Sometime in the mid-1970s, Xerox and IBM approached a British research psychologist named Neil Rackham with a peculiar question: why did the top 10% of salespeople consistently outsell the bottom 10% 3 to 1 across every sales organization examined, and nobody knew why? Same training. Same product. Same territory. Over the next 12 years, Rackham’s research firm Huthwaite Research uncovered why, sending observers into over 35,000 actual sales calls in 23 countries and coding every question, pitch, and objection made by the salespeople against 116 behavioral variables, per multiple retellings of the research.
They discovered behavioral differences so significant that they ended up rewriting how the world thought about sales. Closing techniques — the assumptive close, the fear close, the alternative close — every sales tactic drilled into salespeople at seminars over the past few decades was avoided by the best performers and correlated with failure in any situation involving selling something that cost over $10,000, per various summaries of the research findings. Top performers didn’t talk more about their products or execute better closelines. They asked better questions. They asked a specific order of questions, and they asked four times as many questions about the consequences of the problem as the average salesperson before they ever said the word “their product” or “solution.” All of SPIN Selling, the bestselling sales book of the past 40 years, basically describes that behavior.
Start with questions that help them realize, in their words, that they have a problem worth solving. The Structure of a good sales process isn’t an “Are you ready to buy?” script. It’s a sequence of questions that allows your prospect to verbally discover for themselves that they have a problem worth solving. Including you. You should be talking about your product or services less than half the time.
Now, that might sound great in theory, but some version of this realization has sold a zillion copiers over the years. The reason it actually works right now is that every other approach to selling just doesn’t. Traditional selling has spent the past few decades completely shooting itself in the foot. Buyers say they trust salespeople about as much as they trust politicians. Only around 3% of buyers say they fully trust a sales rep, per data HubSpot collected about buyer sentiment. As soon as people catch a hint of being sold to, they shut down, whether you’re selling them marketing software or asking a founder for an internship. When a conversation smells like selling, it doesn’t work anymore.
But if you can actually build a process that feels like discovery, not selling, you can actually have sales conversations again. You just have to build the right one.
Ask questions that center the conversation on their situation first, not anecdotes or your value proposition. What are they currently doing? How is that working for them? Where could it improve? The “Situation” and “Problem” portions of Rackham’s framework should take up the majority of your time. You’re not just wasting time by saying you did your due diligence. You’re asking if there’s actually a problem that needs solving before you spend 5 minutes pitching a solution that isn’t for them.
How would their situation improve if the problem went away? Notice I didn’t ask you to explain how much their problem was costing them. I asked you how their situation would improve if their problem went away. Will they serve more customers? Streamline their process? What?
Asking questions about the consequences of not solving their problem is the most important part of the entire process that most salespeople skip entirely. Cost is important. Help them tell you how much their problem is costing them in consequences, and they’ll believe buying your solution can fix it far more than you telling them it can.
Before you say how your product or service creates value for them, let them say it. Never say “this will save you time.” There’s a 100% chance they’ll hear that as a pitch. Ask them, “If this took half the time it does now, how would that change how you work?” and listen to them tell you the value you’re offering. The value you state sounds like a salesperson stating a fact. Let the buyer tell you the value, and it immediately sounds like something they discovered.
Only discuss what you have to offer after you’ve established there’s a problem that needs solving and they’ve stated the value your solution provides in their own words. If you followed steps 1-4 sincerely, you’re not selling anymore. You’re discussing a solution to a problem the other person just articulated, which feels like a need to them.
Your sales process should be a checklist, not a script. Scripts are only as good as the person memorizing them. Say something off-script during a sales call, and you instantly sound like a crazy person trying to sell something. Checklists (Situation > Problem > Consequences > Let them state value > Discuss Solution) aren’t rigid phrases. They’re a simple structure you can apply to any conversation, whether you’re pitching a founder or your professor, because they know you’re trying to understand, not perform.
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