Book review: Rainmaking Conversations
“People in professional services firms can be such babies about the word ‘selling’. They need to get over it!” That’s the robust view of Mike Schultz, co-author of the new book Rainmaking Conversations and co-president of the RAIN Group.
Rainmaking Conversations
The other half of the ‘co’ is John Doerr, Schultz’s partner at RAIN Group, which is based near Boston and specialises in working with professional services firms. The pair is also behind RainToday.com, a website that publishes on services-related sales and marketing issues and reports having over 108,000 subscribers internationally. You can find excerpts from Rainmaking Conversations as well as related podcasts via the site.
Schultz is passionate about how professionals can sell better and – after years of teaching, consulting and writing on the topic – continues to see many professionals still duck and weave away from the concept. He believes much of the issue is owed to self-image; that professionals live in denial that they sell themselves on a regular basis. Professionals are worried about being thought of as selfinterested – it scares them.
“The reason that people don’t like the term ‘sales’ is because of the perception of self-interest on the part of the seller,” says Schultz. “Don’t be self-interested. Focus on their interests. If you can do that well enough then they will pay you for it and they should pay you for it. But it’s business. Call it what it is.” Rainmaking Conversations was published in early 2011 and has gone on to become a Wall Street Journal bestseller. It focuses on the idea that effective selling by professionals and firms must centre on ‘masterful’ conversations. It is built around the primary acronym at the heart of the authors’ firm – RAIN.
According to Schultz, “If you look at the word RAIN, which stands for Rapport, Aspirations and afflictions, Impact and New reality, the A and I also double as a reminder to balance advocacy and inquiry – to balance how much you talk with how much you ask questions. A lot of time people believe that selling is about pitching or presenting but they learn very quickly – particularly in professional fields – that that is not the case.”
Selling isn’t just about grinding prospects down with questions either, he says.
“Somewhere in the middle is a more advanced and more challenging thing to do, which is to know when to ask questions and when to also share things which can bring value to the table because you are bringing forth ideas, because you are giving advice, because you have an opinion and because you can help them think.”
The book itself offers a system for achieving this that traverses building rapport and trust, creating conversations with prospects and clients, uncovering clients’ needs, making your case, understanding and communicating your value proposition, overcoming objections and closing deals. It also offers lists – such as 10 principles as to what makes an effective rainmaker and 16 principles for influencing the targets of your sales techniques. These include leveraging the power of envy, for example, by using examples of how you have helped others to achieve outcomes that your prospect might wish for him or herself.
The book is written as a reference tool for professionals who need to sell, but should be equally useful to marketing and business development professionals. It’s the second book by Schultz and Doerr. In 2009, the pair published Professional Services Marketing, a comprehensive guide to marketing and business development in services firms.
The publication of Rainmaking Conversations reflects Schultz and Doerr’s increasing focus on sales. Their reason is something that many firms might relate to – while a small number of people inside a professional services firm are responsible for marketing and branding activities, almost everyone has to sell.
I met Schultz at the RAIN Group’s offices in June. I took the opportunity to ask how firms in North America were recovering from the recession and whether it had changed their strategies. He responded by highlighting how a recovery in work can quickly extinguish the business focus that firms often gain by going through a difficult period.
“When the recession started, they all began playing defence. They began cutting staff and cutting efforts and saying instead of what are we going to do next, it was what aren’t we going to do that was currently on the plate?” he explains. “They went into their shell and they looked inwardly. One by one over the last year and a half, the firms have left thinking about defence and begun thinking about offence – and they’ve asked themselves, where is our expansion, where is our growth? How do we want to compete?”
However, their more positive outlook is being met with a resumption in work which Schultz worries is stifling their renewed interest in growth and strategy. “There’s an inverse relationship between how much work you sell and how much time you have to either sell more work or do other strategic things.”
The danger, Schultz believes, is that as the new work arrives, previously parched firms allow their senior people to become very busy bringing in revenue and fail to remain focused on growing their footprints, business and competitiveness.
“I think it’s still on the rare side that businesses are thinking about that,” he says. “But we’re now leaving this playing defence time and I would suggest to firms to resist the urge to just take all the business they can and have all the senior people working in their businesses rather than on their businesses.”
At least one of those strategic steps could be to consider whether or not a firm is happy to sell. According to Schultz, “When you can be proud of the part of your business which is selling then you will join the ranks of people who have much more successful businesses.”
Mike Schultz and John Doerr, RAIN Group
Six keys to communicating your value, from Rainmaking Conversations
According to Mike Schultz and John Doerr, there are six building blocks that you should consider in building your value proposition positioning statement.
- Target customers. Whom do you serve? What makes for an ideal customer regarding industry, location, size, type and so on? This allows the person on the receiving end to think, “They work with companies like ours and people like us.” Know your target customer so you can craft messages that will resonate with them. In addition, the more you can position specialisation for a particular buyer set, the more you differentiate.
- Need/business problem. What types of needs and business problems do you address? How do you help? This helps prospects understand how and when they should use you.
- Impact of solving need. What are the financial and emotional benefits of solving the need? How do you provide value? You may be thinking, “We do so much, and the specifics are always different.” When crafting your value proposition positioning statement, choose one or two, generalise the type of impact, and later, in proof of concept, you can give a specific example or two. This helps people see why they should address the needs you can help them address.
- Your offerings. What’s your product and service approach; how do you run your company, solve problems and work with customers? Notice that company and offerings are a fourth here. Don’t lead with your capabilities. Take a customer-centric approach and frame your offerings within the context of the needs you can help solve.
- Proof of concept. How can you demonstrate that your approach has worked to solve similar problems for others? How do you substantiate your claims? How do clients know that what you say will happen, will actually happen?
- Distinction. Why is your offering preferable to other options for solving the need? Do you have something unique about you that’s worthwhile to share? Is there some way to highlight how you’re distinct from others?
