What 'Rainmakers' do differently - an actionable business development playbook for transformational sales effectiveness

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Bullet-point summary of the playbook detailed in this article (or here is a 64s video summary)

• "Opening is the new closing": focus on new customer acquisition NOT renewal/expansion
• Pipeline self-generator: proactively invest > time identifying and engaging with new prospective clients
• Don't rely on marketing, partner channels or SDRs for deal flow
• Protect / reserve time for new business development and rigorous follow up / nurture every week
• Increase market coverage and multi-thread decision making units building champions uncovering obstacles
• Ruthless with time: focus on what is most effective - be phone-first & cut out what is less effective e.g. omni-channel busy-ness that is illusion of meaningful communication
• Have higher quality conversations with C-suite: the conversations that matter with the people that matter
• Optimise discovery to understand, align to business priorities and sell on value
• They follow-up relentlessly
• They earn and ask for referrals

P.S. A rainmaker will most likely cringe if you call them a Rainmaker, Rockstar, GOAT, Ninja, Assassin... They pride themselves on being a customer focussed trusted advisor, pipeline generator and working smart and hard.

For a deep dive on the above points... keep on reading.

There is a lot of mystique around consistent outperformers, which is why recruiters call them "purple squirrels" and it is generally believed that they follow no replicable actions, doing what only they can do intuitively...

I have oversight on 1000s of sale orgs and > $36B in pipeline, and there are definite steps you can implement in your sales process that will enable you to generate revenue more effectively.

According to What Today’s Rainmakers Do Differently by Matt Dixon, Ted McKenna, Rory Channer and Karen Freeman (rightly recognised by Harvard Business Review as one of the "10 Must Reads 2025: The Definitive Management Ideas of the Year")

The Activator profile showed a positive impact on performance and revenue.

Spend a significant portion of their business-development time identifying and engaging with prospective clients up and down the org chart.

• Non-Activators spend 37% less time on business development than Activators.

They achieve > market coverage and multi-thread decision making units

Protect / reserve time for new business development and rigorous follow up / nurture every week

• Nearly 90% of Activators report that they reserve time for business development every week vs 33% of other profiles

They make things happen : Outbound-first

• 73% of Activators prefer to proactively engage clients with an opportunity, compared with just 36% of non-Activators.

It’s not just in a downturn that companies find their inbound engine is no longer enough to drive business. Whether you’re operating in a down market or your inbound motion has just reached its saturation point... there’s only one cure for elongated sales cycles and pipeline deficits... Go outbound - Andreessen Horowitz (known as "a16z")

"Opening is the new closing" Focus on new customer acquisition NOT renewal/expansion.

As recently as five years ago, 76% of buyers preferred to buy again companies they had used in the past BUT today that figure is down to 53% and over the next five years, it is expected to drop to 37%

Loyalty is does not exist and no client relationship is “safe”, and there is an increase in RFP-driven purchasing.

Never has the need to build new relationships been higher in my 20+ years in sales.

Customer churn, not renewal, and downsell not expansion is the reality most face, so allocate most time to new customer acquisition, not existing customer monetisation.

Not over-reliant on marketing or partners

They are always self-sourcing opportunities. Typically a third of their pipeline is self sourced and thes ops have: Higher win rates, Shorter sales cycles, Larger deal sizes, Faster upsell / expansion

Over reliance on inbounds and partners was blamed by > 90% of 6k+ EMEA B2B sales leaders polled in October/November for them missing their target!

• Partner referrals are painfully slow to convert today
• As ACV increases, marketing generated leads reduce in volume and quality (conversion / win rate) e.g. only 27% of 100k+ deals are marketing sourced, and they close at under 20% of AE self-sourced opps 😧 And this is the most positive take on marketing's contribution to AEs revenue generated I can find.

Pavillion research data was more pessimistic, and Korn Ferry even more so.

Only 5% of salespeople believe that they gained quality leads from marketing - Iron Paper 😠

Out of all your leads, 79% will never convert into sales - Marketing Sherpa 😞

SDRs are generating only 18% of pipeline these days, down from 40% - Insight VC, one of the top firms in the world that backed 6Sense, Monday, & Qualtrics shared private internal research on their portfolio

In 2022, even within SaaS: 73% of SDRs missed target (Pavillion) in 2022, despite quotas falling >35% since 2018,and >70% in 2024 are missing target still

"Never hesitate to pick up the phone and engage the prospect" Mark Hunter

Rainmakers are ruthless with their time & focus on what is most effective: the phone!

They cut out what is less effective

Have higher quality conversations with C-suite: the conversations that matter with the people that matter & discover business priorities better than others

They sell value aligned to their findings

🎁 For AEs willing to self-prospect... happy to share our breakthrough in AE sales effectiveness

Significantly boost Activator behaviors by investing in technology

Compress hours of prospecting work down into minutes - really.

My Sales Directors and AEs: In under 30 mins output > than an average SDR does in 2 full working days

Live conversations on-demand in 2 mins

With ONLY named, so-called hard to reach CXOs on YOUR target list at your dream account

Effortlessly

e.g. on average on typical Thursday, each AE on my team averaged from ONLY 28 minutes input time

• 6 conversations with named CXOs on their target list
• 0.5 meetings booked
• 3 qualified follow-ups
• 0.2 referrals
• That's >1 meeting booked / AE / hour!

Forrester’s “Call Commerce” Research

1. Outbound calls provide a more immediate return on your investment converting 30% faster than other channels... time-to-value
2. 84% higher conversion rates compared to other forms of engagement
3. 41% of organisations report having increased phone conversion rates by 25% or more in the past 12 months
4. Phone calls are often the most valuable conversions with larger order value (AOV) compared to other forms of engagement
5. Get smarter insights into customers and make more informed decisions to drive efficiency
6. When you tailor experiences based on the content of their phone conversations, you better meet their needs and earn their loyalty
7. Call-sourced clients are retained at 28% higher rate than inbound web leads
8. 85% of marketers believe phone conversations are now a key component of their organisation’s digital-first strategy

Buyers do actually want to speak on the phone

76% of B2B new buyers appreciate speaking to someone on the phone and even 15% of repeat buyers - McKinsey

87% of respondents said talking to a person on the phone to answer questions made them feel more confident in making high-consideration purchases - Invoca Research

82% of buyers who have answered a cold call say they’ve accepted a sales meeting.

The Phone is the Most Effective Sales Channel

My Linkedin poll above exactly echoes HubSpot's own research (who are naturally email-biased?)

44% of sales professionals who sell remotely say phone calls are the most effective channel for remote selling… over double email or video - HubSpot 2022

And is very much in line with Rain Sales Consulting's research.

Telephone is still the most productive sales tool for 41.2% of salespeople is their phone. Between cold calls, warm calls, and hashing out details, calling prospects continues to be the best means of communication - Rain Sales Consulting

Phone is not just for cold calling...

You don't believe in cold calling?

Neither do I. But I do believe conversations matter... The temperature doesn't.

Any call should be at least a warm call, where you have something relevant that is worth saying / hearing...

Nevertheless...

Organisations that don’t cold call experienced 42% less growth than those who used the tactic - Crunchbase

Sure individual salespeople have their channel superpowers / preferences, but it makes sense to pay attention the wisdom of crowds.

Top sales performers make 82% more cold calls and send 24% less email - McKinsey Survey of 43000 sales reps 2021