Publishing articles is one way to build your reputation as an expert. In an earlier posting (Hey! That’s Going Too Far), I described a formula for producing an article efficiently. Here is another.

Anecdotes attach to professionals the way that burs do to dogs. Each project a professional works on gets reduced to one or more anecdotes used to show prospective clients the depths of her experience, teach a lesson, or entertain a colleague. You can put your anecdotes to one more use as the material around which you write an article. I call this the Four-Stories Formula (unless there are only three stories, in which case I call it the . . . Can you guess?).

Many years ago, a colleague and I wrote an article entitled “Secrecy in Site Searches, Is It Necessary?” using such a formula. The article explored the need for secrecy when a company sought a location for a new plant or office.

The first paragraph questioned the need. Four anecdotes followed, each describing a problem that resulted from discovery of a company’s plans. Each anecdote described the kind of operation being located, the way the company’s identity and plans were discovered and the consequences. Each case illustrated a different consequence; escalating real estate prices, political pressure to select a suboptimal location, labor problems and . . . I no longer remember the fourth outcome. A final paragraph concluded that, yes, secrecy is necessary. A sidebar listed things the site seeker had to do to ensure his identity remained unknown.

It was a simple piece for a trade magazine, but we knew it was spreading our reputation as experts when, before we could give it to them, clients showed up for site visits with us with the checklist from the sidebar in hand.

The formula can be adapted to almost any area of professional practice. For example, an article could be built around people’s changing circumstances and how they resulted in the need to revise their wills. Another could show how different building conditions result in different ways to reduce energy consumption.

For additional examples of short pieces using this formula see the postings Two Tales from Toronto, Opportunistic Rainmaking and Getting It.

Watch out for competitors when you‘re networking with executives and other decision-makers. They may try to lure you into the “restaurant gambit” (similar to the hotel and vacation gambit) in an attempt to show what an unsophisticated bumpkin you are.

The restaurant gambit is a way to determine people’s status, financial and cultural, by their knowledge of expensive and trendy restaurants. It can be used offensively to embarrass anyone who isn’t a sophisticated foodie. It goes something like this:

Competitor: We went to Fruit Cocktail last night. Have either of you been? (The faux British construction ending the sentence with been, instead of the American, been there, wins the competitor one point. A second point goes for knowing of about Fruit Cocktail. You, of course, don’t even know it’s a restaurant and are about to say that the last thing you saw was The Lion King, when, mercifully, the executive speaks before you can embarrass yourself. This keeps you from being routed in the opening round. You do sense that you are being dragged into something involving high stakes, but you can’t put your finger on what it is, yet.)

Executive: We went the first time about three months ago. What did you think of it? (The executive shows his skill at the gambit by scoring three quick points with a single short sentence, one each for knowing of the restaurant first, for knowing it before it became trendy and for having been there more than once. Someone skilled at the gambit might also observe that he is laying a snare for the competitor. You aren’t consequential enough for him to worry about.)

Competitor: Oh, it was marvelous! And the wine list! We had a bottle of Resueou Garage for only $175! (Two points, one for the seemingly faultless pronunciation of the name and the other for showing that he’ll drop $175 on a bottle of wine. But he has also stepped squarely into the trap, which the executive now springs.)

Executive: We were a little disappointed. We had heard so much about the possum l’orange, but found it a bit gamey. (A point scored for daring to try the possum. Knowing the restaurant better, the exec’s opinion counts more than the competitor’s. The competitor loses a point for liking the restaurant more than he should. With the first two rounds complete, the exec and has a one-point lead over the competitor, while you are still stumbling around to understand what is going on. Whatever it is, it doesn’t feel good be so lost in the exec’s presence.)

Competitor: And it certainly doesn’t compare with the old Toto’s House, as they say it does. (Having just lost a point for saying that he liked a restaurant that the executive doesn’t, he suddenly realizes how crafty and skilled the executive is. He recovers quickly by showing his awareness of old Toto’s House. Seeking to displace his embarrassment at coming in second onto someone else and sensing that you are defenseless, he turns to you.) Which restaurants do you enjoy?

You: With two small children, we don’t get out much. China Joe’s has a great takeout menu. (You hope this will get a laugh, and the executive seems amused. Even so, you know you have had a thrashing and flee as soon as good manners allow.)

