Rainmaking Conversations: Influence, Persuade, and Sell in Any Situation

What inspired you to write Rainmaking Conversations?

Both pain and pleasure. Over the years we’ve seen so many sales people, professionals, and leaders struggle to create sales conversations, kick them off well, uncover needs, create enthusiasm with the prospect, and win business. Without realizing it, they make the same mistakes over and over again. This is the painful part! But it’s such a pleasure when we see people learn to sell with competence and class. Not only do they make more money for themselves and their companies, which is nice to see, it’s a pleasure to observe people when they have their “ah ha” moments—learning sales techniques that will make all the difference to them.We wrote Rainmaking Conversations to help the greatest number of people get through the pain, or avoid it altogether, and get to the pleasure.

Can you define the term “rainmaker” and how it applies to the book?

In the book, we define a rainmaker as, “a person in the top 10% of sellers in their organization or in their field.” Typically, rainmakers make upwards of five times as much money as the average salesperson. These top performers bring in the dollars, and shower their companies with revenue and growth. “Rainmaker” is an old term in sales, and has a connotation that the person isn’t just a top performer, but an entrepreneur and business leader as well. (I’d also like to say that I can dance around in my backyard to get the sky to open up, but I haven’t figured that one out yet.)

Your book provides a solid, relevant and actionable guide for anyone who wants to become a real rainmaker in sales – can you give a short anecdote about successful rainmaking from the book?

Sure. Selling, like everything else, is a process. The better you can be at each stage, the more success you have in the whole process. Building rapport – making genuine connections with people – is one area.

For example, a company I had worked for was going public, and was determining between competing accounting firms. When the decision was made, I asked our chief financial officer – why we chose that particular firm. He revealed a detailed grid of the decision criteria and why this firm was the best. We talked about it for a few minutes and I was astounded. As a young leader in a fast-growing firm, I felt I had just learned a valuable skill in how senior leaders make important decisions. It was all very scientific and analytical. Then he closed the door, ‘‘Do you want to hear the real reason I picked them?’’ ‘‘Sure,’’ I said. He followed, ‘‘I liked them best.’’ He went on to tell me that three out of the five firms had the experience and capability to handle the job. One firm even had advantages over the others. 

But, here is a real-life example of the familiar, ‘‘People buy with their hearts and justify with their heads.’’ All things being equal, he picked the provider he liked. He’s not the only buyer who does it. When comparisons are equal, buyers purchase from the people they feel most connected to. In the book, we help people get the best outcomes at each selling stage, and thus in their whole process.

You note in the book, “for those who seek to become top performers, too many well-known sales methods focus heavily on sales process and skills, but rarely on readiness, action or knowledge.” How does RASP empower sales and can you describe it briefly?

First, RASP stands for Readiness, Action, Skills and knowledge, and Process.

If you have the skills, you can do something, but it doesn’t mean that you do it. That’s where the readiness comes in. The answers to the previous question can get you started on figuring out whether you’re ready to be a top performer in sales. Let’s say you are ready, you have your skills, and you get to your desk bright and early. You still have questions to answer regarding what to do. That’s where the actions come in. Planning goals and actions is a crucial part of sales success that so many sales people, professionals, and entrepreneurs give short shrift to. The short answer on the knowledge is that you need to be fluent in a number of topics – like your products, your competitors, you customers’ needs, how your solutions produce value, and so on – to succeed in sales conversations. Rainmakers are fluent experts in what they need to know to sell.

Why is it important for rainmakers to always have a daily goal practice?

“If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.”  It’s true in everything, and sales is no exception. I’ve literally seen people remind themselves in the morning of their goals, and then get 20% more done in a given day. I’ve seen people review their goals and, right there, decide to do the difficult things, that they’ve been avoiding, to sell more. In Rainmaking Conversations, it’s not our charge to sell the value of goals to readers, but instead to provide a simple and effective framework for setting and reaching them in sales.

The book covers what a value proposition is and is not, can you give us three common mistakes people make when describing what they do (their value proposition)?

Sure. Let’s assume we’re getting asked the question, “What do you do?” Here are three traps to avoid:

1. Talking but not saying anything:

“We offer efficient and effective products and solutions to Fortune 500 and emerging growth companies, helping them to uncover and capitalize on known as well as hidden opportunities to provide value to their customers and increase shareholder value. We’re unique because . . .”

2. Being unprepared for the question:

“Well, um, you see in capital-intense businesses there sometimes is a situation where the capitalization structure needs to be re-engineered because . . . well, there’s really a lot to it. Okay, from a big picture perspective we tend to focus on smokestack businesses, but only where their capital structure . . .:

3. Sounding too scripted by using an elevator pitch:

Many salespeople write a tightly scripted elevator pitch that they practice over and over. When it comes time to use it, it comes out like a canned monologue, and it comes out the same way to every person, regardless of their perspective. It often falls flat, seems impersonal, and doesn’t resonate because it doesn’t consider the point of view of the receiver of the message.

