6 Takeaways From SPIN Selling That Are Still Relevant

Over the weekend, I re-read Neil Rackham's SPIN Selling. Although published in 1988, this book provides timeless insights for GTM professionals at any stage.

Like How to Win Friends and Influence People from the 1930s, understanding human decision-making patterns is key to sales. These books are still relevant in 2025 because there is still an art component of sales (albeit 30% 😀), and the way humans make decisions hasn’t changed much.

As a refresher, SPIN stands for:

• Situation Questions - Gathering an understanding, facts, and data about the current state (how bad is the current state?)

• Problem Questions - Exploring specific difficulties and dissatisfaction that could be solved (what problems/challenges is the bad current state causing?)

• Implication Questions - Understanding the broader effects and consequences of these problems (to what area of the business does this impact (eng, sales, etc.)? How impactful negatively are these problems/where do they sit on the priority list?)

• Need-Payoff Questions - Getting prospects to articulate the benefits and value of solving the problem (what does this mean metric-wise? Revenue, cost, and risk implications? Does the prospect agree?)

What stands out about this book (compared to other GTM books) is its focus on high-ticket B2B sales rather than transactional selling, plus its foundation in data from thousands of sales call recordings and top rep shadowing (impressive to have done before Gong).

After 6 years in sales at both large companies and startups, here are the 6 key principles I've found most relevant:

TL; DR:

• 1) Strong Discovery is Your Best Close

• 2) Align Questions to the Buyer's Journey

• 3) Structure Discovery to Build Pain, Not Just Find It

• 4) Micro-commitments Are Good Tests Throughout The Process

• 5) Do Your Homework to Minimize Situational Questions

• 6) Charisma is a Multiplier, Not a Foundation 

1) Strong Discovery is Your Best Close

"The effect of pressure is inversely related to the size of the decision." - Neil Rackham

In high-ticket B2B sales, weak closers are typically weak investigators. The best reps excel at discovery early on in the sale (they ensure they’re working on real deals, not high-pressure tactics at the end of deals with low chances of closing). I've found in enterprise deals that thorough, effective discovery accomplishes three things (not exhaustive):

• It helps prospects self-discover the depth of their problems (even if you know they have a problem, they have to be willing to solve it)

• It builds internal champions who can articulate value to other stakeholders (for more here, read Selling With)

• It helps reps know if they are working on real deals or not

  • Early-stage/evangelical sales - this is a little more fluid and unstructured

  • More established markets/enterprise sales - MEDDICC is your friend here

2) Align Questions to the Buyer's Journey, Background, Size

Your approach should differ based on the following:

• Inbound vs. outbound

  • If you book a call via inbound, a buyer will (obviously) be more inclined to want to talk to you - so jump right into the current state and why they’re looking for a change

  • If you book a call via outbound, you often need to earn the right to get them talking a little more. For this, I recommend explaining what you commonly see and why you reached out

    • Hey X, I saw you’re X role, and I wanted to share our findings of the problems in this space and how we’ve seen similar folks like yourself

• Selling to the business vs. selling to devs

  • I have found it extremely important to match your prospect’s energy when selling to a technical buyer (if they are low energy, you should be low energy - coming off too loud/charismatic to a developer who is an introvert will make you come off sales-y), whereas a business buyer is more indifferent to it (and sometimes even likes you to be more bubbly)

• Stage - in the information gathering stage or active evaluation?

  • If more in the informational stage, you might need to help them still see they have a problem worth solving for

  • If they know they have a problem, you have to help them quantify this and see where this stands amongst their other priorities, as companies only have the capacity to solve a certain number of problems a year

3) Structure Discovery to Build Pain, Not Just Find It

Progress through the SPIN sequence strategically:

• Situation Questions:

  • If inbound, you can say, “I saw in your form/product usage XYZ, which led me to believe X - but I would love to hear more about the current situation at your company regarding X.”

  • “What have you done already to help solve this?”

  • If outbound - you need to earn the right first:

    • “Curious, what compelled you to take the call?” - this can be a good opener

    • But chances are, they’ll be cold and be like, “You called me - what’s up?”

