Book Review On Spin Selling By Neil Rackham

Introduction

The book is majorly concerned with large scale selling. Even though other books have come up with various approaches and ideas on how a person can improve on the sells, they have not provided any prove that supports their selling strategy. However this book seems to have challenged other books by providing apart from providing the selling approaches and ideas, it has also provided evidence on the selling ideas. The book seems to be concerned with the changing trend of the today’s sales. However the sells of today is very complex and fast moving it also need a new selling strategy that also fits the changing trend. Application of the old selling ideas in the today’s complex sell will possibly not work and this is where the book comes up with the new selling ideas that will work with the rapid changing world of today. For the progress or improvement by the industries or any organization, there is need to abandon the old selling method and adopt the new approach of sales provided by the book as it has not dwells only on the theory but has done enough research that has taken many years and has proven that the new ideas work better in the world of today than the old ideas used by organizations in the past years. This report will majorly focus on the various SPIN selling strategy and some real world experience and evidence in the field of marketing. Though the old selling techniques worked well at the past, the sales have grown large and the need for the SPIN technique is very important to maximize and improve on the sales (Rackham & Rapkin, 1988).

Overview

The book is about the selling techniques that for small sales and that for the large sells. The book tries to explain why the companies use as certain methods and strategy of selling and prosper and when their sales grow bigger the same company experiences a drop on the sale with a given percentage. The book tries to look into the problem and to find a good reason and explanation for why the companies are experiencing a decrease in sales as their companies sales grow bigger and bigger. The book tries to provide a real life experience faced in the field of sales. The book has also provided the challenges faced by various sales persons majorly that sales person dealing with large sales. The book clearly brings out the irony of two sales persons, one of the sales person dealing with large sales and the other sales person dealing with small sales. However the two sales persons face a totally different result even though they have applied the same sales methods and technique during the selling process. The reason to why the two sales people get a different result even though they have applied the same selling technique is also provided in the book. The book also talks of all the classical methods of selling such as; opening the call, investigating needs, giving benefits, objection handling and finally the closing technique. The book is determined in providing the companies and organizations with a selling method and technique that will best work for their companies or organization in increasing the sales of such large companies and also convincing such companies on the effectiveness of the methods and techniques by providing researched evidence in the real world situation of the very divers and rapidly growing sales (Rackham, 1987).
The main purpose of the author is to try to explain to the readers, the large sales companies and the professionals in the field of sales that the traditional selling methods, technique and models that most of the sales people have been trained to use always work perfectly for the small sales and reassures the reads that methods that perfectly work on small sales can defiantly be dangerous to the organization or a business person as the sales grow larger. With this in mind, the organization may now understand whey they experience the reduction in the rate of sales as the business expands or the sales grow larger. The methods the companies used while they were still dealing with small sales provided the company with a good record of sales but the same method when applied to a large sale will automatically contribute to a drop in the sales. Because of the of the authors realization of the challenges the people dealing with large sales are facing, he has decided to dedicate this book to people how are involved in major sales and who share the same dissatisfaction with the success of the models of the traditional sales and are in need of a more sophisticated method. The writer has gone ahead and provided some of his experience during his research on the characteristics of larger sales in reference to customer’s psychology. The difference in the major sales are determined with the customers behavior and perception (Rackham, 1987). Some of the difference provided includes; the selling cycle length – here small sales can be completed in one call while the large sell may need many calls which may be distributed over a period of time, the commitment size of the customers – customers involved in large purchasing may need to make bigger decisions as compared to those involved in who are seen to be less interested in value, the ongoing relationship – most of the large sales entails an ongoing relationship with the customers this is mainly because the such sales always need some support in post-sale which mean there is need for the seller and the buyer to meet after the sale while for small sales is always a one- off event, the risk mistakes – customers find it easy to take risk in small sales because the risk involved is minimal; as compared to that of large sales where the customers becomes more careful as the risk involved is very great.
However whether the sale is small or large there are four stages that are applicable to both of them these four stages includes; the preliminaries – it is majorly important during the initial two minutes of the call, initial impression formed by the customers if a factor to the rest of the sale, the second is investigative – an improved investigative skill developed by the sales person can improve the sales by twenty percent, the third is demonstrating capability – in this stage of the call, a sales person has to convince the customers that he has a solution that will contribute in solving his or her problem and finally, obtaining commitment – a successful sales person will end with having a commitment with the customer. Among all the four call sales the most important when it comes to small sale is obtaining commitment. However when it comes to large sale, the determinant is the size of the sale which will determine which among the four is important (Rackham, 1987). Mainly in large scale, the success is determined with how the calls investigative stage. Here the writer decided to replace the old questioning with developing a new positive model for questioning that seems to be satisfactory as compared to the old ones. The questions to be asked should be systematically asked and selected with lots of care or else it might bore the customer. The selected question in the successful call seems top fall in a sequence called SPIN (Rackham & Rapkin, 1988). These questions include; situation questions, problem questions, implication questions and finally need-payoff question respectively when this question are asked to the customers, there is higher possibility that the customer will feel motivated to buy a product. For example the Problem question, this question mainly is asked after the sales person has enough information about the customers, they may include questions such as “Are you worried about the quality you got from the old machine?” this questions will enable the sales person to identify difficulties, dissatisfaction in areas where the seller products can help. However these questions should always be limited

