(Blogger Bizze Guye has tagged me to comment on warming up cold calls as one participant in a meme. For other contributors go to his site.

Cold calls, sales meetings at your request with someone you have never met, are universally loathed in the professions. But they can be effective, especially because they offer direct access to a prospective client of your choice. No other technique I know of does that. When in hot pursuit of an opportunity that will go to someone else, unless you move quickly, a cold call may be your best shot.

Of course, you would be crazy not to warm it up, if you can.

1. Market Like Crazy: A major goal of your firm’s marketing effort is to build its brand, a market awareness of what you do well. Developing a brand takes time, so start now and cold calling will be easier a year or two from now. I still remember the first cold call I made on a person who had one of my books and had heard of me from two people. I was so much easier than any I had made before.

2. Ask for an Introduction: If someone introduces you to the prospective client, the temperature of the meeting starts about ten degrees warmer than if you go it alone. People with large networks can almost always identify some who knows who will provide an introduction. The ability to do so frequently is a hallmark of rainmakers.

3. Identify Someone You Know in Common: During the small talk which precedes the meeting, see if you can identify someone whom both the client and you know. Say a few nice words about someone you both admire and you can almost feel the warming up of most relationships. Rainmakers, with their big networks, are good at this.

4. Use the Client’s Time Well: The client is a busy person and probably feels she is doing you a favor by meeting with you. Do your homework so that you focus discussions on something of interest to her. If you can, call someone who works for her or some higher in the organization, who knows you well enough to tell you about the client and her interests.

5. Keep up the Relationship: Find reasons to stay in front of the client from time to time, so that the relationship continues to build and so each call you make is warmer than the last.

For more on this subject, including a description of how to get and conduct a cold call meeting, see Chapter 7, “Eliminating the Dread of Cold Calls,” in my book, Rain Making-2nd Edition—Attract New Clients No Matter What Your Field.

(Now I am tagging John Caddell of Caddell Insight Group and Ian Brodie of Lighthouse Consulting to write a post about warming up cold calls.)

In responding to my recent post, Rainmaking Problem #2: The Next Level of Blogging, Mel Lester raised several questions that reminded me of how I felt in my early blogging days.  (He wasn’t really singing the blues, but I liked the way the title sounded, so I kept it.)  I will give my answers to his questions.  If you disagree or have something to add, please comment below.

Who reads the blogs, especially new ones?  Are they mostly other bloggers, as the comments to early posts seem to suggest?

I don’t know for sure.  I believe that early audiences are made up primarily of people you have notified of the blog and other bloggers.  Bloggers are more interested in blogging and other blogs than are most people, so they are more likely than non-bloggers to come across yours.  Capturing a few of these as regular readers helps grow the blog because they are likely to mention your blog in theirs and to link to it.  This brings in more readers.  Early on, you should be targeting other bloggers for this reason.  More acuratelly, you should always be targeting other bloggers for this reason.  So, for example, you can comment on other blogs on yours with trackbacks to them.

Do buyers of your services read blogs?

Probably not, especially in its early months.  This is even more likely to be true, if your buyers are extremely busy people.  The older they are, the less likely they are to read blogs.

In that case, is blogging an effective means of connecting with them?

Like other marketing tools and techniques, blogging is most effective if integrated into a larger marketing effort.  Your buyers are more likely to see your blog, if you send them an email with a link to a post of interest to them.  If you can get your posts published in on-line newsletters, more people see them and some will be attracted to them.  Assigning posts as required reading in your training programs also reinforces your blog’s importance and its availability as a resource.  Through these techniques, readership grows little by little.  Good content speeds up the process.

Bloggers I talk to cite the value of blogs in making it easy for prospective clients to find their firm when using search engines.  (See The News from India: Blogging to Sell Professional Services and More News from Down Under: How Shawn Callaghan Blogs for Fun & Profit )When I search on Google for “management of AE firms,” for example, the first page includes references to Zweig White, PSMJ, Sullivan Keiss and others.  Your firm is found at the bottom of Page 3, in listing number 40, which isn’t bad.  If I do a blog search, it comes up on Page 1, listing number three, which is great.

