Rainmakers know only the calendar changed, targets didn’t. “Rainmakers don’t have excuses. You either made the sale or you didn’t; no-one wants to hear why you didn’t bring in the sale”
“Don’t get too excited about this New Year stuff. Only the calendar has changed. The spouse, the job, the targets remain the same.” And since this is a sales, not relationship, column, let’s focus on the latter two.
I received that funny quote from a client and laughed my heart out. Yet the laughter should not belie its gravity. Despite the turbulence in last year’s selling environment, selling was not excused-it still had to happen. And for the most part, at least in the earlier months, it did so remotely.
Selling, like money, never sleeps
Patients paid with mobile money and doctors ‘prognosed’ and diagnosed on ‘phone; my local chemist introduced ‘call and deliver’ services (which he has kept on, incidentally); students accessed learning via the Internet, TV and radio; and online training and shopping thrived. All these are testament to the fact that ‘only the calendar has changed; the job and targets remain the same’. The music did not stop; it may have moved from fast rock to a slow jam, but stop, it did not.
Campaigns, like terrorism, aren’t new
So this year, because of its comparative certainty, the rock is back and the jam will be frowned upon. In fact, the targets come with last year’s likely backlog and so the beat will be accelerated. But there’s the campaign for 2022 elections, you say? What’s new? Campaigns have been a staple diet for Kenyans for decades.
To draw a parallel, forget campaigns, global experts say, as reported in the Business Daily after the terrorist attack at DusitD2, “Markets regain their composure in days. Investors have learned to accept that event risk in the form of terrorist attacks is not going to go away. They have learned to live with the risk, realizing that it seldom pays to sell in times of panic.”
2021: Calendar changed targets didn’t
Now, in 2021, the calendar changed but targets didn’t. ‘I cannot sell because of Corona’ will become even harder to sell. Life is back to what it was. In the sense that, children are back in school, many matatus are flouting the social distance seating rule, bull fighting is back in Kakamega, formal meetings are happening ‘masked’, and the roads are gridlocked at peak times.
There is even a double bonus -buyers and sellers are aligned in accepting remote access, and we are taking the pandemic in stride. In fact, the only ‘anomaly’ is that nightlife is still curtailed courtesy of the curfew. So, yes, only the calendar changed-the job and targets remain the same.
Emulating the successful one, what the average seller needs to do is jumpstart his selling batteries, especially if (like most) he let them die last year.
And why? In the bestselling sales book, ‘How to Become a Rainmaker’, the author dramatically states, “Rainmakers don’t have excuses. You either made the sale or you didn’t; no-one wants to hear why you didn’t bring in the sale- even earthquakes don’t count. And that’s because, there can always be an excuse.” A rainmaker is anyone who brings in revenue to an organization. That’s you.
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