      • Challenge - you need to uncover pain, but the prospect is coming in cold and might be unwilling to have that conversation

      • With an outbound meeting, you’ll need to ask context-led questions: questions that are preceded by sharing an observation or insight (usually based on pre-call HW) that gives context as to why you’re asking the question

      • You can share observations and context about the company, their industry, or external factors impacting their business - you earn credibility and that warms them up

      • Then, once you ask the context-led questions (and warm them up), then you go into more discovery mode

• Problem Questions:

  • One I love for this stage - “What challenge is going on in your business that’s driving this to be a priority?”

  • “What are the challenges you’re facing in [x-area] that would be problematic if you didn’t solve them 6-12 months out?”

    • This forces them to talk about the large problems and not the small problems

  • “What’s your opinion on why that’s happening?”

• Implication Questions:

  • “You could be prioritizing anything right now - why prioritize this issue? What is going on in the business to focus here?”

  • “What implication does [x problem] have for the business?”

• Need-Payoff Questions:

  • "If you could solve this [specific problem they mentioned], how would that impact your team's ability to hit their targets this quarter?"

  • "You mentioned the manual process takes 4 hours per week. What else could your team accomplish if they got that time back?"

4) Micro-commitments Are Good Tests Throughout The Process

I've found success by treating each interaction as a mini-close toward the next step rather than pushing for the final close. This builds momentum but also tests your buyer/champion - people who are seriously buying don’t want to let you down.

• Set clear next steps at every interaction

• Get small agreements throughout the process and hold them to it

• Agenda/objective on each call - here is the framework I will use for a first call:

  • One idea of first 5 mins of a discovery/early call:

    • Align on objective

      • The outcome I recommend we shoot for is _____

      • “I think what would make this jointly success is understanding if we should [jointly take some logical next step together - whatever that is for your business]”

    • Align on agenda

      • To get there, here’s the agenda I have in mind…

    • Align on next decision

      • By the end, I’d like to put you in a position where you can decide ____

      • Do you decide on a next logical step, or do we decide it doesn’t make sense to continue talking for now

    • When done with all three, you ask “does that feel fair?”

5) Do Your Homework to Minimize Situational Questions

This preparation lets you jump straight into a valuable discussion rather than basic fact-finding. Top enterprise reps I've worked with spend as much time preparing as they do on the actual call.

It will show business acumen and respect that you did your homework, and getting off to the right first foot makes future mistakes a little easier.

Some tips:

• Review their tech stack on tools like BuiltWith

• Research recent company news and earnings calls (can use Clay here or the AI tools we’re all using)

• Understand their industry challenges (hopefully, you’re an expert on your product at this point, but if you aren’t yet, you should be consuming as many Gong calls as you can from the team/founder)

• Have relevant customer stories/social proof ready to drop

• Review LinkedIn profiles of attendees (rapport building, but also to see their background/have they worked at a past company who uses you)

Buyers get annoyed if you ask too many situations:

• Recent feedback I’ve received is to weave three questions and then explain why or say, “We do this well” or “I am hearing this a lot; here’s what we’ve seen.”

• If you ask too many questions in a row, it feels like an interrogation and that’s a bad buying experience

6) Charisma is a Multiplier, Not a Foundation

Top performers succeed through strong qualification and investigation skills. Charm is helpful but secondary - especially as an individual contributor. (Though it becomes more crucial in leadership roles, no doubt. I’ve rarely seen a sales leader rise without being someone that others are attracted to because of their executive presence and charm.)

Highly charismatic reps struggle with complex sales because they rely too heavily on personality/relationship selling rather than structured discovery and value selling. The best reps I know aren't necessarily charismatic - they're the most skilled at investigation and qualification.

For experience sellers, a lot of what you learn/read in SPIN Selling is table stakes and stuff they know.

I thought it was helpful to re-read a sales classic and reflect on stuff I may have forgotten to consistently do, and hope you all learned something/got a good refresher.