Posts by Mike Schultz

• Generate More Leads with Existing Accounts Through Value and Collaboration

  

  Most people think of prospecting as reaching out to people they don’t know, with an over-the-top approach, to interest them in buying something they’re not thinking about. This isn’t the only way to generate more leads.

  Prospecting isn’t just a cold activity, and you don’t need a sledgehammer approach to make it work.

  Key accounts are typically huge, untapped opportunities for more business, but the outreach tends to look very different.

  To generate more leads with key accounts, sellers often use the same tactics they do when cold prospecting. It’s not called “key account sales” just to use fancy words. It’s different.

  If you’re selling to a key account, you know them already. And they know you. You’re important to each other. You’ve built trust. That’s a very strong platform. One you should be careful to protect.

  At the same time, most realize they can and should be doing more work with their key accounts. Since no one else is going to make sure the client receives maximum business value from their relationship with your company, you must be proactive to make it happen.

  [click to continue...]

  0 Comments Topics:

  • Cross Selling & Up Selling,
  • Professional Selling Skills,
  • Sales Prospecting

• Sales Call Planning: What to Know Before Every Sales Call

  

  Eighty percent of success is showing up. - Woody Allen

  Woody Allen’s advice is pretty sound for salespeople as well, assuming you show up prepared.

  We acknowledge that sometimes you do just show up (or—hallelujah—a prospect calls you out of the blue) and you haven't done any preparation for the sales call. It's reasonable to suggest that, on occasion, sales calls are appropriately deemed 'exploratory discussions'; the kind of discussion in which we just talk and 'see where it goes.'

  Take this approach in most business development situations, however, and you'll lose more than your share of sales that you should have won. Interestingly, whether you have a two-thousand- or two-million-dollar price point, to increase your odds of winning new clients, you still need to do the same basic planning and know the same essential information before your sales calls.

  Here are six sales call planning questions you can answer for yourself before every sales call that will help prepare you for business development success...

  [click to continue...]

  3 Comments Topics:

  • Sales Call Planning,
  • Sales Planning,
  • Sales Prospecting

• On Relationships, Solutions, and Challengers

  

  Having spent two decades in the sales training and consulting world, I get asked all the time what I think about this or that sales approach or book. When I do, it tends to make for productive discussion and learning. Importantly, it helps people decide what’s right for them when it comes to selling.

  Until now, I’ve never been asked about the same approach and book on a regular basis. That approach and book is The Challenger Sale by Brent Adamson and Matthew Dixon. And now that we’ve published RAIN Group’s major research study, What Sales Winners Do Differently, we’re getting asked even more often.

  Since we get asked often—and since it’s getting a bit old copying and pasting the same emails to clients and colleagues—we thought we’d open up the discussion to everyone...

  [click to continue...]

  11 Comments Topics:

  • Buying Process,
  • Professional Selling Skills,
  • RAIN Selling,
  • Sales Research

• New Sales Research: What Sales Winners Do Differently

  

  After many months of significant effort, we launched What Sales Winners Do Differently this week. This report reveals data and insight from our in-depth sales research on what sellers do to win sales opportunities.

  The results are both surprising and fascinating.

  Where selling was just a few years ago, where it is today, and where it’s going: these are pretty hot, and hotly debated, topics.

  Quite a few people, most notably the authors of The Challenger Sale, have declared the death of solution selling. You know an idea has gained mainstream credence when the Harvard Business Review publishes an article that takes a firm position on it. In this case, the article in the July-August 2012 issue was titled “The End of Solution Sales.”

  No hedging in that title. Story over. The end.

  We agree that sales is changing, but the question is how.

  When we started this research, our goal was to find out what’s currently working in sales. Is solution selling really dead? If so, what should replace it? If not, since we know selling is changing, what do sellers need to do differently in order to find themselves in the winner’s circle more often?

  [click to continue...]

  21 Comments Topics:

  • Buying Process,
  • Professional Selling Skills,
  • RAIN Selling,
  • Sales Research

• 21 Powerful, Open-Ended Sales Questions

  

  Broad, open ended-sales questions are great for helping us to find out what’s going on in our prospects’ and clients’ worlds. They help us connect with buyers personally, understand their needs, understand what’s important to them, and help them create better futures for themselves.

  Following are 21 open-ended sales questions you can ask that will help you round out the picture of your clients' needs. These questions are broken down into four groupings within the RAIN Selling^SM Framework:

  • Rapport
  • Aspirations and Afflictions
  • Impact
  • New Reality

  One thing to note about open-ended sales questions: they don’t need to be complex. Often the basics are all you need.

  [click to continue...]

  0 Comments Topics:

  • RAIN Selling,
  • Sales Planning

• Seller-Driven Demand: the Greatest Untapped Opportunity in Key Account Sales

  

  Imagine for a minute you sold everything you should be selling across all of your firm’s capabilities to your existing clients. If all the buying centers bought all of the capabilities they should be buying, how much would your key account sales increase?

  When people spend time analyzing this carefully, they find the potential to expand sales to existing clients is huge.

  Given the great potential for growth, many companies give proactive key account sales quite the effort, but few achieve the results they should. The problem is they can’t, or for some reason simply don’t, create their own opportunities.

  [click to continue...]

  0 Comments Topics:

  • Cross Selling & Up Selling,
  • Professional Selling,
  • Sales Knowledge,
  • Strategic Account Management

• 6 Tips for Differentiating in the Selling Process

  

  See an article about differentiation and it’s likely to be about marketing. Differentiation often starts with marketing, but it’s in the selling process that it truly comes alive.

  Here at RAIN Group, we recently analyzed just over 700 business-to-business sales made to buyers who represent $3.1 billion in annual purchases from industries with complex sales.

  The purpose of the research was to find out what sales winners do differently in the selling process compared to the sellers that didn’t win, but who came in second place.

  One area we studied was the buyers’ perceptions of what they believe led them to buy from the winners. Overall, we studied 42 factors, three of which focused on differentiation. They were:

  1. Overall value from the company was superior to other options.
  2. Company offers products and services that are superior to other options.
  3. Seller differentiated their products and services from the other available options.

  Not only did these differentiation factors score near the top of the list, they dominated it. In fact, these three factors were in the top four! Not only is differentiation in the selling process helpful, but it’s of the utmost importance if a seller wants to win.

  [click to continue...]

  0 Comments Topics:

  • Buying Process,
  • Professional Selling Skills,
  • Sales Performance Improvement

• How to Tackle the Hidden Killer of Account Growth

  

  All the strategies. All the meetings. All the planning.

  All the effort you put in to maximizing your sales to existing accounts will be for naught if you don’t first talk about, and then do something about, this hidden killer of account growth.

  Your people don’t trust each other.

  We don’t mean everyone thinks the guys down the hall are all lying, cheating, sniveling Salty Sams. It’s often more subtle:

  • Your account leaders don’t know enough about the other areas of your business and how they operate to trust them with their most important relationships.
  • Your account leaders don’t know enough about what the other areas can help clients achieve to believe that their clients will be thrilled if they buy it.
  • Your account leaders have been burned in the past by bringing other people (or, perhaps, specific people) in, so, whether consciously or not, they avoid broadening the conversation.

  Then again, it could be Saltysamism. It could be they doubt each other’s competence. Or that the product they sell isn’t so great. It could be a host of issues.

  [click to continue...]

  0 Comments Topics:

  • Cross Selling & Up Selling,
  • Sales Management,
  • Strategic Account Management

• 7 Tips for Maximizing Time and Deepening Relationships with Executives

  

  “It’s impossible to get serious face time with senior executives.”

  “Even getting 15 minutes with a senior executive can take 15 months.”

  I hear things like this all the time from professionals, sellers, and other business leaders who want to get more time with decision makers, but haven’t yet cracked the code.

  Let’s start by setting a few things straight:

  1.    It’s not impossible to get serious face time with senior executives.
  2.    Getting serious face time with senior executives doesn’t need to take forever.
  3.    The code is crackable.

  It’s a common misconception that senior executives don’t have time. Based on extensive research in the area, I’m prepared to reveal a startling fact...

  [click to continue...]

  3 Comments Topics:

  • Networking,
  • Professional Selling Skills,
  • Sales Conversations

• Building Trust with Skeptical Executives

  

  Sometimes it’s just easy. You meet a person and connect. Conversation flows. You find common areas professionally and personally. Ideas bounce back and forth, and you start talking about how you can work on something together. Before you know it, work is under way, and the collaboration is the definition of one plus one equals three.

  Sometimes it ain’t easy. You meet a person, and they’re all business. Getting them to engage with you in any sense is slow. Painful. You open up and share, provide great ideas, and work hard to get the other person to see the value in working with you. It should be plain to see, but it’s not. You’re met with aloofness and suspicion.

