In the Digital Universe
Rainmakers Rule
Jim Cecil
The rules have changed again.
Today it's not how much you know about solutions that matters, it's how much net new revenue you can generate for the firm that counts. Lawyers call it 'making rain'. It's no secret that there are different varieties of sales producers. Each uses their own personal brand of salesmanship and strategy in an effort to attain the stability and income they desire. Many salespeople call themselves producers but few can pass the test of a day to day rainmaker.
Rainmakers are always needed but never more than now because today's complex and ever changing markets demand top producers' customer contact skills. In the past, around the late '80s and early '90s, when there was "low hanging fruit," ready to pluck, there was less need for skillful salesmanship or client nurturing. The abundance of cash that naturally flows from successive hard markets and the evolution of efficient and effective customer support centers soon erased any inclination that a pseudo-provider had toward prospecting. True rainmaking skills were allowed to stagnate and die from lack of use.
Declining dollars and rusted prospecting skills fostered the emergence of the true entrepreneurial risk-taker — the rainmaker. They evolved out of a necessity to survive. Armed with years of formal sales education, they soon equipped themselves with a working knowledge of software, technology and the Internet. They saw a clear vision of new opportunity ignored by the distribution channels.
What makes a rainmaker? First, as the title implies, they are proactive about new business. They make things happen. They do more than the cursory examination of their clients. As intently as they study customers, they also examine themselves and constantly measure the actual value added by their products and services.
Second, based on what they glean from up-close examination, they adapt each client interaction to be certain they are always providing precisely the right measure of desired goods and services and the right amount of insights and advice to continue to earn the relationship. Not surprisingly, rainmakers demonstrate personal integrity, which means telling the absolute truth and absolutely keeping their word. Rainmakers hold to a concrete rule that the value they provide clients will always be worth far more than the money they ask.
Rainmakers are realists. Clients seldom pay big prices for mediocre performance. Rainmakers understand an inherent law of harvest. "As ye sew, so shall ye reap." Or in more modern-ease, "what you invest in helping clients succeed, you get back."
Genuine rainmakers have always ardently studied their clients - their behaviors and their desires. They evaluate the nature of each interaction between themselves and their customers. They commit to providing the highest level of service their customers have ever experienced. They develop intimate knowledge of the nuances of their customers' unique organizations, and as a result, they consistently reap superior results. Make no mistake about it - today, rainmaker's rule.
The new rainmaker is truly a new breed - often having industry savvy combined with tech savvy and a genuine deep love of an industry. Rainmakers produce results and their high compensation is often an outcome of finely honed customer relationship skills, totally unrelated to his or her product skills.
Rainmakers target new potential accounts with laser precision. They've learned that it's wiser to target and cultivate relationships only with those firms that are certain to bring measurable value. Rainmakers prospect but they don't make cold calls. They nurture relationships by faithfully staying in touch with the use of letters, emails voicemails. Rainmakers almost instinctively understand that when trust must proceed commitment, a profitable customer relationship is always a multiple contact process. True rainmakers work to attain top of mind status. They align themselves with customers' real concerns and devote their efforts to create workable customer solutions.
The underpinning to the rainmaker's systematic success today is technology. Rainmakers use software to maintain contact much like drip irrigation farming. They use the Internet to keep a sharp awareness of the problems and changes clients face daily. Rainmakers learn to stand out by faithfully staying in touch, staying useful, respectful, relevant and timely.
Rainmakers make decisions, select their A's with care, tell their story with clarity and nurture the relationship persistently. This century heralds the dawn of the era of the new rainmaker. Digitally equipped, service focused, technology empowered, Rainmaker 2002 will breathe new life into any industry grown cold and unnecessarily distant.
Jim Cecil provides custom sales and marketing strategies for nurturers that cause prospects to call them first and never forget them. Also, for turnkey solutions to making customer contacts that count, review the Nurture Solution at: http://www.nurturemarketing.com/industry_specific/
A free copy of his "A Cure For The Common Cold Call" is available at www.nurturemarketing.com, under Free Stuff, or call 800-474-7951.
For answers and more tips on customer nurturing, contact jim@nurturemarketing.com