We recently won some business from a firm we had been pursuing for six years. With little encouragement from the client, I had remained optimistic all this time of winning them, believing that when they were ready, we would get a shot. It is a fine firm with good people, a valuable set of offerings and attentive service. How could I be so certain that they would one day be ready?

My confidence was based on experience with other firms which suggested that this one would, one day, find itself lead hungry. The firm had enjoyed a steady flow of leads generated by an institutional marketing effort, and the firm’s partners would convert enough of them into assignments to keep their professionals working hard. Living off this lead flow, the firm’s partners had never learned how to generate leads on their own. When the institutional lead generation ceased to work, these partners didn’t know how to go out and dig up their own.

I have seen this happen at firms as large as the late CSC Index and at small firms. I have seen it happen at firms as different from each other as strategy consulting firms and structural engineering firms. And I have seen it happen to whole firms or just one practice or studio.

That we at Harding & Company flag over reliance on an institutional lead source as an indicator of future need for our services should be a caution to any firm heavily reliant on such a source. And it should be a caution to anyone rising through the ranks of such a firm without learning how to bring in business.

In the corporate world, as people rise though the ranks, they often move away from front-line sales activity. In the professions, the opposite occurs at most firms; the higher in the organization you go, the greater are the expectations that you will bring in work. If this is not happening at your firm, there are two possible consequences. For the firm, the failure of the institutional lead source will cause a crisis which your senior people will be ill-equipped to solve. That could result in buckets of red ink.

The individual partner set free from such a firm is likely to find prospects for employment within professional service firms limited. Other firms will expect people at that level to be able to bring in business. Unless there is strong evidence you can do that, they won’t want you.

Institutional lead flow is a great asset to a firm, practice or studio. But it can be seductive. It should never be allowed to replace the requirement that partners go out into the market and bring back business for the firm.

(This is the first of a series of posts on interesting people I have encountered)

The value of LinkedIn is evolving so rapidly that it’s hard to keep up.  A few heavy users lead the way, discovering new ways to use it, and the rest of us straggle behind them.  Gary Pines, Harding & Company’s strongest advocate for using the network, suggested we interview one of these leaders to gain some insight into its future direction.

Konstantinos Kasekas, a recruiter for Hudson and an author of the blog, www.beyond.jobs, has been a heavy user for three years and has over 8,500 1st contacts (over 16 million total).  Always operating at high energy levels, he becomes so joyous talking about LinkedIn that it sweeps everyone within earshot along.  He kindly agreed to be interviewed:

Q:   You can’t possibly have relationships with 8,500 people.  Why collect so many contacts?

Kasekas:  Because it makes the key decision maker visible to me, making part of my job as a “Lead Generator”, significantly easier.  In the past, the identity of the decision maker was obscure, protected behind a veil of corporate privacy.  Now that paradigm has been obliterated. Due to the site’s depth and breadth, on LinkedIn I can conduct a specialized key word search and identify key decision makers immediately. For example, Lululemon Athletica  is a global clothing manufacturer, with a strict “No Names” policy. If you call into their HR department and ask to speak to a Recruiter, or Director of HR (key decision makers in our line of work), you will immediately be turned down by the Operator and be forwarded to a general mailbox where you can leave a message. However, a quick search in my linkedin network, gives me a short cut around this process. The importance of “Size” is critical here, since a linkedIn search is limited to my “network” of contacts, defined as “my immediate contacts, their contacts, and their contacts’ contacts. So Ford, if you conducted the same search at Lululemon, you would likely get different results than I, simply because my network is larger than yours. Simple economies of scale. The larger my network, the more I get to see.

Q:  Once you identify the person you want to meet, do you ask your mutual contact for an introduction?

Kasekas:  Usually not.   Usually I don’t know that person either, so I go directly after the person I want to meet.  There are a number of tactics to get to them but they don’t involve LinkedIn.

Q:  That’s it?  It’s just a big directory?

Kasekas:  No, but don’t underestimate the directory value.  Identifying key decision makers in a company, a process that used to take several phone calls or varying degrees of research, can now be done in mere seconds.

