A friend of mine brought me the following problem.  What would you recommend that she do?

I’ve known Mooch (name changed) for many years.  He has implied that he helped meget work at two clients.  In both cases I have strong evidence that others helped me get in, but no direct evidence of Mooch’s help.  Because he is not clearly stated that he helped, I tend to discount the possibility.

I like this man.  He is smart and cheerful.  He also has unusual family obligations which must create great pressure for him.

As a networker, I have stayed in touch with him over the years, checking up on how he is doing, without any sales motive in mind.  Several times he has been out of work and called me for help.  Those are the only times I remember him ever calling me.  He is good at what he does, and I have recommended him to several people who interviewed him.  When I have not been in a position to help, he wheedles, asking me for more introductions repeatedly, if indirectly.

I once said to him that I, too, would like some introductions to potential clients from among the many people he knows.  Nothing was forthcoming, until the last time he came to me for help, when he offered to give me an introduction to a client that I did not think was likely to hire my firm, it was so small.  Then he asked for help finding a job.  I explained to him there was no quid pro quo for my help, just to keep in mind when he was talking with people might benefit from my services.  I then tried to introduce him to someone, who declined for reasons unrelated to Mooch.  He didn’t seem to understand my explanation.

I did not hear back from Mooch for several months.  He left me a message yesterday.  I know he is still looking for work and I know what he wants.  What should I do?

(This is another of a series of Rainmaking Problems.  If you have one that you would like other readers to comment, please send it to me at fharding@HardingCo.com.)

In my last post I described how small firms can win against big ones by gaining special access to a client.  They can also win by delivering a compelling message.  To be compelling, it must represent something that clearly differentiates you from your large competitors.  Among the messages used this way are:

We do a better job, because this is the only thing that we do: A big competitor may be better known than you and have a stronger brand, but their brand is usually more diffused than yours, because it must encompass more services.  All big firms also have practices that don’t fit neatly within the brand they promote, and others that are clearly secondary in importance to the firms’ businesses.  This gives you the opportunity to differentiate your firm on the basis of your specialty.  This argument will only succeed, if specialization really makes a difference in your area of work.  You argue that because you don’t do anything else, you recruit, train, promote, reward and organize around just this kind of work.  This results in a more effective organization and better work producing better results for the client.  If you can back this argument up with specialized data bases, research, publications or other demonstrable differentiators, so much the better.

We do a better job, because we have fewer conflicts of interest.  The more services a firm has and the bigger it gets, the more likely it is to have potential conflicts of interest when serving a client.  Sometimes they are so severe that they are subject to regulation.  That happened to the big accounting firms which are now proscribed from serving as outsourced providers of an audit client’s internal accounting and bookkeeping functions, as a result of the Sarbanes Oxley Act.   Sometimes these potential conflicts draw sufficient heat that clients avoid them, even when not prohibited from doing so.  In recent times this has kept many companies from buying executive compensation services from the firms which do their pension and benefits work.  This provides opportunities for small, focused firms to replace them.  As another example, if a law firm that works for insurance companies also does insurance recovery work, it raises a fair question about potential conflicts of interest.  A firm specializing in insurance recovery and which doesn’t work for insurance companies can win business on that basis.

You will get better service because your business will be more important to us than it will be to a big firm.  A company that is a middling or small client to a big firm is likely to be a major account for yours.  This means it will get more of attention from your firm.  Your A Team will work the account, where a large competitor might assign a B or even a C team.  The client can get easy access to the head of the firm, if it wants to for any reason.  I know one small MEP (Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing) consulting engineering firm, which specializes in small repair and renovation projects for large clients with big processing operations.  They are set up to complete these projects efficiently and profitably, whereas, for large competitors, the projects are often seen as a nuisance.  That they gladly take on small projects that others will do only begrudgingly wins work.

You will get a richer mix of talent from us, because we are less leveraged than big firms are, meaning fewer rookies working on your important assignment.  You aren’t expecting the client to pay for the education and development of junior team members, because the firm tends to hire experienced people.

We cost less, because we have less overhead.  Many small firms don’t compete on price.  But many others do and there is nothing shameful about doing so.  This works best if you are avoid giving the perception that you pay less, and so may attract less qualified people.  One consulting firm has grown rapidly by focusing on selling work within an easy commute from its offices.  Because travel costs for its consulting teams end up being much lower than for big firms which move huge teams from across the country to do an assignment, the total cost of their services is lower.

