Professional Services Professional: Commercial Rainmaker

Making connections with people

• Creating intimacy by finding shared interests and experiences
• Developing integrity by thinking about buyer success first
• Demonstrating competence through knowledge

Connecting the dots

• Identifying the buyer’s aspirations (goals) and afflictions (pains)
• Quantifying and painting the “so what” picture, establishing how important it is to buy from you
• Using disruptive questions to challenge the buyer’s ideas, assumptions, strategies, and agenda for action

Creating RAIN

• Using advocacy and inquiry to clarify and demonstrate your understanding of the buyer’s pains and goals
• Painting a picture of possible new realities illuminating what they will get when they work with you
• Using both interaction and opportunity to close the gap between the buyer’s pains/goals and your products/services

Buyer collaboration

• Preparing the buyer to collaborate before the meeting
• Gaining the buyer’s psychological ownership and commitment
• Defining the parameters and allowing buyer to shape it

Power of a convincing story

• Clarifying what you want the buyer to learn, feel and do differently
• Combining a focus on ROI – the potential gain – with fear of loss to help the buyer see the negative impact of inaction
• Apply the key components of a convincing story where the buyer is the hero

Facilitating collaborative group discussions

• Using broad, open-ended questions to elicit assumptions from the group
• Probing deeper to separate the facts and truths from the gut feelings, corporate myths, and personal prejudices
• Encouraging the buyer to collaboratively examine possible actions

Business development processes and milestones

• Planning and scheduling capture activities and decisions
• Identifying and assigning the best people to the roles in your capture and proposal team(s)
• Being prepared to end the pursuit if decision–making information is vague, cannot be obtained, or the team lacks the commitment to win

Creating your value proposition

• Getting on the buyer’s 'to do' list
• Differentiating by providing overall distinction and difficulty of substitution
• Substantiate to gain buyer’s trust in your ability to deliver

Developing the persuasive proposal

• Designing the document for maximum impact
• How to disclose your price early in the executive summary and quantify your added-value
• Ensuring compliance and responsiveness in your proposal