Networking is helping people, as Oscar Megerdichian told me long ago.  A network contact will see few things as helpful as assisting her child in a job search.  A previous post listed five ways to help.  Here are five more.

6. Provide a practice job interview.  Job interviews intimidate most first-time job seekers.  A practice interview in a low-risk environment is usually greatly appreciated and greatly enhances the job-seeker’s likelihood of doing a real interview well.  The young job seeker will often take straight talk from you about appearance, posture and language better than she will from a parent.

7. Provide them with questions to ask during interviews.  Most inexperienced job seekers are painfully ill-equipped for an interview.  They have no idea of what to say or ask.  But if they do ask good questions, their chances of getting hired increase noticeably.  Questions they can ask, but probably won’t without a little help include:  In your opinion, what makes this job important to the company?  How will anyone know if the job is being done well or poorly?  What are the consequences for the firm of the job getting done well or poorly?  What made past occupants of the job successful at it?  What made those that didn’t do well at it fail?  What are your biggest worries about this position?

8. Coach them on follow-up to an interview.  Most have no clue about how to follow up after an interview.  They don’t know what to put in a letter thanking the prospective employer for the opportunity to meet.  They don’t know how or how often to follow up by phone.  Guidance here can make the difference between getting an offer and not getting one.

9. Hire them.  Give them a summer job or part time job.  If they are a good fit for your firm, give them a job.

10. Be tolerant if they don’t follow up with you.  Chances are about fifty-fifty that the young person you help will remember to let you know when they land a job or thank you for the help you gave. Remember that they are young.  The parent will be mortified to find out that the child hasn’t called you.  Putting the parent at ease by saying that you aren’t troubled by the child’s breech of etiquette is a part of the help you are giving.

And after the kid gets a job, let the parents know how delightful their child is.  We all love to hear that about our children and all worry, often needlessly, that the sullen face they may put on at home gets carried into the marketplace.

(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.)

Lest you think this case seem irrelevant to you, it is but an extreme version of situations many of us face when selling to a committee with some of the members attending by phone. By studying extremes we often learn things less apparent in milder versions.

A turnaround management firm we have worked with sells its services to committees of creditors. The firm is often asked on one-or-two-week’s notice to present to such a committee that will pick an adviser from three to five firms after all have made their pitch. Each firm is assigned a slot running anywhere from twenty to forty-five minutes. Most are at the shorter end of the range.

Perhaps ten to twelve members of the committee attend the meetings. They usually include a member of the workout department from the troubled company’s bank, representatives from major vendors and others. Each creditor usually has an attorney with him.

Now comes the hard part: The meetings are held by conference call with each creditor and the turnaround managers participating from their separate offices. The attorneys may also be attending from their offices or from the offices of their clients. Just imagine, a twenty minute presentation to anywhere from ten to twenty people, all attending by phone from separate locations!

I advised that in this environment the chances of winning go way up if you are well networked with the creditors and their attorneys before you even get the invitation. As true as that is, it doesn’t say anything about how you should manage the meeting, itself.

Any thoughts? How can the client shine in this difficult situation?

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

To get in front of a senior executive, you often have to go through a secretary. When working with such a person always remember:

1. Without her help, the chances of getting a meeting are slim.
2. She is a lot more experienced with meeting-getting tactics than you are.
3. She is smart and well paid. There is a good chance that she is at least as smart as you are.
4. She knows more about the executive and his interests than almost anyone.
5. Ditto about the company.
6. She wants to help the right people get on the boss’s agenda. It’s your job to convince her that you are one of those people.
7. Most are predisposed to be helpful in ways beyond getting a meeting with the boss, if you let them.
8. She will likely keep her job longer than the boss does.

Of course, it isn’t necessarily a she.

There must be things to add to this list. Any suggestions?

One way to advance a relationship with a contact is to help him, and few kinds of help are more appreciated than help to the contact’s child who is looking for a job.  It may be a summer job or a first full-time job.  But it’s urgent for the job seeker and a source of concern for the parent, whose advice isn’t always welcome at this stage in the child’s life.

Helping out can be fun for you, too, if you like to help young people come along in the world.  Here are five ways you can help a child.  Five more will published in a later post.

1. Provide a tour of your firm.  Learning how a business works fascinates most of us and more so, the young and inexperienced.  Of course, an architect’s office, with its models and drawings is easier to show off than is an actuary’s office.  But, properly explained, most businesses are interesting.

2. Provide them with information on your profession.  Most people just entering the workforce know little about a profession. The internet doesn’t provide a basic mapping of the major players in the profession, the kinds of specialties a person can pursue, typical career paths and much else.  A session during which you go over such things can speed up their job search.

3. Help them set realistic expectations.  Most young people go into their job searches with little idea about how to interpret what then happens.  They are hurt, angered and discouraged by unreturned phone calls, expect—briefly—every resume they send to get a response and have dozens of other misconceptions that can slow down their search.  One young man came to me devastated after learning that the first company he had interviewed with had hired someone else.  “That’s a good thing,” I pointed out.  “If you aren’t being told no from time to time, it means you aren’t out talking to enough people.”  A month later I overheard him with a friend, joking, “I got turned down twice this week, so I feel twice as good as I did then.”  They were laughing rather than moaning.  By helping them interpret what is happening during their job search, you teach them a lesson valuable for a lifetime.

