As consumer behavior changes, to make a consultative sale, the salesperson needs to follow a method in which he can encourage the customer to talk about their pains and desires. Every sale goes through a process that, according to the author of the book, has 4 phases, as shown in Figure 7.
The Research Stage: Asking questions and collecting data about consumers, businesses, and their needs
SPIN Method
The studies highlighted in the book revealed that the stage that most influences the success of the sale is the Investigation stage , the reason being that it is at this stage that the customer's needs are raised, not for nothing did Rackham create the SPIN questions for this investigation phase, which we call "diagnosis" here at Hubify.
As the sale becomes larger and more complex, list of timeshare owners the buyer's context changes: 1- needs take longer to develop, 2- the purchase involves input, influences, and contributions from multiple people, not just the desires of a single individual, 3- needs are expressed on a rational basis, and 4- the consequences of a bad choice are more serious.
Before we start talking about needs, it is worth mentioning the definition that Rackham used in the book: “Any statement made by the buyer that expresses a desire or concern that can be satisfied by the seller.”
Needs usually begin with minor imperfections and evolve into problems, difficulties and dissatisfactions, to finally become desires, wishes or intentions to act. Needs can be divided into 2 types, as shown in Figure 8:
Implicit Needs: Statement by the customer of a problem. Example: We are not satisfied with the speed of our server.
Explicit Needs: Specific statements by the customer about a want or desire. Example: We need a faster server.
Implicit and explicit needs
Implicit needs are just a starting point, the raw material that successful salespeople use as part of their needs development strategy, that is, it is the starting point for the salesperson to extract explicit needs.
And why is it important to extract explicit needs from implicit needs? Because the greater number of explicit needs in a sales negotiation is directly linked to successful sales negotiations as shown in Figure 9.
Explicit Needs and Success in Bigger Sales
That's why we should avoid lazy salespeople on our team. It's very common for low-performing salespeople to jump to the closing phase the moment they hear from the lead that they need the product the salesperson is offering.
It turns out that without the buyer's awareness of their explicit needs, sales conversion rates are lower, since the buyer is not feeling an "unbearable pain" that leads him to the conclusion that he cannot live without the product or service that is being offered to him.