Analysis and evaluation

It is true that there are many challenges faced by various companies when it comes to sales and most of the companies are registering very poorly in sales as compared to others. These problems have forced the companies to spend a lot of resources and time in trying to find a solution to the challenge. Most of the problems the writer is communicating are issues we have experience when going to parches items from a shop. I strongly agree with the author that not all that works in small sales will automatically work for the large sale. It is commonly known that when it comes to purchase of large sell items like a car, a person becomes very keen in terms of inspection of the cars details and condition. This is mainly because the amount of money involved in the transaction is very high and customers want to be sure that the product they are buying is worth that money. The client makes sure the transaction is well documented so that in case of any problem with the product they can claim back their money from the seller. This level of high keenness is not experienced in the small sales because very little money in involved and the risk ids very low and incase the customer finds a problem with the product he or she necessarily does not have to return the product but can decide to dispose the item and seek for another one.
I also strongly agree with the writer on the issue of ongoing relationship. Although small sales sell the products to the customers and are not sure if they will ever meet the customers again, the big sale is the opposite. Some sale involves very high money transaction hence for such commodity transaction will take a period of time (Rackham, 1987). This purchase usually needs the sales person to provide a post- sale support. That is to say the customer and the sales person will have to meet in several accessions. The length of the relationship can affect can be a factor to determine whether the customer will by the product or not. This is so even if the deal is too good, the customer will be reluctant because he or she doesn’t want to involve themselves with the relationship issue.
I also strongly agree with the author on the length of the calling cycle. The small sale will basically convince the customer and if the customer have had enough information about a product, he or she can decide to buy the product which always happen in the spot as compared to the larger sales which will entail most of the major discussion taking place at the absence of the seller which is mainly during the interval between calls. This may lead to the customer changing his mind. My disagreement is on the new direction there writer seems to strongly bealive in. even though the use of SPIN sequence of question look promising in solving the sales issues the companies are facing, the author has not specified the specific number of question that is required for a perfect result to be abstained from the strategy (Rackham & Rapkin, 1988). This is because the author just explains that too much of this question will make the customer bored. So I think the author should specify the exact number of question required for such strategy because if it is left open then the customers will be bored and the purpose for the strategy will not have worked hence a failure of the new strategy.

Conclusion

The book seems to be real in life, what the author has talked about are what are experienced in the field of sales. The companies have to understand that the fall in the sale of their commodity is due to the progress the company has made from the sale of low commodity to high commodity. The failure experienced by the companies’ requires a change in the sales strategy and not sticking to the old method and strategy of sales. The companies should understand that low rate of sales they are recording is as a result of the use of the strategies applied for the low sale to the high sales. They have to understand that not all that works for low sale will automatically work for the large sale. The companies have to adopt the situational question, problem question, implication question and the need-payoff question respectively abbreviated as SPIN (Rackham & Rapkin, 1988). This strategy when adopted by the companies will help in improving the sales of the company. This does not mean that the old strategies should be got reed off completely but be used at the right place. The old strategy works well in low sale and poorly in large sales so it important for it to utilize in the v low sales. The research carried out has shown various scenarios the author came across. All this incidences are those that affect the daily operation of man and the author has gone ahead and provided possible solution for each problem encountered by a person. I may recommend the companies and organization top take their time and go through the book as this will provide a solution the problem that has been disturbing them for long (Rackham, 1987).

Reference

Rackham, N. (1987). Making major sales. Aldershot: Gower.
Rackham, N., Kalomeer, R., & Rapkin, D. (1988). SPIN selling. New York: McGraw-Hill.