You did the training. Three days, role plays, a certificate.
You apply it properly. And your deals still stall in exactly the same place as before.
Does that method have to go?
No. And that isn't politeness.
Those methods describe what you do. This model explains why it works or doesn't. Two different layers, not competitors.
- SPIN questions are a way to uncover stake.
- The Challenger approach is a way to create urgency.
- References and cases are a way to build trust.
- MEDDIC mostly tests whether the stake is real and who decides.
All useful. And all useless the moment you aim them at the wrong element.
A method tells you what to say. This tells you what is missing.
That is why the training ran dry. You learned how to treat. No one taught you how to establish what you are treating.
The surgeon who knows after thirty seconds
Chapter 8 starts in a hospital. You have stomach pain. A surgeon comes in, barely looks at you, asks no questions, does no examination, and says: I know exactly what you need. Next week we take out your gallbladder.
You would run. Not because you are against surgery, but because you want to know first whether that surgery is necessary.
Now look at your own week. The adviser arrives with the solution already in his bag. The consultant has the deck ready. You knew which package you were going to offer before you left the office.
Everyone starts with the treatment. Almost no one starts with the diagnosis. And then we're surprised the client runs.
One question that turns the conversation around
Chapter 10 holds the reversal. Not: does he understand my story?
But: why would he move today?
That looks like a nuance. It is the difference between a conversation in which you have to prove something and one in which you can find something. In the first you talk seventy per cent of the time. In the second, he does.
And that is the test of whether your method is aimed right: if you talk more than the client, you are treating without a diagnosis, whatever letters are on your certificate.
The exercise
Take the method you were trained in and put three columns next to it: stake, trust, urgency.
Distribute the steps of your method across those three. Which step serves which element?
You'll find most methods lean heavily on one or two, and that one stays almost empty. That is the side where your conversations die.
The full working-out is on diagnostic selling: the six steps, the pricing rule and the difference with SPIN, Challenger and MEDDIC.
The closing question
If an objection is information, which element is it about?
That is session 5: which objection belongs to which element.