None of this demonstrates the superiority of blogging over other routes to market.  Whether your time is better spent on it or some other activity, I don’t know and wonder, myself.

Your ability to ask for something and your likelihood of getting what you ask for sometimes depends on how you phrase your request. Here are wordings of requests others have found effective. The desirability of using any of these words depends on the situation and your relationship with the client. Also, words that flow naturally from one speaker aren’t necessarily suited to another. Some of these words have been provided in earlier postings and are consolidated here for your convenience.

Purpose: To keep a client talking
Words:     Tell me more.   Could you elaborate on that?  This is helpful.  Please go on.  Could you give me an example? How do you know that? I’m not sure I understand.  And, so?  Really?  Is that so?  What else?

Purpose: To ask for a meeting
Words: I do a lot of work in the [industry or function] area, so it’s my business to know people like you, and I’d like to meet you.

Purpose: To request introduction from satisfied client
Words: Could I ask you a personal favor?

Could I ask you a personal favor?  I know that you belong to [an association].  Could I come with you to the next meeting as your guest, so that I can meet the  people there?

Could I ask you a personal favor?  Peter Smith is your counterpart in the XYZ Division, isn’t he?  Could you introduce me?

Purpose: To be seated next to possible client at party
Words: I have wanted to get to know [name] for a long time.  Would you consider seating us near each other at dinner?

Purpose: To request intro to person mentioned by client
Words: That sounds like someone I should know.  Could you introduce me?

Purpose: To turn conversation to business
Words: I know you didn’t join me for lunch today in order to hear a sales pitch, but that’s actually something we could help you with, if you want to talk about it.  No pressure.

Is it okay for me to put my sales hat on for a minute?

Hey, are we ever going to do any business together?

Purpose: To request coaching from a secretary
Words: I want to use [your boss’s] time well, so perhaps you could give me a little advice. . .

Purpose: To start with agreement where there is little
Words: What has occurred hasn’t been good for either of our companies, and it’s in both our interests to get it fixed.

Purpose: To confirm that a client is ready to hire you
Words: So, where do we go from here?

Purpose: To request help without putting client on the spot
Words: Could I ask you for some advice?

Purpose: To ask for advice
Words: Could I ask for a little mentoring?

Do any of you readers have useful words or phrases that you could share?

(This is part of my series on Rainmaking Problems. I hope you will leave a comment with your thoughts on a solution to this problem.)

Today I place my own problem before you.  As a person who puts himself forward as knowing something about selling professional services, I have tried to keep abreast of changes in marketing techniques.  I do so by interviewing people who have used a technique, but also by using it myself.  I’m able to talk about how to write an article, because I have written over 100.  I’m able to talk about networking, because I have a large network that feeds me business opportunities year after year.

The Internet is changing the way that professionals market and sell their services.  One of my efforts to keep abreast of these changes was starting this blog.  Having published it for about a year and a half, I feel justified in making some comments about how blogging works.  I may not be an expert, but at least I have a grasp of what I know and of how much I don’t know.

In the first category is my knowledge and that if this blog is to be truly successful I must take it to the next level.  I know what this level looks like, but I don’t how to get there.  Having looked at a good many blogs by now, I believe that successful ones move from the driving force of content to that of community and that this is done through comments.  Let me explain.

The day you start a blog, you have no readers.  You may be able to attract readers once with an advertisement or a mass e-mailing, but to keep them coming back requires content.  And supplying that content can be deliciously fun at first.  I look back on writing some of my early posts, such as He Talks Too Much and Three Ways to Get a Good Seat, with pleasure.  In this way you build your first readership base.  I will call this Level 1.  Business blogs without solid content fade quickly.

While building to Level 1, your posts receive few comments.  A low percentage of those who read blogs ever comment—the figure one percent is commonly thrown about.  You simply don’t have enough readers to spark much comment, let alone dialogues.

