Neil Rackham, in his classic book The SPIN Selling Fieldbook, Gower, Aldershot, UK, 1996, shows a method that is a ‘hurt and rescue’ approach. You find prospects’ problem and ‘hurt’ them by exposing the terrible things that might happen (spot the use of tension). Then you “rescue” them with your product/service.
Rackham describes four question types in the original book. Here is a summary:
Situation questions
In BtoB sales, minimize the small talk and focus on finding background detail that can be used to understand the context of the buyer’s business situation. Context creates meaning. This is also the type of question that will help you to find the prospect’s concerns. Here are some examples:
- Tell me about your company (history, structure…).
- tell me about your products and services or the ones you would like to offer.
- What are your key differentiators?
- What are the major challenge for this year?
- What are your expectations about our business relationship and how you want me to be?
- Who is sharing the responsibility with you?
- What is the budget for… ?
Problem questions
Ask questions to uncover problems which your product/service can address. If you are selling equipments, ask about maintenance costs, breakdowns and so on. If you are selling high-end sound systems, ask about the configuration of the apartments.
A trap here is to dive straight into presenting the benefits of what you are selling. You may know the problem, but they do not! Going straight to the sales pitch will just get you objections.
- From what I understand…
- You have mentioned that…
- You seemed concerned by…
- What are you doing when such problems arise.?
- What chances or improvements will you put in place in next year?
- What aspects of your … are causing the most important problems?
Implication questions
Instead of telling them the problem they have (which is also likely to raise objections), the goal is now to get them to discover (and feel!) the problem. By asking questions which draw out the implications of the problem, they get to feel the pain that will drive them towards your product/service. This is the ‘hurt’ of Hurt and Rescue.
Here are some examples:
- What is the impact of … on your … ?
- How this situation or concern is touching you personnaly?
- What other areas (dept) can be impacted?
- How much is costing this problem to…?
Need-Payoff questions
Once you have hurt your prospect with your implications, you now give them a hint by asking how their pain could be resolved. With careful questions, you can get them to the state where they are asking for your product/service even before you show it to them. This is a very neat ‘rescue’ of Hurt and Rescue, where they either rescue themselves or ask you to rescue them. Here are some good questions:
- If I could propose a solution that would generate the expected benefits rapidly, would you consider discuss in more details or evaluate it seriously in the next days?
- If I could find a solution for … What priority would you assign at this project?
Want to know more? The book: http://books.google.ca/books?id=eOGwcJ4NYncC&printsec=frontcover&hl=fr&source=gbs_v2_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=&f=false
