7 critical factors for successful sales conversations

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http://www.raingroup.com

Copyright © RAIN Group 2011 7 Critical Factors for Successful Sales Conversations

Here’s to your

selling success!

Mike SchultzPresident

John Doerr President

Introduction:

How to Become a Top Performer in SalesSince trial and error are too often the norm when it comes to learning how to succeed in sales, the learning curve is steep 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 complex solutions, and can we increase sales success

faster?”

The answers (as you may have guessed) are yes and yes.

We've worked not only to provide the premier process for the complex sale,

but to improve the process of learning to become a RAINMAKER – a

top performing sales person who drives significant revenue

growth.

In this ebook, we’ll introduce you to the 7 critical success factors necessary for leading masterful sales conversations, success factors that we’ve identified over our many years working with sales people of all types. Following this process, you’ll not only start winning more deals, you’ll become the top-performing rainmaker you know you can be.

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7 Critical Factors for Successful Sales Conversations

Whether you’re generating leads through cold calling, referrals, speaking, direct mail, search engine optimization, or a myriad of other tactics, at some point each one leads to conversations with you.

Much sales success and failure is decided here.

To succeed with sales conversations, especially if you sell complex products

and services, it’s important that you adhere to these 7 success factors:

1. Build Real Rapport

2. Uncover Aspirations and Afflictions

3. Make the Impact Clear

4. Paint a Picture of the New Reality

5. Balance Advocacy and Inquiry

6. Build on the Foundation of Trust

7. Plan to Succeed

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Take an honest look in the mirror and ask yourself, how do I approach sales?

If you really want to bring new customers into your company on a regular basis, you need to start selling:

• With hustle

• With passion

• With intensity



From “Hello” to “Let’s Go”: Your Roadmap to Sales Success

Use the RAIN SellingSM model as your guide to remembering and employing the 7 success factors:

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BuildRapport True

valuegap

UncoverAspirations …

… andAfflictions

Make the Impact of Success Clear…

… andFailure

Gaincommitment

Paint a Picture of the New Reality

Initialvaluegap

Trust

Influence



Success Factor #1

Insincerity and Manipulation Spell Death in Sales – Avoid at All Costs

The concept of rapport building is not new. You can find book after book written from the 1920’s onward that will teach you “techniques” for rapport building with prospects.

While the subtle art of rapport may be intuitive to some, many buyers and sellers wrongly equate the concept of rapport building with contrived chit chat.

This is a surefire way to snap your line and lose your big catch. Our

emphatic response to this approach: don’t do it.

Yet the fundamental, underlying need for a buyer to connect with a seller—or at least to generally like him or her—exists and must be attended to.

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Success Factor #1:

Build Real Rapport with

Prospects

“Ah, I see you have a big fish on your wall.

Are you a fishing enthusiast? Let’s talk about trout.”



Take a look at the survey results from our benchmark report, How Clients Buy. Here, you see the likeability element factors strongly in the decision-making process:

With stats like these the need to build real rapport can not be overstated.

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25% of buyers surveyed reported that they have experienced having no

personal chemistry with sellers.

86% of these same buyers would be much more likely to consider

purchasing from the seller if some kind of personal chemistry was established.



5 Simple Ways to Build Real Rapport with Prospects

So how do you build real rapport and create a genuine connection with your prospective customer? Here are 5 ways to get you started:

1. Be genuine: Before the first day of school, first jobs, camp, and any family get together my dad would always say, “Just be yourself and everything will be fine.” Same goes for generating rapport with prospects and customers. Don’t try to be anything you are not. Don’t create a new persona, and don’t adopt a sales-like tone. Just be yourself and relax. Good things will follow.

2. Show interest: No surprise to anyone, people are self-focused. This is quite helpful to those of us selling complex products and services because we need to learn about our prospects before we can provide the best solutions.

3. Don’t be in a rush…but don’t dally: If you jump right in with the “OK, let’s get down to business” meeting kickoff before you give everyone a chance to take a breath and say hello, it often creates a tense atmosphere. You have to gauge when to start talking business at the right time; too early and a chilly abruptness fills the air…take too much time chatting and the buyer wonders, “Are we ever going to get going here?” Time the conversation right and you’ll be well on your way.

