SPIN, Relevant To Both Salesmanship & Advertising!
Copyright 2005 Daniel Levis

What can face to face selling tell you about online
salesletters & advertising?

Plenty, once you understand the basics of direct response
marketing. Remember, the Internet is the ultimate direct
response vehicle. Using a website, or email as an
advertising medium gives you two very important elements
that are critical for direct response success.

You have virtually unlimited messaging space, so you can &
should tell your full sales story, & you have almost
instant feedback. It's more like the face to face sales
call than any other form of passive media.

That said, let me illustrate some face to face selling
fundamentals that you can relate to your online sales
efforts.

"The SPIN Concept"

Neil Rackham turned the world of high-ticket salesmanship
on its ear. By observing over 35,000 actual sales calls, he
scientifically isolated & identified the specific behaviors
exhibited by successful salespeople. He called it SPIN
selling.

Situation, Problem, Implication, Need Pay-off.

It should come as no surprise that one of the things that
he discovered was that successful salesmanship means asking
a lot of questions, before presenting products. This is
just common sense. What would you think of your Doctor if
he told you, “Here, take these Zoloft tablets. By the way,
what seems to be bothering you?” Probably not very much, so
don’t ‘show up & throw up’, ask questions.

So far, so good, but what kind of a questioning process
most often resulted in a positive result?

Here’s what he discovered.

At the beginning of the sales cycle, good questions about
the buyer’s situation were well received, provided these
questions were perceived by the buyer to be relevant, and
to illicit information that was not easily obtained
elsewhere. The best situation questions were those that
built on the seller’s research. For example, “Many of the
homes in this area have sump pumps, do you have one too?”
Neil characterized these ‘situation’ questions as being of
a fact-finding nature (who, where, when, what, how,
yes/no). They serve to give the salesperson a frame of
reference for the client’s specific setting. The client
appreciates being treated as an individual, but quickly
becomes impatient with too many of these ‘situation’
questions.

The successful salesperson maintains the customer’s
interest by following on with questions that seek to
identify or better understand a problem that exists within
the prospective client’s situation. For example “Do you
find it worrisome when you travel, wondering whether the
power might go out, causing the sump pump to stop working
when you’re away?” Again this shouldn’t come as a big
surprise to anyone, right? No problem, no sale. But Rackham
soon discovered that getting a customer to admit to a
problem & then addressing that problem in a sales
presentation was rarely enough to win the sale.

The sales calls that most often resulted in a sale, or an
advance, were characterized by what Neil termed implication
& need pay off questions. Implication questions serve to
explore the ramifications of a problem. In the examples
we’ve got going, the prospect relies on a sump pump to keep
water out of her basement. Instead of diving directly into
a sales pitch for a battery back up unit, the salesperson
exhibiting winning salesmanship would ask additional
questions to magnify the problem, before presenting the
solution. “Would you have a flood, if you’re sump pump
where to fail?” “Cleaning up after a flood is not a
pleasant thought, but did you know that if it were to
happen, it could also result in health threatening molds
starting to grow between the framing & the concrete?”
“Could it put your insurance up, if you were to file a
claim?” And so on.

Before a prospect will spend money on solving a problem, it
has to hurt. But people need to feel empowered & confidant
when they buy, and that’s where ‘need pay off’ questions
come in. Need pay off questions serve to stimulate the
imagination. They get the prospect envisioning the pay off
that they get by buying into your solution. Here are a
couple of examples. “Would you consider adding a recreation
room in the basement here, after we install this battery
back up system for you?” “Wouldn’t that greatly enhance the
enjoyment of your home?”

I submit to you that what Niel Rackham discovered as an
observer of thousands of sales calls has a parallel in
online advertising. While a piece of media can’t respond in
real time to a specific customer’s questions, it should
most definitely be based on the most common responses to
those questions.

It should be very much like the presentation that the
salesperson gives to the customer after uncovering the
implications of the problem. It should set the stage
(situation), discuss the problem, explore the varied
implications of that problem, and create a vision of how
much better life could be (need pay-off), with your
solution.

The most effective online advertising (salesmanship in
print) does just this.

These concepts are also present in a winning sales letter.
Take a look at some of the parallels that you can find in
Robert Collier’s famous “salesmanship in print” letters.

The take away point is this. Take the time to survey your
salespeople & your customers to uncover the ripple effects
of both the problems that you are trying to solve, as well
as the solution that you can provide. You might be
surprised by what you discover. Then work those insights
into your online advertising copy & sales letters to
enhance perceived value.


About the Author:

Daniel Levis is a top marketing consultant & direct
response copywriter based in Toronto Canada. Recently,
Daniel & world-renowned publicist & copywriter Joe Vitale
teamed up to co author “Million Dollar Online Advertising
Strategies – From The Greatest Letter Writer Of The 20th
Century!”, a tribute to the late, great Robert Collier.
Let the legendary Robert Collier show you how to write
words that sell...Visit the below site & get 3 FREE
Chapters!
http://www.Advertising-Online-Strategies.com/ad-strategies.html