Raintoday's Sales Tips & Techniques Podcast

Everyone loves a good story, and that includes your buyers. A good story triggers an emotion, and if the situation is similar to your buyer's, it makes them feel the problem could also happen to them. If you can show how you or your service helped the subject overcome the conflict, then you're one step closer to winning the sale.

Certain behaviors determine a person's sales effectiveness—such as asking the right questions, uncovering the buyer's true need, and developing rapport with the buyer. What you might not know is selling with purpose, truly wanting to make a difference in clients' lives, can also lead to more sales. In fact, organizations that have a higher sales purpose outperform organizations that are focused on just producing revenue, says Lisa McLeod, author of Selling with Noble Purpose.

The natural tendency is to appeal to all buyers, providing everything and anything people might need.  If you do that, however, you will have less business. When you specialize and differentiate, you will be much more successful, says Lee Frederiksen, co-author of Professional Services Marketing, Second Edition.

Buyers are in control of the buying process. In fact, most of the process is complete before they even contact you. They've already done the research: searched the web, read reviews and reports, and talked with their friends. That's why content marketing is so important, says content marketing evangelist Joe Pulizzi. To succeed at content marketing, however, you must have a content marketing strategy.

Ideally when you meet someone at a networking event, you end the conversation by scheduling a time to meet later and continue the conversation. A lot of the time, however, all you leave with is a business card that gets put into the top drawer of your desk with all the other cards you've collected over the years, never to be touched again. To prevent those opportunities from being wasted, Nancy Fox suggest following her 30-minute follow-up process.

A lot of people are afraid to ask for referrals because they think they will appear pushy, needy, or unsuccessful. And some people don’t ask because they’re afraid of rejection. The truth is asking for referrals doesn’t make you look like any of those things. Further, not getting a referral is not a failure, says Bill Cates author of Beyond Referrals. How you ask for a referral does affect your chances of receiving one, however. Listen as Cates explains how you should ask for one.

There's a mania around content marketing like there was around social media marketing a few years ago. Everyone knows they need to do it, but they don't know why and they don't know how to do it well. As a result, there's a lot of junk out there and intense competition for buyer attention. For content marketing to work, the content you produce must be useful and helpful, says Jay Baer, author of Youtility. More than that, you have to produce content that your buyers love.

When someone says your price is too high, you haven't done your job. You didn't build value. You didn't show the person the value you provide is worth more than the price. To help you do that—and make price a non-issue—Kurt Mortensen, author of Maximum Influence, explains three pricing strategies.

Companies know they need a marketing planning system. However, 80% of organizations don't have an integrated and coordinated plan. Many barriers prevent them from implementing one, but the biggest is the lack of line management support, says Mike Meldrum, co-author of The Complete Marketer. Listen as he explains why this is a problem, how to eliminate it, as well as other challenges marketers face in organizations.

Selling to C-level executives is more about making a single sale. It's about building long-term, lifetime relationships. That means you must approach high-level executives differently than other decision makers. Listen as Ago Cluytens, Practice Director EMEA at RAIN Group, discusses the best strategy for selling to C-level executives.

As independent professionals try to market their services and get new clients, many are stumbling and seeing little results for their efforts. A key reason for that is they aren't using their marketing time efficiently, says C.J. Hayden, who recently released the third edition of her book Get Clients Now! Listen as Hayden explains the reason for this inefficiency and how to eliminate it.

Prospects who buy from you get a seven-course meal. But prospects who don't buy from you should also get something—and something of value. David Newman, author of Do It! Marketing, calls it "Happy Meal Marketing. Nobody leaves your website or blog hungry. Listen as Newman explains how Happy Meal Marketing fits into the new sales paradigm for selling professional services: offer value, invite engagement.

Consultative selling on its own has worked for many years for many sellers. But with the incredible amount of information available to buyers before they even talk to a seller, buyers need help sorting it out and making the right decision. They need a collaborator, says Nancy Bleeke, author of the book Conversations that Sell. Through collaboration not only do you uncover needs and demonstrate your expertise, but you work with them to decide on the best possible solution.

After hearing people say relationship-based sales approaches are dead, RAIN Group decided to find out if that were true. After all, people have been using that for many years, and if it were true, their way of doing business would have to change significantly. To its surprise, RAIN Group did not see evidence of relationship selling's death in the research they conducted. Listen as Mike Schultz, co-president of the firm, explains why relationship-based selling is still important and what sales winners do over their second-place finishers.

IT professionals, lawyers, accountants, salespeople—they all have their own language and jargon. While it's fine to speak that language among the same types of people, doing so with people outside your group—and even to potential buyers—can impede business development efforts. In this interview, Babette Ten Hanken, author of Do You Mean Business?, explains why techno-speak creates communication barriers and how to tear down those barriers and improve business development.

Today's marketing efforts are not like past marketing efforts. Indeed marketing is undergoing a paradigm shift as increase importance is placed on quantitative results—chief executives want to know what to expect in return for their marketing spends, says David Scott, author of The New Rules of Lead Generation. Listen as Scott explains the shift, how the shift applies to B2B professional services firms, and his five-step plan for a lead generation campaign.

Not long ago, the rule for the length of prospecting email messages was to limit your text to 165 words. That rule has changed and even become more complicated, says Kendra Lee. Listen as she explains what length is now preferred, how the length varies depending on where your prospects live, how to prevent prospecting email from being marked as spam, and the most common mistake people make when composing prospecting email messages.

"Nobody goes onto LinkedIn to find someone to buy from, but that doesn't mean you can't create sales opportunities via LinkedIn," says Jill Konrath co-author of the new ebook Cracking the LinkedIn Sales Code. In fact, Konrath's research found top sellers excel at creating opportunities via the social network. Listen as she discusses what they do, how to research prospects via LinkedIn, and how to connect with prospects via LinkedIn.

Increasingly marketers are involved in the revenue equation, with many marketing leaders now carrying a sales quota. But because sales departments still hold the greatest influence in organizations, marketing leaders have difficulty being heard. If marketing leaders want salespeople and the executives within their organization to listen to them, they must do three things. Listen as Lisa Nirell explains what those are.

Whether you work for a firm or run your own business, a strong personal brand will help you attract clients and grow your business. That's because when people decide to do business with you, it's based on what you are like as an individual. Listen as Dorie Clark, author of Reinventing You, discusses how to develop a strong personal brand and how to use your brand to attract clients.