By Mike Schultz, Publisher, and John Doerr, Founder and Contributing EditorSales Conversations for Services
Oily. Smarmy. Phony. Mendacious. Two-faced. Right or wrong, these words are often associated with salespeople. None of us wants to be associated with these terms, nor do we want to engage in any selling tactics that will make these labels apply to us. We rarely see professionals engaging in tactics that will merit these labels, which is good. It is not, however, because they use the right tactics. More often than not it is because they avoid selling altogether.
Here's the good news: You can sell with high integrity and without snake oil tactics. You should never have to engage in any sales activity that makes you feel ethically uncomfortable.
So many service providers think selling, by its nature, is a distasteful and less-than-ethical process, the sole purpose of which is to part people from their money for things they don’t need. They believe that to be successful at selling, service providers must leave their values and everyday personalities at the door and adopt a sleazy persona and voice that would naturally say something like, “What’s it gonna take to get you into this shiny red pre-owned sports car today, ma’am?”
Nothing is further from the truth. The best rainmakers bring clients and cash into their firms because they are no different when they sell their services than when they deliver their services. Great rainmakers sell as they serve.
They prepare.
They listen.
They solve problems.
They care about their clients’ well-being and success.
They create new futures for their clients that the clients didn’t know were possible. They are interpersonally sensitive.
They can either push the limit or slow down when it is in the client’s best interest. The best rainmakers meet mutually set expectations over and over again, building trust, relationships, and two-way confidence. The best rainmakers are ethical at all times.
In other words, the best rainmakers are simply great professional service providers. In effect, they are starting the process of being great service providers during the sales process before clients officially engage their services.
Great service providers are masters at uncovering the goals and the challenges of their clients and prospects. Great rainmakers are no different. However, service providers often lack the tools to engage in the types of conversations that allow them to fully explore all of the client’s needs.
Great service providers also understand the value they provide clients. They craft compelling solutions based on specific client needs, and can communicate that value to the client clearly and articulately. When you can uncover, quantify, and communicate the impact of engaging your services, you are better able to articulate your true value to each client.
To facilitate the transition from trusted advisor to seller, we developed the concept of RAIN SellingSM to help you plan your sales conversations in selling as you serve, selling to need, and communicating the value.
RAIN Selling Basics
Since trial and error are the norm when it comes to learning how to be a rainmaker, the learning curve is long and steep, and often filled with anxiety and pain. This leads us to ask the questions, "Is it possible to shorten the learning curve when it comes to selling professional services? Is it possible to make selling itself feel less 'salesy'? Can we increase the level of success of the seller?" The answers (as you may have guessed) are yes, yes, and yes. We at Wellesley Hills Group have worked not only to provide a process for selling professional services, but to improve the process of learning to become a rainmaker.
RAIN is an acronym for rapport, aspirations and afflictions, impact, and new reality. The word RAIN, of course, is also a nod to the fact that this process is focused on rainmakers—the traditional name for those people who bring new clients and big fees into service firms.
Graphically, RAIN Selling looks like this:
R—Rapport
The ability to build rapport in sales conversations is an old concept that is more relevant and important than ever. At the same time, it's talked about less and less in sales training circles and dismissed as a ploy to make a surface-level connection to a potential client. Why is true rapport so important? Rapport sets the foundation of comfort for the rest of the conversation and for any future relationship. The word rapport also implies a real connection between people, not just a surface-level commonality.
Having a true connection to a potential client is so important in rainmaking because, all other things being equal, buyers tend to buy from service providers that they like as much as they buy from those who can meet their needs the best. Yes, there should be a strong focus on creating and presenting a compelling value proposition, but rapport is an often overlooked factor that can tip the scale in favor of one service provider over another.
A—Aspirations and Afflictions
The “A” in RAIN Selling stands for aspirations as well as afflictions. Many sales discussion methodologies suggest that to sell products and services as solutions to needs, you must first uncover the problems and/or pain of the potential client. We suggest that uncovering problems and pain (afflictions) is only half the story.
