Raintoday's Sales Tips & Techniques Podcast

The up and down of the economy has many professional services firms concerned about their business and often taking on any client that comes their way. It is possible to grow your business, however, without having to resort to desperate measures. You start by developing a growth plan that allows you to establish the foundation of a strong company. Listen as marketing strategist Lisa Nirell explains the struggles firms are dealing with and what it takes to get your business to grow and thrive.

Effective thought leadership—the kind that attracts prospects that eventually become clients—requires a strong platform that your entire company adopts, not "random acts of content," says Craig Badings, author of Brand Stand: Seven Steps to Thought Leadership. Listen as Badings explains how to develop a strong thought leadership platform and the success organizations can see from implementing it.

Webinars are a great way to build your brand, demonstrate thought leadership, and generate leads. They can also fill the gap when companies are not able to send staff to training. But for them to succeed, whether they're free or paid, you have to have a strategy. Listen as Lee Salz, author of Stop Speaking for Free, explains how to pick a topic that draws viewers, how to create a title that grabs people's attention, and the type of content you must provide if you want people to pay to attend your events. * Full Disclosure: the link to purchase Stop Selling for Free is an affiliate link. And while the authors offered to pay us a small commission for anyone who purchases the book through us, we wouldn't promote it if we didn't think it was an excellent resource.

You know blogging is a powerful way to establish yourself as a trusted expert and grow business. But it can happen only if you manage your blog properly. If you're not seeing the results you hoped for, chances are you've made one of the many mistakes people fall for. Listen as professional blogger Chris Garrett describes the two biggest mistakes bloggers make, the worst thing you could do with your blog, and how to get people to notice and comment on your blog.  

You know body language can affect personal relationships, but have you stopped to consider how it and other non-verbal communication can affect your sales results and your client relationships? People respond on a primal level to how you say and do things, says Sharon Sayler, author of the new book What Your Body Says, so it's important you do things that draw people to you, not push them away. Listen as Sayler describes the two main things that hinder business relationships and what you can do to get people to respond positively toward you.

A sales training program might be just the thing to help your sales team improve their skills and sell more. But how do you know which program and vendor is right for you? To help you figure that out, Dave Stein, CEO and Founder of ES Research Group, discusses some of the findings of the company's Sales Training Vendor Guide.

Sales has change significantly over the years, particularly for B2B services firms. These days everyone plays a role in helping to grow the business, and firms must have a client-centric approach, says Matt Heinz, author of Successful Selling. Listen as Heinz explains mistakes firms make with lead generation, how firms can win complex sales, and how to avoid becoming a commodity.

Thought leadership might be considered a buzz word in the world of professional services sales, but it's an absolute necessity if you want to attract prospects and convert them into buyers. Listen as Scott Ginsberg, aka The Nametag Guy, talks about key aspects of thought leadership, mistakes people make, and how to overcome the biggest challenge of attracting prospects willing to pay for your services.>>Learn More: Attend Scott Ginsberg's Webinar How to Build a Thought Leadership Platform So Clients Come to You with Money on Thursday, July 29

Problem solving requires creative thinking, but too often people get stuck coming up with the same tired solutions. How can you break out of that rut and think of ideas that solve your business problems? Mark Levy suggests using a process called freewriting, which allows you to explore ideas you might never come up with using traditional methods.  

Want to sell more? Stop talking about you and your services. Prospects, who are busier than ever, don't want to hear it. Jill Konrath, author of the new book SNAP Selling, says to instead focus on your prospects and their challenges, demonstrate your value, and tell them something that will grab their attention and hold it throughout the decision process.

Marketing technology services effectively requires a systematic approach. Unfortunately, however, many companies go about it in an erratic and tactical way that doesn't allow them to demonstrate the value of their services. And as a result, few buy their services. Listen as Laurie Young, author of Marketing Technology as a Service: Proven Techniques that Create Value, explains what successful companies have done to market their services and mistakes to avoid.

Happiness as a business model--you might doubt its effectiveness, but Zappos is proving that it helps drive profit and growth. Listen as Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos and author of Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose, talks about how a strong company culture that centers on employee happiness leads to better customer and client service, which leads to more sales.

If you've ever been trapped in the cycle of having a lot of client work and then having none, more than likely, it's because your marketing efforts weren't continuous. You have one marketing push followed by all-out work only to lift your head at the end and discover you don't have any leads. You can avoid such trials of feast or famine when you make marketing part of your everyday life. Never stop marketing, and you'll never have to worry about filling your sales pipeline.

Even when you have a sales organization that has the right processes and does things perfectly, you can still get low returns. That's because core leadership principles within a company can have a negative effect. Listen as Danita Bye, author of Leadership Shift: Paradoxical Wisdom for Transformational Leaders in These Times of Change, discusses leadership paradoxes that can significantly impact sales force effectiveness and should be evaluated if sales efforts are lagging.

In the past all you needed was a pulse and few clients and your firm could survive. With the "new normal," however, that isn't enough. The CEO can no longer be the sole rainmaker and top sales person, and you must have a plan for running your firm. Fail to change your approach and you limit how much your firm can grow and run the risk of watching it fail.

Often service professionals kill any trust that might be developed with prospects with their sales and marketing tactics--and not even know that they're doing it.

Often firms spend a lot time and money wooing perfect strangers to become clients only to stop paying attention to them after the project is complete. But it is through existing clients that firms can generate more business, says Joseph Jaffe, author of Flip the Funnel: How to Use Existing Customers to Gain New Ones. Instead of following the traditional marketing funnel, flip it so that you build on existing client relationships and use those to draw new clients to you.

If referrals are the best way to generate leads and grow business, then why don't more firms do this well? It all starts with being referable and trustworthy, says John Jantsch, author of the new book The Referral Engine. When you establish trust and provide a great client experience, you set the stage for building a powerful referral system that generates leads and often eliminates the sales cycle.

With all of the marketing tactics available for professional services, five have risen to the top in terms of preference, including email marketing and thought leadership, according to recent studies by The Shattuck Group. Listen as Randy Shattuck, senior marketing executive and founder of The Shattuck Group, reveals some of the findings of those reports and give a preview of his upcoming webinar.

If you're not doing social media, you need to rethink that. Not only are millions of people using social media networks, but using those networks to market your firm can create greater awareness and generate more web traffic faster than SEO tactics, says Michael Stelzner, founder of SocialMediaExaminer.com.