(Don’t miss the Example Introductory Letter Free Book Offer at the end of this post.)

Hoping to obtain a meeting with a senior executive, you have drafted a letter of introduction and rewritten it a dozen times, whittled and honed it down to three terse paragraphs. Without wasting a syllable it states who you are, what you want, and why the client will want to give it to you.

At the end of the first paragraph, which describes your firm, you have written,
”I have attached __________________.” Uncertain what to include, you have not completed the sentence, but the letter must go out today, and so you must decide.

If you send the letter electronically, the choices are:

• A link to your website, which includes a client list, partner bios, descriptions of work done by the firm, a list of services and other information
• A link to an electronic reprint of a an article you wrote
• A link to the firm’s newsletter
• A one page description of a case or project the firm worked on, also available on the website.

If you send a paper letter of introduction, your choices are:

• A twelve-page glossy brochure
• A client list
• A one page description of a case or project the firm worked on
• A list of firm publications available on request
• Your bio and those of others in the firm

What would you send? Here are some guidelines:

1. Less is more. The less you send with a document, the more it looks like executive-to-executive correspondence. More attachments make it look more like a pitch or a mass mailing. Don’t send the brochure. DON’T send the brochure.
2. more senior the executive, the more that less is more, if you follow my drift. Just in case you don’t, let me repeat that in other words. Very top executives don’t read a lot of marketing collateral; they don’t have time for reading through mass-mailed documents or anything that looks like one. So with letters to senior execs, you really want to reduce enclosures to a minimum. Consider sending your letter without any attachments.
3. If the receiver has never heard of you or your firm, it sometimes helps to send some form of external validation, such as an article about you or your firm or a reprint of an article you have published in a journal he would recognize. But keep it small, because less is more. An exception might be a copy of a book you or a colleague from your firm has written, because, by its nature it appears substantive rather than salesy.
4. If your objective is something other than getting a meeting, you might want to attach a little more. A letter sent primarily to remind an executive of who you are and what you do may benefit from a short attachment, like a reprint of an article that mentions you, a reprint of an article you wrote of relevance to the person you are writing to. But skip the brochure.
5. You have more flexibility if you send an email, because you can create links to your website that are subtle because they look like a standard link appearing in all your documents.

And when should you use the brochures, you might ask? Many find that they are really good for toasting marshmallows.

My Example Introductory Letter Free Book Offer:
I am looking for examples of good emails and letters of introduction used by professionals. After changing or blocking out any names of people or firms that you wish to keep private, please send your best samples by April 21, 2008 to I am looking for examples of good emails and letters of introduction used by professionals. After changing or blocking out any names of people or firms that you wish to keep private, please send your best samples by April 21, 2008 to fharding@HardingCo.com.

I will send copies of one of my books, Rain Making-2^nd Edition-Attract New Clients No Matter What Your Field or Creating Rainmakers to the two people who, in my opinion, provide the best introductory letter examples. Be sure to include your name, mailing address and phone number with your submission.

*******************************

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

Management Consulting News just published an interview with me. We discussed the new edition of Rain Making, how the Internet has changed the way people sell, “call discipline,” and more.

See Ford Harding on Rainmaking for Consultants to read the whole interview.

*******************************

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

Suzanne Lowe just posted a review of Rain Making on her professional services blog The Expertise Marketplace.

See Rainmaker, Rainmaker, Make me Some Rain.

Before reading this you may be interested to read my previous posting No Time to Rehearse? You’re Fired!

At many professional firms, preparing for a sales meeting means many hours spent preparing a PowerPoint presentation deck that will double as a leave-behind. This document and maybe a proposal, too, have been through several iterations, proofed and reproofed, adjusted, adapted and then admired by the sales team who may or may not remember to thank the graphics specialist who stayed up all night incorporating last minute changes.

With document in hand and confidence buoyed, the sales team grabs a cab to take them to the client’s office.  During the fifteen minute ride they decide what they will say and who will say it.

This is insane.

Long ago I was put in charge of a struggling office that was losing pitch after pitch. To turn the situation around, I did post mortem interviews with as many people who had hired other firms as I could.  I used a process for the interview that avoided biasing the clients’ responses (see Chapter 24 in the second edition of my book, Rain Making: How to Attract New Clients No Matter What Your Field for a detailed description of the process.).  I must have done twenty such interviews over several months, sometimes with separate members of the client’s selection committee.

I first asked the client why she had chosen the other firm, letting her prioritize her reasons without any suggestions from me.  I then asked what our competitor had done well, what we had done well and not so well, again without offering any suggestions.

Once I had her view of the decision, I asked her to compare what we did with what the competitor did, starting from first contact.  One issue at a time I asked how each firm handled the initial phone inquiry from the client, how each handled the fact finding meeting, the proposal, the pitch meeting, the leave-behind document, and follow up.

Not once was the proposal or leave-behind mentioned by any of the clients until I brought it up.  Not once!  When I did bring them up, it was clear the clients didn’t remember them very well, if at all.  I suspect that many of them never so much as glanced at the leave-behind.  The deck or pitch book were mentioned by two or three clients, all referring to one image, a particularly compelling diagram our competitor had concocted.

What they did remember and what all of them volunteered without prompting was how our people and our competitors had handled themselves in face-to-face interactions with their people.  This they could talk about in detail and with emotion. This is what they cared about!

Like so many other firms we had been putting all our energies into things that mattered little and treating cavalierly that which really counted.  It was insane!
And when we fixed it by taking rehearsals seriously—putting in time and effort where it mattered—we began to win again.
 

For more advice like this, please see Ford Hardings’ new book: Rain Making, Attract New Clients No Matter What Your Field, 2nd Edition

“Rain Making, in its new edition demonstrates its position as the single most sensible, accessible guide to building a professional practice…”
David Maister, author of Strategy and the Fat Smoker and co-author of The Trusted Advisor (with Charles Green and Robert Galford)

It’s about time someone spoke up for distrust for a change. 

I have an April 1 guest post on distrust on Charlie Green’s Trust Matters blog. See Ode to Distrust and join the discussion.