False Clairvoyance
In earlier postings (Build It and They Will Come, All or Nothing Thinking and Dealing With Unreturned Phone Calls) I described thinking habits that undercut your will to create rain. Another is False Clairvoyance.
False Clairvoyance occurs when a professional feels that some, usually negative, outcome is certain and acts accordingly. Someone who realizes there are other possible outcomes acts differently and so sometimes secures an advantage.
For example, a professional goes to an association meeting, which a colleague has recommended as a good place to get leads. After a couple of awkward conversations with other attendees, he says to himself, “This will never work.” Acting as if this were true, he gives up and goes home, without questioning the validity of the thought. A competitor goes to four of the associations monthly meetings, and, at the last one picks up a lead.
“Never” is a long time. Any statement including words like “never,” “always,” “inevitable,” or “definite,” warrants reconsideration before acting on it. Rainmakers are likely to consider the possibility of a positive outcome. As one rainmaker put it to me, “When you’re talking with clients, good things tend to happen.”
False clairvoyance is an especially seductive thinking habit, because, if we define our objectives narrowly enough, the prediction is perilously close to the truth.
Let us say, for example, that facing a revenue shortage, the management of the firm asks all of its fifty professionals to call five current and former clients. Believing, accurately, that the probability of any one call turning up a lead rounds to zero, several of the professionals don’t make the effort. But the probability of at least one of the fifty professionals obtaining a lead this way may be quite high. If we broaden the goal, the probability of something beneficial coming out of the calls is almost a certainty.
So, when you feel discouraged and are thinking of giving up on an effort to make rain, ask yourself if false clairvoyance is undermining your resolve.
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Order your copy of Ford Harding’s new and revised edition of Rain Making, called ”…an essential guide for anyone responsible for business development in the professional services industry…” - Mark Mactas, Chairman and CEO Towers Perrin