Does this sound familiar to you? If you were ever caught in a restaurant gambit, how did you handle it?

You have just a few days left in the year. Here are some reasons for calling your contacts that come but once a year:

1. I didn’t want the year to end without letting you know how much I have appreciated your . . .

2. We want to continue to support you next year as we have in this one. Do you expect to have any needs that we should be planning for?

3. As the workload finally slows down for the Holidays, I finally have time to make this call, which I have been planning to make for (weeks, months).

4. We should get together before we are both too swept up in next year’s activity.

5. Would you like our invoice before the end of the year?

Our best wishes for 2008.

Charlie Green, David Maister and I are engaged in a debate about the focus of today’s sales management on numbers (of meeting, proposals, etc.)

Do any of you have opinions about the ability to manage relationships by the numbers?

In an earlier posting, I described Build-It-and-They-Will-Come Thinking. This is a fallacious assumption held by some professionals that if you do one major effort, such as give a speech, prospective clients will come to you and hire you. To derive sales benefit from the speech you must abandon this assumption and treat the speech as just one step to acquiring a client.

Today I was reminded of another kind of erroneous thinking that reduces the success at selling professional services. I met with an actuary who had attended an association meeting a month ago. He had planned to follow up with thirty people he had met there and admitted that he hadn’t done so. I asked why not and he responded, “I haven’t got time to follow up with thirty people.” While true, this answer is logically flawed. He could at least have followed up with the most important contact he made at the event, a senior vice president at an account he was targeting. He might have even found time to follow up with five or maybe even ten. Instead, he had fallen into the trap of All-or-Nothing Thinking. Here are two more examples:

• A business developer at a Big Four accounting firm helped a partner craft a letter to be sent to the CEO of a bank. A note came back from the CEO, saying he had passed the letter on to his CFO, and suggesting that the accountant follow up there. The partner told the business developer, “You see, it didn’t work.” He had apparently defined success as immediate access to the CEO. It was get that meeting or nothing.
• A management consultant was finding the call discipline required to build a referral network onerous. Like the actuary described above, she was having difficulty finding time for making calls. “Besides,” she added, “what can I possibly have to say to all these people every month?” She had fallen into the all-or-nothing trap by thinking that she had to call everyone on her list once a month. That might be true of some of her contacts, but more infrequent intervals would be appropriate for most of them.

In my experience, this is a common kind of error. It seems so obvious that people feel embarrassed when you point out that they have made it. All three of the professionals described here are extremely smart. They just haven’t learned yet that rain making requires many, many small advances to win big every once in a while. They haven’t yet parsed the effort down to the many small steps that they can make day after day. When they do, they will be well on their way to becoming rainmakers.

Whether it is by cutting costs or increasing revenues, many professionals help their clients make more money. When selling to a client, it’s a good idea to determine how much money that will be, usually through a series of questions. Once the dollar amount is estimated, a rainmaker will sometimes go one step further, letting the client visualize what she would do with that money, if she had it. Doing so will remind the client of the urgency of getting the job done, so reducing the risk of a delay in hiring you. It will also help focus the client on the value of your services rather than on some preconceived idea of what they should cost. Here are two examples of such two-stepped series of questions.

Issue: Potential Real Estate Sale

Step One: Determine the Value

Q: How many acres did he donate to the college?
A: Ninety, but a third of that is wetlands.

Q: What is it worth per acre?
A: The developable acres have been appraised at $____________, the wetlands at $____________.

Q: How many acres would you be willing to sell?
A: We want to keep fifteen developable acres adjacent to the campus and all the wetlands. We will sell the rest.

Step Two: Letting Her Spend the Money

Q: Let’s see . . . That totals to about $ __________ and if you can acquire the old Peggoty farm, giving the site access to Dunmore Road, the value could as much as double. What would the college do with that money if you had it?

A: We badly need a new chemistry lab if we are to remain competitive in the recruitment of faculty and students.

Issue: Hiring the Right Talent

Step One: Determining the Value

Q: I can think of several reasons to get this position filled quickly. Which ones are you most concerned about?

A: I’m worried that some of the other research team members might jump ship. They all get offers from our competitors all the time, and if they sense the project is in trouble, they would be more open to accepting one.
Q: How would a loss of two or three of the researchers affect the project?

A: It could delay its completion by anywhere from four months to a year.

Q: What would a delay in the project cost the company in lost revenue for each month of delay?

