“…but I know it when I see it.”
- Potter Stewart, Associate Justice, United States Supreme Court

In writing his ruling on pornography, Justice Stewart probably sounded like so many of the clients you work with as a professional service provider. Since you are selling something clients cannot see or touch, they have a hard time knowing exactly what they are buying and what value they will get in return.

Thus, one of the greatest difficulties in selling professional services is helping potential clients to understand exactly what outcomes they get when they work with you, and then communicating this benefit to other people involved in the buying decision.

Whatever your service may be, engaging it will somehow change your clients' world. In other words, you will create a New Reality for them.

To do this well, you need to:

• Discover what you need in order to create the best New Reality you can for them (i.e. what's your solution to their needs)

• Translate your solution into a case for moving forward with you

• Paint the picture of the New Reality so they can understand it and its value

Follow the RAIN™ Selling Process

At its core, RAIN™ Selling is a roadmap for the process of selling professional services and leading sales conversations. It serves as the foundation for each individual sales conversation, and for the flow of all conversations leading up to winning a new client. Geared 100% as a conversation methodology for selling services, RAIN™ Selling helps professionals win new clients.

RAIN™ Selling is an acronym that stands for

• Rapport
• Aspirations and Afflictions
• Impact
• New Reality

R – Rapport: Build rapport with the client so that they feel comfortable with you and willing to open up about their full set of problems, aspirations, afflictions and issues.

A –Aspirations and Afflictions: Understand the full set of their needs, both their problems and challenges (afflictions) and their desires for growth, innovation, and improvement (aspirations).

I – Impact: Make explicit how fixing their afflictions and/or helping them achieve their aspirations will make an impact on their business and personal lives.

N – New Reality: Keep reading.

Establish the New Reality Benchmark

In 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 their specific needs and challenges and the impact of doing (or not doing) something about them.

One of the first steps – even before you have engaged your complete needs discovery and solution crafting process – is to ask them 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 6 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 the Wall Street Journal article say about you (your company, your group) three years from now?

Don't be surprised if the prospects 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.

Craft your Solution

Armed with your clients' answers and the following from the RAIN™ process:

• A growing relationship and rapport with the client
• Deep knowledge of their afflictions
• Deep knowledge of their aspirations
• Understanding of the impact of taking action with you

…you can now craft a solution.

With this much client knowledge, most service providers believe that they can make a huge positive impact for their client. Thus, they write out a list of their services (or simply tell the potential client) that will make their worlds a better place. In the end, all the good work they did in the sales conversations is lost in a blurred picture of reality.

To combat this, you as the service provider must translate the New Reality into dollars and cents, and then (literally) paint the picture for the client so they can see the difference between their current state and New Reality.

Translate the New Reality

Whatever the New Reality is, you need to describe it to the client. For example, you might tell them they will:

• Save 22%, or $1.2 million on costs of XYZ Widgets
• Improve their cycle times by 13 days, cutting out major inefficiencies in their operational process
• Set up new operations for them in a new city that will improve quality levels by 17%
• Improve revenue by $600,000 by increasing the effectiveness of their lead generation programs
• Eliminate the headaches of working with their current service provider who is always late and does not call them back

Paint the Picture

It is now time to put the New Reality into your proposal to the prospect. If “a picture is worth a thousand words,” then a chart, a graph, a table is worth at least that many words and probably more. The goal is to paint a compelling picture.

A simple chart outlining the value of each of your services to deliver to the client will sell better than paragraph after paragraph of prose. In other cases, a table of figures might be the right approach.

You do not have to rely on just one picture. As much as is appropriate, you can present the New Reality in both qualitative (descriptive or conceptual) terms as well as quantitative (financial or other numerical-based measure).

Seeing is Believing

Purchasing professional services can be as difficult as selling them. It is tough to get a handle on what to buy because it is difficult to differentiate between competing services and competing service providers. Understanding and communicating the value of moving forward is where the difficulties often surface.

If, however, you follow RAIN™ and paint the picture of a compelling New Reality your prospects will know the solution is you…because they will know it when they see it.