The Lead Glut and Its Consequences
It happened again! For the third time in so many weeks someone has told me that she is so loaded with work that she is reluctant to call former clients to keep the relationship warm. She fears that they will ask her to take on an assignment that she will have to decline for want of time. This fear is a sure sign of a peak economy.
It wasn’t long ago we were all hoping that someone would ask us for help. Short of work, we swore we would stay in touch with former clients, not letting the relationship go cold again. How quickly the world changes! How quickly we forget!
A glut of anything reduces its value, as any economist will tell you. Leads simply aren’t as precious as they once were, causing us to lose interest in the call and meeting routines and other lead generation efforts.. How quickly we forget that the calls and meetings we have today aren’t so likely to surface immediate requests for our services. Rather, they maintain relationships with those who may seek our services six months or a year from now, or perhaps in the more distant future. And who knows what the economy will be like then?
A downturn will come as surely as the sun sets in the evening. When it does, the clients who still have work to give out will give most of it to the professionals with whom they have a warm relationship. And it’s hard to have a relationship with someone you never talk to.
Rainmakers know this and make their calls and have their meetings in good times and in bad. One rainmaker I know had all the cases his twenty-person practice was working on cancel over the two weeks that followed September 11, 2001. By the first of November, he had his entire staff redeployed on new assignments for these same clients. There aren’t many professionals who could do that. Because he did it, he didn’t have to lay off any staff in the recession that followed. His team sailed through the downturn which put some firms out of business and resulted in layoffs and reduced bonuses at most. With a full team, he could grow faster than competitors during the following recovery and has reaped huge rewards. Without deep client relationships, he couldn’t have pulled this off.
More calls, anyone?
