Selling your Expertise

The Mindset, Strategies, and Tactics of Successful Rainmakers

Selling your Expertise

BY Robert Chen

This Wall Street Journal bestseller is written to help professionals immediately generate more revenue. Selling Your Expertise: The Mindset, Strategies, and Tactics of Successful Rainmakers (Wiley, April 2022) 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 actionable 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!

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About the author

Robert Chen

Senior Advisor

Robert Chen leverages his business, science, and cross-cultural background to help Fortune 100 business leaders and their teams sell, communicate, and lead more effectively. He works with top firms across…

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Testimonials

“

Chen gets it right; rainmaking is essential in virtually all business enterprises. And that skill can be taught, and learned.

Stanley Goldstein

Chair Emeritus, New York Alternative Investment Roundtable, Chairman, Sustainability Investment Leadership Council

“

If you are like most highly educated professionals, selling seems like a foreboding exercise that you must force yourself to do at the inflection point in your career when you suddenly face being evaluated not on your expertise but instead on your ability to generate business. ‘Selling Your Expertise’ is a must read for any professional striving to become a rainmaker, anyone who has realized through painful experience that there must be more to selling than schmoozing.

John Cho

former Executive Vice President and Chief Legal Officer, AmerisourceBergen

“

The growth of any organization is driven by its sales team and is vital to future success. ‘Selling Your Expertise’ shows how a positive approach combined with best practices, can increase productivity, output, and ultimately, success. An essential how-to book for professionals in any industry who want to grow their business and build their future.

Ken Daly

President, St. Thomas Aquinas College

“

Success is a continuous learning process. If you have a desire to meet your fullest professional potential, ‘Selling Your Expertise’ will guide you along the way. Robert’s book contains the right balance of candor, theory, and practicality to help you take stock of your career progression, transition or accelerate into a rainmaker, and succeed in sales.

Helen Shan

EVP and Chief Revenue Officer, FactSet Research Systems Ltd.

“

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

“

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

“

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

“

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 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.