Q:  How else do you get value from LinkedIn that people with fewer contacts might not?

Kasekas:  Recently, I had the VP of Global Talent Management at a Fortune 500 company contact me from Paris, through LinkedIn even though she, herself, only had ten contacts on LinkedIn.  If my network was smaller, she wouldn’t have found me on the site, and more importantly wouldn’t have found me as attractive. A well connected professional with a large “rolodex” is generally viewed as a key strength in consulting.  This could lead to global relationship.

Increased visibility both ways is what it’s all about.  That’s all that counts.  It’s very difficult to gain trust on the internet, so why bother? Go for maximize visibility and work on trust through other means.

Q:   So, how does one get 8,500 contacts?

Kasekas:  I am a “super-user”. This does not mean I am super, but that I have more than 5,000 1st contacts.  This group of users represents the top 98th percentile of LinkedIn members. Unlike other members, super-users focus on one thing; growing our networks indefinitely.  It is more a mindset than anything else, as all my resources are either dedicated to using LinkedIn, or how to use LinkedIn to enhance my professional goals. There are email addicts, and blackberry addicts; I am a self proclaimed LinkedIn addict. I check my LinkedIn account at least ten times per day to see if I’ve received an invitation to connect.

Like most super-users, I am an open-networker, which means that I accept all invitations. I invite everyone I interview or call on to join my LinkedIn network. My linkedin profile is listed in my signature file of my email. I write about using LinkedIn on my blog, and host multiple LinkedIn-centric discussion groups on and off of LinkedIn.com. While traffic varies, I try to add at least 100 new contacts per week to my account.

Another great tool for access to the greater LinkedIn network, is the use of the “LinkedIn Groups”. LinkedIn allows you to join 50 groups at a time, I am a member of 50 groups at all times. Every few weeks, I remove myself from five-to-ten groups and join new ones, to ensure that I am being exposed to a diversity of interests and backgrounds. I answer questions that are relevant to my industry to raise awareness of my subject matter expertise, and end every answer with an invitation to send me an invitation.  LinkedIn only allows you to send out 3,000 invitations to connect, a ceiling I hit over a year ago, so such creative ways are necessary to maintain my steady network growth on the site.

Q:  What are its principal limitations?

Kasekas: A common misconception is that LinkedIn is the new alternative to networking. The belief is that by sitting in front of your computer all day, you can build a solid network of strong relationships that will replace traditional networking. As a LinkedIn-addict I am the first to yell out that this is not the case. LinkedIn is not, and will never be a replacement to traditional networking. It is a tool to help facilitate networking, but nothing more.

Trust does not come cheap, and building trust via inmails and emails, is extremely difficult. I could do more to build trust over a ten minute telephone conversation, or a fifteen-minute coffee than I can do through months or even years of email correspondence. So, our perception of LinkedIn as an end, versus a means is a key limitation of the site.

Once we overcome this perception, the tool, itself, does have another major limitation.  While it is an excellent tool for identifying key decision makers, the effectiveness of the site is limited to the size of your network. LinkedIn only allows you to “see” the names of the people within your network and their contacts twice removed (your first contacts, their friends/contacts and their contacts’ friends). So, for example, if your 1st contacts, or their friends were not connected to Barack Obama directly, you would not be able to find the name of the President of the United States, via LinkedIn.  So, on LinkedIn size does matter.

A superuser grows his LinkedIn network exponentially as a means of building your total contact list, and then picking and choosing whom connect with, within that larger group later on.

The rest of this interview will be published in a later post.

(This post in another in our series of Rainmaking Problems. We invite your comments on this problem and would also welcome any problems you would like to s to get comments form other readers.)

An attorney, whom I will call Larry Polonisen, has sent in the following problem, one common enough in networking and well worth reflecting on.  How can he continue to take, if he has nothing to lend?  What would you do?

Hello, I am a faithful reader of your blog.

