Article by Mike Anderson (NSBC Founder & CEO)
To be a sales superstar, you must make it rain. The economy doesn’t create economic opportunity, rainmakers do. A rainmaker seeks out, secures and retains big clients, brings in big money, and concludes big deals. How do they make the rain fall? They don’t wait for luck or a brighter economy; they operate and make things happen.
Rainmakers don’t have excuses. They either make the sale or they don’t. In today’s business culture, sales is one of the most competitive fields. There are more products and services available than ever before. To be a star, you must make it rain. The rainmaker is the sales person everyone else wants to be. Whatever item or service the rainmaker sells, it is sold effectively.
Some tips to becoming the 1% that do things differently:
- Be confident and believe in whatever you do. Confidence conveys value to your potential clients. Be able to walk into a room and engage the entire room.
- Ask good questions. You need to connect with the decision makers on a personal level, understand their needs and problems, and then solve and satisfy.
- Have a strategic plan. In order to become a successful rainmaker, you need to develop a focused plan. Have a short and long-term vision and set meaningful objectives.
- Promote your successes within your business to clients and potential clients. Become comfortable in announcing your successes. If you show excitement about what you do, your prospect will in most cases, become equally excited.
- Focus on high-potential marketing opportunities. Don’t market to people you don’t know until you have mined all your existing relationships.
- Follow up consistently. The biggest mistake sales people make is failing to follow up. Keep following up and never take no for an answer. You will be respected as a true professional.
- Ask for business at the appropriate time. Once you are clear about a prospect’s needs and are confident you can help, ask for the business.
- Find the customer’s pain and take the pain away. Customers will pay plenty, if you can reduce their ‘pain’. Find out where they are struggling and bring a solution to it. Look at it from their point of view, not yours.
- Talk less. The more you talk, the more likely you are to say something that causes your prospect to not want to buy your product or service. Take pride in being a solution provider and demand creator instead of a demand fulfiller.
- Adopt a high-energy level. Keep coming back, and just keep moving and ‘beating at the door’. Don’t be afraid to prospect for new accounts and new business. Have enough confidence to view rejection as simply a step closer to success.
- Build quality relationships. Be interested in, get to know, and understand your clients. Sales is the activity of developing relationships with quantities of people which result in trust, positivity, and belief in the salesperson.
- Integrity is ‘the badge of honor’. If you have integrity nothing else matters, and if you don’t have integrity nothing else matters. Skill may help you close that first sale, but integrity keeps customers coming back.
- Get up close and personal. A good salesperson researches the company, but a rainmaker does research on the person – the real prospect. No one has ever sold anything to a company. Selling is done with people within the company.
- Turn small talk into big deals. Is your sales elevator pitch fine-tuned and ready to launch? What could you say to make a profound impact? Your pitch must be relevant and it must be flawless. Get it down pat for those opportunistic moments that may occur.
- Be a total professional. Always present yourself with absolute confidence as an expert. People want to talk to experts. Become a full-circle, well-oiled machine.
Successful rainmakers are made, not born. They have adopted certain critical habits. Employing these habits consistently has given them confidence in their marketing abilities.
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