Business Owners Radio · Craig Moen & Shye Gilad | Business Owners | Entrepreneurship | Small Business

SALES | How to increase your influence in customer conversations to close more deals. w/Nikki Rausch

·33 min·2 clips

The Selling Staircase breaks sales into five steps: introduction, curiosity, discovery, proposal, and close.

1. Business Owners Radio episode 232 focuses on Nikki Rausch's approach to sales conversations and relationship selling. 2. Craig Moen and Shai Gilad host Nikki Rausch, CEO of SalesMaven and author of The Selling Staircase: Mastering the Art of Relationship Selling. 3. The episode asks how entrepreneurs and small business owners can increase influence in customer conversations to close more deals. 4. Nikki says her sales career began in Washington State in the early 1990s when a commission job let her control her income. 5. She describes moving from a college project into professional sales in tech, then becoming a national sales manager and later managing a large manufacturing territory. 6. Nikki says she sold for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Hewlett Packard, and NASA and earned multiple top producer awards. 7. She explains that SalesMaven, founded in 2013, combines sales experience with neuro-linguistic programming to teach strategic sales conversations. 8. Nikki defines NLP as communication, including how people process information, use language, and manage internal dialogue. 9. She says the programming part of NLP is about habits and patterns, and she uses flexibility as a core sales skill. 10. Nikki says people who share a communication style talk more easily, while mismatched styles can make a ten-minute conversation feel like an hour. 11. She advises taking cues from the other person, especially when a buyer seems reserved, direct, or short in their responses. 12. Nikki says salespeople should ask smart questions because questions reveal what it takes to earn someone's business. 13. She warns against showing up with a "dog and pony show" or giving the same presentation to every buyer. 14. Nikki describes a software-buying story where a founder's long final presentation frustrated a buyer who already wanted to negotiate terms. 15. She says one lesson from her mentor is to "never sell past the close," because extra talk can create doubt after the customer is ready to buy. 16. Nikki says a common mistake is leaving the close open with phrases like "just let me know," which leads to ghosting and indecision. 17. She breaks The Selling Staircase into introduction, create curiosity, discovery, proposal, and close, and says the structure lowers pressure for sellers. 18. Nikki's tone is practical and direct, and the conversation stays interview-driven with examples from real sales meetings and client training. 19. Business owners, sales managers, and client-facing teams building relationship-based sales skills. 20. Listeners who want entertainment without sales tactics or process guidance.

As heard by us

A practical reminder that closing is an active ask, not a polite handoff.

Nikki Rausch's appearance on Business Owners Radio offers a grounded look at what actually moves a sale ahead: making a clear ask, not leaving the decision hanging, and treating selling as relationship work.

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Why you'd press play

A clean close beats a polite drift in this sales conversation.

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