An earlier posting, Do Rainmakers Leave Messages?, discussed the kinds of voicemail messages to leave and when to leave them.  This one covers the practicalities and etiquette for leaving a message that every professional should know.  Many obviously don’t.

If you leave five voicemail messages every working day, a low estimate, it totals to about 1,200 messages a year. Each message you leave serves as a small advertisement for what you would be like to work with.  Leaving a voicemail message is one of those small things you had best do right.

To start, think of the problem from the recipient’s point of view, an easy task because we all receive voicemail messages.  It is best to assume that at the time she picks up your message, the receiver is in a rush, squeezing the call to her voicemail box in between other urgent matters.  Assume that yours is one of a number of messages she must get through as quickly as she can.  Finally, assume that she is not in a location where she can write easily and that she must hear you over a bit of background noise.  Sound familiar?  If you make these assumptions, your voicemail messages will be better under all conditions.

Here are the steps you should follow:

1>     Leave your name first, stating it clearly and spelling it, if it is likely to be hard to understand. If needed provide the name of your company or other relevant affiliation.

2>     Immediately after your name and company, leave your phone number. Immediately after your name and company, leave your phone number! Got that? Doing this saves the recipient from having to replay your entire message again to get your number, if she doesn’t get it the first time through.  State the number slowly and clearly, so the recipient has at least a hope of getting it down the first time.

People who leave 20 minute voicemail messages and then blurt out a garbled phone number at machinegun speed at the end are a menace to the business world and should be forced to attend voicemail courtesy training the way bad drivers are forced to attend auto safety classes. Leave your number this way and people will come to dread your messages.

If you are not in the habit of leaving your number immediately after your name, you will have to work at it to retrain yourself.  Go to the trouble.  The delayed, garbled, fast-spoken phone number is the most common and most annoying breach of voicemail message etiquette.  Leaving it this way also marks you as an inconsiderate rube.

3>     Next, consider giving a short indication of the urgency of your call. This is not always desirable—sometimes you don’t want to emphasize your lack of urgency—but when it is, you can help your contact make a quick decision about whether to listen to your message now or leave it for later.  The exact wording depends on such factors as your relationship with the recipient.  (This isn’t urgent . . . It would be helpful if over the next couple of days … I’m in need of some quick help, if you can …)

4>     Next, provide the core of your message as concisely as you can. If it is bound to be lengthy or complicated, consider sending an email instead of leaving a message.  If you want something, make the request clear.

5>     Consider leaving a brief personal message at the end. (Give my best to Adam and the kids). You may also want to repeat your phone number slowly.

You have many opportunities to practice these guidelines. Use them.

To what extent can you substitute emails for telephone calls and face-to-face meetings when maintaining and developing relationships with clients and other key market contacts?

The answer to this frequently-asked-question affects how you spend your precious business development time and money.  Getting it right will improve your sales effectiveness.  No wonder it’s so frequently asked.  But what is the answer?

On September 22, four bloggers will post their answers simultaneously.  They are:

1)  Brian Carroll, specialist and noted author on generating leads for the complex sale.

2)  Tom Kane, specialist on marketing and selling legal services.

3)  Mark Buckshon, prodigious blogger and special on marketing and selling design and construction services.

4)   Me

We hope this attention to the issue generates conversation on the subject with all of our readers.

Professionals often tell me that clients are too busy to take calls that aren’t made for urgent reasons. They worry that the clients will be annoyed. 

If you ask them why they feel this way, they will say that they would be annoyed if the call came to them.  Then ask them to think of a client they haven’t talked to for a couple of years.  How would they feel if she called them?  They say it would be nice, but different than a call they would initiate, because the client isn’t trying to sell them something. 

The answer to this concern is simple: Don’t try to sell her something. Call her because you like her and would like to know how she is doing.  Call her because you have useful information to share with her.  But . . . the argument drags on and isn’t satisfactory to anyone.

There is a better way to get at these concerns; suggest that the professionals take a client to lunch and ask her how she feels about getting such calls.  Get the straight dope from the horse’s mouth on the level, as it were.  Let the clients speak for themselves.  Here are some things clients have said when asked:
 
1>     Your competitors bring us ideas we find helpful. I always wondered why your people don’t.

2>     When we were doing business together you would call and talk with me regularly.  Now I never hear from you.  Don’t you like me anymore?
 
