Using a baseball analogy, during an interview I’m sure you will feel more like a batter than a pitcher since you are receiving a barrage of the questions being thrown at you. You are likely taking fastballs, curve balls and change-ups without knowing what pitch is coming next while all along you’re trying to just keep the ball in play and advance yourself to the next level without striking out.
The interviewing process is a delicate balance between the interviewer asking a list of questions to rule you in or out and you the candidate responding effectively so that you are viewed as a leading contender for the position. Successful interviewing has as much to do about what you ask as it does by what you tell the interviewer that will enable you to make a good impression and advance yourself around the bases to score the winning position.
Given that the interviewer is primarily in control of the process, how do you influence the flow of the dialog in your favor so that it offers you the best opportunity to “demonstrate versus declare” your unique value proposition? Since you only have a single chance to make a good first impression, how can you best accomplish your goal to knock the interview ball out of the park? What should that process look like?
Don’t go into the interview with a “tell and sell” mindset and approach; rather one that is “ask and solve.” That is like throwing pizza against the wall in hopes that something sticks. The sell vs. solve approach may allow you to touch a lot of bases, but it may not get you to home plate. Go into the interview with the mindset of a consultant that is looking to identify and solve problems, challenges and opportunities (PCO’s) that the interviewer or company/department is facing. When evaluating an engagement opportunity, a good consultant will ask strategic questions that clarifies the PCO’s, identifies the “Explicit Needs” of the client, and offers solution options to resolve the PCO’s.
You likely are familiar with the terms solution selling or consultative selling, especially if you are in sales as a profession. These terms are associated with the process or methodology of identifying PCO’s and possible solutions as part of the sales process. Since you are in a sales mode when conducting a job search, Solution Selling is a most appropriate interview model that you can leverage during your discussions. When you are conducting a job search you are in sales; and the products or services you offer are your skills, abilities and experience which represent the solution to the PCO’s.
The key is getting the client (the interviewer) to express their explicit needs and the context of those needs. Asking intellectually sound Solution Selling questions will significantly help you accomplish that goal by clarifying the challenges, identifying solutions (that you can influence) and increase your value proposition in the eyes of your potential employer.
Throughout my career I have been trained and studied numerous solution selling methodologies. Some are better than others, but most follow the same basic standards and that is to get the client or interviewer to express their pain and needs in explicit terms so you can offer appropriate solutions which would be fulfilled by your employment. One of the most simple, effective and well known solution selling models that is easily convertible to an interview model is S.P.I.N Selling by Neil Rackham, who was the brainchild of the approach and authored a book of the same name in 1988. The book has been successful selling well over 150,000 copies. S.P.I.N. Selling is based on extensive research by Rackham and his company, Huthwaite; now owned by MHI Global Inc. After analyzing more than 35,000 sales calls they were able to put to rest a variety of traditional myths about closing sales. They examined large, complicated sales scenarios to identify trends and best practices that formed their sales effectiveness philosophy. It is key to understand that the financial and operational implications of hiring you is significant to any company, therefore it is appropriate to view your candidacy as a large, costly and complex sale.
The original survey showed that in successful sales calls it’s the buyer who does most of the talking, which means that the salesperson is asking the majority of questions. Although the interviewer will obviously be asking many questions about your experience, skills and abilities; you too should be prepared to ask as many solution selling based questions.
Before we can talk about how we can satisfy our interviewer’s needs, we have to get him/her prepared to listen to you and reply to your questions. You do this by getting the interviewer to trust you by first developing sales rapport. This is accomplished by asking for permission to ask questions throughout the interview rather than yielding your time until the very end. If you ask for permission to ask questions up front you will create a back and forth dialog which is exactly what you want, not a one direction interrogation coming from the interviewer.
Asking questions means that the candidate is building rapport with the interviewer. Building sales rapport with the interviewer allows him/her to feel more comfortable talking about core issues. Well prepared and intelligent questions persuade more powerfully than “telling and selling” as a way to impress by covering all of the bases. Building sales rapport elicits trust, and trust precedes the sale or the job offer. Ask questions about their business while you build rapport. This allows you to you are build rapport in a work context.
“People do not buy from salespeople because they understand their products or services but because they felt the salesperson understood their problems and could solve them.”
For these reasons, it is totally appropriate to consider using S.P.I.N. Selling techniques when you are interviewing as a candidate for a job. Isn’t an interview perhaps the important sales call you may ever make?
S.P.I.N. Interviewing is a consultative or solution based sales model that is simple to remember and easy to apply, and can be used in a multitude of situations. There are many good sales models that are taught, but when trying to nail an interview you need to employ a simple and effective process given all of the pressures and details that accompany an interview.
S.P.I.N. Interviewing suggests you develop a questioning mindset stating it’s “more important to understand than to persuade.” This is similar to the 5th habit from “The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People” by Steven Covey which says “Seek first to understand then to be understood.”
S.P.I.N. Interviewing is about asking researched based questions of the interviewer that follows a clear methodology followed by listening for answers that align with your experience, skills, ability and interests as they relate to the job. This model allows you to identify and offer solutions to expose explicit problems/needs expressed by the interviewer versus talking too much and trying to “excessively tell and sell” everything about yourself while not fully knowing what is critical to the job opening. “Telling and selling” your attributes and background before knowing exactly what will be of real “Benefit” to the interviewer is risky at best and likely a huge strategic mistake.
The S.P.I.N. Interviewing process consists of four types of questions, thus S.P.I.N. stands for:
- Situation (questions)
- Problem (questions, includes challenge and opportunity questions as well) PCO’s
- Implication (questions)
- Need-payoff (questions)
Situation Questions deal with the facts about the buyer’s/interviewer’s existing situation.
