Neil Rackham > Quotes

“Successful people ask a lot more questions during sales calls than do their less successful colleagues. We found that these less successful people tend to do most of the talking.”
― Neil Rackham, Major Account Sales Strategy

“If you’re getting a lot of objections early in the call, it probably means that instead of asking questions, you’ve been prematurely offering solutions and capabilities.”
― Neil Rackham, SPIN Selling: Situation Problem Implication Need-payoff

“In our research we consistently found that the people who were most effective during the Investigating stage were the ones most likely to be top sales performers.”
― Neil Rackham, SPIN Selling: Situation Problem Implication Need-payoff

“Success in the larger sale depends, more than anything else, on how the Investigating stage of the call is handled.”
― Neil Rackham, SPIN Selling: Situation Problem Implication Need-payoff

“The building of perceived value is probably the single most important selling skill in larger sales.”
― Neil Rackham, SPIN Selling: Situation Problem Implication Need-payoff

“The purpose of questions in the larger sale is to uncover Implied Needs and to develop them into Explicit Needs.”
― Neil Rackham, SPIN Selling: Situation Problem Implication Need-payoff

“If you can’t solve a problem for your customer, then there’s no basis for a sale. But if you uncover problems you can solve, then you’re potentially providing the buyer with something useful.”
― Neil Rackham, SPIN Selling: Situation Problem Implication Need-payoff

“Never try directly to diminish or minimize something which is important to another person. By making a direct challenge to a crucial criterion you are more likely to strengthen it than to diminish it. Your best strategy is to begin by accepting that the criterion is legitimately important.”
― Neil Rackham, Major Account Sales Strategy

“It’s important to be clear about your objectives when you approach people at the focus of receptivity. Calls to people who are purely receptive—which is a way of saying that they are not dissatisfied and they don’t have decision power—tend to be most successful if your strategic aims are to find out information about the account and the people in it and to gain access to others in the account who are located at the focus of dissatisfaction.”
― Neil Rackham, Major Account Sales Strategy

“try to soften the differentiator. You might ask, “How do you measure machine speed? Do you mean speed for continuous run, or speed for a one-off job? Some machines are very fast under continuous run conditions, but they perform much more slowly if you have one-off production needs.”
― Neil Rackham, Major Account Sales Strategy

“without dissatisfaction, there’s no basis for a sale.”
― Neil Rackham, Major Account Sales Strategy

“Put yourself in the shoes of an eighteenth-century country doctor. You’re treating a very ill patient. You’ve tried everything, yet nothing seems to work. So, in desperation, you put together a mixture of herbs and potions. Your patient takes the mixture and recovers. Eureka! Your medicine works, you’ve found a miracle cure. What you don’t see, in your enthusiasm, is that the patient was getting better anyway.”
― Neil Rackham, SPIN® -Selling

“Successful people tended to seek a sponsor—an individual within the account who helped them, advised them, and, if necessary, represented them in places where they couldn’t gain access.”
― Neil Rackham, Major Account Sales Strategy

“The most effective selling strategy during this phase is to uncover dissatisfaction in the account and to develop that dissatisfaction until it reaches the critical mass.”
― Neil Rackham, Major Account Sales Strategy

“it’s more dangerous to ignore signals of customer concern than it is to explore potential concerns and get them out into the open.”
― Neil Rackham, Major Account Sales Strategy

“In summary, Need-payoff Questions are important because they focus attention on solutions, not problems. And they make customers tell you the benefits.”
― Neil Rackham, SPIN Selling: Situation Problem Implication Need-payoff

“The most common strategic error that salespeople make in this phase of the sale is that they don’t try to uncover the customer’s guidelines, or criteria, for making the decision.”
― Neil Rackham, Major Account Sales Strategy

“For the rest of your life you honestly believe it was your mixture which caused the recovery.”
― Neil Rackham, SPIN® -Selling

“You must begin by deciding what problems your products can solve for customers.”
― Neil Rackham, Major Account Sales Strategy

“Implication Questions take a customer problem and explore its effects or consequences. As we’ll see, by asking Implication Questions successful people help the customer understand a problem’s seriousness or urgency.”
― Neil Rackham, SPIN Selling: Situation Problem Implication Need-payoff

“Implication Questions develop a problem by asking about its effects or consequences. In major sales, Implication Questions are very strongly linked to success during the Recognition of Needs phase.”
― Neil Rackham, Major Account Sales Strategy

“It’s very confusing choosing between different systems. So I’d like to begin by looking at some of the factors you should consider to help you make the right choice.”
― Neil Rackham, Major Account Sales Strategy

“As the Exxon seller said afterward, “Unless you’ve an un-usually good price, you’ve got to have a friend in the account if you want to influence a purchasing agent. And the best friend is the person who’s having the most problems with your competitor.”
― Neil Rackham, Major Account Sales Strategy

“benefits – as we define them – involve showing how you can meet an explicit need which the customer has expressed. Unless the customer first says, ‘I want it’, you can’t give a benefit. It’s no wonder that customers are most likely to express approval when you show you can give them something they want.”
― Neil Rackham, SPIN® -Selling

“entelechy,”
― Neil Rackham, SPIN Selling

“Do you know anybody in your company who’s experiencing problems in this area?”
― Neil Rackham, Major Account Sales Strategy

“If you can get your customers to say, “I want it,” it’s not difficult to make a Benefit by replying, “We can give it to you.”
― Neil Rackham, SPIN Selling: Situation Problem Implication Need-payoff

“Never try directly to diminish or minimize something which is important to another person. By making a direct challenge to a crucial criterion you are more likely to strengthen it than to diminish it. Your best strategy is to begin by accepting”
― Neil Rackham, Major Account Sales Strategy