1: Listen. Listen. Listen.
1: “Always Be on ‘High Receive,'” Jeffrey Fox writes in How to Become a Rainmaker: The Rules for Getting and Keeping Customers and Clients.
What do Rainmakers think about? What is their singular focus?
The customer.
What is our job as Rainmakers?
To listen to our customer. We “must accurately hear what they are saying and not saying. We must be acutely aware of all verbal and nonverbal signals.”
How do we do this?
We seek to find out what they want. What they don’t want. What they need.
2: Rainmakers are like “investigative reporters, detectives, psychiatrists, doctors, and archaeologists,” Jeffrey observes. “They ask, probe, dig, diagnose, and listen.”
To be successful, we must “watch and listen to our customer,” Jeffrey writes, “as sensitively and intently as military spy equipment monitors enemy movements and communication.
“Like the most sensitive of receptors we must be on high receive. Let nothing get by us; even the casual, offhand remark may offer clues.”
We aim to ask interesting questions. And then listen intently.
Step one: Turn off your phones. Jeffrey’s recommendation: “Don’t let the customer see you carrying a mobile device.”
Step two: “Don’t daydream,” he instructs. “Don’t mentally wander when the customer is telling us something we’ve heard a hundred times before. Don’t start talking until the customer has completely stopped talking. Don’t think about what we are going to say next. Take notes.”
3: Jeffrey calls this approach “Onionizing.”
“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,'” he writes.
We don’t prescribe until we understand the diagnosis.
“The Rainmaker cannot turn the customer’s need into a want until he or she knows how to put value on the customer’s desired state.”
So, we focus on getting the essence of what the customer needs. We listen to understand the problem, the concern, the desire, the fear.
How does the Rainmaker onionize the customer?” We ask:
- “Tell me how the current situation is worrisome to you.”
- “Why is that important to you?”
- “How is that important to you?”
- “What are the consequences if this continues unimproved?”
- “Can we try to find a solution that costs less than the problem?”
- “How often does the machine go down or stop working?”
- “What is the failure mode?”
- “Why do you think that?”
The word onionize is powerful. Rainmakers “use the word onionize as a memory trigger to remind themselves to keep probing,” Jeffrey writes, “to keep asking questions, especially ‘why,’ ‘why,’ ‘why,’ and ‘why.'”
More tomorrow.
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Reflection: Am I asking enough questions? Am I listening on “high receive”?
Action: Try out Jeffrey’s approach on a prospective client.
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