Episode 109: Nikki Rausch – Relationship First, Rapport Always

Nikki Rausch  00:00

Selling is something that you do with somebody else, it’s not something you do to people. And I think it’s a big mistake in the marketplace that people think — and this is also why people think sales is gross and icky and I don’t want to be associated as a salesperson as a business owner, it’s because they think it’s something that you’re supposed to do to people and it’s not. It’s something you do with people and when you start showing up with this “with” attitude, then everything gets easier.

Bob Woods  00:27

Welcome to the Making Sales Social podcast! Featuring the top voices in sales and marketing. Join hosts Brynne Tillman and Bill McCormick as they discuss the best tips and strategies they are teaching their clients so you can leverage them for your own virtual and social selling. You can also listen to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play. Here are your hosts Brynne Tillman and Bill McCormick.

Bill McCormick  01:04

Welcome to Making Sales Social. I’m Bill McCormick.

Brynne Tillman  01:07

I’m Brynne Tillman.

Bill McCormick  01:08

So Brynne, who’s joining us today? 

Brynne Tillman  01:11

I’m so excited. We have Nikki Rausch today and we met through the power of networking in Clubhouse. Neal Thompson is a gentleman who frequents the rooms that I’m speaking in and said, “You absolutely need to meet Nikki, you guys are so aligned.” And when we chatted, there was one thing, many things that I connected with but one thing where I said, “We’ve got to have her on Making Sales Social,” which is she has a radically different approach to sales, which is very similar to ours. She helps business owners and entrepreneurs who want to sell authentically and build relationships. Woohoo! So Nikki, welcome to the show.

Nikki Rausch  01:54

Thank you so much for having me, I’m really honored to be here with both of you.

Brynne Tillman  01:58

Tell everyone a little bit about you and how you became this sales trainer who teaches authentic relationships.

Nikki Rausch  02:05

So my background is a corporate sales rep. I was one of those like road warriors, you know, doing the traveling like crazy and managing a very large territory, and working at the manufacturer level in the technology space and while I was doing that, I started studying neuro-linguistic programming. And if that’s a new term to anybody out there, it’s essentially the study of communication. And I did it with the idea that it would improve my selling skills, which it certainly did, but what it really did was improve my ability to communicate in a much more effective way.

And so when I decided to start Sales Maven, which is my business, I took my combination of selling experience, selling to, you know, large, corporate, you know, organizations, multimillion dollar deals, and my NLP background it combined. And now I really work with entrepreneurs, primarily women entrepreneurs, and teach them the sales conversation. I teach a five-step approach, I call it the selling staircase. And the idea behind it is that you don’t have to have a script in front of you, and you don’t have to, you know, try to sell like anybody else. You get to be yourself and you understand where am I in the conversation? And how do I seamlessly move it to the next step if the other person is interested in going there with me?

Bill McCormick  03:25

This is fascinating. I can’t wait to dive in the selling staircase and NLP, right? But first, before we get to that, there’s one question we ask every guest, Nikki, what does making sales social mean to you?

Nikki Rausch  03:41

What it means to me is that selling is something that you do with somebody else. It’s not something you do to people. And I think it’s a big mistake in the marketplace that people think — and this is also why people think sales is gross and icky and I don’t want to be associated as a salesperson, as a business owner, it’s because they think it’s something that you’re supposed to do to people and it’s not it’s something you do with people. And when you start showing up with this “with attitude” then everything gets easier because it truly is a social, like interaction.  

Brynne Tillman  04:15

Love that. I love that. And those are like mic drop moments, like quotable moments, right? “Sales is something we do with, not to.” I love it.

Bill McCormick  04:25

Yeah and it kind of goes to our philosophy, you know that prospect isn’t a number in your CRM, they’re not a dollar amount in your quota. They’re actually a real person. So, I love that. So I don’t know Brynne, I think we need to unpack the staircase. I think we need to climb higher and higher. So let’s talk about the staircase a little bit.

