Kristina Haymes has an excellent posting about how to get more revenues, directed at mediators, which with a little imagination can be applied to other professions.

Her blog is well worth a frequent check, even if you aren’t a mediator, because many of her postings are relevant to all professionals.

Readers who are interested in the art of blogging should subscribe to her blog. She has a remarkable ability to build solid content at a continuous, high level. How? I’m not sure. She reads widely, but there is more to it than that. She knows how to reinterpret a wide variety of things she comes across for her audience.

Rainmakers in their prime advise the most powerful people in the corporate world: the CEOs, Presidents, CFOs and other c-suite executives. These people can authorize projects with little more than the flick of the wrist to sign a contract. If they like you, they can dispense with competition with a wave and they can refer you to their friends working in c-suites in other companies.

We would all like to get people of that caliber into our networks, but the task is daunting. Ask an executive about his children, and you learn that the kids are ten years older than you are. Ask about his vacation and you learn that he was flown by private helicopter into the furthest reaches of Kamtchatka, or whatever the latest prestige holiday destination is. You will dread the inevitable question that follows, “where did you take yours?” to which you must answer, “the Jersey Shore.”

Still, there are ways to network with c-suite executives that can spare you embarrassment, and rainmakers have discovered them. Here are three for networking with executives you know from your client work.

Invite the executive and spouse to a charity, civic or cultural event. This will be neutral ground where the difference in your age, power and means are not relevant. To increase the chances of the executive accepting, pick a big event where she will be able to meet some of her peers. Even if the executive declines, you can hardly be faulted for making this kind of invitation. (See Jane’s Lunch, or A Lesson in Dominos Networking.)

Provide volunteer support for an organization she is active in. A little research will tell you what organizations the executive devotes her time to. If you have interest in the cause, volunteer and help her further her goals there. You must avoid seeming commercial during your volunteer hours, so this approach requires patience and diligence.

Ask for mentoring. Instead of trying to work around the differences in age, experience, and wealth between yourself and the executive, use them to your advantage. Ask for some career advice. Many older people like the mentor role. Follow up the mentoring meeting with a thank you note, which specifies the value you took from it.

Of course, time is the long term solution to building your network of senior executives. Bringing a few into your network early by using these techniques will hasten the process.

If you wanted to talk with someone who had been blogging a long time as a way to promote professional services, where would you go? David Maister’s blog would be a good place to start.

The other serious contender is Gautam Ghosh, who has been publishing his blog, gauteg.blogspot.com, from Hyderabad, India since 2003. Begun as a personal knowledge management tool, the blog soon morphed, as firms seeking technical talent began to source him.

He kept his day job until about a year ago, when a former client contacted him to see if he could help their project managers learn to use internal blogging as a vehicle to share knowledge. Gautam took the assignment and set up shop. He has generated several other leads directly through his blog, but none of them converted into paid work.

When I questioned Gautam about the value of blogging, which absorbs huge amounts of time and other resources, suggesting that marketing investments might be better made elsewhere, he responded:

People who read blogs are either bloggers themselves or a handful of others. Even so, blogging can be a powerful marketing vehicle. That’s because the search engines treat every post as a webpage. Google rates the blog pages higher than traditional ones, because the content changes more often and people link to it more often. The many linkages I have gives me a fairly high Google rating.

That rating makes it easy for people to find us, especially newspaper reporters. They call to interview me, resulting in quotes from me in the news media, and those quotes count for a lot here in India. Magazine editors have found me in the same way and asked for articles. I get speaking engagements in a similar fashion. All this goes well beyond India; I get global visibility.

Business has more or less come to me, and I because I am quiet and introverted I am more comfortable with people finding me. Somehow they do. They may not know my blog, but it is the main way I have achieved visibility. All else has flowed from that.

There is much to reflect on in Gautam’s example. The invisible hand of the market seems to be a term that applies well to blogging. It certainly works in invisible ways, leaving the value of blogging for marketing professional services strongly felt but still unproven.

A rainmaker has a large network that helps him generate leads and win more business. The value of a network of contacts grows geometrically with the size of the network. This is known as Metcalfe’s Law and is described in more detail in my book, Creating Rainmakers. Though it may interest you to understand the underlying logic and the mathematics (which are quite simple), you really need to know what it means on the ground during your ongoing efforts to sell your services. Though they happened in the air, two encounters I had in plane rides make the point nicely.

