The Poison-Remedy Model

Here I am reading the SPIN handbook - for those of you who haven't read it yet, it is the latest sales textbook regarding sales trends in the modern era. It is all about the poison-remedy model.

To illustrate:

Implication questions, such as: Will having bad acne effect your chances of getting girls? or Will your ineptitude at picking up women cause you to have no friends? or Will your lack of friends cause you to adopt a terrible disposition which will in turn make people distrust you? or Will people's lack of trust for you get you branded as an unseemly sort? or Will this predisposition of your character cause you to be judged and persecuted without due cause?. All for want of a good acne cream. These implication questions create pain or discomfort that can only be alleviated with a solution.

Implication Questions are the precursor to Need questions (the I and the N in SPIN), which we will get into later on.

Needless to say, I'll take a quote right out of the SPIN handbook page 123.

Implication Questions increase pain by extending the seriousness of the problems. A fundamental (ugh) principle of consulting, which applies equally to selling, is that good consulting keeps the client in moderate pain, but never allows that pain to become excessive.

In other words, give them pain, and then take it away. This model, while effective, is a bit dark if you ask me. Advertisers love it, though, and the truth is, it really isn't all that ethically sound. It doesn't bring any happiness into the world. And although there is something to be said for the tough love idea of smartening people up, and giving them a bit of a shake 'Hey! Get your blood pressure checked, fool! Do you want to drop dead at your own 40th birthday surprise party? What are you doing eating bacon 3 times a day? etc. etc. pairing it with excessive materialism is, well, not really our style here.