Sales Blog with Sales Tips

If you have more than a dozen or so sales professionals in your office, you have one of these. They are annoying sometimes, but management loves them. We call them “rainmakers.”

Definition Of A Rainmaker
A rainmaker is a sales professional who produces sales results that are far above the average. Rainmakers consistently provide stellar results. They get large amounts of business from companies that lesser humanoids wouldn’t even consider approaching.

Sales Management Scratches Its Collective Head
Sales management doesn’t understand rainmakers. They see them as shamans or high priests of sales. Only the anointed can understand their ways. Most sales managers leave their rainmakers alone for fear of disrupting their “secret” formula. One thing is certain. Sales managers love rainmakers because they bring home the bacon.

Sales managers are also intimidated by rainmakers.

Let’s Demystify The Rainmaker

• Rainmakers have no magical formula. They have simply created sales processes that are consistently effective when used in different selling situations.
• In many cases, rainmakers themselves don’t know what their sales processes are. They have unknowingly crafted these sales processes through trial and error. They frequently have trouble explaining exactly how they sell, even though they have systematic and repeatable sales processes.
• Most rainmakers enjoy the status and enigma associated with being a rainmaker. They are slow to reveal their “secrets” because of this.
• Did I mention that rainmakers work hard?  However, this is not necessarily the case.

A Message To Non-Rainmakers And Sales Management
If you’re a sales professional and haven’t reached the status of rainmaker yet, take heart. Critically observe the work habits and sales skills of a rainmaker and you’ll quickly find they have sales processes that you can make work for yourself.

If you’re a sales manager, quit being awed by the rainmakers in your organization and learn how they do what they do. Document their best practices and train the rest of the organization to do what they are doing.

It’s time to bring the “secrets” of the rainmakers to the masses.

©2010 Scott R. Sheaffer

We’ve all heard some form of the following a million times. “We can’t ship your order until next week; sorry for the delay. We have a large customer in front of you.”

When customers hear this they think, “I could not possibly care less about your big customer that has such a high priority. I only care that you’re not taking care of my needs.”

Why This Upsets Customers

1. They don’t care about any other customers. Customers are made up of people. People are selfish. They honestly, sincerely and deliberately do not care about anything other than how happy we are making them at the moment.
2. If we say something like this to a new customer, we’re signaling how we intend to treat them relative to our other customers (i.e. second-class).
3. Long term customers justifiably resent this kind of treatment. The customer relationship we’ve built over the years can be destroyed in seconds when we indicate to them that they are riding in “coach class” today.

Sales Tips Rx
We shouldn’t ever use our involvement with another customer as a reason for poor customer service. While it’s tempting to use this excuse when we’re in a time or resource crunch, the fallout will be very toxic to the customer who’s “waiting in line.”   This is considered a major faux pas in customer service.

Everyone understands that we have to prioritize time and resources with customers. Clearly, our best customers should be given priority. However, it needs to be done in a way that is transparent to our smaller customers. It’s also the supplier’s responsibility – not the customer’s – to be prepared to accommodate unexpected customer needs.

Sales Blog Wrap Up
Customers vote with their feet. In other words, when they don’t like a supplier they’ll turn around on their heels and walk away from them. Verbalizing to our customers that they are in line behind a bigger customer will almost always guarantee they’ll walk.

©2010 Scott R. Sheaffer

Take the following short exercise. I want to demonstrate something to you. For this to work, you need to get through the entire mini-exercise.

Reading: Part 1
Read the following:
I had the privilege several years ago of working with a sales professional named Tom, who was in his sixties. He was a member of a sales force whose average age I would estimate at around 35. He was the “old man.”

However, the “old man” outsold, year after year, all the younger folks who worked with him. I worked with Tom for almost an entire week as part of a program to have the sales force work with sales managers other than their assigned sales manager.

I didn’t teach him a thing. But, I learned something from him. I learned the value of listening. Tom hung on every word his customers said. He never presumed he knew the answer to their needs before they had a chance to talk. He didn’t finish their sentences.

Guess who his customers always came to for solutions to problems? I guess I don’t need to tell you his referral business was substantial too.

Not actively listening is the number one complaint customers have about those of us in sales. Tom didn’t have that problem. His sales showed us the power of listening.

Reading: Part 2
Read the following:
Surveys show that sales professionals who listen attentively to customers can increase sales by 50% or more.

Your One-Question Test
Here’s your test question.

Which reading had the biggest impact on you?
a.) Reading: Part 1
b.) Reading: Part 2

And The Answer Is…
I think we all can guess what most people will answer. As you may have figured out, I’m not dispensing listening sales tips today. The essential purpose of today’s sales blog is not to reinforce the importance of listening, but to demonstrate how much more powerful we can be when we integrate our point around a story.

“Part 1″ gave us a story with a person and a compelling reason why listening is critical in sales and explained the benefits it brings. “Part 2″ was nothing more than a boring transmittal of essentially the same information.

One Of History’s Oldest Sales Tips
Story telling is the oldest form of communication and, as a result, it is an ancient sales skill. We’re conditioned to listen to stories from youth. Wrap a selling point around a relevant story and watch the magic with your customers. Your customers have it in their DNA to get absorbed in what you are saying when you make selling part of a story.

Anyone can rattle off facts and figures. Weave that information into a story that is relevant and meaningful to the customer, and you instantly build a communication bridge that is powerful and timeless.

©2010 Scott R. Sheaffer