Using the SPIN Selling behaviours

Written by Neil Rackham

 

Video Transcription: People are quite obsessed with the quality of their behaviour. Was it a good implication question? Would it have been better if I'd asked it like this? It's about quality. If you really want to learn you should learn quantity before quality.

One of the things I say to people is I was taught a language, I was taught French. I studied French for five years and my teachers all the time were giving me quality feedback. This isn't a regular verb. No the pronunciation is like this. That's the wrong tense. All the feedback I'd get was about the quality of what I was doing.

Most people like me who went through the same experience never really learnt another language because it takes a huge amount of time and confidence to get to the point where you can begin to take-off with quality based feedback.

Look at modern language training. Modern language training says go out speak it talk it to hell with pronunciation. Don't worry if it's the wrong tense, go out and talk it, talk it, talk it. But if you speak it enough it will come right and that's absolutely true of the SPIN questions don't worry about is is a good problem question? Ask a lot of problem questions. You'll soon find what the good ones are. They'll refine themselves. But unless you ask a lot of the behaviour you're not going to get there.

I've seen people for years who've agonised about well should I phrase it like this or like that? Or is this a better question than this? Fine that they should do that but that's not helping them learn. It would be better that they ask three or four different questions and let real-life sort out which ones are the best ones.

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