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Book Review:
Jeff Fox's Books on Rainmaking & Dollarization |
April 4, 2016. About a month ago, on March 8, 2016, in my ongoing research of best tools and practices in Marketing Plans (I can recall the exact date because the Time Management app I've been using since last August, and that is available in the whole suite of the HWD Productivity & Project Management applications, makes remembering the moment so easy), I attended this webinar organized by the Active Rain social network for real estate professionals.
In that webinar, speaker Kevin Markarian mentioned a daily "Four Point System" for keeping a sales pipeline full and a business successful. I thought it was so brilliant that I built it into my Time Management App. It works like this:
- Get a lead, a referral, an introduction to a decision maker.
- Get an appointment to meet the decision maker.
- Meet the decision maker face to face.
- Get a commitment to close a sale.
The idea is, since the sales process can be rather convoluted and prolonged, on the days they don't close sales it's easy for salespeople to become disoriented and discouraged. But if one makes it a goal to get four points every day, it'll all work out in the end. So on one day you might get four leads. On another day you might meet a decision maker and get one lead. And once in a while you will close a sale. But if you get four points daily, you're good.
Markarian mentioned this in passing. It wasn't his idea, but among other things, he credits it for his success. I wondered whose it was, and what other sales and marketing gems he might have up his sleeve, so I did a little poking around and discovered the gentleman's name is Jeff Fox. Here's his web site. I bought the above three books and read them, underlining and tabbing heavily. Here are a few nuggets I got out of them:
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Gary V on Empathy: "Reverse-engineer the other person."
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Empathy. Having just read The Narcissism Epidemic last year (narcissists lack empathy), I've been reflecting a lot on empathy; and although Fox never uses the word, what struck me about what he had to share about Rainmakers is that they're profoundly empathetic people.
They really master the art of stepping into their clients' shoes and seeing through their eyes. That's what enables them to "dollarize" which means, presenting their product or service not in terms of its price or worse, in terms of the commission they stand to get out of it; but rather, in terms of economic benefit to the customer. In so doing the salesperson wins because it shifts focus away from price, to where it really ought to be anyway: the customer's return on investment. |
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Preparation. I was amazed by how much preparation goes into being a true Rainmaker. They don't "wing it." They do their homework. For every hour spent working directly with a prospect or client, a Rainmaker probably spends two or more doing his or her homework, doing background research, preparing for the interview, focusing on the client's best interests. They're not frenetic, frantic, fast-paced, or scatter-brained. They're the opposite of all that: calm, cool, collected, focused, & prepared.
Focus. One of the things that amazed me the most was Chapter 21 in How to Become a Rainmaker, "Learn the Miles per Gallon of Selling." It pointed out how if the Call-to-Close Ratio is 14:1 and a salesperson makes 130 calls on 10 prospects, he or she will totally fail, selling nothing, because an average of 13 calls per prospect are made.
But if that same salesperson makes 126 calls on 9 prospects, he or she will close nine sales. So, make four fewer calls, narrow your focus from ten to nine, and you'll totally win. Spread yourself just a little too thin between ten prospects instead of nine, work a little too hard doing 130 calls instead of 126, and you'll totally lose.
I put a blue tab on that page with "AMAZING" in capital letters.
Old School. This dude's approach to sales is totally Old School. Yes there are computers, but so what? Computers don't make buying decisions; people do. Rainmakers know this.
I found this refreshing because I enjoy interacting with people more than I enjoy sitting in front of a computer screen. I like to put on a tie, splash on a little cologne, shine my shoes, put a feather in my hat, and meet nice people at a coffee shop or restaurant. It's a lot more fun.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Although he's old school, understanding how much follow up Rainmakers must do to close sales, he had a lot to say about the importance of whatever it is you use to keep track of people, even if it's a Rolodex. He had good things to say about CRM which I found encouraging and vindicating. For more info, here's my CRM page.
Listening. Rainmakers are good listeners. He emphasized that they speak only a third of the time when they're working with prospects and clients, and are really skilled at asking good questions. (I suppose one thing that enables them to ask such intelligent questions is all that preparation.)
Customer Value File (CVF). This is a really unique idea that he introduced more than ten years ago and that, I gather, still has yet to really catch on because it requires a lot of continuity and consistency within an organization while, in the real world, most organizations have been going through so much change that they haven't had the luxury to develop CVFs. So when you Google it now, you don't find much other than what Fox himself has published about it. I was so intrigued about it that I left voicemails with both the author and his co-author Richard Gregory asking about the state of the art and best tools and practices in CVF development now.
The CVF documents not just a customer's sales history, but these other things as well:
It helps them see the total value they're getting, not just the price they're paying. It helps keep everyone's focus on the customer's best interests.
It protects the customer from "Penny Wise, Pound Foolish", "Ya Get What Ya Pay For" kinds of hazards.
I loved this so much that I added a CVF checkbox field in my Time Management app. That way, anyone who uses the app and experiences an event that might belong in a CVF can just check the box and later, a report filtering on that field can be run that can generate a pretty good CVF - or at least, its spine.
