Jeffrey J. Fox - Secrets of Great Rainmakers: The Keys to Success and Wealth

ALSO BY JEFFREY J. FOX

How to Make Big Money in Your Own Small Business

How to Become a Marketing Superstar

How to Become a Great Boss

Dont Send a Resume

How to Become a Rainmaker

How to Become CEO

Copyright 2006 Jeffrey J. Fox

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the Publisher. For information address Hyperion, 77 West 66th Street, New York, New York 10023-6298.

ISBN: 9781401382568

1.Sales managementUnited States.2.SellingUnited States.3.Customer relationsUnited States.4.Success in businessUnited States.I.Title.

First eBook Edition: January 2007

This book is dedicated to all the Rainmakers, paperboys, car washers, teachers, bartenders, oil changers, emissions inspectors, fitness trainers, rugbyplayers, and moms and Nenas and Nannys andGrandma Kays and Gammys in the world.

Contents

A Career Odyssey: From Rookie to Rainmaker

Rainmakers Have No Competitors

Rainmaker Mottos

You Cant Sell Beer Sitting at Your Desk

Heed the First Buy Signal

Turn Six into $60,000

Selling Is a Contact Sport

Play Rolodex Roulette

How to Get an Appointment

How to Correctly Start Every Sales Call

The Real Secret About Asking for the Order

Take a Stroll

The Fisherman

Why Customers Want to Give Referrals

Get the Blank Out of Here

Something for Free Is Not a Loss Leader

Killer Sales Questions #1 and #2

Always Get Your Customer to Do Something

Paperboys

The Price Was Right

Reductio Ad Absurdum

Always Make That Last Call

Set to Get

Take the Word Price Out of Your Vocabulary

Make an Offer They Cant Refuse

Never Let Anyone Outwork You

Always Attempt a One-Call Close

Influence the Influencers

Silence Is Golden

Never Give a Quote

Killer Sales Questions #3 and #4

Politeness+Persistence=Performance

Always Take Notes

How to Conduct a Needs Analysis

How to Prepare a Presentation

Relationships Are Bunk

Please Pass the Ps

Sell the Resellers

Personalize, Personalize, Personalize

Build Customer Value Files

Call on Marketing

Dont Mail Proposals

Use the MEV Sales Success Prioritization System

When You Get the Blues

Mary Ellen ONeill, who, with the Hyperion team, got it done once again.

Doris Michaels of the DSM Literary Agency in NYC, who is a Rainmaker.

Heather and Damian Fox, who gave us Luca.

I t is easy to become an ordinary salesperson. The barriers to entry for a sales job are, in many companies, very low. In some companies the barriers to getting a sales job are so low a Galapagos turtle can jump over them. In some companies if you fog a mirror, you get the job. It is easy to become a salesperson. It is difficult to become a Rainmaker. Becoming a Rainmaker requires study, training, practice, and professionalism. A Rainmaker is professional in all things, small and big.

In companies that use salespeople to sell directly to customers, Rainmakers are the people who bring in the business. Rainmakers bring in big revenues, big money. Rainmakers bring in new revenues, new customers. Rainmakers sell new applications, new products, and price increases. Rainmakers make the cash register ring. Ka-ching! Ka-ching!

And Rainmakers make big money for themselves. Rainmakers are always the highest-paid sellers, and it is not uncommon for Rainmakers to be among the highest-paid employees in the organization.

Rainmakers are rare, but they are everywhere. They are in corporations as super sellers. They are commission-only salespeople, entrepreneurs, small business owners, solo practitioners, agents, brokers, partners in professional firms.

The difference between Rainmakers and ordinary salespeople is one thing: Rainmakers sell more! Rainmakers generate more sales revenues than the other people. They sell more through thick and thin. They sell more in good economies and bad. They sell more regardless of competition. They sell more regardless of price. They sell more despite internal company problems. Rainmakers sell more by relentlessly doing things that ordinary salespeople sometimes do or never do.

In a baseball game, a hitter or batter gets to the plate about four times a game. That means that the batter, barring a strikeout, and regardless of whether he gets a hit or not, has to run to first base three or four or five times a game. Even though running to first base three or four times a game is nothing, a small effort in the totality of the game, some players give up on their hit, assume they will make an out, and dog it to first. The Rainmaker never dogs it to first base! The Rainmaker never assumes he or she will be thrown out. The Rainmaker runs out every hit, and runs full tilt, because the few times the opposition fumbles the ball, or the ball drops in, the Rainmaker ends up safely on base. The Rainmaker never quits in the sales cycle. The Rainmaker always sprints, always goes for the sale. Thats why Rainmakers are known as big hitters.

This book contains the secrets of great Rainmakers. These secrets are why Rainmakers sell more and make more money than the rest of the selling crowd. Do what they do and go make rain!

A Career Odyssey: From Rookie to Rainmaker

H e was hired on a Friday. It was his first job out of college. On Monday he was selling. No sales training. Armed with product catalogues, brochures, and business cards, with scant direction, he was told to go down one side of the street and up the other, making cold calls. One day he made one hundred calls. Rejection, up to 90 percent and 100 percent on some days, was a brutal fact of his early selling career. At the time he did not know that cold calling is the least effective selling approach on the planet. Cold calling was what he was told to do. But all the rejection was a good thing.

He learned not to fear rejection. Rejection is a sales reality. Weirdly, he began to enjoy rejection. Each rejection was an opportunity for him to think on his feet, to experiment with responses, to toughen his resilience. Despite his sales managers exhortations to make more calls, he started to think. Cold selling was gambling. Rejection took many forms: The decision maker was out, in a meeting, too busy, sees people by appointment only, never heard of the salesperson, no solicitors allowed. He decided to improve the odds of making the sale. He focused on getting appointments via phone, note, visit. Thus, the next sales call was not a cold call. His hit rate soared and so did his career.

Early on, he decided he was not going to be serious about sales; he was going to be fiercely serious. He took every opportunity to associate with successful salespeople regardless of what they were selling. He schooled himself via books, audiotapes, and live professional sales training. Coincidentally, he read How to Become a Rainmaker. It is now his sales bible. He wanted to become a Rainmaker from the top of his hat to the toe of his shoe.

The company assigned him to crack a big potential account that was dominated by another supplier. No one in his company had ever been invited to even make a proposal. He tried to penetrate the account according to his companys selling strategy. He stupidly repeated his companys prior experience. He was completely shut out. He considered handing the account to some other doomed soldier, but that was quitting. As with the cold-call situation, he started to think and to study. A complete review of the sales database and all sales call notes pointed out the obvious: He, and all the salespeople before him, had done the same thing. They called on the same contacts, wrote the same letters, asked the same questions. What they were doing failed, but they did not change their approach. He looked into the metaphorical mirror and asked, What would a Rainmaker do? Rainmakers are different from ordinary salespeople. They dont accept the rules for failure. Rainmakers adapt, change, take calculated risks. This Rainmaker, the guy in the mirror, decided to do everything new at the account, and to do nothing of the old. This Rainmaker was going to make rain. He formulated a new selling strategy. This decision would ultimately change his life, financially and professionally.