I have a suggestion for a post there (which I need to frankly admit is also a request for free advice).  The question is what to do when a contact gives you a couple of good referrals of business, and makes known (appropriately) that he expects referrals in return, but such reciprocal referrals are unlikely to ever happen (for lots of reasons not the least of which is that other better sources are in line for reciprocals before this person).  

The choices seem to be 1) tell the referral source that reciprocals are very unlikely, 2) actively search for things to refer, 3) assure the person (honestly) that if something comes along that can be referred to him it will be.  The first choice seems good in the abstract but horrible in the real world as it likely cuts off a referral source.  The second is again great, except that there is a higher priority for any referrals in this area and also because I get hardly any of matters in the referrers area (or I would be in that area myself).  The third seems the best, but if nothing gets referred, the referring lawyer ends up feeling taken advantage of.

I suppose that there might be a fourth choice (at least in my jurisdiction) is to offer the referrer a (legal) referral fee (perhaps coupled with the explanation under alternative 1).  What do you think?

Thanks very much.  I enjoy and use the information on you blog.

(This post is another in our series of Rainmaking Problems. We invite your comments on this problem and would also welcome any problems you would like to submit to get comments from other readers.)

Over the past twenty years a handful of companies have prospered by running what I call lead junkets. A class of corporate manager; human resources managers, facilities managers, financial managers or some other group; are invited on an expenses-paid trip to a resort or on a cruise ship for an event with some educational content. In return they agree to participate in a set number of short meetings with people who would like to sell to them. The sellers pay a fee to attend and also get a set number of meetings with the buyers with additional opportunities to rub elbows with all attending buyers at receptions, meals and the like.

These can be pricey events, costing a seller over $10,000 plus travel expenses.  In return they are promised twenty uninterrupted minutes to pitch their wares to each of the twelve buyers. Though some sorting and matching of buyers and sellers may be done by the organizers, the sellers do not get to pick whom they meet with. Also the organizers restrict attendance by sellers who compete with each other.

The appeal of the lead junket is having prospective clients delivered to you with little effort on your part. It all seems so painless, compared to cold calling, attending association meetings, giving speeches and all of the harder ways to generate leads.

I acknowledge that I have never attended a lead junket and my skeptical view of them is reflected in the term I use to describe them. In my experience, those who want their firms to send them on these jaunts are usually those most uncomfortable with other kinds of lead generation. They are looking for fixes with a minimal feeling of rejection.

I get asked about lead junkets four or five times a year.
My question is, when, if ever, are lead junkets worth the cost? In your response, please note whether or not you have ever attended one. If you have had good or bad outcomes, I would like to hear them.  Please do not name the operator of the event in your comment.  Also, if you work for or are an investor in a firm running this kind of event, please state that in your response.

(Two earlier posts, Networking Up, Part 1 and Part 2, described how rainmakers network with executives, who are their seniors in age, authority and income.  Here is another on the subject.)

Few of us can shanty up to a senior executive’s office and just pop our heads in to say hello.  These are busy people and they have little time for casual visits.   Gatekeepers bar entrance to those who might fritter away the executives’ time.  So, even if you meet a senior executive during the course of your work, maintaining contact is hard.  To do so requires knowing more things of substance to share with her than most of us do.  And, if you don’t maintain contact, you will lose the relationship.

Carl whose slow, easy-going manner masked a fast, hard-charging mind, was easy to talk to and even easier to underestimate.  He built relationships with senior execs and so a successful practice, also cross selling many of his firm’s other services.  The execs learned that he was an astute observer of their organizations and so, worth talking to.  He was well briefed on matters that were just beginning to filter up to the executive suite.  His way of coming up with insights into client organizations, like many successful rainmaking techniques, was simple:  He drank a lot of coffee and listened to gossip.

“People want to target the big guys in an organization and not waste time on people in lower levels. They forget that you can’t just buy a senior executive a cup of coffee and have a chat, but you can with someone lower in the organization.  Those people will tell you what is going on and what you need to know to talk with someone higher up,” Carl explained.  “Talk with enough of them and you can learn about anything you want to know.”

