How rainmakers earn their stripes
Secrets of great rainmakers
By Jeffrey J Fox
In Secrets of Great Rainmakers you will learn how to outsmart the competition and set yourself apart from the pack. In over 50 interviews with industry leaders from a wide variety of fields, bestselling author Jeffrey J Fox shares the proven techniques and hard-won wisdom that have helped great rainmakers get ahead, along with his trademark brand of counterintuitive insight and commentary that have made his books so popular.
The book is informative, inspirational, short and easy to read – a powerful package for sales professionals or sales managers, particularly those who need to build expertise and experience. Fox focuses on how a determined sales representative can transform himself or herself into a ‘rainmaker’, an unbeatable, successful salesperson. Each chapter contains a central idea, such as how to get a sale, how to get an appointment or how to present proposals. Short examples scattered throughout the book show how real rainmakers earned their stripes. After all, everyone wants to know how to make it rain at will.
In books like How to Become a Rainmaker and How to Become CEO, Fox offered original lessons on selling your product and selling yourself. In Secrets of Great Rainmakers, he shares typically counterintuitive advice about marketing and management.
Fox gets to the heart of the matter, and condenses years of hard-won wisdom into memorable chapters guaranteed to increase sales. From the basics, covered in chapters like How To Get An Appointment, where everything from precall homework to precall planning is discussed to higher-level rainmaking, such as it is explained in chapters like Killer Sales Questions as well as Influence The Influencers, the book has it all. And the examples become all the more effective in the Meet the Rainmakers section at the end of the book, where the success stories range from financial advisers and sales directors to company presidents as well as CEOs.
What works with the concepts Fox provides is that they’ve already been proven through actual sales successes. Besides, Fox has a concise style about his writing that is both helpful and enjoyable to read. The tips in this book are from his personal experiences and that of other rainmakers. The ideas offered in this book give relevant insights into the rainmakers’ life and way of thinking. This book is great for self starters, those that need help boosting sales or tips on why sales outcomes may not be favourable.
3 quick lessons
- Prepare to be lucky
- Take the word price out of your vocabulary
- Relationships are bunk
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reading room
YAQOB AL MAHROUQI
DIRECTOR, ADMINISTRATION AND HUMAN RESOURCES
PUBLIC ESTABLISHMENT FOR INDUSTRIAL ESTATE (PEIE)
DAY AT WORK
I think it revolves between organising and attending meetings, and taking care of e-mails, since a lot of communication happens that way. I look after administration aspects for Knowledge Oasis Muscat (KOM) as well. So there is a steady stream of people who come to me to discuss various issues, all day long.
CAREER/BUSINESS-RELATED BOOKS YOU ARE READING AT THE MOMENT
I am studying for my MBA. In fact, my examinations are on now. So those are the books that I am reading. There’s also The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt and Jeff Cox, a novel that makes relevant points about production, profits and, most importantly, leadership.
CAREER/BUSINESS-RELATED BOOKS THAT HAVE INFLUENCED YOU THE MOST AT WORK
Scott Berkun’s The Art of Project Management. Berkun covers it all in this book, offering simple and practical methods for making sure things get done right, and on time. In my role at the PEIE, this is of particular importance.
FAVOURITE BOOKS
Books relating to human psychology. I am very interested in psychology, particularly relating to young people.
RECOMMENDED READING
Steve Prentice’s Cool Time: A Hands-on Plan for Managing Work and Balancing Time. It argues that success can be derived from keeping mentally and physically cool. In the real world of interruptions and distractions, few people are able to work in isolation from everything. I agree with Prentice that effective time management is more about human relationships than about making lists. |
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