RAIN Selling: How Rainmakers Lead Business Development Conversations

By Mike Schultz and John Doerr

Business Development 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 business development.

Rarely, however, are these poor souls given a primer on rainmaking, especially when it comes to leading new business conversations and meetings. As a result, they often just 'wing it' and learn by doing, making many avoidable mistakes and losing opportunities to win new clients.

For many of these professionals, they simply don't know where the conversation should start, where it should finish, and what should happen along the way. With this knowledge as a guide, business development conversations tend to go a lot better.

That's where RAIN SellingSM comes in.

RAIN SellingSM Basics

RAIN SellingSM, developed specifically for professional service providers, stands 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 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, but it is more relevant and important today than ever.

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 just 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.

RainToday.com's recent research report, How Clients Buy, found that:

• 26% of decision makers surveyed reported that the professional and I 'had no personal chemistry'
• 84% of these decision makers said they would be 'somewhat' or 'much more likely' to consider engaging the services of the professional if 'personal chemistry' existed between them and the professional

A - Aspirations and Afflictions: The 'A' in RAIN SellingSM stands for Aspirations and Afflictions. Many sales 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. But 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.

How Clients Buy facts:

• 40% of decision makers surveyed reported that the professional 'did not understand my needs' when selling to me
• 97% of these decision makers said they would be 'somewhat' or 'much more likely' to consider engaging the services of the professional if the professional did understand their needs

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 paramount importance to you, because when it comes to winning new business, 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.

How Clients Buy facts:

• 32% of decision makers surveyed reported that the professional 'did not convince me of the value I would receive from using his/her services' when selling to me
• 98% of these decision makers said they would be 'somewhat' or 'much more likely' to consider engaging the services of the professional if the professional did a better job of communicating the value of their services

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.

You then have to paint the picture of how your services will help your potential new client to achieve the new reality. Do this and you help them understand both where they're going and how your services will help them get there.

How Clients Buy facts:

• 31% of decision makers surveyed reported that the professional 'did not craft a compelling solution to my needs' when selling to me
• 95% of these decision makers said they would be 'somewhat' or 'much more likely' to consider engaging the services of the professional if the professional did a better job of crafting a compelling solution

Applying RAIN

Like any good conceptual model, RAIN SellingSM goes a lot deeper than what can be described in a short article. For any new process to make a difference in your business development results, it takes training, practice, and coaching. The power of RAIN SellingSM is that you can apply it right away and have it make a difference. Good models, while having deep intrinsic meaning, 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. Business development 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
• Tangibilize how the world will be different by painting a picture of a better future, and show them how your services will help them get there (New Reality)

John Doerr is a Principal of the Wellesley Hills Group, a consulting and marketing services firm that helps service companies to grow. John can be reached at jdoerr@whillsgroup.com.