In a market made up of many thousands of people there would be chaos if every person in the market tried to meet and work with all of the others.  In a market made up of 5,000 people, this would require 12.5 million separate parings.  Imagine each member of the market trying to schedule and meet with 4,999 others.*  

Chaos theory also describes the other extreme in which there is rigidity with no one making any new contacts. In the grey area between these two extremes lies complexity, where some people manage to meet some others and make things happen.  That’s the world we live in.

When mathematicians model complex systems on a computer, they often find attractors, nodes, like magnets, which attract others.  In network markets these attractors are rainmakers.

If you once establish a strong lead flow, you will find yourself much sought after by others who want to feed off of your contacts.  You attract them because you know so many of the right people and are always meeting new ones.  You attract them because the right people seek your advice, which allows you to spin off leads for your own firm and for others.

Several identifiable types are attracted to you, including:

Other Attractors: Attractors seek each other out for obvious reasons.  When two or more come together, they create a lead generating machine.  They also create an in-group or clique.  These cliques create a powerful attraction.  Many are drawn, but few are let in.

Client Minders: These people know their business and deliver excellent service.  Their clients love them, and they are often good reactive sellers.  But with the exception of turning up some add-on work at their current account, they don’t know how to generate leads.  Within a firm the paring of a rainmaker/attractor with a minder can be a powerful combination around which many a practice has been built. Outside the firm, grinders tend to work intensively at a client for a few years.  When work at a client dries up, they spend six months in hell hoping to get some more work and not knowing what to do about it.  They are attracted to rainmakers, because the rainmakers have one thing they haven’t, lead flow. 

Most rainmakers I know like to help out client minders, because they know that any client the minders are referred to will be treated well, and because most minders are decent, hard-working, likeable people.  Still, when a minder comes back for more leads time and again, the rainmaker is likely to wonder why the minder hasn’t taken steps to avoid the dearth of work, yet again.  And rainmakers need help, too.  Must the flow always be one way, they wonder.
For every rainmaker there seem to be three or four minders, all looking for leads.  At any given time, one or more are hoping that the rainmaker will toss something their way.  This gets old for the rainmaker, as much as she values their friendship and likes them as people.

Proto-rainmakers/attractors: These are people who demonstrate a fundamental understanding of networking, but are still learning.  They are seldom a member of a clique yet nor are their networks big.  But they will try to help the rainmaker, not just looking for handouts.  Most rainmakers will try to help proto-rainmakers, because they like to help people come along.  There is also a chance with this type that the rainmaker’s help will be returned.

There are a variety of other people who want access your lead flow. There are those who have started a business but don’t have a clue about how to get find a client and so, probably won’t be in business for long.  Others see great synergy between your practice and theirs, synergy meaning that you feed them leads and they buy you a lunch in return.  Rainmakers will try to help these people, too, but not put much energy into it.

* Many markets have more than 5,000 members and the number of possible parings goes up geometrically as you add people.  So, a network of 10,000 has just shy of 50 million possible paring, almost four times larger than the 5,000 person market does.
 

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)

This entry was posted on Friday, June 27th, 2008 at 8:43 am and is filed under Rain making, Leads. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.