11 Of The Most Commonly Used Sales Methodologies
Sales professionals are often encouraged to use a sales methodology to bring structure, consistency, and effectiveness to their selling process. These methodologies provide a proven framework that helps salespeople identify customer needs, build strong relationships, and close deals more efficiently.
By following a structured approach, sales teams can increase conversion rates, improve forecasting accuracy, and shorten sales cycles. Whether using SPIN Selling, Challenger Sales, or Solution Selling, a well-defined methodology ensures that salespeople engage the right prospects, ask the right questions, and deliver tailored solutions, ultimately leading to more predictable and scalable success.
I’ve shared a snapshot on some of the most common sales methodologies used:
1.MEDDPICC – Coined by Jack Napoli and Dick Dunkel in the 1990s
- Metrics: How the prospect measures success
- Economic buyer: The person who has the authority to make a purchase
- Decision criteria: The factors that a buyer considers when making a decision
- Decision process: The steps a buyer takes to make a purchase
- Paper process: The administrative tasks and paperwork involved in the buying process
- Identify pain: Understanding the buyer’s pain points
- Champion: A person within the buyer’s organization who supports the product or service
- Competition: Other companies or solutions that the buyer is considering
2.SPIN Selling – Neil Rackham popularized the term “SPIN” in his book SPIN Selling.
- Situation questions
- Problem questions
- Implication questions
- Need-payoff questions
3.N.E.A.T. Selling™ – Developed by The Harris Consulting Group and Sales Hacker
- “N” in N.E.A.T. stands for core needs. Rather than focusing on surface-level pain, this methodology’s creators urge salespeople to go deeply into prospects’ challenges.
- “E” represents economic impact. Don’t simply present your solution’s ROI — help the buyer understand the financial impact they’re currently on track to realise versus the impact they’ll see if they make a change.
- “A” is access to authority. You probably won’t get to speak with the CFO, but can and will your champion talk to the CFO on your behalf?
- “T,” or Timeline, refers to the exciting event forcing your prospect to make a decision. If there aren’t negative consequences to missing this date, it’s not a real deadline.
4.SNAP Selling – suits busy prospects who are easily distracted and demanding.
SNAP is an acronym that encompasses four directives for sellers:
- Keep it Use simple questions, and make clear and concise statements rather than jargon.
- Be i(n)valuable. Craft a message in such a way that shows your product is invaluable for your audience.
- Always Align your sales pitch with your prospects’ goals. In this case, I suggest using customer testimonials to show how your product satisfies their goals.
- Raise Create a list of prospects and narrow them down based on their conversion chances. I also prefer using questions and KPIs to get a clearer picture of prospects’ priorities.
5.Conceptual Selling
Based on the idea that customers don’t buy a product or a service — they buy the concept of a solution the offering represents
- Confirmation questions reaffirm information.
- New information questions clarify the prospect’s concept of the product or service and explore what they’d like to achieve.
- Attitude questions seek to understand a prospect personally and discover their connection to the project.
- Commitment questions inquire about a prospect’s investment in the project.
- Basic issue questions raise potential problems.
6.Challenger Sale – Co-authors Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson started “The Challenger Sale”
- Teach. First, they teach their prospects — not about the product or service in question, but about more significant business problems, new ideas, and astute observations.
- Tailor. Next, they tailor their communications to their prospect.
- Take Control. Finally, they control the sales by not being afraid to push back on their customer, focusing more on the end goal than being liked. The Challenger sales methodology strives to impart the wisdom of the challenger to the other four types.
This approach needs well-thought and thorough personalised lead nurturing campaigns. These campaigns slowly warm prospects up to the business until they reach a point where they’re most likely to make a purchase.
7.The Sandler System – similar methodology to the NEAT method. It’s a more lengthy sales process, where rather than the seller convincing the buyer to buy, the buyer is almost convincing the seller to sell. This is a 7 step process:
- Bonding and building rapport.
- Upfront contracts.
- Pain.
- Budget.
- Decision.
- Fulfillment.
- Post-sell.
8.Solution Selling founded by Mike Bosworth in the late 1980s
“Solution selling” is used broadly nowadays, and salespeople using this sales methodology typically follow these six steps:
- Prospect: Look for a prospect with a problem your product solves.
- Qualify: Understand the decision-making unit (DMU).
- Discover: Diagnose the buyer’s needs and propose solutions within your product or service.
- Add value: Develop a customer champion and gain access to key decision-makers.
- Present: Offer a custom solution and demonstrate its ROI.
- Close: Come to a mutually beneficial agreement.
9.Inbound Selling – the modern-day sales methodology that has replaced traditional selling methods. Simply put, potential buyers interact with the content marketing team and often research products on their own before contacting the sales team.
Inbound Sales Professionals take four actions:
- Identify. Inbound sales reps prioritize active buyers rather than passive ones. Active buyers have visited the company site, started a live chat, filled out a form, or reached out on Twitter.
- Connect. Inbound reps connect by reaching out to prospects with a personalised message through their blog, social media accounts, or in-person events. This personalization is based on the buyer’s role, interests, industry, or connections you have in common.
- Explore. In the exploratory phase, and reps focus on rapport building and recap previous prospect conversations. At this stage, reps dive deeper into the prospect’s challenges and goals, introduce products or services that might fit these goals, and create plans that accommodate buyer timelines and budgets.
- Advise. Finally, reps create and deliver a personalized sales presentation covering what they’ve learned about the prospect’s needs and the value and assistance your product or service can provide.
10.Gap Selling
This focuses on developing a deep understanding customer’s pain points, fears, challenges and dreams.
Understand the potential customer’s business, issues, and — perhaps most importantly — goals. Identifying the root causes for any trouble a prospect might be having.
Take a holistic look at a prospect’s situation.
Determine the best possible way to position your product or service as the most effective means of filling those gaps.
11.Customer-Centric Sales Methodology
There are eight key components of CCS methodology:
- Have a conversation rather than deliver a presentation.
- Ask relevant questions instead of offering opinions.
- Focus on the solution instead of the relationship.
- Target decision-makers instead of users.
- Promote product usage to garner interest.
- Strive to be the best seller rather than the busiest.
- Close on the buyer’s timeline rather than the seller’s timeline.
- Empower buyers to buy instead of convincing them.
Do you use a sales methodology in your current role? I’d love to hear what works best for you! Get in touch – helen@jbrecruitment.co.uk
About Jackson Barnes Recruitment
Jackson Barnes Recruitment delivers international recruitment solutions within the events, media, and publishing sectors. Jackson Barnes recruits Graduate to MD level in the following positions:
• Sales – delegate, sponsorship & Business Development
• Editor
We recruit for organisations in the UK and overseas, with success in London, Dubai, New York, Singapore and Australia.