How To Become A Rainmaker: The Rules for Getting and Keeping Customers and Clients

by Jeffrey J. Fox

Never make a sales call on a customer unless you can answer the question “Why should this customer do business with our company, with me?”

Deliver on your promise and you’ll bring rain.

The only thing customers care about are themselves and their problem.

You do not talk about yourself; rather, you ask probing, preplanned questions. You listen to what the customer says. Clarify. Summarize. Determine how you can help the customer and how your product solves the customer’s concern.

Precall planning is particularly important when making the first call on a new customer and when making the last call—the one that concludes with an order.

It is typical for a Rainmaker to spend three hours planning for a fifteen-minute sales call.

A Rainmaker never calls on a decision maker without a written precall plan.

Rainmakers talk to customers who are familiar with their product, or who already use the product, or who have a high probability of using the product.

Customers who want your product are better targets than customers who need your product.

Customers buy for only two reasons: to feel good or to solve a problem.

Rainmakers help the customer see the money. Rainmakers turn benefits into dollars.

Rainmakers sell money.

You either made the sale or you didn’t.

Rainmakers don’t have excuses.

Rainmakers make appointments to make rain.

Always Take the Best Seat in a Restaurant

Don’t Drink Coffee on a Sales Call

You’re Not at Lunch to Eat Lunch

It’s not about lunch. It’s about getting the customer’s commitment, getting the bill, and getting on to the next appointment.

OK, so before we get into this in any depth, can I get your agreement on the analysis? Will you look at the facts and decide for yourself if they make sense?” This is a killer sales question.

Rainmakers believe that objections are the way customers mask pleas for help and information.

Rainmakers always probe for objections. Rainmakers love objections.

The Rainmaker is always thinking about how his company can help the customer, how the customer’s sales, profits, or well-being can be bettered. The Rainmaker knows that the customer’s continuing success is the only basis for the Rainmaker’s success.

Your customer doesn’t know all you can do for her. Only you know. By the time you are halfway through your current job you should know how else you can help your customer. When you are in the middle of a job, begin selling the next one.

Rainmakers always have a mid-job, next-job action plan.

Rainmakers see the world, and everyone in it, as their market. Rainmakers know the world is small. They know that everyone knows someone. They know that anyone can become a client, or refer a client, or recommend a client, or scuttle a promising relationship.

The biggest buy signal is the sales call appointment.

“Yes, that is a good company. Would you like to know our points of difference?”

Rainmakers sell that which is different.

Returning phone calls is a basic courtesy. But not many people do it. Rainmakers return all calls every day. They return everyone’s calls— customers, prospects, suppliers, job-seekers, parents. Rainmakers are not too big, too important, too busy for anyone.

You must determine how many sales calls—or gallons of gas—you have in your tank. You must maximize your miles per gallon, your call-to-close ratio. Work the math and the numbers will work for you. Rainmakers don’t plan a thirty-mile trip with twenty miles’ worth of gas.

Rainmakers concentrate their calls on the highest potential accounts. Making 100 percent of your calls on one make-the-quota account is perfect T&T management.

Never assume something you can check. Pay attention to the details. Roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty. If the project is important, every single detail is important.

Rainmakers always test in private what they are going to sell in public.

Customers love questions. Customers love to talk. Customers feel more secure with the salesperson who asks questions and listens and takes notes.

The investment return analysis is a powerful selling tool designed to get new customers and new applications. The investment return analysis calculates the economic benefits your customer will get from using your solution.

The Rainmaker uses the investment return analysis to show the true cost (versus price) of the product. The Rainmaker doesn’t sell the product. The Rainmaker sells what the customer will get from the product. The Rainmaker doesn’t sell drills, he sells holes…and holes that are £.02 less expensive to drill.

Rainmakers make friends, not enemies.

Your job is to listen to your customer.

Just as a sous chef peels an onion layer by layer, so, too, the Rainmaker helps the customer get to the “heart of the matter.”

Rainmakers don’t squander sales calls with unnecessary chitchat or entertaining conversation. Rainmakers are nice, engaging, informed, interesting, and interested. . .and always sincere.

If the Rainmaker is temporarily unavailable, the customer knows where she is. The Rainmaker is not “in a meeting,” she is in court, on a job site, traveling to a customer, on a photo shoot, giving a talk at a convention, doing research …

Presentations, demonstrations, and engaging trade-show booths are a waste of money if they are not accompanied by a practiced, proactive strategy to get the customer to buy.

Once a customer hires you to do a job, they don’t want to know your problems doing the job. They don’t care. Do a wonderful job, do it on time, do it on budget, don’t complain, and give the customer a little extra. This is the blueprint for customer satisfaction and for continued sales success.

Rainmakers never do a test or demo without first getting an agreement from the customers to go ahead with the sale if the test is successful.

In selling, if you give something, you should plan to get something in return from the customer.

Anytime is a good time to make a sales call on a decision maker.

There is no ice between a Rainmaker and her customer.

There are four steps that are part of every sale. They are: 1. Getting a lead, a referral, an introduction to a decision maker. 2. Getting an appointment to meet the decision maker. 3. Meeting the decision maker face-to-face. 4. Getting a commitment to a close (a purchase) or to an action that directly leads to a close. Assign one point to Step 1, two points to Step 2, three points to Step 3, and four points to Step 4. Work every day to get a total of four points,

Rainmakers go for it. They never negatively prejudge a sales event.