Every salesperson is familiar with SPIN. It is a set of four questions employed by the most effective salespeople, according to one of the largest studies in Active Sales.
The study took place decades ago, yet it has not lost its relevance a bit. It was about sales with large checks, which implies a difficult negotiating process due to the massive deal sizes. They discovered four types of questions to be crucial to succeed:
1. Situational. When we try to get details on the matter from our prospects.
2. Problem. When we attempt to determine the need for a solution.
3. Implication. When we seek to confirm the issue in order to arrive at specific need statements.
4. Need-payback When we present a solution in the form of benefit questions.
Microtalks is a communications strategy, where you try to move forward as soon as you can from less informationally rich channels to the more so: from a lead to a message, from a message to call, from a call to a meeting.
For those who do B2B sales calling, it’s not new that today you can’t move much further in the first engagement than situational and problem questions.
It is thus natural, that in a textual communication it would be even harder to arrive at implications and need-payoff questions.
Microtalks strategy suggests to use SPIN in textual communications in a reservable manner. Trying to limit yourself with situational and problem questions in most cases and concentrating on moving qualifications further on to a sales call or meeting to maximize conversions.
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