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Every product marketer needs to know about SPIN

? Hi, I’m James. Thanks for checking out Building Momentum: a newsletter to help startup founders and marketers accelerate SaaS growth through product marketing.

I’m writing this whilst a little bit sick, so the below is a short and sweet post. Drop me a note and let me know what topics you’d like to see covered in upcoming posts.

SPIN is a sales methodology developed by Neil Rackham after studying more than 35,000 sales calls over 12 years.

The SPIN framework covers the different questions that are asked, posted, and answered throughout a sales engagement:

  • Situation – what customers are doing today
  • Problem – the challenge they are (or will be) facing
  • Implication – the consequences they will experience as a result of the problem
  • Need-payoff – the value, the outcome, that the customer can achieve by solving the problem

I think it’s more than just a sales methodology. I think it’s a great acronym to use in everyday product marketing work, ensuring that we’re constantly thinking about our customers.

If we’re not rooting our collateral, copy, deliverables, enablement, and strategy overall in the world our customers are living, then we’re not doing our job right.

We need to think about the specifics of what customers are doing today and the resulting mess, chaos, and pain they are (or will be) experiencing.

And we need to think not just about the immediate outcomes (the tangible benefits), but that our messaging is focused on the value they desire.

Our messaging needs to honestly pass the ‘so what?’ test. Say your feature helps you save time. So what? What does that mean – what’s the pay-off that you’re actually able to gain?

SPIN is probably the most useful framework for every product marketer to know and use. Give it a try today!

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