Ch 8: Turning Theory into Practice

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[8] Turning Theory into Practice

One of my favorite words, entelechy, is so little known that listeners reach for a dictionary whenever I use it. That’s a pity, because the word fills a serious gap in the English language and deserves to be in everyday circulation. It means the becoming actual of what was potential—turning something into practical usefulness as opposed to theoretical elegance. Entelechy is the subject of this chapter—turning the potentials of Huthwaite’s research into actions that will be practically useful to you in your selling.

There’s no easy way to convert theoretical models into practical skills. The fact that you’re reading this book doesn’t mean that the knowledge you’re gaining will automatically translate itself into improved selling abilities. No book on selling will, of itself, improve your selling skills, any more than reading a book about swimming will teach you how to swim. The challenge for both author and reader in any book with pretensions to being practical is entelechy—turning theory into practical action.

To meet my part of the challenge, I’ll draw on Huthwaite’s worldwide experience of training many thousands of people to improve their selling skills. In this chapter I’ll share with you some of the principles and practices that have worked successfully for us and for our clients. Your challenge is a tougher one, because improving your skills is hard work; there’s no instant formula for better selling. Success in any skill—whether in golf, playing the piano, or selling—rests on concentrated, tedious, and frustrating practice. It’s quite realistic for you to expect a significant increase in your sales results if you follow the advice in this book and really practice the skills, but this is the tough bit. For each reader who practices adequately, a dozen are likely to fall by the wayside.

The Four Golden Rules for Learning Skills

Why do people find it so difficult to learn skills? It’s not just because of the hard work, for we’re accustomed to putting work into learning new knowledge. You’ve demonstrated the ability to work hard already, through the time and energy you’ve invested in reading this book—in acquiring knowledge about how to sell. Yet I wonder how many readers will invest an equivalent amount of effort in turning their knowledge into practice. The sad fact is that we generally work harder and more effectively to learn knowledge than to translate our knowledge into skills. Perhaps entelechy is such a rare word because it refers to something we so rarely do.

It’s my personal belief that the main reason why people have such trouble improving their skills is that they’ve never thought about the basic techniques of skill learning. At school our success depended on developing techniques for learning knowledge—and most of us got quite good at it. But what did school do to help us learn skills systematically? With the exception of sports, the answer for most people is little or nothing. So before I talk about what skills you should practice, it will be useful to begin with how. How can you learn any skill efficiently and with minimum pain?

We have found that most people can greatly improve their ability to learn skills if they stick by four simple rules.

Rule 1: Practice Only One Behavior at a Time

Most people, when they work on improving their skills, try to do too much at once. I can imagine people reading this book and saying, “I’m going to cut out closing techniques, and in future I’ll ask more Problem Questions. Then, instead of jumping in with solutions—which is what I usually do—I’ll hold back and ask Implication Questions... oh, and Need-payoff Questions too, of course. And I’ll also work on avoiding Features and Advantages; instead, I’ll make more Benefits and...” STOP! If that’s how you’re thinking, then in terms of learning, you’re dead. People who successfully learn complex skills do so by practicing one behavior at a time—not by half-practicing two, and certainly not by trying to handle 10 at once.

Last year I was on a flight to Australia and found myself sitting opposite a delightful man named Tom Landry. As an Englishman, my sports are cricket and croquet—I knew nothing of American football. Consequently, it wasn’t until well into the conversation that it emerged that Mr. Landry was a famous football coach. I confess, right up to that moment, I’d mistakenly thought the Dallas Cowboys were a traveling rodeo show. So I was fascinated when Tom Landry explained a little about the sophisticated and complex task of coaching a major football team.

“Your job is teaching people skills,” I prompted him. “If you had to put forward just one principle for successfully learning a skill, what would it be?” He didn’t hesitate. “Work on one thing at a time,” he replied, “and get it right.” Benjamin Franklin said much the same in 1771. In his Autobiography, he gives a masterly account of how to break a complex skill into its component behaviors and then how to work on improving it one behavior at a time. With authorities like Franklin and Landry to support me, I don’t hesitate to put forward the first, and most important, principle for getting value from this book:

Start by picking just one behavior to practice. Don’t move on to the next until you’re confident you’ve got the first behavior right.

Rule 2: Try the New Behavior at Least Three Times

The first time you try anything new, it’s bound to feel uncomfortable. It’s not only new shoes that hurt at first.

Suppose, for example, you decide to practice Implication Questions. You’re keeping Rule 1 in mind, so you’re going to concentrate only on Implication Questions, not on the other behaviors we’ve covered. Off you go into a call. Do the new Implication Questions roll off your tongue in a smooth, convincing sequence? Not on your life! When you ask them you sound self-conscious, artificial, and awkward. And because of this, you don’t make a particularly positive impression on the customer. After the call, if you’re like most people we’ve trained, you’re tempted to conclude that Implication Questions didn’t help you sell—so you’d better drop them and try something different next call.

If you draw that conclusion, of course, you’re making a big mistake. You have to try any new behavior several times before it becomes practiced enough to be both comfortable and effective. The new skill needs to be “broken in.” It’s not just in selling that this happens. Whenever you try to improve any skill, at first it feels awkward and it doesn’t go right. I once asked a sample of 200 people, each of whom had taken golf lessons from a professional, whether their next round was better or worse. Out of the 200, 157 said that they scored worse after the lesson than before it.

What’s the remedy? The principle which I use personally—and which Huthwaite recommends to those we train—is this:

Never judge whether a new behavior is effective until you’ve tried it at least three times.

Rule 3: Quantity Before Quality

Remember the old-fashioned way to learn a foreign language? You try to say a few words. “No,” says your teacher, “that’s the incorrect tense—you should be using a pluperfect.” You try again. “Wrong,” the teacher warns you, “you’ve got the tense right, but this is an irregular verb.” With some nervousness you make a third attempt. “No,” your teacher tells you, “this time the tense is right and the verb is right, but your pronunciation is terrible.” Notice that every one of the teacher’s comments is about the quality of your skill. Many of us struggled for years to learn a language this way. At the end of it we were able, hesitantly but correctly, to pronounce a few sentences with the right verbs, tenses, and word orders. Most of us never reached the point, despite several years of emphasis on quality, where we could speak the language confidently and comfortably.

In contrast, let’s look at modern language training. Students are told, “Never mind about pronunciation, and don’t worry about tenses. For now, word order doesn’t matter and we don’t care if you forget the differences between regular and irregular verbs. The only thing we want you to do is speak it, speak it, and speak it.” The emphasis, in other words, is on quantity rather than quality—talking a lot is more important than talking well. Many convincing experiments have shown that this approach, which puts emphasis on the quantity of speech, can greatly speed the learning of language skills. At the end of a single year, students are talking the new language more confidently than those who have spent 5 times as long learning in the old quality-first manner. What’s more surprising is that by talking the language a lot, the quality has improved too. In fact, the correctness of language, measured by pronunciation and grammar tests, is higher in those taught by the quantity approach than in those taught by the older quality methods. So in language training, at least, speaking it a lot wins hands down over speaking it well.

But does the same principle apply to a skill like selling? Yes—without question it does. Our studies have consistently shown that the fastest way to learn a new sales behavior is through using a quantity method. Let me give you an example of what I mean. There was a well-known multinational company whose name, for reasons of protecting the guilty, had better remain anonymous. This company liked the SPIN Model and wanted to produce a sales-training program based on it. The program’s designers spent 9 months producing a $650,000 extravaganza that was meant to be the ultimate in sales training. Quality was their motto. So, for example, in their program you couldn’t just ask Problem Questions. Oh no, that wouldn’t do at all because you might not be asking the right quality of questions. Instead, they built a four-stage model of how to ask a Problem Question, with special attention to three ways in which Problem Questions could be smoothly linked to Situation Questions and with sundry other techniques to ensure that any Problem Question—when the poor student ultimately got round to asking it—would have the right quality. The result of their efforts was a 74-step sales model that was so demotivating and cumbersome that it didn’t even get through its pilot without a walkout by confused and angry learners. Tracking students in the field afterward, we found that they were asking an average of 1.6 Problem Questions per call—no different from the pretraining level.