Of course, Carl isn’t the first to discoverer of this technique.  In modified ways, it has been used by professionals for a long time.  In some current cases, LinkedIn replaces coffee as the medium through which information is passed.  But the underlying method is the same and forever being rediscovered, because it works so well.

Two years ago I was coaching a young German strategy consultant.  When I asked him to make some calls, he refused, arguing that later in the week he had a meeting with the general manager of a major business unit of his biggest account.  “I need to spend my time figuring out what I am going to say,” he protested.  I asked if he knew people working in the business unit with whom he could gossip a bit.  He did and agreed to call and talk with them.  Half an hour later, he came back beaming; one of the people he had talked to had laid out an agenda for his meeting with the boss.

Coffee and gossip, that’s not a bad way to spend some time each day!

I am coaching a woman named Lisa, who doesn’t add names to her contact list regularly and hasn’t for years.  She hasn’t pulled all the names of her contacts together into her Outlook program from old client files, old employer directories, the shoebox of business cards she keeps and elsewhere.

This means she doesn’t have phone numbers and email addresses of her contacts handy.  Because she doesn’t have them handy, she misses opportunities to contact the people she knows.  She isn’t developing a rainmaker’s call discipline.

Lacking call discipline, she isn’t rekindling old or developing new relationships.  That results in insufficient lead flow, and, of course, without enough leads, she doesn’t win as much business as she wants to.

If this goes on, she won’t get promoted to partner and will eventually be asked to leave the firm.  And all for the want of a contact list!

A good contact list is the fundamental tool for getting business.  Without one, you will never be a rainmaker.

In an exchange with Alan Weiss last year, I argued that LinkedIn had become so large and multifaceted that some smart professionals were bound to find ways to generate leads from it. Having only one example, my case wasn’t strong. Our firm is supposed to know about these things, and, being research-based, this posed a natural challenge for us.

Gary Pines, Harding & Company’s leading advocate for LinkedIn, took up the challenge and has identified a number of people who have found ways to generate leads through the social network. Here are a few of the things you need to do use LinkedIn as a lead generator:

• Be a Joiner: LinkedIn has many special interest groups. “Join where your clients gather,” Lisa Nirell, who describes herself as Author, Strategic Marketing “Pied Piper,” and Growth Advisor - Chief Energy Officer - EnergizeGrowth LLC, told Gary, a sentiment echoed by others. Also, join where you will find others likely to want to help you, such as alumni groups. Gary received an email from a previous Towers Perrin colleague who found him through the Towers Perrin alumni group. They had not spoken since 1990, but now are helping each other gain leads.

• Reconnect: Connect with previous colleagues, clients, prospects, classmates, friends by searching for their names. Then ask them to be in your LinkedIn network. Because these people already know you, they aren’t inhibited by the Ethernet trust gap. They often want to help you as you want to help them. LinkedIn makes this process efficient. Many people have gotten leads from old contacts revived through LinkedIn.

• Answer Questions: The members of special interest groups often post questions on LinkedIn. Many of those Gary heard from recommended answering questions from people they might want to do business with. This is the social network expression of the old networking rule that you have to give to get. For example, rainmaker Toby Younis, Principal Consultant at B2B Marketing Pro, LLC, starts every day—every day—with a quick review of the requests for advice and information from members of the LinkedIn special interest group focused on the industry he consults to. When he finds a question he can answer well from someone sufficiently senior in a company he would like to do business with, he writes a detailed, high-value response. Some of those he helps this way contact him for more information and some of them eventually hire him.

• Make clear what you offer: Before contacting you, another LinkedIn member is likely to review your profile. Spend sufficient time on your profile to make it clear what you do and why you are good at it. Make sure it is compelling.

• Ask for access: Several people reported to Gary that they used LinkedIn to gain access to companies they had a specific interest in. One did a search for people with the job title of his typical client. Ten names came up within commuting distance. He sent emails to all and three agreed to meet. Another person wrote LinkedIn members who worked at a company he wanted to do business with to describe the value of his services and ask if there would be any interest in them. One referred him to two others in the company responsible for buying his kind of service. He sought and got meetings with the people.

