I have been reviewing several books on selling. Most advise us to ask clients for referrals, but that’s a thing more easily said than done. There’s a lot more meaning packed into the word, “referral,” than its brevity suggests. In most areas in the professions it means we are asking our clients to remember what we do well enough that they recognize opportunities for us when they are out in the market place, refer prospective clients to us, endorse us, and inform us of things that give us an edge over competitors. That’s asking a lot of anyone.

A few people will do these things without our asking. But spontaneous giving of this type is rare. Most of the time, we do have to ask. And there’s the rub.
Asking favors of this kind makes us uncomfortable. It’s asking a lot. Our clients are busy people. They have problems of their own and are paying us for the work we do, and so owe us nothing. We don’t want to burden then with our problems. Nor do we want to seem mercenary about our relationships with them.

Succeeding at this delicate task requires good timing and technique.
Let’s start with when.

An accountant, who is one of the biggest rainmakers in his firm, was the first to explain to me the best time to ask for a referral. He advised me that whenever someone is happy with you, you are in a position to ask a favor. Yes, you are being paid for the work you are doing, but clients who are really pleased with what you have done like to do something that will help you personally, too.

A recruiter was saying the same thing, when he told me that just after a search is completed, when everyone is happy with the candidate and your contribution is fresh in their minds, is the time to ask for a referral.
Now, let’s move to how.

I have an image in my mind of a dinner plate heaped revoltingly full of all kinds of food. There’s pickled herring and taco chips, a combination my mother actually served to guests once. There’s spaghetti in marinara sauce with anchovies, an egg roll, cherry pie, creamed spinach, oysters and chocolate sauce. There’s blue berry yogurt, cheese whiz, acorn squash, pork loin and peanut brittle. Avocado, crab cake, pigs-in-blankets and plum pudding. I am seated, staring at this mess, and a waiter is standing beside me with a serving dish filled with bananas, steak tartar, juju bees, liver pâté and a green substance that they used to serve in school, and which I still can’t identify, all smothered in redeye gravy. The waiter is saying, “Would you like some more, sir?”

This image comes to me, whenever someone says that he can’t do any business development, because his plate is too full, already. How I loath the full-plate metaphor!

So, I will make you a deal. From time to time I will provide you with ideas for addressing the time problem. Of course, none of them will solve it; it’s the kind of thing you can only chip away at. But, if you use them, they will help. In return, you will eliminate the full-plate metaphor from your repertoire or, at least not use it in my presence. Deal?

My first suggestion came from a consultant whose career streaked upwards to a partnership in his firm. “At the beginning of every year,” he told me, “I look at what I am spending my time on. I try to identify things that I won’t be doing by the end of the year and that will free up about ten per cent of my time, which I can then apply to a higher and better use. I then work at unloading those things. Some of them take a few months and some of them the better part of the year. But I get rid of them.” That’s how he made time for business development.

Think for a few minutes on this simple idea. This is the kind of thing that successful careers are built on. It is such good advice that it’s worth unloading two or three full plates from your vocabulary.

Professionals sometimes ask me if it is best to send a prospective client an email before calling her, especially if it is someone you don’t know well. They are usually looking for affirmation. I respond with this story:

Many years ago, I was taught how to make cold-call appointments with senior executives by Bruce McNaughton, a brilliant rainmaker who could get a meeting with anyone. We were to send letters (no email in those days) to people we wanted to meet, and he would come in a week later to show us how to follow up with a call to the execs’ assistants. Something went wrong and the letters weren’t sent. When I told Bruce this, he asked for the phone number of the first person on the list of those who should have received a letter. He picked up the phone and called the man’s assistant. “My name is Bruce McNaughton,” he said. “Has Mr. Smith received the letter I sent?” Of course, the assistant said he hadn’t. “Well, never mind,” said Bruce. “It said this . . .” He proceeded to describe what we were looking for, was passed on to the Chief Financial Officer and got us a meeting. The letter hadn’t been necessary, but Bruce knew that sending one would make me more comfortable with calling.

So, yes. Send an email, if it makes calling easier for you, but realize that you are doing it as much for your own comfort as you are for the executive you send it to. And what if your emails don’t get sent, call anyway.

When a prospective client wants to know something that might hurt a professional’s chance of winning new business, many will finesse the answer by saying something that is true but misleading.  When employing one common form, the Rubber Ruler Finesse, the professional chooses a reference point or measure that makes the answer deceptively attractive.  For example, when a client asks how long a professional has been with his firm, the professional may say, “It’s my first year,” instead of the more precise, “Two weeks.” 
 

Or take this example:  “Do you do a lot of work with banks,” asks the client, and the professional responds, “Yes, a lot. Almost 30 percent of our fees came from that industry last year.” He doesn’t say that all of those fees came from one bank, the only one his firm has ever worked for.
 

Professionals at small firms often use this finesse when asked how big their firms are.  They give the number which includes the largest number of people, even though those counted include support staff and, sometimes, employees not related to the delivery of a professional service.
 

