// Sales
SPIN Selling
Situation, Problem, Implication, Need-payoff, Neil Rackham's question-based framework for consultative discovery.
In depth
Based on 35,000 sales-call observations at Xerox and IBM in the 1980s, SPIN found that top reps ask more Implication and Need-payoff questions, surfacing the cost of the problem, than mediocre reps, who focus on features. Still the canonical discovery framework taught inside most enterprise sales orgs.
Related terms
Discovery Call
The first substantive sales conversation, where qualification, pain and process are established, not product pitched.
Challenger Sale
CEB's 2011 research: complex-sale winners Teach, Tailor and Take Control, they reframe the buyer's worldview.
Gap Selling
Keenan's framework: sell the gap between the buyer's current state and future state, quantified in business impact.