When I started my current firm, it was in a new field for me and I had to build a network of contacts almost from scratch. I had been in this business for maybe a year, when I was bumped up to first class on a flight from New York to California. My seat mate was a dignified looking gentleman in a fine grey, pinstriped suit that even my inexperienced eyes could tell didn’t come off the rack at Target.

We exchanged the normal civilities as we divvied up the space between us for our pre-flight drinks. We then both settled in to our individual affairs. I wanted to meet this man, but knew from experience not to move too quickly. Some time during the flight, we began a small conversation. I asked him where he worked and he named a huge media company. I asked what he did there, and he said, “I’m the president.” My mouth opened to say something, but nothing came out. I tried again and sill nothing came out. The conversation ended there. I had nothing to say to the man. I didn’t know anything about his company. I didn’t know much about the media business. A sudden shift of subjects into sports or politics would have seemed odd, and I know almost as little about sports as I do about the media business. I opened my mouth one more time, and once again nothing came out. Some people would have found a way, but I am shy and introverted and I had nothing more to say.

Fast-forward about eleven years, after I had been in this business of showing others how to sell professional services long enough to build a large network. Again I was bumped up to first class on another flight from New York to California. As I sat down, my seat mate was reading USA Today opened full width so that the left page stretched over a bit over the arm rest and into my space. The main article announced the departure of a celebrity CEO from her company. I observed this news by saying, “Oh, she’s out,” to which my seatmate responded, “Yes, and I have nothing to say on the subject.”

Now, that was an advertisement. The man meant that though the world would like to hear his views of the subject, given who he is, he was not prepared to share them. A conversation with this man was easy to start. And here is where the magic of having a large network began. The man was the president for North America of a large biotech firm, so I began to ask about professionals serving that industry. Within ten minutes we had identified four people we knew in common that his firm used and who had been my clients. I had spent the morning with one of them. Another he thought so highly of that he wished she would call more often. Another had a project with his firm that was in trouble, and he said he would be reluctant to hire them again. We talked briefly about the book he was reading and then went back to our individual affairs, talking again only briefly during landing.

The information he had given me provided reasons to call all four people, strengthening my relationship with each one. I was also able to send a book to this man on a topic of interest to him, so strengthening that tenuous relationship. I could do none of this eleven years earlier; my network wasn’t large enough.

And that is why a person with a big network does better at finding new clients, than does someone with a small one. So, how many people will you meet this month and where will you meet them?

Professionals sell by telling stories about clients they have worked with. Through these stories they make more tangible the value of their services. In earlier entries I have discussed some specific kinds of anecdotes (Sadder-but-Wiser and Watch-Your-Step anecdotes). This entry will address two closely related issues of their composition, their length and their truthfulness.

They are related because when you shorten an anecdote you inevitably have to leave out important facts, resulting in a distortion of the truth. By definition, anecdotes are short, meaning that if one gets too long, it ceases to be an anecdote. I have worked with hundreds of professionals, helping them construct anecdotes from the experiences of their clients and have always been able to bring them down to a tight six sentences. Sometimes, they should be preceded by a statement that highlights their significance (“Confidentiality is critical in matters of this kind. An owner of a florist shop didn’t realize this and . . .) in which case they might stretch to seven.

Of course, I am not the final arbiter of anecdote length. (That, I think, is done by the Anecdote Certification Board in Brussels.) And it doesn’t much matter if one runs on into an eighth sentence. But surely there is no such thing as a twenty-sentence anecdote.

Let’s assume for the moment that the ACB in Brussels officially draws the line at seven sentences. Now we must face the dilemma: We must distill a problem that took a client five years of mismanagement to get into and eighteen months of our work to extricate them from down to a mere seven sentences. And we must be truthful. The ACB insists on the truth. It is absolutely nuts about the truth. What are we to do?

My solution to this problem is to do my best to meet this standard: If the client were sitting there with me when I told the anecdote and were asked if it were true, she would say yes, that it is essentially true, though it’s a simplification.

Of course, I am not the arbiter for standards of truth in anecdotes, either. And the ACB, while good at counting sentences, is notoriously ineffective at discerning the truth. So, you can probably put as much hokum into your anecdote as you like and no one will know. But this is the standard I use, and I sleep well at night.

