Book Summary: How To Become A Rainmaker
"How to Become a Rainmaker" by Jeffrey J. Fox is an impactful guide on mastering sales and marketing techniques. Fox encapsulates his teachings with the phrase, "The Rules for Getting and Keeping Customers and Clients," and I couldn't agree more. The principles are logical and straightforward but demand relentless practice to achieve mastery in sales and business ownership. Fox’s insights have given me inspiration for new business ideas that I'm looking forward to putting into action.
Fox has packed this book with rich content and is direct to the point. It’s an incredibly engaging read and I finished the whole thing in less than a day! If you would like to improve your sales techniques and this summary is interesting to you, I’d definitely recommend you pick up a copy and give it a read yourself.
5 Actionable Takeaways
As always, I’m starting with a concise collection of actionable steps for those of you who want the highlights (or because too many hours of TikTok have given you the attention span of a goldfish ;-) ).
Never lose sight of the number 1 most important aspect of any business - customers. It’s the responsibility of everyone to find and keep customers. Give them your full attention, and overdeliver. Fox puts it beautifully: ‘Do a wonderful job, do it on time, don’t complain, and give a little extra.’
Use calibrated questions to find exactly what it is your customers want and LISTEN. See ‘6 killer sales questions’ under strategies for some ideas of questions to ask your customers.
Prepare excessively for a sales call. Leave nothing to chance as each new customer drives cashflow into the business.
Sell money or an experience. Either show how much money your service will make them, or sell an experience. People respond to a narrative and a great salesperson will sell a story, not figures.
Don’t let anything derail you when meeting with a potential client. Some examples provided in the book were sipping a coffee can lead to a spill and I personally have had a pen burst in my pocket on my first day of work - don’t let this happen to you!
It’s going to be hard to write a summary of this book - as the book itself almost reads as a summary. Fox is extremely concise, and every chapter (50 in a 150 page book!) delivers a unique and vital lesson. I’ve decided to distil down the lessons I found to be most impactful and I’ve split them into three key categories: Customers, Manners, and Strategies. I’ll list the lessons and give some of my thoughts (see bold). Hopefully this will give practical ideas for how to implement Fox’s so clearly articulated lessons in sales.
Customer
Ultimately the customer is king as no business can run without customers. The ethos of any business should revolve around obtaining and retaining clients. To maximise making money it’s vital the business owner provides value and an elevated customer experience.
Always give your customers your full attention and the best experience possible. People do business with who they like & feel will pay the most attention to their needs. To me this boils down to be likable and do right by my clients - two values I keep at the heart of my business.
Fish where the big fish are aka seek high value customers.
Return messages and calls asap (same day at least) and messages at odd out of office times show you’re working hard for the client.
Turn objections into objectives ( this is very similar to looking for no in ‘Never Split the Difference’). Allow customers to express their desires; objections are a plee for help & information.
Never be ‘in a meeting’ when a customer calls, be with another customer. There are loads of ideas like this such as; don’t be on holiday, be travelling. Don’t be at lunch, be meeting with a client. My interpretation is if you’re busy when the customer calls be doing something the customer would respect (or at least say you are!).
Dare to be dumb. & assume nothing. There are never too many questions & customers loved to be asked them.
Do a wonderful job, do it on time, don’t complain, and give a little extra. Love this - probably on of the most important pieces of advice in my opinion.
When a customer agrees to buy - stop talking.
Manners & Ideals
These all boil down to “Make friends not enemies. You never know who might become important.” More philosophies than strategies, these ideas represent an way of being and doing business.
Recognise a rainmaker (very good salesperson) in your business. Tolerate and train them. Let them flourish. They bring the money which after all is the crucial goal of business.
This one is interesting to me, Fox says save icebreakers and small talk for the end of a meeting. He advocates for getting down to business asap in a sales call.
Always show good manners. This shouldn’t need to be said but sadly for many people I meet their manners are not up to scratch, your image matters in business and in life.