Winning against a big firm is challenging, but it sure feels good when you do

In a recent post, I mentioned that a debrief after a loss taught me that my small firm could compete against a big one and set me on the path to winning work that transformed my firm.  A reader, whose small firm competes frequently against big ones, asked me to elaborate on that subject.

A big firm has many advantages, when competing against a small one.  It spends more on marketing and does so many more engagements with so many more clients that it usually has a stronger brand.  The marketing team can help put together stunning proposals and presentations.  Big firms can devote more hours to a pursuit.  They have greater depth and breadth in their professional teams.  Offering multiple services, the big firm is more likely to have an established relationship with someone at the targeted account.  Professionals at big firms can point out that one-stop-shopping for an array of services lessens project management cost and complexity for the client, and that there are less likely to be gaps between services, a common frustration for clients who parcel out a project in pieces to multiple firms.  The list goes on.

Yet small firms do win against big ones and do it frequently.  Sometimes they win on access to key people in the client company.  I will review some of the special forms of access that they can benefit from in this post, and describe other ways they compete with big firms in the next.

If you can learn about a client’s need early, and get in front of the buyers quickly, before competitors do, at the very least you have the advantage of more time to learn about what the client wants and the potential to make your case more frequently.  At best, you can shut out competitors before they even realize the client has a need.  Here are some tips for gaining early access:

Tip #1: Seek to develop a referral relationship with people who sell to the same people you do.  Focus especially on those who compete with big firms in one area, but don’t compete with you.  If a client has a need for your services, such people are unlikely to refer a mutual competitor.  If they know and trust you, they will be happy to recommend you—and, of course, you should do the same for them.  I belong to a formal networking group made up of representatives mostly of small firms, will sell to professional service firms.  There are many such formal and informal networks.

You can also develop a relationship with competitors and their colleagues at large firms which may be conflicted out of the opportunity to work for a client, who would rather see the work go to a small firm, like yours, rather than to a firm which competes with them on many fronts.  Working with such people provides you with extra eyes and ears in the marketplace, identifying opportunities for you.

Tip #2: Figure out who wants you to win and see if they might have opportunities to introduce you to decision makers.  You can also get special access through former employers, colleagues, employees, because they want you to win.  Many small firms get started when the founder leaves a job at a company, but continues to work for it as an independent advisor.

Tip #3: Figure out what can you do that will give you special access.  It had best be something you like to do, because it will absorb large amounts of your time and energies.  Sometimes you can do something difficult for a large competitor to imitate that gets you access.  The founder of a small consulting firm I know is getting many meetings with senior executives.  They meet with him because his recently published book which captures their interest and because his professional meeting-getter knows how to use that interest to obtain meetings.  I have seen others gain access through organizations they found and promote, from a golf tournament to a full-fledged professional association.  These channels take a lot of work, but can deliver huge payoffs.   Most small firms that have grown to midsize have done so by investing heavily in some such vehicle.

In numerous earlier posts (such as Seeing Events Through a Rainmaker’s Eyes, Part 1 and Part 2), I have observed that rainmakers are positive thinkers.  Things we see as bad, such as being stood up for a meeting, they see as neutral or even positive.  (When someone stands you up, it often creates a small chit that you can collect later.)  Things we see as neutral, such as an extra attendee at a client meeting, they may see as positive.  Positive thinking gives them a resilience that allows them to get up and try again and yet again until they win.

This all may sound Pollyanna-ish, but it’s not.  When interviewing people who have observed rainmakers, they often note the rainmakers’ optimism, sometimes mentioning in a tone of mild surprise that the rainmakers’ optimism often proved to be well-founded.  The rainmakers’ positive outlook is shaped and reinforced through experience.  They know not to take an unreturned phone call too seriously, because they’ve had to deal with so many of them.

When rainmakers apply their optimism foolishly, they are as likely to get hurt as anyone else.  Our data base of rainmakers includes several who went bankrupt through misplaced optimism, often in the form of a real estate deal.  Confident that they would sell boatloads of new work, they signed leases for space to accommodate all of the employees they would have to hire to do it.  When the work didn’t appear, they were stuck with the real estate costs.

