The Rainmaker Series – Great Social Skills

It probably comes as no surprise that Rainmakers and Top Sales Performers have excellent social skills.

Ron Willingham in his book “Integrity Selling For The 21^st Century” describes social skills as:

The ability to gain rapport, adapt to different personalities and listen for subtle meanings revealed through non-verbal communication.

What I see in Rainmakers is they are simply great communicators especially good in a social or sales environment.

Please don’t mistake a great communicator for having the “gift of gab” or being able to give the most eloquent speech you’ve ever heard. These may be very good skills to have and I certainly admire anyone who is good at public speaking but I believe the ability to be a good communicator has very little to do with the ability to be a talker.

I think Top Performing Salespeople listen more than they talk. They do this by asking very good questions. The questions they ask have a purpose and they listen with intent and without bias to understand what is being said.

They are very good at reading  body language and understanding the unspoken, much like how a mother can tell what her baby needs before her child is old enough to speak. This gives the Rainmaker (when needed) the ability to recognize the situation much quicker than others.

The Top Performers can easily adapt to different personality styles and communicate in a way that fits the other person’s style. Maybe a better way to put it is “they don’t force their own personality style on others but try to adjust their style to fit others.” It seems the Top Performers can do this without giving up any of their own identity. (I hope this makes sense.)

I think maybe the most important of all the social skills is the seeming easy ability to build rapport and trust with others. Rainmakers and Top Sales Performers seem to convey a sense of confidence, trust and clarity of purpose that others easily recognize. Have you had someone walk into a room and without knowing them or saying a word you think this is someone I should get to know or maybe think that looks like someone I could trust?

You may be wondering, why I would have a picture of Mr. Potato Head in this post?

Mr. Potato Head has all the traits needed for excellent social skills:

•   2 ears for listening for the answers to the great questions he asks.
•   2 eyes to help read body language and see what is unspoken.
•   Only 1 mouth so talking can’t get in the way of the other senses.
•   A personality that gets along with any and everyone.
•   When he walks in the room who wouldn’t trust him?

So there you have four or five social skills that I think make our Top Sales Producers so good.

(This is the fourth in a series of posts called “The Rainmaker Series.” This series is an attempt to identify the common traits and characteristics that Top Sales Performers often called Rainmakers seem to possess.)

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Now let’s get out there and over-deliver!