Be prompt, professional and NEVER show vulnerability. That means: be confident, plan for unexpected, expect a curveball, stay calm, don’t let them see you sweat & never show a weakness. I.e. don’t feel ‘unwell’ - show up fit and ready.
Dress well but don’t overdress for the occasion.
Take responsibility and don’t give excuses.
Treat everyone you meet as a potential client - aka be polite to everyone you meet. It’s the idea that there are no little people in this world and anybody can help or hurt you. This is something I feel particularly strongly about and I do think a small act of kindness can have a massive impact on someone’s day. Examples can be asking the barista how their day was, holding the door open, or saying good morning to the person on the front desk.
Strategies
These are more process driven strategies that you can quantify and track business progress with. I look forward to putting these into practice.
Be able to clearly define your point of difference. The ‘Why Me’ questions must be extremely well articulated when asked. I want and need to get a lot better at this. I think my difference lies around being personal & providing a holistic development that focusses on skills and subject understanding - but I think it’s worth asking my clients why they like my service.
Calibrated questions & listen. Listen. Listen. Get to the root problem. Killer Sales Questions
“Do you have your appointment calendar ready?” - get commitment to a meeting there and then
Some form of “Will you decide for yourself?”
“Would you like to know our point of difference?”
“We would be happy to give you a demonstration.. If the demo is successful, is there anything else prohibiting you from going ahead?”
“Why don’t you give it a try?” - if yes this is akin to a commitment. People do or do not, there is no try (if you know you know ;) )
“What question should I be asking that I am not asking?” / “What am I not asking?” - unearth what’s most important to the customer.
Use the point system and get a total of 4 points every day (see point breakdown in brackets).
Get a lead, referral, introduction to decision maker (1)
Get appointment (2)
Meet face-to-face (3)
Get a commitment to a close or action that leads directly to it (4)
Do something everyday to help get business. Fox has 10 examples of how to do this in his book.
Fox advocates business cards and I agree with him, but I reckon a personal brand is the modern day equivalent…..
Sell money. Help customers see money and turn the businesses benefits into £££. Customers either want to feel good or have financial reward so you should sell the value or experience obtained. I’ve been thinking about how I can apply this to tutoring….. and I definitely feel it combines both. The short term benefit is all about the experience and showing my students (and parents) how to enjoy learning and maximise their potential, whereas the long term benefits manifest around elevating my students earning potential by providing a much enhanced academic and holistic education.
Give to get. Reciprocity is a magical tool where giving a gift builds rapport.
Sell on Friday afternoons.
Ask yourself the question: ‘why should they do business with us.’ When you can answer it take a shot on goal.
If you don’t care about the answer, don’t ask the questions.
Sell the first link of a chain and the customer will buy the rest. The idea behind this is no-one is going to buy one link of a chain, they want the whole package. I’d imaging this applies well to a service based business like tutoring as customers are unlikely to buy just 1 or 2 lessons.
Test everything and leave as little to chance as possible. First impressions matter so test everything that could go wrong before a call, remember those 1% improvements compound over time.
Ultimately - focus on the close. The build-up is irrelevant if the customer doesn’t buy, focus on the real friction points and make the sale.
The final piece of advice found on the last page of the book is probably the most important and can be summarised with the following: don’t learn without action; otherwise you might as well not bother. Choose a random page (or piece of advice) right now and do what it says. Only by acting on these lessons can you learn to become a rainmaker.
Further Reading
Never Split the Difference book summary is particularly applicable to how you communicate with clients and decipher exactly what they want. If you enjoyed this summary and want to excel at communication, you’d enjoy NSTD too.
There were some more detailed strategies within the book I didn’t want to go into, so if you get the chance to read the book I’d pay closer attention to these pages:
pg 16-17 →pre-call sales preparation strategy
pg 52 → heed buy signals
pg 61-64 → “Learn the miles per gallon of selling” is very clever and definitely worth understanding
pg 77 → complete an investment return analysis and sell value
pg 148-154 → dollarise and present a precise value on the benefits you provide
pg 155-165 → Mr K analogy bringing in all aspects of the book into an anecdotal example
Jake Beckett