Gary cautions that those who got leads from LinkedIn worked at this channel as relentlessly as those who get leads by giving speeches, working a professional association, making cold calls or any other method. If you are looking for an easy lead source, you won’t find it here. But the evidence is in: LinkedIn can be a good place to get leads. It is still a young service. As it matures and improves and more smart people use it, more ways to will be found to get leads from LinkedIn.
(We welcome any additional ideas and examples on this subject.)

A Canadian friend recently brought a problem to me that is common enough to warrant a comment: the unproductive network.  Margareta, for so I will call her, has built a substantial network and works hard at maintaining it, but it generates only a dribble of leads.

If this happens, ask yourself three questions:

Am I networking with the right people?

Long ago a colleague of mine worked an association for two years.  She was welcomed, cultivated, wined and dined at the annual meetings.   Popular because of her personality and potential to pass out leads to the other members, she got attention, but little else in return.  On reflection she realized that few of the members would ever be in a position to give her leads.  She refocused her efforts elsewhere and had more success.

Ask yourself if your network contains enough buyers of your services and people who have influence with buyers.  If not, you must find ways to meet and stay in front of such people and reallocate your time to those activities.

Do they know what I do?

Yes, at some level they know, but how fresh and accurate is that knowledge?  Two weeks ago, I missed an opportunity to make a referral to a friend, because I didn’t see the client’s request as something he would help with.  Fortunately, he got the introduction through another channel.

I was embarrassed, and realized that I hadn’t reviewed the kind of work he did with him for over a year.  Shame on me.  Shame on him.  “We’re seeing an uptick in healthcare work.”  “We are getting a lot of requests to help renegotiate contracts.”  Remind your contacts of what you do with brief statements like these.  Sit with them from time to time to refresh your understanding of what each other do.

 But don’t, don’t, assume that they know.

Do they know what I want?

Never assume that your contacts know you want referrals, either.  Never make that assumption.  If you don’t make it clear that you want referrals, you won’t get any.  “Right now we could use a client in the casualty insurance industry.” “The revenue cliff is a little closer than we like to see it.”  “We’re busy, though, of course, we are always interested in new clients.”  “Our lead flow is down.  How about yours?”  Your words should remind your contacts of your interest in new business.

Reviewing these questions with Margareta, we developed some language she could use to make it easier for her contacts to recognize opportunities for her.  She will also make it clearer that she wants referrals.  Let’s see what happens.

In a recent post, I said that if I were betting on which of two professionals would turn up more revenue over the long haul, I would put my money on the one with a large network over the one with a few loyal clients. My books describe the mathematical reasons for this. Here I would like to show how the power a large network plays out over time.

My colleagues and I have built our firm by analyzing what rainmakers do and then training others to do the same. As a fringe benefit from our research, when we learn about something interesting that rainmakers do, we get to try it out ourselves. As a result, I have built a large network and enjoy the benefits that derive from one.

Specifically, I have a steady lead flow even in these hard times.  During two weeks in December, I have had the good fortune to land three new clients and received a lead for another. The history of this last lead provides a look at why large networks can produce this kind of results—that is, how the mathematics of networking play out in the marketplace.

The history of this lead goes back more than twenty years to a time at least six years before I established my current firm. Back then, I ran an office of a management consulting firm and was asked to attend a meeting of the Association of Management Consulting Firms (AMCF, then called ACME). There I met Ed Hendricks, who served on the organization’s staff. We became friends.

When I set up my own firm fifteen years ago, Ed referred me to a firm that became my second client. The work that derived from people who left that firm is a separate story. I also referred at least one of my clients to Ed, which joined AMCF. About a year later, Ed left AMCF and set up his own firm, too. With publicist, John Bliss of Bliss PR (I have kept Ed’s and John’s and my collleague Gary Pine’s real names. All others have been changed.), we set up a formal networking organization. Ed referred me to the head of a small consulting firm, whom I will call Dominic. I also referred Ed to several people who became his clients.

