Identifying a problem isn’t the same thing as understanding it.

Welcome to Funnel Vision, a blog about my adventures in Conversion Rate Optimization and the ideas that have changed how I think about growth.

This month, I read SPIN Selling by Neil Rackham.

The book was published decades ago, long before conversion rate optimization became an industry filled with heatmaps, A/B testing platforms, attribution models, and endless debates about what belongs above the fold.

But one of Rackham’s central ideas feels surprisingly relevant to CRO:

Identifying a problem isn’t the same thing as understanding it.

In SPIN Selling, Rackham argues that effective salespeople don’t immediately hear a problem and jump to pitching a solution. They investigate, they pry, and they learn how those problems affect their prospect’s life. This allows the salesperson to better understand the potential monetary value to solving those problems.

This sales strategy, usually meant for complex sales,  made me think about something we do all the time in CRO.

A landing page has a poor conversion rate.

We immediately start fixing the landing page. This could include highlighting features and benefits, testing CTAs, adding more social proof, etc.

But what if the landing page isn’t actually the problem? What if we’re asking the wrong questions?

Prescribing Before Diagnosing

Let’s say you’re running paid search for a B2B software company. Thousands of people visit your landing page every month, but only 2% fill out the form.

The diagnosis seems obvious: the page isn’t converting.

So the experimentation begins. You change the headline. You shorten the form. You move the CTA. You add customer logos. You rewrite the copy. You create a new hero section.

Any of those could be worthwhile experiments. But they all start with an assumption: the page is causing the low conversion rate.

What if the landing page actually converts reasonably well, but the leads rarely become customers?

Suddenly, “our landing page converts at 2%” isn’t a diagnosis.

It’s a symptom.

And Rackham’s framework offers an interesting way to investigate it.

What SPIN looks like when applied to CRO

SPIN stands for Situation, Problem, Implication, and Need-Payoff. Rackham designed these questions for sales conversations, but I think they provide a surprisingly useful framework for diagnosing a funnel.

Situation questions establish what’s currently happening. 

Then come Problem questions. Where are people actually struggling? 

Implication questions ask what that problem costs the business. 

Finally, Need-Payoff questions explore the value of solving the problem. 

By asking the right questions, we can build trust with our audience and set up sales to close a lead. Helping prospective buyers understand the real cost of their problems can move them through the sales funnel and into a more problem-solving or buyer mindset.

This is where CRO stops being about getting more people to click a button and starts becoming a much bigger growth question.

It’s Not a UX Problem, its a Positioning Problem

Imagine that the traffic is exactly who you want.

They’re in your target market. They have the problem your product solves. They have the budget to purchase it.

And they still don’t convert.

This is where Rackham’s distinction between identifying a problem and understanding its implications becomes particularly useful.

Your prospect might completely agree that they have a problem. That doesn’t mean the problem feels important enough to justify changing their behavior.

This is especially relevant in B2B.

Switching software can mean contracts, procurement, integrations, implementation, training employees, convincing leadership, and taking responsibility if the new solution doesn’t work.

Your landing page isn’t simply competing against another company’s landing page.

It’s competing against doing nothing.

That means a page can be clear, attractive, fast, and easy to use and still fail to convert because it hasn’t given the visitor a compelling enough reason to change.

In that situation, changing a button or shortening a form probably isn’t going to solve much.

You may have a positioning problem.

Try asking questions in relation to the buyer’s pain points. Conditional question forms that dig deeper into a prospect’s painpoints and the results of those pains can help sales closer a deal faster and for marketing to better understand what motivates a prospect to buy.

Sometimes it’s the offer

There’s another possibility: visitors understand the problem and believe it’s important, but the next step you’re asking them to take isn’t particularly appealing.

Imagine someone is early in their research process and your only CTA is Book a Demo.

That’s a relatively large commitment. They may need to give you their information, choose a meeting time, sit through a sales call, and potentially spend the next several weeks receiving follow-ups.

The visitor might want the outcome your product provides without wanting the action you’re asking them to take right now.

That distinction matters.

We sometimes interpret a visitor declining an offer as evidence that they don’t want the product. But those aren’t necessarily the same thing.

Maybe the visitor needs a pricing calculator, assessment, comparison guide, product tour, trial, or another way to understand the value before they’re willing to talk to sales.

In that case, the question isn’t necessarily, “How do we make more people click Book a Demo?”

It’s “Are we offering the right next step for where this person is in their decision?”

That’s an offer problem.

CRO could use a little more SPIN

The biggest lesson I took from Rackham wasn’t a specific list of questions. It was the discipline of resisting the urge to prescribe a solution before understanding the problem.

I think CRO could use more of that.

When we see a low conversion rate, it’s tempting to immediately start brainstorming tests. That’s the fun part. We can change the headline, redesign the hero, shorten the form, rewrite the CTA, or launch an entirely new page.

But experimentation becomes much more valuable when it follows diagnosis.

So before asking:

“How do we get more people to convert?”

I’d start with:

What’s happening now?

Where is the actual problem?

What is that problem costing us further down the funnel?

And what would happen if we solved it?

Those are essentially Rackham’s four questions, applied to CRO.

And they can lead you somewhere very different from another landing page test.

Because sometimes the best thing you can do for a poorly converting landing page is change the landing page.

Sometimes it’s fixing acquisition, positioning, the offer, or the sales process.

The key is figuring out which problem you’re actually solving before you start optimizing.