Huthwaite—maybe because we’d played no part in this monstrous design—was selected to be the bearer of ill tidings to corporate headquarters. I had to tell the decision maker that he’d just spent most of his training budget on a program which was so bad that it couldn’t even stagger through its pilot test. When his initial rage had subsided to a gentle gibber, he was able to ask, “What shall I do?” We suggested that for considerably less than one-tenth of the cost, a program could be designed that would be much more effective. “Concentrate on quantity,” we advised him, “and you’ll get the results you’re looking for.” Sure enough, just 2 months later we had a program based on methods closely resembling effective language training. We didn’t care whether questions were asked well or poorly, but we did care that people asked a lot of them. At the end of the training, in the final role plays, students were asking a dozen Problem Questions. Back out in the field, real-life responses from customers soon told them which of these questions worked best, and—as in language training—the quality improved dramatically. The $650,000 quality-based program was scrapped, and our cheap but effective quantity-based program was adopted in its place across the company’s three largest divisions.

Exactly the same principle applies to your own selling when you’re trying to learn a new behavior:

When you’re practicing, concentrate on quantity: use a lot of the new behavior. Don’t worry about quality issues, such as whether you’re using it smoothly or whether there might be a better way to phrase it. Those things get in the way of effective skills learning. Use the new behavior often enough and the quality will look after itself.

Rule 4: Practice in Safe Situations

I once ran a negotiating-skills program for company presidents. On the last day, one of the participants asked me an innocent-sounding question. “Tomorrow,” he explained, “I’ll be going into the biggest negotiation of my career—I’m selling my company. What lessons from this program should I concentrate on during the negotiation?” I think my answer shocked him. “Forget every single thing you’ve heard on this program,” I advised him; “otherwise, you’ll spend the rest of your life regretting you came here.”

Let me give you some similar advice. If you’ve just finished this book and you’re about to visit your most important account, then forget everything I’ve written. It’s a strange quirk of human nature that we usually try to practice new skills in key situations, those important enough to justify the effort of trying something new. This is a terrible mistake. As we’ve seen, new skills are uncomfortable and awkward. They may even have a negative effect on the customer. If you try them out in crucial situations, then you’re likely to be unsuccessful. Suppose you’ve decided to ask more Need-payoff Questions. Don’t practice on your biggest account. Instead, begin with small accounts, or with customers you know well, or in areas where you’ve nothing to lose if you fail. In other words:

Always try out new behaviors in safe situations until they feel comfortable. Don’t use important sales to practice new skills.

These rules can be sequenced to provide a simple strategy for learning or improving your skills (Figure 8.1). Although my purpose here is to focus on improving selling skills, these four basic rules will help you improve any skills, from making love to flying airplanes.

Figure 8.1. Strategies for learning a new skill.

A Summary of the Call Stages

Let’s summarize the key points made in earlier chapters.

Four Stages of a Sales Call (Chapter 1)

Almost every sales call progresses through four distinct stages (Figure 8.2):

  Preliminaries. The warming-up events at the start of the call

  Investigating. Finding out facts, information, and needs

  Demonstrating Capability. Showing that you’ve got something worthwhile to offer

  Obtaining Commitment. Gaining an agreement to proceed to a further stage of the sale

Figure 8.2. Call stages.

Preliminaries (Chapter 7)

We’ve suggested that there’s no one best way to open a sales call. Successful people are flexible and rarely open two calls in the same way. The opening techniques recommended by traditional sales-training programs—(1) relating to the buyer’s personal interests and (2) making an opening benefit statement—have unintended drawbacks and should be used with caution.

Investigating (Chapter 4)

Our research showed that the traditional distinction between open and closed questions doesn’t predict success in larger sales. Instead, we discovered the SPIN sequence of questions that successful people use to uncover and develop customer needs in the larger sale:

  Situation Questions. About facts, background, and what the customer is doing now. Asking too many Situation Questions can bore or irritate the customer. Research shows that successful people ask them sparingly—so that each question has a purpose.

  Problem Questions. About the customer’s problems, difficulties, or dissatisfactions. Problem Questions are strongly linked to success in smaller sales, but they are less powerful in major sales.

  Implication Questions. About the consequences or effects of a customer’s problems. Successful calls usually contain a high level of Implication Questions. The ability to develop implications is a crucial skill in the larger sale because it increases the customer’s perception of value in the solution you offer.

  Need-payoff Questions. About the value, usefulness, or utility that the customer perceives in a solution. Like Implication Questions, Need-payoff Questions are strongly linked to success in the major sale.

The SPIN Model is often used sequentially, starting with Situation Questions to establish the background, then Problem Questions to uncover difficulties, then Implication Questions to develop the seriousness of a problem, and finally Need-payoff Questions to get the customer telling you the benefits of your solution. However, the SPIN sequence isn’t a rigid formula. To be effective, it must be used flexibly.

Demonstrating Capability (Chapter 5)

The traditional definition of a Benefit—a statement that shows how your product can be used or can help the customer—works in small sales but fails as the sale grows larger. In major sales, the most effective type of Benefit shows how your product or service meets an Explicit Need expressed by the customer.

Obtaining Commitment (Chapter 2)

Closing techniques are effective in smaller sales, but they don’t work in larger ones. Our studies showed that the simplest way to obtain commitment is also the most effective:

  Check that you’ve covered the buyer’s key concerns.

  Summarize the Benefits.

  Propose an appropriate level of commitment.

A Strategy for Learning the SPIN Behaviors

My colleagues at Huthwaite have worked with many thousands of salespeople, helping them use the methods I’ve described in this book. We’ve experimented with dozens of different training approaches. In large corporations we’ve generally adopted designs that make very sophisticated use of advanced learning techniques. At the other extreme, we’ve also tried to develop some very simple ways to help individual salespeople improve their skills. Alas, there’s no free lunch in the training business. It’s an unfortunate truth that our more elaborate and sophisticated training designs have generally brought much better productivity gains than the simpler ones, and this has made us a little self-conscious about recommending simple steps for improving your skills.

Even so, there are some fairly easy, common-sense ways to take the research findings in this book and turn them into useful practice. We’ve found that people invariably find the following four pieces of implementation advice very helpful.

Focus on the Investigating Stage

Many people, when they plan calls, think about what they will tell the customer, not about what they will ask. They concentrate, in other words, on the Demonstrating Capability stage of the call. That’s a mistake. However well you demonstrate capability, you’ll have little impact unless you have first developed needs—so that the customer wants the capability you’re offering. The same is true of the Obtaining Commitment stage; unless the customer wants what you have to offer, you’re going to find it difficult to get a commitment. Focus your efforts on the Investigating stage. Practice your questioning skills, and the other stages of the call will generally look after themselves. If you know how to develop needs—to get your customers to want the capabilities you offer—then you’ll have no problem showing Benefits or Obtaining Commitment. The key selling skill is in the Investigating stage, using the SPIN questions to get your customers to feel a genuine need for your product.

Develop Questions in the SPIN Sequence

Don’t rush in to practice the high-powered Implication and Need-payoff Questions until you feel you have a solid and comfortable grasp of the simpler Situation and Problem Questions.

1. First decide whether you’re asking enough questions of any type. If you’ve built up selling patterns that involve telling—in other words if you’re giving a lot of Features and Advantages—then start by just asking more questions. Most of the questions you ask will be Situation Questions, but this is fine. Just keep asking questions for a few weeks until asking feels as comfortable as telling.

2. Next plan and ask Problem Questions. Aim, in the average call, to ask a customer about problems, difficulties, and dissatisfactions at least half a dozen times. Concentrate on building up the quantity of your Problem Questions; don’t worry about whether or not each question is a “good” one.

3. If you feel you’re doing an effective job of uncovering customer problems, it’s time to move on to Implication Questions. These are more difficult to ask, and you may need a couple of months’ practice before you become entirely comfortable with Implication Questions. Plan them carefully.

A good starting point would be to reread the example transcript in the “Implication Questions” section of Chapter 4. Then, in place of the problem in the transcript, put in a problem of your own that one of your products could solve for your customer. Using the questions in the transcript as a model, try to write some examples of Implication Questions you could ask that would make your customer feel the problem is serious enough to justify action.. When I’m planning Implication Questions, I find it’s useful to imagine a customer who’s saying “So what? Yes, I’ve got that problem—but I don’t think it’s serious.” I list the arguments I’d use to convince the customer that the problem really is serious—it’s causing a loss of efficiency, it’s increasing her costs, and it’s demotivating her better people. Then I turn each of my arguments into a question—“What effect is the problem having on your efficiency?” and “How much is it increasing your costs?” and “What impact does it have on the motivation of your better people?”

