Professional Services Professional: Commercial Rainmaker Training

Commercial Rainmaker Training Outline

• Identifying the Needs of the Client

  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

• Client Meeting Effectiveness

  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

• Mastering Bid and Scope Management

  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