Phone Work. Fox points out how most salespeople are afraid of rejection so they avoid interacting on the phone. They try to substitute phone work with email campaigns, SEO, purchased advertising, and so on. But he demonstrates how those are not substitutes for direct interaction with a real person. They're complements.
He says if you expect prospects to contact you in response to a marketing piece you distribute, dream on. You're kidding yourself. Regardless how good your product or service is, or how amazing your marketing material is, that is simply not going to happen, and don't take it personally. People just don't do that. You must call them.
I have always said that initiative belongs squarely to vendors, and that through search and SEO we've made a grave error by giving it to customers. It really doesn't belong to them because they don't know what they don't know. They have no economic incentive to do deep, thorough R&D. Vendors do because when a sale happens, they get paid. I wrote at length about this six years ago beginning on page 20 of the Benefits Manual.
So if you want to be a Rainmaker, you must, as Gary Keller asserts in his books, especially The One Thing, time-block your week for Prospecting.
I could share more, but hopefully by now you get the idea. Buy his books, they're great.
And for help applying the principles therein, please contact me. Thanks for reading.
For your success,
Kris Freeberg, Economist
Making End$ Meet
[email protected]
(360) 224-4322
Focus. One of the things that amazed me the most was Chapter 21 in How to Become a Rainmaker, "Learn the Miles per Gallon of Selling." It pointed out how if the Call-to-Close Ratio is 14:1 and a salesperson makes 130 calls on 10 prospects, he or she will totally fail, selling nothing, because an average of 13 calls per prospect are made.
But if that same salesperson makes 126 calls on 9 prospects, he or she will close nine sales. So, make four fewer calls, narrow your focus from ten to nine, and you'll totally win. Spread yourself just a little too thin between ten prospects instead of nine, work a little too hard doing 130 calls instead of 126, and you'll totally lose.
I put a blue tab on that page with "AMAZING" in capital letters.
Old School. This dude's approach to sales is totally Old School. Yes there are computers, but so what? Computers don't make buying decisions; people do. Rainmakers know this.
I found this refreshing because I enjoy interacting with people more than I enjoy sitting in front of a computer screen. I like to put on a tie, splash on a little cologne, shine my shoes, put a feather in my hat, and meet nice people at a coffee shop or restaurant. It's a lot more fun.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Although he's old school, understanding how much follow up Rainmakers must do to close sales, he had a lot to say about the importance of whatever it is you use to keep track of people, even if it's a Rolodex. He had good things to say about CRM which I found encouraging and vindicating. For more info, here's my CRM page.
Listening. Rainmakers are good listeners. He emphasized that they speak only a third of the time when they're working with prospects and clients, and are really skilled at asking good questions. (I suppose one thing that enables them to ask such intelligent questions is all that preparation.)
Customer Value File (CVF). This is a really unique idea that he introduced more than ten years ago and that, I gather, still has yet to really catch on because it requires a lot of continuity and consistency within an organization while, in the real world, most organizations have been going through so much change that they haven't had the luxury to develop CVFs. So when you Google it now, you don't find much other than what Fox himself has published about it. I was so intrigued about it that I left voicemails with both the author and his co-author Richard Gregory asking about the state of the art and best tools and practices in CVF development now.
The CVF documents not just a customer's sales history, but these other things as well:
- Investments made on the client's behalf
- Benefits of those investments
- Benefits of solved problems
- Benefits of client rescues
- A statistical snapshot not just of dollar transactions, but of other relevant metrics as well
- Overall relationship history
It helps them see the total value they're getting, not just the price they're paying. It helps keep everyone's focus on the customer's best interests.
It protects the customer from "Penny Wise, Pound Foolish", "Ya Get What Ya Pay For" kinds of hazards.
I loved this so much that I added a CVF checkbox field in my Time Management app. That way, anyone who uses the app and experiences an event that might belong in a CVF can just check the box and later, a report filtering on that field can be run that can generate a pretty good CVF - or at least, its spine.
Phone Work. Fox points out how most salespeople are afraid of rejection so they avoid interacting on the phone. They try to substitute phone work with email campaigns, SEO, purchased advertising, and so on. But he demonstrates how those are not substitutes for direct interaction with a real person. They're complements.
He says if you expect prospects to contact you in response to a marketing piece you distribute, dream on. You're kidding yourself. Regardless how good your product or service is, or how amazing your marketing material is, that is simply not going to happen, and don't take it personally. People just don't do that. You must call them.
I have always said that initiative belongs squarely to vendors, and that through search and SEO we've made a grave error by giving it to customers. It really doesn't belong to them because they don't know what they don't know. They have no economic incentive to do deep, thorough R&D. Vendors do because when a sale happens, they get paid. I wrote at length about this six years ago beginning on page 20 of the Benefits Manual.
So if you want to be a Rainmaker, you must, as Gary Keller asserts in his books, especially The One Thing, time-block your week for Prospecting.
I could share more, but hopefully by now you get the idea. Buy his books, they're great.
And for help applying the principles therein, please contact me. Thanks for reading.
For your success,
Kris Freeberg, Economist
Making End$ Meet
[email protected]
(360) 224-4322