Coincidently, this week blogger Skellie also posted an article on anecdote length. In his case they are for use in blog postings.  It’s well worth a look at http://www.skelliewag.org/mastering-the-anecdote-39.htm#comment-3324

Last week while visiting Canada, I picked up two examples of how rainmakers stay visible to their markets.

I stopped by to visit with a former client who is well on his way to achieving rainmaker status. Gilles, is as I will call him, is a lightly built man in his late thirties, whose intelligence and lively good spirits strike you immediately. Four years ago, he was unknown in Toronto. Since then his cultivation of his reputation has changed that dramatically. He knows that his clients and other important contacts will only remember him if they see him from time to time. Because he travels heavily, staying visible to his Toronto contacts is challenging.

When in town he has lunch with someone almost every day. This well established practice has been used by such notable rainmakers as James O. McKinsey, founder of the management consulting firm that bears his name.

During one of these lunches at a restaurant used for this purpose by many business people in the city, Gilles was seated at a table near the entrance. Two people he knew saw him there and stopped by to say hello on the way to their tables. This impressed Gilles’s guest. It also gave Gilles a brief meeting with two people he wanted to remember him.

Now, he has most of his lunches at this restaurant and always sits at the same table that other patrons pass on their way in. As often as not someone he knows sees him there and comes by the table to say hello. By the simple tactic of selecting the right seat at the right restaurant, he has increased the return on the time he spends.

Rainmakers take advantage of many such simple opportunities. Doing so is especially important to executive recruiters, because there is such a short time between the opening of a position in a company and the time a recruiter is hired. Get in front of the buyer in that brief period and you may get a search. Miss it and your chances plummet.

I have it on good authority that one of Toronto’s leading executive recruiters gets his daily exercise by walking up and down one of the most heavily trafficked streets in the city. He does this at lunchtime when the sidewalk fills with business people. And every day he stops to talk briefly with three or four people he knows. Several times a year at one of these chance encounters, the person he runs into says, “I’m so glad I ran into you! We just . . .” and he gets a search. This works because he specializes in recruiting bankers, and he walks in the financial district.

So, while Gilles sits inside, waiting for people to find him there, the recruiter walks the street outside. Where can you go to make yourself visible to clients?

I recently gave a speech to a group of architects during which I referred to a structural engineer, whom many of us knew. One of the architects corrected me, saying, “He’s not really an engineer, though. He’s a salesman.” “Yes,” I agreed, “he certainly is a big rainmaker for his firm. But why do you say he’s not an engineer?” “Because he’s not practicing his profession,” said the architect. To which I responded curtly, “Yes, he is . . . at the highest level.” We looked each other in the eye and then decided not to have that argument and went on to other subjects. Pity. If we had argued, we might have learned something.

So, instead of debating with the architect, I have done so with myself, as I often do. After winning and losing the argument from both sides several times, I called the engineer (or former engineer) in question and asked him what he thought. He was extremely busy and, I sensed, thought me either mad or with far too much time on my hands to be bothered by such an angels-on-pinhead issue. And he stunned me with his answer. He wasn’t sure, but leaned towards the view that he wasn’t a real engineer any more.

Instead of a definitive answer, I came away with a second question, is it important whether an engineer or actuary or architect or accountant or lawyer or consultant is practicing her profession when selling? I find it best to deal with these questions simultaneously.

The first question comes down to what practicing your profession means. The simplest definition is using one’s specialized education and training in a specific area to solve a problem. 

The answer to the second question—is it important whether or not selling is practicing your profession—depends, of course on your point of view. Here is mine:

One of the pernicious aspects of the professions is the pecking order among specialists. This is, arguably, most egregious among architects, where designers look down on project architects, who look down on construction administrators, who look down on specifiers. Name a famous architect and it will be a designer.

Pecking orders exist in other professions, too. Strategy consultants outrank all other types of management consultant, for example. Trial lawyers outrank other litigators, who are effective at negotiating settlements. Structural engineers outrank their more common brethren, the civil engineers.

In some professions, like architecture, the rankings remain rigid over time. In others, the rankings have changed. Over the past twenty years, the prestige of mergers and acquisitions attorneys has risen from the dregs of the profession to one of the most acclaimed specialties. The status of the general counsels, working inside a corporation, has also risen over the years, as the corporations have given them more power.