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Show interest in prospects as people and in their business challenges,

and your chances of success shoot way up.



4. Balance advocacy and inquiry: One of the best ways to establish a true connection with buyers is to balance asking questions (inquiry) with talking or giving advice (advocacy). Talk too much and the prospect will tune out. Ask too many questions and they’ll feel like they’re getting the third degree. The rapport-building sweet spot is usually somewhere in the middle, leaning a bit towards giving the prospect more airtime than you. (See success factor #5.)

5. Listen actively: In the previously mentioned research report, the single most prevalent problem that buyers reported encountering with sellers is that the sellers don’t listen. If your prospects perceive that you are not listening to them, building real rapport will be virtually impossible.

While the heading for this section is “listen actively” it could just as easily read, “listen, actually.” Many sellers are too caught up in what they’re saying or too focused on what they are going to say next. So they’re not only not actively listening, they’re not actually listening.

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Tune into what your prospect is saying. Tune everything else out.

“The man who makes an appearance in the business world, the man who creates a personal interest, is the man who gets ahead.”

- Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman



Problems, frustration, pain, irritations, challenges…call them what you will; a

seller must uncover his prospective customer’s afflictions.

Once you’ve established rapport, you now have the opportunity to begin the discovery process of learning what issues the prospect has and how you can help.

The reasons are simple:

• If the prospect communicates his business afflictions to

you, then it is likely that he will want them to go away if it’s possible, and if it makes sense to invest the time, money, and brainpower to get rid of them.

• Each affliction you uncover gives you the chance to explore it fully to discover its true business impact.

• Uncovering and discussing one affliction can lead to other

afflictions of which the customer may not have been thinking in the first place.

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Success Factor #2

How to Uncover Afflictions and Aspirations

Uncovering your prospect’s afflictions

is a crucial step in the business development process.

Success Factor #2:

Uncover Aspirations

and Afflictions

But afflictions are only half the story…



Afflictions only focus on half—the negative half—of the customer’s needs. Especially when selling complex products and services, if you focus only on the negative, you are leaving opportunities on the table for expanding your existing relationships and generating new opportunities.

The best way to understand why this is true is to think about how business

leaders buy. There are two core buyer mindsets you will encounter:

1. Problem solving: Buyers are in problem solving mode when something is bothering them or not performing up to expectations. It typically gets to a point where they want to fix it so they seek out products or services to do so.

In this situation, uncovering afflictions and helping to solve

them with your products and services is your core goal.

2. Future seeking: Buyers are in the future seeking mode if they're looking to grow, make their companies better, or somehow improve their current circumstances. In other words, maybe what's keeping them up at night is not a problem in their business at all, but the excitement that stems out of innovation, growth, and endless possibilities.

In this situation, helping prospects see how you can help

them achieve their aspirations is a core goal.

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The Second Half of the Story: Aspirations



Capturing Missed Opportunities

So what happens when you only focus on a customer’s afflictions and neglect the aspirations?

So the next time you are preparing to find the areas of the buyer's pain and problems that you can fix, try focusing on his aspirations as well as his afflictions. You'll find the conversations to be richer, your relationships deeper, and your sales success greater.

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Once you’ve established rapport and then uncovered afflictions, you have created

an Initial Value Gap: the

difference between

where they want to be

and where they are

now.

Most sellers stop here.

BuildRapport

UncoverAfflictions

Initial value gap

BuildRapport


… andAfflictions

Initial value gap with aspirations

To uncover the full set of needs and to widen the value gap, focus on aspirations as well as afflictions.

You miss half your chance to uncover opportunities

where you can help and sell the full solution set.



When you understand the impact of helping the prospect reach their aspirations, you establish a new baseline for where the prospect could be. When you understand the impact caused by your prospect’s afflictions you establish the true business obstacles that they present.

Make the impact clear, and the prospect’s perception of the gap between where they are and where they want to be grows to its widest.

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Success Factor #3

How to Make the Impact Clear So You Can Sell More with Less ResistanceSuccess Factor #3:

Make the Impact Clear

While emotional impact on the prospect is of great importance, you need to be able to make the business case for engaging you, your products and services, and your company.