3>     Would it help you if I introduced you to other people in our firm who could use your services?

4>     I always pick up something from the occasional call.

So, if you have doubts about how a client will feel about your staying in touch, ask her.  If you listen to it, the market is a great teacher.

Yesterday I was reminded of a client I worked with some ten years ago, who needed to bring in more business.  I will call him Benchly, because the name just came to me and I like it. 

Benchly’s business was off, and the younger members of his practice weren’t fully utilized.  Unassigned talent creates a serious cash drain on a firm, so he was in a hurry to find a client.  In his late 50’s, Benchly had practiced his profession for a quarter century.  He had met a lot of people over those twenty plus years. But, he believed many of them were now retired. Like most of us, he had let many of the relationships lapse. 

Still, not all of them could be retired. Rekindling those old relationships was likely to be a faster route to finding business than starting with new ones, so I suggested he start there.

“What could I possibly have to say to someone I haven’t spoken with for ten years?” he asked.  We talked about how to approach these old contacts, and over the next few weeks, he called them.  Only one of them resulted in any new business.  Benchly billed $16 million to that client’s company over the next twelve months.

I was reminded of Benchly because I was recommending a similar effort to another client, in this case a recruiter.  Much younger than Benchly, he nevertheless had let relationships with some potentially valuable contacts go cold.

“What could I possibly have to say to someone I haven’t spoken to in so many years?” he asked.  We talked, and he went off to make some calls.  Half an hour later he was back, having scheduled a meeting with a former boss he hadn’t talked to for nine years.  He had spent the half hour on the phone catching up with the former boss, who wanted to talk to him about a search.

So, what can you possibly have to say to someone you haven’t talked to in so many years?  This is what I recommend:

• Write each cold contact’s name on a piece of paper.  Finding a reason to call them will be much less daunting in the concrete than in the abstract.
• Review the following reasons for calling and see if you can adapt one of them to each person:
  o        Something reminded me of you.
  o        I need your advice.
  o        There is something you should know.
  o        How are the results of our past work for you?
• Focus on them, not on you and definitely not on your need for business.  If you aren’t sincerely interested in them, you shouldn’t call in the first place.  This should be a case of networking making you a better friend (a subject for another day), rather than an indirect means of putting the touch on someone.
• Have a concise, clear elevator speech prepared so you can respond to the inevitable question about what you are doing now.
• Don’t rush things.  You have to earn the right to talk about more business and that may take months.  Of course, if the contact asks you for help, you can respond immediately.

Working for a large firm allows you the opportunity to use firm marketing efforts as excuses to call clients, prospective clients and other important contacts.

Rainmakers make the most of these opportunities that others largely miss. Because firm marketing efforts do little good, unless someone uses them to meet or stay in touch with a market contact, these missed opportunities result in massive waste of marketing dollars,

Printed materials yellow and curl on the shelf until they are thrown away. Tickets to sports and cultural events go unused, each empty seat representing a waste of several hundred dollars. The receptivity of clients to such offerings often surprises the professional who takes advantage of them for the first time.

The first few times a professional uses a firm marketing effort to make contacts can be transforming experiences. A management consultant who had recently started to bring in business had this to say:

We recently moved our New York office and had an open house to show our new space to clients and other friends of the firm. We were all asked to invite people and most took it as a civic duty that they fulfilled by inviting two or three guests. I saw it as an opportunity to call all my contacts. I was surprised that so many accepted, but even when someone didn’t come, it gave me an excuse to talk with them and see how things were going. In the worst cases, I didn’t talk with them, but left them a message that reminded them I was thinking about them.

I know from other sources that sixteen of his contacts accepted his invitation.

Documents, printed and electronic, also provide reasons for calling clients. Once a month, an accountant at a big firm would visit the closet where the firm kept article reprints, white papers, printed cases studies and related materials. He would scan the vast quantities of materials while reflecting on his contacts, and so match as many contacts as he could to the subjects of the documents. For example, he would match a white paper on the accounting issues of doing work in China with an accountant at a client expanding there. He would then call the contacts to ask their interest in the document or send it with a note.

Call discipline, essential to rain making, often gets put off for want of adequate reasons for calling. But, good reasons for the calls are all around you. Your firm’s marketing department provides some of the easiest.

