How to Become a Rainmaker: The Rules For Getting and Keeping Customers and Clients (Hardcover)

by Jeffrey J. Fox (Author) "Cherish customers at all times..." (more)
Key Phrases: killer sales question, dollarized value, investment return analysis, The Rainmaker, The California (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist
This is an afternoon read, pure and simple. And chances are good that once readers accept Fox's hard-hitting yet commonsense approaches, they'll accept his sales process, which applies, by the way, to selling widgets, promoting intangible services, or selling yourself. Every one of the author's 50 two-page to four-page chapters contains just one nugget of information more than the preceding section, enough to keep the momentum and the attention. A sad story about the hazards of drinking coffee (it spilled--and the prospect was then distracted by a second crisis) is followed by a notice not to eat a major meal during a sales lunch, which is promptly followed by "no pen in the shirt pocket" advice. Fox's seemingly disparate hints and tips, in short, comprise a very logical and memorable way of rainmaking, and a short tome that will show anyone the how-tos. Barbara Jacobs
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
"the best book on selling I've seen. Period." -- Gerald Sindell, President, Publishing Consulting Services --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Hyperion (May 17, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786865954
• ISBN-13: 978-0786865956
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (73 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #7,631 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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  #13 in	Books > Business & Investing > Marketing & Sales > Sales & Selling > Techniques
  #40 in	Books > Business & Investing > Skills > Communications

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

64 of 70 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Fairly Good Book on Selling, Not About Rainmaking At All, May 6, 2000

By	Professor Donald Mitchell "Jesus Makes Me a P... (Boston) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)

I would give this book 4 stars except the title is so misleading. Perhaps I am jaundiced on this point, knowing many of the top rainmakers in the world in investment banking, advertising, law, and consulting as I do. NONE of them would have become rainmakers if they had followed the advice of this book. They might have become fairly effective salespeople instead.

Rainmakers find ways to connect with people well beyond anything considered in this book. In fact, since no research is cited by the author, I wonder if any research was done to write this book. It has the feeling of being a memoir of what the author has found works for him.

The only part of the advice that I thought was wrong was the insistence on using canned questions to move the prospect along. Sophisticated customers spot these a mile away, and run in the opposite direction. You will simply be manipulating people, and that's NOT the way to be a rainmaker.

Having had my expectations falsely raised by the title, I still yearn for a good book on being a top rainmaker based on the best practices of what they actually do. Perhaps someone else will write that book.

If you want a short book on selling that covers many of selling's important principles, this is a perfectly okay book. If you have been selling for more than 5 years, there's probably not much here to help you unless you totally lack emotional intelligence (in that case, read Daniel Goleman's excellent book, Emotional Intelligence).

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Decent Basic Refresher Course on Sales, June 24, 2003

By	RV (California, United States) - See all my reviews

As a lawyer and as an MBA that is currently running his own consulting business, I picked up this book as a way of giving myself a refresher course on sales. I was not disappointed by the book, nor was I amazed by the advice given. The book is easy to read and contains 160 odd pages of large font, widely spaced text. I read this entire book during the course of a brief flight from Los Angeles to San Jose(about an hour).

Others have commented that the book contains a lot of simple, obvious and straight forward advice and I tend to agree with this assessment. However, advice does not always need to be complex or particularly insightful in order to be useful. For example, it is always good to remember the value of embracing your client's objections and to develop a client-centric view of the sales process. While this is obvious to most sales people, many of us tend to overlook this principle from time to time.

The book has other fundamental weaknesses. For one thing, most of the examples contained in the book are non-specific and often feel like made up clichés. For example, the truly predictable tale of the sales person who was able to land a huge account by being nice to a secretary that later became an executive VP...

From my perspective the book also has another serious deficiency - most of the examples given in the book deal with tangible products. The author almost completely ignores the often much more challenging and complex process of selling services.

The bottom line is this: this is a decent book if you need a quick refresher or if you are completely unfamiliar with the world of sales. If that is not the case, look for a different book.

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book on the principles of sales, October 14, 2001

By	Dan E. Ross "Dan Ross" (Frisco, Tx USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I bought the book two days ago and I read it really quickly (2-3 hours). Like other books on improving sales you need to APPLY these techniques and principles in order to get maximum value out of the book. If anything, you will at least learn to recognize good sales people from bad ones.

This book is, for some, common sense. For others, this book is a quick refresher course of the basic principals of selling and finally, it might be a completely new experience for many and it may have you thinking about the art of selling. The reality is that the value of this book, to you, probably depends on how much training and common sense you already have. In general, I really enjoyed the book and thought there were many interesting sales concepts, which I am looking forward to employing to see how effective they are in real life. Fox continually emphasized the concept of dollarization throughout the book and gave examples of different sales techniques throughout the book