Nikki Rausch  04:49

So it’s really focused around the sales conversation and there are five steps in the selling staircase. The foundation that this staircase resides on is rapport. So you’ll often hear me say, “It’s relationship first, rapport, always.” So you have to have rapport with the person you’re in conversation with, and step one is the introduction. This is when you’re meeting them for the first time, or maybe they’re being introduced to your work in some way. It could be through LinkedIn, could be through YouTube, it could be that they’re listening to your podcast, or if they’re visiting your website. And the idea in step one, in the introduction, is to make a powerful first impression. To make somebody go like, “Hmm, I’m interested, I’m willing to give you my attention for a few more seconds to check you out.” So that’s step one.

Brynne Tillman  05:33

How do you do that? Before we go step two, how do you do that? How do you use the LinkedIn profile or the website to gain those insights to make that powerful?

Nikki Rausch  05:42

Well, one of the ways that I would do that is I would think about, especially with your website, and also with your LinkedIn, too, is, it can’t be all about you, it needs to actually be about the reader. So one of the things I teach is, you gotta get rid of all these “I” statements like “I do this,” “I help these people, blah, blah, blah…” it’s like, no, let’s talk about, you know, this is for you, when, blah, blah, blah, whatever it is that you’re talking about on your website. Or you could say, you’ll often hear me say this, “You know, clients hire me to learn how to sell.” That’s not me saying, “Oh, I help clients learn how to sell.” I’m making it about the client. It’s what they do. It’s not what I do.

Brynne Tillman  06:24

Yeah, it’s interesting. We actually say, all content, including your profile, needs to do five things. It needs to resonate with your targeted audience. So they know immediately, you help me. The second thing it needs to do is create curiosity, because you can lose them on the website or on the LinkedIn profile like that, or content. If you don’t create a curiosity, they don’t lean in and we need them to lean in. That’s right. The third thing is teach them something new, right. So what did they learn today that they didn’t know yesterday? Or before they got here, and that’s even on your LinkedIn profile, what the fourth is what you taught them needs to get them thinking a little differently than they did before. And then fifth, it needs to create a compelling moment. So we moved them from lurkers to engagers. So, yeah, so I just thought that it would just fit right in with the staircase. Step number one.

Nikki Rausch  07:21

Yeah, for sure. I think we have a lot of alignment here because for me, step number two is creating curiosity. And so I feel like we’re right in alignment. And this I often say is the most missed step in the selling staircase. People don’t think about are you creating curiosity, and I teach creating curiosity is, it’s the difference between how you call it dog and how you call a cat. So I know that sounds a little crazy. So if you give me just a second.

Bill McCormick  07:48

Not anyone who both owns cats and dogs, totally gets that, but you may need to unpack that for some non-dog and non-cat human. 

Nikki Rausch  07:58

Okay. All right. So for the dog owners, you know, typically, if you want to get your dog’s attention, you do this like, kind of a high pitched kind of like, lot of energy, like, “Come here boy, come here, let’s do something fun! You want a treat?” like, you know, and dogs really respond to that kind of energy. But unfortunately, a lot of times in a sales conversation with somebody, we are so excited to talk to a new client that we ended up having this dog-calling energy, which for the person on the receiving end of that, it’s like, “Ugh, too much like I’m not a dog, I don’t respond to that type of energy.”

So the flip side of it is you think about how you call a cat and you do this little thing where you go, “Here kitty, kitty, Here, kitty, kitty.” Now what happens? Your cats, oftentimes, won’t even come to you for that, by the way, they’ll lean in, which I think you said, Brynne, like we’re just wanting them to lean in. We want their attention long enough for them to go, “Tell me more.” Or ask a question, right? So that’s what creating curiosity is about. 

And I often teach that it’s the way you answer really simple questions, oftentimes, can open the door to creating curiosity. So for instance, if you said to me, right now, like, “Hey, Nikki, what do you been up to lately?” Like I could say, “Oh, not much,” but that doesn’t create any curiosity, right? Or I could say, “Oh, I’m just getting ready to launch my last masterclass of the year.” And then somebody could go, maybe if you were interested, you might say, “What are you teaching a class on?” or “What’s going on with that?” And then I could talk a little bit more about that. It gives me a little opening. And then what happens, oftentimes, when you create curiosity is people will start to give you buying signals. And when you get buying signals, that’s when you invite them to step three, which is the discovery process. And I know I’ve heard you guys talk about discovery in your own on your podcast, that how important it is, the idea…sorry?