4. Finally, when you’re comfortable with Situation, Problem, and Implication Questions, turn your attention to Need-payoff Questions. Instead of giving Benefits to the customer, concentrate on asking questions that get the customer to tell you the Benefits. Ask questions like these:

How would that help you?

What do you see as the pluses of this approach?

Is there any other way our product could be useful?

Again, don’t worry about whether you’re asking Need-payoff Questions well. Concentrate on quantity—on asking lots of them.

Analyze Your Product in Problem-Solving Terms

Stop thinking about your products in terms of their Features and Advantages. Instead, think of each product in terms of its problem-solving capabilities. Analyze products by listing the problems they are designed to solve. Then use your list to plan questions you can use in calls. By thinking of your products this way, you’ll find it easier to adopt a SPIN questioning style.

Plan, Do, and Review

The majority of salespeople acknowledge the importance of call planning even if, in reality, their planning is no more than a few moments of anxiety before the call. However, only limited learning comes from planning the call, or from making it. The most important lessons come from the way you review the calls you make. After each call, ask yourself such questions as these:

  Did I achieve my objectives?

  If I were making the call again, what would I do differently?

  What have I learned that will influence future calls on this account?

  What have I learned that I can use elsewhere?

Unfortunately, few of us take enough time to ask ourselves questions like these systematically. Over the years I’ve had the opportunity to travel with dozens of the world’s top salespeople—and as a researcher, I’ve looked for any differences that distinguish them from those who haven’t made it to the top. Two differences stand out. The first is that the top people I’ve traveled with put great emphasis on reviewing each call—dissecting what they’ve learned and thinking about possible improvement.

The second difference is that most of the really successful salespeople I’ve studied recognize that their success depends on getting details right. They may have excellent skills in terms of broad, large-scale strategic account planning, but this is not what distinguishes them. Many of the less successful people I’ve studied can give an impeccable account of themselves in terms of overall strategy. The difference that’s so evident in top people is that they can translate strategy into effective sales behavior—they know what to do in the call. They understand details, which may be why they put such emphasis on planning and reviewing each call.

It’s worth asking yourself whether you are giving enough time to reviewing the details of what happened in the call. Never be content with global conclusions like “it went quite well.” Ask yourself about the details. Did some parts of the call go better than others? Why? Which specific questions you asked had the most influence on the customer? Which needs did the customer feel strongly? Which needs changed during the discussion? Why? Which of the behaviors you used had the most impact? Unless you analyze your selling on this level of detail, you’ll miss important opportunities for learning and improving your selling skills.

A Final Word

Perhaps the most significant conclusion I’ve come to from Huthwaite’s research studies of selling is about the importance of details. Many years ago, at the start of our research, I would have told you that sales success lay in the broader areas. I would have chosen global factors like personality, attitudes, interpersonal chemistry, or overall account strategy to explain why one person sold better than another. I don’t believe this anymore. Increasingly our research has shown that success is constructed from those important little building blocks called behaviors. More than anything else, it’s the hundreds of minute behavioral details in a call that will decide whether it succeeds.

I’m not the first to come to the conclusion that success rests on understanding the minute details. In 1801 William Blake wrote:

He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars. General Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer; For Art and Science cannot exist but in minutely organized particulars.

So, as a parting word, let me urge you to concentrate on those minute particulars. Give real attention to the basic building-block behaviors you use when you sell. We’ve put thousands of sales calls under the microscope to isolate some of the detailed behavioral elements that bring success in the major sale. Use the results of our research to examine, develop, and improve the minute particulars of your selling skills.

Appendix [A] Evaluating the SPIN Model

More than a century ago Lord Kelvin wrote, “If you cannot measure it—if you cannot express it in quantitative terms—then your knowledge is of a meagre and insignificant kind.” How right he was! But alas, today we live in an age that has lost the exuberance of the great nineteenth-century scientific investigators. Measurement, proof, and careful testing don’t generate the same excitement that they did in the golden age of science. As a result, our work on testing the validity of the SPIN Model gets relegated to an appendix like this instead of being bang in the middle of the book where Lord Kelvin would have put it.

If you’re the one person in a hundred who bothers to read the appendix in a book like this, then you deserve my admiration and gratitude. Personally, I find the material here to be the most exciting part of our work. I hope you’ll find it rewarding too.

My topic is an intriguing one—proof. How do we know that the methods I’ve described in this book really contribute to sales success? This has been the most difficult challenge in our research—collecting solid evidence that the ideas we’ve developed really bring a measurable improvement in bottom-line sales results. As far as I can tell, we’re the first research team to bring rigorous scientific methods to establishing whether particular selling skills result in measurable productivity improvement.

Many people, of course, have made claims that their models and methods bring dramatic improvements in sales results. As I look through my junk mail today, there are several enticing promises of success. “Double your sales,” claims a 1-day program. “At last,” says another, “a proven method that will increase your sales by up to 300 percent.” A third offering tells me, “After this program, the sales of our Branch went through the roof. Yours will too!” Yes, there’s no shortage of claims made by training programs that their methods bring measurable improvement. But how many of these dramatic cases stand up to close scrutiny? None that I’ve looked at. Unfortunately, when you examine them closely, most of the heavily advertised “miracle cures” in sales training look remarkably similar to the claims made for snake oil a couple of hundred years ago.

I’m not being unduly malicious when I draw parallels between sales training and snake oil. Many of the purveyors of snake oil, miracle mixtures, and wonder medicines sincerely believed that they had found a great cure. Their sincerity was based on a simple misperception. 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. For the rest of your life you honestly believe it was your mixture that caused the recovery.

That’s exactly what happens with most sales training. The designer puts together a mixture of concepts and models—and administers it in the form of a training program. Afterward there’s an increase in sales. So, in all sincerity, the training designer concludes that the training has caused the increase. I spent 3 years doing postgraduate research into training evaluation. Over and over again I’d come across this miracle-cure phenomenon. I recall, for example, a trainer from a large chemical company telling me that he had a program that doubled sales. Sure enough, he had figures to prove his point—the sales of his division had risen by 118 percent since the training. On looking closely at the curriculum, however, I found it was little different from the training that his division had been running for years. I couldn’t find anything to justify a sudden 118 percent increase in sales. But looking at the market told a different story. A large competitor had gone out of business because of industrial disputes, new products had been introduced, and prices had changed. On top of that, there were several significant changes in sales-force management and policy—not to mention a major advertising campaign. It’s reasonable to suppose that each of these factors had a much larger impact on sales than a conventional sales-training program did. In my judgment, the patient would have recovered without the miracle cure—the training was snake oil.

During my evaluation research I investigated many claims for sales increases resulting from training. More than 90 percent of them could be accounted for more easily by other management or market factors. There are so many variables that affect sales performance—and training is just one factor. In almost every case we studied, there was a more plausible reason for the increase. I’m not doubting the sincerity of those who tell you how their wonderful sales method has doubled results. But as with any miracle cure, you’ve got to ask whether the patient would have done equally well without the medicine.

Correlations and Causes

Whether we’re talking about medicine or training, it’s extremely difficult to prove that one’s “cure” is effective. Yet that’s a difficulty I now face in this chapter, because the question I want to answer for you is “Does this stuff work?” What’s the evidence that the ideas we’ve put forward here will make a worthwhile contribution to your sales results? If you’re going to invest time and effort in practicing the sales skills I’ve described, you’ll need to know that I’m offering you more than snake oil. But how can I prove to you that the SPIN process increases sales?

Let me start with how not to do it (Figure A.1). In the early days of the SPIN Model we were working with a capital goods company based just outside New York. The training staff were anxious to test whether the model brought improved sales results. They measured the average monthly sales for the 28 people they trained. For the 6 months before training, the average sales were 3.1 orders per month. But in the 6 months after the training, the average sales rose to 4.9 orders per month—an increase of 58 percent.

Figure A.1. A misleading example of improvement: SPIN brings a 58 percent increase in orders ... or does it?

Can we conclude that the SPIN Model increases orders by 58 percent? This would be a very unwise conclusion. Let’s look more closely at the result. In the 6 months following the program, two important new products were introduced. Sales territories were redrawn, and 23 of the 28 trained people were given larger territories with greater sales potential. Company sales increased during this time by approximately 35 percent—and most of this increase came from untrained people. As we looked more closely, it became clear that we were in danger of kidding ourselves that SPIN was a miracle cure when, in reality, we had no way to tell what part of the increase was due to SPIN and what part resulted from other factors.

