — how many cups a day, which are the peak hours? That’s them, the situation questions.

A problem question — the formula «what problems?» What doesn’t suit you? What worries, hinders, concerns you — within the situation we’re discussing? Just hold the focus: not «what problems do you have in life generally» — but problems with insulation, with suppliers, with the current technology. With the territory where your product lives.

The implication question — here he is, the king. The formula: «what happens if the problem isn’t solved?» Recognize it? It’s the valve-stem question: what happens if it fails? It’s Zhenya’s question about the mixer: what happens to your sales if the only machine breaks down? A question about consequences, about the price of inaction.

And the need-payoff question — the same king, only with a plus sign: «what happens when we solve the problem?» What will change, what will appear, what will become possible.

Four formulas in total; repeat them out loud: how are things? — what problems? — what happens if we don’t solve it? — what happens when we solve it? That is all of SPIN at the skeleton level. Further in the book we’ll build muscle onto this skeleton, but the skeleton — here it is, four questions.

Now the most valuable part of Rackham’s research — the part corporations paid millions for. Which of the four groups influence the sale, and which don’t? Estimate for yourself before reading. Rank the four groups by strength of influence.

Ready? Situation questions do not influence the sale. At all. No matter how many you ask. This is unpleasant news, because ninety percent of the average salesperson’s conversations consist precisely of them: what’s the budget, when to deliver, how much you need, how you pay. Understand me correctly — you do have to ask them; without them you can’t grasp the client’s picture of the world. But don’t flatter yourself: while you’re asking «how much and when,» you’re not selling, you’re filling out a questionnaire. A normal client could just as well send you those answers in a file — and nothing would change. Such questions do not make you special to the client. There are valuable exceptions — situation questions that do influence the sale exist; I’ve collected them over years and will share them in chapter three — but on the whole the rule is hard: situation questions don’t sell.

Problem questions influence — but weakly. Surprised? Then recall the dog. A conversation about problems — what is that in our metaphor? It’s a conversation about the nail and about the whimpering. «Do you get delivery delays?» — «Sure, we do.» — «And defects turn up?» — «They turn up; a cracked pack arrives — so what?» Hear that «so what»? He is used to his problems. He’s lived with them for years; they prick him, he whimpers — but whimpering doesn’t mean getting up. A problem question finds the nail but doesn’t intensify the pain.

And the strongest influence on the sale belongs to implication questions. «What happens if the problem isn’t solved?» This is where the dog gets petted with pressure. This is where the client for the first time sets his familiar little problem next to its full price — and becomes genuinely uncomfortable. Implication questions will get the whole of chapter two to themselves; they are a separate art. For now, just fix the hierarchy: situation — zero influence, problem — weak, implication — maximal, need-payoff — consolidating.

Remember: SPIN is four formulas. How are things? What problems? What happens if we don’t solve it? What happens when we solve it? Situation questions don’t sell. Implication questions sell.