If you can’t make the

business case you’re at

a major disadvantage.BuildRapport True

valuegap


… andAfflictions

Make the Impact of Success Clear…

… andFailure

Initialvaluegap



Here are 6 ways you can communicate the impact of engaging your products and services and make the business case for moving forward:

1. Calculate the Dollar Impact: Each affliction that you solve, and each aspiration that you help a prospect realize should have a financial impact. Simply put, make the case for the financial effects of engaging your products and services whenever possible.

2. Communicate Non-Dollar Impact: Increased prestige. A more enjoyable day. Faster promotions. Ability to relax on the weekend. Enjoying your sparkling personality. Peace of mind. There are many non-financial influences on the sale that can tip the scales in your favor. While you must make the impact in dollars clear, never underestimate the emotional impact on the buyer. People buy with their hearts and justify with their heads. Make sure you win in both areas.

3. Impact Compared to the Alternative: Not only do you need to know the impact of working with you, you need to know the impact on the customer of working with alternatives to you. Perhaps your company offers better ROI, their products are inferior, or your service is better. Or perhaps they have some advantages over your offerings, and you have others. Know the alternatives, and you can make the best case for helping the customer to succeed with you.

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6 Ways to Communicate the Impact

Prospects cannot know

what the value of working

with you will truly be

unless you clarify what

the impact is as it relates

to their aspirations and

afflictions.



4. What Won’t Happen? Sometimes the prospect sees the positive impact of engaging your services, but doesn’t see any negative impactif he doesn’t move forward. The result is usually a very slow decision making process. If this is the case, you can ask the prospect, “What won’t happen” if they don’t move forward. By doing this, you probe for consequences of inaction, and move yourself higher up the prospect’s to-do list.

5. Build Credibility with Similar Impact: They have aspirations and afflictions. You’re selling what they need to help them meet their goals. The value proposition is clear, but they are still unsure. Sometimes they want to know if you’ve been there before. And, when you were there, what happened.

6. Demonstrate Impact Tangibly: The more you can make the impact tangible, the stronger the case for the impact will be. In essence, you need to paint a picture for them so they can see, as tangibly as you can depict it, what is going to change for them if they engage your products and services.

In the next section, we will show you how to approach painting this picture of their future state, thus creating for them a new reality.

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The right story or case study can be a powerful demonstrator of impact

and a strong positive influence on the ultimate sale.



Whatever your complex product or service may be, you must be able to show your prospect that working with you will somehow change their world for the better.

In other words, show them how you will create a new reality with

them.

To do this well, you need to:

• Discover what you need to do in order to create the best new reality you can for them (i.e. what is 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

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Success Factor #4

Become the Renoir of the Complex Sale: Paint a Picture of the New RealitySuccess Factor #4:

Paint a Picture of the

New Reality

Since you are selling something complex, prospects often have a hard time knowing exactly what they are buying and what value they will get in return.

One of the most important skills in selling complex products and services is to

help prospects

understand exactly

what outcomes they

get as a result of

working with you.



1. 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 customer, given their specific aspirations and afflictions and the impact of doing (or not doing) something about them.

This process can start even before you have engaged your complete needs discovery and solution crafting process. Ask them what they want the world to look like once your work is done.

Don't be surprised if the prospect’s first answer to these questions is, “I don't know.” If this happens, do not jump right in. A little silence indicates that you’re listening, and they’ll often start thinking out loud if you give them the room to do so.

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4 Key Steps to Creating a New Reality

Armed with your prospects’ answers and the following (which you have already discerned during the RAIN process):

• A growing relationship and rapport

• 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.

Questions that get the prospect envisioning the future are a good

way to get the creative juices flowing.



2. Craft Your Solution: At this point in the sales process, most sellers believe they can make a huge positive impact for the prospect. Then they write out (or simply tell the prospect) a list of their products and services that will make his world a better place. But the customer doesn’t yet see it. In the end, all the good work the sales person did in the sales conversations can fall flat without a compelling picture of a new reality. A list of products and services often doesn’t cut it.

To combat this, you must translate the new reality into business, financial, and personal impact, and then (literally) paint the picture for the customer so they can see the difference between their current state and a new reality.

3. Translate the New Reality:

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%

Quantify the new reality and the customer will listen.

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Whatever the new reality is,

you need to communicate it to the customer.



