How to Become a Rainmaker

JEFFREY J. FOX

Reviewed by Jack

How to Become a Rainmaker will help you recharge your sales force, or, as the book did for me, return your focus to the people who pay the bills: the customer. That quality—the nudge this book gives me when I stray from the most essential goals—places it very near to my heart. I wrote one of my first “Jack Covert Selects” reviews on this book when it came out in 2000. It was a fortuitous match. At the time, our business was struggling in the shadow of Amazon, which was emerging as a new powerhouse in the book business. Through Fox’s book, I quickly learned that I had forgotten the basic needs of my company: happy customers who wanted to buy what we could provide. Seems obvious, but this is the kind of insight Fox presents in this book: simple but always valuable. Each of the 160 pages contains easily digestible, practical advice for the sales professional who knows that life is nothing but selling—either yourself or a commodity.

A rainmaker is a person who brings the revenue into an organization. What this book offers are strategies for maximizing your success as a rainmaker. Here’s an example from the chapter on “Why Breakfast Meetings Bring Rain”: You do a breakfast meeting because: (1) breakfasts are the least expensive meal—the selection is simple so a minimum of thought is needed and no alcoholic beverages are a temptation; (2) breakfast saves time—try to set up the meeting on the customer’s way to work; (3) breakfast meetings are canceled less because the problems of the day are out of the picture. (Often rainmakers have two breakfast meetings per day.)

This book presents some of the best act-on-it-today advice that will immediately change the way you do business. Under the heading “Don’t Drink Coffee on a Sales Call,” Fox explains that because the average sales call runs only eighteen to twenty minutes, you don’t want to be distracted from your presentation, and, as he says, “You can’t take notes with a coffee cup in your hand.” In the chapter “Be the Best-Dressed Person You Will Meet Today,” Fox asserts that it is important to dress better than your client (though don’t overdress) to make them feel that you are professional, confident, successful. “Dressing with care flatters your customer. . . . Your respect for your customer will show, and your customer will appreciate it; your customer will reelect you, sale after sale.” It is not often that we think about how our customers see us, especially if they are people we have worked with for some time. And I would take this a step further. I would add to Fox’s advice that dressing with care in the workplace shows that you respect your work. And your employees or coworkers will appreciate, and maybe even be influenced by, your effort.

“[T]he paramount job of every single employee in an organization is to, directly or indirectly, get and keep customers.”

I’ve given a copy of this book to every newbie sales associate who begins in my company; there is no limit to its practical application. And whether you are an old-line sales manager, a C-level manager, or a college graduate looking for a job, How to Become a Rainmaker speaks a language of sales that will turn the oft-cited cliché “when it rains, it pours” on its head. JC

How to Become a Rainmaker: The Rules for Getting and Keeping Customers and Clients, Hyperion, Hardcover 2000, ISBN 9780786865956

WHERE TO NEXT? Here for how to compete Here for how corporate sales forces work | EVEN MORE: Hug Your Customers by Jack Mitchell; Secrets of Great Rainmakers by Jeffrey J. Fox; The Rainmaker’s Toolkit by Harry Mills