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.

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

• “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?”
• “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?”
• “What’s it worth to you to reply to every lead in 2 minutes instead of a day?”
• “If we shipped one fix in week one that got back [X hours], is that worth moving on?”
• “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 three tells that this is a real buyer

1. They give you concrete stories with numbers, not summaries.
2. There’s a trigger — something changed recently that made this urgent.
3. They answer the cost-of-inaction question with a real consequence, not “nothing really.”

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