SPIN Selling: Situation Problem Implication Need-payoff

“This is yet another book about how to sell more effectively. So what makes it different from the more than 1000 books already published? Two things: 1. It’s about the larger sale […] 2. It’s based on research.”

To convince his audience, Rackham frequently demonstrates his knowledge of sales and other sales books. He does not pretend that this is the only book on sales, nor does he act as though his is the only book a seller would ever need. Instead, Rackham acknowledges that there is plenty of material on sales available but that this book is different because it focuses on larger sales and that it is based on research rather than anecdotal evidence. This becomes almost a mantra throughout SPIN Selling and is repeated in various ways throughout the book.

“We’ve spent 10 years analyzing 35,000 sales transactions. We’ve studied 116 factors that might play some part in sales performance, and we’ve researched effective selling in 27 countries.”

Rackham states that the difference between this book and others is that SPIN Selling is based on research. This research, funded by several Fortune 500 companies, was the largest venture investigating sales behaviors and sales success at the time. Though Rackham will go into greater detail about this research and his methods later in the book, it is critical that his audience understands the scope of this research to prove his argument.

“Research has an inconvenient way of coming up with evidence that the researchers sometimes wish they’d never found. That’s what happened to me. I was perfectly content with traditional theories of how to sell. When we started our investigations, our aim was to show that classic sales training really worked.”

Rackham insists throughout the work that his goal was never to cast doubt on the effectiveness of traditional sales methods. Traditional sales methods have over 60 years of research to back their success rate, and Rackham agrees that these methods are successful, but only in smaller sales.