In the same vein, I have to advise you not to be taken in by this glowing little report of another SPIN evaluation. This one is from Honeywell’s Management Magazine:

Our European sales force was oriented primarily to product and shortcycle selling. We needed a truly effective program... that could be applied universally to our varied European markets. Late in 1978 the SPIN program was adapted into all European languages. There was a 20% increase in sales success... which may rise higher as the salesmen sharpen their SPIN techniques.

Yes, following the implementation of the SPIN approach there was a 20 percent increase in sales. But what this report doesn’t tell you is that Honeywell introduced a number of important new products to Europe that year, including the revolutionary TDC 2000 process control system. It’s quite possible that the products created the whole increase. In Honeywell’s case there’s no way we can tell whether the SPIN approach is any improvement on snake oil.

Control Groups

The most serious weakness of results like these is that the trainers didn’t set up a control group—a matched group of untrained people who could provide a baseline against which changes in the performance of the trained group could be judged. I imagine that the majority of readers will know about control groups and how important they are for any experimental work. But you may not know that much of the early use of control groups was in medicine, where they were used in an attempt to sort out whether a cure was genuine or just snake oil. If the trainers had set up a control group of 28 matched, untrained salespeople, we could have compared the performance of the two groups to obtain a truer picture.

But even with a control group, results can be misleading. Here’s a study that seems, on the surface, a very convincing test of whether the SPIN Model brings improved performance in major sales.

The Case of the Plausible Explanation. A large multinational company decided to test the SPIN Model by training a whole major-account branch of 31 salespeople. As a control, it chose other branches that were not given the training. If the trained branch improved more than the others, then this wouldn’t be due to the market or the products because these factors applied equally to both the control and the experimental branches. Even more important, there were no significant changes in people—the branch had unusually low turnover at the sales and management levels. Perhaps, this time, we had a valid test of whether the SPIN approach brings productivity.

The results, a 57 percent gain compared with the control group, certainly look convincing (Figure A.2). But we have to ask the standard evaluator’s question: “Is there any other equally plausible way to explain this increase?” Unfortunately for us, there is. The branch had been created very recently—just 4 months before the SPIN training. The average selling cycle for the product range was 3 months. So the productivity improvement could well have been caused by the time required for a new branch to get up to speed, coupled with the delayed effects of a 3-month sales cycle. Once again, our “proof” can be explained away.

Figure A.2. A misleading control-group study.

In our research files, we’ve many similar examples of evaluation studies that look plausible at a first glance but don’t stand up to close scrutiny. Here’s one more case to make the point.

Foiled Again. A large business-machines company decided to evaluate the SPIN methods in a seasonal market where February was a peak month. In order to compensate for seasonal and market effects, it used as control groups every other branch that operated in the same market. The company tracked the order record of each branch before and after the experimental branch was trained in early January. As can be seen in Figure A.3, the SPIN-trained branch showed an impressive productivity gain compared with the others. This time, unlike our earlier studies, all five branches were well established—so there wasn’t a problem about the selling cycle or the learning curve. Could this be the proof we’d been looking for? Unfortunately, it wasn’t.

Figure A.3. Productivity gain of SPIN-trained branch compared with four control groups.

In November the branch manager had changed. How do we know whether the dramatic improvement in productivity was caused by the SPIN Model or by the new sales-activity management system introduced in December? The question is unanswerable. Nevertheless, the company attempted an answer of sorts by interviewing all participating salespeople. They asked each person to estimate how much of the change was due to the SPIN training and how much to other causes. Although everybody obligingly gave an estimate, the fact that their most common response was that 50 percent was due to SPIN makes me suspicious. Whenever people reply, “50 percent,” to any question about causes, I interpret this as meaning that they haven’t a clue.

Failure after Failure

You can never entirely eliminate the effects of other organizational and market factors—which means that it’s extremely difficult to obtain convincing proof of any selling model. Heaven knows, we’ve tried. We got one organization to agree not to change products, management, or salespeople for the whole of a 6-month test period. For a while we were convinced that we had an evaluation study that would stand up to the toughest scrutiny Then, just as we were moving smoothly into the third month of the test, the wretched competition cut its prices by 15 percent. Our client, forced to respond quickly, changed prices, people, and product introductions. Another test ruined!

We thought we finally had all the important factors under control in a high-tech company. The test branch was doing well—73 percent ahead of the control branches—and this time we were convinced we had a winner. Halfway through the test, however, we fell victim to one of the branch managers from the control group. Before the test, he’d been top branch and proud of it. But now, seeing that the test-branch figures were looking much better than his own, he decided to take action. In the dead of night he raided the training department’s files and made a copy of all the program materials we’d used with the test branch. Returning home with his loot, he swore all his salespeople to secrecy and ran his own training classes using the stolen material.

It ruined our test. Although I was furious at the time, looking back I can’t help thinking it’s the most convincing evaluation study of all when your methods are good enough for a sales manager to drive 600 miles in the middle of the night to steal them.

Is Proof Possible?

In 1970 I wrote a book on training evaluation with Peter Warr and Mike Bird. One of our conclusions was that the difficulties involved in controlling real-life variables made it almost impossible to prove that training increased productivity. While we were writing the book, we discussed an “ideal” evaluation study. Mike Bird and I shared an office and we spent hours thinking about how we would set about designing the perfect piece of evaluation.

“If you look at it simply,” Mike said, “the way most people set about evaluation is like this.” He drew a picture on the blackboard (Figure A.4). “But,” he added, “look at all the complicating variables. How can you possibly prove whether any change is due to training?” He quickly sketched in some of the other factors (Figure A.5).

Figure A.4. The usual way of evaluating sales training.

Figure A.5. Variables complicating accurate measurement.

This was turning into a depressing conversation, because I’d just been reading Karl Popper, the philosopher who’s best known for suggesting that you can’t prove anything. What Popper had suggested is that the only way science can “prove” something is by continually trying to disprove it and failing. “Could we adopt that kind of approach?” I asked. “Just suppose that instead of trying to prove that training brings productivity, we attacked the problem from the other end and tried to disprove any productivity effect. Would that be better?”

We didn’t take the conversation further—but years later, as I wrestled with the problems of testing whether our SPIN approach worked, I remembered that discussion with Mike. Should we forget about proof and instead set about disproving the idea that the skills described in this book cause more sales?

Proof or Disproof—Does It Matter?

As a practical person, you may find my researcher’s obsession with proof or disproof to be an academic form of overkill. In my defense I’d say that many billions of dollars are being wasted each year, teaching selling methods without one scrap of proof to show whether or not they work. No other area of business is so casual about testing its products or methods. Civilized society would collapse if manufacturing design showed the same lack of concern with product effectiveness that I see in most training-design organizations. Just because it’s difficult to measure the effectiveness of a sales approach doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. On the contrary, the difficulties make it all the more important. Without honest attempts at better measurement of sales-training effectiveness, we’ll continue to waste billions of dollars that could be spent more productively elsewhere. I don’t really care whether the emphasis is on proof or disproof. But I do passionately support anything that will give better measurement and testing, because without these tests, my profession is in the snake-oil business.

If you’ll forgive me a moment of preaching, I hope you’ll see this concern with thorough evaluation as being in your interest. Our reason for all these measurements and tests is that we’re trying to make sure that what we give you will work. There used to be an old army saying: “If it moves, shoot it, and if it doesn’t move, paint it.” Huthwaite’s equivalent is: “If it moves, measure it, and if you can’t measure it, shoot it.” Measurement and testing is almost an obsession with us.

Stages of Disproof

In pursuit of our enthusiasm for a rigorous measurement of the SPIN approach, my Huthwaite colleagues and I spent unreasonable amounts of time struggling with the problems of proof and disproof (Figure A.6). We decided that before we looked at productivity gains (Test 3), we first needed to pass two other tests—or opportunities for disproof, as Popper would have called them.

Figure A.6. Stages of proof and disproof.