I make this point for two reasons.  First, it is a caution to rainmakers and those who work with them to question the rainmakers’ optimism, if they seem to be applying it to areas beyond their expertise or to be brushing off the risk of catastrophic consequences, if they prove to be wrong.

My second reason for making this point is to deter anyone inclined to use a colleague’s negative thinking as a brickbat to beat them with.  I’ve had this done to me earlier in my career and seen it done to others.  Branding someone has a negative thinker and berating them for it is a loathsome and ineffective form of bullying.  There is a place for negative thinking in an organization, and when appropriately applied, should be encouraged and rewarded.  When misapplied, the reaction should be education, not derision.  For those interested in this subject, I recommend Martin Seligman’s excellent book, Learned Optimism.  (I have no financial interest in the sale of this book.  I do have a financial interest in the sale of my book, Creating Rainmakers, which also addresses the subject, but decline to recommend it out of modesty and fear of being hauled into court by the blog police.)

Dwight Davies said the following to me long ago:

“At any given time there are three to five things that a company is working on that are driven by the board and CEO on down, and everyone owns a piece of them.  They’re not always the obvious things.  If you are talking to people about  one of those things, you’re helping.  If you are talking about anything else,  you’re on the outside and you’re selling.”

I think this is true wisdom.

(For over 15 years Harding & Company has helped hundreds of professionals make the transition from doing and managing client worked selling it.  Among our duties is helping the people we work with recognize it when they are avoiding the hard work on developing relationships and generating leads.  This is the third of a series of posts on the most popular avoidance tactics.)

Many people feel awkward about calling former clients and other business contacts.  They imagine getting a negative response, and this imaginary image becomes so strong that they accept it as if we were real.  These people say things, like “ he’ll think I am just calling to sell them something” or “ she’ll be annoyed with me.”  These people fall into the trap of believing that they can read other people’s minds.

If you find that you say such things to yourself and that it deters you are making calls, remember the following:

1. People generally accept without question your stated reason for calling them.  Even if they suspect that you may be calling to sell them something in your first call, they will quickly learn that that is not your primary motivation, if you focus on providing value to them in each conversation.  This value can include recognizing them as people and friends, providing some information that might help them, offering an introduction, and the like.  The more you call people and provide such help, the less they are likely to ascribe to you a mercenary motivation.
2. Even if they do suspect that a hope for new business is one motivation for your call, few will be offended.  After all, most are in business, themselves, and in business everyone must live by selling something.

Starting a new relationship with someone who you have no explicit reason for contacting is one of the most difficult steps in selling professional services.  Almost as hard is advancing a relationship with someone you know hardly at all.  This isn’t just for of the professions; it is characteristic of business in general.

I just got off the phone with someone seeking to become my financial advisor.  At the beginning of the call, I told him that I was not interested in a sales call at this time.  He assured me that it wasn’t his purpose to sell me anything.  But, of course, at the end of the call, he couldn’t resist trying to do so with a we-can-help-you-with-that offer at the end.  This offer had, also of course, been the sole purpose of the 10 minutes of gobbledygook which preceded it.  In short, he was trying to begin relationship by lying to me about the purpose of this call and wasted my time in the process.   Did he think that I would turn over my money to someone who tried to deceive me the very first time he spoke with me?

It amazes me how common this is and how many forms it comes in.  Those mass mailings that come with what looks like a handwritten note, sometimes on a yellow sticky, saying “you should see this” or something similar, are another example.  They try to trick you into believing that the document was forwarded to you by a business colleague or friend.

When employing tactics to meet someone or to warm up a tepid relationship, the professionals must do nothing of this kind.  I suspect that even the word, tactics, will make some readers blanch, so let me give an example.   Asking for advice is one frequently recommended way to get in front of someone you don’t know well to warm up a relationship.  This can be effective with two cautions.  First, only do this with someone whose advice you would value on the subject in question.  If the advice asking is used simply as a ploy, there is a good chance that the contact will catch on and shun you thereafter.   Second, never, never try to turn the advice-seeking conversation into a sales call.  You should only talk about how your services can help the contact, if he explicitly asks you to do so, and even then with some reluctance.  (I didn’t come here today to sell you anything, but if you want we can talk a little about . . .).

You never want the contact to come away from a meeting with the feeling that you left it thinking, “Gotcha!”