When clients buy professional services, they are typically thinking as much about aspirations (where they want to go) as they are about afflictions (problems or pain). If you think about asking questions in the negative context, you will find yourself always positing, "What's not happening for you?" or the trite "What keeps you up at night?"
You might get good answers. But if you also think of questions in the positive context, you will find yourself asking "Where do you want to go?" and "What are the possibilities?" By asking questions in a positive light, you will find that, instead of just negating problems or filling a need, you can paint a vision of a new reality (more on this later) for the client that takes them past problem solving and into new possibilities and innovation.
I—Impact
After you uncover the potential client's aspirations and afflictions, the question then becomes “So what?” If your afflictions don't get solved, what will or won't happen? Will they get worse? How do they affect the bottom line of your company, division, or department?
If your aspirations don't become reality, so what? In a business-to-business scenario, these questions might sound like, “Will your competition get ahead of you if you don't innovate? Will you lose market share if you aren't aggressive in your strategy?”
The exact “so what?” questions will vary depending on the situation, but your ability to quantify and paint the “so what?” picture is the foundation for just how important engaging your services is to the prospective buyer. This is of paramount importance to you because, as we have discussed previously, when it comes to selling professional services, your competition is often the indifference of your client, not another organization or service provider. So creating urgency for buying your services hinges on how well you help your client answer the “so what?” questions.
N—New Reality
One of the greatest difficulties in rainmaking is helping potential clients to understand exactly what they get when they work with you, and then communicating this benefit to other people involved in the buying decision. At the end of a well-managed sales process, your job is to create a new reality that will be the best for your client, given the client’s specific aspirations and afflictions and the impact of doing (or not doing) something about them.
This process can start even before you have engaged your complete needs discovery and solution crafting process. Ask prospects what they want the world to look like once your work is done. Broad questions that start them envisioning the future are a good way to get the creative juices flowing.
- At the end of this engagement, what will success look like?
- After working with us for six months, what do you see happening?
- What is your current service provider delivering in terms of creating the changes you need? Where are they falling short?
- What do you want to have happen as a result of our work together?
- What would a Wall Street Journal article say about you (your company, your group) three years from now?
Don't be surprised if the prospect’s first answer to these questions is, “I don't know.” More than likely they also will say, “That's a good question.” If this happens, do not jump right in. Silence will indicate you expect an answer, and with some thought they will give you one. Prompt them if need be.
As much as possible, you should present this new reality in both qualitative (descriptive) terms as well as quantitative (financial measurement or other numerically based) terms.
Applying RAIN
Like any good conceptual model, RAIN Selling goes a lot deeper than what can be described in a short article. Applying any new process such that it will make a difference in your sales results takes training, practice, and coaching. The power of RAIN Selling is that you can apply it right away and have it make a difference. Good models, while having deep intrinsic value, are also easy to understand and apply.
Thus, the best way to get you started is to simply remember what the acronym RAIN stands for. Selling professional services (i.e. rainmaking) requires that you connect with a potential client (Rapport) because professional service buyers often choose who they like the best; get a sense of where you can make a difference, either by solving their problems (Afflictions) or helping them innovate and grow (Aspirations); help everyone involved in the buying process to understand the 'so what' (Impact) of moving forward; and make tangible how the world will be different by painting a picture of a better future (New Reality).
Editor's Note:
Learn a lot more about how RAIN Selling works with this free e-book:
Mike Schultz is the publisher of RainToday.com and president of Wellesley Hills Group, a consulting and marketing services firm that helps service companies to grow. He is also co-author of Professional Services Marketing. You can read his Services Insider Blog and can reach him at mschultz@raintoday.com.
John Doerr is the founder RainToday.com and president of the Wellesley Hills Group, a consulting and marketing services firm that helps service companies to grow. He is also co-author of Professional Services Marketing. John can be reached at jdoerr@whillsgroup.com.