Test 1: Do These Skills Make Calls More Successful? How did we know we were teaching the right things? Before we could begin to answer elaborate questions about productivity change, we needed first to test whether the models worked. For example, suppose we were teaching a major-account team a traditional low-value sales model that involved asking open and closed questions, giving Advantages, and then using closing techniques to gain commitment. From the evidence we’ve presented so far, it’s not likely that adopting this model would make major-account sales calls more successful. Even if there were substantial productivity gains after the training, they would probably have been caused by other factors. So before we started to measure productivity gains, our first test had to establish whether we were teaching the right things.

Generically, we knew that the SPIN Model passed this test because it was derived from studies of successful calls. So there was a high probability that if we taught the SPIN skills, we would be teaching something that would make calls more successful. But if we wanted to design the ultimate evaluation study, we’d have to go beyond this. We’d have to answer a very specific question about the individual salespeople whose productivity we intended to measure. We couldn’t rely on studies we’d done in other companies, in other markets, or with other groups. What if this group was different? How did we know that just because SPIN worked somewhere else, it would work here? In the ultimate evaluation test we would start by doing some research to establish what a successful call looks like for the group of people we’re going to train. We wouldn’t take the chance that unique factors in terms of their geography, market, products, or sales organization might invalidate our results. If, from this first test, we could collect solid evidence that the things we were teaching worked for this set of individuals, then we would have eliminated one more source of disproof.

Test 2: How Do We Know That People Are Using the New Skills? The next test in our quest for disproof would be to discover whether people were actually using the new skills in real calls after the training. I was once caught out on this test. We were measuring productivity improvement in a group of salespeople from a division of General Electric. In the 6 months after the SPIN-based training, sales had risen by an average of 18 percent. Could we claim the credit? Alas, no. By watching these people sell before and after the training, we established that they weren’t using significantly more of the SPIN behaviors afterward than they were before we trained them. Once again we had disproved that the productivity gain should be credited to us.

This test, which measures whether the training has made people behave any differently in their calls, is rarely if ever carried out by training designers. It’s a pity. We’ve learned a lot about effective training design by analyzing the amount of behavior change our programs have caused. I’m sure that other designers would also find this kind of measurement more useful than the usual smiles test—“the training must be good because people say they liked it”—which is the normal extent of training evaluation.

An Evaluation Plan

Bit by bit we were developing a specification for a very sophisticated and thorough method that we could use to evaluate the effectiveness of our SPIN Model. The evaluation steps would be:

1. Watch a group of major-account salespeople in action to find out whether there are more SPIN behaviors used in their successful calls than in the calls that fail. If so, we’ve passed Test 1; we now know that the model works for this group of people.

2. Train the group to use the SPIN methods that we’re trying to evaluate.

3. Go out with each person in the group after the training to discover whether they’re now using more of the trained behaviors during their calls. If so, we’ve passed Test 2; we know that people are actually using the new skills.

4. Assuming that we pass on Test 1 and Test 2, measure the productivity gain compared with control groups as Test 3.

It seems an elaborate method, but we didn’t see any alternative. We searched for a simpler answer, but none of the usual superficial evaluation tests stood up to close examination. The author and corporate planning expert Michael Kami once told me, “For every complex question, there is a simple answer—and it is wrong.” We were forced to agree with him. If we wanted a solid evaluation of a complex problem, we’d have to accept a difficult method for getting there.

A Test with Kodak—Almost

We took our evaluation plan to a number of clients and tried to interest them in it. This is a polite way of saying that we tried to get them to pay for a very expensive test. Most of them, realizing how costly the test would be, encouraged us to take our evaluation elsewhere. For a time we had high hopes of a full test with Kodak—an organization with a long tradition of careful testing of new methods. Kodak was considering using SPIN-based training worldwide across all its divisions involved in major sales. An evaluation test seemed a sensible first step. We agreed to test the model by observing a group of salespeople from Kodak’s Health Sciences Division. Sure enough, the SPIN Model worked exactly as our research had predicted. Implication and Need-payoff Questions were more than twice as frequent in successful calls as in the ones that failed.

Next we trained the pilot group and, after the training, went out to observe whether its people were using the new skills. Once again, things looked good. Benefits had trebled, Implication Questions had trebled, and Need-payoff Questions had doubled. The people were now using more of the successful behaviors than they were before the training.

We were delighted. For the first time we were about to begin a productivity test where we could say, “We know the model works and we know these people are using it in their calls.” Then came one of those good news, bad news bombshells. The good news was that Kodak was so happy with the pilot test that it had decided to adopt the SPIN methods worldwide. The bad news was that Kodak was so convinced by its people’s reactions to the pilot that it saw no point in elaborate and costly productivity tests. The “smiles test” had stabbed us in the back!

Enter Motorola Canada

We were just remarking to ourselves that the evaluator’s lot was one of unrelieved woe when we had an offer we couldn’t refuse from Motorola. Like Kodak, Motorola wanted to test the SPIN Model with the intention, if it worked, of adopting it worldwide. Its chosen test group was the Communications Division of Motorola Canada. This time we were careful to set the evaluation study in concrete well before the project, so that none of our tests would escape. As an added bonus, Motorola hired an independent evaluator, Marti Bishop, who had worked with our models and methods in her previous job as Evaluation Manager in the Xerox Corporation. Her function was to test the effectiveness of the SPIN program rigorously, going through the full steps we had outlined for the ideal productivity evaluation.

I now quote from a condensed version of her report:

Motorola Canada Productivity Study

This report is a productivity analysis of the SPIN program that was conducted during the third quarter of 1981.

   It sets out to answer these questions:

q Does the SPIN Model work in Motorola Canada?

q Are people using the model after the training?

q Has this led to measurable improvement in their productivity?

Does the Model Work?

Motorola’s first concern is to test whether the SPIN behaviors predict success in Motorola’s sales calls in the way that they have proved successful in other companies.

To test this, we traveled with each of the 42 sales reps who were to be trained and analyzed the frequency of the SPIN behaviors in their successful and unsuccessful calls. We found that all SPIN behaviors were at a higher frequency in the successful calls:

The SPIN training concentrated on developing an increased number of Problem Questions, Implication Questions, Need-payoff Questions, and Benefits. As each of these behaviors is at a significantly higher frequency in Motorola Canada’s successful calls, we can conclude that the training is teaching people behaviors that should help them sell more effectively.

Have People Changed?

There’s evidence that the model works in Motorola. The next step must be to show that the 42 people who were trained are actually using the new behaviors in their calls. To test this, we observed people selling before the training period, during the training period, and after it in order to determine whether they are now behaving differently with their customers.

We sampled each of the 42 people at five points (Figure A.7). The first time we went out with them was immediately before the training. The other four times were at intervals of approximately 3 weeks during the training period itself. At the start of the training, people were asking more Situation Questions (average 8.6 per call) than the combined total of Problem plus Implication plus Need-payoff Questions (average 5.8 per call). So the three questioning behaviors statistically associated with success were being used less than Situation Questions—the one questioning behavior not significantly associated with success.

Figure A.7. Motorola Canada: Changes in questioning behavior.

By the end of the training period, however, this had been reversed. The frequency of the successful questions had risen to 8.8 in the average call, while the level of Situation Questions had fallen. In terms of questioning behavior, we can safely conclude that the 42 salespeople are now behaving in a more successful way than before.

At the start of the training, the Benefits were at an average level of 1.2 per call (Figure A.8). By the end of the training, Benefits rose to 2.2 per call. Remember that Benefits, of all the behaviors, are the ones most predictive of success in Motorola Canada calls. Your salespeople are now giving customers almost twice as many Benefits per call as they were before the training. In view of this, it would not be surprising if this pilot results in measurable sales increases.

Figure A.8. Motorola Canada: Changes in Benefits per call.

Has Productivity Changed?

To measure productivity change, I have:

  Examined the sales results for the 42 people in the pilot and compared them with a control group of 42 untrained salespeople from Motorola Canada.

  Compared the results for three time periods:

  Three months before the SPIN training

  Three months during the SPIN implementation period

  Three months after the implementation

  The results therefore span a 9-month period.

  Measured sales in terms of:

  Total orders

  Orders from new accounts

  Orders from existing accounts

  Dollar value of sales

In terms of total orders (Figure A.9), the 42 people in the control group have shown a 13 percent fall from their original pretraining level. This is due to the competitiveness of the communications marketplace, coupled with the extremely difficult Canadian economy. In contrast, the SPIN-trained group has shown a 17 percent gain, reversing the trends of a difficult market. This gross difference of 30 percent in order rate between the control and experimental groups is statistically significant.

