Sales Conversations for Services
To advance in their careers and become Rainmakers (those people at services companies that bring in the new clients and revenue), professionals such as accountants, lawyers, management consultants, and technology consultants eventually need to excel at selling professional services. Rarely, however, are these poor souls given a primer on rainmaking, especially when it comes to leading sales conversations and sales meetings. As a result, they often just 'wing it' and learn by doing, making many avoidable mistakes and losing opportunities to win new clients.

There is a better way to learn to become a rainmaker, especially when it comes to leading sales conversations and sales meetings. To help guide professionals through the process of learning to become a rainmaker, we'd like to introduce the concept of RAIN™ Selling. Geared 100% as a consultative sales process and conversation methodology for selling services, RAIN™ Selling helps professionals win new clients using sales techniques that work.

RAIN™ Basics
Trial and error are the norm when it comes to learning how to be a rainmaker. Thus, the learning curve is long 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 'salesly'? Can we increase the level of success of the seller all at the same time?" The answers (as you may have guessed) are yes, yes and yes. We've worked to embody much of how to improve the learning process in the RAIN™ Selling methodology.

So how does it work?

RAIN™ Selling is an acronym that stands for Rapport, Aspirations, Impact, and New Reality. The word 'RAIN', of course, is also a nod to the fact that this process is geared towards rainmakers—the traditional name for those people who bring the clients and the revenue into services firms.

R - Rapport: The ability to build rapport in sales conversations is an old concept that is more relevant and important that 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 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: The 'A' in RAIN™ Selling stands for Aspirations. 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 are 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?"

And 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 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 won't happen? Will they get worse? How does it 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 are to the prospective buyer. This is of tantamount importance to you because 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. Thus, you have to paint a clear picture of a New Reality to help them understand, as tangibly as you can depict it, how their world will be different if they engage your services.

As much as possible, you should present this New Reality in both qualitative (descriptive) terms as well as quantitative (financial or other numerically-based measurement) 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 tangibilize how the world will be different by painting a picture of a better future (New Reality).