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How to Become a Rainmaker: The Rules for Getting and Keeping Customers and Clients

How to Become a Rainmaker: The Rules for Getting and Keeping Customers and Clients

List Price: $16.95
Your Price: $11.53
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Easy to read and full of good tips!
Review: This is a great book for anyone who wants a quick and easy reminder of what is important in sales and customer service. The chapters are short and to the point, and the entire book can be read in a couple of hours. More importantly, it has some good ideas for things you can do everyday to increase sales and revenue.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Insightful book for the non-salespeson
Review: Being from a technical background and finding myself forced into a sales role, I found this book very helpful in giving insight to the sales process and the paradigm needed in order to achieve successful sales.

The book is short and straightforward, and is simply a a collection of common sense ideas. Though the concepts Fox covers are simple, I believe they are some of the more elementary concepts which non-salespeople would either overlook or not even realize.

If you're a green salesman or an experienced once, just wanting a refresher, I believe this is the book for you. It may not cover all the facets of sales, but will give you a decent overview.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Insightful!
Review: Jeffrey J. Fox brought wit and common sense to his simply written, How to Become CEO. His similarly popular How to Become a Rainmaker is written in the same enjoyable style, but the book disappoints in the end, lacking the practical insights of the former title. It's easy to understand the appeal that's placed this book on the best-seller lists. It's a quick and painless read that touches on all the basic rules of sales and does provide some intriguing conversational techniques to apply to your own pitch. But Fox's plain prose can do little to mask the fact that his sales advice is so basic that even inexperienced sellers will already know many of these things intuitively. Nevertheless, it won't hurt - and it definitely won't take much time - to breeze through this book as a refresher course in salesmanship basics, and we [...] would even extend a recommendation to entry-level salespeople to spend an evening with this pleasant but obvious book.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Sell it like it is
Review: I finished this book within 3 days. It sure gave me some pointers on selling, but have yet the opportunity to apply most of the tools considering that I just finished it over the weekend and am writing this review on Monday. Am sure this book is like most "business" books, in that it is obvious and common sense. However, if only we APPLY just 1/5 of it, we really cannot tell if its a great book.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Basic Knowledge, Contrived Case Studies
Review: If you have been in sales, you should know these basic rules. The book is of little value, even if you have had no experience in the business world. It is filled with mostly common sense knowledge that anyone should be aware of. The book offers very short case studies for many of the "rules." These case studies seem to be very contrived with seemingly little "real world" attributes. The studies read as if there were to be no problem and every thing goes perfectly as planed (When does this happen?). If this were the case you wouldn't even need to be looking at theses books.

My advice is to pass this one by. I have not read the author enough to advise against him. However this book will be of little value. If you must buy, it buy it used.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Sales Advice for Adults with Attention Deficit Disorder
Review: by Dan Moreland

Jeffrey Fox has brilliantly cashed in on America's Quick-Fix-to-Get-Rich Culture, authoring the short and to the point "How to Become CEO". This follow-up is another guaranteed moneymaker. Unlike the endless array of Byzantine and boring sales manuals on the market, "Rainmaker" is short and to the point. No charts, no high fallutin' theories, and it can be read in about 90 minutes or so. Or, if you suffer from A.D.D., you'll be pleased to find that most chapters can be ripped through in 5 minutes or less!

But on to the $64,000 question- will the book turn you into a "Rainmaker", the mystical term for superstar sales professional? The answer is, well, just like every other sales book promising the keys to the kingdom of money and success, not really. As usual, in sales, there is no substitute for prospecting, listening and getting the customer what they need.

Not that the book is not a useful guide, and not that I would not recommend it to any new salesman or slumping sales pro. Again, in Fox's easy to read prose, the chapter title basically gives you the piece of advice. Examples include "Customers Don't Care about You", or "Never Wear a Pen in Your Shirt Pocket".

While the book can be criticized as a bit simplistic, Fox does offer some refreshing common sense. Fox stands out amongst all the "gurus" out there trying to rewrite the laws of selling. They torture us with their 300 page borefests. And 90% of them are either Ivy League MBAs or con artists who never even sold lemonade at a corner stand.

If you are like me and have an attention span of 30 seconds or less, but still want to pick up some sales advice, I'd recommend this book. Also check out titles by Joe Girard, Frank Bettger and Byrd Baggett.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: How to Become a Rainmaker : The People Who Get and Keep Cust
Review: If you are in the business world, stop what you are doing and buy this book and read it, then give it to someone you care about to read. A must read!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Tightly Focused Book
Review: Jeffrey J. Fox defines a rainmaker as "a person who brings revenue to an organization, be it for profit or not-for-profit." He says, "Customers' money is the rain." The book consists of chapters containing 2-3 pages each, with each chapter focusing on one aspect of becoming a rainmaker. Each chapter guides the reader in getting the customer and keeping the customer. While many of the concepts will be review for many readers, Fox does emphasize the concept of dollarization and offers examples of the idea. He asks the reader to think of what he or she is selling. He answers the question by claiming, "Rainmakers sell money." How he or she does this is through demonstrating to the customer the value of the product (hence selling money) through dollarization. Fox also offers six "killer questions" throughout the book. How to Become a Rainmaker can be read in one evening. Fox suggests after reading the book to open it to a random page and do what the chapter tells you to do. This way it becomes a handbook for future reference.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: You could write this, too
Review: Save your money. "Rainmaker" reads more like the "100 Best Ways to Lose Weight" pamphlet for sale in the grocery-store check-out line. Sure, Fox captured all the basics of rainmaking. But the elegant packaging is worth far more than the content. The book designers get 5 stars; the content is probably on the web for the price of a few minutes of searching.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Way to basic
Review: With a name like "How to become a rainmaker", one would expect powerful insight to the world of selling. This book is geared towards selling 101 (or remedial selling) at best. I felt that if I kept reading, I would gain something from this book. I was wrong. The only reason I gave it 2 stars, is that a person new to selling would like the very concise, yet basic concepts.


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