Hiring Rainmakers to Build Your Business

One common misstep is promoting a rainmaker into a management job where he or she has little customer contact. Neither the rainmaker nor the company's sales will benefit, Fox warns. "Rainmakers should be allowed and encouraged to stay in the field, keep selling and keep ringing the cash registers."

Not all companies are ready for a rainmaker, in Lacey's opinion. Companies must reach a certain level of maturity and have a track record that lets the rainmaker leverage his or her skills and turn them into dollars. "You have to have enough success stories that they have something to trade on," he explains.

Perhaps the best news about rainmakers is that good ones can transform a company's entire culture, making it more customer-focused, more driven and more capable of attracting and keeping customers. But just as you can never have too many customers, no enterprise can have too many rainmakers, Fox says: "After you hire your first rainmaker, your job is to find another one."