Bill McCormick  09:48

I just want to stay on step two, just for a moment, because I love that. You know, I think one of the reasons that salespeople don’t like to create curiosity is because we lose control of them, you know, we have a sales process and we’re going to go, we’re going to do our step one, step two, step three, step four, and we know it. And the problem with that is that the buyer has a buying process. And as salespeople, I don’t think we like to lose control, and curiosity causes us to lose control.

You know, I think about my cat. So I have one cat that answers like a dog, when I call him he comes, it’s great but there’s another cat that just is a totally different story. So you know, you scratch, like, I don’t know if you can hear that on my microphone but you know, I scratch on something and it kind of gets, “Okay, I might want to go after that.” And that luring, enticing, I guess really is the thing is that we have to entice them, entice them along. So I just wanted to say that before we move on to discovery, which is a great thing to talk about.

Brynne Tillman  10:47

I want to pull what you said, though, both of you were saying because I think that’s really important, when we’re not creating curiosity, and we’re following our own agenda, we don’t make them matter. It’s all about me and my agenda, right? When you create curiosity, what I’m learning from Nikki here is that, you know, that’s what gets them to lean in, because they matter, right? So I think that’s the kind of differentiator there that at least I’m picking up on.

Nikki Rausch  11:17

Yeah, the idea is that we want them to lean in, we want them to have questions, because from their questions, oftentimes, that gives us an indication of where to go next, right? Because think about all that you guys do and all the experience that you have, if somebody came up and said, like, “Hey, Brynne, tell me everything you know about sales,” like you could talk for probably days, right? Like, because you know so much about it but maybe all they wanted to know when they say, “Tell me what you know about sales,” is tell me how to hire you, right? So you don’t want to just talk about sales, you want to talk about ways to work with you. So we have to give them opportunity to ask questions, because it lets us know where to go next. 

Brynne Tillman  12:01

I love that. I think that’s so important. And discovery also helps them too, right? Yes, one thing that I… like discovery is not just for me to find out what’s going on in their environment, if we do a really good discovery, they’re having “aha” moments about their environment that they didn’t even recognize.

Bill McCormick  12:19

Right. It goes to what you said in the beginning. You know, we do sales with someone not to someone and Jeff Shore said it, you know, “We don’t do discovery on a client or prospect. We do discovery with them…” to Brynne’s point, so that they discover some stuff also.

Nikki Rausch  12:34

Yeah, I always say all roads in the discovery in your questions, all roads should lead to either hiring you or helping them self-select this isn’t the right thing for them, right? Because not everybody you talk to is a client. So we’re planting seeds by asking questions that let them go. “Ooh…” So for instance, in my discovery process, you better believe one of the questions that I ask is, how proficient are you at creating curiosity when you’re talking about your business? Guess why? Because I teach that. So of course, I’m going to ask that question because it also plants a seed in their mind of like, “Oh, maybe Nikki knows how to do something that I haven’t learned how to do yet. So I want to stay in this conversation, I want to find out how can I learn how to create curiosity.”

Brynne Tillman  13:20

In some ways, so one of the things that we teach is that we want to lead to our solution, not with our solution. (Nikki: Yes.) And so I think that that perfectly aligns with that. 

Bill McCormick  13:31

For sure. For sure.

Nikki Rausch  13:32

I’m a big fan of, I teach this too, is like, “Do not sell during discovery.” This is not you demonstrating your expertise. This is not you giving a little nugget to somebody or like. “You know, what’s going to solve your problem is this.” Like, I think that’s a huge mistake in the selling process is to demonstrate your expertise. Because that, I always, I’ll often say, it’s kind of like, think about all the resources, everything you know, everything that you can bring to a client’s life that will help them get whatever it is, you know, that they need, or want or solve their problem. 

