Jeff Rickard

     This weeks entry is from Jeffrey Fox’s “How to Become a Rainmaker”. 

Treat Everybody You Meet as a Potential Client

Rainmakers see the world, and everyone in it, as their market.  Rainmakers know the world is small.  They know that everyone knows someone.  They know that anyone can become a client, or refer a client, or recommend a client, or scuttle a promising relationship.

     Rainmakers treat nonclients as they do existing customers.  They are polite to everyone.  Rainmakers view everyone as influential.  They know that business can come from unexpected places.  They know that something they did ten years ago might result in business today.

     There are no “little people” to the Rainmaker.  They do not berate the waiter because the kitchen is slow.  They do not get angry with the person at the ticket counter because the airline delays or cancels a flight.  Everyone is treated with courtesy.  The Rainmaker is respectful and polite to the guy who mows his lawn as he is to the president of the company that makes the lawn mowers.

Don’t make unnecessary enemies.  Why be unlikeable?  Who is ever helped by unpleasant behavior?  Pleasant people often appear self-controlled and confident.  Customers like that.

     The Rainmaker knows that anybody can help or hurt.

We all can tell stories that relate to the above excerpt.  This seems to be very timely to me because in a market that is currently under pressure we can become short or more easily frustrated.  The world is shrinking and remember a happy client may tell others but an unhappy client tells everyone. 

     I also read something in “Change the Way You See Everything Through Asset Based Thinking” that has had a great impact on me.  Ask yourself everyday “Whose socks did I knock off today?”  That exercise has made me focus on being the best I can be at all things, big or small.  It is amazing if you ask yourself that question at the end of the day you realize that sometimes you were awesome and sometimes you were adequate.  To be competitive today you need to “WOW” people, not be adequate. 

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