Avid golfer Matt Mundfrom openly concedes golf is a game that you simply don’t master.
“For me, the game isn’t an end result. It’s the process. It’s practice, repetition, and constantly trying to perfect your swing,” Matt said.
Ah, yes… the pursuit of making pure contact – a solid strike that compresses the ball against the ground and maximizes trajectory and distance. There are many elements to account for to achieve this: wind, the feel of your swing, how your body is reacting, the humidity, and so on. Spin rate, the amount of spin on the golf ball immediately after impact, has a major influence on the height and distance of a shot.
At Datamax, Matt utilizes a different type of spin — SPIN Training. The Canon-based course, which Matt and 8 other Datamax Texas Account Representatives attended recently, enables reps to acquire a deeper understanding of their customer needs. It also creates empathy with a prospect and empowers them to decide for themselves the desired outcome.
In other words, the rep is the consultant on this journey, while the customer is the hero. The contact made isn’t phony or presumptuous – it’s pure in nature.
What is SPIN?
The SPIN selling method is built around four types of key sales questions - each fulfilling crucial roles within a sales process:
- Situation: questions about the customer’s current situation
- Problem: questions about the customer’s difficulties or dissatisfactions
- Implication: questions about the consequences or implications of the customer’s problems
- Need-Payoff: questions that explore the importance to the customer of solving a problem
Essentially, these questions provide a logical framework rather than a rigid sequence allowing salespeople to enhance communication with their prospects, deliver value and close more deals as a result. They steer the conversation away from the salesperson, to focus on customers and their needs.
“It really comes down to understanding what a client is saying, and one question leading to the next step of questions,” Matt said. “Even if something is insinuated, you can’t assume anything. You really do have to actively engage and really listen.”
A need is any statement a buyer makes that expresses a concern or want that can be satisfied by the seller. Two kinds of needs are key:
- Implied Need—a statement of a buyer’s problem, dissatisfaction, or difficulty with the current situation.
- Explicit Need—a clear statement of a buyer’s want, desire, or intention.
“Implicit maybe things they desire, but not necessarily a need. Phrases like ‘this could be better,’ or ‘this is difficult,’” Matt said. “Explicit is, ‘I want, we need, this must get better.’”
What makes SPIN Successful?
Enter Sharon Janae Crepeau, Canon Sr. Training Specialist and SPIN instructor. She offers the following pointers:
Active Listening. “Based on what you hear, can you identify the needs? What can you ask next to strategically drive the conversation,” Crepeau said. The SPIN model is not supposed to be used as a checklist of questions. The questions should flow naturally into a conversation.
Identifying the type of need. “Implied, I like to say, would be any synonym of the word ‘problem'…worried… bother… dissatisfaction,” Crepeau said. “This can be practiced in real-life scenarios. If I say ‘the traffic was horrible on the way to work,’ that’s a problem. However, if I say ‘I need to find a new place to work – that is explicit.
Identifying Keywords in both types of statements. “Once you can pick up keywords, you’re not struggling on what they’re saying (or what you’re going to say next), you are listening for key details.”
What are the advantages of SPIN?
There are many, of course.
It draws out the customer’s needs. It directs you to the problem and helps in framing a solution. It prevents just a checklist of thoughtless questions. It aids in convincing the buyer that they have a requirement on hand.
But Matt points to this one.
“Self-discovery by the client is key in all this. It’s not us saying ‘we will do this for you,’ it’s asking the right questions, and they have the realization that their workflow would be so much better if they did this. That makes THEM feel more like the hero.”