1: The best salespeople are known as Rainmakers.
And Rainmakers “never make a sales call on a customer unless they can answer the question ‘Why should this customer do business with my company or with me?'” Jeffrey Fox writes in How to Become a Rainmaker: The Rules for Getting and Keeping Customers and Clients.
“The answer must be a benefit to the customer,” he notes. “The answer must fit the customer’s agenda, not ours.”
There are two reasons someone buys what we are selling: We either solve a problem (business benefit) or make the customer feel good (personal benefit).
Many times, these two outcomes are interlinked.
“If the benefit makes the customer feel good,” Jeffrey writes, then “the effective furnace or natural gas salesperson’s answer might be ‘The customer will get warm, cozy rooms.'”
What about the ineffective furnace salesperson? They think the prospect is buying BTUs.
If our product solves a business problem, we want to answer the question using dollars and cents.
“For example, assume a software program enables a hotel to more accurately capture and bill any computer usage of hotel phone lines,” Jeffrey observes.
“If that’s the case, the reason the customer should do business with you is because your product will generate $2 per room per night in incremental revenue.”
2: Scheduling a call with the decision-maker is a critical first step in the sales process. We can’t get a sale without talking to the decision maker.
“Getting appointments with busy decision makers is often difficult,” Jeffrey notes.
What’s the question we ask when we have the customer on the phone? “Do you have your appointment calendar handy?”
Then we ask: “Is Tuesday at three OK?” “No.” “How about Thursday at eight-thirty A.M. “No.” How about next Friday at three?” “Fine.” “OK, great, the meeting will take about twenty minutes. See you at three. Thanks.”
Asking if the customer has their appointment calendar handy is what Jeffrey calls “a killer sales question.”
Why? “Because it leads to that precious appointment over 90 percent of the time.”
Rainmakers make appointments to make rain.
3: What else do Rainmakers do? They never negatively prejudge a sales event.
“Rainmakers never say ‘We’re too small for that company,’ or ‘We’ll never get an appointment with that guy,” Jeffrey suggests.
Rainmakers ask and answer the question, “Why should that customer do business with us?”
Then they go for it.
Wayne Gretzky, the National Hockey League’s greatest all-time scorer, said, “One thousand percent of the shots I don’t take don’t go in.”
Jeffrey writes: “The Rainmaker knows one reality: If he doesn’t make the selling attempt, there will be no sale.”
Because Rainmakers take shots on goal.
More tomorrow.
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Reflection: Do I consider myself a Rainmaker? What else do Rainmakers do?
Action: Discuss with a colleague or with my team.
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