  You try to engage on a personal level and ask, “How was your weekend?” His reply, “Fine.” Then dead air...

  [click to continue...]

  0 Comments Topics:

  • Networking,
  • Professional Selling Skills,
  • Sales Conversations

• Sneak Peek at the Benchmark Report on High Performance in Strategic Account Management with Our SAM Infographic

  In our white paper Why Strategic Account Management Fails, we noted that high performers in strategic account management were significantly less likely to face 16 of 19 common challenges in strategic account management. We didn’t, however, have space to go into much detail in this specific area. Since publishing the white paper, we’ve been asked quite a bit for more detail on the specific challenges faced by companies that engage in formal strategic account management, and the differences between high performers and average / below-average performers.

  Though access to the full Benchmark Report on High Performance in Strategic Account Management is reserved for one-on-one interactions and for our work with clients, we are happy to share this more in-depth look at some of the challenges that stood out to us...

  [click to continue...]

  0 Comments Topics:

  • Sales Knowledge,
  • Sales Management,
  • Sales Performance Improvement,
  • Sales Research,
  • Strategic Account Management

• Turning the Question "What do you do?" Into a Conversation About Value

  Avoid these six conversational mistakes in new business relationships.

  You’re at an industry event mulling over which cheese will go best with which crackers at the buffet. The person next to you introduces himself. You introduce yourself. Then he says:

  “So tell me, what do you do?”

  The challenge is to communicate the key elements of your value. When we work with our clients to teach them how to sell, we tend to focus on helping them learn the right things to do, such as you’ll find in our article 6 Building Blocks for Communicating Your Value Proposition.

  Knowing the right thing to do will help you get on the right track. However, even those on the right track can get derailed by common mistakes. It’s often just as helpful to know what not to do as it is to know what to do.

  Here, then, are the most common mistakes we see people making when trying to answer the question, “What do you do?” and ideas for how to avoid them...

  [click to continue...]

  4 Comments Topics:

  • Sales Conversations,
  • Sales Mistakes,
  • Value Proposition

• 5 Ways Strategic Account Management and Selling Are Different

  What are the differences between Strategic Account Management and Selling?

  Ask the question, “What needs to happen at your company to maximize your success with your strategic accounts?” and you’re likely to get answers like this:

  • The leaders at the account need to know about the value we can bring them besides what we’re doing for them right now.
  • We need to penetrate different divisions of the accounts.
  • Our relationships need to be deeper if we want to keep competitors out.
  • We need to work directly with decision makers at the enterprise level.

  Nice list, but not unique to strategic account management.

  Indeed, the answers tend to be the same as those to the question, “What would you like your salespeople to do more of?"

  Company leaders often ask the question, look at this list, and decide, “Okay – looks like we need sales training. Let’s put something on the agenda.”

  This is a mistake.

  While on their face, many of the outcomes of strategic account management and sales are the same (e.g. higher revenue, higher margins, longer contracts, deeper penetration, more mindshare, stronger relationships) and some of the concepts are the same, the paths to get there can be quite different.

  Here are 5 areas where these differences stand out...

  [click to continue...]

  3 Comments Topics:

  • Buying Process,
  • Sales Performance Improvement

• 8 Strategic Account Management Roles Every Company Needs to Know About

  Is your account team playing all the right roles?

  Ask leaders at companies how much more they believe they could be selling to their strategic accounts and you don’t hear 5%, 10%, or 20%.

  It’s usually more like, “We should be selling 2 times…3 times…even more.”

  Ask what’s in their way, you’ll often get this answer, “Our strategic account managers just aren’t doing what they need to do to penetrate the account, cross-sell, and keep the competition out so we can truly grow our accounts to their potential.”

  The reasons vary why this is the case. But when it comes to the strategic account management team, eight of the reasons are predictable. There are eight distinct roles that must be played for strategic account management initiatives to deliver at peak potential.

  Few companies define the roles and play all eight well.

  The first step to changing this is to know what these roles are. So here you go.

  [click to continue...]

  1 Comment Topics:

  • Buying Process,
  • Sales Knowledge,
  • Sales Performance Improvement

• Creating a Culture of Selling with Rainmakers: Part Two

  Are your rainmakers armed to succeed?