There are two strong arguments I can make for saying that a professional who sells her firm’s services is practicing her profession. First, she uses that education and the knowledge she has gained from experience to understand the client’s business issue, translate into a set of technical needs, assemble a team that has the right set of technical abilities to address those needs, and then with the team, develops an affordable solution to the business problem. She may not work at a drawing table or CAD machine, she may not write briefs or argue a case in front of a judge, or do many of the other tasks which she studied in school to earn a professional degree. To say that doing this is not practicing a profession is like telling a pianist that he is not really a musician, because he composes music.

The second argument for including rainmakers among those who practice their profession is based on an analogy. If a general counsel or in-house architect is still considered to be practicing her professions, then logic dictates that professionals who sell their firms’ services are, too. One is the buyer and one is the seller. Both buyer and seller use their technical knowledge to structure and negotiate the transaction. Why should the person on one side of the deal be considered to be practicing her profession and the other not? The general counsel doesn’t plead cases before a judge or write contracts and the in-house architect doesn’t design buildings any more than the professionals who sell do. But they do use the specialized knowledge in other ways.

To say that a professional is no longer practicing her profession, because she makes her contribution to the firm by selling, is not only inaccurate, it is harmful. It is pernicious, because the person who says that selling isn’t practicing a profession is attributing a professional inferiority to sellers and is most likely justifying his own sales ineffectiveness on the grounds of professional purity. He is saying, “I studied to be an architect and want to remain one, so, of course I can’t sell anything.” This form of elitism is not good for the speaker nor for the one who has supposedly given up his profession. Because I like a good rant from time to time and because I feel a passion about this subject, I want to say, :”Stop being such an ineffectual dweeb and be a real architect (or actuary, accountant, engineer …) and sell something.”

Maybe it’s just as well that the architect and I didn’t have that argument after all.

Back in June I promised to post ideas on finding the time for business development, and haven’t done so. Things slowed down for us this summer, so I wasn’t pressed for time, myself. The time subject just didn’t seem interesting.

Summer is over, and, for now at least, the economy chugs along at a good clip. Once again my clients are struggling to get their client work done, and, once again, putting business development calls and meetings at the rear of the train. Many professionals are afraid to do any marketing for fear that the client called might want to hire them, when they have too little time to do it.

They forget that calls made today are unlikely to turn up business today, and will preserve relationships that you will need when the economy turns (see The Lead Glut and It’s Consequences). So, now both you and I are ready to talk, once again, about making time for business development.

Logically, there are a limited number of ways to find time in an overloaded schedule. You can: 1) replace some other activity (sleep, comes to mind, though some of you readers might not find that suggestion funny), 2) increase your efficiency somewhere, and so, free up time for business development, or 3) you alter something else you are doing so that you derive business development value from it, too. We call this Two-for-One marketing. I will address Two-for-Ones today.

In the first group of professionals that I ever coached, Jim had the most difficulty finding time for business development calls and meetings. He had taken on a workload that would have broken someone else’s back. During one coaching session he said he would be unable to make any calls the following week. He would be meeting with clients in Boston all day on Monday, in Detroit on Tuesday, in Milwaukee on Wednesday and in Memphis on Thursday and Friday. He would be in meetings or at airports most of the day.

I have a rule that I shared with him of not letting a day pass without doing something, no matter how small, to further my efforts to develop business. Jim agreed to try this approach. On his return, he told of how at each client site, he had dropped by the office of a person he knew but was not scheduled to meet. He would stick his head into the contact’s office and say, “I’m here to meet with x and just wanted to say hello.” This led to a brief conversation without taking much extra time. In most cases he arrive a little early at the client’s offices and took ten minutes before the meeting started to look up the additional person.

By Wednesday Jim already had a pay-off. The extra person he visited in Milwaukee gave him a modest lead, which had the potential to convert into something big.

James McKinsey, the founder of McKinsey & Company, believed in Two-for-Ones. According to his biography, he encouraged all of the firm’s consultants to have lunches with prospective clients. The consultants would be having lunch anyway, so why not get some additional value from it?

Other Two-for-Ones that I have seen people use are:

• Talking with seatmates on airplanes
• Making calls on cell phones while commuting
• Going to a sporting or cultural outing that you would go to anyway and taking a client with you