In these trying economic times most professionals have had to increase their number of prospects to win a piece of business.  This means digging deeper into your contact lists and calling more people that you haven’t talked to in a while such as old clients and past prospects.  The thought of calling someone just to reconnect with the hopes of generating an opportunity gives angst to many.  The phone handset begins to feel like a 100 pound elephant.  But all is not lost with the new social media.  We have things like LinkedIn that facilitates this act for us.  All we have to do is initiate a standard note and wait to see if they accept our request to join our LinkedIn network!  We ponder if receipt of our LinkedIn request will prompt our old acquaintances to call us if they have a business need. 

It arrives!  Your contact has accepted your LinkedIn request!  Time passes and they still haven’t called you.  After a few months go by with lightning speed you feel like you are right back where you started with the angst of calling to reconnect.  In this example LinkedIn served the same purpose as the introduction cover letter so many professionals use as a crutch to help them warm up a call.  In the end, you still have to make the call.  Similar to the intro cover letter, if you wait too long to follow up with a personal call, any benefit you may have received from the “link” diminishes.  An easy example to illustrate how this plays out in human nature is in dating.  If you meet someone, connect and get their number, what is the likelihood of forming a long term relationship if you wait to call that person for six months after you met them? 

Most contacts will tell you that if they agree to join your LinkedIn network, they would be pleased to hear from you from time to time.  So if you find yourself feeling good about the number of contacts who agreed to join your LinkedIn network, but feeling frustrated by the lack of leads received from your initiated effort, consider following up the contact acceptance more promptly with a personal call or simply bag the LinkedIn intro note and just pick up the phone. 

Of we have sent your clients introductory letters and emails to get meetings.  We have reminded the clients that you will see them in meeting confirmation letters and e-mails.  Once you have held meeting, someone must send a follow-up letter.  An earlier post described how to prepare follow-up e-mails and letters. Who on your team should send them?

After a team from a professional firm has a sales meeting with a client, someone often asks who should send follow-up e-mails to whom.  Sometimes that follow-up note is the last communication you have with a member of the client team before the company decides whom to hire.  You want that last communication to be powerful.

Of course, every member of the team can send a note to every person on the client team.  But that isn’t always best.  If the teams are large, the client may feel overwhelmed.  Key members of the client team may also pay more attention to one well drafted follow-up note than to a flurry of paper which will inevitably included many redundancies.

There is no answer to that is right for every occasion, but here are some things to consider when assigning follow-up responsibilities:

• Identify relationships you want to build.  Usually, you want the senior person on the client team to feel close to the client partner or other senior person your team.  So, too, with technical experts from both organizations.  If there is an engagement manager on your team, you want the client’s engagement manager to feel that this is someone he wants to work with.  In short, the members of your team should each, at the very least, send a follow-up note their counterparts in the client organization.

• Respond to concerns and questions with authority.  If a member of the client team has expressed concern or raised a question, she should get a response from the person on your team most suited to address that concern.  If it is a technical question, your technical person should follow-up.  If it is a question about the commitment of the firm, the senior person on your team should follow-up.

• Maintain and reinforce personal relationships.  Anyone on your team who has a business or personal relationship that predates the meeting with a member of the client team should send a personal note to that person afterwards.

• Don’t leave anyone out.  Every member of the client team should get a follow-up note from at least one person on yours.

Don’t let a competitor have the last word.  Send those follow-up letters and emails.

Earlier posts have described how to write e-mails and letters of introduction and meeting confirmation letters and e-mails.  Once you have had a meeting, you will also want to send an e-mail.  These serve several purposes.  First, they remind the recipient of the meetings outcome and next steps you have agreed to.  This increases the probability of the recipient following through and captures a bit more mind share.  Second, they provide what is often the  only written record of the meeting.  Most importantly, if it is a sales meeting, the follow-up letter or e-mail often provides your final chance to reinforce your interest in the client and your qualifications for the work.

