Mike Schultz says, "Increasing win rate—even just by a few percentage points—has a dramatic effect on a company's revenue and profitability."
In this interview with Mike Schultz, President of the Rain Group, SLMA Radio host Jim Obermayer discusses why top performing companies are winning 62% of their sales opportunities while the rest drag in with Only 40%.
The Rain Group studied 472 sales executives and sellers representing companies with sales forces ranging from 10 sellers to 5,000+, and published the results in The Top-Performing Sales Organization Benchmark Report. They analyzed what organization factors correlated to higher win rates—and the results are significant. In this interview we will try to cover:
3 sales skill areas all organizations need to pay attention to
5 ideas for strengthening your sales process—for both leaders and individual sellers
What your organization needs to do to drive revenue growth
Surprising findings around sales training and seller motivation
How Value-Driving Sales Organizations excel in revenue growth, value pricing, win rates, sales force retention, and more
How Top Performers differ from The Rest in sales process maturity, sales training focus and investment, sales skills, sales results, and more
Mike Schultz, President, RAIN Group
President of RAIN Group, Mike Schultz is world-renowned as a consultant and sales expert. He is bestselling author of Rainmaking Conversations: How to Influence, Persuade, and Sell in Any Situation (Wiley, 2011) and Insight Selling: Surprising Research on What Sales Winners Do Differently (Wiley, 2014), and was named the Top Sales Thought Leader globally in 2011.
Mike and the team at RAIN Group have worked with organizations such as Hitachi, BNY Mellon, HP, SAP, Boeringer Ingelheim, Deloitte, Harvard Business School, and dozens of others to unleash their sales potential.
As a sales leader himself, Mike oversaw a sales force at a leading business-to-business company, engineering growth in his division by 800% in a four year period while increasing margins significantly. Mike has also personally sold tens of millions of dollars in products and services to companies across industries and of various sizes.
Mike is a graduate of Brandeis University in Waltham, MA with a B.A. in American Studies, and holds an MBA from the F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business at Babson College.
About the Rain Group
Over the past two decades, RAIN Group has grown into a recognized leader in sales improvement with an international client base. We've helped hundreds of thousands of salespeople, managers, and professionals in more than 62 countries increase their sales significantly with our sales training, sales consulting, and sales coaching services.
Led by Recognized Sales Experts
RAIN Group is led by industry luminaries Mike Schultz and John Doerr, two of the world's most respected sales experts, named as the Top Sales Thought Leaders globally. We are leaders in sales research and publishing, including the bestselling book Rainmaking Conversations, Insight Selling, What Sales Winners Do Differently, and The Benchmark Report on High Performance in Strategic Account Management.
Sales Training Company Focused on Unleashing Sales Potential
We help our clients succeed in each area of the Sales Competency WheelSM, and make sure the wheel is working the best it can to unleash sales potential at their companies. Our suite of sales training programs cover everything your sellers need to become top performers.
For us, good is not good enough. We are constantly innovating, working on the leading edge of selling and sales training research, thinking, methods, and technologies. Only by constantly striving to be the best can we be most helpful to our c