  In our last post about building a rainmaking sales culture, we discussed the three areas of organizationally-controlled influences you need to address in order to create the best sales environment in which your sales team can thrive and succeed:

  Organizational Influences:

     1. Expectations and Feedback

     2. Tools and Resources

     3. Consequences and Incentives

  In this post we will discuss how to make certain you have the best rainmakers and potential rainmakers working in that culture. We’ll look at the three factors that are a part of who is on your team, who can sell, and, just as importantly, who will sell. These 3 factors are...

  [click to continue...]

  0 Comments Topics:

  • Sales Knowledge,
  • Sales Motivation,
  • Sales Performance Improvement,
  • Sales Training

• Creating a Culture of Selling with Rainmakers

  Are there holes in your organization's sales culture?

  There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza. A hole in the bucket, dear Liza, a hole. 
  - Harry Belafonte

  Here at RAIN Group, our advice to organizations looking to create a culture of sustained, serious selling: Make sure the bucket doesn't have any holes or it won't hold water.
  
  Time and again we see organizations doing a certain percent of what they need to do to help their teams achieve more sales success and increase sales performance (our favorite, “Can you come in and give a 90-minute speech that will charge up the team for the next 12 months?”), but rarely do they put forth 100% effort. If you're only doing 70% of what you need to do to increase sales performance, you don't get 70% results; you get much less. Like patching a leak in the bottom of a boat, if you don't patch it 100%, it still takes on water.
  
  So if your charge is to create a team of rainmakers, those people responsible for selling who are bringing in three, five, or seven times more revenue than everyone else, make sure you...

  [click to continue...]

  0 Comments Topics:

  • Sales Knowledge,
  • Sales Motivation,
  • Sales Performance Improvement,
  • Sales Training

• 7 Reasons Why Sales Training Fails

  Is your sales training falling short?

  According to ES Research between 85% and 90% of sales training has no lasting impact after 120 days. At the same time, companies are spending billions of dollars on sales training each year. That’s billions of dollars being wasted on limited sales performance impact and only short-term boosts in sales at best.

  Training can be a disappointment right away when it just doesn’t go well, or it can be a disappointment months later when results don’t materialize. Regardless, sales training strikes out a lot. When it does, it’s usually because of common and predictable reasons. But if you can avoid these mistakes, you can set yourself up for a successful training initiative that leads to increased sales performance and long-term revenue growth. Here are 7 reasons why your sales training might be failing...

  [click to continue...]

  3 Comments Topics:

  • Sales Assessments,
  • Sales Performance Improvement,
  • Sales Training

• How Was the Sales Training? 14 Comments to Avoid at All Costs

  What does sales training failure look like? Hear any of the following comments after asking, “How was the sales training?” and you’re closing in on it.

  Failure is popular these days.
  
  Seriously.
  
  I’ve been reading (and recommend) The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. In The Lean Startup, Ries covers a number of concepts to help entrepreneurs and their new ventures to succeed. One such concept is ‘Validated Learning’.
  
  Essentially, Validated Learning is a process by which you try a lot of things that you think make sense, measure the results, find that you made a lot of mistakes and hit on some successes, and keep on keeping on by avoiding the mistakes and testing new things.

   

  
  I like it. For a business. 
  
  For sales training, not so much.
  
  I’m a fan of failure when...

  [click to continue...]

  3 Comments Topics:

  • Sales Training

• How to Build Fluent Product Knowledge and Improve Sales Success

  Build product knowledge to improve sales success.

  Salespeople know what they sell, and they sell what they know. When it comes to salesperson knowledge, people know too little about their particular industry, their customers’ needs, and their company’s products and services to be able to sell the full suite of solutions. Without this knowledge they can’t:

   

  • Ask the right questions to uncover the complete set of customer needs
  • Match the right products and services to those needs
  • Position the value of their company as superior to other options available to the customer

  Indeed, they can’t and don’t hold masterful sales conversations with customers.
  
  The result: Lost sales and missed cross-selling opportunities.
  
  Some of you may be saying to yourself, “Wait. We provide knowledge training. We even hold a retreat each year and classes focused on knowledge topics.”
     
  Perhaps you’re the exception, but most often even if product knowledge training happens, it doesn’t get the job done. If there is some kind of test for knowledge gained, it’s usually only for accuracy.

  [click to continue...]

  0 Comments Topics:

  • Blog Post,
  • Professional Selling Skills,
  • Sales Knowledge,
  • Sales Planning

• Want to Double Your Sales Opportunities? Focus on This One Thing

  Only focusing on a prospect's pain? You're missing half the story.

