How to Become a Rainmaker: The Rules for Getting and Keeping Customers and Clients

91 Pages·2000·0.57 MB·English

by  Jeffrey J. Fox

HOW TO BECOME A
RAINMAKER

The Rules for Getting and Keeping Customers and
Clients

JEFFREY J. FOX
Dedicated to
Catherine M. Fox
and to
Dorothy and Modesto Brunoli
“Because Rainmakers sometimes need umbrellas”
Contents

Introduction

I - The Rainmaker’s Credo
II - Always Answer the Question, “Why Should This
Customer Do Business with Us?”
III - Obey Marketing’s First Commandment
IV - Customers Don’t Care About You
V - Always Precall Plan Every Sales Call
VI - Fish Where the Big Fish Are
VII - Show Them the Money!
VIII - Earthquakes Don’t Count
IX - Killer Sales Question #1
X - Always Take the Best Seat in a Restaurant
XI - Don’t Drink Coffee on a Sales Call
XII - You’re Not at Lunch to Eat Lunch
XIII - Never Wear a Pen in Your Shirt Pocket
XIV - Killer Sales Question #2
XV - Rainmakers Turn Customer Objections into
Customer Objectives
XVI - Always Make a “Mid-Job, Next-Job”
Recommendation
XVII - Treat Everybody You Meet as a Potential
Client
XVIII - Heed the Biggest Buy Signal
XIX - Killer Sales Question #3
XX - Always Return Every Call Every Day
XXI - Learn the “Miles Per Gallon” of Selling
XXII - Beware the Myth of Time and Territory
Management
XXIII - Always Taste the Wine Before a Wine
Tasting
XXIV - Dare to Be Dumb
XXV - Always Do an Investment Return Analysis
XXVI - Never Forget: Everybody Is Somebody’s
Somebody
XXVII - Always Be on “High Receive”
XXVIII - “Onionize”
XXIX - If You Don’t Care About the Answer, Don’t
Ask the Question
XXX - Never Be in a Meeting
XXXI - Present for Show, Close for Dough
XXXII - Advice to a Baby-sitter
XXXIII - Killer Sales Question #4
XXXIV - Give and Get
XXXV - Sell on Friday Afternoons
XXXVI - “Break the Ice” at the End of the Sales Call
XXXVII - Use the Point System Every Day
XXXVIII - A Shot on Goal Is Never a Bad Play
XXXIX - Don’t Make Cold Calls
XL - Show the Chain, Sell the First Link
XLI - Don’t Talk with Food in Your Mouth
XLII - Killer Sales Question #5
XLIII - Love Voice Mail
XLIV - Park in the Back
XLV - Be the Best-Dressed Person You Will Meet
Today
XLVI - Why Breakfast Meetings Bring Rain
XLVII - “Here’s My Card . . . ”
XLVIII - Killer Sales Question #6
XLIX - Ten Things to Do Today to Get Business
L - How to Recognize a Rainmaker

The Rainmaker Extra: How to Dollarize
A Case Study: Mr. K.
Epilogue

Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also By Jeffrey J. Fox
Copyright
INTRODUCTION

You Should Read This Book If Your Organization Needs
Revenues

A
merican Indian tradition exalts the Rainmaker. The Rainmaker used magical
powers to bring the rain to nourish the crops to feed the people. Without the rain,
the people would weaken, die, or have to move elsewhere.
Today, a Rainmaker is a person who brings revenue into an organization, be it
profit or notfor-profit. That revenue comes from customers and donors. That
revenue is the aqua viva—the lifeblood—of the organization. Without it the
organization will die.
Customers’ money is the rain.
The term Rainmaker is more commonly used in such professional service
industries as legal, accounting, consulting, investment banking, advertising, and
architecture. In these industries, Rainmakers are the two or so people in the firm
who are responsible for generating most of the new customers, the new business.
Big-hitting Rainmakers are among the highest paid employees in every
company in every industry. They operate under many titles: owner, partner,
chancellor, sales representative, CEO, agent, managing director, and fund-raiser.
If becoming a Rainmaker is your goal, then this book will help you get there.
There is another kind of Rainmaker, and he or she is an employee—or
associate or colleague or team member or crew member. Every employee must
be somehow involved in the identification, attraction, getting, and keeping of
customers. The advice in this book tilts to the salesperson, but if you have
contact with customers, or work with and support colleagues who have contact
with customers, this book will make you more effective. You will be better able
to sell inside, to sell your ideas to your organization.
The most important success factor in any business or organization is having a
customer. This is more important than the business idea, the products, the
machinery, the buildings, the financing, or the people. It is customer money that
pays everyone’s salary, that pays for 401(k) plans, union dues, bonuses,
vacations, health insurance, computers, and office furniture. Customers are
known by many names: members, students, fans, soldiers, parishioners, and
patients. Regardless of what they are called, without customers no organization
can continue to survive.
Therefore, the paramount job of every single employee in an organization is
to, directly or indirectly, get and keep customers. This is true without exception!
The job of every employee is to help ring the cash register. The job of every
employee is to keep the customers coming, and to keep the customers coming
back.
This book is a recipe for how to sell, for how to make rain, be it drizzle or
deluge, sprinkle or storm. If your organization needs revenues, and if you want
to become invaluable to your organization, then read this book.