The term rainmaker in business means “an achiever of outstanding results in a profession”. Do you want to excel in your career? Then be a rainmaker! Some people think that means bringing in new business. That is not the only thing it is. It also means doing an exceptional job.

A big part of being an exceptional employee is making things happen. If you are a salesperson that means bringing in a new account. As an accountant, there are new cost cutting measures; as a production person, looking for new and top notch factories; as a designer, new concepts that will add plus business. Even as a receptionist starting out you want to stand out. Be so extraordinary that clients tell your boss how you have made the experience of coming to your office exceptional.

Always look out for ways to bring extra value to your company. In my case I am working on trying to bring new businesses to my company. But, from the beginning of my career I always looked for ways to stand out. What ways can you stand out? How can you be a rainmaker?

Be the one that does the exceptional job. Come in a 1/2 hour early leave a 1/2 hour late. Don’t take long lunches. When you work, work. Don’t let people steal your time. If someone comes to hang out in your office to gab, tell them you have a project to do and have to stay focused. Tell them you can talk after work. Being focused on your job while you are at your office will give you a leg up on all your coworkers. Most people waste a lot of time at their job and their actual productive time is quite low. Don’t be that person .

Where are the opportunities for you where you work? Always be looking out for ways to grow your job. Take on new duties. I don’t necessarily mean more work (not that you shouldn’t help out your boss wherever possible). What I am talking about are responsibilities that stretch you as an individual and make you more valuable in your place of employment and the industry. You will become more capable. By doing this you’re sure to bring the attention of your higher ups. Doing exceptional work and bringing in new business or ideas are very important parts of being a rainmaker.

There is another way to be impactful on your company’s business. That is the person who takes the idea and runs with it. Many ideas die on the vine through lack of follow through. What if you were the person who made it happen? In a meeting when the idea comes up ask if you could help with the concept. Offer to do the leg work. Find out the information and the action steps required to get the project going. Some people are thinkers and some are doers. Nothing wrong with being the doer. In most cases the doer is way more valuable than the thinker. Being a person who spearheads projects is another component to being a rainmaker.

The rainmakers in an organization are the people who rise to the top. These people are usually the CEO’s of a company. So always being looking for ways to help impact the success of your company. Don’t have the attitude that, “It isn’t my job, or I am too low down on the totem pole”. You can do this and it will speed up your path to the top.

Author: Maria Pesin
Article Source: EzineArticles.com

“Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud’s premier student in the field of psychoanalysis, often spoke of the power of miracles by telling the following story:

There was a village that had been experiencing drought for five consecutive years. Many famous Rainmakers had been called, but they had all failed to make rain.

In the villagers last attempt, they called upon a renowned Rainmaker from afar. When he arrived in the village, he set up his tent and disappeared inside it for four days.

On the fifth day, the rain started to fall and quenched the thirst of the parched earth. The people of the village asked the Rainmaker how he had accomplished such a miracle.

The Rainmaker replied, “I have done nothing”. Astounded at this explanation, the villagers said, “How can that be? After you came, for days later, the rain started.”

The Rainmaker explained, “When I arrived, the first thing I noticed was that everything in your village was out of harmony with heaven. So I spent four days putting myself into harmony with the Divine. Then the rains came.”"

The story above is an excerpt from the great book “Do Less, Achieve More” by Chin-Ning Chu

Life was meant to be much simpler, yet somehow, we’ve fallen into a vicious cycle of “work hard to get ahead” and then realize that the “work hard” has caused such a state of unrest in our Hearts and our Souls, that we spend precious time and money on “quick fixes” that just take us further from our Truth (and cause even more pain and suffering in the process).

Until we realize that the Rainmaker knew the right way, the simple way to create what we really want in our lives.

The ancient proverb that says:

“As within, so without”

clearly highlights that the Source of all is within you.

When you take time to put yourself in harmony with heaven as the Rainmaker teaches us, you will experience a priceless gift. A gift of inner peace… a feeling of calm will emanate from you. When you find that your life is out of balance (or if you feel stressed out because of some issue) – remember how the Rainmaker succeeded where others had failed – he put himself back into harmony with heaven.

Life is meant to be simpler my friend…

From this day forward, allow yourself time to breathe and step back from the busy-ness syndrome that we’ve allowed ourselves to get so caught up in…

As you do, the “rain will certainly fall again” and nourish your deepest Dreams and passions

: – )

Paul

Author: Paul Bauer
Article Source: EzineArticles.com

During my 35 year career, I have had the privilege of being referred to as a “Rainmaker” in several news articles and stories during interviews with some of my clients. I take that as a very kind compliment. Some may ask, what is a “Rainmaker?” The American Indian tradition would say that the Rainmaker used magical powers to bring rain to nourish crops to feed the people of the tribe. Today, the most common and simplistic definition I can offer would be this: A “Rainmaker” is a person who brings the most revenue into a company or organization and the revenue or money is the rain. Today’s “Rainmaker” makes things happen, generates the most new customers, new business and takes the art of the doing business to new levels.

This past Christmas (2004), I was given a very special and interesting book by Jeffrey J. Fox. The title: “How to Become A Rainmaker.” This is a great book and I have reread this book once a month since I got it. Jeffrey Fox has hit a home run with this book, in my opinion, because he has put his advice into a handbook form that is easy to read and understand and very valuable to anyone who wants to become a “Rainmaker.”

And just to wet” your appetite further, here is “The Rainmaker’s Credo” from Jeffrey Fox’s book – How To Become A Rainmaker”

Cherish customers at all times.

Treat customers as you would your best friend.

Listen to customers and decipher their needs.

Make (or give) customers what they need.

Price your product to its dollarized value.

Show customers the dollarized value of what they will get.