4. 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, or a table is worth at least that many words and probably more. The goal is to paint a compelling picture.

Purchasing complex products and 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 providers and their solutions. For the buyer, understanding and communicating to their colleagues the value of moving forward is where the difficulties often surface.

If you follow RAIN SellingSM and paint the picture of a

compelling new reality, your prospects will know the solution

is you.

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



When sellers talk too much, they generate too few customers.

So why do those of us trying to develop business constantly find ourselves in a similar position? Perhaps because we don’t always understand why we talk too much.

Then there are those sellers on the other side of the spectrum who, somewhere along the line, learn that good salespeople ask great questions. They then take the advice too strongly and ask question after question, offering no advice and making the person on the other side of the table feel like they’re getting the third degree.

Instead of talking too much, they’re asking too many questions.

So what’s the key to talking the right amount?

You need to balance advocacy and inquiry.

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Success Factor #5

How to Balance Advocacy and Inquiry

Success Factor #5:

Balance Advocacy and

Inquiry

Balancing advocacy (giving advice…talking) and inquiry (asking questions…finding out more…letting the customer have the air time) is key to successful sales conversations.


Copyright © RAIN Group 2011 7 Critical Factors for Successful Sales Conversations 20

What You’re Not Hearing When You’re the One Doing All the TalkingWhy Do You Talk Too

Much?

Many sellers fall into the ‘talk too much trap' for one or more reasons:

• I need to show my expertise

• I like to hear myself speak

• I get nervous, so I talk• I have no plan or

objective• I easily get distracted• I don't talk too much, I

am lively

The key is to understand why you talk too much. That way you can develop a personal plan to cut down on the soliloquies.

Isn't it important for my prospects and customers to know

what I know so they can understand what I can do for them?

This is a perfectly legitimate and common question. While it’s important to

showcase your expert knowledge and articulate nature, here are

3 opportunities you can miss if you talk too much:

1. Building rapport and a foundation for trust. Buyers don't just buy your solutions, they buy a trusted advisor relationship. If you are doing all the talking, you will not pick up on the signals that indicate what in a relationship, besides your expertise, is important to your customer. You miss the connection—the rapport that you can and must build.



2. Uncovering the needs of your prospect. When entering into sales conversations, you often have a strong idea of what you can do for the prospect, but understandably only a vague notion of what the prospect truly needs. If you are doing all the talking, you can only guess which components of your service set will offer the greatest value for the client.

You miss the chance to craft something special for them.And if you don't know all the needs, you miss out on building larger solutions (and generating the most revenue possible).

3. Demonstrating what it is like to work with you. What better way to engage prospects than to have them experience what it is truly like to work with you. When you listen, show interest in the prospects' issues, and ask insightful questions, you provide the prospect with a glimpse into the real you, and what it will be like to work with your company.

Everyone loves to talk about themselves, to tell their story.

This is not a very good way to start the relationship.

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If you do not give the prospect a chance to tell their story,

they feel ignored, overwhelmed, and unheard.



The goal most of the time is to lead a balanced conversation where neither party is dominating the talking. So how do you get the prospect talking and teach yourself to sit back and listen? Follow these guidelines, and you’ll be talking and listening just the right amount:

• Approach business development conversations like customer

conversations

• Think about balancing advocacy and inquiry

• Ask open-ended questions

• Become overtly conscious of your air time

• Practice your conversations

• Seek coaching

• Be genuine in your approach

We all know the more we listen to our customers, the more we can help them. So listen to your customers even before they are your customers. Ask open-ended questions.

And be wary of talking too much. Balancing advocacy and inquiry will help you win more customers.

Less is more.

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How to Stop Telling and Start Selling

Selling complex products and services is not about learning manipulative techniques, but about developing relationships with customers that lead to fruitful business interactions.

The best conversations you will ever have are those you have when you are focused on helping the customer succeed.



Most of us grew up playing with wooden building blocks, stacking them on top of one another in an attempt to build the highest tower in the play room.

If you were smart, you quickly learned that the stronger the foundation, the higher your skyline could climb.

Sacrificing width for height (with a finite number of blocks) would result in skyscraper collapse.

Now apply the same concept to selling complex products and services:

The question then becomes, “How do we build this foundation?”