Figure A.9. Motorola Canada: Changes in total order levels.

The management of Motorola Canada is focusing its effort on increasing new business and wants to know whether the SPIN training made a significant contribution to new-business sales. As Figure A.10 shows, new-business sales from the control group increased only during the training period, when the sales organization was putting great effort into new-business sales; in the period after the training, sales fell back to below their original level, reflecting the difficulties in the market. In contrast, the SPIN-trained group showed an order gain of 63 percent, reversing the generally poor market performance. It’s particularly interesting to note the increase in the SPIN-trained group’s orders in the period after the training had ended; this suggests that the new skills are now self-maintaining and can be expected to make a continued impact on sales productivity. Before the study, some of your sales managers had expressed reservations about the “soft” nature of the SPIN Model, with its emphasis on probing and not on the “hard” closing techniques that some managers felt to be essential to the new business sale in a very difficult and competitive market, but the results indicate that they have no reason to be worried. The SPIN training has succeeded in generating significant business against hard-sell competition.

Figure A.10. Motorola Canada: Changes in new-business order.

In terms of business generated from existing accounts (Figure A.11), the record of the control group is better. Both groups show a fall in business from existing accounts during the training. This is due to the sales organization’s focus on new business during that period. However, while the control group shows a 13 percent overall decline, the SPIN-trained group shows a 1 percent increase.

Figure A.11. Motorola Canada: Changes in orders from existing customers.

An increase in orders can be misleading. It’s possible that the productivity gain of the SPIN group was because it took more small orders, while the control group took fewer orders but each one had a greater dollar value. Because of this possibility, we needed to take a direct measurement of the dollar value of sales. Since dollar sales figures are confidential and this is a report for general release, we have therefore displayed the change in dollar value for the two groups in percentage terms to preserve confidentiality (Figure A.12). The control group showed a decline of 22.1 percent in terms of dollars sold; again, this reflects the extraordinarily difficult market conditions. The SPIN-trained group reversed this trend, showing an overall gain of 5.3 percent in dollar value. Note that these results suggest that some of the dramatic 63 percent order increase made by the SPIN group in the new-business area does come from a larger number of smaller orders.

Figure A.12. Motorola Canada: Pre/post change in dollar value of sales.

In terms of dollar sales, the SPIN group is running at 27.4 percent above the control group. This difference is substantial and statistically significant. It would seem that the cost and effort of implementing the SPIN approach has been repaid many times over in terms of sales results.

Conclusions

These results suggest that the SPIN approach has succeeded in:

  Changing the skill levels of the people trained

  Increasing order levels, particularly in the new-business area

  Increasing the dollar volume of sales by an average of 27 percent above the control group

Two Serious Flaws

Marti Bishop’s evaluation study represented the most detailed, rigorous, and comprehensive examination of a sales-training program ever carried out. I’ve quoted here from the summary version, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg. She used additional control groups, used methodologies involving sales managers in the data collection process, and used some sophisticated computer techniques to build success models and analyze results. But as powerful as this study is, it still doesn’t contain that elusive “proof” we were looking for.

If I wanted to discredit the Motorola study, I’d point out two flaws, each of which could be potentially serious enough to give a strict methodologist palpitations:

1. The control group starts from a lower point than the SPIN group. If you look at order levels before training (Figure A.9), the control group averaged 16.3 orders and the SPIN group 17.9. Now this difference isn’t statistically significant, so perhaps it’s nothing to worry about. Nevertheless, a cynic might argue that the SPIN group did better in a difficult economy because it was a little better to begin with.

2. There might be a Hawthorne effect. This is a technical term for the artificial increase in results that you get when you pay attention to people. The name comes from the Hawthorne plant of Western Electric, where some of the early productivity studies were carried out in the late 1920s. In one of the Hawthorne experiments, researchers found that when they increased the intensity of the plant’s lighting, productivity rose. But to their astonishment, productivity also rose when they decreased the lighting levels. Their conclusion was that you can get a short-term increase in productivity just by giving people attention. In the Motorola study, you could argue, the productivity increase came from all the training attention that the SPIN group was receiving. It wouldn’t matter whether we trained the group in the SPIN methods or in aerobic dancing. Productivity would have risen anyway because of the Hawthorne effect.

I had a couple of standard answers prepared to counter any suggestion that the change was due to a Hawthorne effect. My first defense was that Hawthorne effects are much less common than most people suppose and that when they do occur, they are short-term, usually lasting for a matter of days at the most. The Motorola study, which spanned a 9-month evaluation period, would almost certainly be free of any serious Hawthorne effect. My second defense was: “Who cares? The fact is that we’ve increased productivity. If it’s a Hawthorne effect, then let’s Hawthorne the whole sales force and get a 30 percent increase in sales from everybody.” But my heart wasn’t in either of these answers. The researcher in me badly wanted to know whether a Hawthorne effect existed and, if so, how much it had contributed to the productivity gain.

A New Evaluation Test

Motorola was convinced enough by the study to adopt the SPIN methods worldwide. Being satisfied that the methods worked, it saw no value in further attempts to disprove the link between SPIN and productivity. In fact, Motorola dismissed my concern as an example of that rather quaint eccentricity which the English show in times of stress.

We needed a new client with enough doubt to justify another large-scale investigation. Salvation came in the form of a giant multinational business-machines company who, like Motorola, wished to test SPIN for worldwide application. With only moderate difficulty, I persuaded the company to let me carry out the remaining two tests that would plug the gaps in the Motorola study: (1) using a matched control group and (2) measuring the Hawthorne effect.

Before carrying out these tests, we went through the same methodology that we had used in Motorola. I’ll spare you the detailed findings, which were very similar to those in Motorola except for these differences:

  Situation Questions were 4 percent lower in successful calls. This is in line with our main research findings, which show that Situation Questions have a slightly negative effect on customers.

  As in Motorola, the Problem, Implication, and Need-payoff Questions were all significantly higher in successful calls. So were the Benefits. (But unlike Motorola, where Need-payoff Questions were the ones most strongly associated with success, the most powerful behavior in this study turned out to be Implication Questions.)

The behavioral changes brought about by the training were greater in this implementation than in Motorola. As Figure A.13 shows, the Problem, Implication, and Need-payoff Questions almost doubled, while the level of Situation Questions remained fairly constant.

Figure A.13. Changes in questioning behavior.

The Benefits showed a particularly pleasing rise—from 1.1 per call to 3.4 (Figure A.14). This may not sound like much, but here’s how I looked at it. The 55 people trained in the study were making an average of 16 sales call per week, which means that in an average week before the SPIN training there were 968 Benefits offered to customers. At the end of the study, in an average week the same people were giving 2992 Benefits. It would be surprising not to get a significant increase in sales from these 2024 extra Benefits.

Figure A.14. Changes in benefits.

A Matched Control Group

Our opportunity in this study to match the control group with the experimental group so that both groups started with the same order level allowed us to test one possible weakness in our Motorola results—that the reason for the increase could be because the SPIN group started from a higher point. Again, as in Motorola, we compared the performance of each group for a 3-month pre period and a 3-month post period. The control group showed a 21 percent fall in orders, while the SPIN group showed a 16 percent gain under the same, unfavorable economic and competitive conditions (Figure A.15). This study was also carried out under unfavorable economic and competitive conditions, which accounts for the fall in the control group’s orders.

Figure A.15. Changes in productivity after training.

By having matched the initial order levels of the control and experimental groups, we could now confidently reject the idea that the reason for Motorola’s 30 percent gain in orders was that the SPIN group had better salespeople to begin with. That explanation couldn’t be true here, where the initial order levels of both groups were the same.

Measuring the Hawthorne Effect

The Hawthorne effect was harder to test. As far as we knew, nobody before us had ever tried to measure whether a Hawthorne element existed in sales training. As we thought about the problem, it became easy to see why we were the first. It’s not hard to measure the impact of plant lighting on output, but how do you measure whether a sales productivity gain is due to the SPIN Model or due simply to the fact that you’ve given attention to people by offering them training?

The method we adopted was a little complex, but this was inevitable, given the difficulty of the issue we were trying to measure. Basically, the approach we used was this:

1. We reanalyzed the productivity results from our group of 55 people trained to use the SPIN approach. Each of these people had exactly the same number of hours of training, so all 55 had received a similar level of attention. All had, so to speak, an identical dose of the Hawthorne effect.