But many people surf the net not just to receive information, but to exchange it.  If you want to grow your base of readers to the next level, you must engage them in a dialog.  That is, you must write in such a way to attract comments; not just any comments, but the kind that attracts still others.  If you do this assiduously, those looking to participate in a dialog, plus those interested in reading debate in addition to content will form a community of readers, which I will call Level 2.  It is much larger than achieved at Level 1.  The community comes to your site to read and to be read, to agree and to disagree, and to feel.  They come to feel smart or funny or provocative, but above all else they come to feel connected.

And that’s where I need help.  I believe I have plateaued at Level 1 and want to move ahead to Level 2.  But I don’t know how to do it.  There’s something wrong with either my writing or my format or something.  Or perhaps I’m just not patient enough.  As bloggers and participants in blogging communities, can you advise me how to move from content to community, through making people want to comment to making them feel connected?

Or am I looking at the problem the wrong way altogether?

(Got a problem selling professional services? Feel free to email me your problem and it may become a future “Rainmaking Problem.”)

Sometimes we want to ask a favor, but feel awkward doing so.  Perhaps we don’t know the person well or they’ve already done a lot for us, so asking for more might seem greedy.  Whatever the reason, you don’t want to put the other person on the spot with a direct request.

Sometimes you can resolve the problem by asking indirectly.  Words you can use for this purpose include:

Can I ask you for some advice?
Could I ask you for a little mentoring?

To be asked for advice or mentoring is a compliment, the person asked being attributed superior knowledge, judgment or experience.  Also the person asked has great latitude in choosing a response.  She can spend ten minutes or an hour with you.  She can simply give you a few words to the wise or open her contact list to you.

Sometimes a contact will help beyond the expectations of the person making the request. Gabriela, an executive recruiter, ran into a former client at a conference and asked him for some mentoring on business development.  He immediately began introducing her to other people he knew at the conference, describing her work as a recruiter in ways that would have sounded immodest coming from her.

Caution!  Do not use this approach indiscriminately. If it is seen as simply a ruse to get introductions, the contact will feel you are being manipulative as opposed to tactful.  Only use these words with someone whose advice or mentoring you would legitimately value.  That way you won’t come across as false.  If all you come away with from the conversation is some good advice, you should be thankful.  After all, that is all you asked for.

A few months back I wrote a post on to-do lists, a short piece to be run in late August, when readership was down.  As sometimes happens with blog posts, this one attracted more attention than I had expected, both in written responses and in comments made by people I talked with.  The humble to-do list is the source of more emotion than I had thought.

To-do list junkies strongly advocates their use to ensure prioritization, productivity, and responsiveness of tasks.  Several people praised David Allen’s Getting Things Done books and software, which I jokingly described as a graduate level course in to-do listing.  The software allows you to sort tasks by priority into different lists.  You can also sort by the time required, so that when you have ten found minutes, only tasks that can be completed within that opening appear.  Or you can sort by the need for access to a phone, so that activities requiring one don’t appear when you pull up your list on an airplane.  These are useful enhancements to the old-fashioned lists.  David Allen has come up with the proverbial better mouse trap.

The principal complaint about to-do lists remains their demotivating effect when they get too long and when workload denies the author of the list the satisfaction of crossing tasks out.  Said a partner at one firm, “One of the people who works for me froze up when his list got too long.”  I have a suggestion for people who suffer from this problem.

A to-do list person is a doer.  She likes to get things done and wants the respect that others show her for contributing.  Her can-do approach has won her promotion and authority.  As a side effect to this behavior, she sometimes does things she shouldn’t, because she fails to delegate, to say no or to insist that someone else does his job.  If she treats this by increasing the sophistication of her to-do list, it is like addressing a growing overdue receivables problem by hiring more collection agents, instead of by tightening the credit policy.

Such people (and I admit that I am one) may benefit by putting together a Not-To-Do List, which itemizes the things you are to cure yourself of doing.  This list should be looked at daily.  A task can only be scratched off when someone else is doing it routinely.  Items that people I know have gotten rid of this way include filling out expense reports, making duplicates of documents, making travel arrangements, screening emails, proof reading, and scheduling meetings.

