SPIN
SPIN selling
Situation, Problem, Implication, Need-payoff
SPIN is a sequence, and the sequence is the point. Most reps collapse it: a few situation questions, then a pitch. The discipline is staying in implication long enough that the buyer, not the seller, says why it matters.
All five methodologies
It arrives having already done the situation questions
Headcount, stack, structure, funding, who they sell to — a buyer resents being asked what is on the website. The brain reads first and opens where the public record runs out, which is where a good first call should start anyway.
It stays in implication when a rep would reach for the demo
The hardest discipline in SPIN is not asking the implication question; it is asking the second and third one. The brain has no urge to present. It will follow a problem outward — what that costs, who else it reaches, what it has already prevented — until the implication is the buyer's sentence rather than yours.
It lets the buyer state the need-payoff
A need-payoff question the seller answers is a pitch with a question mark on it. The brain asks and then stops, and it records the buyer's own words, because those are the words that work on the rest of their committee when you are not there.
What it will not do.
It will not pitch out of sequence to rescue an awkward silence. If the implication is not established, it asks another question rather than filling the gap with product.