2. We divided our 55 people into two subgroups. In any group that’s learning any skill—whether it’s golf, a foreign language, or selling—some people naturally learn more than others. From having measured their behavior in calls, we identified the 27 people who were displaying the most use of the SPIN behaviors and put them in one subgroup, and in the other subgroup we put the other 28, whose use of the SPIN behaviors was lower.

3. We compared the sales results of the two subgroups. If their productivity gains had been due entirely to a Hawthorne effect, then both subgroups should have shown identical gains, because both had received the same amount of training and management attention. But, if their productivity gains had resulted from using the SPIN Model, then the subgroup showing the greatest learning of SPIN should have had a significantly higher productivity gain than the subgroup showing a poorer level of learning.

4. Finally, we compared the performance of both subgroups with a similar-size control group of 52 untrained salespeople to make sure that the changes weren’t caused by a market, product, or organizational effect.

Once we’d decided on this methodology, we set about reexamining our data in an attempt to isolate the elusive Hawthorne effect. Our results are shown in Figure A.16, which reveals that there was a Hawthorne effect at work but that, as with most Hawthorne effects, its impact was short-lived.

First, let’s look at the performance of the subgroup of people higher on SPIN skills. In Figure A.16 their results show an increase during the training period, when they were receiving the most attention. But, more important, their results continue to improve after the training is over, when they are receiving no attention that might create a Hawthorne effect.

Figure A.16. Isolating the Hawthorne effect.

In contrast, the results from the subgroup of people lower on SPIN skills show a dramatic improvement during the 4-month training period. However, as soon as the training attention is withdrawn, their results slip back to the original level. Here we have the Hawthorne effect—isolated for the first time in the field of sales performance.

Finally, let’s look at the control group. Selling the same products in the same difficult capital goods market, their performance shows a decrease both during and after the other group’s training. So we can conclude that the improvement of the higher SPIN subgroup did not result from market, product, or organizational factors. Compared with the control group, even the performance of the lower SPIN subgroup looks good. Instead of showing a gradual decline, its people are at least holding their own.

Final Thoughts on Evaluation

There are even more tests I’d like to carry out before I’ll be totally satisfied that the ideas I’ve described in this book will significantly improve the results of major sales. It’s a never-ending quest. When I was growing up in Borneo there were no roads and all trips were by river. At any point of any journey, if you asked the boatman how much farther, you’d get the same reply—“Satu tanjong lagi”—which means “One more bend.” Evaluation studies are like that. Just when you think you’ve all the proof you need, there’s one more bend.

We’ll probably never get round that final bend. But I hope you’ll agree that in our search for proof, Huthwaite has explored the river carefully. We’ve tried to take an objective and critical look at our own models and whether they work—and by doing so we’ve become better researchers, designers, and trainers. Above all, we’ve been able to increase the practical effectiveness of our approach. Ironically, by going through these very academic-sounding testing routines, we’ve improved our understanding of what makes practical good sense, measured by its contribution to sales results. I wish more people in the training business could be persuaded to take a similar approach. It would be very satisfying to us if this book stimulated more research into effective selling. I’d like to think that eventually, through patient investigation and experiment, researchers will be able to take more of the mystery out of the major sale and make it as clearly understandable as any other business function.

Appendix [B] Closing-Attitude Scale

In Chapter 2 we looked at closing techniques, and in the “Attitude problems” section I mentioned an attitude scale that we developed to measure people’s feelings about closing. If you’d like to test yourself, here’s how:

1. Read the following 15 statements about closing.

2. After each statement, put a check in the box that most nearly represents your own opinion.

3. Follow the instructions at the end of the scale to calculate and interpret your score.

1. Closing is the most valuable of all techniques for increasing sales.

1. Trying to close a sale too often will reduce your changes of success.

3. Unless you know a lot of closing techniques, you will be unable to sell effectively.

4. Even at the start of a sale, it never hurts to use a trial close.

5. Weak closing is the most common cause of lost sales.

1. Customers are less likely to buy if they recognize that you are using closing techniques.

7. You cannot close too often when selling.

8. Closing techniques don’t work with professional buyers.

9. The ABC of selling is Always Be Closing.

1. It’s your other behavior earlier in the sale, not your closing technique, that determines whether a customer will buy.

11. You should try to close every time that you see a buying signal.

12. From the moment you enter the customer’s office, you should act as though the sale has already been made.

13. If a customer resists your trial close, then it’s a sign that you should have closed more forcefully.

1. No matter how good your other skills, you will never succeed unless you have good closing techniques.

15. Using closing techniques early in the sale is a sure way to antagonize customers.

Calculate your Score

To calculate your score, take the number (between 1 and 5) of the box that you checked for each statement and add up your total for the 15 statements.

Theoretically, a score of 45 is absolutely neutral. A higher score shows a positive attitude toward closing, and a lower score shows a negative attitude. In practice, most salespeople score a little above 45, and in our studies we allowed for this by taking a score above 50 as demonstrating a favorable attitude toward closing.

What Do the Scores Mean?

In the study described in Chapter 2 (see Figure 2.2), the salespeople with the best results were those with a low (unfavorable) score: one below 50.

As Chapter 2 explains, however, the effectiveness of closing techniques depends on the type of selling you do. If your business involves low-value goods and services, unsophisticated customers, and no after-sale relationship with the customer, then a very favorable attitude toward closing (a score above 50) might well be justified in terms of your selling situation. But if you score above 50 on this test and your business involves larger sales, sophisticated customers, and a continuing post-sale relationship, then please read Chapter 2 very carefully. In the larger sale, closing techniques are more of a liability than an asset.

Index

Please note that index links point to page beginnings from the print edition. Locations are approximate in e-readers, and you may need to page down one or more times after clicking a link to get to the indexed material.

Actions, 45, 47, 64

specific, 48

successful, 48–51

Advances, 44, 47

Advantages, 103–106

effect of, 110–111

in longer selling cycle, 108–110

objections and, 124–133

probable effect on customers of, 119, 120

relative impact of, 106–111

Alternative closes, 20

Appetite, Features, 101

Approval, Benefits and, 133–135 Assumptive closes, 20

Attitude toward closing, 25–27

closing-attitude scale, 187–191

Behavior, sales:

new, trying, 149–150

success and, 1–18

Behavior analysis, 1

Bells-and-whistles approach for new products, 111–112

Benefit statement, opening, 139, 141–143 Benefits, 100

approval and, 133–135

changes in, 183

defined, 101–102

giving, 5

in major sales, 99–116

in longer selling cycle, 108–110

probable effects on customers of, 119, 120

relationship of, to sales, 109

relative impact of, 106–111

success and, 107–108

summarizing, 50

support and, 133–135

Type A and Type B; 102–108

Bird, Mike, 168

Bishop, Marti, 173, 179

Blake, William, 159

Boundary issues, 89

Boyles, Bob, 38–39

Buyers (see Customers)

Buying signals in major sales, 62–65

Call objectives, 42–43

setting, 47–48

Call stages, summary of, 152–155

Calls, sales:

four stages of, 11–14, 153–154

high-close, 24

low-close, 24

objections early in, 135

opening, 4, 137–145

planning, 158

reviewing, 158–159

warming-up stage of, 137–141

Capabilities, demonstrating, 115–116

Clients (see Customers)