The Not-To-Do List Challenge

So here is a challenge for you all.  We all do things that are not a good use of our time.  I ask each one of you to identify something you are doing now that you will work your way out of doing over the next six months.  Please send me a short comment noting what you are offloading.  If I get enough, I will assemble a list of Not-To-Do Items that can help us all identify more ways to free up time for developing business.

“These are the times that try men’s souls,” wrote Thomas Paine at a low point in this nation’s fight for independence.  That famous sentence might be translated for use in the current revenue crisis that many professional practices will face over the next year as “In this time of crisis for our clients and their companies, our character as friends and our grit as rainmakers are determined.”

Rainmakers build referral networks made up of clients and other influential people.  By the implicit contract of networking, you and your network of contacts do what you can for each other, looking out for each other’s well being, helping each other advance careers or sell work.  In short, you are friends, even if it is a strictly business friendship.

Some, perhaps many, of these contacts now face a career crisis.  Will you be there for them in this time of need?  Or will you be so wrapped in your own crisis that you lose track of theirs?  Even if you can’t steer them to someone who can hire them, you can still give moral support by calling and showing interest in them when, perhaps, few others do.  You don’t want to be what Thomas Paine would have called a summer soldier or consultant Michael Shays calls a teabag friend (one who only calls when in hot water.)

Your rainmaking grit will also be tested, because you will have to work twice as hard to win less work than you sold before.  You have to get out in front of more people, pursue more false leads and find more dead ends to win enough work to keep your people busy.  These are the times that rainmakers try their soles, as it were, because they use up more shoe leather going from meeting to meeting.

You will read advice in this blog and in other places about where to look for business in hard times.  As good as this advice may be, work will be scarce and winning it will be hard.  In a recession, rainmaking is composed of 80% grit, 15% empathy and 5% for everything else.

Larry Bodine has written a superb portrait of a rainmaker., lawyer Peter Klee, for lawjobs.com Career Center.

(This is part of my series on Rainmaking Problems. I hope you will leave a comment with your thoughts on a solution to this problem.)

I am coaching a woman whom I will call Sophie.  When I asked for her boss’s assessment of her, he said that she doesn’t put herself forward enough in client meetings and especially in sales meetings.  He cited a recent sales meeting they had gone on together, at which he felt compelled to do the most talking, she seemed so reserved.

Sophie says that her style differs from her boss’s.  She feels it natural to let the client talk, expecting to say something when she can add real value.  That her clients all adore and respect her suggests this is true.  She says that she doesn’t talk much at meetings when her boss is present, because she doesn’t want to fight with him for air space.  Knowing the man, I can believe this is true.

Still, I have never seen either one in a sales meeting.  Her boss has a track record of selling successfully and, so far, Sophie doesn’t.

What would you recommend that Sophie do? Is this HER problem or HIS problem? How should she continue pleasing her clients while gaining the respect of her boss?

Please respond below.

(Got a problem selling professional services? Feel free to email me your problem and it may become a future “Rainmaking Problem of the Week.”)

I have decided to make a change in this blog, which I hope will benefit readers as much as I think it will me.  I will continue to post on Mondays and Wednesdays, as always.  However, every other Wednesday’s post will have a new format.  It will provide an example of a problem that a client, a reader or I have in selling professionals services or in helping people learn to do so.  These will be problems that I do not feel that I have satisfactory answers for.  I will then ask you readers for suggestions.

The best part of blogging is hearing from readers.  Done right both the blogger and the reader benefit from this exchange.   Recently, Glenn Andrew provided some interesting insights on elevator speeches that gave me some useful ideas.  Ian Brodie taught me about more sophisticated applications of to-do lists than I had realized exist.  I suspect others thought so as well.  By posing more questions, I hope to generate more exchanges of this kind.  What do you think of this idea?

Please see tomorrow’s post to get an idea of what I have in mind.