Our Approach to Sales Training

ES Research estimates that between 85% and 90% of sales training fails.

But it doesn’t have to happen to you.

The RAIN Selling Learning System is designed to inspire real change and deliver real results. Watch the RAIN Selling system overview presentation:

After years of fieldwork, exhaustive research into what makes for successful sales training, and continuous research and development, we’ve developed the RAIN Selling Sales Training System. The key components of the system revolve around the acronym RACE.

RACE stands for:

• Readiness: Determine each individual’s readiness to become a top sales performer
• Action: Focus on taking daily action to improve results and surpass goals
• Capability: Develop the skills and knowledge needed to succeed in sales
• Evaluation: Set expectations and measurements for success, then evaluate results, build accountability, and improve continuously

Readiness – Person Driven to Win

Many sales training programs focus only on skills (and sometimes knowledge), but skills and knowledge are only part of the story. Even if salespeople and professionals have the skills to sell, something else often holds them back from achieving success.

Before training, we evaluate your sales team using our Rainmaker Assessment to determine their strengths, areas for improvement, growth potential, and overall ability to sell. Our Rainmaker Assessment process sheds needed light on:

• Who can sell
• Who will sell
• How much they can improve
• Which areas need improvement
• What the training and development program needs to look like for them to improve and to achieve results

It doesn’t matter how fast your car is, if you want to win a race, you have to enter it with a driver ready to win. With our Rainmaker Assessment process, we’ll help work with you to get your team ready for top performance.

Action – Right Roles, Right Plan, Right Action

Once you have a sales “driver” ready to drive at top speed, they need help navigating the course and developing a winning strategy.
Our training and coaching method has action at its center. We work with your salespeople to set goals, develop action plans, and hold them accountable so they achieve maximum results.

We’ll work with each individual on your sales team (or train your managers and trainers) to develop a playbook to help them reach their long-term goals with short-term actions that will lead them (and you) to success.

Capability – Skills and Knowledge to Succeed

You can have a driver ready to drive with a winning strategy to navigate the course, but if you don’t have the right car with the right engine, you won’t get very far. The car needs to be ready to accelerate fast, go 200 miles per hour, hug the turns, and perform for all 500 miles.

Like a car needs the right engine and components, your sales team needs the capability – the skills and knowledge – to succeed. It’s up to you to help your team build them.

Many sales training programs focus on two- or three-day training events as the complete learning program, and expect it to make a significant and lasting difference in skills, knowledge, and results. Live sales training events are important, helpful, and necessary, but they’re only a piece of a larger puzzle for getting the most out of sales training.

The RAIN Selling Sales Training System focuses on real change and real results. While it usually starts with a two- or three-day event and many can see immediate results, the greatest changes happen over time. Our robust learning methods, reinforcement, and action planning allow for real, long-term change to take hold.

The RAIN Selling learning system features:

• Action-learning: Our training focuses on getting your team “doing” with custom role-plays, case studies, and an engaging online selling simulation. This allows your team to practice their new skills in real-world settings while getting the feedback they need to improve.


• World-class blended learning: We maximize classroom learning by introducing core concepts and getting your entire team speaking a common sales language prior to live training. Our robust online sales training curriculum provides access to online modules for both reinforcement and new learning.


• Instructor and coach excellence: We employ only the best instructors with deep experience in sales. Our facilitators have led sales organizations and sold millions of dollars. Prior to the training our instructors conduct deep research into your industry and your company and tailor the training to make it most relevant to you.


• Research-based, proven results: The RAIN Selling methodology is based on our extensive research and experience on how customers buy and how the top performing salespeople sell. It’s been proven to work with tens of thousands of salespeople to help them become top-performing rainmakers.


• Ongoing reinforcement: Real behavior change happens over time. The more you reinforce learning and new behavior, the more the learning takes hold and results increase. Our robust training reinforcement includes online training, email, live workshops, webinars, individual and group coaching, email tips, and more to help your team successfully put their new skills to use.


• Complete Curriculum of Programs: Our sales training modules span the complete selling process. With our deep and rich library of training programs, we can build the right training for you.


• Customized for you: Each program is customized for you based on the skill gaps of your team, your industry, the markets you sell to, and your objectives and challenges. This makes the training relevant, immediately applicable, interesting, and just what your team needs to improve results.

Evaluate – Accountability and Continuous Improvement

What gets measured gets managed. When salespeople regularly monitor and measure their actions and results, they tend to succeed at much higher rates. Measurement is embedded into our methodology helping you to increase action and results continually.

Not only do we evaluate your sales team, but we set up the systems to evaluate your overall company results as well. We work with you to define your company’s goals and to align individuals’ goals to them. We then track these key measures.

Every RACE has a winner. We’ll help you take your sales results to the next level and make sure that you’re the one standing at the top of the podium at the end of the day.

The Results

By employing the RAIN Selling methodology, our clients have achieved these results:

• Grew sales at a double digit pace for 3 years running at a technology company


• Increased the size of the average contract by 50% at an environmental engineering firm


• Closed three new deals within 3 months at a large regional accounting firm (after closing no deal in the previous 12 months)


• Increased their cross-selling results from zero to five in just six months at a mid-size health care consulting firm


• Increased  sales performance year over year in excess of 80% at a technology services company


• Increased key account revenue by more than 200%


• Increased per sales representative revenue productivity from an average of $300,000 first to an average of over $500,000 in six months, and then to an average of $1,200,000 per rep

RAIN Group can help you increase sales and build an over-achieving sales team

Give us a call at 508-405-0438, send us an email, or fill out our contact form to learn how we can help you achieve dramatic increases in sales results at your company.

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