Problem Questions (includes Challenge and Opportunity questions, PCO’s) ask about the interviewer’s pain and focuses the interviewer on this pain while clarifying whether or not there is a problem that results from the prevailing situation you identified previously. The answers to Problem questions yield Implied Needs (apparent but not yet validated as Explicit Needs).
Implication Questions discuss the effects (implications) of the problem, challenge or opportunity if they are not successfully addressed. Implication questions develop the seriousness of the problem to increase the interviewer’s motivation to change and/or hire the right person. Bottom line; big Implication…big problem, little Implication…little problem.
Need-Payoff Questions are questions that probes for Explicit Needs (overt/specific statements of need) and begins to identify possible solutions to the PCO’s. When the interviewer expresses their Explicit Needs it presents the opportunity for you to position your Benefits through the solutions you embody. Getting the interviewer to align with your Benefits has great impact and is a lot less pushy than selling your Features and Advantages.
Understand Features vs. Advantage vs. Benefits when offering solutions.
A Feature is an objective and observable characteristic of your career experience. Features remain unchanged whether the interviewer hires you or not. For example in the case of an accountant job search candidate you might list your experiences doing financial statement preparation, general ledger development and account analysis. It’s not clear if these are valuable to the interviewer. They may be “nice to have” but not essential to solving the problem until the interviewer expresses his/her desires as Explicit Needs.
An Advantage is what the feature does, the service that it performs or the task it can accomplish that “may” prove useful to the interviewer. Although it may be useful, it may not be necessary or essential. They are “nice to have’s” but not essential to solve the problem until the interviewer expresses his/her Explicit Needs in those terms.
A Benefit is the payoff of the advantage you offer, or the value you provide to this individual interviewer. A Benefit addresses a specific need and is a clear payoff or solution to the problem, challenge or opportunity expressed by the interviewer. It takes away the expressed pain. Benefits are essential to solve the problem and address Explicit Needs.
Think of Benefits as the value of the advantage to the interviewer. These are therefore defined by the interviewers goals. The same job experiences may offer different Benefits to various interviewers with different priorities.
In the S.P.I.N. model a Benefit shows how a set of skills and experiences meets an Explicit Need expressed by the interviewer. If you try to sell yourself by offering only Features and Advantages it leads to objections and delays identifying Explicit Needs which slows down the process.
There are five stages to a job interview that you hope to influence:
- Opening: The introduction and positioning stage. Establish credibility and likability.
- Investigating: Asking PCO questions.
- Demonstrating Capability: Show them what you know by offering “Benefits” vs. tell them what “Features” and Advantages” you offer. (see below)
- Validating Capability: Clarify that your answers and messaging are having a positive effect.
- When you answer important questions asked by the interviewer, ask them if your answer is in alignment with the requirements of the position
- At the end of the interview ask two closing questions:
- “As a result of our interview and my resume, what are my key attributes that would cause you to consider me as a (or the) leading candidate for the position?”
- “As a result of our interview and my resume, is there anything that comes to mind that would cause you to pause to consider me as a (or the) leading candidate?”
- Obtaining Commitment: Ask them if/how you can move on to the next step of the process and at the appropriate time ask them for the job offer.
Key points to remember:
- Successful job candidates ask fewer Situation Questions because they do their homework to identify basic information. Good selling equals good planning.
- More experienced job candidates tended to ask more Problem Questions and to ask them sooner in the interview.
- Top job candidates tended to introduce solutions very late in the discussion. They held back their opinion and discussed the effects of the problem before talking about solutions.
- Problem questions require planning. S.P.I.N. Interviewing suggests working backwards from the problems your solution solves for an interviewer to generate these questions.
- It is better to uncover several problems before asking Implication Questions. It can be dangerous to focus on one problem as it invites the buyer to raise another area where you solution does not fare so well. Additionally you may not allow yourself enough time to expose multiple problems and offer a variety of solutions. (Don’t put all your eggs in the one basket)
- Implication Questions are the most powerful sales questions and the skill in using them doesn’t automatically improve with experience.
- There are no easy or perfect solutions in a complex sale, but there are good ones.
- Interviewers seek help through hiring others when the pain of the problem is greater than the cost of the solution. Interviewers hire the person that can best address the problems, challenges or opportunities (PCO’s) their department or company faces.
- Seek a series of Advances rather than trying to close the interviewer prematurely. An action that moves you incrementally closer to a job offer is termed an “Advance” and constitutes a successful outcome. Achieving a series of Advances will eventually lead to the ultimate outcome you want; the job offer.
- Top interviewers reach their goals by consistently planning and conducting interviews that move the job offer process forward in steps. “S.P.I.N. Interviewing” rationale suggests that you start by brainstorming to identify the widest variety of Advances that would move you towards a job offer. Highly skilled interviewers then select those ingenious small actions that the interviewer is likely to agree to.
It is appropriate to prepare yourself to effectively answer the traditional barrage of interview questions that comes with one-on-one interviews, panel interviews and behavioral interviews which accomplishes the agenda of the interviewer(s). It is also necessary to be able to relate your experience, skills and abilities to the published job requirements. However, as the candidate, you can increase your ability to accomplish your agenda and demonstrate your value proposition by employing a sound Solution/Consultative-based interview strategy.
Ultimately, if you provide a Benefit to the employer by clarifying and solving their Explicit Needs and Problems versus “telling and selling” the Features and Advantages of your background you will win the day and the interview game.
Good luck…now go knock the interview ball out of the park!
Rex Rolf is an veteran Career, Leadership and Performance Enhancement Executive Coach working under the corporate banner of Cornerstone Performance Group, LLC. www.Go4Cornerstone.com
