The sales development SPIN Selling needs and payoffs questions are the final steps in the process of a powerful sales technique. That also means that this post is the last in our series on how to use SPIN Selling in sales development. Make sure you check out all four steps, starting here with part one on identifying your prospect’s situation. You need to ask how the solutions you’re offering would satisfy their needs and deliver a worthwhile payoff. Both of you must understand the problems and implications of the current situation first, though. Sales development SPIN Selling needs and payoffs are easy to address when you have the right pieces in place.
Getting to This Point
Although needs and payoffs are the last steps in SPIN Selling, keep in mind that this sales strategy is not just a checklist of questions to ask. You have to skillfully weave the SPIN questions into a natural sales conversation. As with so many other things in life, the easy way isn’t the best way. Remember that you have to start the whole process with thorough research. Your outreach to that prospect is based on a preexisting relationship that you’ve cultivated via social media and other methods. You gathered all the information that you could before calling them.
Before you started the call, you had a plan in place. You knew in advance what situation questions you still needed to ask to get additional information. From there, it all flowed naturally. You could see where the problems were in that situation. More questions helped you to gauge how much those problems and their implications would be of concern to your prospect.
Tying Needs Together with Payoffs: Mirroring the Implications
Now, it’s time to turn those implications on their heads. Your solution to their problems will provide a payoff. The question is whether they realize that it’s worth pursuing. They have to be able to answer that question for themselves. You can’t force them to see it, which is why SPIN Selling is such a powerful technique, even thirty years after Neil Rackham developed and published it. By asking reflective questions, your prospects can work out the problems and benefits until they see the way forward, which is by working with you.
The specific questions you have to ask at the end here should take the negative implications of the problems, and turn them into a positive possibility. As we noted in our original SPIN Selling overview post a while back, you must tie the problems and implications to very specific alternatives. Here’s an example of how you could formulate such a question.
“If, by using Service Y, you could take those $10,000 you’re paying for Solution X each month and redirect more than half of it into your customer service training, how would that help your team establish market leadership?”
This question addresses a big problem resulting from the current situation. It offers an alternative and implies a way to achieve one of the prospect’s goals. It’s important to include all of these elements in this type of question.
Implementing Sales Development SPIN Selling Needs and Payoffs Questions
You can implement all of these aspects of discussing sales development SPIN Selling needs and payoffs within any sales organization. The advantage of using them in a sales development context is that you can let front-line SDRs do most of the work of qualifying prospects, while your top salespeople focus on deepening customer relationships.
This is the sort of strategy that Boom Demand uses to maximum advantage for our clients. By providing trained SDRs at nearshore and local offices, we help our clients to achieve ever greater sales returns! Contact us today to start exploring how we can boost your sales campaigns!