Eric Wolfram's Writing, How To Sell -- Sample SPIN Selling®Implication questions

Sales Training with SPIN Selling® Implication questions


This information is based on a book report on the SPIN Selling ® Technique. In most cases, we can discover a propect's situation with just a few quick questions. Using our knowledge of the industry, we can then infer some likely problems. We use this to formulate our implication questions. Here are two sample situations, the problems that these situations cause, and most importantly, questions that invite someone to articulate or realize the implication of their situation.

Situation: Offices in different locations

Problems:

  • Cannot see the database from remote locations

    Implication questions:

    1. Do your vendors have to make extra trips to the office because they didn't have information locally?
    2. What happens when you need information about a customer in the evening, and you're at home?
    3. How many phone calls does your office take from customers who are looking for status updates on their problem? What would happen if your could reduce tha\ t number by 25%. Would that free up your receptionists time by 25%, or could you hire 25% fewer customer support staff? What are the actual costs of a custom\ er support rep. and how much do you save when they can do other tasks?
    4. When you are in another office and you cannot access some pertinent information, does that cause a loss of efficiency?
    5. How do you know which office is more efficient? Who is in charge of making report evaluations about each office -- how much time is spent on that?

  • High cost of maintaining IT infrastructure in multiple locations

    Implication questions:

    1. If a computer breaks in a remote office do you have to send a support person out from the central office to fix it?
    2. Are your computer people in each office duplicating work that could be done by a central team?
    3. Is it difficult to get similar reports from different accounting and issue tracking systems?

Situation: No centralized issue tracking database

Problems

  • A manager cannot get information on a colleague's issues.

    Implication questions:

    1. Do customers ever get frustrated when they call into the office and there is noone who has info on their problem?
    2. Do you ever find that important issues get dropped if a manager goes on vacation?
    3. Have you ever found a lot of duplicated effort when one problem gets reported multiple times?

  • Executives cannot monitor performance of property managers

    Implication questions:

    1. If you cannot effectively monitor what is going on with each of your properties have you ever had problems from issues that suddenly blew up?
    2. Have you ever suffered because one of your property managers was not performing but you weren't aware of the problem?

About This Page
I keep this page so that I can remember the books I read before an important meeting. It's really for my own maximum effectiveness. You can use them of course, and please let me know if anything on this page is misleading, needs updating or additions.

The nice people at Huthwaite, Inc., offered to grant me permission to publish a review of their SPIN Selling(R) book on this site if I proveded notice of their ownership of the content. I recommend that you read the full book and not just rely on this summary review. Huthwaite, Inc. offers open seminars in SPIN Selling(R) techniques for the public -- and interested parties may contact Huthwaite at 22630 Davis Drive, Suite 100, Sterling, VA 20164 (703-467-3800) and obtain more information at www.huthwaite.com

eric@wolfram.org

Please feel free to link to this page so that others can find it. It's easy to link to this page, just copy the text below onto your web page:

<a href="http://wolfram.org/writing/howto/sell/cold_call.html">How to SPIN Sell -- Implications</a>


Notice of Copyright | More Sales Training, Tips and Techniques