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Success Factor #6

Building a Strong Foundation for Sales Success Success Factor #6:

Build on the

Foundation of Trust

The building blocks of a strong business relationship are: trust, need, solution, and value.

The stronger and broader the foundation of the relationship,

the higher and sturdier your selling success.



By being specific and

clear about your

solution and value,

you will make it easier

for the prospect to

buy from you.

But you can’t get there unless trust and need are attended to first.

1. Trust: Trust begins with the initial rapport that we develop with each prospect. We need a certain amount of rapport just to get a conversation started. As the prospect begins to feel that we indeed are competent and professional, he or she will start to let us into their world.

2. Need: It is with this “block” that we find out what kind of needs our prospect might have in our general area of expertise. Often these needs exhibit themselves as pain or afflictions. But they can also be a goal or aspiration for a brighter future (see success factor #2). In either case, your job is to uncover as much need as you can in order to develop a solution.

3. Solution: Once you’ve engaged the conversation (or conversations) to uncover needs, you now can craft a solution. It is not a question of offering all the products and services you have available, but offering only those that connect with the scope of the articulated needs.

(This seems rather obvious, but, amazingly, many sellers cannot resist the urge to mention everything they offer, even though the prospect has shown zero interest in the additional products.)

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4 Building Blocks of a Strong Business Relationship

Value

Solution

Need

Trust



4. Value: In order for your solution to be considered you must make the value tangible. From working with you, what specific value will the customer gain? This value can be articulated in dollars, in efficiencies, or in quicker resolution of their problem.

When you stack these blocks one on top of the other, you create and move up the sales relationship hierarchy.

Simply put, even if you develop a fair amount of trust but the uncovered needs and proposed solution are far beyond the trust level established in the early stages of the sale, your blocks will topple over and you’ll lose the sale:

Trust as the foundation needs to be the broadest block of all.

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Not Enough Trust

Each subsequent step up the hierarchy needs to be broader

than the one above it in order for you to be successful in selling.


Copyright © RAIN Group 2011 7 Critical Factors for Successful Sales Conversations 26

Consider This Scenario…You had initial discussions with a new prospect. During conversations, you uncovered a number of needs for which you would be the perfect provider. In fact, you have been so good at uncovering needs, this could be one of the biggest customers you have ever landed.

Even though you haven't had what you feel is enough interaction with the prospect, the needs are so clear and compelling that you craft your proposal (outlining your incredible solutions) and construct a strong case

for the value that your solution will provide. In total, the proposal is for $325,000 – a huge win for you, especially for a first project with a customer.

You send the prospect the proposal and...voila...you do not get the business. You are certain of their needs. You are confident of your solution and the value you provide. What happened?

When you think about it, you already know the answer. You were right about the needs, solutions, and value.

But you were also right about this being such a BIG win so early in the relationship. In essence, you were

providing too much too early for such a new relationship.

Now consider an alternative…The need set is the same: $325,000 in products and services will be just right. You realize the client isn't ready

to drop this much money on you to start, so you break the project into phases so you can prove the concept. Phase 1 is $75,000 – much more palatable for a new relationship.

You close the deal and succeed with flying colors in your delivery of Phase 1. As you move on and propose the remainder of the solution your trust block is now wide enough to support a more lucrative relationship.



According to acclaimed director Woody Allen, a good part of life (or, for our purposes, sales) success is just showing up. But show up prepared and success will follow.

Ask yourself these six sales call planning questions before

every sales conversation:

1. What is the prospect's current situation? Ask this question to give yourself the lay of the land. Often your goals for the prospect, the value you can offer, and your action planning for the rest of the sales conversation come out of your detailed knowledge of the prospect's situation.

If you find that you don't know enough about the situation yet, ask yourself what research you can do before the meeting so you can 1) move quickly through situational discovery that can bore a customer, and 2) demonstrate to him that you are the type of person that does his homework and goes the extra mile to make sure the customer gets the most value out of each contact with you.

Success Factor #7

Plan to Succeed with Rainmaking Conversations

Success Factor #7:

Plan to Succeed

Along with planning to succeed with every conversation, you should plan to succeed in general.

Sales people with

written goals and

plans succeed more

often than those that

don’t.

