CAREER SEARCH TOOLS: Secrets of Great Rainmakers

The Keys to Success & Wealth - By Jeffrey J. Fox

• Don’t take “no” from a person who cannot say “yes”
  
  
• Rainmakers have no competitors.  Your only competition is that the customer does not yet know or believe in your dollarized value. (dollarization is the way to quantify – in dollars and cents – the true value of a product’s benefits)
  
  
• Studies show that 90 percent of all salespeople never ask for the order…the salesperson who asks for the order has a tremendous competitive advantage over other salespeople.
  
  
• Like great athletes, Rainmakers constantly practice, prepare, and plan meticulously, go to the plate, and swing the bat…they love the wins and forget the losses.
  
  
• Rainmakers understand the psychology that stimulates referrers to refer.  Many buyers want reinforcement that they made the correct purchase decision…giving the salesperson a referral is giving approval to the salesperson for selling.
  
  
• Killer sales questions 1,2,3 &4:
  1. In addition to yourself, who else is involved in making this solution happen in your company? 
  2. And what might their concerns be about going ahead?
  3. Why do you ask? 
  4. How important is that to you?
  
  
• Rainmakers always know the difference between a selling activity and a sales goal
  
  
• Take “price” out of your vocabulary.  Don’t replace the word “price” with the word “cost”; they mean different things.  Replace “price” with investment.  This will help you educate the customer…
  
  
• Always attempt to make the first sales call on the highest-level decision maker.  Always know how much money you are going to make the customer.  Always know the economic consequences to the customer if the customer does not buy
  from you.  Always ask for the order, or for a customer commitment to an action that leads directly to the sale.
  
  
• …during any sales call the customer should do 80% of the talking..silence sells.
  
  
• Politeness plus persistence is an irresistible selling style.

A Rainmakers’ personality

• Passion.  Rainmakers love their lives.
• Paid.  Rainmakers make the most money.
• Persevere.  Rainmakers are tougher than tough times.
• Persistent.  Rainmakers don’t quit.
• Physically Phit.  Rainmakers look after themselves.  The body carries the brain.
• Play.  Rainmakers have phun.
• Polished.
• Polite.
• Precall planners.
• Prepared.
• Price to value.  Rainmakers sell the dollarized value of what customers get.
• Problem Solvers.
• Produce, perform.
• Professional.
• Prompt.
• Proud.
• Punctual.

Even the best..get mired in a slump

• Mentally blank out your slump.  Go cold.  Depersonalize.  Poker-face your brain.
• Don’t give in and get down.
• Don’t second guess yourself.
• Don’t get mad at the walk-away customer.
• Don’t get mad at people in your company.
• Don’t say, write, or think a bad word about the customer who says “no”.
• Leave work an hour early, and vigorously exercise for forty to sixty minutes.
• Objectively review recent lost sales.  Do a sales autopsy.  What went wrong?
• Call a salesperson friend and trade tales of woe.
• Call every customer you lost at least six months ago and ask how everything is…

Dig deep into your internal, external fuel tank of optimism, competitiveness, energy, and positivism and reload.

Epilogue
Always be nice to everyone.  It costs nothing.  Being nice lowers your blood pressure.  Being nice is a selling secret.  Being nice evaporates any attack on you by a not-nice person.  By being nice, maybe the customer will come to like you or like you more.  Being nice will lead to more business.