SPIN Question Bank — grouped by stage and by E/E/Q

Pick 10–15 for any given call based on category and what the intake already told you. Never run all of them — that’s an interrogation, not a conversation.

SITUATION — context (ask few, fast; you did recon)

One-sentence: what you do, who for.
Headcount and revenue lines.
“Walk me through a typical day/week.”
Current software stack; which tools they pay for; any AI already in use.
Who owns which process; who’s already using AI on the team.
Challenge: “Do you think [current approach] gets you to [goal], or does something have to change?”

Listen for: where the owner is still in the machine; manual glue between tools; a stack that’s outgrown. Their own “something has to change” is a commitment they’ll act consistently with — write down their exact wording and reuse it verbatim in the close and the report.

PROBLEM — the 5–7 pains (rotate the three axes)

Effectiveness (money they’re not making)

“New lead comes in — walk me through what happens, and how fast.”
“Where do deals stall or slip?”
“When did you last lose a deal to slow follow-up or a dropped ball?”
“What marketing/sales thing do you know you should do consistently but don’t?”
“Where are you leaving money on the table that bugs you?”

Efficiency (time they’re burning)

“What task would you pay the most to never do again?”
“What’s the 90-minutes-every-morning kind of task here?”
“Where are you or your team just moving data from one place to another by hand?”
“What gets dropped when you’re slammed?”
“How many hours a week are you in the business vs. on it?”

Quality (experience that’s inconsistent or dated)

“Where does quality depend on who’s doing it or what kind of day it is?”
“What part of the client experience embarrasses you a little?”
“What looks like it was built in 2015?”
“Where do things fall through the cracks between people or steps?”

Listen for: a story with a number and a frequency, not a vague complaint. Pull until you get it.

IMPLICATION — make it cost something

Earn each one — reflect their words first (“you said mornings are eaten by X — so what happens when…”). Implication questions land as care when they’re built from their own words, and as interrogation when they’re not. If a prospect later says “too expensive,” it means this section was cut short (see objection-handling.md).

“What changes if you don’t fix [pain] in the next 90 days?” (cost of inaction)
“If that keeps happening weekly for a year, what’s it add up to — hours, dollars, deals?”
“What’s the second-order effect — on the team, on you, on the clients who notice?”
“While this stays manual, what is a competitor who’s automated it able to do that you can’t?”
“You said you can’t take on more without another hire — what’s that hire cost, fully loaded?”
“Why now and not six months ago?” (trigger — the deal’s timeline lives here)

Listen for: named people, named deadlines, specific revenue/churn numbers, a concrete trigger.

NEED-PAYOFF — let them say the value

“What’s an hour of your time worth?” (get a number — required for ROI math)
“If [pain] disappeared, what would you do with the reclaimed time?”
“If every lead heard back before your competitor even saw it — what changes for you?”
“If [X hours] a week came back starting next week, where does it go? What’s that worth over a quarter?”
“A year from now, if this is handled — what’s different about the business? About your week?”

Listen for: them quantifying the upside themselves. That number goes straight into the report and the proposal.

The four tells that this is a real buyer

They give you concrete stories with numbers, not summaries.
There’s a trigger — something changed recently that made this urgent.
They answer the cost-of-inaction question with a real consequence, not “nothing really.”
They cross from complaint to WANT — “we have to fix this” / “I need something for this.” Until you hear want-language, you have implied needs only; keep asking implication questions, don’t pitch.

Miss all four and they’re not a buyer today — say so and move on.