Neil Rackham

Rackham began his academic training in Psychology, completed in 1966. During his time of research and graduate studies, he began to take the first steps in the world of negotiation and sales, initiating a project that was seeking to develop new tools to study and measure the importance of interpersonal skills to achieve success in sales. Also, he is a bestselling author in sales and creator of the SPIN methodology, widely adopted by sales professionals around the world. From 1970 to 1974, Rackham served as Managing Director of Performance Improvement Ltd., enhancing high-level skills for clients such as IBM, BP, British Airways, Xerox, and Honeywell. In 1974, he founded the Huthwaite Research Group, which later became Huthwaite Inc., a global research and consulting firm based in northern Virginia, and Huthwaite Ltd., based in the United Kingdom. Having developed methods to measure interactive behavior in his research grant, Rackham produced a series of seminal articles that focused on practices and behaviors associated with successful negotiations. In deciding to apply these same methods to the sales world and to explore effective behaviors in successful business marketing for companies, Rackham sought the support of large multinational companies including Xerox and IBM and raised an initial $ 1 million for a study of reference.