Though these answers are true at some level, they pass the definition of a lie found in Sisela Bok’s  Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life,  the classic book on the subject.  According to her a lie is “any intentionally deceptive message which is stated.”  So, is this type of truth stretching honest or not when selling a professional service?  I would like to hear from you.  Consider the following additional points:
 

¨      We will assume that the professional successfully deceives the prospective client in order to eliminate answers that deal with practicality rather than ethics.
 

¨      One only has to look at a few clients’ advertisements to realize that they commit comparable deceptions.
 

¨      No one considers it unethical to lie in an oriental bazaar.
 

¨      Professionalism requires a high standard of honesty with a client.

Lindsy, a valuation consultant I am coaching, just generated a lead for new business, the first one she has ever turned up outside of the clients she is consulting to. It’s not for anything big, but it’s an important event for Lindsay. Without a lead, there can be no sale. Having a good lead flow gives you added control of your destiny at professional service firms.

Meet the right people. Stay in front of them by being helpful. Remind them of what you do in appropriate ways. And leads will follow. This is the simple logic that underlies what rainmakers do.

But is there a way, aspiring rainmakers like Lindsay always ask, to make those leads come along a little more quickly? It’s a fair question. We don’t find it so terrible to be asked to help people, especially when it’s people we like. We don’t expect an immediate return on our giving and realize that we will often give without ever getting something back. That’s okay. But we need to get something back some of the time from some of the people we help, if our firm is to make a profit and we are to move our careers along. That’s not being mercenary; it’s just being practical.

There are techniques for generating leads more quickly, and we will address them from time to time in this blog. Here is the one Lindsay used, which is perhaps the simplest of all:

To become a rainmaker you must develop relationships with clients, prospective clients and connectors, the term we use for people in other organizations who sell to the same people we do. Call discipline, the regular outreach by phone (and by emails, too, of course, but that’s a subject for another day), to our clients and connectors is a required part of the rainmaking process. These calls should largely be about the other person. How are you doing? What are you working on? What would help you? At some point in the conversation, the good ones, the ones you want to work with, will ask how things are going with you. This may be the only point in the conversation when you have an opportunity to talk about yourself and your firm. You had best spend this coin wisely.

It’s best to assume that in asking this question the contact really wants to know how you are doing. . . but not too much. And we will give her what she wants. Clearly, it shouldn’t be a blatant advertisement or a heavy sales pitch. That would be distasteful and unproductive. But answers like “Great,” or “We just put an addition on the house” won’t buy you much, either.

Instead, before you make the call mentally prepare a short statement describing something about the work you are doing that might stimulate the client’s thinking about how she or someone she knows might use you. “For the past year I’ve been working mostly on acquisitions. They’re fast paced and a lot of fun.” Keep it short. “We are putting some new ideas about vertical transportation in place, and it’s exciting to see them working so well.” “For several clients we are finding ways to manage healthcare costs while still providing the employees with reasonable coverage. Everybody; management, the employees and the providers; needs to do their part to make these approaches work. I’ve been brokering the different constituents and it’s very rewarding.”

Lindsay said, “I’m spending all my time placing a value on a pharmanceutical company’s unused patents. It’s like a treasure hunt, so I’m having a blast!” The former client she was talking to referred her to a friend who was selling his business and needed help valueing his patents.

Way to go, Lindsay!

At a conference the other day I set myself the task of spending time with one of the speakers after a breakout session which was attended by about 40 people. At the end of the workshop, eight people lined up to talk with the speaker, and he gave each of them a minute or two of his time. Unlike the others, I spent almost twenty minutes with him, enough time to come up with a reason to follow up next week. And I owe it all to Dennis Donovan.

Many years ago, when I was transferred east to run the eastern regional office of the firm I was with, Dennis’s firm was our chief competitor. It was taking business from us left and right. But it wasn’t really his firm that was beating us; it was Dennis. During my first months on the job, I had my head handed to me seven competitive presentations in a row. Dennis won all of them.

So, I went to school on him. One of my first efforts was to attend a professional association’s annual meeting where I could meet a lot of clients. Dennis was there, too, and had obviously been coming to the meetings for several years. He could really work a room, but what most intrigued me was how he worked the speakers, who tended to be senior people with a lot of influence. This is what he did:

He would arrive early at the room for the breakout session and take a front row seat directly across from the speaker. During the entire workshop, he would give the speaker full attention. At the end of the session, when the speaker asked for questions and there was the usual awkward pause, Dennis would raise his hand. He said his name and the name of his firm and then lobbed an easy question that gave the speaker a chance to look smart.

At the end of the workshop, most of the audience shuffled out to get coffee and five or six lined up to talk with the speaker. But Dennis didn’t move. He sat patiently scribbling a few notes, until the last person in line got her time with the speaker. Then Dennis got up and added himself to the end of the line. When his turn came to talk with the speaker, the speaker saw that Dennis was the last in line and so felt no need to rush to get to someone behind him. So the speaker took his time with Dennis, and, still conversing casually, they would walk out of the room together. He did this with speaker after speaker.

And, I’ve been doing the same thing ever since. Thank you, Dennis.