If you are going to send follow-up emails consistently, you need to reduce writing them down to an efficient system, while avoiding the appearance of boilerplate.  You can do this by using a standardized process, as distinct from a standard letter.

In most cases, you will compose a letter if in a sequence of sentences you:

• Link:  Reinforce any emotional link you established with the other person.  After all, that is one important outcome of the event.  You can only do this if you avoid clichéd personal statements.  (Please, oh please, don’t open with It was a pleasure to meet you . . . It is so over-utilized that it conveys almost as little of its original  meaning as goodbye does of God be with you from which it derives.)  Instead, note something that you found interesting or special about the person or something she told you.

Examples:

As many times as I have been through Grand Central Station, I had never noticed the one dirty brick left unwashed by the restorers.  Now in-the-know, I was able to point it out to my nephew who came to visit this weekend. Many thanks for improving my knowledge of New York.

Your directness about the problems that Trigestis Pharmaceuticals is facing was extremely helpful.

• Synthesize :  Show you clearly understand the issue at hand in a concise summary.

Examples:

You described a company at a turning point. The actions your management team takes over the next . . .

We are both seeking to increase our business with private equity firms and are meeting many of the same people.  We may be able to help each other.

• Remind or Reinforce:  Politely remind the other person of any commitments she made during the meeting.  A clear statement of next steps makes it easier for her to fulfill her commitments than if she has to recall them on her own.  Alternatively, reinforce your commitment to the client and why you are well suited to the work.

Examples:

I greatly appreciate your offer to introduce me to Oliver Princer.  I will be in Pittsburgh week after next and could stop by his . . .

You mentioned that you might be able to get some feedback on my meeting with Debra Parks.  That would be . . .

We remain most interested in working on your matter.  Our experience with the licensing of intellectual property in the pharmaceutical industry equips us well to address the disagreements you are having with Trigestis.  We well understand your desire to resolve the issue amicably.  Our track record with litigation in this area will provide try Trigestis with an added incentive to do so.

Promise:  Restate any commitments you have made, so that the other person knows you haven’t forgotten.

Examples:

I will call Mary Gumstar next week to see if . . .

By regular mail, I am sending you a copy of . . .

Should you choose our firm, you will give your matter . . .

• Close:  As appropriate, end with a personal statement.

Examples:

I hope you have recovered from your cold.

I will think of you as the Bears trounce the Giants this weekend.

Link.  Synthesize.  Remind 0r reinforce.  Promise.  Close.  Follow this sequence in each follow-up email, and you will soon learn to produce them efficiently while maintaining a high quality.

(Well, the Bears sometimes trounce the Giants.)

In previous postings, I described how to write an introductory letter requesting a meeting.  That letter should be but the first in a string of communications.

Competing for business at a professional services firm is a battle for a share of a client’s mind.  When she needs an accountant (or actuary, or attorney, or engineer, or management consultant, or whatever kind of professional you are), you want her to think of you.  If you are already working for her and so in regular contact, keeping in front of her is a manageable task.  But if she doesn’t even know you, it’s harder to come up with reasons to get her to think about you.  You must take advantage of every opportunity you get.

Once the client has agreed to meet with you, you want to use that meeting to remind her of who you are several times.  In addition to the meeting, itself, this means that at the very least you want to send an email confirming the meeting and one following up afterwards.  This posting describes the former, and a later posting will describe follow-up emails.

In an earlier posting, I observed that there are no extra points for developing business the hard way.  Meeting confirmation emails are one of the easiest ways to capture a little mindshare.  They should be short and to the point, needing only to confirm the meeting’s time, place, participants and purpose.

Dear __________:

I look forward to our meeting in your office next Thursday, November 3, at 2:00 PM to talk about the tax implications of divesting the Wescott plant.  Mark Smith of our Tax Department will be with me.  See you then.

Sincerely,

Optional additional items include a politely worded reminder of what the client has offered bring to the meeting and a brief personal note.