  Most sales advice suggests that to sell products and services as solutions to needs you must uncover your prospect’s pain.

  The reasons are simple:

  • If the prospect communicates his business afflictions to you, then it is likely that he will want them to go away if it’s possible, and if it makes sense to invest the time, money, and brainpower to get rid of them.
  
  
  • Each affliction you uncover gives you the chance to explore it fully to discover its true business impact.

   

  • Uncovering and discussing one affliction can lead to other afflictions, which the prospect may not have been thinking about in the first place.

  Uncovering your prospect’s afflictions is a crucial step in the business development process.

  But focusing only on afflictions can do you a disservice because problems and pain are only half the story.

  [click to continue...]

  5 Comments Topics:

  • Cross Selling & Up Selling,
  • RAIN Selling,
  • Sales Conversations,
  • Sales Mistakes

• 8 Tips for Selling with Social Media

  There's money to be made in social media if you sell the right way.

  There’s this age-old problem with selling: If we could only get more people to pay attention to us, we could build relationships that lead to sales.

  Fortunately, social media offers an amazing source of business opportunities. If you approach it the right way, you can build many relationships that could be crucial to your business growth and success.

  This article is about successfully selling (not marketing) with social media. And by selling, I mean the “two people getting to know each other and starting up a conversation that might go somewhere” kind of selling.

  Here are 8 ways to strike up social media conversations with people you want to meet...

  [click to continue...]

  9 Comments Topics:

  • Networking,
  • Sales Conversations,
  • Sales Mistakes,
  • Sales Prospecting

• Q. I Hate Selling, So Now How Do I Convert Leads?

  A. Green eggs and ham.

   

  John Jantsch over at Duct Tape Marketing asked me and several other sales industry veterans the following question:

  "I hate selling, so now how do I convert leads?"

  His readers could then guess which sales author answered the question which way. Now that the cat’s out of the bag, I thought I’d share how I answered the question.

  [click to continue...]

  4 Comments Topics:

  • RAIN Selling,
  • Sales Conversations,
  • Sales Mistakes

• 7 Ways to Build Rapport in Sales and Connect with People

  It's important to build rapport from the initial handshake. Take a look at these 7 tips for building genuine rapport with new prospects.

  Consider this: a CBS News / New York Times poll asked, “What percent of people in general are trustworthy?”

  The answer: 30%. Pretty skeptical we all are, right?

  Not necessarily. At the same time, the CBS News / New York Times poll asked a similar group the same question, but with a slight difference. “What percent of people that you know are trustworthy?”

  The answer: 70%.

  That’s a huge difference. Goes to show you: when people get to know you and people get to like you, people begin to trust you.

  Of course, there’s a lot more to building trust than making a good initial connection with someone, but it’s sure a good start. And making a connection with someone makes them more comfortable sharing with you their aspirations and their afflictions, two things you need to know if you want to succeed in sales.

  When you build rapport in sales, keep in mind you want to make a sincere connection. All too often chit-chat before a sales call seems contrived…because it is. Assuming you want to build solid and real relationships with people, consider the following...

  [click to continue...]

  4 Comments Topics:

  • Networking,
  • RAIN Selling,
  • Sales Conversations,
  • Sales Mistakes,
  • Sales Prospecting

• 6 Building Blocks for Communicating Your Value Proposition

  Even when people know their value, many find it difficult to describe it.

  Let’s say someone asks you the simple question, “What do you do?”

  How do you answer? Of course, you need to get your value across, but as we note here, when communicating your value proposition, you don’t want to deliver the same canned speech for everyone.

  What you need to do is first craft, then learn to deliver specific nuggets of information you can use to get your value across. Put all these nuggets together, and you have what we call a value proposition positioning statement. 

  [click to continue...]

  4 Comments Topics:

  • RAIN Selling,
  • Sales Conversations,
  • Sales Mistakes,
  • Value Proposition

• Using the Power of Why in Needs Discovery

  Why - a powerful word in uncovering need.

  "It’s not that they can’t see the solution, it’s that they can’t see the problem.”

  - G.K. Chesterton

  One day the production line stopped suddenly, and the whole plant shut down.

  It was horrible!

  The company lost tens of thousands of dollars an hour by not turning out widgets as the staff stood idly by and waited.

  The problem was in the ViperAssembly machine. No matter what they tried, they just couldn’t fix it for good. They replaced the McGurnkney nut and it worked for about a day. Then it stopped again. Then they tried realigning the Johnson rod, and that fix only lasted 3 hours.