Teach customers to want what they need.

Make your product the way the customers want it.

Get your product to your customers when they want it.

Give your customers a little extra, more than they expect.

Remind your customers of the dollarized value they received.

Thank each customer sincerely and often.

Help customers pay you, so they won’t be embarrassed and go elsewhere.

Ask to do it again.

Author: Glenn Ebersole
Article Source: EzineArticles.com

Rainmaker Days are a new concept from Erudyte following feed back from their clients and the clients from their The Speakers Company subsidiary. 

What was said was that numerous organisations, whilst they enjoyed and learned from speakers who were at the top of their industries, wanted more from the speaker and a closer engagement with the speakers’ experience and expertise to benefit their companies.

Given that that engagement could be consultancy, training, mentoring, tutoring, brain dumping with the CEO or board or other activities it is very hard to describe the offering succinctly.  Equally few board members will admit that their skills and knowledge could be improved on especially within their organisations even when things are not going that well.  Reasons can always be found for why things are as they are but it takes foresight not to mention bravery to ask if things could be (even) better and what it would take to bring that about.

For us one obvious route is to engage with someone who has “been there, done that, had the T shirt” and proved it time and time again on an international stage. 
As an executive you might not want to admit that you had been talking with such a person but if that discussion could be held discreetly, for example under The Chatham House Rule, might great benefits not be possible?

Lets face it your HR or Training department are hardly going to suggest to the boss that he needed upskilling or advice  even if they knew what those skills looked like.

What came out of all this was the realisation that if we selected some of our brightest and best – “The Rainmakers” and allowed them to host a small group (max 16) for a day, (with refreshments of course to keep brains up to speed) in a discreet and secure environment at a fraction of the normal price as an way of engaging with a rainmaker to experience both the process and quality, whether or not it lead to something more long term, this could be an attractive idea.

So was born the “Rainmaker Day” the next one is on 4th February 2010 and the thought leader that day is Gordon Lovell Read.  We have launched a new Rainmaker site (www.rainmakerscompany.com) where you can not only see more details about the Rainmakers but read their thoughts and blogs (feel free to respond or contribute) as well as news feeds relevant to the C-Suite and Boards.

If this sounds too good to miss one can book online at www.erudyte.eventbrite.com or Telephone Chris at Erudyte on 0845 094 1044.

Euan Semple :

Philip de Lisle :

A new directory enquiries service has recently launched here in the UK called 118 800. It will allow you to ask for someone’s mobile number.

Most people, I suspect, feel that their mobile is their very private domain and don’t want it invaded by cold callers. It’s bad enough when that happens on one’s home telephone.

I’d heard about this service before but thanks to the weekly email I receive from Money Saving Expert (an excellent service for finding the best deals on insurance, utilities), I learnt just how insidious this service is. If you’ve ever forgotten to opt out when signing up for an online service (or offline come to that) and provided your mobile number, the chances are that this service will have bought your details and added you to their database.

But all is not lost! You can opt out! Don’t forget to do your partner’s phone and particularly those of any children you might have as many (most?) kids phones are registered to a parent and so outside the rules governing contacting minors. 118 800 have a removal page here.

I strongly recommend that you take action now!

For about 18 months I’ve been a very happy user of VAServ’s cheap and cheerful VPS platform. The control panel was called LXAdmin (later renamed to Kloxo). A major series of security bugs was found a few weeks ago, and last Sunday the security company that identified the bugs decided in their wisdom to publish the bug list online because they had not had a response to their emails to LXLabs.

Well the sky fell in, and the fall out has been very painful. VAServ lost just about everything: over 100,000 domains taken off line while they tried to fix the break-in/security breach(es). For this company the pain is awful as they have been forced to be acquired (as far as I understand the email I received) by their UK datacentre partner who supplied man power to help out. I doubt the owner, who spent years building his company up, received very much if anything for it.

I lost all my domains. The reason you are seeing this is because I was forced to move to Hostgator to try and get my domains back up and running – I’m one of the lucky ones in that I had full backups of all my sites, both SQL and themes/plugins etc. Not everyone will have been so lucky.

Which brings me to the unfortunate owner of LXLabs who sadly appears to have committed suicide on Monday.

Is a software flaw, no matter how serious, really worth a life?

I’ve joined the Netbook Revolution and become a network road warrier in the process!

I’ve bought an Advent 4211 from my local Currys electrical store. Linux was quickly installed using Fluxbox as my window manager – this was easy as the Advent is a rebadged MSI Wind so there are lots of helpful articles all over the ‘net.

It fits inside a canvas shoulder bag I bought years ago and never used, along with an A4 jotter pad and all the other paraphernalia I need for meetings so I’m recycling too. Talk about feeling smug as I set off each day!

So now instead of permanently being behind on email, I can stay on top of it on trains, buses, planes etc etc. And with a Huawei E220 bought on eBay (as I know it is Linux compatible) and a cheap-as-chips PAYG data card from T-Mobile, I’m truly a mobile warrier!

Last night I took my wife and our 2 small boys to Lord’s to watch Middlesex play Kent in a Twenty20 Cup thrash – and Middlesex did indeed get thrashed by 60 odd runs.

But the floodlights, being used for the first time if I heard the announcer correctly, were fantastic and watching them rise slowly before play kept my boys amused for ages.

Great work MCC – now I can’t wait for the Twenty20 World Cup to begin in a few weeks time!

Philip de Lisle :

I just updated 2 plugins to their latest version on 2 of my websites – this one and Enhancing Clarity. When I went back to check them later, I saw, to my horror, that they were no longer centered on the screen.

Despite deactivating both plugins, the problem refused to go away so I had to tweak my themed style sheet with the advice I found here.

And it worked!! Hurrah!!