A: We project sales of the A30 to build quickly to $____________ a month in the first six months.

Q: How much of a delay do you feel the recruitment and integration of three new team members in addition to the lead scientist would cause?

A: That would set us back eight months at the very least.

Step Two: Letting Her Spend the Money

Q: Ouch. If that could be reduced to a two-month delay, what would the additional funds be used for?

A: We cut dividends last year and want that money to restore them to previous levels.

Salesopedia is featuring my article “Networking Tips for Introverts” on their home page and newsletter this week. The direct link to the article is here.

Tracking down and talking to people you went to school with or worked with earlier in your life can be great fun and generate leads for lots of new business.

This is even more true of old clients. One person I know had consulted to a financial services mega corporation for years, when a sudden change in the CEO put most of his contacts at the company on the street looking for work. He stayed in touch with about ten of the most senior ones who quickly found jobs in other organizations. Three of these brought his firm in with them.

Three years later he took a look at a list of other people he had known at the mega corporation who were no longer there and with whom he had lost touch. He tracked down fifteen more. One of them bought $1,000,000 worth of services this year. The ballot is out on many of the others.

Finding old contacts is easier that it has ever been, because of the power of the Internet. Lifehacker.com has just posted an article entitled, How to Track Down Anyone on Line. This is a valuable source for finding people whom you have misplaced over the years.

But, before we give in and do it the easy way, let’s be sure it is the best way. In the old days (just yesterday, if you are my age), finding a lost contact often meant calling mutual friends who might know where she had gone. You might have to contact three people before finding someone who knew where the contact could be found.

Not as efficient as a Google search, it provided a wonderful excuse to call other people with whom you wanted to reconnect. You can call up someone you haven’t talked with for years and say, “Remember me. I know it’s been too long since we last talked. I was trying to track down Bev Binder and thought you might know how to reach her. But first, how have things been going for you since we last talked?”

In a recent posting, Reasons for Calling, I mentioned that having an adequate reason for calling is a challenge for most professionals just starting out to develop new business. Here is a readymade reason for calling lots of dormant contacts. Don’t let new technology seduce you away from taking advantage of it.

The December 2007 Carnival of Trust is now online, hosted by John Crickett and his UK-based blog Business Opportunities and Ideas.

Each month, the (rotating) host selects the Top Ten trust-related blog postings from across the web during the prior month. The Carnival always makes for good reading, and the hosts provide a valuable service through their editing and commentary.

This month’s carnival includes my post A Secret about Rainmakers and Their Trusted Advisor Relationships.

Charlie Green started the Carnival of Trust. See the Blog Carnival website for information on joining a future carnival.

I met with Andy today.  Barely hidden beneath his usual cheeriness, stress crackled like static electricity.  A lateral hire at the partner level, he got his job on the expectation that he would bring in enough work to revive a failing practice.  He has been at it a year and has yet to deliver … anything. 

The rainmaker at one firm who can’t even raise a dust devil at another is seen fairly often in the professions.  Why?  When a client buys a professional service, she is buying the ability of a team to solve a serious problem.  She bases her perception of that ability on the reputation of the seller’s firm, on any past experience she has with the firm and on the trust she has in the word of the rainmaker. 

When the rainmaker moves to a new firm, a lot changes.  If not better or worse than the old firm’s, the reputation of the new one is at least different.  The rainmaker may praise the abilities of his new one, but the client knows he was singing a different melody just yesterday, and, rightly is skeptical.  Many will prefer to wait and see, before taking a chance on the new arrangement.

Rainmakers tend to be optimists who overrate their own importance in the buyers’ weighting of factors in their hiring decisions.   The inability to sell to their old clients comes as a devastating surprise.  When that occurs, the rainmaker often loses focus and seeks to sell a broader array of services or recommends the latest miracle marketing service that will get him better meetings or jumps to another firm in hopes that it will go better there.

I don’t want Andy to fall into any of these traps.  In his case I think he should stay the course.  That’s because the input measures are favorable. He is having more meetings with the right people on the right subjects.  Selling is a numbers game. Get the inputs right and the probability that someone will buy grows.  I think he is near a breaking point on several pursuits.  I feel his success coming in my aging bones, as sure as spring follows winter.

It will take courage for Andy to stay the course.  I hope he does.  And I hope I am right and that luck starts to run his way.