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2. What are my goals for this prospect? Different goals for your prospects will make for very different sales conversations. Questions you can ask yourself include:

• Is this a 'discovery' meeting in which we get to know each other and build rapport while learning how I can help?

• Is this a current customer to whom I am introducing a new set of solutions?

• Am I looking to cross sell or up-sell products and services because I see how they can add value to this customer?

• Am I trying to supplant a competitor?

• Is this a current customer for whom I work in one of their divisions

and I would like to get introductions into other divisions?

• Is this a prospect with so much potential that I am willing

to travel on my nickel to five cities to visit their branch outlets and their competitors? And then put together a presentation and value proposition so compelling they are wowed like they've never been wowed and resolve to work with me on the spot?

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Always enter the meeting with a clear goal

for this particular client or prospect.



3. What is my desired next outcome? Sounds simple enough, but this question is so often overlooked by sellers before they meet with clients or prospects. Our advice: if you don't know what you want to get out of your meeting with them, don't get out of the (proverbial) car (credit to Mack Hanan and his book If You Don't Have a Plan, Stay

in the Car). Always have a next step in mind.

4. What are my relative strengths? In every sales situation, various forces are working in your favor. Know what these forces are for this particular customer or prospect situation so you can leverage them to help make the customer more successful.

5. What are my relative vulnerabilities? This is the corollary to number 4. Maybe you have less experience than the competition. Maybe another company is the incumbent service provider and you are the challenger. Knowing what your relative vulnerabilities are will allow you to prepare in advance.

6. What actions do I need to take before the next call? We all have to-do lists that help us get done what we need to get done. By taking the time to answer questions 1 through 5, your business development and sales call planning to do list will be as good as it possibly can be.

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Have the answers to these questions prior to every sales call, and you’ll set yourself up for selling success.

With good preparation and call planning you can have your responses to 'objections'

and tough questions ready when you need them.



To succeed in your journey towards becoming a rainmaker you must

commit to the process and your vision of what success will look like

as you put RAIN SellingSM into practice.

As a way of creating your own new reality, we ask you to engage in a little creative and inspirational writing. Imagine three years from today. You are reading The Wall Street Journal. On the front page is an article about you.

This is a positive article about how you’ve achieved career success

and have driven significant revenue growth in your

organization through your skills as a rainmaker. What does it say? How did you do it? What were the defining moments?

To give you a little push, we have started the article for you on the following page (and provided a happy ending)…

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Put RAIN in Your Forecast



Wall Street Journal[Three years from today]____________ – [your name] _____________ has made huge advances in career and sales success, and has become a top rainmaker in [his/her]______ organization.

“I realized I needed to develop my sales skills and I could win a lot more customers, increase the size of my accounts, and just sell more,” *your name+_____________ remembers thinking.

“Here’s what happened and how I got there… *your story+

________________________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________________________

“And I guess, the rest is history,” *your name+____________ said with the smile of a confident and successful rainmaker.

Now go out and make it RAIN.

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About RAIN GroupRAIN Group is a sales performance consulting and training firm dedicated to helping companies succeed with the complex sale. Founded in 2002, the firm has grown over the last decade into a recognized leader in sales improvement with an international client base.

RAIN Group has helped tens of thousands of salespeople and professionals in dozens of countries increase their sales significantly with our RAIN Selling methodology.

RAIN Group helps organizations:

Enhance sales skills and improve sales results

Increase cross and up-selling success

Recruit, hire, and retain the best sales talent

Greatly reduce the learning curve for new hires

Increase the success of new product and service launches

RAIN Group is a leader in sales research and publishing, including The Wall Street Journal bestseller Rainmaking Conversations, How Clients Buy, Lead Generation Benchmark Report, and many others.

We publish RainToday.com, named the 2010 Top Sales Resource site by the Top Sales Awards. We speak at conferences and events globally on sales and selling and are frequently quoted in leading publications such as BusinessWeek, Inc. Magazine, Huffington Post, and Entrepreneur Magazine.

Contact us to learn how we can help you improve sales performance. Call 508-405-0438, visit www.RainGroup.com, or email [email protected].

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Authors of The Wall Street Journal Bestseller

http://www.raingroup.com/

mailto:[email protected]


7 critical factors for successful sales conversations

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Transcript of 7 critical factors for successful sales conversations