Rainmakers Principles

Co-authors of Rainmaking Conversations, Mike Schultz and John Doerr, explain the ten principles the most successful salespeople live by.

People often ask us, “What separates the best from the rest in sales?”

It always reminds me of what a great business guru once said. “Want to know the secret to making 10 million dollars? First…start with 9 million dollars.” (Thank you, business guru Steve Martin.)

Assuming you don’t have the $9 million to start with, you’ll need to, as a good friend of mine would say, rub two nickels together first and see what happens.

Let’s adjust for inflation and make it ten. And those ten nickels are the 10 Rainmaker Principles.

In our years of research in working and observing professionals and sales people across industries, we’ve observed that there are ten common principles that rainmakers – the elite performers in sales – share. These are principles that you too can apply to your selling efforts and reap the rainmaking rewards that will surely follow.

Below are the 10 Rainmaker Principles:

1. Play to win-win. Rainmakers respect, and always try to satisfy, the best interests of prospects and customers (the win-win part) as well as their own. They are extremely dedicated to becoming top performers (the play-to-win part), exhibiting the hustle, passion and intensity it takes to achieve what only the elite achieve.

2. Live by goals. Rainmakers are goal-setting and goal-following fanatics. Goals are part of their daily rituals.

3. Take action. Rainmakers realize that goals without action don’t get you very far. While other people intend to take to action and do more, rainmakers do it.
 
4. Think buying first, selling second. Rainmakers map their selling processes to the processes and psychology of buying.

5. Be a fluent expert. Rainmakers are masters of market knowledge, client needs, their products and services, their value, their competition, and everything else they need to know to succeed at selling. Rainmakers might not be technical experts in every area, but they know what they need to know to sell.

6. Create new conversations every day. Rainmakers always feed the front of their pipelines and improve their pipeline quality. They never coast, and rarely a day goes by when they don’t speak to customers, prospects, and referral sources with the intent to source new business.

7. Lead masterful rainmaking conversations. Rainmakers lead masterful sales conversations, from prospecting to needs discovery to closing to account management.

8. Set the agenda; be a change agent. Rainmakers recommend, advise, and assist. They are change agents who are not afraid to push when it’s in the best interest of the customer.

9. Be brave. It takes courage to rise to the occasion when selling. Rainmakers not only conquer their fears, they seek actively to win the most fruitful sales opportunities no matter how difficult the challenges may be.

10. Assess yourself, get feedback and improve continuously. Rainmakers are never afraid to learn the cold, hard truth about themselves. They take what they discover – the good and the bad – to learn, grow and change for the better. They never stop this cycle.

These principles form the core of the rainmaker’s modus operandi. If you want to become one yourself, print these out, post them in your office, and read them once each day.

Do this and you’ll make them a part of your work principles. Your sales and career success are sure to follow.

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