4. Edit a resume.  Most young people are inexperienced at writing resumes.  A little help from an experienced professional can greatly enhance most resumes that they write.

5. Provide an introduction.  Introduce them to people you know who might be hiring or who might provide them with additional introductions or information on the profession.

In a post published in late October (Waiting for the Elections), Margaret Grisdela described a small law firm’s decision to put its marketing effort on hold until after the election. Grisdela, quite correctly, argues against this decision. The election is now over, leading me to wonder if the firm has moved ahead with its marketing or has found some other reason to delay. My money says they haven’t budged, and if they have, it is more because of Grisdela’s persuasiveness than their own inclination.

Some people always have a good reason not to market now. That especially applies to the most fundamental of business development activities, picking up the phone and calling. There are lots of good reasons not to call:

• He doesn’t like to be bothered
• She isn’t a decision maker
• He’s new to his job. Let’s let him get settled for a bit.
• They’re in bed with a competitor
• No one is likely to be buying in this economy
• I don’t have a compelling enough reason to call her
• Monday mornings aren’t a good time to call
• He’ll think I’m just trying to sell him something
• I’ve got other things to do
• The probability of any call resulting in a lead rounds to zero

The law firm that Grisdela mentioned can come up with good reasons for delaying year round:

• Let’s let the dust settle from the election for a couple of weeks
• People are too distracted by the approaching holidays to pay attention to our marketing efforts
• People are too busy closing their books for the year
• Let’s get the new administration in place,first

. . . and so on.

These are all good reasons, but there’s one reason for calling that trumps all of them: If you never talk to anyone, you’ll never sell anything.

Among the people I am now coaching are two expecting mothers at different firms. Both are first time mothers. One made partner last year and the other hopes to be put up for partnership within the next couple of years. Both want to know what they can do to minimize the loss of momentum during maternity leave.

Surely, there are readers better qualified to answer this question than I. To be honest, I usually refer these cases to my partner, Mimi Spangler. Mimi suggests that it often helps to think in terms of things you can do in the three stages of maternity leave:

1. Before: How do you prepare your contacts for your absence and prepare yourself to maintain market awareness during your leave.
2. During: What must you do at minimum and what additional might you do.
3. After: How do you speed up your reentry into the market.

You men would do well to read the responses, too, because you may one day be married to or managing someone with this question. You may take a leave of absence, yourself, some day and have a similar concern.

What would you advise these women to do? Feel free to comment on all three of the stages or just on one or two.  In your comment please let us know of the kind of professional firm you work for.

Because this blog is written for professionals, I have avoided using examples from product sales. But I like this story, and it makes a point.

My friend, Dan Morley, who always has a twinkle in his eye, owns a furniture dealership that was recently asked to bid on furnishing a corporate headquarters. Dan’s firm was shortlisted to present its capabilities along with several competing firms. His firm was given the last slot of the back-to-back presentations, an hour in the middle of the afternoon. Deadly!

Dan and his team arrived at the client site in time for lunch and went to a restaurant across the street. The waitress, obviously in her element, was talking with each of her customers and leaving most of them laughing. Harriet, for that was her name, asked Dan what his team was in the area for, and when she learned, she said, “That’s simple! Just tell them that the furniture is BE-U-TIFUL, that the price is REA-SONABLE, and that everyone will be HAPPY!”

Later, when Dan stood up to introduce his team, he was faced with four men with their ties loosened and sleeves rolled up sitting at a table littered with old coffee cups and stacked with materials left by his competitors. The clients looked exhausted. On the spot, Dan ad libbed, “We can give you the forty-five minute presentation you asked us to prepare or I can give you the five minute synopsis. Which would you like?” The clients stared at each other. They had been listening to presentation after presentation all day. They were sick of sitting and listening, while the dealers all praised themselves and their products. To a person they opted for the synopsis.

So, Dan told them about the waitress and how she said the job was simple. “And,” he concluded, “I’m going to tell you what she told us to say: The furniture is BE-U-TI-FUL, the price is REA-SONABLE, and everybody will be HAPPY!” Everyone laughed, and the rest of the meeting consisted of an informal give and take. The clients gave Dan’s firm the business, and the next day, Harriet received a large basket of flowers.

Here are some lessons from this story:

• Take pity on the clients you present to and remember that most presentations are long-winded and repetitive. The words Dan borrowed from the waitress made the same point that other firms had taken an hour to make.

• The clients didn’t doubt the ability of Dan’s firm (or any of the other firms) to meet their need. That being the case, they were now looking for someone they would like to work with. That is often the case when final selections are made. So, give them a sense of what you would be like to work with during your presentation.

• A client who laughs is half sold.

• A rainmaker recognizes good advice when he hears it, regardless of the source.