How To Become A Rainmaker – Getting and Keeping Customers and Clients

1 comment Archive, Entrepreneurship, Marketing

A few months ago I was organizing my workspace here at my home office and decided I wanted to clear my office bookshelf (which wasn’t being used for any books). I wanted to make room for my favorite books which I could place right above me for reference material and day-to-day inspiration.

As I collected my favorite books for this “master book shelf” I blew the dust off an old classic sales book of mine that was handed to me by one of my first managers back when I started with IBM in 2005. The book I was given was How To Become A Rainmaker – The Rules of Getting and Keeping Customers and Clients (affiliate link) by Jeffrey J. Fox, and as I picked it up I remembered how truly great this book was. So I gave this one a reread because it had been years since I cracked it and I was really really happy I took a second look because the book revealed some classic advice that I’d mostly forgotten.

How To Become A Rainmaker on the surface is a straight-to-the-point book about how to achieve the Win-Win with a set of rules and advice geared towards people in the sales profession. But when you look closer most of these rules and advice are applicable to virtually any line of work where your business is dedicated to providing a service or product for clients and customers. There’s some real “salesly” type stuff that’s downright hilarious (“The customer is King, and the sales call is an invitation to the King’s Court” and “Present for Show, Close for Dough“… reminds me Glengarry Glen Ross), but a lot of it is timeless advice.

I thought I’d share some of these gems with readers today, here are some of my favorites.

Fish where the Big Fish are.

Treat everybody you meet as a potential client.

Always always return every call, every day.

Rainmakers concentrate their calls on the high potential accounts.

Dare to be Dumb by asking questions. Customers LOVE questions.

The Rainmaker doesn’t sell the product, the rainmaker sells what the customer will get from the product. Example: The rainmaker doesn’t sell drills, he/she sells holes. Holes that are 2 cents less expensive to drill.

Don’t sell a product or service. Sell the Money (ie. the outcome of doing business with you.. like reduced downtime, decreased costs)

If you go to lunch or dinner, always take the best seat in the restaurant. You want the customer to focus on you.

Don’t drink coffee on a sales call. (Loved this one! I can’t tell you how many times I wound up with coffee drops on my tie back in the day)

You’re not at lunch to eat lunch. You’re there to do business.

Never where a pen in your shirt pocket. <- Classic! Totally common sense but useful!

Rainmakers turn customer objections into customer objectives.

Rainmaker always probe for objections. Love Objections.

Rainmakers always find a difference. Not just “be better”.

Don’t sell babysitting, sell a relaxed evening and a clean house.

The Rainmaker gives to get.

“Break the ice” at the end of a sales call. Get right to the point instead.

“Onionize” to understand, and get the essence and the core of what the customer needs. Keep probing and always ask “why, why, why”.

Never speak to a client unless you can answer 2 questions: 1) Why should this company do business with us, with me? 2) If I were this customer, how would this product benefit me?

Once hired, there are no problems. Ever. Do a wonderful job, do it on time, do it on budget, don’t complain, and give the customer a little extra.

I’ll save Killer Sales Questions for another post. There are some really awesome questions in here that really elicit the right kind of response. In sales and in business, its not so much the question but the way we phrase the question that gives us important information. We’ll look at those next time.

-Mike

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