In earlier postings, I argued that using easy or unoriginal tactics can often get you new clients faster at lower cost than you can by doing something hard or original.  You should use them, because there are no extra points for going after business hard or original ways. 

If there are fun ways to get business, you should use those, too, there being no extra points for suffering through something unpleasant.  Here are some examples of rainmakers who had fun while pursuing new business:

The Music Lover:  A young executive recruiter and lover of classical music bought four season tickets to a string quartet.  All season, he and his wife entertained a client and spouse every couple of weeks at each new performance.  The performances created a structure that helped him build business development into his routine, allowed him to spend more time with his wife doing something they enjoyed and helped him bring in searches.

The Athlete:  A German management consultant and intense amateur athlete arranged an athletic event, such as bicycling across Germany or climbing a mountain, once a year.  He would invite a few senior executives from client organizations and suggest that they invite other senior executives they knew at other corporations. That helped him grow his network.  Bicycle across Germany with a prospective client and you will almost certainly have built the foundation for a longer relationship.

Treating One’s Self:  An actuary arranged a weekend getaway to a spa for herself and a few clients, all women.  They all paid thier own way on this mini vacation.  They all came back feeling refreshed from the trip.  And the clients came back knowing the actuary and each other a lot better.

The Opera Lover:  An attorney and opera lover in Phoenix would come to New York once a year for an opera binge.  During the days he would visit with lawyers at firms without an Arizona presence, offering his help if a client of theirs should ever need representation in the state.  In the evenings, he would go to the opera. 

The Chinese Chef:  An accountant in New York loved to cook Chinese food.  Once a month his wife and he would host a party at which they would serve Chinese food to two or three other couples.  He did this year after year, developing close personal relationships with clients, prospective clients and key referrers of new business.  And his cooking got better and better with all that practice.

You will be more motivated to make rain, if you find a way to make it fun.

If you have found other ways to develop relationships with clients, prosepctive clients and referrers and have some fun doing it, I would like to hear about it.  Please leave a comment describing what you did.

In an interesting post on the real estate brokerage industry, Sean Purcell describes a problem common in the professions: A successful rainmaker builds a team to handle all of the work she generates, only to find the time required to manage the team comes at the expense of rainmaking. 

The most common solution to this problem at professional services firms is for the rainmaker to ally herself with another senior professional on her team who is good at management, but less so at rainmaking.  This works well, often for many years, until the rainmaker leaves the firm.  The successor chosen to run the practice is then often the succesful manager who has developed team members to deliver all the work generated by the rainmaker.  But, who then is to make rain?  Crisis follows years of success in many cases.

Among the reasons we run the Harding & Company blog is to help firms avoid this crisis