  [click to continue...]

  9 Comments Topics:

  • Buying Process,
  • RAIN Selling,
  • Sales Conversations,
  • Sales Mistakes

• 16 Principles of Influence in Sales

  I really wanted a new basketball for my 6th birthday - so big sis went to the sidewalk to talk influence strategy...

  When I was 6 I wanted a basketball for my birthday. I didn’t ask my dad for it myself. I sent in the big gun: my sister Allyson.

  I gave her the 411 on what I wanted and why, and we proceeded with a white board session where we mapped out all of the possible ways to get the decision makers to rule in our favor. (OK, as talented an 8 year old as Allyson was, maybe no white board. But we did talk about it, and she was a mean sidewalk chalk girl.)

  Shortly thereafter, we green lighted operation Cedric Maxwell.

  A few hours later, the qualified decision maker (a.k.a. Dad) came to see me. As he tells me the story, he asked me why I sent my sister in to lobby for me.

  My answer, “She’s the better convincer.”

  [click to continue...]

  6 Comments Topics:

  • Sales Conversations,
  • Sales Presentations,
  • Sales Prospecting

• Not Hitting Your Sales Numbers? Do This One Thing Better

  Are you giving yourself a chance of a bullseye?

  “Like a poor marksman you keep…missing…the target. Kaaahhhnnn!!!”

  - Admiral James T. Kirk

  There was this one sales person I know that worked very hard, but he always seemed to be middle of the pack when it came to results. He had good skills. He was a good guy. But the results just weren’t there.

  One day I got a chance to watch him in action. Early in the day I asked him what his plan was for the day, and he said, “Sell, of course.” There wasn’t much rhyme or reason to it as he plowed forward.

  At the end of the day, I asked him if he met his goals for the day, and if he felt like he was on the right track to hit his sales and personal income target.

  He didn’t have much to say on either point...

  [click to continue...]

  0 Comments Topics:

  • RAIN Selling,
  • Sales Conversations,
  • Sales Motivation,
  • Sales Performance Improvement,
  • Sales Planning

• Thank You for Helping Rainmaking Conversations Become an Amazon Bestseller

  Earlier this week we announced the launch of our new book, Rainmaking Conversations and we’ve been absolutely thrilled with the response so far. The book has reached the #1 bestseller spot on Amazon in a number of categories...

  [click to continue...]

  0 Comments Topics:

  • RAIN Selling,
  • Sales Conversations

• 6 Questions to Prepare for the Biggest Sales Conversation of Your Life

  Look in the mirror, and ask yourself these 6 questions.

  Imagine for a minute you’re a master carpenter. You’ve been building houses your whole life, trying your best to hone your craft and deliver the highest quality work every day that you possibly could.

  Then one day, you’re presented with the opportunity to teach your craft – a craft you’ve been honing for 30 years – to someone else.

  Let’s say for argument’s sake that this person has positively average talent! They have no better raw abilities than anyone else you might run into that barely knows the difference between a router and a miter saw.

  But they’ve told themselves that they’re going to be the best carpenter that’s ever walked the face of the planet. They’re going to prove to themself, and in the process everybody else, that they will become a master craftsman, a craftsman with the skills that rival the best carpenters in the land.

  Now imagine for a minute that they really mean it...

  [click to continue...]

  8 Comments Topics:

  • RAIN Selling,
  • Sales Conversations,
  • Sales Mistakes,
  • Sales Motivation

• New Book: Rainmaking Conversations – Special Bonus Gifts When You Buy Today

  Our new book is finally here: Rainmaking Conversations: Influence, Persuade, and Sell in Any Situation. After close to a decade of research, training tens of thousands of people, and a year in the writing process, we’re thrilled with how it came out.

  If you want a guide to leading masterful sales conversations this is it. We cover everything from generating initial discussions to uncovering needs to overcoming objections to winning the sale. We wanted to bring sales conversation to life, so each chapter is peppered liberally with examples, stories, and tips.

  [click to continue...]

  0 Comments Topics:

  • RAIN Selling,
  • Sales Conversations

• New Book First Look: Rainmaking Conversations – Free Chapter

  We haven’t said much about the launch of our new book on this blog, and it’s certainly not for a lack of excitement about it. In fact, we’ve been incredibly busy since the beginning of this year preparing for the launch of the book, which will be next Tuesday, April 19, and in the midst of all the activity, we haven’t even mentioned it yet here on the blog.