They don’t know all that you know. It’s like giving them a grain of sand, because you it’s just a little thing, you’re like, I’m just going to give you this little thing, this little taste, but they don’t know that behind you is all your resources. It’s like a big beautiful beach and they think when you give them that little grain of sand that it is the beach and now they don’t need to hire you. And frankly, they miss out on all that you can help them and all that you can bring to solve the problem, meet the need, and really make a difference and an impact when they work with you.

Brynne Tillman  14:35

So I have a question to that. (Nikki: Okay) Without, I’m not going to push back on kind of your… but my question to you is, we need to earn the right to get the business. (Nikki: Yes.) Right? And so if we are not sharing nuggets, where we are earning the right in the sales process?

Nikki Rausch  14:53

You’re earning the right by planting the seeds about the ways… this idea of what are the things that you can teach and do they get an idea of, “This is something I’d like to know more about.” So you can give as much “what” as you want but if you give the “how,” they often think then they don’t need to hire you. So you can give as much “what” you know, I teach curiosity. You know, storytelling is a big part. And you know, is that something that’s important to you? And how confident are you when you’re telling stories in earning somebody’s business, right? Because I’m not telling them how to tell stories, I’m not teaching them how to break it down. 

That is something that they get when they hire me, that is something that I teach, right? So the idea behind this is, there’s lots of ways for people to get, like, truly little nuggets from you, like you guys have this amazing podcast, and you share all kinds of stuff out into the marketplace. Those are ways for them to get little grains of sand, but they’re not specific to their needs because when you start talking specific to their need, and specific to their application, oftentimes, they won’t hire you because they think, “Well, I just got the, I just got the secret insight here that I needed from Brynne or from Bill. So I probably need to go implement and then maybe come back and hire them later,” but they can’t really go and implement because you just gave them this tiny little thing. And they need you to help them walk them through it or or give them a little bit more context or give them an opportunity to, to ask more questions to get some more clarity. That’s what I mean by that.

Brynne Tillman  16:30

Interesting. So thank you for that. So step number three.

Nikki Rausch  16:34

So that’s the discovery (crosstalk). So step number four is when you actually start doing the selling, this is the proposal step. And proposal can be a former, like a formal proposal, but it may just be in a conversation. So I always suggest that the way you move from step to step is you ask permission. So I never go into sales mode with somebody I always say, “You know, based on what you’ve shared, I have some ideas of ways we might work together. Would you be interested in hearing more about those?” (crosstalk) Okay, good. So I’m going to ask their permission and then I’m going to lay out the way to work with me based on what they have shared, and I’m going to stand in my place of credibility and authority and I’m going to recommend what I know they need. In this moment, I’m not going to say there are 18 ways to work with me. I’m going to say, you know, I’ll give up to three, but usually, I’ll pick one, “I’ll say, you know, based on what you’ve shared, my suggestion is that we work together in a multi-strategy session type opportunity where we can work on these specific things.” 

“Here’s, based on what you have shared with me, these are the things that we would cover in those sessions.” And then I’m going to move to step five, I’m going to issue that closed language and closed language, is that very direct yes or no question. It’s essentially saying to somebody without saying to them, “Do you want to hire me? Yes or no?” So I’m going to say, “Is that something you’d like to move forward with? And then I’m going to zip it and wait, and let them respond.

Brynne Tillman  18:02

You know, it’s interesting. It’s something that we had to learn the hard ways, we gave options and recognize options. They don’t want options. They want to be told. 

Bill McCormick  18:10

It confuses them. Really. (Nikki and Brynne: Yeah.) Basically. (Nikki: It can be overwhelming.)

Nikki Rausch  18:13

And then they go into decision fatigue. Like, “I don’t know what to do but you’re the expert.” So stand in your place of expertise. Recommend what you know they need. And if they have a question or an objection, or if they say that’s a little out of my price range, then you could bring up something else. You can move them a step down, if that makes sense but if you just give them like, “Here’s 18 ways to work with me and go look at my website, and here’s all the packages I have.” They go into overwhelmed. 

Brynne Tillman  18:42

Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, the base is rapport. (Nikki: Yep.) Step number one… (Nikki: Introduction). Step number two… (Nikki: Curiosity.) Step number three… (Nikki: Discovery.) Step number four… (Nikki: Proposal.) Step number five… (Nikki: Close.) Got it. I was mixing some together. And they were all… So now I’m glad that we’ve got (crosstalk).