Closed questions, 2, 15–16, 90–91

Closing-attitude scale, 187–191

Closing sales, 19–51

absence of, 38–39

attitude toward, 25–27

consensus on, 21–22

customer satisfaction and, 35–36

decision size and, 30–34

defined, 21

number of, success rate versus, 40

price and, 32

research into, 22–30

sophisticated customers and, 34–35

standard techniques for, 20

successful, 41–47

training in, 27–29

Closing techniques, 2, 5

Commitment:

customer, 48–51

obtaining (see Obtaining Commitment stage)

proposing, 50–51 realistic, 51

size of, 8–9

Concerns, key, customer, 49–50

Continuations, 44–46

Control-group study, misleading, 166

Control groups, 164–165

matched, 181–182

Conventional openings, 139–143

Customer needs, 54

development of, 55–57

different in large and small sales, 54–55

explicit (see Explicit needs)

implied (see Implied needs)

in major sales, 53–65

Customers:

commitment of (see Commitment, customer)

high-technology, 80

internal selling by, 85–88

key concerns of, 49–50

new points of view of, 130

ongoing relationship with, 9–10

personal interests of, 139–141

preventing objections from, 135

probable effects of Features, Advantages, and Benefits on, 119, 120

satisfaction of, closing and, 35–36

sophisticated, closing and, 34–35

Decision makers, 80

Decision size, closing and, 30–34

Demonstrating capabilities, 115–116

Demonstrating Capability stage, 12, 99–116, 153, 155

classic ways for, 99–106

Details, 158–159

importance of, 159

Directive probes, 15

Disproof, stages of, 170–172

Edwards, J. Douglas, 21

Entelechy, 147, 148

Evaluating/evaluation:

final thoughts on, 186

sales training, 168–169

SPIN Model, 161–186

steps, 172

test, new, 180–186

Experience, problem questions and, 71

Explicit needs, 58, 107, 108

developing implied needs into, 81

expressed, 108

success and, 62–65

Type B Benefits and, 102

Features, 100–101

in longer selling cycle, 108–110

neutral, 100

price concerns and, 119–124

probable effects on customers of, 119, 120

relative impact of, 106–111

too many, 121–123

Features appetite, 101

First impressions, 138–139

Fishbein, Martin, 26

Franklin, Benjamin, 149

Hard-sell style, 7

Harrison, Roger, 37

Hawthorne effect, 180

isolating, 185

measuring, 182–185

High-close calls, 24

High-technology sales, 80

Imai, Masaaki, 72–73

Implication questions, 17, 73–81, 92–93, 154–155

danger of, 81

difference between need-payoff questions and, 88–90

main power of, 79–80

planning, 94–96

Implied needs, 57–62

developing, into explicit needs, 81

uncovering, 72

Impressions, first, 138–139

Internal selling, 85–88

Investigating stage, 12, 14–17, 48, 53–54, 153–155

focus on, 156

Kelvin, Lord, 161

Key concerns, customer, 49–50

Kodak test, 173

Landry, Tom, 149

Large sales, 6–11

buying signals in, 62–65

customer needs in, 54–55, 63–65

giving benefits in, 99–116

problem questions in, 71–72

success in, 4–6

Last-chance closes, 20

Learning:

new skills, strategies for, 148–153

skills, rules for, 148–153

SPIN behaviors, 55–159

Lickert Scale, 26

Low-close calls, 24

Lund, P., 21

Major sales (see Large sales)

Management Magazine, 163–164

Marsh, Linda, 119, 124, 133

Matched control group, 181–182

Mistakes, risk of, 10–11

Motorola Canada productivity study, 173–180

Movement, 47

Multi-call sales, 6–7

Need-payoff questions, 17, 81–88, 93, 155

avoiding early, 96

avoiding unproductive, 96–97

difference between implication questions and, 88–90

importance of, 88

internal selling and, 85–88

objections reduced by, 83–85

practicing effective, 97–98

using, 96

Needs:

customer (see Customer needs)

explicit (see Explicit needs)

implied (see Implied needs)

New-product launch, 111–114

Nondirective probes, 15

No-sales, 41, 45

Objections, 117–135

Advantages and, 124–133

creating, 126

early in call, 135

handling of, 2, 5, 117–135

preventing, from customers, 135

prevention of, 129–131, 133–135

price, 121–123

reduced by need-payoff questions, 83–85

sales-training approach to, 131–133

success and, 132–133

about value, 135

Objectives:

call (see Call objectives)

focusing on, 143–144

Obtaining commitment, 19–51

Obtaining Commitment stage, 12–14, 19–51, 153, 155

four successful actions, 48–51

Ongoing relationship with customers, 9–10

Open questions, 2, 15–16, 90–91

Opening benefit statement, 139, 141–143

Opening sales calls, 4, 137–145

Openings, conventional, 139–143

Order-blank closes, 20

Orders, 41, 44

Perceived value, 8

Personal interests of customers, 139–141 Planning calls, 158

Popper, Karl, 168

Practical skills, theoretical models

converted to, 147–159

Practice, 147

one behavior at a time, 148–149

in safe situations, 152

Preliminaries stage, 11–12, 137–145, 153, 154

making effective, 144–145

Preventing objections, 117–135

Price:

closing and, 32

concerns, Features and, 119–124

objections, 121–123

sensitivity, 120–121

Probing skills, 2

Problem questions, 17, 69–73, 92, 154

experience and, 71

in major sales, 71–72

success and, 72–73

Problem-solving approach:

analyzing products with, 157–158

for new products, 112–114

Product statements, 105–106

answers for types of, 115–116

Productivity change, 175–178

Productivity study, Motorola Canada, 173–180

Products:

analyzing, in problem-solving terms, 157–158

new, selling, 111–114

Professional Selling Skills (PSS) program, 141, 142

Proof, stages of, 170–172

PSS (Professional Selling Skills) program, 141, 142

Pushiness, 7, 111

Quantity before quality, 150–152

Questions:

closed, 2, 15–16, 90–91

concentration on, 145

developing, in SPIN sequence, 156–157

implication (see Implication questions)

need-payoff (see Need-payoff questions)

open, 2, 15–16, 90–91

problem (see Problem questions)

situation (see Situation questions)

SPIN sequence of (see SPIN sequence of questions)

success and, 14–16

Quincy’s Rule, 89–90

Reviewing calls, 158–159

Risk of mistakes, 10–11

Ruff, Dick, 18

Sales:

closing (see Closing sales)

high-technology, 80 large (see Large sales)

major (see Large sales)

multi-call, 6–7

new-product, 111–114

relationship of Benefits to, 109

single-call, 6–7

small (see Small sales)

Sales behavior (see Behavior sales)

Sales calls (see Calls, sales)

Sales success (see Success)

Sales training, 162

evaluating, 168–169

Sales-training approach to objections, 31–133

Salespeople, talking with, 22–23

Satisfaction, customer, closing and, 35–36

Schoonmaker, Alan, 21

Selling:

internal, 85–88

new products, 111–114

Selling cycle:

length of, 6–7

longer, Features, Advantages, and Benefits in, 108–110

Signals, buying, in major sales, 62–65 Single-call sales, 6–7

Situation questions, 17, 67–69, 92, 154

unnecessary, 69

Skills:

learning, rules for, 148–153

new, strategies for learning, 148–153

practical, theoretical models turned to, 147–159

Small sales, 5

customer needs in, 54–55

Socrates, 80–81

Sophisticated customers, closing and, 34–35

SPIN behaviors, learning, 155–159

SPIN Model, 91–93, 155

evaluating, 161–186

Kodak test of, 173

Motorola Canada productivity study, 173–180

new evaluation test, 180–186

report on, 163–164

SPIN sequence of questions, 16–18, 67, 154, 155

developing questions in, 156–157

using, 94–98

SPIN strategy, 3, 67–98

Standing-room-only closes, 20

Statement, opening benefit, 139, 141–143

Stennek, Hans, 51

Strategy(ies):

for learning new skills, 148–153

for learning SPIN behaviors, 155–159

SPIN, 3, 67–98

Strong, E. K., 15

Success:

benefits and, 107–108

explicit needs and, 62–65

investigation into, 3

in larger sales, 4–6

number of closes versus, 40

objection levels and, 132–133

problem questions and, 72–73

questions and, 14–16

sales behavior and, 1–18

Summarizing benefits, 50

Support, benefits and, 133–135

Theoretical models converted to practical skills, 147–159

Training in closing, 27–29

Training program, 162

Transaction time, 31–33

Type A and Type B Benefits, 102–108

Value, 60

building, 127–129

objections about, 35

perceived, 8

Value equation, 61–62, 77

Warming-up stage of call, 137–141

Warr, Peter, 168

Wilson, John, 18

Zehren, David, 39

About the Author

Neil Rackham is president and founder of Huthwaite, Inc.
His organization researches, consults, and gives seminars for over 200 leading sales organizations around the world, including Xerox, IBM, AT&T, Kodak, and Citicorp. His academic background is in research psychology. It was at the University of Sheffield, England, that he began his research into sales effectiveness that resulted in SPIN. He is the author of over 50 articles and several books which have been translated into a total of 11 languages.

Refer questions to:

Huthwaite, Inc.
Wheatland Manor
15164 Berlin Turnpike
Purcellville, VA 20132 USA
(540)882-3212 (telephone)
(540)822-9004 (fax)