Dear __________:

I look forward to our meeting in your office next Thursday, November 3, at 2:00 PM to talk about the tax implications of divesting the Wescott plant.  Mark Smith of our Tax Department will be with me. If Marie Frasier or someone else from your Financial Department can join us, that would be great.  See you then.

Thanks for the news that Marty’s daughter is recovering. I’ve hesitated to ask, it sounded so bleak.  What a relief it must be for him!

Sincerely,

This email should go out within twenty-four hours of the conversation setting up the meeting.  It is easy to do, helpful to the client and businesslike and gets your name in front of the client one more time.  One should go out confirming every business development meeting.

(Don’t miss the Example Introductory Letter Free Book Offer at the end of this post.)

Hoping to obtain a meeting with a senior executive, you have drafted a letter of introduction and rewritten it a dozen times, whittled and honed it down to three terse paragraphs. Without wasting a syllable it states who you are, what you want, and why the client will want to give it to you.

At the end of the first paragraph, which describes your firm, you have written,
”I have attached __________________.” Uncertain what to include, you have not completed the sentence, but the letter must go out today, and so you must decide.

If you send the letter electronically, the choices are:

• A link to your website, which includes a client list, partner bios, descriptions of work done by the firm, a list of services and other information
• A link to an electronic reprint of a an article you wrote
• A link to the firm’s newsletter
• A one page description of a case or project the firm worked on, also available on the website.

If you send a paper letter of introduction, your choices are:

• A twelve-page glossy brochure
• A client list
• A one page description of a case or project the firm worked on
• A list of firm publications available on request
• Your bio and those of others in the firm

What would you send? Here are some guidelines:

1. Less is more. The less you send with a document, the more it looks like executive-to-executive correspondence. More attachments make it look more like a pitch or a mass mailing. Don’t send the brochure. DON’T send the brochure.
2. more senior the executive, the more that less is more, if you follow my drift. Just in case you don’t, let me repeat that in other words. Very top executives don’t read a lot of marketing collateral; they don’t have time for reading through mass-mailed documents or anything that looks like one. So with letters to senior execs, you really want to reduce enclosures to a minimum. Consider sending your letter without any attachments.
3. If the receiver has never heard of you or your firm, it sometimes helps to send some form of external validation, such as an article about you or your firm or a reprint of an article you have published in a journal he would recognize. But keep it small, because less is more. An exception might be a copy of a book you or a colleague from your firm has written, because, by its nature it appears substantive rather than salesy.
4. If your objective is something other than getting a meeting, you might want to attach a little more. A letter sent primarily to remind an executive of who you are and what you do may benefit from a short attachment, like a reprint of an article that mentions you, a reprint of an article you wrote of relevance to the person you are writing to. But skip the brochure.
5. You have more flexibility if you send an email, because you can create links to your website that are subtle because they look like a standard link appearing in all your documents.

And when should you use the brochures, you might ask? Many find that they are really good for toasting marshmallows.

My Example Introductory Letter Free Book Offer:
I am looking for examples of good emails and letters of introduction used by professionals. After changing or blocking out any names of people or firms that you wish to keep private, please send your best samples by April 21, 2008 to I am looking for examples of good emails and letters of introduction used by professionals. After changing or blocking out any names of people or firms that you wish to keep private, please send your best samples by April 21, 2008 to fharding@HardingCo.com.

I will send copies of one of my books, Rain Making-2^nd Edition-Attract New Clients No Matter What Your Field or Creating Rainmakers to the two people who, in my opinion, provide the best introductory letter examples. Be sure to include your name, mailing address and phone number with your submission.

*******************************

Order your copy of Ford Harding’s new and revised edition of Rain Making, called “…an essential guide for anyone responsible for business development in the professional services industry…” – Mark Mactas, Chairman and CEO Towers Perrin

This is the final post in my three-part series “How a Rainmaker Writes a Letter of Introduction.” The earlier posts are:

• Think from the reader’s perspective
• Remember Your Objective and Write Your Letter Following a Three Part Structure

Step Four: Put Complete Contact Information Below Your Name

Make it easy for the client to contact you, if she wants to. Of course, this should be on all the emails you send for any reason.