  The book just hit bookstores! Thus you can buy a copy now. But if you wait until next week, you will have the opportunity to access a ton of special bonus gifts we’re putting together for you from ourselves along with authors and experts including Jill Konrath, Jeffrey Gitomer, Dave Kahle, Art Sobczak, Tim Wackel, and many, many more.

  [click to continue...]

  0 Comments Topics:

  • RAIN Selling,
  • Sales Conversations

• The 8 Buyer Personas (and How to Sell to Them)

  Warp 9 Walt is a change agent with a strong sense of urgency. He's just one of the eight buyer personas...

  A while ago at a conference I had dinner with two people. The first, (we’ll call her Janine) I had known since we worked together six years earlier. The second person (Ed), Janine and I had just met.

  Janine described a sales challenge she was facing. She’d been working with two prospects at two different organizations, one for over a year and one for almost two. The typical sales cycle is 6 to 9 months, and these were both well beyond. She felt she was nearing a sale with both, but for all she knew, “nearing” might mean a year or two to go.

  This is a fairly common sales challenge: The sale looks good, but it’s taking forever. Janine happened to be facing two at the same time...

  [click to continue...]

  18 Comments Topics:

  • Buying Process,
  • Overcoming Objections,
  • Sales Conversations,
  • Sales Knowledge,
  • Sales Mistakes

• Overcoming 3 Common Cold Calling Objections

  Cold calls don't always start perfectly. But learn to overcome these objections, and you'll instantly find more success in it.

  A business-to-business client we at RAIN Group work with recently closed a mid-six figure deal that started with a cold call.

  But it started out rocky. Indeed, about 20 seconds in to the cold call it almost fell apart.

  After the prospect answered the phone, Jim, a sales person that works for our client, began speaking and the prospect immediately said, “I’m not interested.”  This is where many salespeople give up.

  Jim didn’t.

  He knew that this was just the first of three common cold calling objections. He persisted and, as a result, he got our client on the prospect’s radar screen and ended up winning a major deal.

  If your initial attempt to capture attention and create interest on a cold call doesn’t work, don’t just wilt! It’s easy to say “okay” and just move on, but, then again, it’s easy to fail at cold calling.

  All is not lost. You can overcome common objections and make saves.

  Here are the three common cold calling objections along with examples for how you can overcome them.

  [click to continue...]

  0 Comments Topics:

  • Cold Calling,
  • Overcoming Objections,
  • Sales Conversations,
  • Sales Mistakes

• 10 Rainmaker Principles and Keys to Sales Motivation

  Tony Robbins, please accept my apology.

  About 15 years ago, when I was a budding manager in charge of my first strategic business unit, I dissed you pretty badly.

  I'm sorry. I take it back.

  My team and I were in a strategy meeting, trying to get something done—something really big that would literally change our fortunes and our lives.

  We knew the goal, and were now trying to figure out what to do to achieve said goal.

  A well-read young teammate of mine was a fan of motivational speakers, and was always looking for ways to increase sales motivation. At one point she shared, "Tony Robbins says, 'If you want to be successful, find someone who has achieved the results you want and copy what they do and you'll achieve the same results.'"

  To which I replied, "That self-help stuff…Bah-loney." So I dismissed what Tony said because I generally dismissed self-help gurus.

  Why? At the time I had only been exposed to self-help charlatans spouting useless pap wrapped in cheese blankets. As I fancied myself a serious business person, I was anti-cheese. And thus, by mistaken proxy, I was closed to advice from the self-help world that could help us understand, and enhance, the sales motivations of top performers.

  [click to continue...]

  0 Comments Topics:

  • Networking,
  • Sales Conversations,
  • Sales Knowledge,
  • Sales Motivation,
  • Sales Prospecting

• FAINT - The New Definition of a Qualified Prospect

  It's 2001. You work for a new company in the search engine space. Let's call this company Shmoogle.

  Shmoogle has this huge new idea—businesses are starting to grow based on getting found on the Internet. Why not have businesses pay per click to get found? Brilliant!

  You're a sales person at Shmoogle, and you know pay per click will be huge. You start prospecting on the phone.

  You: Hello Ms. VP of Marketing. This is Lamont Sanford with Shmoogle. I'd like to speak with you for a few minutes about our marketing program that's helping companies like yours generate a lot of leads and new business on the Internet.

  Ms. VP (who pleasantly accepts cold calls): Sure. Let's talk.

  (FIVE minutes go by. Conversation goes great.)

  You: OK, then, I think pay per click search engine marketing is perfect for you. How much budget do you have set aside for this?

  Ms. VP: I don't have a budget for pay per click marketing—or a budget for marketing at all right now.

  You: (Thinking to yourself: darn, not a qualified buyer.) Well, give me a call when you have one.

  Of course, only a complete loon would finish a call like that. The wrong turn was the salesperson's fault, though, for asking the question about budget in the first place.

  [click to continue...]

  1 Comment Topics:

  • Sales Conversations,
  • Sales Planning,
  • Sales Prospecting

• 4 Crucial Elements to Rainmaking Success

  Salespeople that exhibit the 4 crucial elements are often the perfect fit.

  People often ask me, “Can rainmaking be taught?”

  It can surely be taught, but the question that people must ask themselves and their teams is, “Can we learn to make rain?”

  Makes me think of this one:

  Q. How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb?

  A. One, but the light bulb has to want to change.

  Same goes for rainmaking: if you want to turn on your rainmaking light bulb, you can.

  If you’d like to discover if the rainmaking bulb can turn on for you (or for members of your organization), you need to know if the following four elements are in place.

  [click to continue...]

  1 Comment Topics:

  • Cold Calling,
  • Professional Selling Skills,
  • Sales Assessments,
  • Sales Motivation,
  • Sales Performance Improvement,
  • Sales Training

• 4 Things to Do When Clients Pressure You for Lower Fees

  “Your fees are too high; can you do it for less?”

  In the highly competitive marketplace we hear dreaded phrases like this all of the time. The easy thing to do is to offer a discount, but that cuts into your profit margins and sets a precedent for the future. You don’t want to become a victim of discounting gone wrong.

  So what do you do when clients push back on your fees?

  The glib answer is: focus on your value. It's trite, but true. If it's worth it to the client they'll pay for it. But when faced with price pushback, many are at a loss for what to do at that moment.

  [click to continue...]

  2 Comments Topics:

  • Overcoming Objections,
  • Sales Call Planning,
  • Sales Conversations,
  • Sales Negotiation,
  • Sales Planning,
  • Value Proposition

• 5 Guidelines for Writing Winning Proposals

  Don't show your clients a windy, roundabout path to their goals. Make it easy.

  Like a Poor Marksman You Keep…Missing…The Target!
  - Admiral James T. Kirk

  If you don't know your destination, any road will get you there. When prospects ask for a formal proposal, they are telling you their desired destination: a business relationship with you. And they're asking you to answer the question, “What road do we take to get there?”

  Since it's your job to give directions, you want to tell them the straightest, shortest, and easiest route. After all, you don't want them to get lost along the way, or so tired on the path that they give up before they get to the end.

  Why is it, then, that so many new business proposals that cross my desk take the long and winding road? They start off in the wrong direction, take side-roads that lead nowhere, and take forever to get where they're going. It's no wonder the success rate of these proposals is so low.

  [click to continue...]

  1 Comment Topics:

  • Proposal Writing,
  • Professional Selling,
  • Sales Presentations

• How to Communicate Value When it Counts

  

  Every business pundit has said at one time or another, "There's no more misunderstood, argued about topic in business than [insert topic here], but it's really not that complicated. Here's the secret to understanding it." Understanding how to communicate value when you're selling falls into this same category.

  Before you can learn how to communicate value, you need to understand what value, itself, is.

  1. Value: The monetary worth of something
  2. Value Proposition: The collection of reasons why a buyer buys
  3. Value Proposition Positioning Statement: A compelling, tangible statement of how a company or individual will benefit from buying something specific or buying from you in general

  Most people, however, only think of #3...

  [click to continue...]

  1 Comment Topics:

  • Buying Process,
  • Professional Selling Skills,
  • RAIN Selling,
  • Sales Research

• Accountability in Strategic Account Management

  In our 5 Keys to Maximizing Sales with Existing Accounts report, we noted a number of different ways that organizations can shoot themselves in the foot when it comes to maximizing account growth. Compensation alignment and accountability are two big ones.

  In our Benchmark Report on High Performance in Strategic Account Management, we found that high performers were more than twice as likely to have compensation and reporting structures aligned to support account growth. And, as well, high performers were much more likely to hold teams accountable.

  [click to continue...]

  0 Comments Topics:

  • Cross Selling & Up Selling,
  • Professional Selling,
  • Strategic Account Management