(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 second of a series of posts on the most popular avoidance tactics.)

Some people avoid the hard work of business development by convincing themselves that their efforts will produce no results.  That being the case, there is no point in trying.  The most common version of this tactic is expressed in words: “I don’t know the right people, so calling or meeting with them won’t turn up any new business.”

This statement must stand up to two questions:

1. Is it true? In my experience it is seldom totally true.  Such universal statements seldom are.  Most of us know more people than we realize.  Also, people’s circumstances change over time.  Someone who was not in a position to hire you in the past, may be able to today.  Phil, a consultant, called a former client whom he thought would never amount to much.  Since they had last talked she had moved to another company.  It proved a better match for her, and her career took off.  She hired him for a small project almost immediately after his call.  I have many examples like this, including one critical to the early success of my own firm, which I have related in an earlier post.
2. If it is true, so what? That you don’t know the right people will seldom relieve you of the responsibility for bringing in business to advance your career.  So, if you don’t know the right people, you must ask yourself how you can meet them.  There are many ways, including meeting more people during your client work, attending professional association meetings, conducting research that will require you to interview those whom you would like to add to your network, cold calling, to name but a few.

Remember, even if your base of contacts is not as strong as you would like, it is always better to be talking to someone in the marketplace than to be talking to no one.  If you are talking to someone, something good might happen.  If you are not talking to anybody, the probability of success is infinitesimal.

Two new books of interest to aspiring rainmakers and managers of profession service firms came out this summer.

The first is The Integration Imperative by Suzanne C. Lowe [Professional Services Books, 1990].   It deals with what I believe will be the single biggest issue in business development at professional services firms in coming years, the integration of sales and marketing.  Professional service firms are well behind traditional product firms in this area.  This results, I suspect, from two major causes.    First, selling was a forbidden word in the professions for many years and still is at a few firms.  If you can’t talk about it, you can’t manage it.

Second, marketing has been a poorly defined term in the professions, in part, because it was often used as a euphemism for selling.  When not referring to selling, marketing has been used vaguely to refer to a collection of activities, including public relations, advertising, running seminars and the like.   This is a far cry from the sophisticated understanding of marketing found at product companies where the term refers to the selection and positioning of products in carefully selected markets and the way a company goes about taking those products to the  markets.

Professional firms which successfully integrate sales and marketing will have a big advantage.  Some already do.  Lowe has sought out a number of these firms and studied what they have done.

The book is divided into three parts.  The first covers why integration of marketing and sales is important and the second provides guidance on how to do it.  These are both well worth reading and studying.  Still, it is the third part that I found most interesting.  I am a sucker for case studies, and Lowe has outdone herself in this section by providing detailed studies of eleven firms across the professions.

The second book, Winning the Professional Services Sale by Michael W. McLaughlin [Wiley, 2009], neatly complements the first by providing an in-depth look at how professionals should handle a sales meeting.  It covers both the strategy and tactics of face-to-face selling from how to prepare, draw out the client’s needs, deal with surprises, prepare proposals, present, negotiate and set up the second sale.  McLaughlin also addresses critical subjects that are infrequently written about, such as when to walk away from a sale.

McLaughlin provides practical advice that is clearly based on a lot of personal experience.  For example, early in the first chapter he states that in a sales meeting every client has three burning questions of a professional:

•    Do you really understand what we need?
•    Can you do what you claim?
•    Will you work well with us?

Anyone who has sold professional services knows that these are the fundamental questions.

Though I may not agree with everything McLaughlin says, his arguments are well worth reading and a valuable check on opinions that all of us hold about selling.  This book is a good choice for anyone learning to sell professionals services and also for those interested in refreshing and sharpening established skills.

Professionals learning to develop business often struggle with finding a reason for calling clients and other important network contacts, when there is no urgent matter to discuss.  You can have frequent conversations with a network contact, as long as the net value of the sum of those conversations is sufficiently high to meet her hurdle rate. If it doesn’t, she won’t return your calls or will find other means to use her time more productively.  The hurdle rate varies from contact to contact and tends to be higher with the more desirable contacts, such as senior executives.

Note that most contacts will not mind the occasional low-value conversation, as long as the net value of the sum of all exchanges with you is high.  This logic presses us to find ways to provide the needed value.  With some contacts the personal relationship is strong enough that interest in each other provides sufficient value.  For the rest, we must constantly be looking for information and ideas that our contacts would find valuable.  That can be a challenge.

Joe Flom of the law firm, Skadden, is one of the world’s greatest rainmakers of the past half century. I find it revealing that he used to hit upon a conversation topic that he would use with his business contacts for a while, and then come up with another.  His colleagues used to refer to these topics as his flavor of the month.  Over the years I have seen other rainmakers do the same, though they seldom have a name for it.

Not having had the opportunity to observe Flom over time I can’t describe the characteristics of his flavors of the month.  From broader experience, I think a flavor must:

• Be a valuable insight or piece of information tied at least peripherally to your business
• Be topical enough that it is easy to bring into conversation
• Lead easily to a question that gets the other person talking

Recognizing a promising flavor is a knack worth developing.  They come to you more frequently than you might imagine, if you are looking for them.  To build the habit, from time to time ask yourself the following questions:

• Is there a contrarian story to a current trend?
• Do you have an example of an interesting solution to a common problem?
• Do you know how a leader in a field does something that others struggle with?
• Is there an impending change in technology, regulation, competitive environment of other area your contacts need to be advised of?

I was reminded of this subject recently when I found myself discussing flavors of the month with several contacts over two weeks.  The subject of flavors of the month had become my flavor of the month.

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.)

What would you do with ten found minutes during your work day?  If your answer isn’t an activity that will help you get business, try again.  What business development activity would you do with ten found minutes?

In practice you probably answer this question several times a week.  You finish a task ten minutes before you are scheduled to call a client.  A colleague is late for a meeting.  You arrive early at a client site.  A meeting finishes early.  What do you do at moments like these?

A rainmaker almost certainly calls a member of her network or sends one a quick email.  She can do this, because she knows who she wants to reach out to and she recognizes the found time as an opportunity to do so.  She has built the calling habit over the years.

Most people don’t have this habit, so the found minutes get spent on responding to an internal email or something else that won’t help them develop business.

If you want to develop the habit, try the following:  Take twenty minutes once a week, preferably on Friday afternoon, Sunday or early Monday, and review your contact list.   Make a new list of people you will try to reach that week.  Just twenty minutes.  Then when you find ten unexpected minutes in your calendar, reach for the list.

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 earlier posts (Dealing with Unreturned Phone Calls, A Lesson from Joe) I described how easy it is to misinterpret a lack of response from a prospective client. This is but one example of a broader tendency for rainmakers to see things differently from the rest of us.  Here are two more examples:

Being stood up for a meeting with a prospective client: