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How to Become a Rainmaker

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How to Become a Rainmaker

The Rules for Getting and Keeping Customers and Clients

Hyperion,

15 min read
10 take-aways
Text available

What's inside?

Go beyond sales: Become a Rainmaker.

Editorial Rating

7

Qualities

  • Applicable

Recommendation

Jeffrey J. Fox brought wit and common sense to his simply written, How to Become CEO. His similarly popular How to Become a Rainmaker is written in the same enjoyable style, but the book disappoints in the end, lacking the practical insights of the former title. It’s easy to understand the appeal that’s placed this book on the best-seller lists. It’s a quick and painless read that touches on all the basic rules of sales and does provide some intriguing conversational techniques to apply to your own pitch. But Fox’s plain prose can do little to mask the fact that his sales advice is so basic that even inexperienced sellers will already know many of these things intuitively. Nevertheless, it won’t hurt - and it definitely won’t take much time - to breeze through this book as a refresher course in salesmanship basics, and getAbstract would even extend a recommendation to entry-level salespeople to spend an evening with this pleasant but obvious book.

Summary

Respected Rainmakers

Sales is one of the most competitive fields in today’s business world because more products and services are available than ever before, leaving customers and consumers with an overwhelming number of choices. To succeed in sales, you can’t just be good - you must be far above average; you must be a rainmaker, the kind of salesperson everyone aspires to be. The rainmaker makes sales into an art, and brings this art to new levels. Rainmakers not only bring in the most money and make the most money, they command the most respect.

Since rainmakers aren’t born, anyone can learn to become one. The customer’s money is the rain, and you can bring it to your company. The term "rainmaker" has been used for many years in legal, accounting, consulting, investment banking, advertising and architecture firms. In these industries, rainmakers are the people in each company who are responsible for bringing in most of the new business. They make it rain.

You can become a rainmaker in any industry. In any business, customers are everything. The most important job of every employee in every organization is to get and keep customers, whether the employee does...

About the Author

Jeffrey J. Fox is the best-selling author of How to Become CEO and the founder of Fox & Co., a marketing consulting company in Avon, Connecticut, serving more than 60 industries. He previously was vice president of marketing and corporate vice-president of Loctite Corporation. Fox is the subject of a Harvard Business School case study that is rated one of the top 100 case studies, and is thought to be the most widely taught marketing case in the world. Fox earned his MBA at Harvard Business School.

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