Avoid sending too much material attached to this email. Consider including no attachments at all. Fear of viruses may stop some people from ever opening your email if you’re unknown to them and have attached a file. If you must attach something, it should be educational, like an article reprint or white paper. Do not send something that is purely a sales document, like a brochure. You have listed your website under your signature, which the client can visit, if she wants that kind of information.

Step Five: Bite Off Only What You Can Chew

If you can only follow up on five of these emails next week, only send out five today. Don’t raise expectations you can’t deliver on.

These three blog posts sum up how to construct an email or letter of introduction. What comes next? In a future posting, I will describe how to make the phone call that follows it.

This is the second post in my three-part series “How a Rainmaker Writes a Letter of Introduction.” The first post is Think from the reader’s perspective.

Step Two: Remember Your Objective

As I have described elsewhere, people often get confused about the objective of an email of introduction.

The objective of the email is to get the executive to accept your call. If she tells her assistant to book some time with you on the basis of the email alone, you are unusually lucky. If the assistant decides to screen over the phone before passing the email on to its intended recipient . . . . well, at least your talking with someone. That’s an acceptable fallback objective.

It is not your objective to get the client to hire you. No letter can do that. If you forget this, you are likely to so burden the executive with information that she deletes your email unread.

Step Three: Write Your Letter Following a Three-Part Structure

I recommend a three-part structure for your email, discussed in more detail below:

1. Establish credibility
2. Make an offer
3. Discuss next steps

To take your call, the executive or maybe just her assistant must believe you are credible, that what you are asking for is reasonable, and that talking with you may be beneficial.

Your credibility is probably based on the work you have done, though other qualifications, such as having written an article for a prominent journal or a relevant book, will sometimes do. List relevant clients or, if confidentiality prohibits that, describe them in a way that makes your qualifications sound solid.

Trivelmayer Wurms helps its clients find hidden value in their intellectual property. Our clients include three of the five largest pharmaceutical companies.

Haswort Wooten and Scopes renovates and helps preserve landmarks and other heritage buildings, while making them efficient and comfortable for use today. Our projects include the Oscuttawa County Courthouse, Ranamack Library and the Founders’ Building at Jamieson College

Next, tell the executive what you want and tie it to an offer. The email should evoke peer-to-peer respect. It says, “If you give something to me, I will give something to you,” but the exact nature of the gift is left unclear. It shouldn’t sound too eager or include an offer so generous that the reader would feel indebted by accepting it (I will fly to Boise to meet with you any time that is agreeable to you.)

I am conducting research on energy usage and would like to hear how Rushthroat Foods is reducing energy consumption. In return I can share with you information on what other companies are doing in a form that is consistent with the confidentiality we have promised to all who have provided us data.

Ivarro Executive Search has seen compensation escalate, due to the shortage of experienced hedge fund managers. I would like to hear how your firm is dealing with that shortage. In return I can share what we expect to see happening in the search for hedge-fund talent over the next six months.

Finally, discuss the next step you will take.

I will call your office next week to see if we can arrange a short conversation.

Do you have any time on Thursday or Friday, October 29 and 30, when we could talk? I will call you early next week to see.

Note that in neither of these examples is it clear whether you will be arranging a telephone conversation or a face-to-face one in your call next week. That is left deliberately vague, so that you that you can move right to scheduling a meeting, if the client is ready to.

Stay tuned for the next post in the How a Rainmaker Writes a Letter of Introduction series: Put Complete Contact Information Below Your Name and Bite Off Only What You Can Chew.

I have been trying to get to know you better by analyzing the wisps of data that you leave when you visit this blog. You don’t leave much to go on, but what I do find is intriguing. For example, what country has the second highest number of visitors to this blog. You can find the answer at the end of this post.

Many of you found this blog while looking for information on how to write an email or letter of introduction to a prospective client. My previous postings (Write Before You Call?, Of Water and Buckets, and Open Me, Please) may have been off the mark, because they used letters of introduction as a vehicle to addressing a larger matter.

Today and in the next two posts, the email and letter of introduction take center stage. These posting will show you how to write them in five easy steps. To simplify, from here on I will refer only to emails. You can assume that what we cover applies equally to letters.

Step One: Think from the reader’s perspective

Before you write anything, you should reflect on what you know about the reader. Usually you have never met, but you can make some reasonable assumptions, even so.

For example, if your letter is intended for a high-level executive, it will probably be screened by her assistant, who will decide whether she will ever see it. In that case, you are writing as much for the assistant as you are for the executive.

You can also assume that the executive is so busy that she is predisposed to delete an email lobbed in from someone who almost certainly wants to sell something. Among the assistant’s duties is making sure the boss’s time is used well, meaning the assistant will toss most introductory emails, too.

But not everything is doom and gloom. Most executives are interested in ways to do their jobs better, in staying abreast of changes in their industry or their field, and in ways to improve their own fortunes. The assistant will admit people who offer enough value to the boss.

All this means that you must make a compelling case and make it concisely. It should take no more than three short paragraphs, leaving lots of space on the screen. I have seen effective emails of one paragraph.

Stay tuned for the next post in the How a Rainmaker Writes a Letter of Introduction series: Remember Your Objective and Write Your Letter Following a Three Part Structure

Oh, I almost forgot. The country of origin of the second largest number of visits to this blog is China.

Professionals sometimes ask me if it is best to send a prospective client an email before calling her, especially if it is someone you don’t know well. They are usually looking for affirmation. I respond with this story:

Many years ago, I was taught how to make cold-call appointments with senior executives by Bruce McNaughton, a brilliant rainmaker who could get a meeting with anyone. We were to send letters (no email in those days) to people we wanted to meet, and he would come in a week later to show us how to follow up with a call to the execs’ assistants. Something went wrong and the letters weren’t sent. When I told Bruce this, he asked for the phone number of the first person on the list of those who should have received a letter. He picked up the phone and called the man’s assistant. “My name is Bruce McNaughton,” he said. “Has Mr. Smith received the letter I sent?” Of course, the assistant said he hadn’t. “Well, never mind,” said Bruce. “It said this . . .” He proceeded to describe what we were looking for, was passed on to the Chief Financial Officer and got us a meeting. The letter hadn’t been necessary, but Bruce knew that sending one would make me more comfortable with calling.

So, yes. Send an email, if it makes calling easier for you, but realize that you are doing it as much for your own comfort as you are for the executive you send it to. And what if your emails don’t get sent, call anyway.

Recently, I helped one client sharpen his elevator speech and another to spruce up a letter with which she planned to introduce herself before she called a prospective client to ask for a meeting.  Both were making a common mistake by pouring too much content into these tiny vessels.  They did this becaue they forgot their objectives.

An elevator speech, so called because it is what you would say to a prospective client you ran into during a thirty second elevator ride, tells a busy client who you are and what you do in words that are easily undestood and memorable.  In thirty seconds you can’t do much more than that.  An introductory letter may spark enough curiosity for a client to take your call and talk to you for a few minutes.  After all, you have about three short paragraphs, because a busy client who doesn’t know you won’t read an epistle.  If the client grasps what you do or takes your phone call, you have achieved a lot for a small investment of time.

If you try to accomplish more than these bare objectives, you may not achieve even them.  Niether the elevator speech of the introductory letter can differentiate you from your competitors or explain the full range of your services.  They certainly can’t persuade the client to hire you.  Trying to achieve these things is analogous to trying to fit three gallons of water into a one-gallon bucket; it makes a mess of the job.  In every contact with a client, remember what you objective is and you will have a better chance of accomplishing it.

And now I must stop before I try to get too much content from a small, if important, point.