Do you 9-Block?

Over on the LinkedIn Solution Selling Alumni group Tim Sullivan asked "Solution Selling includes a structured dialogue model for consultative, diagnostic conversations with customers, called the 9-Block Vision Processing Model. Have you used the 9-Block, and did you find it effective?"

I couldn't wait to give "my 2 cents" on this one:

The 9-Block Vision Processing Model is excellent conceptually and I believe does lay out a nicely structured approach to sales dialogue. I would like to think that if you dissected my best sales calls (let's forget the others ;-), you could map my questions onto the model very closely. Conceptually, it does work.

I don’t use it everyday day because in the heat of a sales call (as opposed to calm planning/reading in the office), 9 of anything is too much to remember!

Instead of 9 points to remember, I started my sales career with 4. I came to Solution Selling from SPIN selling (which as a whole is less complete and definitely inferior to Solution Selling).

SPIN = (S)ituation, (P)roblem, (I)mplication and (N)eed payoff.

I would say that the top row of the 9-Block Vision Processing Model (Diagnose reasons, Explore impact, Visualize capabilities) maps very roughly onto (P)roblem, (I)mplication and (N)eed payoff (OK, there are some differences and there is some overlap, but broadly speaking I think this statement is correct enough for this conversation.)

I think these 3 are the key solution selling points to remember in the heat of a sales call. However, the 9 block adds to each of those stages three types of question. Again, these questions are the appropriate and the right things to be doing, but I think they would be better presented somehow out or separately from the diagnose, explore, visualize.

In fact I would suggest a staged approach to reps learning this : Stage one, learn to ask basic questions (any questions!) to diagnose the reasons, Stage two, learn to ask basic questions (any questions!) to explore the impact, Stage 3, learn to ask basic questions (any questions!) to get the prospect visualizing capabilities.

Once that is mastered by the rep, they should move on to refining their technique by asking the Open, Control and Confirm questions.

So, in summary, I think that the 9-block is spot-on, but a little over-ambitious for newbies to take in one chunk.

And in answer to your original question, have I used it, I would say “yes” and was it effective, I would say “yes” but only because I didn’t come at it as a rookie.

All this said, in my opinion Solution Selling is still the best sales process out there.