Selling Your Expertise: The Mindset, Strategies, and Tactics of Successful Rainmakers - Hardcover

Chen, Robert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 111975514X ISBN 13: 9781119755142

Publisher: Wiley, 2022

Synopsis

Wall Street Journal bestseller

Build your book of business and sell more services with this expert guide for knowledge professionals

How do rainmakers consistently and continuously sell their ideas and grow their client base? What is the secret to their ongoing success? Whether they are in accounting, consulting, investment banking, law, or any other type of professional service, it’s not just their knowledge, experience, and unique services that set them apart. They succeed by adopting the mindset, mastering the strategies, and employing the tactics at the heart of rainmaking.

In Selling Your Expertise: The Mindset, Strategies, and Tactics of Successful Rainmakers, veteran communications, sales, and leadership consultant Robert Chen provides a practical guide to selling knowledge-based services in a market that demands credibility and subject-matter authority. Chen and his colleagues at Exec|Comm have helped hundreds of thousands of professionals learn to sell, influence, and negotiate more effectively. This book condenses Chen’s first-hand experience and over 40 years of Exec|Comm’s best sales advice, along with interviews featuring other successful rainmakers from a variety of professions and industries.

Whether you’re a national practice partner at a Big Four consulting firm or an independent attorney just starting out, this book equips you with the real-life knowledge you need to:

• Develop a client-focused mindset to help build a thriving book of business 
• Use effective strategies to find your ideal prospects and turn them into long-term clients, using concrete metrics to assess whether you’re on the right track 
• Apply practical tactics to build a trusted reputation, sharpen communication skills, manage the challenges of not having enough time to sell, and push beyond obstacles  

The perfect book for consultants, investment bankers, lawyers, research analysts, and accountants, Selling Your Expertise is an invaluable resource for any professional who makes a living by selling solutions to their clients’ most pressing needs.

About this title

About the Author

ROBERT CHEN, MBA, is a Partner at Exec|Comm. He leverages his training in business and science and his management experience in the U.S. and China to help Fortune 500 business leaders and their teams communicate, sell, and lead more effectively. He teaches at The Wharton School and his ideas have been published in Fast Company and Training Magazine.

Visit www.exec-comm.com to learn more.

From the Back Cover

FOREWORD BY HELEN SHAN, EVP and Chief Revenue Officer, FactSet Research Systems Ltd.

PRAISE FOR SELLING YOUR EXPERTISE

“Chen empowers us as professionals to not just deliver our work but to create value by selling. Whether you are a first-timer or a seasoned business developer, new or resistant to selling, Selling Your Expertise will open your mind and heart to greater career opportunities and rewards. Thank you, Robert!”

―JAY PERSAUD, Vice Chair, Big Four Professional Services Organization

“Building and maintaining lasting client relationships is key for the long-term success of any business. Selling Your Expertise outlines a clear roadmap with proven strategies to leverage your professional experience and knowledge to serve your clients, build enduring relationships, and scale the business.”

―SRINIVAS RAPTHADU, Business Transformation Officer, Global Strategy Consulting Ecosystems, SAP

“Remarkable insights and an in-depth resource for anyone who views a sales role with skepticism or trepidation. I view Selling Your Expertise as essential reading for anyone in professional services who is serving in a technical role. Here is a practical and realistic guide for building a career roadmap for success.”

―HIROSHI BAENSCH, Senior Partner, Mercer

“You can offer the best data, models, and analytical skills in the world, but more important than any of that is the ability to sell your expertise. Robert Chen provides some unique and invaluable lessons, which I find immediately useful for my own teaching and consulting work.”

―PROFESSOR PETER FADER, Frances and Pei-Yuan Chia Professor of Marketing, The Wharton School of The University of Pennsylvania

“Robert Chen clearly understands the subtleties and nuances of interpersonal dynamics. In Selling Your Expertise, his advice on how to develop business authentically in your own voice is not to be missed.”

―MICHELLE NASIR, Chief Talent Officer, Arsenal Capital Partners

“If there is one book to read on developing selling acumen for someone who is not a ‘born salesperson’, Selling Your Expertise is it. It offers relational guiding principles and step-by-step approaches that help any expert within their business understand how to build a thriving book of business. You’ll not only gain practical insights, but the confidence to be a rainmaker!”

―PAUL WYPASEK, Chief Learning Officer, Turner Construction

From the Inside Flap

Written to help professionals immediately generate more revenue, Selling Your Expertise: The Mindset, Strategies, and Tactics of Successful Rainmakers offers lawyers, accountants, consultants, investment bankers, and other knowledge-based professionals a clear roadmap to build a book of business and cultivate long-term client relationships.

Organized into three parts, the book begins by exploring the mindset necessary to set yourself up for rainmaking success:

Part I walks you through the perceptions and interpretations you’ll need to adopt to overcome common business development challenges.

Part II moves on to specific guidance around the most effective strategies to use based on where your clients are in the sales process.

Part III discusses the core tactics you’ll use to execute your strategies. You’ll discover how to build a stellar reputation to help you land business, grow a personal and professional network that offers value to you and your clients, read a room in real-time, and more.

Each chapter contains a “Practical Tips” section to highlight immediately applicable pieces of advice and closes with reflection questions, metrics, or practice tips to help you apply what you learned.

Selling Your Expertise is an indispensable how-to guide to grow your book of business, expand your practice, and improve your ability to provide value to your clients. If you make a living by providing value and expertise to your clients, this book belongs on your bookshelf.

Edition details

• Publisher: Wiley
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 111975514X
• ISBN 13: 9781119755142
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336