Dominic hired Harding & Company several times. That firm had two practices, one headed by Steve. (Steve moved on and has brought us into a firm he joined recently, which has become a major client last year.) Fourteen years ago, when Steve was working for Dominic, a bright young professional, Keith, was a member of his team.

When Domenic’s firm was sold to a major consultancy, Keith moved on to another firm, where he introduced us and we did a small project. Six years ago, he also introduced to Jasper. About that time, I introduced Keith to a client interested in his services; I don’t know if they ever did business together.

Jasper had a history of moving to a new firm every few years. At the time, Jasper worked for the U.S. arm of a European consulting firm. He introduced me to a former boss, the head of a prospering strategy firm, where we did substantial work for several years. When Jasper moved on, my colleague, Gary Pines, and I advised him and provided him introductions. Two years ago, when he established his own firm, we referred him to a client which became one of his first.

At about this time, Jasper introduced me to Lenny, the head of marketing at the European consultancy where he used to work. Lenny had a reputation for having instilled his organization with a sales culture. I was not sure he felt a need for our services. Before we had ever talked, he had interviewed several people we had coached who had described our services. He was clearly impressed and intrigued, though he did not hire us. I referred a couple of candidates to him for a position he had open.

Last week he spoke with one of his firm’s clients, who was looking for someone to train their professionals in sales. He referred them to us. I will find out if we get hired this week.

It is important to note that this description, as contorted as it is, is a simplification of what really occurred. Think of all the paths to business for me and for others that it introduces, which could be turned into stories of their own. And, of course, there are many unrelated paths that I pursued, including many that so far look like dead ends. Also, note that I am still in touch with almost everyone mentioned. Does it surprise you that leads turn up from all these relationships and paths, even in these tough times?

In comparison, the professional with a few strong relationships has precious little to work with, if he loses a client and has to rebuild. He has probably met as many people over the years as I have, but in the absence of contact, they rarely think of him. In the absence of the give and take of networking, they feel no urgency about helping him.

Aspiring rainmakers struggle to find time for business development. It is by far the most frequently mentioned barrier to success. I have suggested several ways to deal with it in earlier posts. Here is another.

Most people agree that if something is important enough to them, they will usually find the time for it. And they always find time for the truly urgent. It follows, then, that business development, at least the long-term relationship building and lead generation part of it, doesn’t seem sufficiently urgent and important to make it into their schedules.

In one sense they are right. If you don’t call any old clients or other network contacts today, disaster won’t strike. Your life will go on just as usual, with you working diligently on your clients’ urgent matters. The same will be true, if you make no calls tomorrow.

But if this lapse persists, month after month, the cumulative impact is huge. You won’t develop a referral network and without the network, you get no leads. Without leads, you have no sales opportunities of your own.

At this juncture, you must ask yourself, so what? More specifically, five years from today (or three or two—select your own horizon), if you have no lead flow and aren’t generating any work of your own, what are the consequences and do those consequences mean enough to you to get you to find time for business development now? If so, you need to keep those consequences in front of you now. Every day. Where they can compete with the other urgent demands that cry for your attention.

Joshua is an executive recruiter, a self-effacing, quiet man with a strong sense of service. His clients love him. And he worked so doggedly for them, he had no time for client development. When asked so what, he said that if he didn’t generate business, he wouldn’t have the financial resources he will need to pay for his four children’s education and other needs. We took the picture of his children down from the shelf behind his desk and put it next to his phone. He is making his calls and has the largest number of leads he has ever had.

Patrick is a healthcare consultant with abundant charm. He can make an exchange on the weather feel valuable. People like talking with him and he with them. As certainly as chickens produce eggs, if he talks with people, he will generate leads. But he wasn’t making his calls. He has no children and so no looming tuition expenses. So, why should he make calls? Patrick answered that he is sick of doing projects for other people in the firm. As much as he likes these people, he wants control of his own destiny. He wants to answer directly to his own clients. He has printed out the following message: Lead flow means control of my own destiny. He has pasted it above the monitor of his computer where he will see it often. We will now see if his call volume goes up.

To make time for business development, you must be clear about its importance and its urgency. If you don’t make your calls, so what?