Nikki Rausch  19:03

I did it really fast. So… (crosstalk)

Bill McCormick  19:05

Yeah, and four and five kind of went right together. So let’s talk for a moment about the close. So you do that, and you and you zip your lip. And here’s one of the things we know. You know, I don’t know what the… I don’t know, there’s like 8,952 decision makers for every business, every decision that’s made nowadays, I’m being really sarcastic. I’m being really sarcastic, but I’m not. I mean, that’s just, you know, there’s so many and says, “Okay, I have to get the team’s input, or I need to take this to my boss.” or, so what do you do at that point?

Nikki Rausch  19:41

So what I do is, I always think it’s important to move the conversation along and get to the next step. So I want to have the next step scheduled before I end that conversation. So I would say to somebody who says, “I have to take this to my boss.” I would say, “Now, is there any additional information that would be useful for you to have in front of you when you have that conversation? And when do you think you’ll have that conversation with him or her?” And then I’m going to say, “Let’s schedule a circle back call now on our calendars. That way, I can answer any additional questions that come up during that conversation for you and your boss. And then we’ll talk about next steps for working together.”

Like, “Do you have your calendar available now?” And I’m going to schedule that next step because I want to make sure, I actually don’t believe in chasing clients. I always say if you chase clients, you’re turning everybody into a toddler, just like if you say to a toddler, like, “I’m going to chase you,” they don’t even know what the game is, and they’re off and running. And if you act like, “Well, I’ll just follow up with you next week,” or “I’ll just call you sometime soon.” Well, they’re not going to answer when you call them but if you have an appointment scheduled on their calendar, they’re going to either have ensured that they have the conversation with a boss, or they’re going to say, “This isn’t really for me. So I’m just going to cancel this meeting with you.” Great, save you a bunch of time and effort and energy talking to somebody who’s not an ideal client or they’re going to get on the call with you and say, “I’m struggling with how to bring this up, and I need some help, or I need some, I need some additional information,” but that keeps the sales conversation moving forward to we get to the place where we actually either decide not to work together, or we exchange dollars for service or product or whatever it is that you’re selling. (Brynne: Love that.)

Bill McCormick  21:25

Yeah and either one of those is a win, because, you know, because you found out and you discovered and that’s one of the things that I’ve done is I’ve focused more on before I end any call, it’s like “Okay, where do you think we should go from here, and let’s schedule and let’s schedule a follow up.” And it’s been a game changer, it really has and its kept things either moving along, or somebody saying, “Hey, listen, it’s just not going to work.”  So I love that and I can’t believe we are already out of time. We really didn’t even get to talk about neuro-linguistic programming. So I’m thinking that we’re going to have to do another session with you, for sure. (Nikki: Happy to.). So listen, before we wrap up, Nikki, thank you so much, tell everyone how they can stay in contact with you and connect with you.

Nikki Rausch  22:15

Well, I’m going to wrap it around a gift for your listener, if that’s okay, your listeners. Yes, okay, good. So this is an ebook called Closing the Sale and it kind of really talks through some of that language of steps three, four, and five and the selling staircase. You can get that by going to my website, yoursalesmaven.com/social. So this is for your podcast listeners.

Bill McCormick  22:41

Right. So make sure you go check out yoursalesmaven.com/social to download that. I know as soon as we get off, I’m going to go do that and so Nikki, thank you so much for being here. Listeners, thank you for spending your time with us. And don’t forget, whatever you do when you’re out and about this week, don’t forget to make yourselves social. We’ll see you next time. Bye-bye, everyone.

Bob Woods  23:04

Thanks for watching, and join us again for more special guest instructors bringing you marketing, sales training, and social selling strategies that will set you apart. Hit the Subscribe button below to get the latest episodes from the Making Sales Social podcast. Give this video a thumbs up and comment down below on what you want to hear from us next. You can also listen to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play. Visit our website socialsaleslink.com for more information.

Resources Mentioned:

• Clubhouse
• The Selling Staircase
• Free gift from Nikki