A Lesson from Edwin Heft: Creating Rainmakers
Rereading the notes from one of our several hundred interviews with rainmakers, I came across this story about Edwin Heft, an accountant and partner at Touche before it began its long series of mergers with other firms:
A senior partner, Edwin Heft, decided that there had to be a way to get the more junior members of the firm out in the market learning how to develop business. He decided that this should be done by establishing a practice development committee composed of senior managers, managers and staff accountants. A senior manager was to be chair and Heft served as an advisor.
The committee was given a small budget to allocate as it wished on business development. Heft understood that in the early stages it was important to reward efforts rather than results. You can sell professional services by a shot gun or rifle approach. With a shot gun approach, you make many contacts and get the message out to all, but the net you throw is wide and it may not pay off for a long time. He realized that if you want to encourage young professionals to get out in the market place, you must reward the effort, because the young person otherwise is doing it strictly on faith, and that faith is sorely tested.
Becoming a rainmaker is ego-deflating. There is a lot of rejection, or what looks like rejection to the inexperienced. To boost morale, committee members were rewarded with a small bonus. They set goals, but didn’t evaluate themselves; Heft did that.
It was a small effort for four or five years, and it worked. Heft had been savvy about who he picked for the program and insightful about how to make it go. The experiment was highly successful. Three of the four senior managers became great business-getters. One later became chairman of Touche.
Edwin Heft was one of the rare rainmakers who knew how to help others learn to sell. Almost fifty years later, we at Harding & Company had to reinvent through hard practice what he got so right the first time he tried. I just wish I knew more about this singular effort to create rainmakers.
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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