You have just a few days left in the year. Here are some reasons for calling your contacts that come but once a year:

1. I didn’t want the year to end without letting you know how much I have appreciated your . . .

2. We want to continue to support you next year as we have in this one. Do you expect to have any needs that we should be planning for?

3. As the workload finally slows down for the Holidays, I finally have time to make this call, which I have been planning to make for (weeks, months).

4. We should get together before we are both too swept up in next year’s activity.

5. Would you like our invoice before the end of the year?

Our best wishes for 2008.

In an earlier posting, I described Build-It-and-They-Will-Come Thinking. This is a fallacious assumption held by some professionals that if you do one major effort, such as give a speech, prospective clients will come to you and hire you. To derive sales benefit from the speech you must abandon this assumption and treat the speech as just one step to acquiring a client.

Today I was reminded of another kind of erroneous thinking that reduces the success at selling professional services. I met with an actuary who had attended an association meeting a month ago. He had planned to follow up with thirty people he had met there and admitted that he hadn’t done so. I asked why not and he responded, “I haven’t got time to follow up with thirty people.” While true, this answer is logically flawed. He could at least have followed up with the most important contact he made at the event, a senior vice president at an account he was targeting. He might have even found time to follow up with five or maybe even ten. Instead, he had fallen into the trap of All-or-Nothing Thinking. Here are two more examples:

• A business developer at a Big Four accounting firm helped a partner craft a letter to be sent to the CEO of a bank. A note came back from the CEO, saying he had passed the letter on to his CFO, and suggesting that the accountant follow up there. The partner told the business developer, “You see, it didn’t work.” He had apparently defined success as immediate access to the CEO. It was get that meeting or nothing.
• A management consultant was finding the call discipline required to build a referral network onerous. Like the actuary described above, she was having difficulty finding time for making calls. “Besides,” she added, “what can I possibly have to say to all these people every month?” She had fallen into the all-or-nothing trap by thinking that she had to call everyone on her list once a month. That might be true of some of her contacts, but more infrequent intervals would be appropriate for most of them.

In my experience, this is a common kind of error. It seems so obvious that people feel embarrassed when you point out that they have made it. All three of the professionals described here are extremely smart. They just haven’t learned yet that rain making requires many, many small advances to win big every once in a while. They haven’t yet parsed the effort down to the many small steps that they can make day after day. When they do, they will be well on their way to becoming rainmakers.

Many professionals put off calling former clients for want of a sufficiently important reason to interrupt them. This is a problem that little bothers a true rainmaker. Rainmakers just pick up their phones and call their contacts, without much bother finding a reason.

Why the big difference? The rainmakers have some advantages: First, they work larger networks and learn things from one contact that they can use as a reason to call others. The more people you call, the more gossip (or industry intelligence, if you will) you pick up and the easier it gets to find a reason to call others.

Second, they are more practiced at recognizing a reason-for-call when they hear one. A client just changed jobs—the rainmaker sees this as a reason for calling several others. A client gets some press in The Wall Street Journal—the rainmaker knows that this is an excuse to call people at that company early in the day, before they learn about it from some other source. A firm runs an event, say a holiday party in December—the rainmaker uses it to call all of her clients to see if they can come. Even if they can’t, the rainmaker gets to have a little chat with many of them.

Rainmakers also set the bar lower when selecting a reason for calling their contacts. They have learned to identify those contacts who find it valuable to talk from time to time, regardless of the reason, and those who only want a call if the professional has something important to impart.

The goal of each call you make should be to provide something of value each time to every contact. But not everyone insists on getting the same kind of value. Some crave industry gossip and some don’t. Some are eager for new ideas and others aren’t. Some want to meet a wide variety of players in their market. Some want technical information related to their business. Some want friendship. Some want a safe place to vent their frustrations with their employers. Rainmakers figure out what their contacts want and give it to them.

But you don’t have to succeed every time, at least with most contacts. The contacts won’t remember every call you make to them, but will remember if, in general, talking with you is helpful. If they consider you helpful, they will take your calls. So, that is the standard you need to meet.

How would you react, if the following happened to you over the course of a month as you tried to develop new business?

• Three unreturned phone calls to the same former client.
• Being stood up for meetings two weeks in succession.
• Learning that a former client has a new project only after it has been awarded to someone else.
• Four losses in a row to competitors.
• Realization that you have been calling and meeting with contacts at a large prospective client for a year without winning any business.

