# Post-Call Review Questions Source: SPIN Selling, Chapter 8 ("Turning Theory into Practice"), section "Plan, Do, and Review" — Neil Rackham. These are the verbatim review questions Rackham specifies, followed by detailed prompts for evidence-grounded answering. --- ## The Seven Questions (Verbatim) Rackham writes: "After each call, ask yourself such questions as these:" 1. **Did I achieve my objectives?** 2. **If I were making the call again, what would I do differently?** 3. **What have I learned that will influence future calls on this account?** 4. **What have I learned that I can use elsewhere?** And from the "never be content with global conclusions" passage: 5. **Did some parts of the call go better than others? Why?** 6. **Which specific questions you asked had the most influence on the customer?** 7. **Which needs did the customer feel strongly? Which needs changed during the discussion? Why?** (The passage also asks "Which of the behaviors you used had the most impact?" — this is folded into Q5 and Q6 as the behavioral lens on both questions.) --- ## Detailed Prompts Per Question ### Q1: Did I achieve my call objectives? **What to check:** Compare the call outcome to the Advance objective stated in the pre-call brief. Apply the four-outcome framework: - **Order:** Firm purchase commitment. Customer showed unmistakable intention to buy. - **Advance:** A specific customer action committed — attends demo, arranges stakeholder meeting, agrees to pilot, submits internal eval request. The customer must be the actor. - **Continuation:** No specific customer action. The sale continues but nothing concrete was agreed. Classic phrases: "We'll be in touch," "fantastic presentation, let's meet again," "visit us again next time you're in the area." - **No-sale:** Explicit rejection. **Guided prompt:** Was there a specific customer action committed in the call notes? If yes, name it — that is the Advance. If no, classify as Continuation regardless of how positive the call felt. **Continuation flag:** If your call notes say "it went well" or "they were very interested" with no specific customer action named, flag this immediately. Positive sentiment is not an Advance. --- ### Q2: If I were making this call again, what would I do differently? **What to check:** Identify the 1-3 specific behavioral decisions that produced suboptimal outcomes. Be moment-level specific: - At what point in the call did the conversation go off-track? - What did you say or do that you would change? - What would the alternative behavior have been? **Guided prompt:** Name the moment (e.g., "minute 15, when the customer mentioned delayed procurement"), name the behavior you used ("I pivoted to a feature demo"), name the alternative ("I should have asked an Implication Question: 'When procurement is delayed, what's the downstream effect on your project timeline?'"). **Anti-pattern:** "I should have asked better questions" is not specific enough to produce behavioral change. Name the exact question, the exact moment, and what it would have surfaced. --- ### Q3: What have I learned that will influence future calls on this account? **What to check:** What new information did this call reveal about the account that changes your strategy or approach? - New stakeholders or decision-makers mentioned - Shifts in the customer's stated priorities or timeline - Budget signals (positive or negative) - Internal political dynamics surfaced - New problem areas or needs that weren't in the deal brief **Guided prompt:** "What do I now know about this account that I didn't know before? What should I update in deal-brief.md or needs-log.md?" **Output action:** Write the findings as specific updates to the deal brief or needs log. Do not keep them in the review artifact only — they need to persist to the next call's planning inputs. --- ### Q4: What have I learned that I can use elsewhere? **What to check:** Identify one portable insight from this call: - A question structure that produced unusually strong engagement - An Implication chain sequence that made the problem feel more serious than anticipated - A customer language pattern that revealed how this industry frames a problem - A technique for getting past a gatekeeper or moving to a higher-level stakeholder **Guided prompt:** "If I replaced the account-specific details in this insight, could it apply to another account or industry? What is the transferable version of this learning?" **Output action:** Optionally note this in a personal "question library" or "call patterns" log across deals. --- ### Q5: Did some parts of the call go better than others? Why? **What to check:** Identify the high-performing moments and the low-performing moments from the call. - High-performing: A moment where the customer became more engaged, volunteered information unprompted, shifted language from vague to specific, or agreed to a direction. - Low-performing: A moment where the customer disengaged, became defensive, gave a non-committal response, or the conversation lost direction. **Guided prompt:** "For each high-performing moment: what specific behavior preceded it? For each low-performing moment: what specific behavior triggered the disengagement?" **Anti-pattern:** Do not conflate the call's overall tone with per-moment performance. A call can feel positive and still have significant low-performing moments — those moments are the learning opportunities. --- ### Q6: Which specific questions had the most influence on the customer? **What to check:** From the call notes, identify 2-3 questions that visibly moved the customer: - A question followed by an unusually long or specific customer response - A question that caused the customer to pause and think - A question that surfaced a need or problem the customer hadn't previously articulated - A question that changed the direction of the conversation **Guided prompt:** "Label each influential question by SPIN type (S/P/I/N). Was there an imbalance? If all influential questions were Situation Questions, the call was in fact a fact-gathering session, not a discovery call." **Pattern check:** Research finding: only 1 in 20 questions in an average sales call is an Implication Question. If none of the influential questions were Implication Questions, that is a systematic gap in the seller's call pattern — note it explicitly. --- ### Q7: Which needs did the customer feel strongly? Which needs changed during the discussion? Why? **What to check:** - **Needs felt strongly:** Where did the customer use emotional or urgent language? Where did they volunteer problems without being asked? - **Needs that changed:** Did any needs shift from Implied (customer expressed a problem or difficulty) to Explicit (customer expressed a desire or intent to act)? What prompted the shift? - **Needs that emerged unexpectedly:** Did the customer raise a problem or need you had not anticipated? Is it within your capability to address? - **Needs that stalled:** Were there problems you identified but were unable to develop? Why? **Guided prompt:** "For each need shift (Implied → Explicit): what question preceded it? That question is the high-leverage behavior in this call. For each stalled need: what would the Implication chain look like if you had continued developing it?" **Critical finding signal:** If no needs changed during the call — if all needs remained at the Implied level — then the Investigating stage failed to move the deal. This is the most important post-call finding available: the call did not develop needs, and without developed needs, solution presentation and commitment-seeking will fail on the next call. --- ## Context: Rackham's Top-Performer Distinction From Chapter 8, verbatim: > "Over the years I've had the opportunity to travel with dozens of the world's top salespeople — and as a researcher, I've looked for any differences that distinguish them from those who haven't made it to the top. Two differences stand out. The first is that the top people I've traveled with put great emphasis on reviewing each call — dissecting what they've learned and thinking about possible improvement." > "It's worth asking yourself whether you are giving enough time to reviewing the details of what happened in the call. **Never be content with global conclusions like 'it went quite well.'** Ask yourself about the details." This is the empirical basis for the skill's design: structured post-call review is not a best-practice recommendation — it is a behavioral differentiator observed directly in top-performing sellers.