A breath of fresh air. The profession of Sales is plagued with all sorts of nonsense, most of it annecdotal at best. Little actual research has been done to identify good processes for sales professionals and consequently we get idiotic advice ranging from "Always Be Closing" and endless manipulative closing techniques for doing so, to recommendations on how to sell "anything to anybody." Such sales tactics are precisely the reason salespeople have been saddled with negative stereotypes.
SPIN Selling is the result of extensive observation and analysis of sales calls by behavioral researcher Neil Rackham. His findings are both practical and useful, and are well presented in this book. As sellers, we might give some thought to how we would like to be treated as customers - something that should not be a revelation, but is. We should understand the customer's goals and objectives and help them be successful if we want to be successful. Forget your scripted sales pitch, leave your brochures in your briefcase, ask questions and listen to your customers to understand their needs BEFORE presenting your product. Surprisingly, this will actually shorten the selling cycle and will result in better long-term customer relationships. Rackham's concept of an "Advance" as an objective way to measure the progress of a sales call is, alone, worth the price of this book.
As a sales professional with many years' experience, and now as sales training manager for a division of a Fortune 500 company, I highly recommend this book and the methodology Rackham describes. There are other good books for salespeople - but if I could only recommend one, this would be it.
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