If you work at developing business long enough, you will have a month like this.  Events like these don’t bother rainmakers.  Where other people would blame themselves and get discouraged, rainmakers depersonalize such events.  They know that their luck will soon turn and they will start to win.

“You never know where the next piece of business is going to come from.”  I have heard those exact words from at least a dozen rainmakers I have interviewed over the years.  For all the targeting and prioritizing that we do when selling our services, there is still room for some healthy opportunism.  These unexpected opportunities remind us how imperfect our judgment is when picking targets and result in us winning some major assignments.  Here are three people who have unexpectedly given me opportunities and lessons to be learned from each.  Names have been changed.

Stephen

If you passed Stephen in the street, you wouldn’t notice him.  He is short, quiet and lacks pretension.  He seems shy by nature, though he engages easily one on one and has taught himself to work a room. 

I first met him doing just that at an association meeting.  There he focused on other people, getting them to talk about something that interested them, so that later, reflecting on the conversation, I was more likely to remember the person doing the talking, than to remember Stephen.

On the last day of the conference we found ourselves the first to arrive at a breakout room to hear some speaker I have long since forgotten.  He asked me questions and, like others I had seen the night before, I was soon talking about myself and finding it a pleasant subject, while he sat there quietly, a twinkle in his eye. He suggested that we get together some time after the meeting.

That was twelve years ago.  I didn’t believe then or for quite some time that his firm would hire us.  But it did.  It took him four years to get us in, but he did it. Since then he has become a friend.  I have boundless respect for this man, as do many others.  Still, if you put him in a crowd, he will become inconspicuous, almost as if he had protective coloration that helped him disappear into his surroundings.

Lesson:  Stephen is a reminder that substance is more important than show, something we all know, but need reminding of from time to time.  He is also a good example of how valuable it is to have a sponsor in a client organization.
 

Rachel

I also met Rachel at an event, this one sponsored by a team that consulted to law firms from a Big Four accounting firm.  Not having learned how to get a good seat at such an event (see posting of  June 2007, entitled Three Ways to Get a Good Seat.), I took pot luck by grabbing an unoccupied seat between two other participants.  Rachel sat on my left.  She worked at a mid-sized law firm as director of marketing.  The firm didn’t sound like one we would be eager to work for.  Still, she seemed a nice person, and to me that counts for something.

I sent her one of my books and called her a few times.  She wanted to bring us into her firm, but clearly lacked the influence to do so.  I put her into the call-twice-a-year category and went about my business.

Three years later, I answered the phone and it was Rachel.  She had moved to a prestigious firm and brought us in to what was a strategically important account.

Since then I have gotten to know her.  She has dealt successfully with things that would bring most people down, and remains irrepressibly optimistic.  She is truly heroic.  But it took me a long time to learn that.

Lessons:  People move around.  Someone who is a poor fit in one company may be a star at another.  You can’t always recognize a hero when you see one.
 

Jake

A partner at a large firm, Jake was under pressure to sell more work.  To help him, the firm put him into one of our programs, and I worked with him for six months.  He was openly skeptical, but did what we suggested.  He took direction, worked hard at developing business, and hung in there for six months.  But the business didn’t come.  Not long after our program ended all his hard work began to pay off.  I learned this from others and called to congratulate him, but he didn’t respond to my voicemail message, nor to any other message that I left him. 

I did a lot of work for his firm, and when I was in town would stop by his office.  When he was available, he was cordial, but undemonstrative, the conversation was stilted.  He left the firm and I called him at his new employer.  Again there was no response. I didn’t try again.

Last year I got a call from someone in his firm asking us to come pitch our services.  The oman said that Jake was among their most successful rainmakers and had recommended us.  One of my colleagues went for the sales call.  Jake introduced him to the assembled crowd, saying that if they followed our advice, they would eventually win work, that by following our teachings, he could confidently generate the revenues he was equired to, year after year.  We got the assignment and are still working with his colleagues.  With that kind of endorsement, it is no surprise.

I called to thank him, and we had another stilted conversation. Since then he hasn’t returned my calls.

Lessons:  I am reluctant to say, “Expect the unexpected,” because you might puke.  Other than that, all I can say is thank you, Jake.  You may not have returned my calls, but you were there for me when it counted.  To the rest of you, all I can do is point out that you never know where the next piece of work will come from.