Are you the Rainmaker in your small or medium business?

A "Rainmaker" is someone who brings in the big deals.

This is really addressed at the owners of small or medium businesses who have worked hard to build their company but just can't seem to grow beyond a particular limit. I've noticed it more over the last few years.

Often, the person who started the company best understands the product and where it fits in the market.

Usually they, the company, has matured enough to put together a business plan for growth and have often designed their systems to scale to handle the increased volumes. It just that for some reason, no one seems to be able to sell their product or service quite as well as the owner.

Standing on the outside, it became obvious to me that there are three main reasons that this occurs:

1. The sales person does not have the authority to make the call. This allows the owner to always be the rainmaker.
2. The owner hired someone who understand the technology or complexity but does not how to sell. This person is often best at after sales support. This allows the owner to step back in and be the rainmaker.
3. The owner hired sales people who cannot sell, or has them in a structure that cannot scale, which often amounts to the same thing. So, in an attempt to grow, the owner steps back into the rainmaker role.

I'd love to hear of similar observations.

Social Media is not Selling

I’m fairly new to the social media scene and certainly don’t consider myself an expert in the field. So it may be best to regard this as an early observation.


In order to get an understanding of what social media is about I decided to follow some of the more obvious thought leaders in social media including @thinktankmedia and @smcmelb for a local perspective and @mashable for an international perspective. Interestingly most had initially bypassed Linkedin having started in social media from a marketing or blog background.

I recently attended a gathering for @smcmelb and was amused at the reticence of attendees to engage. Most of them were busy using their various smartphones to check the latest stream of witty comments. I was specifically there to meet people as I’m recruiting for some sales roles, so widening the network helps. It was better after the presentation but I’m sure that was an effect of the wine. This probably explains why social media clubs like to gather in a bar!

My observation is, apart from a few, most social media experts get there from two perspectives:
1) Marketing People using a new medium, or
2) Technical experts who understand how to configure the applications.
It reminds me of the time when every person who could run a PC suddenly became a “Desk Top Publishing” expert. Just because you can drive word processor, or blogger, it doesn’t mean you can increase revenue for any company, especially your own. Likewise, having a twitter account or facebook fan page does not make you capable of engaging a market or selling a service.

Whilst social media is great for brand awareness, product and business, and can be a great source for leads, business to business sales for any complex product or service still requires a structured sales process.

Consultative Selling Lessons for Labor and Liberal Parties

I happened across this tweet from @fast_thinking The Public Private NBN Divide. and it reminded me that unless you are aiming to meet the business goal of the client, you will inevitably fall back to trying to sell product features and benefits and this always leads to a price comparison.

Often, the client is left trying to choose between benefits that, in the end, do not make much difference to the goal of the client. In this case, both solutions can handle a simple video conference. If you are not across the relative merits of the technology, it will become obvious that the discussion falls back to price.

This is great for the Liberal and National Party but disastrous for the Labor Party and the Greens.

But if your goal is to improve health in regional Australia then a simple video conference in not going to make the grade.

I think the spin doctors in Canberra can do with some consultative sales training.

Why is hiring sales people such a risky and expensive business, when it doesn’t need to be.

I interviewed a candidate for a sales manager role this week. When I asked her to describe an experience of having to sack a sales person for non performance she gave me the following story….

The CEO wanted to establish an operation in Sydney. The organisation provides professional training to engineering staff. The decision was made by the CEO to establish an office, hire 3 trainers, and hired a sales person that had a good resume and interviewed well.

Five months later, after giving the sales person extensive induction training and then additional hands on support they let him go. He was just not performing, and yet during the hiring process, which was rigorous, our candidate seemed perfect for the role.

Total direct cost of this exercise was $750,000. This included the cost of the office lease, the salaries of the three trainers and the salary of the sale person; other additional costs that could have been included are the cost of recruitment or the cost of lost opportunities. This was a very expensive exercise as a result of failing to hire a top performer in just one role.

If you want to know if the sales person can do the job, I can help you from making the same very expensive mistake.

Visit this site to find out more and organise for more information that explains the challenges of hiring.

Selling at the C-Level

Sometimes it’s the C-Level customer that is the roadblock because they do not understand the difference between someone selling them a product and someone trying to help. Sometimes it’s because the sales person is still stuck in the “feature, benefit, close” sales process.
The April 2009 Harvard Business Review posed the question “Who can help the CEO?” The answer is other CEOs, or peers. This can make it difficult to engage with C-Level Executives and appropriate decision makers in organisations, unless they see you as a peer.
Many companies, even consultants, try a front on approach that necessitates a product based discussion. Whilst it might be true that your product may eventually fit a possible client, a product based approach generally ends up in an early discussion of feature, benefit and price.
Based on prior experience I recommend a course of action that engages the target decision makers at a business level that is not directly related to your product. My experience shows that it is easier to get C-Level Executives into a smaller setting when they know that the focus of the meeting will be them, not the technology or services company.
The idea of peer support becomes viable in the smaller environment and is in line with current thought leadership in business approaches. The best result is that in being part of the discussion, you too become a peer.