Your book states that it is important to balance advocacy and inquiry. Why is that and how does advocacy help you establish a relationship with your prospect/client?

Talk too much, and you miss the chance to listen, to understand, and connect. Keep asking question after question, and the buyer can feel integrated. If you do both in the right balance, most times erring on the side of advocacy versus inquiry, you tend to have the best results.

What do you think is a misconception about being a rainmaker?

The biggest one is that they’re born. You can learn how to become a rainmaker if you want it badly enough. The second is that having “a great personality” or being a “people person” will lead to sales success. Other factors are so much more important. A third misconception is that you have to compromise your integrity to succeed in sales. The opposite is true.

What are three tips for leading rainmaking conversations?

Here are three things that set the best apart from the average:

1. Plan for the call before you have it.
2. Set the agenda, offer ideas, and be a change agent during the conversation.
3. Be brave, and be willing to ask the tough questions that will help the prospect succeed.

 And here’s a 4^th, understand that all buyers have different work styles, preferences, and ambitions, and that one interaction style does not fit all buyers.

What’s the biggest piece of advice you have for overcoming money objections?

Most sellers fail with money objections because they fail to understand what’s behind them. The simple statement “Money is going to be a problem” can mean so many things. Some buyers actually don’t have the money, others don’t have it in their budget, and still others fail to see the value. Some may have competitors of yours offering similar products and services for less. Others may have never spent this much or don’t trust you enough to spend that much. And finally, others may be bluffing or posturing to see if they can get your prices down.

In the book we outline all the different types of money objections, how to discover what they are, and how to deal with them. The first thing you have to do, though, is find out what they’re really saying.

Of your recommendations, which seem to be the most difficult for sales reps to follow? Why?

Everyone’s their own special snowflake, so everyone finds different individual things difficult. Universally, however, adults have difficulty learning new things. When we’re young, we’re good at what academics call generative learning – picking up brand new things and learning new behaviors without a previous basis for them. As adults, we much prefer iterative learning – getting better at things we’re already good at. Great cooks take more cooking classes. Golfers take more golf lessons. And so on.

But we still can learn new tricks as old dogs, it just takes an open mind, and a learning system complete with solid andragogical tenets. (I learned that big word recently, and I’m an old dog. Learning can be done!)

How can you speed up the sales process?

Run, don’t walk, to your phone! That will speed you up by a few seconds at least. With your selling process, a big part of the feeling of “speed”  can be helped by filling up your pipeline and keeping it strong. Watching just a few leads move through an empty pipeline can feel like it can take forever. But keep filling the front of the pipeline by creating new conversations every day, and sales can feel like they happen fast and furious. Now remove dead wood from the pipeline and it won’t bog you down and you can put even more in. Now it feels even faster.

To actually speed it up, know that people buy fast if they see the value. They buy faster if they fear loss – loss of financial value, loss of esteem, loss of happiness, loss of opportunity. Your job is to help them see the benefits of the new reality they can have when they work with you, and what they’re missing out on if they’re not.

How can non-sales people apply the skills learned in Rainmaking Conversations?

As an individual, as long as the conversation with yourself goes well, it doesn’t matter if you’re an entrepreneur with zero sales experience, a professional looking to make the transition into rainmaking, or a dad selling the benefits of doing homework to your son—you can apply the concepts in Rainmaking Conversations. Conversations that influence, conversations that create action and conversations that lead to change—it doesn’t matter what your title is. Sales or something else, the tenets are the same.

What common mistakes are sellers making that hurt their efforts in closing more sales?

For our benchmark research project, we asked hundreds of buyers what problems they ran into during the buying process. Among the most common problems cited were: sellers do not listen, sellers do not understand my needs, and sellers do not convince me of the value I’ll receive if I buy from them. These are significant mistakes that are, fortunately, easy to overcome if you set your mind to it and know what to do.

A few other killers worth mentioning are: sellers do not fill their pipelines frequently enough, sellers do not create a vision of a new reality for buyers, and sellers have not honed their influence skills. We find that many salespeople misunderstand what it takes to be influential. Influence can make such a difference; we dedicated an entire chapter to the subject.

What do you hope your readers take away from reading Rainmaking Conversations?

You can do it! And you can feel good about it. Perhaps I missed my calling as a cheerleader, but I’m serious. For so many, sales is a black box. They don’t understand it, so they fear it and don’t engage in it with hustle, passion, intensity, and enthusiasm. Some also think that to succeed in sales, they have to compromise their integrity, or constantly be pitching and promoting. The best salespeople never compromise their integrity, and never try to be anything but their genuine selves.

What’s next for the authors of Rainmaking Conversations?

Well, as far as we can see on the calendar, it’s speaking engagements and training in Rainmaking Conversations and RAIN Selling. But our goal is to help everybody sell more effectively. This is why we wrote the book, why we’ve made so much of our training programs available online and in seminars for individuals and companies, and why we spend so much of our time spreading the word. One of RAIN Group’s corporate values is “Commitment to the success of others.” We’re serious about this commitment, with the book and everything else that we do at RAIN Group.